Episode 355: Stellaris

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 355:

Stellaris

It's a very special, gas giant-sized podcast as the panel discusses Paradox's newest grand strategy game, Stellaris. Stellaris takes the Paradox formula and flings it into space, replacing trade merchants with space merchants, warships with space warships, and regular coalitions with space coalitions. Not content with one, two, or even three guests, Rob welcomes Rowan Kaiser, Austin Walker, Fraser Brown, and Sean Sands to the show to get their take on the new game. Some people love it, some people have conflicted feelings, and then there's Rowan.

Stellaris

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[Turrican]

Ah crap. I bought the Galaxy version of the game too! Sounds like it needs a huge amount of fleshing out over the next couple of years before it's any good.

All modern empire games need resources, military, exploration, religion/culture, economy, trade, diplomacy, espionage, internal politics and technology. If several of these aspects are missing the game will always feel incomplete.

[safes007]

The main thing I worry about this game relates to multiplayer and diplomacy. 

 

Can your ever make a good simulation of how space empires would interact when you need to be able to have human players ignore the system entirely? Things like making it hard to form long lasting alliances and certain restrictions based on opinion. 

 

Still I think paradox have made a deep 4x space game, but (almost certainly by design) they have not made a space grand strategy game. 

 

That being said I wonder whether the expansions will make it more grand strategy or not. Assuming they have brought a large number of sole 4X players on board they may be hesitant to make things overcomplicated.

 

Still looks like a good game in the end.

[Cordeos]

I wish there was more discussion about how this game stacks up against Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations etc. instead of focusing on how it compares to other Paradox games. 

Good episode though. 

[Badfinger]

Still I think paradox have made a deep 4x space game, but (almost certainly by design) they have not made a space grand strategy game. 

This might not be (definitely isn't) a representative opinion of people interested in this game, but I deeply hope that's the case. I want a flavorful 4X game rather than a space crusader kings. I'd take the EU approach, though.

[cornchip]

I get a MoO 3 feeling about this game. I'm concerned that Paradox can't infuse it with enough 'stuff' to really make it an exceptional strategic title because they can't synthesize worlds and lore nearly as quickly as they can draw on their knowledge of history, and the actual space parts mechanically seem a little too easily designed.

 

I would certainly love to be proven wrong, and I suspect I will be, but only after an expansion and a few major patches.

 

Edit: to be clear, I'm very happy this game is being made and I do want it to succeed and be well-regarded.

[Turrican]

So I played this for maybe 3 hours tonight. Really loved it so far. I think what we have here is probably the best foundation of any game I've played (Endless Legend may have something to say about that though). Yes, each solar system is essentially a circle full of stuff surrounded by other neighbouring circles surrounded by more stuff, so that you are effectively constantly looking at the same kind of vista. However, something is special here. Whereas Gal Civ 3 immedistely failed to grab me and even turned me off by its ugliness and lacklustre mechanics, Stellaris has its hooks into me already.

Someone (probably Rowan) mentioned there isn't any trade in the game. Err yes there is. At first glance, the diplomacy seems better than say Civ5. There is a real sense of isolation when piloting your intrepid science ship through the cold reaches of outer space that I've not had since EveOnline. The score is absolutely majestic. I really hope they expand on the tracks here. Graphics are great. Mechanics sound. These are the important things people. These are the things that really won't/can't be changed. The vital question is, does the game have that special feel? For me, yes it does. Stronger, cleverer AI and features such as espionage etc can be bolted on later. What's important is that the foundations are rock solid.

I'm very happy so far. Interesting to see the boys over at Explorminate leading the charge once more (as

they did with Thea and XCom 2) awarding Stellaris their highest grade. Anyone who was put off by the 3MA pod should still check the game out, I'd say it's already the best space 4X out there and it's only going to get better.

[sclpls]

Ehh... I'm waiting to hear what more people have to say about the mid game. Even Rowan, who was the most critical of the game, said the early game was really great.

[Sorbicol]

Also played a couple of hours last night 2 or 3 and my glorious race of Space Felines (descended from my pets. Intelligent, greedy and liking their creature comforts) have headed out into the great expanse.

