@dave_tacitus: Yeah, I even tried to take Austin's advice and create my own story and vision of how my race was operating or goals to work towards, but the game was giving me absolutely nothing to go on. I hope it's just randomness that I came upon a game that damn boring, but if I go centuries of expansion and development and nothing of interest happens I have to think something's wrong with their design. It's like they gave up on their goals and quests system after the early game, and forgot to add deep enough diplomacy/warfare/empire management to compensate once you got out of those.

The Hydragorian race is woefully prepared for the onslaught of this fleet of other-dimensional super-aliens who have just appeared and are wrecking the worlds of another faction I'm in a Federation with. Trained Physicists, Hydragoria are naturally inquisitive but a peaceful race at heart. They've expanded far and wide but lack an adequate military to properly protect it were they to be attacked next. Taking the diplomatic route early proved useful as the fleet of a neighbour five times their size has been crucial in keeping them around so far. However, fearfully their journey through the Cosmos seems to be coming to an end. I salute their Scientific achievements and raise a glass to the courageous few who will try to hold back the incoming onslaught.

I played about 4 hours today. I definitely feel the lack of narrative compared to CK2, which is the only other Paradox game I remotely understand. I feel like there's a way for it to be more immediately engaging besides written content. I had one of my first contacts and my only trade partner get wiped out, without any real message. I'm not too bummed since the early game is fun enough and its so accessible compared to their other stuff. I already feel like I have a grasp of the game.

I had a nice early thing where I played as nice space spiritualists. Everything was alright. Had some cool space discoveries. I think the tutorial might have mislead me into less optimal builds but nothing too scary. I eventually and foolishly joined a small pact with 2 close allies. Then my influence plummeted so I tried to start some rivalries, one led to a war that I will undoubtedly lose.

@deathpooky: Your experiences sounds about in line with what Austin was saying about the mid game being dry, which is too bad. Hopefully they do flesh it out with DLC, but it still sucks that a lot of the game can drag.

As for me, I've put 4 hours in so far. I'm feeling pretty attached to my Bird People. Gotten myself into a real pickle though. I'm surrounded on both sides by people who are far more powerful than me and don't like me because they are spiritualists and I'm a materialist. I set everything to use the default hyperdrive, so I can't really go between the arms of my spiral galaxy that well. And I waited too long to make good on my militaristic nature and attack one of them, so now they are in an alliance with each other, so attacking one will cause the aggro the other.

So I think I might be boned. Thinking about starting over with the same people, now that I know a bit better about how to play the game and how to manage resources.

I'm fascinated by the fact that you can only get achievements by playing on Ironman mode. Forced me to do it, and I am enjoying every bit of it.

@catlicker: I saw that. As soon as the major patch releases that's supposed to fix the faction system, I'll start an iron man run. I read somewhere that patch is coming before the end of the month.

I haven't read deep into it but there's another factions besides the ones who want to be returned to the control of their home nation. Something is failing to trigger those other factions into being created.

fuckin xenomorph armies man. I never invested at all in armies thinking they didn't matter and here i am trying to fight a war with some guy with xenomorph/psionic armies that apparently can't be bombarded.

What do we consider to be mid-game? Everyone in my game is too friendly and peaceful. I guess I need to start vassaling my weak neighbors. Seems like you don't get anything from vassals though... I'm looking forward to their updates.

I recently started research on a xenomorph army, so I'm looking forward to that.

@visariloyalist: You mean to tell me that Xenomorphs can't be nuked from orbit? I wonder if this is another inside joke from Paradox.

There's definitely a mid-game dip that it sounds like they're planning on addressing.

I think an interesting but potentially problematic thing is that if you get boxed in you have have to be the space jerk who kicks off hostilities. Now I'm personally fine with doing this but I know some of my friends for whatever reason are REALLY reluctant to be the initiator of aggression. I still haven't had another empire declare war on me but I have been draw into conflict through my vassals and alliances.

