Victory conditions not quite enough

[scaper12123]

In my honest opinion, which will probably be unpopular with literally everybody on this forum, I don't think the victory conditions are balanced quite right. In actuality, I think all three of them aren't quite suited to the conditions this game is set for at the moment. My thoughts are as follows:

The Domination condition is the easiest and most straightforward victory condition to obtain, which is reasonable. However, I don't think controlling 40% of all habitable planets necessarily fits the condition. It would be very easy, in fact, to achieve this goal while still leaving 3 awakened empire swarming about who can come and collectively crush you whenever they'd like. That's not much of a domination.

I have not once gone for the conquest victory condition because in many ways it's too much of a hassle. First you have to build up a significantly huge empire so the others don't rebel against you, then you have to whittle the enemy down. By the time you're ready to put significant focus onto this victory condition, you're likely already on track for Domination. The building-tall conditions being added in 1.5 might address this, but I don't think it's quite enough.

Federation victory is pretty easy to obtain under the right circumstances. It's especially easy to get if the war in heaven occurs and you are the leading galactic power. In fact, my League of Non-Aligned Powers achieved this condition just after my presidency ended (sadly) and before the true war even started.

So at the moment, I think the game leans towards domination. The game frankly doesn't have enough victory conditions atm and there's plenty more the devs could add to make interesting challenges. But as for what I think they could do to improve these victory conditions,

• Domination should require 50% of the galaxy instead of 40%. A bit of a step forward but it would require a bit more effort and that extra push would probably be enough to firmly cement your power over the fallen empires. Furthermore, planets owned by vassals or tributaries wouldn't count - they must be within your own empire, hence dominating them.
• Conquest should be a list of goals rather than simply conquering all other empires. Firstly, no fallen empires should exist. Secondly, your navy must make the collective naval power of your subjects be inferior in comparison. Finally, you must subjugate three-quarters of other nations. This would support a focus on conquest without necessarily taking everything from everyone, suitable for anybody not being militarist.
• Federation victory condition should require 75% of all habitable planets as opposed to 60%. Vassals and tributaries SHOULD count in this scenario.

I think a few other victory conditions should be added in the future, like I said. Two ones I've thought of in particular are Population and Scientific victories. A Population victory would require you making your species the galactic majority by populating 40% of all planet tiles in the galaxy with them. This would be especially good for xenophobes who have to go the extra mile to purge other species in order to propigate their own. A Scientific victory would require building a ringworld from scratch, which would take a very long time well beyond the late game and would, for the most part, require all non-repeatable researches to have been acquired. Such a victory would require lots of time, effort, resources, and research (which perhaps could include the special fallen empire buildings which could be built exclusively on these ringworlds).

 

[Adamsrealm]

In my honest opinion, which will probably be unpopular with literally everybody on this forum, I don't think the victory conditions are balanced quite right. In actuality, I think all three of them aren't quite suited to the conditions this game is set for at the moment. My thoughts are as follows:

The Domination condition is the easiest and most straightforward victory condition to obtain, which is reasonable. However, I don't think controlling 40% of all habitable planets necessarily fits the condition. It would be very easy, in fact, to achieve this goal while still leaving 3 awakened empire swarming about who can come and collectively crush you whenever they'd like. That's not much of a domination.

I have not once gone for the conquest victory condition because in many ways it's too much of a hassle. First you have to build up a significantly huge empire so the others don't rebel against you, then you have to whittle the enemy down. By the time you're ready to put significant focus onto this victory condition, you're likely already on track for Domination. The building-tall conditions being added in 1.5 might address this, but I don't think it's quite enough.

Federation victory is pretty easy to obtain under the right circumstances. It's especially easy to get if the war in heaven occurs and you are the leading galactic power. In fact, my League of Non-Aligned Powers achieved this condition just after my presidency ended (sadly) and before the true war even started.

So at the moment, I think the game leans towards domination. The game frankly doesn't have enough victory conditions atm and there's plenty more the devs could add to make interesting challenges. But as for what I think they could do to improve these victory conditions,

• Domination should require 50% of the galaxy instead of 40%. A bit of a step forward but it would require a bit more effort and that extra push would probably be enough to firmly cement your power over the fallen empires. Furthermore, planets owned by vassals or tributaries wouldn't count - they must be within your own empire, hence dominating them.
• Conquest should be a list of goals rather than simply conquering all other empires. Firstly, no fallen empires should exist. Secondly, your navy must make the collective naval power of your subjects be inferior in comparison. Finally, you must subjugate three-quarters of other nations. This would support a focus on conquest without necessarily taking everything from everyone, suitable for anybody not being militarist.
• Federation victory condition should require 75% of all habitable planets as opposed to 60%. Vassals and tributaries SHOULD count in this scenario.

