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One of the main reasons I'm starting to get a little bored of Stellaris is that the galaxy remains largely static throughout the game, once you've discovered all of the empires and they've filled their space. To compare this to other PDX games:
- In CK3, the constant lifecycles of characters and the transfer of titles and so on provides a relatively dynamic experience (even if at the moment, large empires are a bit too stable). Things can change drastically in 100 years, empires can fall apart or be united into a much stronger, terrifying force.
- In HoI4, the entire game is relatively dynamic, because the frontlines are shifting and changing on a rapid timescale. If an enemy starts to snowball, you can be in big trouble.
- In EU4, again, you're constantly trying to keep your enemies weak, because they are always attempting to grow in size and power, and could become a threat to you.
However, contrast this with Stellaris. It feels as though once you get to the mid-game... everything really just stays the same. Maybe some Federations form. Maybe a Devouring Swarm or some Fanatic Purifiers get killed. But largely, there are minuscule border changes... and that's about it. In the last two games I've played, once the mid-game empires were established and empty space was filled, from that point on nothing happened. There were a few wars, and a handful of border systems changed hands, and then maybe changed hands back. Then it's just a waiting game until the crisis.
What's causing this, and how can we make the galaxy a more dynamic and exciting place?
Some ideas:
- The AI aren't very aggressive at all (I've flagged this in the beta AI feedback thread). They seem lethargic, and uninterested in declaring war for the most part. When empires do go to war, the result is usually that a few border systems change hands, and that's it.
- Is it too easy to recover from a war? Does war cost too little? I know many times in EU4, I've seen a nation bleed itself dry fighting a war, and then collapse after the peace was signed, only to be gobbled up by their rivals. This never happens in Stellaris.
The AI seems better at using armies in the beta, although they do seem to wait until they are bombarding a planet, and THEN start bringing armies in. If they are attacking deep into enemy territory, or they have a very large empire, this can be a bit of a problem as it takes the armies so long to get there.
It's probably a question of scale. The AI has trouble with where to prioritize its fleets and armies. This is not really unique to Stellaris as it also occurs in EUIV and in CK3. The difference is that it is a smaller scale in the two other titles while it can take years for the AI to transport fleets from one end of their empire to the other.
Because the AI sucks, and there's nothing in midgame but the Khan. It'd be best if the next content pack would be a midgame focused lots-of-stuff-that-can-happen thing.
Because the AI sucks, and there's nothing in midgame but the Khan. It'd be best if the next content pack would be a midgame focused lots-of-stuff-that-can-happen thing.
I wholeheartedly agree. Honestly, I've come to the realization that most paradox games are pretty shallow. Stellaris is one of them. Every new Stellaris game feels the same.
Actually in my opinion it's a problem with lacking features for internal and external interaction. Compared to EU4 the internal and external interaction between empires is a joke. For example:
In EU4, overaggressive expansion is curbed by massive internal issues. take too much territory of too much value, and the cost of integrating might take your country apart. racked with revolts and penalty's you can quickly tear into many smaller kingdoms. In stellaris, after 700 hours, I've had a single revolt i remember, and that was before any DLC's. There needs to be revolts, with their own compositions, reasons and goals that can splinter an empire. For a game with this much Genocide, there really needs to be more resistance from the populace.
In EU4 (yes i find it to be the best example of dynamic border movement) external threats can easily gather to threaten a larger power. in a recent game as Austria my victory and conquest of Venice pitted half of the southern HRE against me in a massive war to strip me of my power. only my web of alliances allowed me to pull of a white peace. You'd never see a situation like that in stellaris. Empires almost never band together against a larger threat, allies don't matter and there's no way to curb steamrolling Empires. with no internal system to manipulate, theres no real reason to interact with others besides war declaration's.
The fact that i don't think i've even OPENED the diplomacy screen in the last 70-80 hours of gameplay says a lot.
