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You said that you deliberately avoided getting your ships into conflict by moving them out of systems where they could start shooting.
You didn't have a different experience by default, you actively did micro to get the experience you wanted.
The setting for having your ships start shooting automatically wouldn't matter if you always turn it off and move your ships out of firing range, but that's you -- not the setting being ambiguous or unimportant.
tl;dr - you're not disagreeing about the setting's previous meaning -- you worked damn hard to avoid engaging with the old mechanics.
Or I just queued up a bunch of move orders and my ships never really got into any fights. I'm not saying that first contact conflicts didn't occur in your games. Just that in mine, on my computer two years ago, I don't recall it ever coming up.
But if it's really that important to you that you win this one, we can say that you're right.
Or I just queued up a bunch of move orders and my ships never really got into any fights. I'm not saying that first contact conflicts didn't occur in your games. Just that in mine, on my computer two years ago, I don't recall it ever coming up.
But if it's really that important to you that you win this one, we can say that you're right.
What I'm saying is that there was a legit purpose for the setting in previous versions.
You're saying you never used it, therefore ... what? Are you seriously making the argument that because ~you~ never used it, therefore it had no purpose?
That's not a respectful disagreement, in fact that's not even a coherent argument.
It's like you're saying that you don't use slaves, therefore the slavery setting has no purpose. You're making an argument on that level. It's not a good level to inhabit.
And yeah, even though I wasn't trying to "win" -- I was just explaining an old mechanic to people who might not have been around then -- it's pretty evident that you did really did want to "win" and you did not.
What I'm saying is that there was a legit purpose for the setting in previous versions.
You're saying you never used it, therefore ... what? Are you seriously making the argument that because ~you~ never used it, therefore it had no purpose?
That's not a respectful disagreement, in fact that's not even a coherent argument.
It's like you're saying that you don't use slaves, therefore the slavery setting has no purpose. You're making an argument on that level. It's not a good level to inhabit.
And yeah, even though I wasn't trying to "win" -- I was just explaining an old mechanic to people who might not have been around then -- it's pretty evident that you did really did want to "win" and you did not.
- 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.
Add to that that the wars are exceedingly slow. I somehow got dragged in an AI's war recently (pretty sure I did not promised them help unlike what the game claimed, but maybe they got a favor on me w/e).
I decided to ignore the war as I only had a single system border with one enemy, but after about 2 years realized that the war is not progressing in any way and decided to send an army after all. That was 2 years of absolutely no real progress for either side. And then it took me 5 or so years to push the war far enough for the AI to call for peace.
The travel times in early to mid game are veeeeeeery slow, which makes wars very slow, which means the AI barely manages to take a handful of systems from other AI before it decides that the war has taken long enough and it's time for peace. Which means there are few and slow border changes.
Third, both the map and how you interact with it are fundamentally static. It's like always playing Civilization on a pangaea map, and accordingly, you can "walk" anywhere on it given enough time and barbarian (or space amoeba) clearance. Technology lets you "walk" faster or take shortcuts, but the way you interact with the map never really changes (there's no real equivalent of researching boats or filling out exploration ideas). An evolving hyperlane network, special hyperlanes that require higher level hyperdrive, or large segments of space only connected by wormhole would allow ways of interacting with the map to change with time and/or technology. This would also allow scrambles for new regions of space even after the relatively early game. The L-Sector is neat because it allows even a little bit of this.
Technically, there is yump drive, gateways and wormholes that become available over time, but gateways and wormholes are only really shortcuts. Yump drive on the other hand comes very late.
I guess we could have "continents of hyperlane connected systems", that are divided by some sort of common "ocean", with mid game bringing up technology to travel that ocean, and wormholes and gateways as late game shortcuts, to be eventually surpassed by yump drive.
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.
I read your comment, and honestly you should make a separate post with it. While your post is about material resources, I'd also love to hear your thoughts on a deeper political system.
Generally, spanning the universe with several years of travel between each planet would surely create different identities. Especially when combined with immigration from whole other species. Maybe planet 1 becomes extremely racist but planet 2 becomes more welcoming. In the end, this will put strains on your empire as you try to juggle various interests. Planet 3 for instance has become much more environmental friendly and they're pushing for politics which will reduce your alloy output and boost food production etc.
