When did Stellaris get really good?

[Hyomoto]

Spoiler, this post is about how I started using 5x technology/tradition costs and it made me appreciate many aspects of the game I didn't know existed or simply ignored before. My playstyle and settings choices are just what I enjoy, but it's kind of incredible how many gameplay systems I usually ignored and have suddenly come up when my next technology or tradition is super far off. For example, fleet size. Never came up. Ever. Not once. Almost *universally* my fleet size was larger than my naval capacity. Yet, with 5x costs I'm not just picking tech: I have to focus and specialize on things I need. It's not just that though, sure tech is rare but it means I'm looking at things beyond raw numbers: subterfuge and stealing tech, researching wreckage from battles, various events and dig sites: these often felt fairly pointless, what is 843 Unity? Well, when I need 17,000 it's eight months or two leaders.

Some of this could just be recent tweaks, I mostly overlooked the last two patches. Still, it's just strange to come to the realization there's always been mechanics that seemed so unimportant and finding them suddenly relevant and interesting. Like, people often say, "Oh, all the empires feel the same." And it's like yeah, they do when they all have all the techs. I've played two games this way now and I'm hooked. The first was my normal science-focused empire making me the most technologically adept nation. I focused explicitly on lasers and armor: no shields due to getting regenerative armor early on. Sure, we had the most tech in the galaxy ... but not necessarily the strongest economy. I ended up getting wiped out in a misguided war. I'm not *quite* sure what happened there, but my intel must have been old on my target because they looked to be much weaker than they actually were, and my advanced fleets were wiped out by being vastly outnumbered.

Second playthrough super imperialistic clone empire. Got a lucky second planet appeared adjacent to my starting world with perfect compatibility (I also play on no guaranteed worlds and 0.25 habitable), but being a clone empire I was super limited in how many pops I could have. Technology was also super slow save for physics. There just weren't sources for the other two, and I had unemployment issues due to the vats taking up building slots. I didn't have a single ship upgrade for the first ... hundred years? Still, I did have larger fleets and talented admirals I used that to crush two nearby civilizations into vassalage. Amazingly the mercenary group on my border handed me a fleet of hyper advanced ships, and later a highly capable admiral to round out my otherwise technologically inferior fleet which I would use to subjugate a rival imperial empire. I also took extra envoys as my ascension perk and start building deep espionage networks to scout my neighbors and occasionally mine for technology. Not a perfect source or anything, but a 30% boost on an engineering tech that would other wise take several decades to research is well worth the time investment and knowing exactly who to bribe and embarrass was awesome, turning some neighbors on an empire I was looking to break up.

These are just the cliff notes versions but it really does all stem from not powering through traditions and the tech tree like candy, making my decisions feel more impactful. Suddenly these other sources of unity, empire buffs, etc... feel more relevant and powerful. Even waging war felt somehow more invigorating because I was looking at diplomatic ties and scheming to steal vassals or making actually important defense pacts. I'm trying to leverage my existing resources, make plans. And I got to be honest, I was interested in the upcoming patch and DLC before but now I'm genuinely excited. I know this isn't "the right way to play" for everyone, but it has had such an incredible impact on how I experience it that I'm *slightly* sad to see the old research jobs go. Only slightly. If you did read this far, hey thanks. It does make me wonder though, when did Stellaris get really good for you?

 

[Meneye]

I started liking the mechanics and feeling good about the future of the game again when they released necroids. But it was really when federations came out that I started having a lot of fun.

Federations got me to make a small group of custom empires that matched each federation type, but I decided to keep using them every game afterwards. I sometimes tweak them to play with new mechanics, but by playing or spawning them in I felt like I unintentionally started creating my own universe with its own lore.

I've had a blast since then, and I'm excited to see how the council and leader events are going to add to the game's emergent storytelling.

 

[Eelectrica]

Custodians is when I think Stellaris turned the corner.
They were able to focus on many of the long standing issues and have made some great improvements since.

 

[Imp0815]

Somewhere around two to three years ago. I had not played for a while and jumping back in expecting not much, i had a really fun time. While playing with two friends in in PvE I realized that all my time i were engaged in different mechanics and had fun steering my empire making decisions, upgrade specialized planets, managing my pops, creating border fortresses, manipulation the GalCom, diplomacy, exploration, designing ships, plan my traditions, etc.. Obviously i started playing with mods but soon after i started playing vanilla and the only thing i really missed sometimes were all the different planet and features mods. Most of the tech and ship mods just bloat the game for me and make it ridicules.
Overall the pacing and content is really well rounded and the flow of the game is perfect. Except for warfare and the utterly dull Military system with big number blobs. It always leads to an annoying distraction that needs far too much attention and is not satisfying at all.

