Paradox Grand Strat meets Sci-Fi 4X; Boners Explode

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:20 pm #184099

Bottom post of the previous page:

It's taking 99 months to research destroyers but it'll be so fucking worth it

Incomptinence · Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:31 pm

Oh also looking at the stats with the right leader trait, tech and advanced military junta you can get 100% ship upgrade discount plus 40% ship discount for a particular trait and just that advanced government and the assembly yard you can churn out minimum cost hulls at a discount then upgrade them FOR FREE!

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:47 pm #184103

GOT EM BOYZ, TIME TO SQUISH SOME BUGS

WAIT FUCK THEY COST 333 MINERALS THAT'S 10 MONTHS INCOME EACH

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:50 pm #184104

You know what fuck making these for this war, I need to upgrade my starport to level 3 which is another 450 so I'm just gonna spam corvettes and conquer that way for now. The lances will acquire blood one day, but that day is not today.

Incomptinence · Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:52 pm

Eh I would just go all lances if I were you. Sure its not going to be perfect mounting it on destroyers but even as a single slot on them it still has dps beyond anything available to you.

I might as well tell stories about my games too.

I was playing slow breeding guys and executed the early robot start. Perfect fucking fit I tell you despite my negative trait I am on par with my primary species population with my enemies before the 20 fucking droids I have at this point. Even the basic robot is like colony nitro fuel oh little tin can doesn't eat food while working that starter farm? Huge huge, also have the star port hydroponics. Then once my slow growers and robots fill the planet I can like my homeworld have everything running off the capital and 1 upgraded farm in adjacency, its so sweet . Only stopped playing because I realised my army boosting race traits were a waste.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:04 pm #184106

Oh I am going all lances, but my tech level and mineral income is too low since it's so early in the game to be able to support going all lances right now. It'd be a decade before I had an even decent fleet of lance ships.

If you want some tips, go collectivists since slavery is OP (in a good way.) You get stupidly high mineral income once you have planets dedicated to minerals and if you go materialist on the side you also have great research. You'll lack in energy a bit due to ship maintenance from a billion ships you made due to having a billion minerals but dedicating whole planets to energy with the +15% energy edict will get you by.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:12 pm #184107

The first battle against the Grizznar hivemind http://i.imgur.com/WPT2ThL.png

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:32 pm #184114

The deed is done. http://i.imgur.com/sq2Jo7f.png

Also holy FUCK these guys had a good start. They had a fucking size 25 Gaia world right next to their homeworld and tons of minerals and betharian stone.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Mon Jun 06, 2016 1:35 am #184135

The Grizznar have been absorbed into my empire and memory of my conquest has gone from their minds. From here I just want to tech up I guess, even though there's little point in getting new weapon technology.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Mon Jun 06, 2016 10:58 am #184203

I've been creating a mod with "pre-made" versions of my empires, complete with custom AI personalities and custom interaction lines. It's mostly just a personal project, I might submit it to the workshop when I'm done but I don't expect any downloads.

But boy, there are a LOT of lines, for every possible interaction you can have with another empire. It took me a few days to write everything for the capitalist megacorporation chameleons, and I'm already completely out of ideas for the Holy Hegemony of Elk.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Mon Jun 06, 2016 6:15 pm #184287

Playing a new game with wormholes, and holy shit they are just flat out better than hyperspace in just about every aspect. They're cheap as hell to build and maintain, and they let you travel faster and further than hyperspace ever could, right off the bat.

ThanatosRa · Post by **ThanatosRa** » Mon Jun 06, 2016 9:00 pm #184335

just need to have the constructors and minerals needed to expand the network. But yea, once you get the hang of it, it beats the shit out of everything until jump drives(and even then, it's still just as good if not better)

Just had an interesting bit of fun. I was playing a cheating whore game just for fun and my Human Fanatic Individualist/Materialists(I think I can agree that this is THE Objectivist Ethics combo) had spent the game avoiding doing AI. FInally I give in and afterwards, we go a few months, even years without anyuone caring, and wihtout any rebellion(I think because my dudes gave everyone the chance to rule, including aliens and robots. Everyone had a say. Everyone was free to pursue their own perfection etc. though my starting leader was still kicking and still getting elected because he was just that good) and even my allies(later a federation) were cool with it. Then a fallen empire had a shit fit about it.