I'd probably say that the main reasons are (in no particular order):
* The Wargoal system is built in such a way as to limit how much you can claim and how much you can take in a war quite significantly - in EU4 the main limiter most of the time is really AE, wheras in Stellaris it's the claims themselves, so the claims need to be most costly to make up for the shortfall in potential diplomatic finesse, limiting the scope of most wars
* Internal instability is essentially nonexistent (this is a symptom of the limited internal mechanics)
* A lot of systems are built to be 'slow burn' and non-dynamic, including things like traditions and ascension perks, which it kinda makes sense for, but also things like federations, which encourages large defensive alliances which last the whole game
* Several ethics are specifically built around the idea of doing diplomacy (Xenophile) and economy (Pacifist) rather than war, and without internal issues there aren't many ways for borders to really change.
The midgame slog is arguably the core problem with Stellaris right now. For everything else we bitch about, it really boils down to a fun and exciting early game that transitions to a long, tedious middle.
It's hard to say exactly what the problem is. A few reasons, for my own two cents, include:
- Nothing happens to destabilize the board or change your incentives. The occasional event like a Khan invasion will happen, but those are one-off and infrequent. More importantly, they're essentially just new wars between either you and a third party or other empires and a third party. Nothing changes your strategic priorities or opportunities as the game goes on, so there's no reason for the board to change. (For example, even if the Khan invasion weakens your neighbor, there's no reason for you to seize that opportunity other than a general feeling of "might as well.")
- There's nothing you want or need outside your borders. Empires are wholly self-sufficient and can generate everything they need, so there's no actual reason to interact with other empires outside around the map. Nothing drives conflict between empires because there's nothing you need or want from each other.
Personally I think those are the big two. A game entirely focused on war can still have a dynamic, shifting map if something drives conflict among the players. But there are no conflict drivers in Stellaris beyond arbitrary ethics-based opinion modifiers, and those can often be smoothed away with envoys. It leads to the infamous "declared war out of boredom" problem, because (aside from headcanon) there's generally neither a narrative nor a strategic reason for conflict.
In addition to that, I would say that other issues are:
- There is still little meaningful interaction with other empires beyond war or alliances. (So, declaring war or preparing for it.) There are no trade routes, cultural conflicts, personality-driven conflicts by leaders, etc., so there's very little which could generate dynamic interactions. This leads to several problems, one of which is that diplomacy becomes very locked in. Nothing changes diplomacy over the course of the game because there's nothing to negotiate over aside from whether or not you'll go to war.
- Huge middle game blocs form quickly. By the middle game much of the galaxy has split up into defensive pacts, alliances and federations. (I've found this is more true than ever since the Federations update.) This makes it harder to declare war, and often the map settles into a WWI-style stalemate instead.
- The lack of neutral space makes every empire a landlocked nation. Even if there were something to do outside your borders (which there isn't), Stellaris doesn't have any equivalent to the oceans that you find on terrestrial maps. So there's no second age of exploration, no new encounters as the game goes on, and little ability to directly interact with empires that don't border you.
- The absence of internal politics means that there is no internal instability either. Sectors don't develop their own identities and it's very rare for empire to split up as the game goes on. When they do, it's the (imo) deeply useless rebellion mechanic in which a single system declares independence and then immediately gets swallowed up again.
AI doesn't know how to play the game, so you don't get situations like fearing the war decleration of France in EU4, because it never happens.
It's slightly better in the current beta, but need much more work, either in monumentally improving the AI code, or by making some game elements more AI friendly.
AI doesn't know how to play the game, so you don't get situations like fearing the war decleration of France in EU4, because it never happens.
It's slightly better in the current beta, but need much more work, either in monumentally improving the AI code, or by making some game elements more AI friendly.
There is also no mechanic AI could use to get several empires in a war against a larger threat. Eu4 has favours for that as well as coalitions. Federations also seem often unable to declare war. Probably because all empires need to vote yes for a war deceleration, meaning as long as one federation member likes you the federation will never declare war.
Of course things become static. The map gets painted and defensive alliances/federations form. There is no real mechanism a player can use to destabilise alliances or federations. Very few reasons to fall out with erstwhile allies. Almost no internal conflict. There used to be a moderate number of civil wars / splitting nations opportunistic players could use, but they are all gone now. Very few surprise blows to galactic tranquility outside the Khan, awakening FE, and the crisis.
The midgame slog is arguably the core problem with Stellaris right now. For everything else we bitch about, it really boils down to a fun and exciting early game that transitions to a long, tedious middle.
