Three Moves Ahead Episode 494: Stellaris Federations

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 494:

Stellaris Federations
Rowan, Jon, and T.J. are joined by Waypoint and Friends at the Table's Austin Walker to once again ask the immortal question: Is Stellaris good now? On the heels of a diplomacy rework and four years of expansions, what has become of Paradox's oddball 4X space child?

Stellaris

 

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[ilitarist]

Rowan speaks the truth. It's fine. It's not great.

 

I too tried Stellaris after this update. People speak about boring endgame but they talk about it as if it's about events and exploration coming to an end. It's not just that. Before you hit midgame and see big alliances and wars you get all the traditions and all the technology. This choice between early traditions (or Civ5 cultural ideas or whatever they are called) is only there to affect early game. By the time you bump into other empires and run out of space to expand you finish them all. And offensive wars are limited by the same resource you use to expand peacefully, so if you conquer you don't expand peacefully, it's hard to combine the two. With technologies it's the same, it's worse than any other 4X: in midgame you only get "+5% to mineral production #6" tech and the like. That midgame comes after 20 hours of play but the game itself says it's midgame, you're supposed to play long after that to bump into an endgame crisis.

 

The economy has something interesting going for it, but all the rest is still boring. Endless Space 2 is mentioned and I'm puzzled why isn't it regarded as a better 4X game. It has an elegant design, it's not bloated with boring nodes like Stellaris. When it has a unique star system you care about it because you don't have 200 other star systems. When you have a choice in planet development it's something interesting and important instead of building housing district #12. ES2 AI doesn't know how to play the game but neither does Stellaris AI.

 

Then again I rant about how ES2 is a much better game yet I don't launch it from time to time to check out if it's good. I come back to Stellaris too. Paradox has me.

[shark jacobs]

I didn't play Stellaris before this patch, so I don't have firsthand experience with it and I don't understand the significance of the changes to fleet size. What is the difference between having a fleet of 200 ships versus having 3 fleets of 66 ships that all move into battle together?

[Tdoggs]

I concur with everything ititarist said.  In my recent 2 1/2 play Throughs, it felt like the empires played all the same. The bland percentage based increases didn’t feel like it gave it an asynchronous advantage.  I was playing two very different empires but I was hitting all the same buttons. 

[Essrog]

If you're going to let Rowan Kaiser talk about Stellaris, you have to invite Fraser Brown as a counter weight.