Also something that really made me appreciate the game even more are the, somewhat few, different play styles. Playing a mega Corp feels different when combined with the Mercenary enclaves. Or some of the civics and origins from Toxoids are cool. The Industrial ones combined with Post Apocalypse origin for example. Or focusing on Diplomacy heavily works really well. Necro phages i did not warm up too. The "Become the Crisis" mechanics are also fun but somewhat warfare heavy, which does not work well.

 

[Peter34]

I purchased Stellaris 1.0.3 about 1-2 weeks after release, so almost 7 years ago from today, and it was very bare bones, with extremely little content.

The three main boosts it got, or five if you like, were the 1.3 update and the Leviathans DLC, the 1.5 update and the Utopia DLC, and the 1.8 update (but not, to my mind, really the accompanying Apocalypse DLC). Those really, really enriched the game and made it genuinely fun to play, whereas early on it was mostly that I have a space science fiction fetish and that I could very likely see the potential inherent in Stellaris' design, although it wasn't really realized potentail at first.

 

[Seridor]

I'm really into star trek/babylon 5 etc, so stellaris building on their concepts was a very good starting point. Previously I was turned off mostly by the bad handling of the AI and difficulty to find settings for a correctly challenging game.
Recently I came back to stellaris, run afew 2* tech cost, 5* crisis, peacefull builder games and they went quite well, I1m looking forward to play some more. 5* tech cost seems a bit too much, i might go up to 2,5*. What i1m thinking is to increase the influence cost of starbases to double (need to do a small edit in the defines file) and possibly increase growth required scaling. This way the early game would be less of a rush.
I wanted to wait for 3.8 before starting a new game, but right now i1m not sure it's gona be that good. I see the power creep increasing with these leaders, and that's already high.

 

[Ryika]

Suddenly these other sources of unity [...] .. feel more relevant and powerful.

Problem is, Unity itself becomes really weak when you increase the costs by x5, because now Traditions are an investment that's 5 times as big, and you're probably better off just rushing down the galaxy while ignoring tech and unity all-together, or at least until a much later game. There is a balance to be struck between red laser meta and what we have now, but I think x5 tech/unity cost isn't anywhere near the sweet spot.

I do agree that the way the systems currently work have a significantly negative impact on the sense of scale and progression though.

As for the actual question of the thread... I actually liked it from the beginning, though I took regular breaks at that time. Utopia really improved the game for me, spamming hundreds of habitats was surprisingly fun back in the old system. I think performance issues aside, since the 2.2 rework it has been a steady climb to an overall better game. Can't really pinpoint that one moment where things really came together in the newer versions, it's just positive changes and additions having a compounding effect.

 

[Archael90]

Spoiler, this post is about how I started using 5x technology/tradition costs and it made me appreciate many aspects of the game I didn't know existed or simply ignored before. My playstyle and settings choices are just what I enjoy, but it's kind of incredible how many gameplay systems I usually ignored and have suddenly come up when my next technology or tradition is super far off. For example, fleet size. Never came up. Ever. Not once. Almost *universally* my fleet size was larger than my naval capacity. Yet, with 5x costs I'm not just picking tech: I have to focus and specialize on things I need. It's not just that though, sure tech is rare but it means I'm looking at things beyond raw numbers: subterfuge and stealing tech, researching wreckage from battles, various events and dig sites: these often felt fairly pointless, what is 843 Unity? Well, when I need 17,000 it's eight months or two leaders.

Some of this could just be recent tweaks, I mostly overlooked the last two patches. Still, it's just strange to come to the realization there's always been mechanics that seemed so unimportant and finding them suddenly relevant and interesting. Like, people often say, "Oh, all the empires feel the same." And it's like yeah, they do when they all have all the techs. I've played two games this way now and I'm hooked. The first was my normal science-focused empire making me the most technologically adept nation. I focused explicitly on lasers and armor: no shields due to getting regenerative armor early on. Sure, we had the most tech in the galaxy ... but not necessarily the strongest economy. I ended up getting wiped out in a misguided war. I'm not *quite* sure what happened there, but my intel must have been old on my target because they looked to be much weaker than they actually were, and my advanced fleets were wiped out by being vastly outnumbered.

