Only played five hours or so. Not really feeling it. Everything seems kind of bland. AI seems really stupid. No real challenge despite having less tech and less ships. I kind of wanted more.

@alphasquid: There are quite a few research projects that will increase your monthly gain of influence

Playing as a pacifist xenophile alliance builder on harder difficulties is rough. Everyone gets a cool -25 modifier to alliance willingness towards you, and I'm not willing to rival the large bully on my southern flank, since he likes me a bunch. If we all allied against him, everyone would be better off, but because I don't want to antagonise him nobody wants to play ball.

How do you wage a war?? I fought an empire that was smaller than me, beat their fleet in engagements, by the time i started bombarding their planets they had rebuilt their whole fleet and attacked me again... It was like a 20 year war of attrition and since it ended that enemy has grown too big to fight. The combat is kind of broken if its that easy for the ai to rebuild it's fleets and comeback, do i just need a massive fleet size advantage???

@mikemcn: Well if you go out and destroy his mines and siege his planets he wont have anything to rebuild with. Also there is an wareconomic policy that can greatly help you massproduce new ships while loosing an defensive war. (basicly sieze all private properties in the name of saving our existance.)

Building ships really dont take that much time though as long as you have the resources for it.

Also the obvious answear to this is: wage war like your AI opponent did VS you ;) Learn from your failures.

Loving this game. The one thing I don't like is the rivalry thing. Like, there is nothing you can do if another empire declares you their rival, and it seems that only the other empire can end the rivalry.

@sgtsphynx: they've only declared you as a rival, you haven't necessarily declared them as your rival so there isn't anything for you to end. Though I think if you do declare someone as your rival you get extra influence per month and maybe other stat changes too. I don't know enough about the game to say what it would be a good strategic move for, other than influence. It seems just to be, if you need influence you can get some but you put someone else's cross-hairs on you.

The AI in general seems kind of weak. The opposing empires seem very stagnant. I'm at 10 hours in and no AI has declared any wars on anyone and I have received a trade offer exactly once. Also the AI that is supposed to govern your sectors is flat dumb or broken. The sector AI isn't constructing stations basically at all. The idea of offloading some of the micromanagement is only a good one if that system functions the way it is meant to.

I think I'm done for now. Hopefully in future patches they make the AI better/ functional. I want to love this game, but at the moment it just feels a bit boring.

@cronus42: Have you met many civs? I'm playing on normal and I've been seeing wars and rivalries pop off here and there for a while (I'm about 10-12 hours in, roughly), and have gotten a few trades (mostly star charts, but a couple migration ones).

A good third of the civs have joined this one alliance, and I think there's another big alliance running as well. Meanwhile I just sit in my corner of a galaxy, boxed in by some pissy fallen empire guys, those assholes.

Edit: I also had to break from expansion to deal with a few things, and when I looked back this one Civ had taken basically everything I would've headed for. So they're definitely doing stuff on my game.

It could be that your galaxy generated with little conflicting ideals or something, I dunno. I haven't done sector stuff yet so I can't comment on that.

Fucking bird people are the worst.

I'm liking this game so far.

My starting game I went pacifist but found I couldn't get any influence going regularly. Then an ally got into a war and I could't negotiate peace despite being at 100% with them because a different empire had already taken the systems that my ally wanted. So I started over with a race of militaristic fox people and it's going fantastic. I'm almost always sitting on max for all three major resources and have taken over a handful of other empires.

One thing I'd really like this game to have is more diplomatic options. The combat is a bit boring too since it's just "who ever has the biggest fleet wins" and there's no real strategy. I suppose to can lure the enemy to a system with a weak fleet and then ambush them with a larger one but it doesn't really seem to be any better than just rolling around with one or two massive fleets.

I just played this for 5 hrs straight on first sitting. It took about 2hrs to get my head around but once things all made sense beyond a certain point it was ultra - addictive. I think I'm really going to love this game.

I've created a Police State in the game. 100% enslavement of the population except for one guy who rules absolutely, his pop-Idol war princess, and a handful of advisers.

After a second look I really don't like this. Everything is so barebones. All civs are basically the same. Diplomacy is an after thought. Building up is a chore. Just really bad across the board.