Coming from a 4x background rather than a great strategy one so far to me at least the game feels like a pretty good amalgamation of the two genres. It is definitely very 4x focused in the early stages, while at the same time having a sense of scope I've never gotten from MoO2, Endless Space, Galactic Civilsations etc etc. The victory conditions for this game are clearly very secondary to the experience of just playing it, and once you've got yourself into that mindset I think it's just a little bit wonderful. It has a sense of exploration that I've not felt in any other 4x, and it has a galactic sense of scope too.

It has a hell of a lot going on it - far more than more traditional 4x games - which I'm still getting to grips with. The "tutorial", while helpful, is actually paradox's version of Microsoft's Paperclip and is just as annoying if you ask for the full tutorial help version (blessedly this can be switched or toned down) and it's sometimes not that easy to keep track of quite everything that's going on. Sometimes there are so many pop ups on the screen you can't be sure you've captured them all, let alone have any idea how important they might be.

However, so far I'm mightily impressed. Very early stages though. I must be in an empty part of the galaxy having only met one other race so far (who are religious fanatics who hate any other life form apart from their own) so sooner or later I'm going to be going to war with them, slathering them in catnip and throwing them to the masses for their entertainment.

[Shardik]

I'm a bit conflicted on Stellaris. On the one hand it's not quite as good as I hoped it would be and I'm worried about how passive the AI has been. Also all of Rowan's complaints are things I recognize.

 

On the other hand I really enjoy it and desperately want work to finish so I can go home and play some more though I am not quite sure I can put my finger on why.

[Badfinger]

I've now finished the whole podcast. This is a little bit a criticism of a criticism. There were multiple comments along the lines of "how will you feel at the 200 or 500 hour mark though!" Besides the fact that I know I personally will never get to the 500 hour mark in this game no matter how I love it, that's a strange criticism to leverage precisely because it's developed by Paradox. I know you have to render criticism of a thing that is and not a thing that may be, but I really can't imagine more than a handful of people playing several hundred hours of the game before the flood of patches, dlc, updates, and expansions. Rowan is robustly negative on the game, but I'll be frank, EIGHTY hours of mostly enjoyable game time is a rousing endorsment to me even in a genre where the most dedicated can do 10 times that.

[Valorian Endymion]

I did finish the cast and find myself agreeing more with Austin and Fraser. Now, I do agree with some critical points, such as a need for better organization on how info is display/given, however most of this is just stuff could, and very likely will be adjusted better soon. Overall I found Stellaris to be amazing game, specially if you keep in mind this is their first try in a genre and theme they didn´t before, that does a lot of interesting ideas.

[Gormongous]

I wish there was more discussion about how this game stacks up against Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations etc. instead of focusing on how it compares to other Paradox games.

 

Yeah, it was a very odd episode to listen to, although overall enjoyable to hear a lot of diverse opinions about the game.

 

It sometimes seemed like Stellaris was losing at both ends: where it fell short of CK2, it was criticized (even in contexts where EU4 also falls short of CK2) and where it fell short of EU4, it was criticized (even in contexts where CK2 also falls short of EU4). Unrest and rebellion have always been underwhelming in EU4 ("press a button before a number gets too high" eventually became "press a button to lower a number that lets you press a button before a number gets too high," to Paradox's credit) but Stellaris is faulted for not being more like CK2 in that regard, for example. Occasionally, Stellaris was even criticized for falling short of the general expectations of science fiction as a genre of artistic endeavor, like when Rowan gripes that Stellaris doesn't make him care about the technology of his ground troops even though both EU4 and CK2 have always had abysmal "army management" systems (Do you want whitecoats, redcoats, or bluecoats in EU4? That one-pip difference could matter a lot! Do you build barracks or militia training grounds first in your holdings in CK2? Light infantry provides a better cost-to-power ratio but only past a certain threshold!). Without history to act as a glue and a filler, a lot of Paradox's foundational design decisions in their games do feel weaker, but they're still the exact same decisions!

 

I think a lot of criticism, justifiably, is focusing on the fact that Stellaris is a shallow grand-strategy game but a dense space-4X game. Turns out, in a lot of cases, the blending of the two genres is less a chocolate-and-peanut-butter situation and more of a broccoli-and-cottage-cheese situation: tasty, but not instant magic. I think that Paradox's way forward is clearly threefold: add a more robust interface that doesn't hide basic information three screens down out of embarrassment of being a high-complexity game; build out and complicate systems, especially peacetime ones, if war is going to be mostly a late-game concern; and keep adding events and event chains to the game. Knowing Paradox, we'll see a lot of the second, some of the third, and none whatsoever of the first. Hopefully that'll be enough in this case: it was for CK2 until the run of DLC between Rajas and Conclave totally salted the earth there.

