The State of the Meta

[MrFreake]

Hey everyone!

I'm MrFreake, community manager for WSC a discord community dedicated to Stellaris multiplayer. I thought I'd check in, and post a few observations from the first few weeks of 2.2 (and 2.2.2).

First off, I love the planet changes. I can't stress this enough, combined with the changes in 2.0, 2.2 is getting pretty damn close to the dream 4x game.

It seems that there are two prevailing strategies that have emerged in multiplayer. Both are based around the same essential build:
F militarist and stacking fire rate bonuses.

Without going into too much detail, here's how you do it:
1) Build at least four alloy foundries on your homeworld, by replacing the start buildings.
2) move all your pops onto minerals, ignoring energy completely
3) use your huge alloy income to build corvettes
4) when you have ~30 at year 10-15, rush a neighbor
5) just before you go to war, sell everything you can to get enough energy to power your fleet

There *are* ways to defend against this, the best way presently is to do the same thing, but not rush. If the defense stations got a rebalance (more here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ve-stations-cost-more-than-starbases.1139272/ ) it would help considerably, combine this a return of FTL inhibitors to starbases off game start, and it would slow this strategy down somewhat.

When you rush your neighbor, you have to options:
1) Take the enemy homeworld, and move all their pops to your homeworld (the Scoop method), and set them to livestock.
2) Demand the other empire become a tributary.

I'm not going to do any back seat game-dev here, but some limiter to tributaries (in internal conversations, we've been flirting with an influence cost/upkeep), and moving pops would be a great balance to this.

I'm not opposed to this playstyle, it does add a nice flavor to a devouring swarm or hivemind that they do this. However something to make it a *little* less powerful I think may be in order.

Thanks for reading!

 

[bobgrey1997]

Sounds annoying.
Thank you for letting me know to never try multiplayer outside a small, closed, 2-3 player setting.

 

[tinculin]

Reasons why this have become so prominent in gameplay is a combination of factors:

1) subjugation cb is no longer blocked behind domination traditions (subjugation is required because it reduces the need for influence claims which would otherwise delay the tactic)
2) You can use the cb without being adjacent to your opponent - this results in the rushing empire to have little need to expand to ‘touch borders’ thus saving valuable alloys which are made into ships
3) the snowballing effect this gives makes it hugely advantageous and unless you also heavily focus alloys and fire rate, there is no easy counter.
4) ship upkeep has been reduced which means the rushers economy isn’t hugely at risk - which it would have been in previous versions
5) The ease of becoming classed as superior & thus able to employ subjugation is now at easier.

This has pretty much reduced early game to massive alloy focus & supremacy as the go to.

Important- I’m not saying this shouldn’t be a valid tactic, though when one strategy doesn’t have multiple counters, it’s not good for gameplay and interesting choices.

 

[Jiav]

the easiest way to maybe balance this would be to increase the alloy production of your capital by a good amount, so the alloy production gap between someone who rushes foundries and someone who doesn't isn't as huge as it is now and allows the rushed empire to also build some corvettes without sacrificing literally everything, as a neat bonus this would also the AI out

also fix defensive station cost, one station costs more than a base star port

 

[Annihilat0r]

I think it would probably be enough to fix defensive platform alloy costs (I assume this is a bug/oversight) plus additional, free defensive armies on the capital planet. I always thought this should be the case anyway, since every species will hold their birth planet in high regards and defend it with all means.

I am not opposed to a general buff to starbases though, including earlier access to FTL inhibitors.

 

[MrFreake]

the easiest way to maybe balance this would be to increase the alloy production of your capital by a good amount, so the alloy production gap between someone who rushes foundries and someone who doesn't isn't as huge as it is now and allows the rushed empire to also build some corvettes without sacrificing literally everything, as a neat bonus this would also the AI out

Unfortunately, any increase to base alloys would also benefit the rusher, making the rush even more powerful.

Unless foundries were nerfed alongside this.