So it turns out if you keep pissing off the demigod civs, they will stomp your face into the dirt. At least I was calling them "Fuckos" as my ships exploded, and giving them the middle finger (...tentacle?) as my homeworld of Hydros burned.

Second game is much better so far. Working my way up the end of another spiral arm, having bypassed one civ (who just hates me) and it seems like no more are past him. That guy and me started insulting each other every five-ish minutes for like an hour before I got tired of going through the menu to do it back, and declared rivals. He never went so far as to declare war though (we're about equal on the diplomacy screen), and neither have I.

He then went and stomped this other Civ on the next arm over that was friendly to me (only has one planet now), but right before I stopped playing I got invited to an Alliance from another dude the jerk was encroaching on, who then invited the one-planet friend, so now the jerk is surrounded by three people in an Alliance. I think shit's about to get real.

I tried playing a peaceful race and honestly the game seems to have way too few winning conditions and trade possibilities and science perks. Or hell, even things to put all your resources into other than getting even more resources or building war fleets. I dunno I'm probably going to pick up my current save again and try to find anything meaningful to do but I can't see it right now. It's like you're funneled into conflict.

Edit: Also honestly the influence mechanic is terrible. Why does making alliances and building new outposts i.e. EXPANDING my realm decrease my political influence? How would making others your rivals increase it, especially as a pacifist race? And why are there so seemingly few ways to gain it? I was lucky I got that one +1 research perk early, I can totally see the rng fucking you over if you don't.

@bouken: It doesnt decrease your influence. You use your political influence to expand.

Having a rival is basicly like the cold war. You are doing everything but going to war to gain influence over them and and then using that influence to create alliances and outposts to squeeze them in tight.

Its like the soviets using influence to put missiles on Cuba.

19 hours into my first game , cant help but feel alot of the systems and mechanics in the game feel very flat , but i know from experience that they will mostly overhaul these systems with the multiple expansion dlcs that i expect to come down the line , it mildly depressing to know that the dlc is such a core part of their business strategy now (with ck2 and eu4 progressing much the same way) .. but honestly I expected all of this , and im happy to have the base game available.

also .. 19 hours in and I still haven't gone to war yet because i got lucky? and have a pretty large section of space to call my own (waiting with butt puckered for late game events) .. im so used to ignoring victory conditions in paradox games, feels weird to even have them there.

Chances are all but certain that given a year, and several DLCs this game will be nothing like it is now. Paradox is if anything not shy about reworking entire systems and concepts in their games for a long, long time. So, its hard to pass final judgement on something that feels like its going to be completely different given a year or two.

That said, my first (and only) game so far started pretty standard. Humans, Sol. Peaceful Ultra Materialist. I lucked out quite a bit in that my first, and only close other empire was a 'lets make a federation!' style. I made the mistake of entering an alliance early though, the hit to influence was not worth it. It worked itself out however given time and now a few hours later I am speeding along making progress in the general "lets expand and build an empire."

I kind of lucked out in a sense I started at the top of the map with a lot of room to expand and no really close empires minus the one almost instant ally.

I say all that to say, for me the games been fun and I want to go back. I find myself only playing for an hour or so at a time, its the sort of game where I remember/decide a goal, get started, achieve it, put it down until a new goal comes to mind. It was certainly worth my money so far.

That said, while I expect the game I Am in to take me weeks to finish, its highly possible a second play through might not be nearly as fun. With the events being repeated and such. The game is certainly 'sterile' in a way that leaves it needing the 'blorg space-friends' style narrative to really drive the game forward..and since that is all self-generated unless your able to write such fiction in your own head..well.

The game is absolutely easier to get into than any paradox game to date. It starts off very very much like a X4 game. Explore, expand. The tech card system is simple to understand as is the base-building aspect of planet management. The game does get more complicated as you go, but I think its got a good 'ease you into it' curve.

That said..its by no means bug free. I have not run into any hitching but I do seem to have a problem where every empire I discover/am discovered by doesn't pop up with 'a new empire has translated your language and.." with the accompanying diplomacy screen. Instead I get a "A alien ship has appeared in Sol calling itself the 'empire name here". No ship of course, but the empire does appear on my map and on the list of known empires. Its a weird bug for sure.

