Please make late game more interesting

[Commander Tobe]

I know this is vague. And maybe it's best to be understood as a place to collect different ideas.

Currently you can win by 3 conditions
1) Have most victory points
2) Conquer the WHOLE galaxy
3) Become the crisis and destroy the galaxy

All winning conditions somewhat demand that you have the biggest fleet. Especially in late game you will have endless tiresome wars which can be exhausting. At least for me it feels more like work than fun which is why most of the time I quit the game and start with a different empire in an infinite vicious circle.

I bet there are ways how Stellaris can do better! It would be nice for a change if devs could focus on that. In my mind it is still the biggest problem the game has.

 

[EarthboundPapa]

I'm having a similar feeling about the end of the game. Once control of the board is established, side quests are done, and the other worthy empires are pathetic status, I'm usually waiting for the last 100 years or so and already understand I have won. Conquering the whole board is tedious and there's so many planets that I stop caring about how I tailor them. I'm too eager to move on to a new game and do it over again and there's nor enough of a point in waiting just to see a victory message.

Although I am also glad that the game has this kind of freedom in the way it does. I'm pretty sure you can continue playing after the victory year and it speaks from how the developers understand gaming and how a particular match can become valuable to the player. I had kept my winning saves for a while, like pictures of the story I created, and later touched base with some of them again after they were done. It's fun like that in Stellaris too.

Mostly it's good the game doesn't have any forced stopping point because if it did it would totally change the feeling of the game. Should a player be able to request victory after conditions are met?

 

[The5lacker]

I'm curious how you would go about winning a game with other players who don't want you to win... *without* having the biggest fleet. Seems to me those other players would probably use their fleets to, you know, stop you from winning, whatever the win condition you invent is. Not really possible to have a game all about conflict that doesn't end in conflict.

 

[Commander Tobe]

I'm curious how you would go about winning a game with other players who don't want you to win... *without* having the biggest fleet. Seems to me those other players would probably use their fleets to, you know, stop you from winning, whatever the win condition you invent is. Not really possible to have a game all about conflict that doesn't end in conflict.

Are you familiar with Sid Meier's Civilization 4 or 5? There ARE ways, like diplomatic, technological or cultural winning conditions. For me these are the best examples for 4X games that don't necessarily rely on warfare to be fun and challenging.

 

[The5lacker]

Are you familiar with Sid Meier's Civilization 4 or 5? There ARE ways, like diplomatic, technological or cultural winning conditions. For me these are the best examples for 4X games that don't necessarily rely on warfare to be fun and challenging.

It sure is a good thing those contribute to your endgame score in Stellaris then.

Also, in Civ, if someone is going for a Culture win, is it physically impossible for you to just... war them out of existence? Because if it is possible, then the Culture player still needs to consider their warfaring capabilities to avoid being warfared out of existence. Very difficult to win a game you've been removed from.

 

[Commander Tobe]

Very difficult to win a game you've been removed from.

Sure, hard to imagine a win without building an army once. But that's not what I mean. At some point you will need a (defense) force to protect your borders, true. But theoretically you could win the game without conquering the whole galaxy and that I find a very interesting concept for a change.

 

[The5lacker]

Sure, hard to imagine a win without building an army once. But that's not what I mean. At some point you will need a (defense) force to protect your borders, true. But theoretically you could win the game without conquering the whole galaxy and that I find a very interesting concept for a change.

I mean, you already can. Again, Endgame Score checks for a *diverse* array of things. You can get a big chunk of points from, say, fighting the Crisis, or building megastructures, or collecting Relics, or anything. If you feel the Endgame is going on to long, you can set the score date earlier, but the fact remains: Doing non-war things *is* a route to victory in Stellaris.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

It sure is a good thing those contribute to your endgame score in Stellaris then.

Also, in Civ, if someone is going for a Culture win, is it physically impossible for you to just... war them out of existence? Because if it is possible, then the Culture player still needs to consider their warfaring capabilities to avoid being warfared out of existence. Very difficult to win a game you've been removed from.