 

[tinculin]

Defensive armies won’t help- this tactic typically employs use of nihilist acquisition which means your pops are stolen without invading armies being required

 

[Jiav]

Unfortunately, any increase to base alloys would also benefit the rusher, making the rush even more powerful.

if both empires start with 20 base production and another foundry just adds 3 its not as big as a gap in overall production anymore.

also it gives other maybe adjacent empires the option to build a small fleet as well, to either help or attack the rusher

 

[Tim_Ward]

What happens when you turn clustered starts off?

 

[Bobylein]

also fix defensive station cost, one station costs more than a base star port

Also they now have an not insignificant alloy upkeep, while before requiring only energy as upkeep.

 

[Annihilat0r]

Defensive armies won’t help- this tactic typically employs use of nihilist acquisition which means your pops are stolen without invading armies being required

Ahh interesting. I don't own Apocalypse so I didn't think of that. In that case, maybe add a couple of free defensive platforms to every home starbase from the start of the game.

 

[bobgrey1997]

I imagine nothing happens when turning off clusters.
Subjugating someone no longer requires them to be adjacent to your borders.

 

[Tim_Ward]

Also, sounds like penalities for running out of, e.g. consumer goods and energy need to be more severe. Metallurgists are specialists and require a fair bit of consumer good upkeep. Simply scrapping your starting civilian factory and focusing entirely on minerals and alloys should cripple your economy, but I guess it's not doing that if these guys are getting that strategy to work.

 

[Tim_Ward]

I imagine nothing happens when turning off clusters.
Subjugating someone no longer requires them to be adjacent to your borders.

No, but you still have to find them. I imagine you need to get at a target fairly quickly to get this to work, as you will be haemorrhaging energy and consumer goods.

 

[Jiav]

No, but you still have to find them. I imagine you need to get at a target fairly quickly to get this to work, as you will be haemorrhaging energy and consumer goods.

not really you have like 12 years to find something, you are not building your fleet asap as the upkeep will drain you before you start any war

you can have 20 corvettes at year 5 otherwise

 

[Sir-Rogers]

So here's my opinion as a Stellaris lover. I think the issue is spread over many different layers:

1) You are now completely locked into a certain build order and strategy: You have to make alloys or you will die to a neighbor that does this - which restricts the gameplay experience instead of diversifying it.

2) If you run a 40 corv 2k fleet into a 1k starbase you most likely will not lose a single unit due to the way damage is spread over all units, and therefore having considerably more units is way more effective than having fewer and stronger units. If you run a 20 corv 1k fleet into the same starbase you will lose the fight and a considerable number of ships. I think some balancing here is necessary. It also depends on how they are equipped - a few destroyers with larger weapons will completely annihilate a starbase.

There's definitely more to be found here but those would be the core two layers this issue touches and it's probably not as easy to fix because tweaking numbers and mechanics in one way to solve one problem may break things for other use cases. It's always a balancing act.

 

[tinculin]

No, but you still have to find them. I imagine you need to get at a target fairly quickly to get this to work, as you will be haemorrhaging energy and consumer goods.

It really doesn’t take long to find your nearest player.

The ship upkeep cost isn’t very much at all, potentially one of the issues that need addressing

 

[BalefirePhoenix]

The easiest easiest way to fix this is to just houserule enforced peace until 2230-2240 or thereabouts so an alloy-focused build actually requires a functioning economy, and other factors such as technological disparity start kicking in. All of the MP groups I'm in do this with great success. Attempting to tweak numbers and mechanics can only go so far - in the end this is a player problem, not a numbers problem.

 

[tinculin]

Enforcing peace does not fix anything it rules out the entire Play style.

Note, this isn’t about eliminating rushing, it’s about making a particular start the only viable strategy.

If a player only expands, uses alloys entirely on expansion and opts not to build to fleet cap, then I’ve little sympathy for him.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I don't think this is a problem with the game or balance itself that can be "solved", you will just shift the problem elsewhere.

I would suggest using house rules that make these strategies less powerful, perhaps a minimum of 20 -40 year graze period where no one are allowed to attack anyone else for example.

The problem is that there are too many components of Stellaris that don't work when the game are treated as a competition between players with no role-play.

Another thing is randomized empires or restrict the game from certain civics.

The fact that players only choose militaristic empire types clearly show that the simplistic goals of such MP games and also mean that they can't be balanced through normal means.

Just some of my opinions.