 

 

Oh! Also, Rowan, it's clear from Paradox's Blorg stream that factions used to be much more prone to revolting, but once late-stage multiplayer testing had ramped up, the design team apparently decided that sector revolts were too much of a distraction from wartime maneuvering, as well as too much of a drain on influence and energy, and flattened the chance into the dirt. If I recall, EU4 was the same way, immediately pre- and post-launch. With luck, they'll build something out there, too.

[sclpls]

That is really disappointing to hear. I wish they would keep mutliplayer balance changes in the multiplayer game because that's just a component of the game I will never in a million years interact with, I don't care how much fun it's supposed to be.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Yeah, it was a very odd episode to listen to, although overall enjoyable to hear a lot of diverse opinions about the game.

It sometimes seemed like Stellaris was losing at both ends: where it fell short of CK2, it was criticized (even in contexts where EU4 also falls short of CK2) and where it fell short of EU4, it was criticized (even in contexts where CK2 also falls short of EU4). Unrest and rebellion have always been underwhelming in EU4 ("press a button before a number gets too high" eventually became "press a button to lower a number that lets you press a button before a number gets too high," to Paradox's credit) but Stellaris is faulted for not being more like CK2 in that regard, for example. Occasionally, Stellaris was even criticized for falling short of the general expectations of science fiction as a genre of artistic endeavor, like when Rowan gripes that Stellaris doesn't make him care about the technology of his ground troops even though both EU4 and CK2 have always had abysmal "army management" systems (Do you want whitecoats, redcoats, or bluecoats in EU4? That one-pip difference could matter a lot! Do you build barracks or militia training grounds first in your holdings in CK2? Light infantry provides a better cost-to-power ratio but only past a certain threshold!). Without history to act as a glue and a filler, a lot of Paradox's foundational design decisions in their games do feel weaker, but they're still the exact same decisions!

I think a lot of criticism, justifiably, is focusing on the fact that Stellaris is a shallow grand-strategy game but a dense space-4X game. Turns out, in a lot of cases, the blending of the two genres is less a chocolate-and-peanut-butter situation and more of a broccoli-and-cottage-cheese situation: tasty, but not instant magic. I think that Paradox's way forward is clearly threefold: add a more robust interface that doesn't hide basic information three screens down out of embarrassment of being a high-complexity game; build out and complicate systems, especially peacetime ones, if war is going to be mostly a late-game concern; and keep adding events and event chains to the game. Knowing Paradox, we'll see a lot of the second, some of the third, and none whatsoever of the first. Hopefully that'll be enough in this case: it was for CK2 until the run of DLC between Rajas and Conclave totally salted the earth there.

Oh! Also, Rowan, it's clear from Paradox's Blorg stream that factions used to be much more prone to revolting, but once late-stage multiplayer testing had ramped up, the design team apparently decided that sector revolts were too much of a distraction from wartime maneuvering, as well as too much of a drain on influence and energy, and flattened the chance into the dirt. If I recall, EU4 was the same way, immediately pre- and post-launch. With luck, they'll build something out there, too.

I mostly agree with the above, just a few observations.

- Indeed, Paradoxian design "patterns" are all over the place. Yet I think they have done a great job blending stuff that has worked greatly for them in the past - the Division designer from HOI3 is in the Ship Designer in spirit, even if most of the design itself is a bow to Sword of the Stars I, the memorable POP system from Victoria I and II, to deliver novel mechanics that fit well within the Science Fiction setting. The latter especially can be the thing that delivers a killing blow to the MOO-clone crowd: I was playing this weekend the remake of MOO and while I was getting bored out of my mind checking out the 16 colonies I have plonked by turn 180 I couldn't help thinking "these little ragdolls loook lovely, but other than sometimes sitting down with a placard they seem quite lifeless". Even if it is just because of the animations, I do find that Stellaris makes a great job of making me care about those guys... just not too often

- I stopped following CK2 a few years ago, so I don't get the "salted earth" comment, but I guess has to do with Rob's distaste of the proliferation of "context menus" in CK2. I think that if you are adding new mechanics, and those mechanics are intertwined with already existing mechanics either you 1) re-design the whole interface to accomodate comfortably every control exposed to the player or 2) take an incremental approach using tooltips, context menus and pop-ups, basically extending the existing metaphor. I don't think that 1) is something you want to do for a mature game every 6 months, really. And 2) works as well as flexible and extensible was the initial design. For all the criticism of Stellaris UI, I think that the relative "blandness" of it, is basically because I find to be easily extensible, and that requires some degree of "genericity" in order to happen.

