I’m really liking the interactions between ideology, civics, factions, and pops. I’m definitely getting more of a “living world” feel from my empire now.
My latest tweak is increasing the hitpoints of fixed installations (spaceports, mines, platforms, etc) by a factor of ten. It slows down the coarse of war and gives some time to reorganize after a fleet defeat. At least in the early game.
I’m playing again after the patch, but it still lacks the ‘zing’ of a good 4X for me. Time to break out MOO2 again, I think.
MOO2 is probably best of genre. 
Have you tried different options in the Stellaris game setup? If you set number of empires to about 5, with 0 advanced starts, 0 fallen empires, and no end-game crises, you’ll get something more like a traditional 4X.
I always zero out Advanced Starts and cut down a few of the AI empires, but not usually that far. Perhaps I should try that. I still have issues with Paradox’s trademark war system, and it seems like the formula for success has a very narrow error tolerance … if I push to expand as fast as my neighbors, to keep them from getting good planets, my fleet strength falls way behind. If I push to keep up militarily, my planet development suffers.
I think it’s a combination of scant initial resources and high upkeep costs for mining stations and buildings.
But basically, the game is fun right up until you meet the first AI empire, and then it starts to decline for me. So the settings you suggest might be the cure for that. The only downside I can think of is that then you don’t have a barometer for how well you’re doing relative to the others, and could find yourself in an unwinnable game by the time you run into them.
I find you need to be selective in the early game with respect to what stations you build or don’t build. +4/+5 science, oh yes please. +4 minerals, oh yes please. Any + energy, sure but only if you’re close to a deficit (otherwise it is a waste of minerals). Picking out good frontier posts is a handy skill. If you have a big surplus of energy it is no big deal, but otherwise make sure that a frontier outpost will get you at least +3 energy so that it pays for itself. Ideally you want 5-6 energy from a frontier outpost so it’ll pay for a few stations as well. Then the other thing to look for is planet acquisition and denial. You’re continental and you spot a size 25 Alpine… well we’ll just put a frontier outpost on that and make sure nobody grabs it (again assuming such an outpost will be profitable).
Another thing is to build up a sizeable influence reserve (~150) for the inevitable leader die-off 50-70 years into the game. Your initial set of scientists will die off fairly close to each other typically and it will cripple you if you can’t replace one.
Overall through you’re right the early game is a tricky bit of balance between fleet and planetary development.
After some playing around, I think Stellaris has some major issues, partly built on its quasi-basis in Europa Universalis.
First, there’s a huge lack of fixed defenses. Yes, they exist, but they’re nothing more than a speedbump to an actual warfleet. Where this becomes an issue, is that it turns every war into a massive war. In this game, ever war turns out like a Mahan-idealized naval war, entirely dependent on one gigantic battle. Even with a bunch of bonuses to building ships, it almost impossible to rebuild after a major loss. Once you take serious losses, the enemy (whether that’s the player or AI) can simply roll right over you.
Second, a third party may get called into a war where it has nothing to gain and no interest, and will hurl its entire fleet into the fight. (This was a problem in EU as well, because the AI would throw everything into every single warm which was basically a design to keep the player from picking around the edges of a a powerful empire - even though that was actually a pretty logical and common reaction in real life.)
Third, Hyperdrive… does not work well with the game set. I think it’s the most interesting one to use, but IMHO, it only works if that’s the only allowable FTL method. The upgrade to Jump/Psi Jump is fine; it’s just that the hyperspace lanes don’t interact well with opponents who ignore them from day 1. In addition, because of the way the game generates them, the lanes make no sense as laid out (since they are supoosed to have been developed deliberately) and often have weirdly impractical whorls or branches. In addition again, there’s no way for the player to ever remedy this by adding their own, presumably for a major cost in energy and some minerals.
Fourth, the galaxy generator ends up being way, way too random. You can be completely wrecked by a bad start in so many ways, and even having two guaranteed-decent, habitable planets nearby isn’t enough.
Fifth, if’n I had my druthers, they’d change the planet model such that anybody could reasonably inhabit any world with a biosphere, but each species, having its own preferred terrain, are only happy on tiles that match their climate. So, in effect, planets no longer have climates - tiles do. The nature of the planet would only affect this insofar as it controls how many tiles are allocated to different climates. My thought is that hydrosphere would be a major challenge to overcome, but climate a smaller penalty, on the grounds that it’s a lot easier to live in a cold or hot climate than one with virtually no water or an actual ocean, if you’re used to dry land with regular rainfall.