@rethla: it literally decreases my monthly influence gain by a significant margin.

@bouken: It doesnt. You are spending influence on it monthly.

Paradox use small payed DLCs to be able to support their games for a long time but most of the DLCs are cosmetic. All systemoverhauls finetuning etc. Are given to all for free via patches.

So far I've managed to load up the start screen with the spacebase and the planet in the background. If I go beyond that I get overwhelmed and log out and hug my knees in a corner.

@rethla: how is spending something monthly not the same as your monthly gain decreasing? It's functionally the exact same thing.

Like, what's even your point here?

@bouken: My point is that it makes perfect sense to use your influence to set up outposts and forge alliances. You dont get less influence by expanding your empire like you put it but rather you use your influence to expand your empire. Perhaps i missunderstood what you mean by "broken".

@rethla: I didn't use the word broken though, I said terrible, and I meant it both from a world-consistency as well as a gameplay standpoint.

For one thing I'm not sure I see how it makes sense to "spend" your influence on an outpost that expands your empire, as you call it, or get less influence as I called it. That's probably where we got off track in the first place because political influence isn't some material resource you gather so spending it doesn't make that much sense to me. You either have it and with it might be able to do certain things but specifically when that action in question is literally expanding your empire and thus logically increasing your overall influence over the galaxy, I don't see how it makes sense that it'd be used up by it. The political resource in general is weird. I understand why certain policies and appointing generals, governors or scientists might cost you influence because you can imagine that some people in your society will always be against it for various political reasons and you kinda have to win them over or rule against them which isn't possible when you don't have enough influence over your population overall but expanding? And especially when as far as I know you "spend" your influence on expanding regardless of what kind of society you're playing? Same with alliances. Alliances make you strong, they give you political allies you can count on and are potentially prestigious. Xenophiles should be all up in that, as should materialists.

Plus from a gameplay perspective there are too few ways to gain influence as I see it. I started my pacifist race with +3 monthly gain, didn't get the perk that gives you +1 for a few hours and then being in a single alliance already gave me -2, building a single outpost gave me another -1 so I was already stuck at +-0 with very few habitable planets around me. And yes I know rivalries and all that jazz but man I was playing fanatical pacificsts, declaring rivals wasn't an option in my headcanon.

Very high quality. Some things are still quite clunky, like upgrading the buildings on a planet. Not to keen on the planets being what they are and so close to civ.

So, I think it is very well made, does a good job, not a single part of it is a bad decision (Endless space was neat, but the combat being turn-based semi cardgame based wasn't too great).
But, I don't think I like it. Endless legend is still the 4x with the most new fun things. (Not that that game comes together perfectly)

I like it a lot. It seems rather quite simple. There are not so many systems yet, but you can do fun stuff with pops and pre-FTL. The combat system is quite interesting with the rock/paper/sicissors approach in combination what fleet composition and behaviour you should employ.

Ground combat is to simplisitc though, and the enemy-empire AI and the sector management AI need a bit of work though.

I'm 20ish hours into my first real game and loving it. The emergent stories are beautiful.

The thing I'm truly loving, though, is how little emphasis there is on "winning." My least favorite part of the Civ games is when I've established my neat little nation and suddenly the realization sets in that I'm supposed to be pursuing these "victory conditions," and if I don't, one of the AIs will get there first. I vastly prefer the Dwarf-Fortress-esque playstyle of setting your own goals and just pressing forward until you feel like you're ready to stop, and Stellaris accommodates that nicely.

@bouken:Well you "spend" your influence points as an representation of you using your influence. At some point you have to accept that its a game and you need to see some numbers to know what is happening around you. Its like experience, research points and everything else. It wouldnt be a very fun game if everything like that was hidden from the player to mimic real life.

Using your influence to control an sector thats not normaly within your empire (like setting up an "outpost") is exactly the type of thing nations use their influence for in real life. As in the Cuba crisis that i took as an example.