It's hard to say exactly what the problem is. A few reasons, for my own two cents, include:
- Nothing happens to destabilize the board or change your incentives. The occasional event like a Khan invasion will happen, but those are one-off and infrequent. More importantly, they're essentially just new wars between either you and a third party or other empires and a third party. Nothing changes your strategic priorities or opportunities as the game goes on, so there's no reason for the board to change. (For example, even if the Khan invasion weakens your neighbor, there's no reason for you to seize that opportunity other than a general feeling of "might as well.")
- There's nothing you want or need outside your borders. Empires are wholly self-sufficient and can generate everything they need, so there's no actual reason to interact with other empires outside around the map. Nothing drives conflict between empires because there's nothing you need or want from each other.
Personally I think those are the big two. A game entirely focused on war can still have a dynamic, shifting map if something drives conflict among the players. But there are no conflict drivers in Stellaris beyond arbitrary ethics-based opinion modifiers, and those can often be smoothed away with envoys. It leads to the infamous "declared war out of boredom" problem, because (aside from headcanon) there's generally neither a narrative nor a strategic reason for conflict.
In addition to that, I would say that other issues are:
- There is still little meaningful interaction with other empires beyond war or alliances. (So, declaring war or preparing for it.) There are no trade routes, cultural conflicts, personality-driven conflicts by leaders, etc., so there's very little which could generate dynamic interactions. This leads to several problems, one of which is that diplomacy becomes very locked in. Nothing changes diplomacy over the course of the game because there's nothing to negotiate over aside from whether or not you'll go to war.
- Huge middle game blocs form quickly. By the middle game much of the galaxy has split up into defensive pacts, alliances and federations. (I've found this is more true than ever since the Federations update.) This makes it harder to declare war, and often the map settles into a WWI-style stalemate instead.
- The lack of neutral space makes every empire a landlocked nation. Even if there were something to do outside your borders (which there isn't), Stellaris doesn't have any equivalent to the oceans that you find on terrestrial maps. So there's no second age of exploration, no new encounters as the game goes on, and little ability to directly interact with empires that don't border you.
- The absence of internal politics means that there is no internal instability either. Sectors don't develop their own identities and it's very rare for empire to split up as the game goes on. When they do, it's the (imo) deeply useless rebellion mechanic in which a single system declares independence and then immediately gets swallowed up again.
And going back a few years I also agree with what you said back in 2018 when strategic resources were about to be removed (I'm not stalking I promise, I was looking for the name of XuraGel and that thread popped up with a quick google)
I am really going to miss strategic resources. First, I would just like to define what I mean by strategic resources and define “Strategic Resources” as the pre-2.2 strategic resources, Zro, Riggan and so on and the new, 2.2 resources, motes...
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James_K said:
This is my issue with how strategic resources work in Civ - it's all too easy to be locked out of using a lot of technology because you don't have the required resources. It just ends up punishing people who don't want to go to war all the time, which makes the game less fun for me.
Hopefully the galactic market will make this less of a problem in Stellaris.
For me that's actually a feature, not a bug. It drives conflict at various stages of the game. The lack of conflict drivers is exactly why Stellaris suffers from its famed midgame slog. For the majority of the game nothing really happens, because nothing needs to.
At least a major reason Civilization doesn't have the same midgame slog as Stellaris is that each tier of technology changes the state of play. The map changes when iron, coal, oil, etc. hit the board. It forces you to change your strategy in response, and can change both your plans for expansion and power dynamics.
The strategic resources create critical, unknown variables and they create scarcity. Those resources are unpredictable, zero-sum and everybody needs them.
Stellaris doesn't have any unknown variables and it has almost no scarcity. By the start of the midgame you know the map, it isn't changing, and you're quickly swimming in wealth. So there's nothing to change the state of play and nothing that drives conflict. Nothing forces you to change your strategy once it's set. You can just keep ticking along. In most of my games, I end up just declaring war on all of my neighbors out of sheer boredom.
I definitely get the concern about not being forced to play a warmonger. It's an issue. But personally I still like the Civ style of strategic resources because I think over-rewarding war is better than a long, long stagnation.