- Regarding the pre-emptive balancing of rebellions, I think that solo players wouldn't appreciate either wayward Sector Rebels assaulting virtual Winter Palaces whenever one decides to incomodate the POPs for the sake of the war effort. At EU IV launch I do remember very well that having a war that goes on for more than a few years or where your fleet/armies get the crap beaten out of them was a very scary thought: I remember a game with Spain where the BBB totally overran my field armies, only to be stopped by the massive, massive rebel armies that popped up all over the Peninsula. They actually defeated the French, and I could ask for a White Peace (and then caved in to these rebels demands, of course). That was kind of cool, but I can also see that about 90% of Paradox games' solo players wouldn't like that one tiny bit (and they didn't, the forums went up in flames).

[biz]

the resulting software was completely expected given paradox's history

 

the problem is it was marketed as a 4x strategy game, but it misses the entire point of what makes a 4x game a strategy game instead of a simulation game

 

4x games are just competitive races to victory conditions that will be extremely boring if you aren't playing to win. that's not really a problem with the games, but rather a disconnect between what the game is actually about (racing & winning) and how people actually play it (casually non-competitively in single-player and never actually reaching the end)

 

you invest 50 minerals to increase production by +2 per turn so that in 25 turns you start getting extra minerals, and you hope you can turn those extra minerals into something relevant to win the race. when stellaris copies all the same mechanics in an uncompetitive space empire simulator, it's just pointless. and when those mechanics aren't interesting, the pace of the game is ruined

 

i'm sure it matters in competitive multiplayer, but i still think it's a fantasy that people actually want to play a 25-hour long multiplayer RTS, especially when the whole concept of planning (i.e. what defines strategy games) is basically non-existent with random tech trees and random events and random everything

 

stellaris feels like a 4X for people who don't actually like 4X games. that's fine and the audience for that is huge, but people really need to come up with better terms for this stuff.

 

i haven't gotten to the end of a game yet, but if the game needs 50 packages of DLC that shift the focus away from 4X stuff and turn it into space EU4, then why bother trying to attract the 4X crowd to begin with?

[Gormongous]

I mostly agree with the above, just a few observations.

- Indeed, Paradoxian design "patterns" are all over the place. Yet I think they have done a great job blending stuff that has worked greatly for them in the past - the Division designer from HOI3 is in the Ship Designer in spirit, even if most of the design itself is a bow to Sword of the Stars I, the memorable POP system from Victoria I and II, to deliver novel mechanics that fit well within the Science Fiction setting. The latter especially can be the thing that delivers a killing blow to the MOO-clone crowd: I was playing this weekend the remake of MOO and while I was getting bored out of my mind checking out the 16 colonies I have plonked by turn 180 I couldn't help thinking "these little ragdolls loook lovely, but other than sometimes sitting down with a placard they seem quite lifeless". Even if it is just because of the animations, I do find that Stellaris makes a great job of making me care about those guys... just not too often

- I stopped following CK2 a few years ago, so I don't get the "salted earth" comment, but I guess has to do with Rob's distaste of the proliferation of "context menus" in CK2. I think that if you are adding new mechanics, and those mechanics are intertwined with already existing mechanics either you 1) re-design the whole interface to accomodate comfortably every control exposed to the player or 2) take an incremental approach using tooltips, context menus and pop-ups, basically extending the existing metaphor. I don't think that 1) is something you want to do for a mature game every 6 months, really. And 2) works as well as flexible and extensible was the initial design. For all the criticism of Stellaris UI, I think that the relative "blandness" of it, is basically because I find to be easily extensible, and that requires some degree of "genericity" in order to happen.