Second playthrough super imperialistic clone empire. Got a lucky second planet appeared adjacent to my starting world with perfect compatibility (I also play on no guaranteed worlds and 0.25 habitable), but being a clone empire I was super limited in how many pops I could have. Technology was also super slow save for physics. There just weren't sources for the other two, and I had unemployment issues due to the vats taking up building slots. I didn't have a single ship upgrade for the first ... hundred years? Still, I did have larger fleets and talented admirals I used that to crush two nearby civilizations into vassalage. Amazingly the mercenary group on my border handed me a fleet of hyper advanced ships, and later a highly capable admiral to round out my otherwise technologically inferior fleet which I would use to subjugate a rival imperial empire. I also took extra envoys as my ascension perk and start building deep espionage networks to scout my neighbors and occasionally mine for technology. Not a perfect source or anything, but a 30% boost on an engineering tech that would other wise take several decades to research is well worth the time investment and knowing exactly who to bribe and embarrass was awesome, turning some neighbors on an empire I was looking to break up.

These are just the cliff notes versions but it really does all stem from not powering through traditions and the tech tree like candy, making my decisions feel more impactful. Suddenly these other sources of unity, empire buffs, etc... feel more relevant and powerful. Even waging war felt somehow more invigorating because I was looking at diplomatic ties and scheming to steal vassals or making actually important defense pacts. I'm trying to leverage my existing resources, make plans. And I got to be honest, I was interested in the upcoming patch and DLC before but now I'm genuinely excited. I know this isn't "the right way to play" for everyone, but it has had such an incredible impact on how I experience it that I'm *slightly* sad to see the old research jobs go. Only slightly. If you did read this far, hey thanks. It does make me wonder though, when did Stellaris get really good for you?

Some time ago i started playing with tech cost 3x, and while i sometime change it to 5 i never go below this 3. Terraforming feels better, techs from anomalies got sense, overpopulation start being a thing, researching new hulltypes is a giant leap in fleet power. Everything start looking as intended... i think that game balance is made around higher tech costs.

 

[Wolfgang I]

Personally I really enjoyed the game around 1.6-1.9 and stopped enjoying it after the change because the AI stopped being an obstacle at all. I played with warp only before and I felt hyperlane only and the new economics nerfed the already weak AI completely into the ground because the AI could handle neither choke points nor the non tile economics. Changed form okish challenge in the early game on GA to non challenge at all with RP builds.

I started playing it again a while ago and find it fun again. However I'm not min/maxing as much as I used to because I dislike the vassal/diplomacy mechanics on higher difficulties and I stay clear of that.

Problem is, Unity itself becomes really weak when you increase the costs by x5, because now Traditions are an investment that's 5 times as big, and you're probably better off just rushing down the galaxy while ignoring tech and unity all-together, or at least until a much later game. There is a balance to be struck between red laser meta and what we have now, but I think x5 tech/unity cost isn't anywhere near the sweet spot.

I do agree that the way the systems currently work have a significantly negative impact on the sense of scale and progression though.

As for the actual question of the thread... I actually liked it from the beginning, though I took regular breaks at that time. Utopia really improved the game for me, spamming hundreds of habitats was surprisingly fun back in the old system. I think performance issues aside, since the 2.2 rework it has been a steady climb to an overall better game. Can't really pinpoint that one moment where things really came together in the newer versions, it's just positive changes and additions having a compounding effect.

My last two games were DA blobing games with default settings and with slower research and traditions it feels like I would have conquered 1000 systems before getting blue lasers...

 

[Harkinian's Dinner]

It became really good around when Utopia was released, then became total garbage in 2.2 and stayed garbage for a couple years until the Custodians came on the scene and started fixing things. Now it's probably the best it's ever been.

 

[Zoomy]

Patch 3.0. Stellaris was good until 2.2 (apparently, I only joined in 2.1), then from 2.2 - 2.8 you have the Dark Age of Stellaris, 2.9 doesn't exist and 3.0 is when Stellaris gets good again.

 

[Tim_Ward]

I don't think there was one moment when it suddenly became good, it started as very shallow game with little content and little to do but paint the map and little idea of what the game is supposed to be about, but by the time we go done with the 2.X.X series it had plenty of mechanical depth and stuff to do, and we now have the basic idea of what a game of Stellaris should be like in place but almost everything is broken in some way. Then with the 3.X patches and the Custonians we finally (after a little bit of screaming gentle cajoling on the forums) get some progress on legacy issues and now the game is probably in the best state it's every been in. War mechanics are still bad though.

