STELLARIS: New Paradox Game in SPAAAACE

[ulmont]

Stumbled again into the midgame wall. Bored to bits and without much to do or aim for. I could easily crush any of my neighbors if I actually could earn enough influence to put claims on their systems...

It's about this point I try to beeline for the Colossus Project.  Or restart and play a Determined Assimilator (you have massive diplo penalties but still can engage in diplo, and you have the total war CB always available; they are like Fanatic Purifiers light).

[fromtia]

Im only on my second game, playing the basic edition, with the vanilla default human star trek federation. Im at about 2309 and having a great time noodling away. I bought the game on GOG because the Steam sale ended, and now I see all the various Stellaris expansions and DLC are on sale on GOG as well.....

[Zanza]

Utopia is the best DLC, Apocalypse for warfare, Federations for diplomacy add quite a few mechanics.

Distant Stars, Leviathans, and Ancient Relics mainly add more stuff to explore. But there is also good content on Steam Workshop for that.

Megacorp and Syntethic Dawn make sense if you want to play those specific factions.

[fromtia]

Utopia is the best DLC, Apocalypse for warfare, Federations for diplomacy add quite a few mechanics.

Distant Stars, Leviathans, and Ancient Relics mainly add more stuff to explore. But there is also good content on Steam Workshop for that.

Megacorp and Syntethic Dawn make sense if you want to play those specific factions.

Awesome, thanks for the tips. The exploration part of the game is super fun.

[Agelastus]

So...

Normally by late game I am powerful enough to sit out the War in Heaven with my vassals and, depending on the empire I am playing, rarely one or two federation members (if they don't jump ship.) I'll jump in when "I" choose to, thank you very much...

First game with "Federations" where I have been interested enough to go past 2400.

I have a Star Hegemony, Maximum centralisation, and the largest Federation I have ever created. So I sit out the War declaration and all my members stay with me. Then I refuse to lead the League. Then another nation accepts...and apart from my vassals every...single...one of my members leaves the Federation to join the League of Non-aligned powers.

The War in Heaven has always annoyed me more than inspired me in the late game; now they seem to have made it worse. I mean, what's the point of having a new, improved federation where the president is supposed to be allowed to say "no" to members leaving if the War in Heaven ignores this mechanic the way it did with the pre-expansion old, simple federations?

Back to vassals only for me.

[Solmyr]

I didn't even get to War in Heaven in my current game. Actually, I don't think it would even be possible for it to trigger, because one of the two FEs were Ancient Caretakers, machine intelligence. The other one was Enigmatic Observers, and as soon as they awakened I went in to crush them, take their beautiful worlds, and enslave their populace. The Caretakers actually helped me earlier in the game, because the Great Khan spawned between them and me, and as soon as his fleets went near their border, they helpfully came to crush him. That kinda was fortunate for me, because I was also in the middle of AI rebellion at the time. By the time the Great Khan returned, I was ready for him and managed to kill him. I later thanked the Caretakers by conquering their ring worlds and dismantling them for parts. By the time the Unbidden showed up, I was powerful enough to just roll up to their portal and destroy all their fleets right away, before they could even expand anywhere.

Also spoiler for Horizon Signal event chain, if you haven't played it yet. [spoiler]I went through it and embraced the worm in the end. My home system, which was originally a tri-star, now houses three black holes. Not to mention all the barren planets and moons in the system got turned into tomb worlds, several of size 25+! Not that I really needed them at this stage of the game...[/spoiler]

[Zanza]

What difficulty level do you play? The higher difficulty levels are very tough early on for me as I never have a large enough fleet to fight off enemies. The lower difficulty levels leave the AI opponents in the dust by year 2300.

[celedhring]

I'm just plodding through the endgame, because I've never finished a single playthrough and I promised myself I'll do it this time. The Khan spawned and lasted two minutes before he was smashed by the AI. I conquered an L-gate early on, so I worked through that chain and I opened the gates. The dragons or whatever slipped through, but their target system was at the other side of the galaxy and right now they're rampaging through IA empires.

I'm busying myself building a Ringworld, never got far enough to finish a megaestructure.

[fromtia]

Still going on my second game, it's 2320 or so, I'm in the lead of the "regular" civilizations, but there's a pretty big lull without the exploration. Doldrums, which so many 4X suffers from, just a sort of whack-a-mole of economy resource management. Hopefully it'll pick up again shortly. perhaps ill buy one of the expansions for $5.

[Barrister]

I saw you guys having fun with this.  Had fun with Stellaris at first release - Steam says I have 60+ hours in.

Dammit though - so many expansions, none of which are on sale... I just can't buy them at full price...

[fromtia]

I saw you guys having fun with this.  Had fun with Stellaris at first release - Steam says I have 60+ hours in.

Dammit though - so many expansions, none of which are on sale... I just can't buy them at full price...

A lot of the expansions are on sale on GOG - Good Old Games Galaxy.

[Barrister]

Does that work through Steam though?

[fromtia]

No clue. also, they aren't on sale today dammit!!

[Syt]

Check also Paradox's own store, they had a spring sale that might still be on.

[Barrister]

Nevermind - been a lot of changes since I played, no need to worry about DLC to keep things interesting...