If I ask ignorant, honest questions will I get banned?

[ShouldIBuy]

Yes I am new to paradox games. I might have heard of one of them, but I tend to invest heavily in games I learn. I don't settle for anything less than near complete system mastery. I love the 'it'll be done with its done' attitude and I'm very happy to hear developers maintaining games far longer than normal. I'm often disappointed with studios that don't seem to respect their own IPs as much as I do. I'm sure you guys can think of other more big name gaming companies doing that alot recently...

I like the fact that the real-time aspect is easily throttle-able on the fly even in multiplayer. That's something blizzard games can't do, but it's not a knock against their RTS's since it's far easier to implement in a 4x. I'm also pretty okay with bare bones games. I felt that way about endless space or the xcom1 (EU, the reboot), but it was fine for what it was.

Thanks for the FTL summary, guys. From an outside perspective it seems like it was purposely built as an advanced feature that actually split the playerbase from the start, but wasn't noticeable until it became depreciated. It wouldn't surprise me if warp and wormhole drives used the same code base and therefore shared a common technical problem. It makes me want to play 1.9 and use the other (3?) types of FTL, but force the AI to use hyperlanes to minimize performance problems. Unfortunately this seems like an unfair advantage.

The enemy AI is very important to me, since getting other people to play dozen hour games is a bit unrealistic. Since people here think that the AI will eventually become a (albeit modded) challenge, I'll accept that. It's a bit frustrating that I can't look at the mods here, but I found the (main?) steam one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584133829 . Of course I won't be buying it through steam no matter the price difference to GoG. The modding scene does appear to be vibrant, which is a must for modern games. It looks like I might have to go through another game's hundred of mechanical mods yet again.

One thing I noticed in some of the recent LPs is that due to the crippling nature of administrative cap, the AI and even the player are hamstrung from ever having a decent chunk of the galaxy. This is in contrast to the 'survival of the fittest' standard tournament style knockout of other competitive grand strategy games like Civ5. Has anyone played on a recent (perhaps modded) game where the AIs were even able to gobble up all its neighbors so a 12 player game became a 3 player one without abnormally warmongering custom racial design?

 

[Matoro_TBS]

One thing I noticed in some of the recent LPs is that due to the crippling nature of administrative cap, the AI and even the player are hamstrung from ever having a decent chunk of the galaxy. This is in contrast to the 'survival of the fittest' standard tournament style knockout of other competitive grand strategy games like Civ5. Has anyone played on a recent (perhaps modded) game where the AIs were even able to gobble up all its neighbors so a 12 player game became a 3 player one without abnormally warmongering custom racial design?

The administrative cap is the mechanic that increases tradition and tech cost and leader upkeep. However, there has always been a mechanic for this, now it's just 1) transparent and fair, because it is clearly shown 2) you can control it with techs etc 3) it's lighter penalty than it was previously, as pre-2.2 smaller planets were never worth colonizing just because of their tech penalty. Admin cap is not a problem.

The AI hasn't ever been very competitive in a way that it could eat quickly its neighbors and snowball out of control. Fanatic purifiers etch which get advanced start sometimes manage to pull that off, but generally it's very rare. The AI is pretty... well, slow. Even if it was more aggressive, just pure number of stars and planets in average Stellaris game makes it very time-consuming to wipe out a decently-sized empire. The only effective way to do this constantly is to have a civic or an ascension perk that enables "Total war" casus belli. Non-genoidical empires basically never destroy each other.
However Stellaris has some "end bosses" that function as those scary end-game blobs of murder. Khan, Awakened Empires and Crisis are all basically superior foes that force player to "serious", galactic scale war even if the ordinary AI empires aren't that much of a threat by themselves.

 

[Duuk]

The administrative cap is the mechanic that increases tradition and tech cost and leader upkeep. However, there has always been a mechanic for this, now it's just 1) transparent and fair, because it is clearly shown 2) you can control it with techs etc 3) it's lighter penalty than it was previously, as pre-2.2 smaller planets were never worth colonizing just because of their tech penalty. Admin cap is not a problem.