Because currently, the political parties are largely ignored. I sometimes look at them and say "oh, I've fulfilled whatever party's main points. Great." I don't form my gameplay around what my citizens want, because it doesn't really matter too much. I use it optimistically whenever it suits my goal. But, that shouldn't really be the case, should it?
What needs to happen is a rework of the strategic resources system. They need to be hidden at game start and only become unlocked once tech progresses. And the AI would need to WANT those resources.
I agree that this is one of the most needed reworks, after urgent performance fixes. Currently, the only thing I used resources for was the upgraded buildings (foundaries, factories, and labs), and the foundaries/factories are about to become 1-per-planet. This means the already underwhelming resources are gonna become even more underwhelming.
If the resources are hidden at game start, revealed by techs (like in Civ), and made essential in some way, then that would go a long way towards making the map more dynamic as new resources got revealed.
Staggering Empire Spawn. giving even a half or full decade, with the way the pop system works, would create a much larger number of weaker empires for fodder through the early and beginning of the mid game.
Make natives more abundant and much much more likely to develop into space faring empires, and give them more to start off with so that as they begin they take a lot more investment to take. they would create free pops, which is the real time constraint on empires. making them develop earlier on would help as well.
This works. I always play with maxed out primitives, and the naturally-staggered progression of them into spacefaring makes the game more dynamic and interesting IMHO. This can be done with default settings, and also having a decent number of advanced start empires.
One more thing that can be done in vanilla settings: Force spawn one of each of the genocidal empires as premades. Usually at least one or two of the genocidals will be advanced start, and they tend to be the big movers and shakers especially in the early/mid-game. Oftentimes I will see one of them snowball and become the big boss of the map. The Total War mechanics when fighting the genocidals is waaaay more interesting than default warfare, and it also perhaps allows the standard empires to save up their influence for more decisively claiming/warring against each other.
IMHO, the more stagnant the game, the more genocidal empires are needed to mix things up. I usually end up with ~25% of the galaxy as genocidal, but I could see doing up to 50% genocidal if I were playing pacifist or something.
The Planet invasions need to be streamlined so it does not require any micro. This would help AI a lot.
AI also needs to be more aggressive. A big issue is the limitation of war goals.
If you are in a faction, you do not get any war goal at all, if you border only allies. This massively reduces the chance of liberations wars or subjugation wars.
Space travel on huge maps takes enormous time. As AI can not preplan, it makes them too slow to succeed in invasions before the war ends.
This works. I always play with maxed out primitives, and the naturally-staggered progression of them into spacefaring makes the game more dynamic and interesting IMHO. This can be done with default settings, and also having a decent number of advanced start empires.
One more thing that can be done in vanilla settings: Force spawn one of each of the genocidal empires as premades. Usually at least one or two of the genocidals will be advanced start, and they tend to be the big movers and shakers especially in the early/mid-game. Oftentimes I will see one of them snowball and become the big boss of the map. The Total War mechanics when fighting the genocidals is waaaay more interesting than default warfare, and it also perhaps allows the standard empires to save up their influence for more decisively claiming/warring against each other.
IMHO, the more stagnant the game, the more genocidal empires are needed to mix things up. I usually end up with ~25% of the galaxy as genocidal, but I could see doing up to 50% genocidal if I were playing pacifist or something.
It's good to hear i can manage a similar effect myself, but in my experience they don't become space-faring nearly early enough to enter the stage where there's room to grow, and they tend to be just late enough to get nommed and turned into free pops (or food) for a neighbor.
And while i agree that force spawning an actual threat in the galaxy that will be inherently aggressive might be able to keep things moving, but the thing for me is after 700 hours the interest in a stellaris game for me isn't war. been there and seen it all. I like the randomness of each galaxy to explore and exploit. i don't want to know whats out there cause it reduce's the randomness that makes a game interesting to me.
But as to my original post, i want empire spawn staggered even more. as in advanced starts having a chance to be a LOT more advanced than they currently are, and for some of the empires that arrive with the player to spawn 5-10 or even 15 years delayed, shaking up the entire game and making it feel less like life just popped into existence when the player arrives and more like you've been dropped into an already alive and moving galaxy.
The more I think about it, the more I wish there was a way to jump your fleet to a location many systems away, bypassing the hyperlane network, just with a long cooldown timer. This would allow you to jump a ship or fleet to a location unreachable to you, allowing you to participate in wars and whatnot, even though you couldn't get there by normal means. The obvious downside would be that you had to wait for the cooldown to expire before your fleet could jump back home.
