Why is everyone suddenly talking about "Can't fill my place anymore"?

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Guys, you don't have to "Disagree respectfully" with every single post of mine... I get that we have different ideas about enjoyment in Stellaris and I elaborated in another thread about it, too. I forgot to consider the different game setups, especially the habitability slider.

That's not why people are disagreeing with you. The default sliders are bad for many, many empire types. I'm playing Rogue Servitors on a small galaxy with almost all sliders at default and around 2300 the game became "wait a few years for a new pop to figure out what to do with them". I'm mulling whether I'll build the fleets to kill the Ether Drake now, because I sure as hell can't do conquest as it'll ruin population, and there'd be absolutely no point trying a megastructure as it'd never fill; my new habitats to fix my mineral deficit won't even likely ever fill their miner jobs without major sacrifices. I have like 10 planets and 5 habitats and only one planet is below 100% habitability for my bio-trophies, who are using the absolute meta build for traits.
Finally, even if the devs only made settings for a certain set of slider settings...isn't that just bad game design? There is very little I've seen before where mechanics just basically don't work because you have the wrong settings at game start.

This is utterly broken and half the fun of the game has been ruined. It'd be unbelievable this is the state of a full version number bump if not for the history of Paradox and Stellaris.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Guys, you don't have to "Disagree respectfully" with every single post of mine... I get that we have different ideas about enjoyment in Stellaris and I elaborated in another thread about it, too. I forgot to consider the different game setups, especially the habitability slider.

If you make a bunch of posts in which you say things that I disagree with, why wouldn't I disagree with each of your posts?

 

[monkeypunch87]

That's not why people are disagreeing with you. The default sliders are bad for many, many empire types. I'm playing Rogue Servitors on a small galaxy with almost all sliders at default and around 2300 the game became "wait a few years for a new pop to figure out what to do with them". I'm mulling whether I'll build the fleets to kill the Ether Drake now, because I sure as hell can't do conquest as it'll ruin population, and there'd be absolutely no point trying a megastructure as it'd never fill; my new habitats to fix my mineral deficit won't even likely ever fill their miner jobs without major sacrifices.
This is utterly broken and half the fun of the game has been ruined.

As I stated in my other thread, 3.01 is more enjoyabale an its Empire Growth Penalty with a lower hapitability. I don't run in your problem around 2300.

The problem with Empire Growth penalty: Your habitability setting

I still wonder about the different experience with the new Empire growth penalty, because my experience is just great with it. But I stumbled on a difference with some other players, who think that this mechanic is absolutly aweful: We play with...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[monkeypunch87]

If you make a bunch of posts in which you say things that I disagree with, why wouldn't I disagree with each of your posts?

Because my Alerts notification gets spammed if you just disagree overall.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Because my Alerts notification gets spammed if you just disagree overall.

So turn off the notification for reactions.

 

[monkeypunch87]

So turn off the notification for reactions.

Tell me how.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

As I stated in my other thread, 3.01 is more enjoyabale an its Empire Growth Penalty with a lower hapitability. I don't run in your problem around 2300.

The problem with Empire Growth penalty: Your habitability setting

I still wonder about the different experience with the new Empire growth penalty, because my experience is just great with it. But I stumbled on a difference with some other players, who think that this mechanic is absolutly aweful: We play with...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I should further note I think I actually set habitable planets to .75. Still, the habitats I added pretty much make up for the habitables loss.
Go play Rogue Servitor, Determined Exterminator, regular Machine Empire, Devouring Swarm, or any normal empire that actually does conquest of planets to bring into its empire (not making vassals), and try and tell me that again.

 

[Ryika]

Tell me how.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/account/preferences

You can enable or disable notification types at the bottom.

 

[sillyrobot]

As I stated in my other thread, 3.01 is more enjoyabale an its Empire Growth Penalty with a lower hapitability. I don't run in your problem around 2300.

The problem with Empire Growth penalty: Your habitability setting

I still wonder about the different experience with the new Empire growth penalty, because my experience is just great with it. But I stumbled on a difference with some other players, who think that this mechanic is absolutly aweful: We play with...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Which directly supports his point. Building a mechanic that operates only for a select subset of the ranges offered by the game and doesn't even include the game's default settings is bad design.

 

[monkeypunch87]

I should further note I think I actually set habitable planets to .75. Still, the habitats I added pretty much make up for the habitables loss.
Go play Rogue Servitor, Determined Exterminator, regular Machine Empire, Devouring Swarm, or any normal empire that actually does conquest of planets without vassalizing them, and tell me that again.

Just played a isolanist with displacement purge.

 

[sillyrobot]

I should further note I think I actually set habitable planets to .75. Still, the habitats I added pretty much make up for the habitables loss.
Go play Rogue Servitor, Determined Exterminator, regular Machine Empire, Devouring Swarm, or any normal empire that actually does conquest of planets to bring into its empire (not making vassals), and try and tell me that again.

To be fair, a regular empire focused specifically on conquest does pretty well in the new design. Frankly it is the only empire setup that works reasonably well. You grow until it gets slow then you eat your neighbors for more pop and just keep eating. The design supports very aggressive militaristic wide play pretty much exclusively.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Just played a isolanist with displacement purge.

Then you're not being exposed to the mechanic because you're removing the pops you conquered and just getting a free planet. Of course it's going to seem like there isn't anything wrong. Try an empire that just wants to go "okay we rule you now" and nothing more, and see what happens. Or try an empire reliant on pop assembly and see what happens when you get bigger (that's what screws Machine Empires up).