Having allies that you can depend on doesnt give you any free influence, its quite the opposite as you will have to let them into every decision you make. If you wanna have any sort of control in the alliance you need to use/spend your influence to get your allies where you want. What you get from an alliance is military power so i dont see how that is more correct than having rivals as an pacifist. Surely you would wanna be neutral as an pacifist.

I'm now fairly far into my game, I have two massive expanses of space, two vassals under my rule and a huge fleet. At this point there really isn't much in terms of diplomacy and inter-imperial relations. All I'm doing is keep researching incremental upgrades for my fleet. I guess I can invade my neighboring fallen empires, but they still have superior fleets that just sit on their feathery asses. There is a real solid foundation here, but as people have said, it's a bit barebones. I'll keep going though until the entire galaxy is under my rule since after all, it is my divine destiny.

@rethla: I wouldn't wanna be neutral, if I'm threatened by another empire I'd want someone to protect me without having to have a fleet myself. Even when in peace times I'd try building alliances for trade, research and travel since that's what I'm all about. I mean the Federation in Star Trek is the classic example. They certainly don't run around taunting other races to score at home. I see the points you're making but once again the problem for me is that political influence doesn't vanish, it's not spendable because what you gain in terms of power and influence over the universe by "spending" it would theoretically give you just as much prestige or influence or whatever if everything goes right. Unlike energy and minerals of course, those get legitimately used up. I dunno, at the very least I think it's poorly chosen as a resource concept to have in such a game.

Also, I would suggest that if you have a frontier outpost that later comes within the sphere of one of your colony worlds that you then deconstruct the outpost. That'll at least give you your invested point back.

@mrbubbles: People are saying that this game is accessible if you've played Civ which is not the case as my little brother has been having trouble getting his head around it. I haven't had time to get into it but I am excited to learn. I loved CK II and Hearts of Iron.

@bouken: Seems to me like your issue sorta comes down to semantics. Instead of influence think of it as political support/capital. By uniting your people against a common enemy (rivaling) you can get away with doing a lot of stuff that would normally be unpopular, like using your military to take control over uncharted territory or uniting forces with another empire to fight common enemies. It's important to remember that both of these things that put a constant drain on your influence are militaristic/aggressive actions. There's no need to ally up with other empires unless there's a war coming, and expanding your empire through colonization has much more legitimacy than just putting up a base and saying "this is ours".

Does anyone have any insight into how trading works? I can't seem to get any of the neighboring aliens to accept any kind of trade, even though they like me. For instance, earlier I suggested an even star chart trade with a neighbor which they promptly declined, only for them to offer the exact same trade just a few days later which I accepted. I couldn't get them to accept my trade offer even when I was piling on all kinds of other stuff onto my side of the deal, either.

@mike: The counter over the trade needs be at least 1 (or higher) for them to accept the trade. There's a lot of different things that will permanently set it to -1000 based on your relationship, so you just gotta experiment with it really. Having that said, so far I've only really found trading useful for giving them all the things they want so they like me better. I've never made a trade that was "worth it" for me.

@ares42: Maybe they just don't want to trade with a xenophobic slave driver

@mike: Heh, yeah that probably doesn't help much =)

I can do plenty of (resource) trading, but my divine mandate empire thingie is a pretty okay place to live, as long as you convert I guess. Got my first Reaper type invasion, but they kinda... suck? It's happening on the opposite site of the galaxy but when I trade star charts with the surrounding people, it seems they don't really move up.

Now trying to wipe out a fallen empire to completely secure my corner of the galaxy. Tough bunch of bastards though with 60k+ fleet strength sitting on like 5 systems. I don't have the energy production yet to support a superior fleet.

@mike: I had the exact issue you described, (Them refusing a trade only to offer me the same trade moments later). The only thing I could think of was that I had an embassy, they slowly tick up your standing with the faction so I assumed it reached the point where it triggered them to make the trade with me.

I really like this game, but there are some things that bother me. For instance, I was in a 70 year war because my alliance started one and didn't want to call it off for whatever reason even though we had essentially put the enemy faction back into the stone age. It's little things like this that make me wish that the player had a little bit more control or feature to control the tide of war between nations. Kind of wish trading was a bit more flushed out, but I guess there is nothing really worth trading anyways aside from tech. Also the tutorial stuff does not help you in the long run, so I wish there was some kind of way of accessing that information before starting an actual game.

