STELLARIS: New Paradox Game in SPAAAACE

[Syt]

But then they went an unveiled throne room dlc...

Plus a full culture rework.

[Tamas]

But then they went an unveiled throne room dlc...

Plus a full culture rework.

Personalising cultures sounds very silly, I sure hope that design philosophy won't get into Victoria 3.

[The Brain]

But then they went an unveiled throne room dlc...

Plus a full culture rework.

Personalising cultures sounds very silly, I sure hope that design philosophy won't get into Victoria 3.

Mew.

[crazy canuck]

But then they went an unveiled throne room dlc...

Plus a full culture rework.

Personalising cultures sounds very silly, I sure hope that design philosophy won't get into Victoria 3.

I think I will wait to see what they produce before condemning it as very silly. 

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - it might be better than hard-coding it. Like the shift to English culture seems weird if the Normans don't invade/win (or indeed the emergence of Norman culture), while if the Norse do then it's a different combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures.

[Tamas]

Yeah - it might be better than hard-coding it. Like the shift to English culture seems weird if the Normans don't invade/win (or indeed the emergence of Norman culture), while if the Norse do then it's a different combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures.

A culture, however, is a very organic thing, one should be not be assembling pieces of it in a shopping cart. That sort of works with a religion, less so with culture.

[Syt]

Yeah - it might be better than hard-coding it. Like the shift to English culture seems weird if the Normans don't invade/win (or indeed the emergence of Norman culture), while if the Norse do then it's a different combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures.

A culture, however, is a very organic thing, one should be not be assembling pieces of it in a shopping cart. That sort of works with a religion, less so with culture.

I'll reserve judgment till they explain it more in dev diaries. So far this is pretty much all we have, from the vision statement:

Much like with faiths, cultures will be made more interesting and malleable - all in line with our vision of Player Freedom and Progression.

Different cultures will have different traditions, different opinions of each other, and even shift and change with time. No longer will cultures be static and similar - we want to give you, the player, the freedom and possibility to shape your own culture and guide its progress in a variety of exciting ways. Of course, culture will change at a slower pace than Faiths do - it'll be gradual over time, tradition by tradition. Though sometimes larger shifts can occur due to isolation, or as the result of two different cultures intermingling.

Grow the acceptance between cultures in your realm, diverge your culture to adopt a new Ethos, or create a Hybrid between two cultures in your realm - adopting the language, traditions and aesthetic choices you find the most compelling.

[Sheilbh]

A culture, however, is a very organic thing, one should be not be assembling pieces of it in a shopping cart. That sort of works with a religion, less so with culture.

Yes - but we know in this period there was conscious adoption of different court fasions/cultural features (especially from France). That shapes court culture and, over the course, of decades if not longer impacts popular culture too.

I think there was more mix-and-match about culture and adopting fashions such as the French chivalry/courtly ideals than there was mixing and matching of religious views.

If it was me I'd probably allow (comparatively) very rich and developed centres more lee-way in adopting culture - e.g. Byzantium, Paris etc - and aspects of those cultures can then be picked up by courts near them (Kyiv, England etc). But I'd also make that your court culture and over decades that may change your "culture" in provinces/popular culture but possibly not in the ways you'd hoped/expected.

I have far less issue with pick and mix on culture than I do on religion because heresiarchs founding new religions was not that common

[Tamas]

Fine, let's wait how it turns out.

[crazy canuck]

A culture, however, is a very organic thing, one should be not be assembling pieces of it in a shopping cart. That sort of works with a religion, less so with culture.

Yes - but we know in this period there was conscious adoption of different court fasions/cultural features (especially from France). That shapes court culture and, over the course, of decades if not longer impacts popular culture too.

I think there was more mix-and-match about culture and adopting fashions such as the French chivalry/courtly ideals than there was mixing and matching of religious views.

If it was me I'd probably allow (comparatively) very rich and developed centres more lee-way in adopting culture - e.g. Byzantium, Paris etc - and aspects of those cultures can then be picked up by courts near them (Kyiv, England etc). But I'd also make that your court culture and over decades that may change your "culture" in provinces/popular culture but possibly not in the ways you'd hoped/expected.

I have far less issue with pick and mix on culture than I do on religion because heresiarchs founding new religions was not that common

Reminds me of the discussion in Marc Morris' new book on the Anglo Saxons (which I highly recommend).  He has a chapter on the cultural impact of the Saxons coming in the 400s (he examines 400-1066 in the book).  It had a significant impact both in displacing Brittonic peoples in limited areas, but also a significant impact on the cultural of those who were not displaced but heavily influenced by their arrival.  He details how there was a very interesting mix of cultural practices in a number of areas of the South East.

It may be that the only way to properly model this sort of thing is on an individual basis

[Zanza]

During the period covered in CK3, the "French", "German", "English", "Russian" etc. cultures formed in a way from Frankish, Anglo-Saxon/
Norman or Slav/Viking cultural predecessors. Let's see if this mechanism is just paint the map or something interesting. 

[Berkut]

I was poking around at Stellaris, and a thought occured to me....

Rarely do games like this actually get much better after their release. I mean, they get less buggy (which is better of course) but they rarely ever actually improve the actual gameplay. By that I mean, they rarely take the game systems, and think about how people play, and then actually make them *better*. Mostly they just add more stuff. More DLC, more variants, more complexity, more races, more ways to play.

But so many of the changes that have happened in Stellaris to the core of how the game works...I'm not sure they made a better game. A more complex game? Sure. But better? I can't really see it. The decisions I make while playing just seem like the same decisions I made before. I still make a giant stack of ships. I still end up playing chase/whack-a-mole in any sigificant fight. I still have to figure out how to mechanically optimize my planets in a way that feels like I am just catering to the mechanics of the game, not to any kind of strategic decision making.

I am not particularly good at Stellaris, and I don't play as much as many so I concede that I could be way off....but then, if it was the game I would want it to be, I would not need to be an expert to see that.

Anyway, I don't think it is a bad game at all, and will certainly keep playing it. But it just feels like they missed somehow, at least for me. I feel like it would be a better game with LESS "stuff" in it, and more tightly focused on player decisions and the impacts of those decisions outside of how to optimize the games systems best.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I agree with you.  It is more complex, but the end result is the same. And I can't say the complex is mroe entertaining since it feels irrelevant.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Do point defenses, fighters, or anything other than battleships with neutron torpedos matter? 

[Zanza]

New DLC "Overlord" announced today. Focus on  vassalization mechanics. Additional content will be new origins, new enclaves and new megastructures.

I will of course buy it like every time.