This. It was ALWAYS there. It's just more obvious now that we can see it. Does it still need to be adjusted and probably re-balanced some. Oh yes. Very much yes. It's too low to start and then suddenly once you gain access to the techs that can manage it you suddenly skyrocket out of control. So the curve is wrong. That will be fine-tuned over the next 60 days I'm sure.

 

[B3ndolf]

Imho other than shortly after a major update the ai in paradox games in general is no better or worse then the ai in most 4x or grand strategy games.

If you want any challenge you have to crank up the difficulty and give the ai bonus stuff or else you just steam roll them.

The ai in stellaris right now is at a low ebb since we just had a major patch, it will steadily improve again with every patch until the next major update.

 

[ShouldIBuy]

Thanks for the planet cap ... recap. I understand why they are there, but ever since civ3 (which was notoriously bad) the systems have left a bad taste in my mouth, especially compared to the good old MoO days where you could just vote yourself the win after you had over half the galaxy. I do find it strange that the AI doesn't ever want to get big and powerful or that it's not worth it to try. That makes it feel like a punishment for playing the game more when it happens to players and an ineptitude when it happens to the AI.

For instance, Starcraft II's AI was always good but it has been programmed by watching the professionals play and then emulating their strategies. Without cheating, it can give human players a challenge. Even more complicated games like DotA have impressively good AI compared to well-practiced human opponents who can think on their feet and strategize together. DotA, specifically got so big because it had a huge variety of game-changing events that could easily make your 10,000th game substantially different from all the rest. So I refuse to think that it's not doable for a simpler "I'm going to execute my strategy" sort of game like monopoly or a 4x where you really never have to vary your play style due to sudden, continuous changes.

Last question about the old FTL stuff, did it really allow you to just wormhole into an opposing human player's territory without any indication that it was about to happen?

 

[Tomn_Peng]

So I refuse to think that it's not doable for a simpler "I'm going to execute my strategy" sort of game like monopoly or a 4x where you really never have to vary your play style due to sudden, continuous changes.

There's a number of mid-game and end-game events that are specifically designed to be major, disruptive changes to the galactic map. That being said, what you're describing is part of the reason why Stellaris is more grand strategy than 4X - AI empires aren't trying to "win," they're trying to live out an existence in accordance with their ethics and AI personality. Democratic Crusaders want to wage war on other empires to force them to adopt more democratic forms of government, Federation Builders want to build a big ol' hugbox of friendly aliens, Spiritual Seekers want to form peaceful relationships, especially with other spiritualist empires, Decadent Hierarchies just want to be left alone so that they can oppress their proles, etc. etc. There's only a few personality types that actively want to conquer literally everyone they see - and those are outright described as genocidal in one way or another. That doesn't mean that the AI doesn't try to get more powerful when it can, but not all AI personalities consider unchecked military expansion to be acceptable. As for internal development, well, the AI just isn't as good at figuring out their economy as the player usually is. They try, bless their little electronic hearts, but they're no match for someone who knows what they're doing.

I will note that Stellaris does have particular difficulties in that they need to write AI scripts that allow every one of over a dozen (or even two dozen) empires to make grand strategic and economic decisions in what is effectively real-time. It's not enough for the AI to be good, it also needs to be efficient. Not a programmer myself, though, so I couldn't say how big an impact that is.

Last question about the old FTL stuff, did it really allow you to just wormhole into an opposing human player's territory without any indication that it was about to happen?

Yep. Warfare prior to 2.0 was basically whack-a-mole - the great challenge in war isn't beating the enemy fleet, it's actually finding and pinning down the enemy fleet and fighting the Great Decisive Battle after which comes the Great Tedious Mop-Up. When your enemy had basically free reign to escape to pretty much any system at will, or to chase you wherever you went, there's not much stopping the weaker fleet from running away indefinitely - and run they will, if they think they're weaker. Going to 2.0 and hyperlanes, among other things, meant you actually needed to get past predictable strategic points that could be reinforced and defended.