I think a few other victory conditions should be added in the future, like I said. Two ones I've thought of in particular are Population and Scientific victories. A Population victory would require you making your species the galactic majority by populating 40% of all planet tiles in the galaxy with them. This would be especially good for xenophobes who have to go the extra mile to purge other species in order to propigate their own. A Scientific victory would require building a ringworld from scratch, which would take a very long time well beyond the late game and would, for the most part, require all non-repeatable researches to have been acquired. Such a victory would require lots of time, effort, resources, and research (which perhaps could include the special fallen empire buildings which could be built exclusively on these ringworlds).

It's not the goals that are lacking, it's because the road to them is to simple, boring and provides little challenge past a cetain point. Wars need to be more dynamic and have many more options for victory besides just doomstack sweeping an enemies empire...

The start to fixing this would be statics defenses that didn't suck and required a solid strategy to take down because at the moment they are cannon fodder. Second would a serious look at how the ftl systems work and a complete rebalance.

In effect wormholes are mostly superior to any other ftl (I am not including jump/psi jump, they are too easy to obtain)

The only weakness wormholes ave is destruction of wormhole stations which other ftls cannot move fast enough between systems to destroy without retaliation

Warscore is also too easy to obtain and empire wiping is a much too viable strategy, not to mention the lack of micro managment with ship combat limits the devs options to improve upon.

Stellaris is too simple of a game which results in a polarisation of certain strategies which cement them at the top and force you to use them because you will ultimately lose if you don't. The game needs serious fleshing out in all departments, but that is limited as well due to the fact it is built on a 32bit engine with limits ran usage to 3 GBs (most of which is graphically base, until late game).

Right now Six things need addressing:

Doomstacks - (Either remove them, or implement a shield mitigation system like in sins of a solar empire, look up shield
mitigation if you don't know how it effects combat)

Static & Strategic defence systems - They need to be made really tough with a hard counter weakness. Expensive to build but
not to maintain

Wargoals/Warescores - Insentives to go after your specific goals, whilst penalties ensue for rolling an entire empires
infrastructure in one war (it's too easy to do this)

Too much technological freedom - Your can get ALL weapon types (excluding space mobs) you need to be locked into
specific main trees with secondaries allowing for some similarities, and weapons in general
need fleshing out more anyway, there isn't enough variety to reduce any single op strategy
without creating another

Consequences for you actions - There needs to be a good and a bad thing happen from all events, no event should give just
positives, that way empire strengths and empire weaknesses develop over the course of the
game which cannot be got ridden of, requiring you to plan for them accordingly.

War or nothing - Wars are currently too black and white, we need middle grounds that allow for continue skirmishes even if
wargoals aren't being pursued, e.g. Boarder skirmishes, hostilities when in neutral space between empire
which will make expanding more than killing the local animals and sending a colony ship, warships only get
used to sterilise systems of fauna or to throw bombs at enemy planets in wars, they SHOULD have a
constant use of border protection.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

I don't see how that opinion would be "unpopular"- the victory conditions are widely acknowledged as rather tacked-on, since Paradox grand-strategy games don't usually have them.

 

[scaper12123]

I don't see how that opinion would be "unpopular"- the victory conditions are widely acknowledged as rather tacked-on, since Paradox grand-strategy games don't usually have them.

I mean unpopular in the sense that they need to be harder to get

 

[Pavane]

I'm not interested in something that makes the game longer without making that additional time more interesting and not just more of the same.

 

[scaper12123]

I'm not interested in something that makes the game longer without making that additional time more interesting and not just more of the same.

Understandable, honestly. Still, you have to admit it can be weird if you could dominate the galaxy but still leave open the opportunity to get steamrolled by the collective power of all other nations (and the fallen empires) later on in your empire.

 

[Pchang]

I am OK with the current victory conditions. I think that letting people decide on their own is the best. The problem I have is that the Federation Victory condition is only reported properly when you are the Federation President. You have to manually figure out how many habitable planets there are by doing the math on the Domination Victory condition, and then summing up the total number of planets you have in the Federation screen.

 

[Derp]

Understandable, honestly. Still, you have to admit it can be weird if you could dominate the galaxy but still leave open the opportunity to get steamrolled by the collective power of all other nations (and the fallen empires) later on in your empire.

Eh... in my experience, if you're at 40%+, you're already too big to fail. Maybe with the exception of tiny maps, since FE and crisis fleets don't seem to scale with map size.

 

[Pavane]

Understandable, honestly. Still, you have to admit it can be weird if you could dominate the galaxy but still leave open the opportunity to get steamrolled by the collective power of all other nations (and the fallen empires) later on in your empire.

It is called a domination victory, which implies that you will dominate galactic politics for years to come. It is not a conquest victory. Think of Britain during the Victorian era, or the U.S. post WW II. Both controlled less than 40% of the world's landmass or population yet they were dominant internationally.

 

[Adamsrealm]

There needs to be more difficulties with running a large empire than ethics divergence. The upcoming consumer goods mechanic is a good idea and the new upcoming factions system seems like it would help as well (providing it doesn't work solely of ethics divergence like the current one)

However there is little added difficulty to "wide empires" (please excuse the meme) as there are no logistical costs for far away planets or distances accross empires.