Civ has multiple alternate victory conditions. You can declare war to prevent a victory in the end, but it's a race against time.

There's a large difference between "the biggest army in the world, big enough to conquer all other nations" and "enough of a competent defense force that you can hold out for maybe 20 turns in a defensive position."

BTC is really the science victory of Stellaris. There's no in-game reason that another empire would declare war when you try to send a colony to Alpha Centauri, as if that were an existential threat, but the metagame demands it. BTC just make narrative line up with the metagame by making other empires cease to exist when they lose. The only issue is the way it forces you into genocidal roleplay.

You could have a peaceful version: try to recreate the Miniature Galaxy. It's basically exactly the Alpha Centauri victory, but scaled up. There wouldn't be a matchup between metagame and narrative, though.

Maybe it could trigger a War In Heaven-esque split: those who are on the side of the Galaxy builder (and compete on score when the game ends) and those who choose a paranoid "we think they're actually BTC" and declare total war. Then other players have options: declare war at the end and do the Stellaris equivalent of charging in with nukes and GDRs to raze every spaceport, or try to just outscore the main actor (despite their hefty bonus) or finish your own first (to claim the bonus for yourself).

With this, it would essentially be just ending the game before the crisis shows up (since you're making a whole other galaxy, which makes the crisis survivable).

You could even do all this with BTC, but have some alternate path based on something other than Menace, so that the ambiguity makes sense. And if you leave both paths open, you even have the chance for betrayal, where your allies think they're signing up for access to your new galaxy, but you've actually secretly managed to generate enough Menace to unlock both paths at once.

To have a functional "race for the galaxy" mechanic, though, you'd have to have a better timer interaction than just megastructure build speed. Maybe make the final stage be a situation into which you can pour unbounded resources to speed it up.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I mean, you already can. Again, Endgame Score checks for a *diverse* array of things. You can get a big chunk of points from, say, fighting the Crisis, or building megastructures, or collecting Relics, or anything. If you feel the Endgame is going on to long, you can set the score date earlier, but the fact remains: Doing non-war things *is* a route to victory in Stellaris.

At actually challenging crisis difficulties, all sources of score except fleet are irrelevant. Even tech score is effectively expressed through fleet score. You could make the crisis and end game significantly earlier (and only 10x, or so), but that severely warps the game in other ways, since lots of things have fixed timers.

I was thinking of diplo weight, not victory score. Ignore this.

 

[mial42]

At actually challenging crisis difficulties, all sources of score except fleet are irrelevant. Even tech score is effectively expressed through fleet score. You could make the crisis and end game significantly earlier (and only 10x, or so), but the severely warps the game in other ways, since lots of things have fixed timers.

Pretty sure fleets don't directly give any score at all (although they're still the most important output of your empire, by a lot).

 

[Commander Tobe]

I mean, you already can. Again, Endgame Score checks for a *diverse* array of things. You can get a big chunk of points from, say, fighting the Crisis, or building megastructures, or collecting Relics, or anything. If you feel the Endgame is going on to long, you can set the score date earlier, but the fact remains: Doing non-war things *is* a route to victory in Stellaris.

But you said it yourself: You will have to wait until the time runs out and what if you have 50 years left on the clock because you played better than expected. I don't think that's fun at all.

 

[Commander Tobe]

BTC is really the science victory of Stellaris.

Sorry if the question is dumb but what is BTC?

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Pretty sure fleets don't directly give any score at all (although they're still the most important output of your empire, by a lot).

I may be confusing it with diploscore. Let me check again.

Edit: I was.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Sorry if the question is dumb but what is BTC?

Become the Crisis. You have a megaproject that, when completed, instantly wins you the game.

When you get to the final stage it forces the entire galaxy to declare total war on you and you have to hold out until you finish. Aka Civ science victory in multiplayer.

To clarify: it's not actually that dependent on tech. It has some hefty research projects, but they're not anywhere near the research investment that getting all the way to the end of the tree is in Civ. In fact, if you finish it before getting to end game tech, it gives you a bunch of tech for free.