 

[mergele]

Yes it did and it was glorious. Well, technically you could spot the warning, but only on the in-system view and unless you were actively watching out for that you won't see it.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Last question about the old FTL stuff, did it really allow you to just wormhole into an opposing human player's territory without any indication that it was about to happen?

The short answer is...it depends. There are three ways to "wormhole" your way into another player's territory while ignoring normal hyperlane connections, but only one of them, naturally occurring wormholes, has any hope to come online before the mid game. Keep in mind that the only way to move through someone else's territory is either to get border access permission from that person or by declaring war on them, so you will always know if someone is on their way to attack you. If you close your borders to someone, they cannot move through your territory at all unless they formally declare war on you.

1) The first way is via an actual wormhole, which naturally spawn upon map generation. While wormholes can be useful, they only connect 2 systems to each other and cannot be changed, so the defending player will know in advance where the other ends of any wormholes in their territory lead to (assuming they have researched the technology required to use wormholes). Of the three ways to bypass the hyperlane network, wormholes are the easiest to defend. Since you know where the wormhole dumps out, you can just build up a starbase in that system to defend it (you can even park a fleet in the system if you are worried about an impending attack). There is also a mechanic in the game that preemptively alerts you when an inbound hostile fleet is within a certain number of hyperlane jumps from your territory. The distance this detection works depends on your sensor technologies as well as whether or not the closest system you control has a Listening Post in it (which increases the range) and whether or not you have the Enigmatic Engineering perk (which further increases the range). These sensors work through wormholes, so you can detect an inbound hostile fleet from as many as 10 hyperlane jumps away if you've maxed out your sensor range. This gives you more time to react to an inbound attack.

2) The second way is by using a superstructure called a Gateway. These are basically mass effect relays. They function as wormholes but they connect to all other active gateways in the galaxy. You cannot use gateways in someone else's territory if they have closed their borders to you unless you formally declare war on them. Gateways are trickier to defend, because sensors do not work through them, but unlike wormholes, gateways are artificial, so you get to choose where gateways will be in your empire, if you build them at all. Defending them is the same as defending wormholes, but without the foresight of sensor range. Personally, I find it to be very effective to build a gateway in each of my choke point systems. I keep at least one fleet in every choke point that leads into my empire, so having a gateway in each of them means I can move most of my fleets to any of my entry points at a moment's notice.

3) The third and final way is with the FTL drive called a Jump Drive (or the Psi-Jump Drive if you pick specific perks). These drives allow you to manually bypass the hyerplane network and "jump" directly to a system of your choice. There is no practical defense against this, but using jump drives offensively is strategically unsound. They are much better used as a way to escape a battle rather than to find one (unless you are significantly more powerful than your opponent, in which case, you'll probably win the war anyway). You see, jump drives have a somewhat long cooldown between uses (I think it was 90 game days, but I could be wrong) and during that cooldown all ships that jumped suffer a -50% penalty to their weapon damage and sublight speed. This is a huge penalty and can turn what would have been a victory into a defeat. The best defense against this tactic is deterrence. If your attacker is about as strong as you and they are using jump drives offensively they will practically guarantee your victory. Remember, any fleet that "jumps" into your territory is automatically weaker than normal, giving you the chance to destroy them with greater ease.

Most of the time, you can expect everyone's ships to move along the hyerplane network. This allows you to create defensible choke points into your territory. If you are lucky/fast enough to expand your territory so there are only 2-4 entrances into your empire, you can really turtle up. I remember a few times I won what would normally have been a hopeless defensive war (me vs a mega-federation is usually how it goes) because I turtled up early. In the early game especially, it can be quite difficult to punch through a dedicated fortress system.

With all that said, the best answer for keeping an eye on your rivals and other potential threats is a late game superstructure called the Sentry Array, which gives you full vision of the entire galaxy at all times. If you get one of these bad-boys operational, no-one can hide from your all-seeing eye.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

The short answer is...it depends. There are three ways to "wormhole" your way into another player's territory while ignoring normal hyperlane connections, but only one of them, naturally occurring wormholes, has any hope to come online before the mid game. Keep in mind that the only way to move through someone else's territory is either to get border access permission from that person or by declaring war on them, so you will always know if someone is on their way to attack you. If you close your borders to someone, they cannot move through your territory at all unless they formally declare war on you.

