Noticed a bug where if you are using Human names and go The Flesh is Weak route, then your species' name list will change to another Humanoid set and you'll have your Humans from earth take names such as Sejess or Tak no Dir or something like that
Stellaris 3.0.3 Open Beta Feedback Megathread
- Thread starter MrFreake_PDX
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
- Status
"Pops will not automatically resettle away from newly founded colonies until 5 years have passed, so your habitats will no longer have one worker flee before you can give them something to do."
I tried playing a void dweller empire in this new patch and while I believe the intention of this change is good, it turns out to be a huge nerf for void dwellers. Due to the 5 year resettlement delay, jobless pops will destroy the pop growth on your habitats since you need them to resettle right away to not get a penalty for having too many pops.
In my playthrough I had habitats which permanently had 2-4 unemployed pops, since the resettlement delay is much slower than pop growth and because of that the pop growth always had a -1 to -2 malus from overpopulation that could only be removed by forceful resettlement, which kind of ruins the whole point of automatic resettlement.
Also, I hate seeing the unemployed symbol. Paradox pls fix
I tried playing a void dweller empire in this new patch and while I believe the intention of this change is good, it turns out to be a huge nerf for void dwellers. Due to the 5 year resettlement delay, jobless pops will destroy the pop growth on your habitats since you need them to resettle right away to not get a penalty for having too many pops.
In my playthrough I had habitats which permanently had 2-4 unemployed pops, since the resettlement delay is much slower than pop growth and because of that the pop growth always had a -1 to -2 malus from overpopulation that could only be removed by forceful resettlement, which kind of ruins the whole point of automatic resettlement.
Also, I hate seeing the unemployed symbol. Paradox pls fix
- 1
PDX have noted recently that megathreads, even with all the repetitive driveby line noise, are reasonably efficient for them to read precisely because everything is going into the same thread so they don't have to go looking for it.
- 1
I tried another game as Barbaric Despoilers. I found that I ended up with a LOT more pops, a lot quicker. By 2430-ish I had about 1000 pops. Unfortunately, I didn't really keep up with my Empire Sprawl so I ended up falling behind in Traditions and Tech, but I'm catching up again now.
I do wonder if Raiding is now slightly overpowered. It does seem like because of the cap on growth, it's now significantly more powerful to just raid and bring back tons and tons of pops. I suppose arguably you could also open yourself to refugees, but that's very situation dependent.
To balance this, I wonder if unhappy pops / slaves should be slightly harder to keep under control. Especially ones that have been forcibly kidnapped within the last 10-20 years, or recently conquered. Although, that doesn't really help with Necrophages, which I imagine also have a pretty significant buff now (but I've yet to try playing as them).
I think for my next game I'm going to try some Lithoid Necrophage Terravores, and also I'll Become the Crisis. See how that goes.
I do wonder if Raiding is now slightly overpowered. It does seem like because of the cap on growth, it's now significantly more powerful to just raid and bring back tons and tons of pops. I suppose arguably you could also open yourself to refugees, but that's very situation dependent.
To balance this, I wonder if unhappy pops / slaves should be slightly harder to keep under control. Especially ones that have been forcibly kidnapped within the last 10-20 years, or recently conquered. Although, that doesn't really help with Necrophages, which I imagine also have a pretty significant buff now (but I've yet to try playing as them).
I think for my next game I'm going to try some Lithoid Necrophage Terravores, and also I'll Become the Crisis. See how that goes.
First, 3.0 Dick does an amazing job of improving the worst flaws of 2.6, 2.7 & 2.8 with horrible AI management and ultra-wide micro-managing being the optimal play, but with lag causing late game to become a chore often, rather than the final culmination to the campaign.
OK, I have played many 3.0 games, 2 large & huge galaxies (max 666 and 990 pops) to completion and war in heaven respectively. I have gone from 666 pops, split the empire, had core planets wrecked by the early arriving Unbidden and finally won with just 250 empire pops. Loyal tax paying vassals who had been protected actually confer stability advantages when the crisis raids your trading capital. I did not have Nemesis DLC then, but the threat level and targetting of the Unbidden was a real challenge, good job!