- Regarding the pre-emptive balancing of rebellions, I think that solo players wouldn't appreciate either wayward Sector Rebels assaulting virtual Winter Palaces whenever one decides to incomodate the POPs for the sake of the war effort. At EU IV launch I do remember very well that having a war that goes on for more than a few years or where your fleet/armies get the crap beaten out of them was a very scary thought: I remember a game with Spain where the BBB totally overran my field armies, only to be stopped by the massive, massive rebel armies that popped up all over the Peninsula. They actually defeated the French, and I could ask for a White Peace (and then caved in to these rebels demands, of course). That was kind of cool, but I can also see that about 90% of Paradox games' solo players wouldn't like that one tiny bit (and they didn't, the forums went up in flames).

 

By "salted earth" with CK2, I mean that, shortly after the first cycle of DLC for the game was complete, all the parts of the game that were obviously and easily extensible had been extended, so Paradox made the choice to continue releasing DLC by i) broadening the scope of the game and ii) simulating previously abstract systems. I have less to say about the former, except that CK2 just doesn't work at the 769 AD start and it's a shame that people think of it as the "default" start now, but the latter is almost certainly a blind alley up which Paradox chased fun and got lost. In the game's current state, the number of gameplay systems (almost always the pretext for their respective DLCs, rather than the result) that are accessible to large amounts of player agency (insofar as players have agency in CK2) but are i) hidden three or more mouse-clicks away from the main and ii) are largely irrelevant to the normal experience of gameplay are honestly immense. Just off the top of my head, with it being almost a year since I played CK2 with any intensity, there's the trading post/fort system, the new education mechanic, the life-focus system, the College of Cardinals, the tributaries mechanic, the viceroy system...

 

At a certain point, you're just not gaining anything by adding complexity to an existing design. I think, if Paradox had stopped expanding and adding systems after The Old Gods and just released event packs, the state of the game would be virtually the same for the vast majority of players. I have yet to meet anyone, on the internet or in real life, who's played a nomadic or subcontinental lord except that one time after they bought the relevant DLC. That doesn't fill me with confidence that Paradox knows the different between a fully-fleshed game and unconscious aspirations to be a crappy version of Dwarf Fortress in space. We'll have to see, I guess.

 

I also remember the state of EU4 at release and the fan reactions, that's why I brought it up! I'm not surprised that Paradox chose discretion over valor, but I do think that the problem in both cases is that there's just not that much to do to prevent (or to spark) rebellions. With Stellaris, especially, unhappy pops in a sector naturally join factions, but the only factions are separatist factions and, barring an extremely heterodox population, there will never be enough unhappy pops at one time to cause a faction to revolt out of nowhere. If there were options beyond "bribe them to stay quiet," or if certain governors had an amplifying effect to happiness or unhappiness, there'd be a reason for revolts to be more regular (if Paradox ever concedes that some people want to play games with internal politics, multiplayer or not), but I can't really fault them for quashing it as it is. The system's just not where it should be.

[Bletchley_Geek]

By "salted earth" with CK2, I mean that, shortly after the first cycle of DLC for the game was complete, all the parts of the game that were obviously and easily extensible had been extended, so Paradox made the choice to continue releasing DLC by i) broadening the scope of the game and ii) simulating previously abstract systems. I have less to say about the former, except that CK2 just doesn't work at the 769 AD start and it's a shame that people think of it as the "default" start now, but the latter is almost certainly a blind alley up which Paradox chased fun and got lost. In the game's current state, the number of gameplay systems (almost always the pretext for their respective DLCs, rather than the result) that are accessible to large amounts of player agency (insofar as players have agency in CK2) but are i) hidden three or more mouse-clicks away from the main and ii) are largely irrelevant to the normal experience of gameplay are honestly immense. Just off the top of my head, with it being almost a year since I played CK2 with any intensity, there's the trading post/fort system, the new education mechanic, the life-focus system, the College of Cardinals, the tributaries mechanic, the viceroy system...

 

Thanks for the clarification @Gormongous. I does have to do with the proliferation of intricate paths through the user interface after all. 

 

Again, I think I am pretty much of the same mind as you. The last CK2 game I remember I walked into the shoes of King Alfred (just not yet The Great) and I basically spent a few decades setting up the bases of a feudal system. That was a cool game, since it felt like I was playing a weird socio-economic Minecraft, half of the systems in the game were just not working as designed or just inert, coming into life as my dynasty survived the wrath of the Danes and my carefully engineered feudal hierachy of dukes, counts and whatnots started to interact with each other. I am not entirely sure my experience was an intended result of the "design". But certainly I enjoyed doing that.