1) The first way is via an actual wormhole, which naturally spawn upon map generation. While wormholes can be useful, they only connect 2 systems to each other and cannot be changed, so the defending player will know in advance where the other ends of any wormholes in their territory lead to (assuming they have researched the technology required to use wormholes). Of the three ways to bypass the hyperlane network, wormholes are the easiest to defend. Since you know where the wormhole dumps out, you can just build up a starbase in that system to defend it (you can even park a fleet in the system if you are worried about an impending attack). There is also a mechanic in the game that preemptively alerts you when an inbound hostile fleet is within a certain number of hyperlane jumps from your territory .The distance this detection works depends on your sensor technologies as well as whether or not the closest system you control has a Listening Post in it (which increases the range) and whether or not you have the Enigmatic Engineering perk (which further increases the range). These sensors work through wormholes, so you can detect an inbound hostile fleet from as many as 10 hyperlane jumps away if you've maxed out your sensor range. This gives you more time to react to an inbound attack.

2) The second way is by using a superstructure called a Gateway. These are basically mass effect relays. They function as wormholes but they connect to all other active gateways in the galaxy. You cannot use gateways in someone else's territory if they have closed their borders to you unless you formally declare war on them. Gateways are trickier to defend, because sensors do not work through them, but unlike wormholes, gateways are artificial, so you get to choose where gateways will be in your empire, if you build them at all. Defending them is the same as defending wormholes, but without the foresight of sensor range.

3) The third and final way is with the FTL drive called a Jump Drive (or the Psi-Jump Drive if you pick specific perks). These drives allow you to manually bypass the hyerplane network and "jump" directly to a system of your choice. There is no practical defense against this, but using jump drives offensively is strategically unsound. You see, jump drives have a somewhat long cooldown between uses (I think it was 90 game days, but I could be wrong) and during that cooldown all ships that jumped suffer a -50% penalty to their weapon damage and sublight speed. This is a huge penalty and can turn what would have been a victory into a defeat.

Most of the time, you can expect everyone's ships to move along the hyerplane network. This allows you to create defensible choke points into your territory. If you are lucky/fast enough to expand your territory so there are only 2-4 entrances into your empire, you can really turtle up. I remember a few times I won what would normally have been a hopeless defensive war (me vs a mega-federation is usually how it goes) because I turtled up early. In the early game especially, it can be quite difficult to punch through a dedicated fortress system.

With all that said, the best answer for keeping an eye on your rivals and other potential threats is a late game superstructure called the Sentry Array, which gives you full vision of the entire galaxy at all times. If you get one of these bad-boys operational, no-one can hide from your all-seeing eye.

They were actually asking about the old FTL system.
To answer the question ShouldIBuy yes you could. How they worked was that your ships could jump to or from one of your wormhole stations. So you would have a network of stations whose jump radii overlapped so that you could jump around your empire and as far into the territory of your neighbours as your border stations could reach. For example, you could jump into one enemy system, but then to get to the next system you need to jump back to one of your stations and then to the next system. You could also build your stations in other empire's territory that you had access to. Which allowed you to surround enemies with jump stations and build a network that would span most of the galaxy giving you far greater mobility than the other starter FTLs. It was the best until you unlocked jump drives by a large margin.

Edit to add:
I really don't think you can get much of a clearer picture of the game right now than you could if you just jumped in and gave it a try. It's 75% off on the paradox store right now meaning the base game is only €10 or local equivalent. It's more than worth it, I really doubt you would actually regret such a spend.

If you buy from their own store you don't have to worry about installing steam or anything (although you are given that option as well)
https://www.paradoxplaza.com/stellaris/STST01G-MASTER.html

 

[FiddleSticks96]

They were actually asking about the old FTL system.
To answer the question ShouldIBuy yes you could. How they worked was that your ships could jump to or from one of your wormhole stations. So you would have a network of stations whose jump radii overlapped so that you could jump around your empire and as far into the territory of your neighbours as your border stations could reach. For example, you could jump into one enemy system, but then to get to the next system you need to jump back to one of your stations and then to the next system. You could also build your stations in other empire's territory that you had access to. Which allowed you to surround enemies with jump stations and build a network that would span most of the galaxy giving you far greater mobility than the other starter FTLs. It was the best until you unlocked jump drives by a large margin.