I suppose you would need some sort of mechanic to keep fleets from just bypassing border fortresses, though. Maybe if you could only jump into neutral space.
The more I think about it, the more I wish there was a way to jump your fleet to a location many systems away, bypassing the hyperlane network, just with a long cooldown timer. This would allow you to jump a ship or fleet to a location unreachable to you, allowing you to participate in wars and whatnot, even though you couldn't get there by normal means. The obvious downside would be that you had to wait for the cooldown to expire before your fleet could jump back home.
I suppose you would need some sort of mechanic to keep fleets from just bypassing border fortresses, though. Maybe if you could only jump into neutral space.
Although I'd actually see that as a feature, not a bug. I don't like the trench warfare in space model at all.
Otherwise, I agree completely with the idea that strategic resources should be harder (much harder) to synthesize and should appear on the map as you research them. That would help shake things up quite a bit.
I read your comment, and honestly you should make a separate post with it. While your post is about material resources, I'd also love to hear your thoughts on a deeper political system.
Generally, spanning the universe with several years of travel between each planet would surely create different identities. Especially when combined with immigration from whole other species. Maybe planet 1 becomes extremely racist but planet 2 becomes more welcoming. In the end, this will put strains on your empire as you try to juggle various interests. Planet 3 for instance has become much more environmental friendly and they're pushing for politics which will reduce your alloy output and boost food production etc.
Because currently, the political parties are largely ignored. I sometimes look at them and say "oh, I've fulfilled whatever party's main points. Great." I don't form my gameplay around what my citizens want, because it doesn't really matter too much. I use it optimistically whenever it suits my goal. But, that shouldn't really be the case, should it?
Thank you for the comment. I appreciate you taking the time to read and comment on my post (though I'm not sure at the moment how best to rewrite it as a new topic, or if my thoughts on internal politics are worth listening to). I agree with what you have to say about the current state of factions and politics and it's hard to know where to start... But since you asked...
For Internal Politics to be important and dynamic it has to begin, rather counter-intuitively, by making Sectors Static.
What's the problem with dynamic sectors?
The ability to create and delete sectors at will prevents them from ever having a deep and unique character. It also prevents sectors from being defined by stellar geography like nebula or the breeding ground of amoeba, the area between two choke-points, the badlands around marauders or the no-mans-land around Isolationist Fallen Empires, or isolated regions like the L-Cluster.
If you could just delete or ignore the xenophobe faction then ethics and factions would have no meaning. The same applies to Sectors. Being able to delete them undermines any regional politics and mechanical intrigue.
Persistent Sectors fixed at map generation have the opportunity to develop their own character, history, plans and desires over the course of the game. Once sectors are a fixture then each sector can dynamically have a dominant faction, influence could be used to force your governing faction into contention and local issues and demands can drain influence when unmet, or cause other issues like piracy and rebellion (breaking up large empires that span many sectors if they are unable to meet the local needs of each sector). Unity can then be used to steer the desires of the populace towards goals you can more realistically meet (generating more faction quests, which when met shift pop ethics and reveal resources relevant to that faction or other fun new mechanics).
What characteristics could Sectors possess?
Sectors could be generated on galaxy creation with a basic set of traits, using a points system like pop traits. One sector could be mineral rich, with mining drones and a leviathan, another could be mineral poor, with hidden dig sites and more anomalies but no hostiles. Sectors could be small or large, with empires placed in smaller starting sectors that each border larger ones which will naturally be stronger but more heavily contested regions.
What user interface changes would sectors need?
1. Sector Potential (an inventory of resources, different for each empire)
2. Dominant Faction (from the 9 current Factions, with additional ones, showing support and approval)
3. Sector Demands (local issues that cause trouble when they aren't dealt with, different for each empire)
4. Sector Requests (small quests based on local ethics and situation, the rewards help shape a sector)
5. Sector Hopes (big quests that define the end-goal and output of a sector)
6. Sector History (stats, graphs, anomaly, dig site and event logs - all the stuff that you otherwise forget where and when it happened)
What could it look like?
Imagine playing as a Spiritualist Megacorp and clicking on the Omega sector
Sector Potential lists resources, as you're a Megacorp you see the branch office spots sorted by trade value at the top, with XuraGel™ as a potential resource Megacorps can develop in the sector if certain criteria are met.