The game is about to have another overhaul with changes to districts and the hints of future espionage and this will obviously change the balance of rare resources. So it seems the perfect time to bring back the best parts of 1.9.1 and revamp the system to reintroduce a scarcity of resources and to make each resource do something spectacular (for some empires, perhaps not for everyone should value each resource equally).
Espionage could allow for more resources to be hidden from prying eyes and unveiled gradually over time you uncover information about the galaxy at large... but we will still need a reason to go to war and resources being scarce, powerful and above-all interesting is at the heart of that.
Imagine the following: 1. Biological hive minds/Evolutionary Mastery empires could look hungrily for new and interesting mutations to add to their own genome. Muutagan Crystals and Isolated valley features could add pop growth, hull HP or regen or enable new traits or bio-ship components (the same resources providing the relatively bland Alien Zoo buildings for normal empires, perhaps leader lifespan boost for Muutagan Crystals)
Currently Hives are normal empires that lack Consumer goods and Happiness. But with this change playing as a Hive mind would then involve a mini-game of collecting DNA samples to boost the hive. As the espionage system reveals which empire hides the lucrative bonus you want to grow stronger there would be mid-game targets followed by an end-game potential that includes bioships and superpowered genetic modification of pops once you collected a sufficient number of key resources. Turn your empire into a mini scourge.
2. Megacorps would fight other megacorps for control of special trade resources to sell to other empires. XuraGel™ could be brought back along with similar trademarked goods spread around the galaxy - perhaps being developed by non-megacorp empires and spawning as deposits inside their space in the mid-game, each could have small unique effects for normal empires (like +5% happiness) but massively alter and upgrade the output of branch offices or just boost trade value generation for megacorps.
Currently Megacorps have a few overpowered branch office buildings and lots of dull ones, while they can fight over branch offices I haven't felt the need to do so... branch offices are so expensive (influence costs from distance), generally weak (only capitals provide a decent return on investment, most buildings are lackluster) and fiddly (no branch office expansion planner) that it's easier just to expand elsewhere than fight an empire that's decades away or possibly inaccessible due to the land-locked nature of closed empire borders. If rare resources changed some of this - reduce influence costs for branch offices, significantly increased branch office value, and unlocked the special empire-buffing buildings. Then there would be stronger incentives to fight over branch offices and over key resources that only megacorps care about. The +10% diplomatic weight buildings could each require a unique resource like XuraGel™ and you could gradually use them to become the senate.
3. Materialists could seek out control of special and unique elements that they want to understand and exploit. Dark matter/Helium-3/Betharian Stone for boosts to empire wide research speed/energy generation/energy weapons/shields. (not just the components and buildings that normal empires get).
Currently there's no use for Dark matter without fighting a fallen empire, Helium-3 was never really in the game and Betharian stone is just a nice small boost to energy output (nothing game-changing). But with a few changes that dark matter could supercharge physics research, or specific ship components, energy generation or all 3. Plentiful access to all key resources could unlock fallen-empire level buildings as potential technologies in the late game. Turn your empire into a miniature fallen empire.
4. Spiritualists could seek out Zro obviously, but perhaps also Engos Vapor for use in rituals, and holy worlds could exist naturally/spawn at targets in mid-game. Zro could improve the odds and number of shroud options while Engos Vapor could have unity benefits or reduce the cost of unity ambitions. Holy worlds could function as they do currently with consecrated worlds simply increasing their number and the strength of their bonuses.
Currently Spiritualists are sadly defined by the lack of robots. This makes them suffer from significantly fewer pops with little to show for it. Instead this would allow them to play a completely different game, collecting spiritually valuable resources that could add or improve existing unity mechanics - imagine if collecting enough Engos vapor allowed for early Unity Ambitions, cheaper or stronger ones. If Zro let you pick and choose from more shroud boons, or more powerful ones, or less risky ones. If you could get psi modules earlier then Psionic Ascension would be significantly more viable. Being able to churn out psionic avatars would go from being a silly gimmick into a valid strategy. Turn your empire into a miniature end-of-the-cycle level threat.
5. Machines/Synthetic Evolution empires could seek out specific ores to produce the perfect machine. Garanthium Ore, Neutronium Ore, Orillium Ore all required to develop and synthesize new alloys and living metal to boost their output. (could open up new machine traits that require those ores for construction as well as buildings that produce living metal but use the ores. Normal empires would simply gain alloys from those deposits).