This could be used way to add new specialized technologies, like “Ocean Habitats” or “Artificial Hydrosphere” to make otherwise-uninhabitable places useful. It also makes it more of a strategic choice for the player, since they would have to decide where to ignore a region of space, use a pricey colony ship to claim a world where they can only use 2 tiles for the foreseeable future, or place an expensive and Influence-draining outpost to save it for later when the planet might be worthwhile.
And, oh yeah, 1.5 Banks is awesome.
Yes, the giant doom stacks are a big issue with the game, and they make wars a single event whit no real tactical considerations. you either have the right defenses and weapons, and the numbers, or you don’t.
I don’t know how they can solve this issue. I sure as hell hope they try though. Maybe having to worry about supply lines? Making fleets move slower? Bonuses for smaller fleets doing hit and run attacks? Ambushing tactics?
It’s a hard problem for these type so games to solve.
You can leverage other species later in the game to occupy those other biomes. Sometimes I integrate them after a war, or I uplift them, or allow them to emigrate to my empire form other friendly ones. I like the main idea that terminating should be extremely difficult to do.
You have some good points, smiling bandit.
As for the doom-stack fleets and winning-or-losing a war after the first big battle, it’s a major issue on the Paradox forums. It’s not clear how to fix it. My personal inclination to fix it is to A) slow down the speed of fleets and B) give fleets “coordination” and “morale”. Coordination would apply attack and defense bonuses to all ships of an empire within a single system (regardless of fleet groupings) based on how many are there. So a few would get a large bonus and a lot would get a small bonus. Morale would have ships automatically try to retreat after taking a certain amount of damage.
Now I just have to figure out how to mod all that in (if possible). 
I don’t really have a problem with this. Don’t forget to bring your own homeys to the gang fight.
Yep. I think one of the devs even admitted that they’re disappointed how the FTL types interact. My solution is to always play a game with only one FTL type. I like the variety, but they simply don’t balance against each other. (I always assumed hyperlanes were natural bodies like rivers, not designed structures like highways.)
That’s all part of the fun for me. Sometimes your end up as Russia, sometimes Finland.
Excellent idea! That would be so much better. Single-biome planets is one of the more annoying themes of science fiction.
I want this. Please go add it to the suggestions forum!! 
Other 4X games impose a “maximum” sizes on ship formation/groups (using a command rating value). Maybe this can be modded in. Also add a malus when trying to use multiple groups against the same target (or maybe within a certain distance of each other).
These penalties can be mitigated with ship modules (like some sort of Combat Information Center, or Fleet/Flag Control Center, which eats up precious space on squadron leaders), technology research, leadership XP and/or skills.
Also “No Clustered Starts”, so the AIs are less likely to spawn next to you.
I also find Warp-only games interesting, since everyone expands more slowly and the empires tend to be more compact. It extends the exploration and expansion phase quite a bit.
I play warp-only as well. Hyperspace only is ok, but the AI clearly hasn’t been coded to understand the significance of the lanes, so hyperspace only is out. The AI definitely doesn’t understand how to use wormholes well, so wormhole only is out too. Although I did play one game of wormhole only with custom empires from the Dune universe and it wasn’t too bad.
For anyone who hasn’t been following things, the 1.6 update “Adams” will be released on the 9th. And the latest Dev Diary has the patch notes.
I really hope this brings some quality and stability to the game. I’m getting very tired of throwing money at Paradox for poorly implemented great concepts.
The update is out. They’ve included a bonus portrait package for free.
There’s also currently an Anniversary Edition on sale that includes all the content released to date.
I haven’t had a chance to play the new update, but I expect the game is in a good state to play right now (if in doubt wait for the first hotfix).
I finally got past the basic exploration stage of the game last night. I’m even figuring out the sector business. It’s gone far better than the time I found a Gaia world and colonized it, then told a Fallen Empire where they could stick it when they objected. 26k fleet dropping on my capital a year later made me realize my error.
I keep trying, I just can’t make the game fun for me. Time to move on to other things.
Sadly, 1.6 has a crippling happiness bug that will hopefully be fixed quickly in a hotfix. But for the most part 1.6 seems to be pretty good. The building AI is still busted but there’s somebody (it isn’t me) making a mod to help it out. So 1.6.1, with the mod, might be very playable.
Does anyone else have a galaxy full of peaceniks? My rather war-like game has become…pacifist. Everyone is a pacifist. There’s two large federations, another significant lone wolf, and a few scattered empires just waiting to be assimilated. I’ve been declaring liberation wars just to create more small assimilation targets, because NO ONE wants to fight. It’s become rather stale, and there’s no endgame crises in this run. As much as I love trying to reach the top of the tech tree, this game is starting to suck.
Stellaris is the featured game in this month’s Humble Monthly. People who subscribe for $12 (you can cancel before next month) get Stellaris immediately and then another six games to be announced in early June.