 

I don't even know about the stuff you mention in your last sentence, I tuned off for good after The Old Gods.

 

 

At a certain point, you're just not gaining anything by adding complexity to an existing design. I think, if Paradox had stopped expanding and adding systems after The Old Gods and just released event packs, the state of the game would be virtually the same for the vast majority of players. I have yet to meet anyone, on the internet or in real life, who's played a nomadic or subcontinental lord except that one time after they bought the relevant DLC. That doesn't fill me with confidence that Paradox knows the different between a fully-fleshed game and unconscious aspirations to be a crappy version of Dwarf Fortress in space. We'll have to see, I guess.

 

Tell that to Dwarf Fortress' designer and programmer

 

Certainly, one of the reasons I tuned out of CK2 was that I wasn't really channeling an inner Rajah or Horse Lord. Some of the "secondary" features though, may be interesting (yet minor). This did indeed happen to me with EU 4 The Cossacks expansions. I couldn't care less for the leaping horsemen in the steppes between the Don and the Volga, but the Estates addition I find was a very good one. Fiddly, yes, but it has changed the way I relate to EU 4.

 

I also remember the state of EU4 at release and the fan reactions, that's why I brought it up! I'm not surprised that Paradox chose discretion over valor, but I do think that the problem in both cases is that there's just not that much to do to prevent (or to spark) rebellions. With Stellaris, especially, unhappy pops in a sector naturally join factions, but the only factions are separatist factions and, barring an extremely heterodox population, there will never be enough unhappy pops at one time to cause a faction to revolt out of nowhere. If there were options beyond "bribe them to stay quiet," or if certain governors had an amplifying effect to happiness or unhappiness, there'd be a reason for revolts to be more regular (if Paradox ever concedes that some people want to play games with internal politics, multiplayer or not), but I can't really fault them for quashing it as it is. The system's just not where it should be.

 

One thing that Paradox does need to do is to start adding sub-menus to the "Gameplay" tab, so people can switch on or off, or modulate the effects of certain mechanics. They seem to leave this to modding... On the other hand, the original EU 4 systems were harsh, and when they complied to the outrage EU 4 became SO much easier. It took a while until they got that more balanced. 

 

In the setting of Stellaris, rather than outright military rebellion, which is a somewhat lazy and cheap way to deal with "internal pressure" as Rowan put it, I'd love to see events/event chains such as strikes in mining stations (production shutdowns or reduction in efficiency), terrorist acts (escalating from damaging/destroying structures), piracy, widespread smuggling (syphoning energy out of the system), and other acts of more or less overt subversion motivated by disaffected POPs. That would go a long way to remedy the "revolution out of the blue" thing you mention: there is an escalation, and if the player has chosen to ignore it or came in too heavy handed... well, then there's a price to pay for that.

 

Regarding options of dealing with this, I think that there's a great majority of players that do like the idea of liberty and freedom as an abstract concept to guide themselves in the real world, but start channeling the ghost of Pol Pot when some virtual characters in video game tell them "No Taxation Without Representation" or "Don't Tread on Me" or start waving "Appeal to Heaven" flags when they turn the screws hard on their subjects. I am not sure that lavish simulations, offering all kinds of feedback on what is pissing off your POPs is ever to content those people who have trouble managing their expectations of absolute control when playing a Video game.

[ilitarist]

This was hardcore episode all around. I've only played Stellaris a little but I already see 2 things that make this game very different from other Paradox game. 

 

1) You are forced to roleplay. In CK and EU there was roleplay too, but it was somewhat problematic. Due to historical limits you couldn't be whatever you want (even with nation designer), due to mechanics you couldn't play fully historical things. It's also a first game after Victoria 2 with decent flavor text and pictures. I bet this roleplaying will make the game very popular. Even less strategy-oriented letsplayers try Stellaris for roleplaying reasons. As an example look at

 - famous for his Kill Everything and YOLO playthroughs of Fallout 3 and NV. This part is where I expect most expansions to go. More portraits, more events, more text reactions.