The Dominant Faction in the sector is the Xenoist (xenophile) faction so that should help your trade efforts.
The Sector Demands lists issues that stop you from properly using the sector. If there were pirates they would appear here as would other large obstacles, in this case you don't have a commercial pact with the Blorg so can't build on any planets in the sector (and there are no unclaimed systems to establish a foothold peacefully). You make a commercial pact and with your presence in the sector the first new sector request appears.
The Sector Request is to Establish a Branch office. You do this directly as per usual, or funnel enough resources into the sector stockpile and the office opens up automatically.
The rewards for meeting the demand and request creates a burst of your governing ethics attraction in the sector (e.g. spiritualist) and uncovers a previously hidden trade value deposit on the planet (which in turn increases the value of your branch office). Other benefits could increase the power of your branch office buildings, or unlock the advanced buildings, reveal anomalies, dig sites, generate favours, boost relations or trigger events.
The Sector Hope shown to you is achieving 1000+ total sector trade value, achieving that will allow you to produce XuraGel™ in the sector on your branch offices. The sector belongs to your ally and you invest unity to trigger additional requests that you can meet to keep adding trade deposits to the sector so that you can eventually benefit from the XuraGel™ , after many years your branch offices each are producing several extra clerk and priest jobs but wars in the sector have hurt trade and a new empire has taken hold of an allies world...
A militarist looking at the exact same sector, where they have a single colony taken through warfare.
Sector Potential lists minerals, energy and research with the untapped potential being a military boosting deposit (Unknown Ore) they need to work hard to develop.
The Dominant Faction being Xenoist means trouble for you as your empire faction is Supremacist.
The Sector Demand is independence/liberation for your colony. The xenophile attraction in the sector is causing happiness issues on the colony as the resident xenophiles disagree with your xenophobe governing ethics, your purge policy, the recent invasion of primatives and other issues. Importantly the minority of xenophile pops are concentrated onto one planet and not meeting their demands is causing penalties like rising instability on your colony and a chance of pirates spawning that you can quash with influence or your military.
You choose influence and pay to force your minority Supremacist government faction into contention in the sector. Now you have the option of meeting the demands of the xenophiles or your xenophobes. Each xenophobe Sector Demand and Request you meet (building starbases, rivaling locals, claiming rival worlds in the sector, enslaving and purging xenos) causes a pulse of xenophobia on your colony and the entire sector and strengthens support for the Supremacist faction, as well as working towards revealing the military boosting deposit you desperately want to find and then control.
The Sector hopes are to build either a military megastructure for the Supremacists (sensor, shipyard, co-ordination centre, Colossus) or a diplomatic megastructure for the Xenoists (Mega Art Installation, Interstellar Assembly, or Relocate Galactic market). Building the military megastructure would cement your control over the entire sector pushing your governing attraction to all worlds making them easier to manage while an Art Installation would increase xenophile ethics and undermine your world with events to free slaves and rebellions to stop purges... this could make the colony more hassle then it's worth and the entire sector hard to control if you capture all the planets by conquest.
/End hypothetical situation.
In the same vein, Sectors could also have their own set of Ambitions (applying them locally rather than globally - and allowing players to applying them to ally or federation space), Traditions (a sector could have a history of scientific discovery that causes more anomalies to spawn/boosts research), History (log of events, graphs and charts), preferred Laws and Resolutions, independent voting power and future plans... all shaped by the ethics of the races that inhabit the sector and neighbour the sectors, their competing influence and investments, unity, traditions, civics and defining traits.
The key to making internal politics important begins with making sectors feel real and meaningful. Shared and contested spaces. Character, mystery and intrigue for each sector. The above mentioned Omega sector should be its own little kingdom influenced by all the surrounding empires who are fighting for control and in the process enriching it. Currently though sectors are merely an on/off switch, created and destroyed freely and instantly to get +10% research speed or to turn on automation.
Defining terms:
Sector Potential.
Listing the reasons you want to interact with that region of space and the benefits control would provide to you. Each empire could place a different value on the same sector, and the true value of a sector could be hidden behind technology, espionage and require infrastructure to develop.
Hive Mind Potential: Minerals deposits, Habitable worlds, planetary features, Rare resources, DNA instead of Zoos.
