Stellaris: the grand strategy game? Why not play a developed galaxy?

[GnoSIS]

There are too many empire builds and types that do not have enough time or development space to actualy grow and flourish. Some origins hint to some galactic cycle and a prolonged millenia of development or societal change. Yet the galaxy and the initial equal 4x start, break all of that; the game sacrifices too much on that 4x altar.

Why not have a pregenerated galaxy with pre-placed empires that are allready developed like in Victoria or Europa Universalis? Give the option for the player to pick one up, or even customize it and then play it.

With developed planets and large populations extisting from the start, suddently now you do fear those militarists and those determined exterminators, that you would just trample under normal "development racing" rules, where those empire types do not work because they arent built for development racing....

I'm not asking for a map editor, hell, those other games don't have one either. But with some light code wizardry and templating surely you can make something up, and this would also be a chance for PARADOX to drop down on us some fixed future lore, add more diplomancy, introduce more internal politics, and even throw new crisis into the mix.

Just think about it...

 

[WoodenP]

You're talking about "Advanced Start" empires which are definable at the galaxy generation screen.

And to a lesser extent, fallen empires (which I do accept are out of date with the current game and could use a DLC or custodian patch)

 

[evilcat]

I think it is doable:
+ all empires start as Advanced Empire
+ all empire start with 1000i and 2000a and 2 science and 2 construction ships
+ Game starts as mid game
+ all empire start with 20 corvetas
+ You get technology of level 3 or 5
+ homeworld has population of 50 and is fully developed

It is not totally crazy.

 

[Bankipriel]

Another example of how the game would benefit from a galaxy map creator/editor that everyone could use, with steam workshop uploadable custom maps.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Why not have a pregenerated galaxy with pre-placed empires that are allready developed like in Victoria or Europa Universalis? Give the option for the player to pick one up, or even customize it and then play it.

A scenario mode would be nice.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Yeah, the ability to set up more narrative driven scenarios would really play to Stellaris' strengths, but it's a pain to set up non-randomised scenarios right now.

 

[GnoSIS]

Yeah, the ability to set up more narrative driven scenarios would really play to Stellaris' strengths, but it's a pain to set up non-randomised scenarios right now.

With such a thriving mod community, I'm sure thousands of people would jump in if we had the tools. Paradox can bring out their own, and we could have routine competitions as well.

 

[Beagá]

A scenario mode would be nice.

And I think it was asked more than once.

I like the sandbox aspect of Stellaris but wouldn´t mind a EU4 like map as an option. No need to have an ENTIRELY developed galaxy, just some assymetrical start. Because if all empires had the same size then some ethos and government types would fare way better than others.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

With such a thriving mod community, I'm sure thousands of people would jump in if we had the tools. Paradox can bring out their own, and we could have routine competitions as well.

Yeah, it seems like easy engagement.

Have some default scenarios/challenges, have the ability to make and play modded scenarios, and occasionally do limited time challenges.

Even Sims has a scenario mode now and they do exactly that model.

 

[Arcvalons]

Game has needed a "Distant Worlds: Universe"-style Galaxy Editor since 2017.

 

[Ryika]

I think Grand Strategy-like setup scenarios wouldn't really work all that well in Stellaris, because it's lacking the strong connection to an established world. It's just not the same to take control of the Kilik Cooperative in year 2270 as it is taking over Austria at the brink of World War 2, the Orks in 40k, or something like that.

I think for the average player, at baseline it would be seen as more of a downside being tossed into a developed galaxy where you have to play a country that's neither your own nor something you're familiar with, where you have to learn what's going on in your surroundings before you can even start playing, with the part of the game that's usually most interesting already left behind. I'd argue that you'd have to really add a good reason for the player to want to play that, instead of if being something that's a selling point on its own for most people.

Which might still be cool if you build your own scenario with its own ruleset on top, but I think it'd always be a niche product.