Ooooooh, I hadn't realized that's what they were asking about. Well, at least my fingers got a workout.

Yeah, wormhole drive was by far my favorite FTL pre-2.0. Cheap to build and maintain and they were super fast to boot! I'd have 8 in my home system, 4 in every major colony system, and 1 in all my other systems. It was actually faster than jump drive so long as you kept expanding your network.

 

[Duuk]

The old FTL system is kind of irrelevant if you're asking if you should buy NOW.

You should, yes.

Unless this entire thread has been some elaborate troll to get us to discuss the old FTL system and get around the FTL megathread right before Christmas when the Paradox staff isn't paying attention and see if you can get some people to start a nasty argument over something that, really, has been hashed out for (literally) a few hundred pages in a different thread.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

The old FTL system is kind of irrelevant if you're asking if you should buy NOW.

You should, yes.

Unless this entire thread has been some elaborate troll to get us to discuss the old FTL system and get around the FTL megathread right before Christmas when the Paradox staff isn't paying attention and see if you can get some people to start a nasty argument over something that, really, has been hashed out for (literally) a few hundred pages in a different thread.

I'm gonna be honest, I would be thoroughly impressed if that were the case.

 

[Tomn_Peng]

To expand a little more about Stellaris being in some ways more simulation than 4X, here's a general overview of the trajectory of most of my games.

- Exploration: Let's find out what our backyard looks like, we haven't raked in ages.

- First contact: Well, hidey-ho, neighborino! What's that you say? You find my fundamental values and beliefs to be repugnant to you on a visceral level? Well, as long as you understand that this is MY yard and that is YOUR yard and not to cross the fence I'm furiously building between us, I'm sure we'll get along swimmingly!

- Consolidation: OK, now that we set up that fence, maybe we should do something about all the leaves in the backyard.

- Early conflict: Now, look, there's no sense pointing fingers about who trespassed on whose yard with what kind of firepower, the important thing is that the fence is over HERE now, and we'll agree to keep it that way until the next time one of us thinks we have the upper hand. Cool?

- Escalation: All right, that dog has defecated on my lawn for the LAST TIME. Now it's time to make sure our yard is safe from the fiendish machinations of our neighbors once and for all, we just need to build up and get ready for -

- Mid-game Crisis: JESUS JOSEPH AND MARY WHERE'D THAT AXE MURDERER COME FROM

- Post-Crisis: OK, right, that's dealt with, now where were we? Oh, right, taking care of our neighbors once and for all. Hopefully that axe murderer hit them harder than they hit me!

- Domination: Neutralizing the neighbors was cool and all, but you know what? My lawn? It can be a BETTER lawn that this. In fact, I'm going to make it the very best lawn in the neighborhood, by fair means or foul!

- Utopia: OK, I'm now officially recognized as the best lawn in the neighborhood. Time to fill it up with all kinds of wacky trinkets! (In other words, time for crazy stupid victory lap projects of various kinds. Build a Death Star! Conquer the galaxy! Build ringworlds! Terraform multiple planets into planet-wide cities! Upload your citizens into the neural network and abandon flesh! Unlock the psionic potential of your entire species! Capture the energy of an entire sun! Ensure all citizens live in a state of utopian abundance! Whatever crazy far-future dream you have for society, make it so!)

- HUBRIS: HUBRIS

- Post-Hubris: Start rebuilding, maybe? Maybe there's still enough left of you to finish whatever Utopian projects you'd been working on.

- Completion: Well, I'm done here. I've got no more goals I want to hit left. Time to start a new empire. That spiritualist pacifist xenophobe setup looks mighty interesting...

 

[Had a dad]

I'm gonna be honest, I would be thoroughly impressed if that were the case.

I wouldn't considering the OP and its... would I get banned.

Closed