It’s OUT!!!
And I’m so damn busy. will be lucky to get a game started sooner than next week sometime :’(
Yay!
They also released an expansion for EU4 today. But Stellaris has priority for me.
There’s supposed to be a sale on Paradox titles this weekend. It won’t cover the latest stuff, but the base games will definitely be cheaper.
I’ve played it for… oh, it’s that late already, is it?
I haven’t gotten to most of the new stuff yet. So far though, I absolutely love how pops will migrate from core worlds to frontiers. It gives it a real manifest destiny feel. I don’t have to wait as long to upgrade government buildings. Not to mention I don’t feel the need to shut down hydroponic farms on a planet once it fills up.
I’m playing it and really enjoying it. My Fanatic Spiritualist/Egalitarian squid-headed guys have just gotten the Transcendence Ascension Perk, but I haven’t yet researched the Shroud. Next Perk after that, I’m going for Ringworlds.
So far it’s been a mostly-lucky playthrough, except for a Xenophobe Fallen Empire spawning uncomfortably close to my empire. A fact that I found out when I built a Frontier Outpost and they declared war on me to force me to get rid of it without even letting me dismantle it first.
“Our flesh harvesters are coming for your larva!”
I finished up all my responsabilities for the week so I’m going to be playing it today. I can’t wait!
Me to, was up at midnight last night and early this morning working, just so I’d have a few hours tonight to play.
I can’t WAIT!!
So good!!!
I’ve also got the Mass Effect and Interstellar soundtrack mods turned on. Ready to sink in for the next 3 hours.
I had a very rough start. I began stuck between two advanced start AIs. The only other empire around got vassalized early by one of the AIs.
I eventually found a civilization weaker than me but messed up tactically and got myself into a drawn and brutal struggle. I won but it was stupidly expensive just to get a protectorate.
The game is getting to the point where the end game crisis will trigger and there’s 4 powers stronger than me, not including Fallen Empires. I just took a chunk out of some weakling Trade Federation, “I give you plasma blasts you give me planets” but I’m really worried about an end game crisis. I have a little over 10K fleets. If I max out my naval capacity I can maybe get to about 15K. My empire is weak and could be easily destroyed.
Fortunately the two strongest powers (the ones that started next to me) don’t hate me that much, and don’t like each other.
Not sure how this one is going to finish out, but I predict a bad outcome.
Three hours? Pffft! Lightweight.
I’m really enjoying the changes to the game. Migration is a bit sloshy, but much better than before. If I colonize four new habs simultaneously, pops from my core worlds will flock to one of them and leave the other three nearly empty until the next wave of migrants. It’s still a hell of a lot better than before, when the second pop on each frontier planet would nope out back to the core.
Habs are fun. Their buildings generally have one tier, so you can “fire and forget” their planning, assuming you’ve got the minerals.
I’m not sure if it’s part of the Banks patch, but, with the right techs, war demands get a lot cheaper. I also like how you can now demand the dismantling of frontier outposts (and that you can often spare the warscore to do so).
Yes, they added several technologies that let you reduce war demand cost. And you can reduce it even further if you have Utopia with the right Traditions.
I’m loving my little robot slaves. They tend to the mines and farms, and my bourgeois Quarians are free to pursue science and engineering.
I’m sure this setup will be just fine and dandy form here on out.
Yes, of course. Your robot slaves will never, ever rise up against you.
beep kill beep
Shush, not yet.
It took me a while to update my mods. They changed how defines work. And broke defines mods completely. But the beta patch and some searching around let me fix things.
First game is going well. It looks like my immediate neighborhood is empty.
I went ahead and took a BIG plunge into Paradox games. I already have Europa Universalis but they had a package deal (in addiction to the already deep sale going on) for Stellaris, Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron IV (it is nice that Steam now recognizes if you already have an item in a bundle and automatically drops it and lets you buy the rest). Between them I should be busy till next year playing all of that.
I figured I’d start with Stellaris since that is all new and fresh with the new DLC (I got the Utopia DLC).
My question is are there any must have mods I should get? I know many mods are personal taste but often there are a few that fix the UI or make important balance changes that are good for everyone. Since I have not played yet not sure what, if any, those might be.
*in addition :smack:
Freudian slip? 
With the new DLC just dropping I wouldn’t trust anything that’s not purely cosmetic, like new portraits and music mods, for at least a little bit.
My favorites are pretty much all the ones that add portraits to the game, including Alien Suns. Also the soundtrack mods, the mass effect and Interstellar ones are great, but you can always use your own music, and a lot of people do for these types of games, YMMV.
I also use some graphics mods like Epic Explosions and beautiful universe. The total conversion mods for Star Wars, and especially Star Trek are AMAZING. But give those a shot after playing the vanilla game.
I can’t really think of anything I’d consider essential, except maybe for Extra Events. Great mod with a ton of extra events and anomalies to encounter.
Is there a tutorial for Stellaris?
I may have missed it and I can certainly figure it out without one but a tutorial would be nice to introduce me to the mechanics of the game.
I quit before I got started because I was not prepared (at this time) to jump into the deep end and sort it out.
I got kind of bored with my psionic ascension game, so I started a new one, as a hive mind.
I had been peaceful, but then some aliens to my galactic east attacked me. Luckily, I hadn’t neglected my spaceports. I scrambled to build a fleet of corvettes. I met the enemy fleet in an uninhabited system in my territory. We were outmatched, but a second wave of corvettes was under construction. Somehow my main fleet became the rally point for the new ships; they were jumping in one at a time to join the battle. I lost, but just barely. The enemy strike force was left too weak to overcome my starbases. The war went into a lull for a few years as I upgraded my mines before rolling out a bigger fleet. This new fleet spearheaded an invasion of enemy territory. My would-be conquerors are officially dinner.
I barely had a chance to regroup and repair before an alliance of aliens to my north and west declared war on me. My focus on mine and fleet construction caught up with me: What initially seemed like a small energy deficit ate away all of my reserves. I scrambled to build and upgrade power plants. I thought I could pull myself out of an economic tailspin, but the completion of a new fleet kept me in the negatives. The first blackouts began just as we repelled an alien invasion force from my home system. To save energy, I razed the cities of my conquered eastern systems; I wasn’t going to settle those miserable iceballs any time soon anyway. Besides, all those planets need is a few concentration camps/canneries.
I still needed a bit more energy, so I started deactivating my hydroponics farms. My core worlds can afford to put agriculture on hold for a few years. That’s right: Eating our vanquished foes is the only thing saving the collective from economic ruin.
Yep. I think you may have to turn it on in the settings. A few of the empire options will turn it off however (like making a hive mind empire.
You can set fleets as rally points; there’s a little button at the top of the fleet screen for it. It’s set to default “on” for your main fleet.