 

[monkeypunch87]

Which directly supports his point. Building a mechanic that operates only for a select subset of the ranges offered by the game and doesn't even include the game's default settings is bad design.

Well, you also complain that your non-default settings don't work.

But I agree, a game should work good at default, but I also stated that lower habitability could work as a bandaid right now while waiting for tweaks.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

To be fair, a regular empire focused specifically on conquest does pretty well in the new design. Frankly it is the only empire setup that works reasonably well. You grow until it gets slow then you eat your neighbors for more pop and just keep eating. The design supports very aggressive militaristic wide play pretty much exclusively.

Yes, it works, but you end up being unable to fill new things like megastructures (see thread title), you just get already-full planets from your conquest of them and so it looks like things are working until you try and do something else. This update basically means the ideal playstyle is to be at war at all times from 2300 until whenever the crisis hits, because any deviation from that will have nothing at all happen, when there used to be things you could actually do.

 

[monkeypunch87]

Then you're not being exposed to the mechanic because you're removing the pops you conquered and just getting a free planet. Of course it's going to seem like there isn't anything wrong. Try an empire that just wants to go "okay we rule you now" and nothing more, and see what happens. Or try an empire reliant on pop assembly and see what happens when you get bigger (that's what screws Machine Empires up).

Well, I may try, but it is not my playstyle. But you will still have lower POPs overall with lower hab setting, which decreases the penalty overall.

 

[sillyrobot]

Yes, it works, but you end up being unable to fill new things like megastructures (see thread title), you just get already-full planets from your conquest of them.

Well, yeah. But if you are very heavily focused on conquest, all of your alloys are going into fleets. Any megastructure you capture (like the FE) comes with its own pop already in place. It's certainly not a play style I enjoy, but I can see how it would work well so long as you drop in a lot of AI empires for the galaxy size. It'll fail if you a low empire / star ratio.

 

[Meneye]

I get what you're saying and I also kinda agree. Heck, even just before 3.0, people were complaining about how easy the game was and how easily they could snowball and build an unstoppable economy. Those threads probably won't pop up for a little bit.

But the thing is, people don't play this game for the mechanics or balance. They play it for the RP, or the power fantasy of being a galactic empire. (We also have our share of competitive min-maxers, but those guys are never really going to be pleased.) If we want the game to be more balanced, what we need is either a much more competent AI, which is really difficult to program, or some huge obstacles we need to overcome, like how the crisis is supposed to work. Limiting the players themselves like this will only make it less fun.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

I get what you're saying and I also kinda agree. Heck, even just before 3.0, people were complaining about how easy the game was and how easily they could snowball and build an unstoppable economy. Those threads probably won't pop up for a little bit.

But the thing is, people don't play this game for the mechanics or balance. They play it for the RP, or the power fantasy of being a galactic empire. (We also have our share of competitive min-maxers, but those guys are never really going to be pleased.) If we want the game to be more balanced, what we need is either a much more competent AI, which is really difficult to program, or some huge obstacles we need to overcome, like how the crisis is supposed to work. Limiting the players themselves like this will only make it less fun.

I would just like to say minmaxers are not some mythical player type that's never pleased. Stefan Anon is for sure in that camp (in the Necroids multiplayer event he literally defeated about a dozen other players in a war because his empire was just that good, even when he was deliberately given an empire with garbage civics at the start), and he maintains a balance mod that is really just a bunch of reasonable improvements that make different playstyles more viable compared to each other by nerfing the more overpowered ones and buffing some that very few ever use.
As an example, it gives the Post-Apocalyptic origin some cool features under blockers so that the origin isn't so underwhelming and has a bit more lore to it. It also makes it so you can restore the habitability of worlds you colonize with Calamitous Birth. These things help less powerful empire setups in a way that's also fun and makes sense.
Hell, its Shattered Ring changes basically made it into the game, along with housing bonuses applying to habitat districts just like city districts.

Minmaxers just want to have fun like everyone else, it's just that they want to do it via a playstyle that takes advantage of whatever they can at any given moment to be the best empire they can be, and that can be fun and even varied if the game is designed well.

 

[Abberon]

Forget about the min-maxers though. They're only part of a much larger set of players that just want the galaxy to feel big and want their empires to be able to get big.

 

[Hansatron]

I've played two games on small galaxies and agree with some of the comments.

The problem is that past the mid game you cannot actually fill large planets like Arcologies or Ring Worlds. You'd need to do aggressive resettlement to fill an arcology. I turned my capital into one, bought maybe 20 slaves to send there over the course of the game - ended with about 160 pops there will 1100 total in my empire. I could have fit several dozen more pops in.

Worse, my empire population was around 900-950 around the time of the Khan in 2350 or so. So I only gained a small amount of population in the second half of the game - how exactly are you going to fill a ring world which you can't build before mid game anyways?

Now, to be clear. I like that I don't have a brutal micromanagement situation of dealing with a bunch of planets producing unemployed pops every year, it makes the game very playable. But the growth points penalty should be piecewise and capped.

Rather than unrestricted +0.5/pop, IMO, it should something like this:
0-100 pops: +0.5/pop (to keep openings balanced for all games)
101-1000 pops: reduced rate based on map size, larger maps lower penalty
1000+ : either a very small continuing rate or fixed at current level

Basically I think the growth point penalty all but eliminates the natural carrying capacity effect which will shut off planets regardless of growth points. The game only lasts 300 years. I think we could be a bit more generous in how many pops we allow in a game. It works great in the first half of the game, but the terminal dynamics of it leave something to be desired.