I hate to be a space-bully, but C'thulus needs to devour some worlds.

@wwen said:

I think mid-game is probably supposed to be inter-empire warfare. It seems like the planned progression the devs had in mind is:

Early-game: Grow and research tech

Mid-game: War and diplomacy, consolidate into alliances/federations or enslave other races

Late-game: Crisis events

I think the problem is that if you're generally a peaceful race, it gets kinda boring because other races generally stay out of your way if you're powerful enough. I've found the game gets way more interesting if you decide to be an evil alien overlord and just enslave the weaker races you come across. Supposedly the next big update is going to include "diplomatic events" that work sort of like diplomatic anomalies. I guess the idea is to have more ways to force you to engage with other races even you are generally peaceful.

Also, you totally get things from vassalizing people. It works kinda like an alliance with a really unequal power relationship - the vassalized state has to join any war you get involved in, even if you started it. You also get an influence bonus, although I've found that's pretty worthless since I'm more or less maxed out on influence all the time.

The late game is completely broken, primarily due to the AI.

When the Unbidden showed up on the other side of the map in between two large empires that were hostile to me, there was nothing I could do. I couldn't get over there to their territory in time to stop the Unbidden from expanding, and the AI were useless against them. When I finally did make it over there some years later, the Unbidden had expanded their territory by about 500% and had several fleets that were each at least double the size of my entire Navy. It was essentially game over at that point. I restarted a new game with a mod that disables the Unbidden completely.

It might have been different if they appeared near my territory, or if the AI wasn't totally inept.

@mike: aye I read that complain a couple of times now.

I am still really early into my mushroom slavers game, but somewhat reluctant to a sector, since I've heard some disheartening things about the sector AI, I also infiltrated and annexed a pre-space flight civilisation, they promptly formed a faction demanding independence from my empire :< Should have just abducted them for the science points I guess. Dunno, right now the "thing" for me is the exploration aspect, the planet management and specially fleet combat is a bit meh. Always enjoyed the more combat focused 4x games a bit more.

I don't mean to hijack but I figured I'd quickly ask if this is a good game to play for someone who has never played a 4X game before?

@mike: Funny how in my game the Unbidden pretty much got instantly destroyed on entering.

My empire of is pretty large now which means I need to keep the big federations happy which means lots of resources will go to them sadly. And whenever I'm bloodthirsty enough to pick off a smaller faction, everything relationship wise goes to shit again. Although I'm pretty much luring factions into war now by insulting them since my fleet is much bigger than anyone else's and I got a good number of fortresses to keep the lame 1-3K hitsquad fleets at bay.

And all internal stuff is solved with propaganda and clever resectoring.

Stellaris is accessible, but I would recommend something more like Civ V Complete when it goes on sale for 75% off again, which will probably be during the Summer Sale. Stellaris, and all Paradox games, seem to assume the player knows a little bit about 4x games going into them. Plus, Stellaris really needs a lot of work to feel "complete", whereas Civ V is ready to go now. Stellaris is a ton of fun and it might be the most accessible of all the Paradox grand strategy games, but I think it needs some time to mature in the form of patches and DLC.

Civ V may be five or six years old, but there are currently twice as many people playing it as Stellaris, if that tells you anything. If you really get into Civ, then you can check out Stellaris when it's more fleshed out and perhaps goes on sale. If you get really into 4x games then you can start looking at the Endless games, Sins of a Solar Empire, Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings II, or Hearts of Iron (a new one is coming out soon.)

@mike: Alright, thanks for the tips! I tried Civ V a few years ago and didn't really get into it but I like what I've been hearing/seeing from Stellaris around the site.

@jjbsterling: Stellaris is very good, don't get me wrong. I just find it hard to recommend in it's current state, especially to those who might not be familiar with 4x games. If you can look past some of the rough edges and oversights, there is a lot of fun to be had with Stellaris. Mayne not being experienced with 4x games is a good thing because you won't notice the glaring omissions and problems as quickly as someone coming straight off of EUIV, CKII, or Civ.