It's the megaproject=victory thing that makes it similar.

 

[NotAYakk]

I mean, the game ends when you stop loading the save file?

The actual victory condition is sort of whatever you want. Or is it that you want a dialog saying "you won" to pop up?

They could add ctrl-alt-W shortcut key combo that does that.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I mean, the game ends when you stop loading the save file?

The actual victory condition is sort of whatever you want. Or is it that you want a dialog saying "you won" to pop up?

They could add ctrl-alt-W shortcut key combo that does that.

What makes the playing game different from sitting at your computer, staring at a blank screen, and imagining yourself being the leader of an galaxy spanning empire is the game's mechanics, the incentives it gives you, and the obstacles it puts in your path.

Yes, you can be done when you feel like you're done. And you can have your own win condition in mind, and push toward that. But "I roleplayed in my mind a thing which is not reflected at all in the game's mechanics or in the way that other empires interact with me in game" is not the same thing as having actual event chains and mechanics to represent alternate victory conditions.

 

[Kiwibaum]

I think a lot of lategame being so boring is how easy it is to keep a huge empire together. There's basically no internal politics going on and no way for other empires to for example try to stir an uprising or something the like. This is also a big problem for Pacifists: There is barely anything you can do against someone else, except to conquer them. I mean espionage is a great example of this. It is a system that was dead on release. It was designed so that the defender can barely interact and since paradox didn't want people to just have things happen to them that they can't defend against, the things you can do are extremely weak and limited.
Imagine if you're a big empire that instead of mostly dealing with outside forces, the game would shift more to internal struggles and having to try to keep together different factions or play them out against each other.

Maybe stellaris is the wrong game for this, but I personally believe that more indepth internal politics would be THE one thing that would improve stellaris the most atm.

 

[Commander Tobe]

Become the Crisis. You have a megaproject that, when completed, instantly wins you the game.

Ah yes, I know this of course. I just didn't know the acronym.

 

[EarthboundPapa]

I think a lot of lategame being so boring is how easy it is to keep a huge empire together. There's basically no internal politics going on and no way for other empires to for example try to stir an uprising or something the like. This is also a big problem for Pacifists: There is barely anything you can do against someone else, except to conquer them. I mean espionage is a great example of this. It is a system that was dead on release. It was designed so that the defender can barely interact and since paradox didn't want people to just have things happen to them that they can't defend against, the things you can do are extremely weak and limited.
Imagine if you're a big empire that instead of mostly dealing with outside forces, the game would shift more to internal struggles and having to try to keep together different factions or play them out against each other.

Maybe stellaris is the wrong game for this, but I personally believe that more indepth internal politics would be THE one thing that would improve stellaris the most atm.

Agreed, the other empires are too much in submission after you have a fleet big enough to take on the fallen empire(s) and it's so easy to keep it together there's no challenge to combat or winning over the other empires at ALL, after this point. Laser power and speed up to like XXXLVII.

To be honest, I haven't gone to the highest difficulty settings yet, and haven't changed any of the empires to have advanced starting conditions either so I may be
speaking too soon. I'm also understanding that after about 1K hours of working a game, a player has likely brought it to a relative level of perfection. No matter what kind of game it is, practice makes perfect.

LOL, Stellaris fans really, really love this game and want it to be more, and more, and more. In all, the developers are smarter for making the game playable and making it incredibly fun for the imagination, rather than skill or experience level. It has great early day RPG qualities that are cherished by my generation. I love Stellaris.

 

[Commander Tobe]

To be honest, I haven't gone to the highest difficulty settings yet, and haven't changed any of the empires to have advanced starting conditions either so I may be speaking too soon.

The only thing in my experience that really changes is the aggressiveness of the AI towards you since they will have a boost in Research and production including alloys. That means they will be stronger and more likely to attack you. Nothing else really changes for you.
If you ask me, that's not really a way to make a game more diverse or colorful to play. It's simply the same as before just more unforgiving.