 

2) This game is more demanding of the player by being more casual. Paradoxically, I know, but hear me out. Rob mentioned you can't be Dutch and maybe that's what he meant but it's not quite suits the idea cause Dutch were pretty active. In other Paradox games you are often supposed to be passive. It is, after all, historical: many countries didn't have any significant developments for a long periods of time (this is probably why we are not getting Cold War game). Passiveness is even often forced on you, this is why you have cores, primitives unable to do anything, regency councils and so on. You can play reactively when you're not feeling like making Ulm the world power. Just start as Papal States and see how the game unfolds. No pressure.

 

Not so in Stellaris. You can't be passive. All systems cry out for you to expand. You have to build new stations. You have to manage energy balance. You need more living space for your race. Doing nothing is not just sub-optimal, it's a clear mistake in Stellaris. Maybe it isn't so later in the game, but it creates a very different feel, and it's more challenging even if it's more casual, closer to traditional Civ/MoO game, even if it's a freedom player expects. I personally think this will rise some problems. This phase feels interesting for the first time but I wonder if the next time I'll become good at it and will know the order of doing things and how to deal with those flying crystals and world guardians. Events also may become uninteresting.

 

I epect later for them to add "classic Paradox mode". So that you start with most of the galaxy being claimed and familiar. There are still unexplored places and unknown sides, but you instantly see balance of powers. They can also integrate existing relations, alliances or federations, give different techs to different races creating some interesting situations. Basically let them instantly drop you into a Star Trek Next Generation, not that prequel stuff.

[ilitarist]

One thing that Paradox does need to do is to start adding sub-menus to the "Gameplay" tab, so people can switch on or off, or modulate the effects of certain mechanics. They seem to leave this to modding... On the other hand, the original EU 4 systems were harsh, and when they complied to the outrage EU 4 became SO much easier. It took a while until they got that more balanced. 

 

They're doing exactly this in CK2 in the next patch so you can expect it to appear in EU4 soon.

 

Also, every time Rowan asked why do all this stuff like expansion this had played in my head: 

[SamS]

My favourite part of Stellaris so far has been the enforcement of different techs between races (which by the way seems to be what Civ6 will be doing as well). Paradox games have always been two armies of identical dudes mashing up against each other. But when the enemy in my first war (which happened in the first 3 hours) turned up with torpedoes and shields when all I had were railguns it really gave the impression that 'whoah, these guys are really alien to me'. 

[Bletchley_Geek]

This was hardcore episode all around. I've only played Stellaris a little but I already see 2 things that make this game very different from other Paradox game. 

 

1) You are forced to roleplay. In CK and EU there was roleplay too, but it was somewhat problematic. Due to historical limits you couldn't be whatever you want (even with nation designer), due to mechanics you couldn't play fully historical things. It's also a first game after Victoria 2 with decent flavor text and pictures. I bet this roleplaying will make the game very popular. Even less strategy-oriented letsplayers try Stellaris for roleplaying reasons. As an example look at

 - famous for his Kill Everything and YOLO playthroughs of Fallout 3 and NV. This part is where I expect most expansions to go. More portraits, more events, more text reactions.

 

2) This game is more demanding of the player by being more casual. Paradoxically, I know, but hear me out. Rob mentioned you can't be Dutch and maybe that's what he meant but it's not quite suits the idea cause Dutch were pretty active. In other Paradox games you are often supposed to be passive. It is, after all, historical: many countries didn't have any significant developments for a long periods of time (this is probably why we are not getting Cold War game). Passiveness is even often forced on you, this is why you have cores, primitives unable to do anything, regency councils and so on. You can play reactively when you're not feeling like making Ulm the world power. Just start as Papal States and see how the game unfolds. No pressure.

 

Not so in Stellaris. You can't be passive. All systems cry out for you to expand. You have to build new stations. You have to manage energy balance. You need more living space for your race. Doing nothing is not just sub-optimal, it's a clear mistake in Stellaris. Maybe it isn't so later in the game, but it creates a very different feel, and it's more challenging even if it's more casual, closer to traditional Civ/MoO game, even if it's a freedom player expects. I personally think this will rise some problems. This phase feels interesting for the first time but I wonder if the next time I'll become good at it and will know the order of doing things and how to deal with those flying crystals and world guardians. Events also may become uninteresting.