@jjbsterling: It's surprisingly easy to learn, but it's not as good as Civ 5 or even Galactic Civ 3. The main problem of Stellaris is there's really nothing you can do once the galaxy is populated besides waging war. If you want to get into 4X, get Civ 5. If the historical setting doesn't float your boat, get Galactic Civ 3. If you want pure fantasy, try Endless Legend or Age of Wonders 3. Stellaris is fantastic right up until the point there is no "eXpansion" left, were all you can do is "eXterminate", and the normal AI is completely useless.

@jjbsterling said:

Honestly I think it's kind of a mistake to even classify it as a 4X game, at least in the traditional sense. If you try to approach it like that, I think you'd be disappointed. Certainly, it has a lot of elements of a 4X game like eXploration and eXpansion, but beyond that it's kinda up to you what you want to do. You don't have to to eXploit or eXterminate anyone and there aren't really a lot of classical "win" conditions in the mold of Civ. Personally I think it feels different than a 4X game. It certainly isn't in the same mold as Civ or MOO. I might describe it as an "open-world-space-management-sim-RPG"?

@mike: Yeah, I think Civ V is always high on the "what people are playing on Steam" list and it has a pretty great community for learning things if you want to dig in. I have like 600 hours on it... one more turn, man.

I like Stellaris, but I'm more excited for what it can become. It has great looking bones, but needs more meat.

Is there a way to see where your embassies are without checking every empire for a "recall embassy" option?

I'm super enjoying it but it is very very rough. I think it needs a lot of polish in just about every part of the game. I say that while also super enjoying it. Making an empire is fun.

@wwen: Google tells me this: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/265735/how-can-i-see-where-my-embassies-are-deployed-in-stellaris

Nevermind, figured it out :b

I was hoping there was an easier way to get to that info and change it. Oh well. I want more windows to open sometimes.

After many hours I've decided, Stellaris is cool, but needs some polish. It did finally motivate me to get Endless Legend though, which I've had on my wishlist for a while. I'll look forward to coming back to Stellaris after some patches and an expansion. Defeating a crisis did net me an achievement of .16% rareness though. o_o

I think it's worth noting that Civ V was pretty mediocre compared to Civ IV when it was first released, but post G+K it was great and BNW cemented it as my favorite in the series. I agree that Stellaris' midgame is monotonous, yet here I am still conquering every last civ near me...Both the progenitors are gone, there's just one more large alliance (of a bunch of weak pushovers) in my way before I can claim victory for all Mushroom kind.

The mighty Associated Pobelin Worlds, with their 314 year old God President For Life Martha Sorensen. I don't know what sort of glitch caused her to be immortal but that +10% happiness bonus is A-OK with me!

Mid game is a SLOG. I'm debating whether to continue playing after two cycles of invade/conquer/consolidate. The early game is so good that it is a damn shame how bad the mid game is.

@banopr: Its a shame that the precursors are the only things that provide a real challenge to defeat. All of the other empires are just there to be tipped over and that's no fun. I want my existence to be challenged every time I wage war on an alliance/federation.

When's the patch out of beta? I thought I heard it was last week.

@hayt: Probably today or tomorrow. I've been running the beta most of the week and its been completely stable.

So i've been playing endless space and galciv 3 and i like both games a lot for different reasons but one thing both lack is the feeling of exploration and discovery. They both have deep lore and even when i'm supposedly a fledgling venturing off into the unknown i seem to already know the other aliens(Galciv seems to have an actual story and endless space has mercenaries from different species when you haven't even discovered them yet). Do you all think this game is better in that regards while still having decent gameplay in other areas(diplomacy,planet colonization,combat etc) I've been eyeing this game but the comments on the mid game have been turning me away.

Also anybody trying the game with a steam controller?