Megacorp Potential: Trade value, Potential Branch office locations, potential for Trade resources like XuraGel™
Spiritualist Potential: Zro, potential shroud breach points, shrouded worlds that could be important.
Dominant Faction
Generated for standard empires only after certain population thresholds are met. This faction is decided by the most common pop ethic. Multiple factions can be present, if a faction is too small to be represented you can use influence to force it to appear in the list and to generate demands and requests.
Sector Demands
Unmet demands would make a sector hard to control. The same sector would then be easier or harder for different empires to control (e.g. shared sectors being easier for xenophiles and megacorps, roaming amoeba easier for pacifists, marauders harder for pacifists and easier for militarists).
Not meeting the needs of a sector should cause significant issues, differing depending on the nature of the demand - lost output, higher upkeep, instability, crime, piracy or even rebellion or secession. These negative consequences could be suppressed with influence, but doing so over multiple sectors would be exhorbitant and limit normal expansion.
Sector Requests
Meeting the requests of a sector could unlock the sector Potential (new deposits, features, anomalies, archeology sites) and generate additional requests. Similar to democratic mandates but without a time limit. Think of this as the list of all potential ways of improving the sector, the weighting of requests being determined by the governing ethics and the local pop ethics.
Hive Mind Requests (renamed Desires): Investigate anomalies, build infrastructure, grow population
Megacorp Requests: Establish branch office, upgrade branch office buildings, build trade hub
Militarist Requests: Defend a System with a Starbase/Platforms, increase total sector naval capacity, increase sector shipyard capacity
Sector Hopes
Sector hopes are difficult to achieve, distant targets rather than day-to-day plans. Meeting the hopes of a sector could spawn new unique resources, and unlock additional tiers of hopes even more difficult to achieve. Available Hopes are determined by ethics and sector resources, and require advanced technology and ascension perks to meet.
Hive Mind Hopes (renamed Plans): Convert planet to hive world, Upgrade pops to use advanced traits
Other Hopes (not all are happy): Develop x habitats, Build megastructure, Crack World, Eradicate all Xeno pops, Consume Worlds
Static Sectors:
1. Created on galaxy generation, regions are clear and distinct with traits and characteristics.
2. New UI to show Sector Potential (resources, branch office locations, hidden resources etc.)
3. Dominant Faction, with influence used to force minority ethics into contention
4. Sector Demands to make sectors harder to ignore
5. Influence used to quash Sector Demands, or reap the consequences.
6. Sector Requests to make sectors more valuable to invest in
7. Unity used to spawn more requests, allowing you to develop a sector over time or fight for faction dominance.
5. Sector Hopes provide an incentive to spread megastructures around to solidify control over sectors rather than hiding them all in a single safe core sector.
Static Sectors:
1. Created on galaxy generation, regions are clear and distinct with traits and characteristics.
2. New UI to show Sector Potential (resources, branch office locations, hidden resources etc.)
3. Dominant Faction, with influence used to force minority ethics into contention
4. Sector Demands to make sectors harder to ignore
5. Influence used to quash Sector Demands, or reap the consequences.
6. Sector Requests to make sectors more valuable to invest in
7. Unity used to spawn more requests, allowing you to develop a sector over time or fight for faction dominance.
5. Sector Hopes provide an incentive to spread megastructures around to solidify control over sectors rather than hiding them all in a single safe core sector.
Exactly what I hoped for. You should create these posts independently for people to read and the devs to notice (lol). Unfortunately, Paradox is not particularly good at creating internal dynamics, so it is probably not going to be implemented.
Because the galaxy is actively designed to be static: small advantages compounding to become large advantages later are seen as a bad thing by developers and players alike.
I really like Uprisings, as mid game filler, Id encourage everyone to not avoid them That and I just found that having a galaxy setting with Aggressiveness set to High, there is a substantial difference, I found,
Haven't read the entire thread yet, but this is starting to remind me of that mod I heard about where apparently instead of starting on huge map, the new systems get added to the map over the time(to represent them being discovered or technological progress). Kinda wondering if that sort of solution really would be the solution to the "you run out of new stuff to find and have no reason to compete with other empires anymore(even diplomatically)"
But yeah, definitely agreeing that would be nice to be able to negotiate with party declaring war on you somehow(sometimes I'd rather not even bother going to war when I'm not ready to fight a fallen empire ). I kinda miss being able to gift my protectorates systems xP
I'm not really convinced that the reason for the static galaxy is that there's not enough reason to go to war, or that allowing empires to massively snowball would help.