 

I epect later for them to add "classic Paradox mode". So that you start with most of the galaxy being claimed and familiar. There are still unexplored places and unknown sides, but you instantly see balance of powers. They can also integrate existing relations, alliances or federations, give different techs to different races creating some interesting situations. Basically let them instantly drop you into a Star Trek Next Generation, not that prequel stuff.

 

That was very interesting to read, thanks. Something that strikes me of Stellaris is that there's a curiously "organic" feel to how empires grow and develop. When I say organic I mean that there's a clear pressure to increase the "carrying capacity" for your species/empire by colonising, and the lack of growth in one direction is usually due to "astographic" features - a gap preventing a warp drive using race from expanding, a lack of inhabitable worlds, or lackluster resource distribution. Sooner or later, all the "easily reached" space is occupied and empires become "boxed in", having reached some sort of "equilibrium" where the empires have maximised greedily their potential to growth. We see this kind of "mid game" on pretty much every 4X game out there, yet in Stellaris the process is more apparent for whatever the reason, and kind of mesmerizing to watch.

 

I am reading through the Paradox forums and I see that the sleepy stasis Rowan complained about is common... but it is also common to have starts where players have neighbours which are less accomodating, or just plain xenocidal crazies. In the latter, the mid game seems to be quite a game of life and death - either you prevail over those competing species, or you're gone for good.

 

Certainly I may be over-analyzing the dynamics of Stellaris' design, but this looks to me a lot like the Lotka - Volterra models for studying population dynamics in Ecology, where one can account for direct and indirect positive or negative interactions. In the context of Stellaris,  indirect negative interactions between empires do happen when one snatches prime real state by establishing colonies or frontier outposts, and direct negative interactions follow from the friction between anti-ethic empires. Very much as the lion doesn't choose the tofu laksa soup over the gazelle, the interactions between zebras and giraffes do not really set the scene for high drama.

 

EDIT: That is not to say that one could do with some more interesting "interesting" pressure or "self-competition", see my previous posts.

 

They're doing exactly this in CK2 in the next patch so you can expect it to appear in EU4 soon.

 

Also, every time Rowan asked why do all this stuff like expansion this had played in my head: 

 

Thanks for the heads up on that, I think it was something very easy to do that for whatever the reason they weren't bothering doing. And LOL @ the video! Hilarious

[panzeh]

I feel like this game, like a lot of 4x games, has a well-developed opening and is less and less designed as the game goes on and it's been playtested less in the later game.  I myself prefer 4x games as competitive races to the victory conditions, so I might be biased, but this game rarely provides threats to me.  The only time I ever lost was an invasion by a much more advanced neighbor an hour into one game.

 

I think one thing that might drastically improve the game would be to eliminate ship designs and have fixed ship designs based on ehos/government/tech.  One of the problems with ship designers is that it tends to result in optimization rather than any kind of differentiation or diversity.  In theory, customization is used to make diverse and neat designs but in practice it just ends up being "pick the best stuff".  A series of well-crafted fixed options tends to result in more diverse playstyles than just customization.  See: MOO1 vs MOO2 where in Moo1 the races were a bit unbalanced, they were distinct.  In Moo2, you just picked the best advantages/disadvantages and rolled with it.

 

I also think that this game uses its writing to try to cover up for its mechanical weaknesses and because i'm not a lore-fiend or whatever, it just bounces off me.  It always strikes me as funny that people call historical settings "limiting" which indicates a lack of game design creativity and imagination.

 

In any case, also, Stellaris is doing the band-aid solution to the city management problem by legislating out too much direct control like almost every other 4x because they seem unwilling to drill it down to what's important.  Instead automation is here to cover up game design weakness.  If you designed it correctly, you could make a game where you can control hundreds of planets and not have to leave the main screen(in fact, the need to go from a big galaxy screen to dig down into the system map to do anything is a weakness in and of itself.).

[jsbarker702]

In my opinion one member of the review team came into the game looking specifically for a CK2 in space and when that wasn't there the show devolved into a feeding frenzy. I don't care for CK2 but I am loving Stellaris so maybe the game should be taken for what it is at this point; a deep 4X game with a grand strategy flavor. And that is fine with me for now but I anticipate content coming in the future since there is already a tab for DLC. 

[ilitarist]

Very unfortunate to see internet reacting to Rowan's review in the way it did.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-review

 

Just read the comments. Comments are so disgusting Paradox had to intervene and say sane thing which was suddenly perceived as some messianic revelation.