Overlord 3.4.3: impressions

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Liggi

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Mar 28, 2017
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My previous thread on 3.4.2 is here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/overlord-initial-impressions.1524975

But I thought it would be worthwhile to do another thread, because frankly, the improvements in the hotfix are massive, and I feel like I can now give a proper overview of my impressions of the DLC / patch as it was intended.

For context here, I played a Fanatic Authoritarian, Spiritualist, Imperial Cult with Aristocratic Elite.

Much of my previous impressions still stand, but here are some more thoughts:
  • Loyalty feels great. There was a nice balance of trying to keep subjects loyal while trying to get as much out of them as I could. I had to consider ways to boost loyalty temporarily and to keep it high, and sometimes when renegotiating terms I had to consider tradeoffs to get them to remain loyal. It's also nice to know I could just exploit the heck out of all of them, but I run the risk of an independence or an allegiance war. I had some powerful neighbours, and so it was interesting to have to really consider how dangerous having a disloyal subject for too long was.
  • Vassals and vassal contracts are a great Influence sink. Influence feels precious again. There are actually tradeoffs of when to use it and I don't just end up sat at the max cap.
    • On that note: one QoL thing. When I try to force my Vassal to accept changes to Terms, and they reject, and I want to try again... I have to keep remembering what I proposed and set it in the Terms again before I can re-propose. If I want to force through a change and have to do it four times to get them to run out of Influence to decline, this becomes a bit annoying.
  • Hyper Relays are SO GOOD. In the past. I'd control my local area with a few Vassals, but waging war at the fringes was just too tedious due to travel time. Now, I can actually interact with empires further afield. The balance between the level of effort required to build your network, the effects of the network, and the benefits it gives you are spot on. I love them.
  • Orbital Rings are very cool. I love the Buildings that modify the planet production in various ways, that's a lot of fun. It might be nice to see something system-wide for Starbases (I guess probably with a weaker effect, though). Would allow some interesting system-based specialisation in certain circumstances.
  • It's 2350, I'm a pretty massive empire with 4 powerful Vassals, and the other AI are doing a pretty great job of keeping up with me. I'm 5th or 6th in Diplomatic Weight, and a few AI are Superior in one dimension or another. I feel like I'm playing well and they are keeping up / exceeding me (this is on GA Scaling, but they weren't this good before).
  • The whole "Realise your Grand Design" tagline really is how this DLC feels. It's awesome. I love Holdings, I love Specialised Vassals.
  • I haven't had a single Situation! I thought I'd have at least one. The only ones I had were very short-lived deficit ones when I failed to notice I ran out of a resource, and I fixed it immediately.
  • I'm seeing the AI build Federations, have Vassals, declare Allegiance wars, all sorts. It's great!
  • ESPIONAGE. It's just... not quite there yet.
    • The "someone is planning to declare war" warning is the coolest thing about it, to be honest. Added some real tension to some moments in the game.
    • I still rarely run any Operations, they just don't have much of an effect. They especially don't feel worth it now that they cost Influence.
    • I really WANT to use it, but I just can't quite figure out what to do with it. And honestly, I think the system isn't entirely sure what it's for. I know this is already on the radar for the Custodians, so I won't say much more about it. But it feels close to being really cool, but it's not there yet.

This is the most fun I've had with Stellaris in a long time. It's a fantastic DLC. I hope anyone who reviewed it badly will consider going back and updating in light of 3.4.3.
 
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