 

[deretao]

i think one great problem would be the behaviour of the srtongest AI at the beggining: victoria 2 have less problems with that, i dont know about vic3, althought vic2 has only 100 years in its timeline. But eu4 is a game where the strongest AI nations almost always end up blobbing everything. So i dont think the current state of eu4 is something to be copied.

Also, there´s some sort of inequality at the beggining: some empires can rush tech, others can rush diplomacy, others receive bonuses to become crisis. I wouldnt mind to see other types of inicial settings, but i would like to have the option to maintain the way it is now.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I think Grand Strategy-like setup scenarios wouldn't really work all that well in Stellaris, because it's lacking the strong connection to an established world. It's just not the same to take control of the Kilik Cooperative in year 2270 as it is taking over Austria at the brink of World War 2, the Orks in 40k, or something like that.

I think for the average player, at baseline it would be seen as more of a downside being tossed into a developed galaxy where you have to play a country that's neither your own nor something you're familiar with, where you have to learn what's going on in your surroundings before you can even start playing, with the part of the game that's usually most interesting already left behind. I'd argue that you'd have to really add a good reason for the player to want to play that, instead of if being something that's a selling point on its own for most people.

Which might still be cool if you build your own scenario with its own ruleset on top, but I think it'd always be a niche product.

Distant Worlds had an answer to this problem.

Scenario empires were still randomly generated, but the circumstances were not. One that sticks out to me is a scenario where you’re a starting empire but there was already a large galactic federation on the other side of the galaxy. You could customize the starting empire and the federation on the other side of the galaxy (as well as anything else that spawned) was random.

A Stellaris equivalent might be that exact scenario or something like “You must start as some variation of pacifist and xenophile and randomly generated empires will all be some variation of genocidal.”

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I think Grand Strategy-like setup scenarios wouldn't really work all that well in Stellaris, because it's lacking the strong connection to an established world. It's just not the same to take control of the Kilik Cooperative in year 2270 as it is taking over Austria at the brink of World War 2, the Orks in 40k, or something like that.

I think for the average player, at baseline it would be seen as more of a downside being tossed into a developed galaxy where you have to play a country that's neither your own nor something you're familiar with, where you have to learn what's going on in your surroundings before you can even start playing, with the part of the game that's usually most interesting already left behind. I'd argue that you'd have to really add a good reason for the player to want to play that, instead of if being something that's a selling point on its own for most people.

Which might still be cool if you build your own scenario with its own ruleset on top, but I think it'd always be a niche product.

I think it can be done and would garner interest.

But that needs a game build with that concept in mind, and Stellaris isn't.

 

[Pancakelord]

I think a lesser implementation is already doable. I've played games in the past where I started using the mayure_galaxy and advanced_galaxy command, with mixed degrees of success.

First, what does a scenario bring to the table? Chiefly:

1. Narrative about the world - this works in hoi or EU but goes out the window with a sci-fi game involving cyborg zombie mushrooms.
2. A non-typical power dynamic - not everyone is a big or small fish, there's a lot of mixed sized ones too.

Focussing on the second, there are effectively 3 ways to make the illusion of a scenario start in stellaris.

1. Use console commands I mentioned at the top
2. Mod the scripts behind advanced start AIs, in the past I've used mods like this that make them much bigger. More recently I've worked on my own personal mod that randomly gives Adv AIs up to 1~12 stars, all of level 1and 2~4-techs (with a random country modifier reducing or increasing tech output by +/-25/50/100% scaling inversely with tech level)
3. Ai-only origin scripts - overlaps with the above but doesn't do it via advanced AI method, and can be more intricate, modifying AI starting system a lot easier and so on, e.g. have an AI start as the galactic custodian over 4 adjacent other ais, and randomly pass a bunch of resolutions at tier 1/2/3.

2 & 3 combined will lead to a * very * different looking galaxy in 2201. You won't know what you expect to find.

You can apply this logic to the player empire too, making them randomly big or small (as we can't make sliders to set this, I guess could add dummy civics that cost 0 points and can only be used by humans to set size (i-v) and tech level (i-iv), but still.