 

[scaper12123]

There needs to be more difficulties with running a large empire than ethics divergence. The upcoming consumer goods mechanic is a good idea and the new upcoming factions system seems like it would help as well (providing it doesn't work solely of ethics divergence like the current one)

However there is little added difficulty to "wide empires" (please excuse the meme) as there are no logistical costs for far away planets or distances across empires.

I agree, and there's everything to gain from having extremely wide empires. Most of my campaigns end in me having a majority stake in the entire universe because I control so much space. It would help if victory conditions were expanded upon.

 

[Adamsrealm]

I agree, and there's everything to gain from having extremely wide empires. Most of my campaigns end in me having a majority stake in the entire universe because I control so much space. It would help if victory conditions were expanded upon.

Victory types are certainly lacking. Here's a few I think should be included, and most should be possible with the new ascension trees (I think paradox has these planned anyways)

Victory types:
Domination (we already have this on)
Spiritual*
Technological*
Biological*
Economic
Diplomatic
Cultural

( * means that the victory type has to sub types, one with ascension and the other without)

p.s. Like hell im going to try and suggest the conditions for achieving these

 

[scaper12123]

Victory types:
Domination (we already have this on)
Spiritual*
Technological*
Biological*
Economic
Diplomatic
Cultural

p.s. Like hell im going to try and suggest the conditions for achieving these

I can see where you're going with that, and I'll go so far as to suggest those conditions for you
Spiritual - have your religious faction be embraced by all other empire (meaning either missionaries to nations with open borders or crusades
Technological - be the first to construct a full ringworld (or, as would be better, repair and inhabit one).
Biological - do something related to modifying your species (maybe applying a certain number of trait points to a certain number of species across the empire)
Economic - Maintain control over 40% of all the galaxy's mineral and energy resources (which is somewhat similar to domination, but these things can be a bit liquid)
Diplomatic - same as federation honestly
Cultural - Populate your empire with 90% of all base species in the galaxy

 

[NakedBeast]

Victory conditions are certainly lacking. As are internal politics and threats. As in - the bigger you get, the more clever you have to be to balance out everything inside, not some arbitary restrictions on expansion like current research penalty from empire size. I found the lack of that the most unfun thing to domination victory - I just had all planets except core ones in sectors with everybody there enslaved and planetary armies destroying slave rebellions from time to time.

 

[Milten]

They always will be lacking, given how Grand Strategies work. There is too much to do and a lot of it has nothing to do with "winning" over anything.
That's why some people are opposed to Victory Conditions as a thing, it's never-finished feature.

 

[xxaxx]

Honestly why would you even want to make the victory conditions "harder"? At a certain point you are the most powerful empire in the galaxy and all that is left is a grind.

Basically all i'm waiting for is to truces to end, so i can take more planets to grind out the victory. I've stopped of course because its pointless.

 

[Volapyk]

I had much rather the domination victory changed from % of planets to % of the galaxy. In the few games I've actually bothered to 'finish' the game it has always been a grind to colonize all the small planets that have been left alone till this point.

The idea that you need the small planets to win but actually colonizing them would slow your progress in most normal circumstanzes is to me rather bad design.

If instead it was changed to a need to have a certaint % of the systems you wouldn't have to bother with a lot of those small planets.

 

[xxaxx]

I had much rather the domination victory changed from % of planets to % of the galaxy. In the few games I've actually bothered to 'finish' the game it has always been a grind to colonize all the small planets that have been left alone till this point.

The idea that you need the small planets to win but actually colonizing them would slow your progress in most normal circumstanzes is to me rather bad design.

If instead it was changed to a need to have a certaint % of the systems you wouldn't have to bother with a lot of those small planets.

I so rarely properly finish a Stellaris game i kinda don't see the point, if you've taken care of the endgame crisis and/or fallen empires/awakened ones there's no point to even go for victory. The game i posted was fun until i destroyed the rebel AI (really easy at that point) and then proceeded to dismantle both the Awakened Empires (War in Heaven). To now grind out the game just so i can see the victory screen seems really pointless.

It may be even better if they did like in CK2 where you can just resign and maybe have a small summary of your impact on the galaxy. You'd get some closure to your game (which i do miss sometimes), but there'd be no need to basically grind towards arbitrary victory conditions.

 

[scaper12123]

I had much rather the domination victory changed from % of planets to % of the galaxy. In the few games I've actually bothered to 'finish' the game it has always been a grind to colonize all the small planets that have been left alone till this point.

The idea that you need the small planets to win but actually colonizing them would slow your progress in most normal circumstanzes is to me rather bad design.

If instead it was changed to a need to have a certaint % of the systems you wouldn't have to bother with a lot of those small planets.

You have a point there, it really seems like domination should be based on control over the galaxy as opposed to control over planets. Controlling the big planets by itself is more than enough for you to expand massively.