Currently synths get lots of powerful bonuses with little effort or skill required. Machines, despite being very similar will never get those same bonuses and have a lower end-game job output and lower total pop growth speed. Perhaps the balancing could be that to get to the current overpowered state of synthetically ascended empires requires collecting the above mentioned 3 ores that used to be in the game, with a policy option that had 4 states for having 0,1,2,3 ores available. The final level could allow for the mass production of living metal and enabling the use of "living metal exoskelton" traits that give the current synth bonuses as well as nanites for ships. Turn your empire into a grey tempest level threat.
And so on for all the resources that have been in the game (using pre-1.9.1 resources requires less art and coding, it's all already there), though there's nothing stopping the devs adding new ones for empires to fight over or for making the existing depressingly bland and generic resources more interesting and strategic:
Terraforming Gases sr_terraform_gases
Terraforming Liquids sr_terraform_liquids
Garanthium Ore sr_garanthium
Neutronium Ore sr_neutronium
Helium-3 sr_helium
Zro sr_zro
Living Metal sr_living_metal
Yurantic Crystals sr_yuranic
Teldar Crystals sr_teldar
Satramene Gas sr_satramene
Lythuric Gas sr_lythuric
Dark Matter sr_dark_matter
Alien Pets sr_alien_pets
Pitharan Dust sr_pitharan
Engos Vapor sr_engos
Orillium Ore sr_orillium
Riggan Spice sr_riggan
Betharian Stone sr_betharian
Muutagan Crystals sr_muutagan
XuraGel sr_xuran
Motes - excess converted into either - Alloy output, armour or kinetic weapon damage. Superpower policy version does all 3 at once and unlocks super modules - Impenetrable armour (Auxiliary), Gigacannons, Kinetic artillary.
Gasses - excess converted into either - Research output, shields or sub-light speed. Superpower version does all 3 at once and unlocks super modules - Hard Shields (Auxiliary), Plasma, Null void beams/lances.
Crystals - excess converted into either - Consumer goods output, energy weapon damage or sensor range. Superpower version does all 3 at once and unlocks super modules - Reactive Plating (Auxiliary), Lances, Neutron Launchers.
The difference between normal and overpowered version of each resource could be decided by "Resource Policy", with the overpowered policy option locked behind ethics, Ascension perks, technology or simply gated behind a large monthly production of the resource, whatever is deemed appropriate (like the trade value policy having its superpowered version unlocked by the Trade federation type). This could replace the current system of clicking every single rare resource edict every 10 years (or at the start of a war). The policy would then change the conversion rate for excess monthly rare resources (with a much smaller cap, obviously otherwise they'd never reach the cap to be converted into an excess damage boost).
Rare resources being annoying rather than amazing to use is something that I really hoped would have been fixed when we had the edict rework... though I would argue that the wrong things were fixed back then. Influence edicts were never spammed enough to need changing into a permanent toggle, combined with a stingy soft-cap and harsh penalties to even using them. Influence edicts were the edicts you thought more carefully about using and used more sparingly as and when the situation called for it (emergencies, deficits or more regularly as Genocidal empires turning the lack of claims into a powerful bonus from all the saved influence), they didn't need changing significantly... it was the rare resource edicts, Campaigns and Unity Ambitions that needed a toggle... which they never got.
An extreme example of the lack of conflict:
My last game I was completely self-sufficient only owning 4 systems (Voidborn Megacorp trapped by marauders), with a massive excess in all resources when I had 7 systems (added a Dyson sphere and a Matter decompressor in the 3 Marauder systems I took). That game was static because I never had any reason to wage war with any other empire, nothing on the map was of significant value to me and the only reason I went to war before I grew bored with the save was to blow-up rival megacorp's planets for fun (One owned a single branch office, the only one in the galaxy that wasn't mine. The other became a satrapy of the Kahn. I thought they both deserved punishment). Though the complete lack of action in the mid-game was relaxing in a meditative way... like washing pots or cleaning the house.