The pop growth stagnation was NEVER insurmountable as I clamped down on clerk jobs and helped auto resettlement, accepted refugees and also created vassasls, I never needed to steal pops or do exploits vassalising and re-integrating. 3.0.3beta does speed development up, reducing frustrations. For me there's an interesting balance, as a Megacorp I went for subsidiaries rather than conquest, collecting a big pile and it works. You can have a high tech/eco power house that supports a grand fleet to take on the warring AEs, backed by Fed fleets.
My concerns are in areas which have been neglected in the hoo-haa over empire pop count:
1) Megacorps, as clerks don't open slots and technicians output is increased, you optimise on production just like a std militaristic empire, there IS space TV but it's harder to get deals and create wealth between co-op empires, who don't waste resources on stupid wars.
I have experimented with Merchant Guilds, as 1 pop generates great trade value and amenities, still you ONLY have clerks when there's no alternative (I tried syncretic origin and most pops can only do worker jobs like mining/farming/generating).
2) First Contact delays, make co-op alliance building vs a significant threat like advanced start fanatical purifiers too slow. The AI neighbours did NOT look for allies with commerce, sharing contacts, but even rivalled honourable warrior neighbour types.
So I have general concern that Nemesis is favouring the military rush, aggressive hostile contact because there's not a timely counter by unifying against a galactic threat. It's as if the game was design was listening too much to aggro multi-player style of playing, with Stefan Anon outlook on production and neglecting the interesting diplo / soft-power element that balanced the xphobe/militarist/genocidal type empires.
Every game is very different, but playing on Admiral non scaling, the AI empires all appear like advance starts when contact is made.
3) Lack of co-op options, why have I NO intel on a threat when I have established relations and pacts with a neighbour of the threat?
That's what diplo is for, to exchange info and not simply be limited to waiting for the human player to make a trade deal for contact info.
The lack of information and secrecy favours xphobe/genocidal/isolationists as they have early game buffs which normal empires don't have and are nerfed as they cannot strike commercial pacts etc as quickly.
I love the RTS style play now possible, pausing much less apart from reading the event reports to enjoy the story, BUT some serious balancing of play styles is required, it appears the focus on menacing the galaxy or being custodians has tilted the game to facilitate production and aggressive styles.
4) From trying to assist on forums with mitigations for the pop growth point scaling, while most venting is down to unexplained change without education about mitigating game mechanics, some empire types probably struggle as they are restricted in options. How does a Hive Mind break off part and have a loyal cooperative tax paying vassal? It doesn't make sense.
Megacorps I have played more, they have a major problem that you cannot integrate, which favours conquest as pathetic tech level vassals/protectorates never catch up, yet you also create vassals with a Megacorp rather than Merchant Guild empire civic. That corp cannot do well in the shadow of the lead corp, who have all the branch offices. To work better, there needs to be a mechanism for a mining sector to continue trading heavily with HQ, who can then trade minerals for alloy/goods with another sector. Some kind of contracted long term deals, so the AI managing the new vassal doesn't have to change focus completely.
Many people don't like the label "vassal" as one said "I don't want to play CK3", semi-autonomous regions with beefed up regional governments in Regional Capitals models a federal system like Germany or the USA, with the Federation operating at a different level.
5) Finally, I have some ideas for balancing empire pops, galaxy pop count limiting, which can be backed by events that has precedent in game lore already.
Empires need autonomous regions, but you can have mechanics that slow numerous species and make medics a mitigation.
At present it's pointless researching gene clinic, as you get rapid pop growth points and miss amenities from clerks padding to stimulate planet growth and help you build rapidly, holo theatres and later luxury housing are by far the best choices. Who cares about 0.3 points, when managing population : capacity gives you 3.0 without employing any pops to do it.
The game could have poxs and genocidal mini-crises who affect the largest empires the most, swarms would be facilited by some raising of their species galaxy capacity, so they can out number conventional empires pop wise. Machine empires could simply become inefficient, with coordinators overwhelmed with exponential increase in connections, so a mid-tier regional empire government could be a society tech goal which off loads micro management onto the AI.
That's why you need the idea of galaxy capacity, with events culling pops, as an understandable crisis style element which gives a challenge rather than induces frustration by a slow stagnation as you reach 400+ pops.
Thanks for the wonderful game!