But is it more fun? Without the narrative of a ww2 settings or whatever, I've found it just feels like loading someone else's save game and picking up where they left off.

It's fun in its own way, for a time, but you'd probably have just as much fun with setting up a thread to upload vanilla (no mods for compatibility) save games in bad situations, for anyone to try and beat/save. In fact, there actually is a "curated _saves" folder in the stellaris directory, this, along with some scripts, is what is used to make the tutorial work, I believe.

 

[SS Boss]

I want a Scenario Editor for that purpose. Launch it in a DLC with some PDX-made scenarios for people that dont care to create their own and thats it.

I probably would spend more time making scenarios than playing them.

 

[TrotBot]

Ok I *love the idea but here's two things to keep in mind:

Population would be starting higher and ending higher in the average game if not tweaked accordingly. Starting higher is fine. Ending higher throws all the recent lategame performance gains out, cause it would be significantly higher I believe?

The other thing is, I don't think we need, and I personally don't want, to skip the tech tree up accordingly so I don't think this should be an advanced start. Just, a few colonies, some pops, a decent fleet that isn't just scrapper fuel, an army, and some of the roleplay/civic tied buildings already filled out on those worlds.

Edit: correction, I LOVE the idea, particularly for the deeper politics implications plus lore

 

[HFY]

"Steady State" galaxy could be a thing.

Basically, in this mode the default AI empire would expand to some maximum size, then fall into decline, ending up in a few different ways:
- Fall back to primitives (end up with a bunch of planets with related species, Ketlings go here)
- Fall into static decadence (Fallen Empire wannabes)
- Split into two or more smaller empires which hate each other (and then each expands up to the maximum size, and then each declines)
- Spawn a machine empire which fights them to expand, or which just Rogue Servitors them into quiescence

If the galaxy looked like that, then a number of arbitrarily advanced empires could exist at player year 0 and not wreck the player's chance to expand and win. Also, new empires like Enlightened / Uplifted / Awoken could be relevant even if they started 100 years into the game -- a young, vigorous empire which is friendly could be a nice boon when you have space to fill (maybe you just defeated another 100-year-old empire and you don't want their pops pushing you below some stability threshold, so give those systems to the young vigorous empire which doesn't yet have 100 years of internal stability problems).

The key thing would be that AIs almost always have some size limitations based on internal stability / politics -- which the player can (temporarily) avoid -- and after reaching that maximum size, the AIs would shrink / fall / destroy themselves.

The player could move into space vacated by a declining empire, which would never happen in the current game, but which is a neat sci-fi trope -- the "young, vigorous" empire taking space as the older, less energetic species retreat.


Even among AIs, the Crisis and Khan and BtC empires would not have any maximum size. They would be non-local problems because they can threaten the whole galaxy at once. Once the Khan is defeated, his empire would fragment if it was over max size -- that would not need to be specially coded, and it would happen to other AI empires too.

For default empires, there would be internal politics which encourage turning your back on expansion after some point. The player should be able to manage this with skill, and (with some skill) continue expanding for long enough to win the game by coloring the whole map, if the player wants to do that, perhaps at some escalating cost over time.


With a "steady state" galaxy like this, you could have old, established empires on the map without automatically taking all the space from the player's younger empire.

That means there could be the sort of political situation which you're describing, and it could even be randomly generated for a lot of replay value.

 

[TrotBot]

oh one thing would be how to keep exploration going in a settled galaxy, since so much of what you discover would end up benefiting your opponents instead of you, as it's in their territory now

 

[Ferrus Animus]

There are scenarios where you play the plucky young race in an established galaxy.

But Stellaris as is lacks the diplomacy and intrigue for such a scenario to be in any way satisfying to play. And the way Ai aggression works means it'll rahter crush you than leave you time to develop.

I'd love a game like that, I would love Stelalris 2 to be that, but for Stellaris 1 it is too massive a paradigm shift and given how much time much smaller issues take to be dealt with, the best we can hope for is a galaxy seed system and a scenario/save game editor that is functional enough for players to create a scenario save.