In that game I also got unreasonably annoyed with the forced system swapping during total war when I really wanted to just blow stuff up instead of capturing it... and I found out that the bug with following Juggernauts still exists, that wasn't actually ever fixed when the patch notes said it was sadly - my corvette fleet being produced by the juggernaut would just say "following" without ever using FTL to actually follow the juggernaut into battle leaving a string of tiny fleets behind in the juggernaut's wake as reinforcing fleets went MIA, turned up back at the juggernaut and then were sometimes left behind as following fleets refuse to follow into battle... I should make a bug report but the game had TinyUI active and I could do with making a "clean" unmodded save when I have a chance and the enthusiasm to do so.
Sorry for the rant, the TL;DR is as follows:
I really would like strategic resources to be as scarce and strategic as they once were, give me reasons to fight that are compelling and interesting, not boring chores with little reward. The district rework is the perfect time to do this as all resource costs and production values will need to be changed anyway to fit the new system.
It's probably a question of scale. The AI has trouble with where to prioritize its fleets and armies. This is not really unique to Stellaris as it also occurs in EUIV and in CK3. The difference is that it is a smaller scale in the two other titles while it can take years for the AI to transport fleets from one end of their empire to the other.
You do realise that EUIV has 3 times the provinces and FIFTEEN times the number of nations of a totally maxed enemies max map size Stellaris game, right?
Don't let the light years of distance fool you, Stellaris is a kiddie pool compared to earlier Paradox games.
Which just makes the spastic AI more embarrassing in the spess case.
Actually in my opinion it's a problem with lacking features for internal and external interaction. Compared to EU4 the internal and external interaction between empires is a joke. For example:
In EU4, overaggressive expansion is curbed by massive internal issues. take too much territory of too much value, and the cost of integrating might take your country apart. racked with revolts and penalty's you can quickly tear into many smaller kingdoms. In stellaris, after 700 hours, I've had a single revolt i remember, and that was before any DLC's. There needs to be revolts, with their own compositions, reasons and goals that can splinter an empire. For a game with this much Genocide, there really needs to be more resistance from the populace.
In EU4 (yes i find it to be the best example of dynamic border movement) external threats can easily gather to threaten a larger power. in a recent game as Austria my victory and conquest of Venice pitted half of the southern HRE against me in a massive war to strip me of my power. only my web of alliances allowed me to pull of a white peace. You'd never see a situation like that in stellaris. Empires almost never band together against a larger threat, allies don't matter and there's no way to curb steamrolling Empires. with no internal system to manipulate, theres no real reason to interact with others besides war declaration's.
The fact that i don't think i've even OPENED the diplomacy screen in the last 70-80 hours of gameplay says a lot.
These sound like they should increase territory changes though. Stellaris has no rebellion mechanics to slow down an AI aggressive expander, and has no coalitions to slow down an AI aggressive expander.
Your explanation only raises further questions!
The problem is the size of the map relative to the number of empires. Even if you play with a very high number of empires, in any quadrant of the galaxy you are gonna have ~6 nations at most. Which inevitably split up into two rival blocs given how easy it is to ally up and how opinion modifiers roll to rivals of your rivals work. In a weird way the main problem is that the AI is too balanced. Pretty much every game they all do a good job of forming alliances with neighbors against other neighbors. If the map were big enough to where each quadrant had 3-4 of those blocs, things would be more dynamic I think.
It needs to be far easier and more common for these blocs to rise and fall.
These sound like they should increase territory changes though. Stellaris has no rebellion mechanics to slow down an AI aggressive expander, and has no coalitions to slow down an AI aggressive expander.
Your explanation only raises further questions!
Actually the thing that makes territory move is an abundance of smaller territory weaker then yours. say i'm Austria in EU4, everyone around me is weaker, encouraging me to attack them. but i avoid attacking an equal nation like Hungary because the gains might not be worth the risk of losing.
so in stellaris, where all empires start at roughly the same time, will end up being roughly the same strength (except the player, who will usually dominate) leading to no one seeing a reason to risk going to war, and with no internal system to rip an Empire apart, creating a large amount of take-able real estate for empires to conquer, creating a power imbalance. and with no effective diplomacy system there's no way of gathering an effective group of allies to overcome an equal enemy.
TL;DR once we're all the same strength, everyone's fine leaving it that way to avoid the risk of losing.