OK, I have played many 3.0 games, 2 large & huge galaxies (max 666 and 990 pops) to completion and war in heaven respectively. I have gone from 666 pops, split the empire, had core planets wrecked by the early arriving Unbidden and finally won with just 250 empire pops. Loyal tax paying vassals who had been protected actually confer stability advantages when the crisis raids your trading capital. I did not have Nemesis DLC then, but the threat level and targetting of the Unbidden was a real challenge, good job!
The pop growth stagnation was NEVER insurmountable as I clamped down on clerk jobs and helped auto resettlement, accepted refugees and also created vassasls, I never needed to steal pops or do exploits vassalising and re-integrating. 3.0.3beta does speed development up, reducing frustrations. For me there's an interesting balance, as a Megacorp I went for subsidiaries rather than conquest, collecting a big pile and it works. You can have a high tech/eco power house that supports a grand fleet to take on the warring AEs, backed by Fed fleets.
My concerns are in areas which have been neglected in the hoo-haa over empire pop count:
1) Megacorps, as clerks don't open slots and technicians output is increased, you optimise on production just like a std militaristic empire, there IS space TV but it's harder to get deals and create wealth between co-op empires, who don't waste resources on stupid wars.
I have experimented with Merchant Guilds, as 1 pop generates great trade value and amenities, still you ONLY have clerks when there's no alternative (I tried syncretic origin and most pops can only do worker jobs like mining/farming/generating).
2) First Contact delays, make co-op alliance building vs a significant threat like advanced start fanatical purifiers too slow. The AI neighbours did NOT look for allies with commerce, sharing contacts, but even rivalled honourable warrior neighbour types.
So I have general concern that Nemesis is favouring the military rush, aggressive hostile contact because there's not a timely counter by unifying against a galactic threat. It's as if the game was design was listening too much to aggro multi-player style of playing, with Stefan Anon outlook on production and neglecting the interesting diplo / soft-power element that balanced the xphobe/militarist/genocidal type empires.
Every game is very different, but playing on Admiral non scaling, the AI empires all appear like advance starts when contact is made.
3) Lack of co-op options, why have I NO intel on a threat when I have established relations and pacts with a neighbour of the threat?
That's what diplo is for, to exchange info and not simply be limited to waiting for the human player to make a trade deal for contact info.
The lack of information and secrecy favours xphobe/genocidal/isolationists as they have early game buffs which normal empires don't have and are nerfed as they cannot strike commercial pacts etc as quickly.
I love the RTS style play now possible, pausing much less apart from reading the event reports to enjoy the story, BUT some serious balancing of play styles is required, it appears the focus on menacing the galaxy or being custodians has tilted the game to facilitate production and aggressive styles.
4) From trying to assist on forums with mitigations for the pop growth point scaling, while most venting is down to unexplained change without education about mitigating game mechanics, some empire types probably struggle as they are restricted in options. How does a Hive Mind break off part and have a loyal cooperative tax paying vassal? It doesn't make sense.
Megacorps I have played more, they have a major problem that you cannot integrate, which favours conquest as pathetic tech level vassals/protectorates never catch up, yet you also create vassals with a Megacorp rather than Merchant Guild empire civic. That corp cannot do well in the shadow of the lead corp, who have all the branch offices. To work better, there needs to be a mechanism for a mining sector to continue trading heavily with HQ, who can then trade minerals for alloy/goods with another sector. Some kind of contracted long term deals, so the AI managing the new vassal doesn't have to change focus completely.
Many people don't like the label "vassal" as one said "I don't want to play CK3", semi-autonomous regions with beefed up regional governments in Regional Capitals models a federal system like Germany or the USA, with the Federation operating at a different level.
5) Finally, I have some ideas for balancing empire pops, galaxy pop count limiting, which can be backed by events that has precedent in game lore already.
Empires need autonomous regions, but you can have mechanics that slow numerous species and make medics a mitigation.
At present it's pointless researching gene clinic, as you get rapid pop growth points and miss amenities from clerks padding to stimulate planet growth and help you build rapidly, holo theatres and later luxury housing are by far the best choices. Who cares about 0.3 points, when managing population : capacity gives you 3.0 without employing any pops to do it.
The game could have poxs and genocidal mini-crises who affect the largest empires the most, swarms would be facilited by some raising of their species galaxy capacity, so they can out number conventional empires pop wise. Machine empires could simply become inefficient, with coordinators overwhelmed with exponential increase in connections, so a mid-tier regional empire government could be a society tech goal which off loads micro management onto the AI.