We told them to fuck off. A few years later, they come knocking, declaring war on me and my federation for working on artificial intelligence.They never got to us, but because I had plans for my allies, I wasn't willing to sacrifice them to the Fallen Empire. So I decided it wasn't worth it after we all got our shit stomped in. I failed to notice that in their terms was Humiliation. The great Vladimir Romanov perished along side the machines who's lives he defended. Those who he said "Are people too." That's how I roleplayed it off as. Instead of them publically executing him for defiance, I imagined he committed suicide after seeing the slaughter of the machines. My second highest ranked Admiral was elected as First Advisor afterward, if only because I influenced her to prevent a separatist powerblock from gaining patrol. I'd used the Sol+ mod to expand the sol system, and had both Lunar and Martian colonies. Annoyingly, they both had separatists(and transhumans on mars who differed in ethics). Technically i should have just fortified the hell out of Earth and let them both be independent.

Also just because OBJECTIVIST it doesn't mean one can't feel responsible for the lives of others.

Incomptinence · Tue Jun 07, 2016 12:44 am

Isn't the vanilla jump drive only available to wormholes users too? Basically meaning materialist hyperlaners and warpers are basically told to get fucked unless they get extremely lucky and break into psychic scientists.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Tue Jun 07, 2016 2:09 am #184424

You can get jump drives from Fallen Empire ships you've killed

Also speaking of Fallen Empires http://i.imgur.com/nJMH5Cr.png

Just about to blow them up in the same game where I got particle lances.

Edit: Turns out Fallen Empire ships don't give jump drives. Rip.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Tue Jun 07, 2016 6:22 am #184459

Started a new game.

Before I could even finish building my first colony ship, I discovered my neighbors were a fallen empire and an aggressive advanced AI that just colonized right next to my homeworld.

Pirates then took out most my meager fleet. Weakened, a meteor hit my first colony, wiping it out.

I don't think things could have started any more catastrophic. I'll start a fresh one tomorrow, hopefully with better luck.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Tue Jun 07, 2016 7:13 am #184472

I annexed the Fallen Empire. There's another one to the left, it's a Holy Guardians one that I can crush with no effort.

To be honest, I don't see much more point in playing. If I do ever decide to go back to it it'll only be so I can deal with late-game crisises. The only late-game crisis I've seen so far has been AI rebellions which went completely ignored by the AI.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 2:19 am #185057

I messed around with console commands in my game and it turns out you can use one of the -

play <empire number>

commands to take control of the Unbidden. I tried to take control of the Prethoryn but it seems that they don't have an AI value associated to them in the console which is a bit of a disappointment. Another disappointment is that when you take control of the Unbidden you don't have all of the functions the normal Unbidden has, but I don't know why I'm complaining about lack of features on a role that's not designed to be ever be played anyways.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 5:13 am #185078

Ikarrus wrote:Started a new game.

Before I could even finish building my first colony ship, I discovered my neighbors were a fallen empire and an aggressive advanced AI that just colonized right next to my homeworld.

Pirates then took out most my meager fleet. Weakened, a meteor hit my first colony, wiping it out.

I don't think things could have started any more catastrophic. I'll start a fresh one tomorrow, hopefully with better luck.

Our first game we played we started and a 300 strength roaming alium fleet wandered into my home system in the first 10 seconds of gameplay, destroyed everything I had in space, and then left.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 6:31 am #185087

I'd recommend sticking with smaller galaxy sizes for now. Just to avoid the late game grind for the most part.

I'm having a blast with my Small galaxy of 8 opponents, all advanced AI starts. It's more interesting now that you can't just rush your neighbour and start the steamrolling. I seeded the 7 Alpha Centauri factions in, as well as my empire from last game, but my beautiful bugs got annexed by The Human Hive early on. Sucks.

Also the newly promoted game director hinted at some overhauls to diplomacy for the Asimov patch.

https://twitter.com/martin_anward/statu ... 6535439361

A new "Trust" mechanic that replaces embassies, and added functionality to alliances and federations.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 3:57 pm #185158

Apparently they streamed a game with a dev build of Asimov

https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/v/71442014

Notes:
https://www.digg.com/r/Stellaris/comm ... imov_beta/

Already confirmed is MAP MODES.
E: Colonization now requires an influence cost depending on how far from your borders it is- expanding naturally is 'cheap', expanding across the galaxy is 'really expensive'.
E3: Hoo-boy, here are alot of changes upcoming:
Embassies are gone, replaced with trust so depending on how many agreements you have you can build up trust over time. Extensive rework of ethics bonuses
War Philosophies are a new policy that limit your CBs, so if you have Unrestricted Warfare you can use any CB, liberation can only use Liberate
Pacifists have more expensive Conquest CB
Fanatic Pacifists CANNOT use Unrestricted Warfare and therefore cannot wage wars of conquest. Instead they get +15% happiness and pacifist governments grant more core system
Xenophobes get more influence from rivalries
Diplomacy now costs influence. Xenophiles get cheaper diplomacy, since embassies are now removed.
Spiritualists no longer get +Happiness, they now get reduced Ethics Divergence so your Imperium of Man has an easier time hating the xeno, the mutant, the heretic.
E4: No matter what your philosophies you can always reclaim planets that were once yours (make the Blorg Commonality Great Again), and I think they said defensive wars are looser with CBs.