It should be noted that even during it's worst periods Stellaris has always had enough interesting stuff going on to keep people actually playing it, even if it was frustrating at times, which is why it never died in the way Imperator did.

 

[TartanNinja]

I think one of the major moments for me with Stellaris was when Apocalypse came out with the rework around FTL (hyperlanes became the norm etc) was when i really dove into the game as then i could control my borders better and stand on equal ground against the AI. I tend to turtle alot as a strategy player so this helped a lot

 

[Khaali]

I'd say with Stellaris 2.0. Not neccessarily because the changes where the best, but it showed that the developers did not shy away from cutting content/changing content, down to the very core of the game, for the better. There where a lot of complains back then that they wanted wormholes or warpdrives and that the change is bad, but ultimatively the change was for the better and layed the groundwork for later reworks like the pop system.

For reference, i bought the game on release, there may have been times where i played the game less, but i am still here.

 

[Kelarys]

4x tech/trad is my setting, but I also increase the mid game and end game dates to compensate

this way the techs feel more impactful and the improvements they bring make a lot more difference

 

[Hyomoto]

Problem is, Unity itself becomes really weak when you increase the costs by x5, because now Traditions are an investment that's 5 times as big, and you're probably better off just rushing down the galaxy while ignoring tech and unity all-together, or at least until a much later game. There is a balance to be struck between red laser meta and what we have now, but I think x5 tech/unity cost isn't anywhere near the sweet spot.

I do agree that the way the systems currently work have a significantly negative impact on the sense of scale and progression though.

As for the actual question of the thread... I actually liked it from the beginning, though I took regular breaks at that time. Utopia really improved the game for me, spamming hundreds of habitats was surprisingly fun back in the old system. I think performance issues aside, since the 2.2 rework it has been a steady climb to an overall better game. Can't really pinpoint that one moment where things really came together in the newer versions, it's just positive changes and additions having a compounding effect.

You are probably right here, this is the first time I've actually considered raising the difficulty but that does suggest I've found my own personal sweet spot where I'm like, okay game, challenge me. I worry that upping it will just break whatever this fragile balance I've struck has going for it, but I kind of see it as the opposite of making it irrelevant.

Full disclosure, I was thinking of tweaking it back down to 4.5 because yeah... but I really am just having too much fun and goddamn it, it's fucking crazy to see a destroyer and go "oh shit, they researched destroyers?!"

 

[currylambchop]

1.9, before they removed the 3 FTL types. It hasn’t been as good since

 

[TomorrowsHerald]

Custodians is when I think Stellaris turned the corner.
They were able to focus on many of the long standing issues and have made some great improvements since.

This. I think the moment I stopped spending most of my time on 1.9/2.1 was when the 2.2 pops performance hit was finally addressed around the time leading up to the Federations DLC. Follow-up improvements by the Custodian team gradually made the cons outweigh the benefits of reverting to those versions. I'd say the recent DLCs haven't really added something definitive I can point to as something I can't play without, but taken together, their absence becomes very noticeable leaving the older versions of the game pretty bare bones. There are still some things 1.9 does better in terms of the base game, but I haven't reverted in some time. If I were to make a cautious guess based on the Dev diaries, it's very possible the Paragons DLC might prove to be the DLC that I can't play without in the future.

 

[dulahan]

I just wish there was better guidance for scaling the crisis settings with those costs. I've yet to figure out a sweet spot for my own preferred 3x. And when a crisis co.es it pretty much either gets ROFLstomped with no effort whatsoever by the galaxy, or is an unstoppable juggernaut due to everyone being too low tech. Even the Khan can be like this. I've seen him snowball 2/3rds the Galaxy before being assassinated once.

But you mess with galaxy size and worlds it can dramatically change things.

 

[Farbros]

Patch 3.0. Stellaris was good until 2.2 (apparently, I only joined in 2.1), then from 2.2 - 2.8 you have the Dark Age of Stellaris, 2.9 doesn't exist and 3.0 is when Stellaris gets good again.

I liked the era of 2.2-2.8, 1200 Battleships with 20 Titans and Juggernaut against 20kk 25x Crisis. I would spam the habitats with energy, alloys, citadels productions. Transform all planets into mineral mines and have a fleet over 10000. It is way more difficult to get there today.