That's why you need the idea of galaxy capacity, with events culling pops, as an understandable crisis style element which gives a challenge rather than induces frustration by a slow stagnation as you reach 400+ pops.
Thanks for the wonderful game!
- 2
Well I think people have wrong assumptions, housing creates capacity the amount is just a number. The idea that housing should be filled is a fallacy.
They could represent housing as a supply proportional to the population at a base of 0, so +ve encourages growth via capacity, -ve is slowing it, but that's cosmetic.
Secondly the idea that jobs made ought to be filled, that's NEVER been true. Good play has often involved restricting jobs so pops are most productive.
3.0 Dick changed a lot, if you approach it with a flexibility and adapt using game mechanics the strategic challenges are FAR MORE interesting, than the ultra-wide landgrab & spam pops crude strategy of 2.6, 2.7 & 2.8 with bureaucrats. Now you ideally think ahead about spinning off regions to be basic producers not tech leaders.
Instead of spending most of the game paused, micro-managing a heap of colonies, now I can manage stuff in real time, a run can take days instead of weeks, it's FAR MORE fun, if you know the game mechanics.
- 5
- 1
This reminds me of the discussion of the mandatory sectors all the way back in Stellaris 1.0. Plenty of people back then also argued how giving up some control is much better, how it's more interesting to have to plan for subdivisions and only focus on a small core.
The problem is that players didn't like it then, and they don't like it now. By and large, people don't want arbitrary punishments that force them to do stuff they otherwise wouldn't do (because they like the micromanagement, or because the AI is so poor, or because they want to RP as the all consuming swarm). The new mechanics aren't unpopular because the game got much harder, they're unpopular because they give the players zero control, instead simply stopping them in their tracks when the game decides they're "big enough".
This is never popular. It wasn't popular with sectors, it wasn't popular with sprawl and it isn't popular now.
- 6
- 2
Well, firstly it's not mandatory .. secondly most hated excessive colony management chores to fix messes at the start of sessions .. thirdly, the AI sectors can be very good tax payers when you set them up to succeed as a vassal .. fourthly, honestly people had their limit, some You Tubers say 20 colonies is enough (so actually you play worse than auto-management without pausing the game).
Game and software design require you to plan for some limits, otherwise your hardware requirements become ridiculously expensive and limit your market, less obviously to non-software engineers are the scaling difficulties present in software. They need to make a mature trade off; no one likes limited fleet sizes and naval capacity .. but without costs to build and limits, the game would crawl.
The new mechanics are popular with a lot of people who can play a whole run in days instead of weeks, but they aren't the ones who are massing to vent on forums.
How many people are really playing 2.8.1 rather than 3.0.2 or 3.0.3beta?
The game DOES give you control, if you use the mechanics, but there's a lot of ppl who want to follow their recipe to success rather than adapt. Now, I reached 990 pops, there was no punishment, it simply meant I was living with slow pop growth, I welcomed refugees regularly and freed slaves to mitigate it.
There's nothing unusual about people disliking novelties. The real problem is that the changes favour production focused military play styles, favoured by prominent multi-player YouTubers who min-max for production and the diplo with AI is not a factor in their games.
- 7
- 2
There is no way around the empire wide growth factor, so it is mandatory in that sense.
And I agree with all that. The problem is that for many, the cure here is worse than the disease. You could always hand control over the AI in a variety of ways, or play with smaller galaxies, or purposely limit your growth. But you get angry reactions whenever you introduce external limits especially if they limit success (pops, growth, power).
No-one likes naval capacity and fleet size? Where is the evidence for that? Not all restrictions are equal. People have laid out in detail just why they think the changes are bad. It's not like they just oppose any limit, and insinuating that they do is dishonest.
You have no evidence for any of these claims, so putting them out here while belittling opposition as "venting" is a bad faith debate tactic.
And because you did not find it punishing, other people who do feel that way are wrong? This sounds like "people should just be reasonable and have fun like I do", but obviously that's not how it works.
Yeah, I agree with that criticism. It's very commonly voiced by the people who "dislike novelties". So it really comes down to how many negative consequences of the pop changes you're willing to accept.