I think that what it comes down to is a lack of dynamism.
So, take EU4 for an example:
- A larger nation goes to war with a similarly sized nation, and in the process wipes out a big chunk of their army and their manpower. While they are recovering, a third nation takes the opportunity to swoop in and cannibalise one of the weakened nations.
- A nation gobbles up a few neighbours and starts to snowball, so other empires team up to cut them down to size, and split them up in the peace deal.
Both of these situations result in drastically shifting balances of power, and provide a key ingredient: OPPORTUNITY. The situation changing means you need to stay engaged with what's happening. You need to look for opportunities to help your friends and weaken your enemies. You need to be watchful for rising dangers, or stay vigilant in terms of who you are allied to in case the strong ally you've been relying on for protection is vulnerable to being obliterated and split apart by its enemies.
In Stellaris, by contrast, the balance of power RARELY changes. The Claims system means that even after a devastating war, the best an opportunist nation can do is take a few border systems from them before they recover. Or... maybe, if they are really lucky circumstances, impose their ideology. And, because there is no dynamism in Stellaris, there's rarely any opportunity for anything, which results in a static and boring galaxy.
Both of these situations result in drastically shifting balances of power, and provide a key ingredient: OPPORTUNITY. The situation changing means you need to stay engaged with what's happening. You need to look for opportunities to help your friends and weaken your enemies. You need to be watchful for rising dangers, or stay vigilant in terms of who you are allied to in case the strong ally you've been relying on for protection is vulnerable to being obliterated and split apart by its enemies.
In Stellaris, by contrast, the balance of power RARELY changes. The Claims system means that even after a devastating war, the best an opportunist nation can do is take a few border systems from them before they recover. Or... maybe, if they are really lucky circumstances, impose their ideology. And, because there is no dynamism in Stellaris, there's rarely any opportunity for anything, which results in a static and boring galaxy.
Your right that doesn't happen. In fact it would be nice if it was a lot more like what you say or at least some empires have a "predatory instinct" to feed off the week without much persuasion.....
Here's a situation I'd like to be able to play out in Stellaris:
- A powerful Slaver empire comes to dominate part of the galaxy, prompting three weaker Egalitarian empires to form a Federation
- The Slavers are at war with Devouring Swarm, so for now, their attention is drawn away from the Democracies
- The Federation in the meantime attempts to build influence with it's Spiritualist / Materialist neighbours by providing favourable trade in exchange for Galactic Community favours, which they use to attempt to pass resolutions banning Slavery and otherwise weakening the Slavers
- Eventually, it all comes to a head and a great war breaks out, in which the Democracies are victorious. In the peace deal, the Slavers agree to ban slavery, and are split into two separate authoritarian nations, in order to keep them weak, with some border planets split amongst the three democracies equally
- In the power vacuum, the Devouring Swarm regathers its strength and manages to gobble up one of the Authoritarian empires, becoming a new, deadly threat
Right now, this just wouldn't happen, because of the following reasons:
- Strong empires are rarely weakened for any significant period of time, even through sustained warfare with another significant power
- The things you can trade for favours aren't significant, and don't cause any significant boost to empires that trade favours away
- AI empires simply won't behave like that, they don't have long-term goals in that sense, so they won't attempt to curry favour with their neighbours by strengthening them, in order to gain favours that they can use to weaken another empire
- The AI won't try to vote things through to deliberately weaken threatening empires
- Peace deals don't allow you to do anything complex like force Slavers to adopt certain policies (unless you win a wholesale ideology war)
- Peace deals don't allow you to split up defeated nations
I'm not really convinced that the reason for the static galaxy is that there's not enough reason to go to war, or that allowing empires to massively snowball would help.
I think that what it comes down to is a lack of dynamism.
Correct, but a lack of dynamism boils down to a lack of snowballing ability.
For dynamism, a small cause should result in a large effect (see Chaos theory and the butterfly effect) Aka Snowballing.
For stability, a small cause has a small effect.
I think there should be multiple domains in which you can exploit an opportunity, but in the end, the problem really does boil down to small opportunities being worthless in the current meta.
In Stellaris, the balance of power rarely changes because so much effort is placed, by developers and players alike, into ensuring that it doesn't change.