- The AI aren't very aggressive at all (I've flagged this in the beta AI feedback thread). They seem lethargic, and uninterested in declaring war for the most part. When empires do go to war, the result is usually that a few border systems change hands, and that's it.
1) make enough Total War custom empires to constitute at least 50% of your total AI empires. I play on 800 stars with 24 AI empires, & use 16 Total War empires (4 Fanatic Purifiers, 4 Devouring Swarms, 4 Determined Exterminators, & 4 Driven Assimilators). I hand pick the other 8 empires, for further challenge or RP goals I want to set.
2) Force start all your custom empires in a galaxy with 50%+ advanced starts. Again, for 800 stars with 24 AI empires, I use 12 advanced starts
Just making these 2 set-up decisions will seriously spice-up your game. All of the total wars will allow at least a few advanced starts to snowball early and pose a serious threat, especially if on the other side of the galaxy without any player intervention to slow their roll.
I'm a glutton for punishment, so I also use GA no scaling, x2 tech unity, x.25 planets, & no guaranteed habitable planets.
In my current game, I've seen over a dozen wars in my quadrant of the galaxy and it's only 2234, with three of those wars being declared on me and my ally at the same time.
I think the AI is just cautious. If the AI calculates that it has a good chance to win, it seems very eager to go to war.
One of the big problems with the vanilla settings (IMHO), is that it's too balanced. If you tweak the settings to get more asymmetric starts and early AI snowballing, (in my experience) you will see a *lot* more wars being declared.
it's simple, influence is toooooooooo expensive for a non-purifier to expand without colossi
when you see Prikki-Ti pops out then you can expect him expanding
civics of AI empires are random, and they hardly combine all efforts to create a proper situation for military expansion
AIs are agressive, they keep waring each other but it doesn't change their borders a lot
The midgame slog is arguably the core problem with Stellaris right now. For everything else we bitch about, it really boils down to a fun and exciting early game that transitions to a long, tedious middle.
It's hard to say exactly what the problem is. A few reasons, for my own two cents, include:
- Nothing happens to destabilize the board or change your incentives. The occasional event like a Khan invasion will happen, but those are one-off and infrequent. More importantly, they're essentially just new wars between either you and a third party or other empires and a third party. Nothing changes your strategic priorities or opportunities as the game goes on, so there's no reason for the board to change. (For example, even if the Khan invasion weakens your neighbor, there's no reason for you to seize that opportunity other than a general feeling of "might as well.")
- There's nothing you want or need outside your borders. Empires are wholly self-sufficient and can generate everything they need, so there's no actual reason to interact with other empires outside around the map. Nothing drives conflict between empires because there's nothing you need or want from each other.
Personally I think those are the big two. A game entirely focused on war can still have a dynamic, shifting map if something drives conflict among the players. But there are no conflict drivers in Stellaris beyond arbitrary ethics-based opinion modifiers, and those can often be smoothed away with envoys. It leads to the infamous "declared war out of boredom" problem, because (aside from headcanon) there's generally neither a narrative nor a strategic reason for conflict.
In addition to that, I would say that other issues are:
- There is still little meaningful interaction with other empires beyond war or alliances. (So, declaring war or preparing for it.) There are no trade routes, cultural conflicts, personality-driven conflicts by leaders, etc., so there's very little which could generate dynamic interactions. This leads to several problems, one of which is that diplomacy becomes very locked in. Nothing changes diplomacy over the course of the game because there's nothing to negotiate over aside from whether or not you'll go to war.
- Huge middle game blocs form quickly. By the middle game much of the galaxy has split up into defensive pacts, alliances and federations. (I've found this is more true than ever since the Federations update.) This makes it harder to declare war, and often the map settles into a WWI-style stalemate instead.
- The lack of neutral space makes every empire a landlocked nation. Even if there were something to do outside your borders (which there isn't), Stellaris doesn't have any equivalent to the oceans that you find on terrestrial maps. So there's no second age of exploration, no new encounters as the game goes on, and little ability to directly interact with empires that don't border you.
- The absence of internal politics means that there is no internal instability either. Sectors don't develop their own identities and it's very rare for empire to split up as the game goes on. When they do, it's the (imo) deeply useless rebellion mechanic in which a single system declares independence and then immediately gets swallowed up again.
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