It's not like there aren't alternatives. I play with the old pop growth, but half size planets. That also works. I think many other proposed solutions would also work. Why accept this one?
- 13
The real question would be to ask how many people are playing in 3.0.2/3 WITH a mod which removes the empire pop limit removal.
- 6
Something I found myself really missing while playing 3.0.3: some way to tell approximately how full my planets are. Am I done with this planet? Is this a planet I'm trying to optimise for growth? Is this planet one I've recently colonised that I'm waiting to develop a bit more?
- 1
In one of my runs I resorted to simply renaming the planets to help track this.
- 1
I have finished my 4th game and I think that the theme of the pops is fine .... it is another mechanic and I already solved the puzzle.
- it is not necessary to have the complete planets of people to win the game
- it is not necessary to have the planets full of people working to beat the crisis or the fallen empires
- you have to adjust the districts at the end of the game according to the needs and variables of the game that you have played, which are not always the same,
which makes it very interesting .... (you just have to think more and be clever)
In short for me: only some minor tweaks are missing for final version 3.1
- it is not necessary to have the complete planets of people to win the game
- it is not necessary to have the planets full of people working to beat the crisis or the fallen empires
- you have to adjust the districts at the end of the game according to the needs and variables of the game that you have played, which are not always the same,
which makes it very interesting .... (you just have to think more and be clever)
In short for me: only some minor tweaks are missing for final version 3.1
- 7
- 1
- 1
Nobody cares.
People want to be able to look at a planet and say "yes, this planet is complete" without the game permanently lighting up a warning indicator to say "hey buddy you need to finish this planet".
- 5
- 2
I dont know if anyone agrees but I dont think the problem was ever the old pop growth system. I think the problem was the carrying capacity of the galaxy which it doesnt feel like this patch changed very much.
- 3
To reinforce a suggestion from before, I think the new pop growth added in 3.0 is definetly a good concept, but applied in the wrong place.
It makes 0 sense to have a global, empire pop growth limiter. The system should instead be applied on the planet scale, where the population limit is a very natural concept.
Another very good idea is grouping the pops in some form or another.
I feel that these 2 features together would be a great middle way between performance and pop capacity realism.
It makes 0 sense to have a global, empire pop growth limiter. The system should instead be applied on the planet scale, where the population limit is a very natural concept.
Another very good idea is grouping the pops in some form or another.
I feel that these 2 features together would be a great middle way between performance and pop capacity realism.
- 3
- 1
- 1
Yeah, pretty much. By applying the pop growth reduction at the empire level, the devs did themselves a disservice. One cannot know while developing if the galaxy will contain 4 empires or 40. The total galaxy population is now controlled more by how many empires the player(s) start with than pretty much any other parameter. How many pops end up inside a single empire can strongly depend on how many are taken from others -- either through raiding, conquest, or if one owns the correct DLC, buying from the slave market. And as the pop count of other empires is reduced, their growth is bolstered in a non-zero-sum way - leading to even more pops in the galaxy.
- 2
It is no longer necessary to say "Oh my planet is complete", you can have 7 incomplete (or less) planets and win the game, I think that is what matters. If you have the jobs well distributed according to your character, you can maintain an economic balance at the end of the game that is quite acceptable, if your planets attack your economy will not go to hell at once. Personally, I do not notice the increase or decrease in performance but I know that what I can continue to improve is to make less Pops and more planetary productivity performance.
At first it was the "anxiety" to see that the planets were not crowded and the pops took a long time to appear as the game progressed, I believed that I would not have enough resources ... well now I realize that it does not have relevance to win a game, you just have to use well the resources that the game gives you in general....
I'll go for my 5 game in this version since it is very entertaining.
- 2
- 1
I feel like there are still too many pops. There should be less pops, and more non-pop based production, especially late game, as people have mentioned. Ringworlds and especially Ecumenopolis don't feel like worthwhile investments because the pop requirements and slow growth in the end-game, but maybe if their districts were automated to some extent it would be much better.
- 3
This ties only partly into production but please consider making the trade hub starbase line upkeep free or buff the effect from Offworld Trading Company building to put them in line with the solar panels. The modules provide no immediate value on their own and +12 TV at 6 upkeep is nothing worth mentioning. The collection range - while nice - has little value a lot of times.
- 2
- Status