Here's a tip...choosing a ring-type galaxy can kind of suck. I ended up with two major superpowers on either side of me that had little interest in any kind of diplomacy, which left me with little room to expand. Both of their fleets are also massive, so any kind of war is out of the question. I'm probably going to have to restart, because right now all I'm doing is sitting stagnant in my little section of space and collecting research.

@mike: if you mouse over the trade acceptance number (the one that is frequently -1000 because nobody likes to trade anything ever) it'll tell you exactly why they wont do it. Some civs have traits that mean they'll never trade a certain thing on principle. I've also had several instances of trying to trade things like star charts declined only to have the trade proposed by them 5 minutes later. The trade percentages are also a factor, if their percentage is under 100% then they'll want you to give them more than they're giving or they wont accept. (I may have the under over of the percentage the wrong way round I'm not sure)

@hark: Interesting, thanks! Does it tell you what they want, or do you just have to hunt for the right trade item?

@mike: no it doesn't tell you what they want but usually if they reject a fair trade it's because of some extenuating circumstance that the trade number will show you. I think they're opinion of you does have a substantial effect on their willingness to trade and that does get shown when you mouse over the number. Also certain trades like migration access and open borders etc will increase their opinion of you if you have those deals active.

see here even though we're trading the same thing, I have a plus 10 for the trade because of that 110% willingness they have.

Here they'll never accept to give me Research no matter what I give them, even if I offered all my systems, unless I give them my research too.

Here these guys hate me to they'll never trade anything, also because they're fanatical purifiers, they're trade percentage is 0 anyway so no trades.

Does anyone know of a good way to increase performance in the late game? The game chugs at sub 20fps for me now that there are large fleets moving around and most of the galaxy is uncovered. The options menu is pathetic so is there an .ini edit that could alleviate the problem?

Having now reached mid-game of my first game, I'm quickly souring on the game. The early expansion, exploration, and danger were all great, but the game has stagnated. I'm dominating my part of the galaxy in strength and resources, I'm part of a relatively strong federation that maintains peace in our half of the galaxy, and the fallen empires are the only threat that are still too overwhelming to prevent further expansion. Unless I wanted to provoke a war with someone on the other side of the galaxy or betray my federation to fully dominate my part of the galaxy I've got nothing to do.

The 200+ years have just been incremental research upgrades and consolidating my power. I control everything in my territory full built-out, I've been forced to divide into sectors so I can't even optimize my entire empire, and nothing of import has happened to challenge me. There's no internal threats at all in the game, external threats are either non-existent or overwhelming, and the lack of a tech tree means I have no idea what I'm building towards in terms of technology. I've completed all my initial quest threads and nothing has replaced them. It's unbelievably boring. It's making me really disappointed that this is all there is and the expectation will be for DLC to fill in the emptiness. Even if Civ games were fleshed out by DLC, I still enjoyed playing through a full game in their vanilla versions.

Play a bunch of games with singleplayer, multiplayer of all numbers, and the game is fine. Has lots of problems but most are small and fixable in a patch. It made me and my friends go back yesterday and play a ton of CK2 instead because that game is probably the best of paradox's lineup. The main thing missing from stellaris is that the ability to lose interestingly. For instance, in CK2 I lost because my wife cheated on me, gave me a son I couldn't prove wasn't mine and thus in my line of succession, but had some god awful stats and skills. My court, after I started playing as my child/not really my child, hated him and rebelled after a few years and overthrew my line. That is an interesting loss. In Stellaris I just... lose a war? Someone comes and kills me? More likely I just get 'space-locked' by other empires and end up falling asleep staring at the map screen waiting for something to happen

I'm really enjoying Stellaris, but I'm holding off on playing much more while I wait for the Warhammer 40k mod to get finished: Twilight of the Imperium.

@deathpooky: Yep, I've bounced off it in much the same way. I also don't take the 'it'll be better with some DLC' excuse. CK2 wasn't as good in its original form but I found it a hell of a lot more engaging than Stellaris has turned out.