-stacking happiness is less effective.
-the map modes shown were political and 'opinion of your empire'.

ThanatosRa · Post by **ThanatosRa** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 6:44 pm #185194

heh, been playing around with a bunch of different mods.

Like this one called "Glassing the Planet." Which allows me to render worlds either completely uninhabitable, or bomb them into tomb worlds with buildings intact. Did this in a war last night... only got two planets before my victories against thier fleets forced them into surrender.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 7:38 pm #185214

I really don't like how colonizing is gonna cost influence in Asimov. I can barely play the game with frontier outposts requiring influence maintenance, the whole thing must be ridiculously slowed down if so many things need influence in Asimov.

Edit: Okay so apparently colonizing is gonna cost 30 influence just for colonizing within your borders what the fuck Paradox there needs to be more ways to get influence
Edit 2: I also really don't like the Spiritualist or Pacifist changes. The spiritualist changes means that if you're a spiritualist you're a liability and a huge target for conquest since it means that your worlds will likely be more stable due to the negative ethics divergence it's going to give. It's also unironically weaker since high happiness gives negative ethics divergence. I really don't know why they're nerfing it in the first place.
The pacifist ones I really don't like either. They incentivise building tall with more core planets and no wars for conquest and + happiness but that's just not how the game works. You can't build tall in this game, you can only build wide through mass-colonization or conquest, so Paradox is trying to incentivise a playstyle that can't exist in the game yet.
Can't say about the Diplomacy changes since I haven't seen them a whole lot yet but I think they'll be good.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:12 pm #185233

I think they only give pacifists more core worlds just so they have more to do besides watching research bars fill if they're not going to partake in war.

The colony changes I don't mind so much. I never really run unto influence shortages in my games. The added difficulty in maintianing large empires might help with the awful steamrolling problem I've experienced. (As in, it's really fucking easy to win once you've already started winning.)

I'm going to miss my happy spiritualists, though.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:16 pm #185234

Yeah I don't run into influence shortages anymore either, but I absolutely did in my first game and it was awful. I built two frontier outposts to block off some fanatical purifiers I spawned next to and for the rest of the game I was basically fucked because I only had 1 influence gain per month and it was impossible to expand due to not having the influence needed for planetary administrations, so I could do literally nothing. Eventually I just gg'd out due to federations and the AI being dogshit.

Something that might happen with Asimov is those situations cropping up more often which is not a good thing.

Post by **Armhulen** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:18 pm #185236

I fucking hate starting the game as a materialist collectivist and then all my neighbors are fucking spiritualist warlike individualist like WHY FOCK

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:21 pm #185237

I guess those frontier stations weren't the best investments, then.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:35 pm #185247

They were though, they were both sitting on top of Betharian deposits so financially I had loads of money. It was just the lack of influence which meant I could do nothing .

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:17 pm #185273

Seeing the new diplomacy I actually really like it. It gives plutocratic oligarchies/megacorps something to do other than Scrooge McDuck all over their mountains of money.

Edit: I also get why they changed the spiritualist happiness. They would get a gorillion bonuses and roll over everyone with so many happiness bonuses.

ThanatosRa · Post by **ThanatosRa** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:21 pm #185276

i kinda wish I was good enough to make custom symbols(since the coding seems simple enough) so I could make a Nanotrasen N and make a Nanotrasen Coporation race. I can do this anyway, but it doesn't feel right without the emblem.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:24 pm #185279

There's already a big S symbol under the pirate section so that's what I used for the Syndicate.

Another thing I see about pacifists is that it seems like they're gonna be ridiculous. They won't be able to gain territory through conquest, but they're saying nothing about vassalizing or liberating then vassalizing afterwards for more loyalty. This means that you can still expand through conquest but it's going to be more about building up a big colonial base then pushing that advantage with a ton of vassals and possibly integrating them afterwards.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:28 pm #185281

I think they don't understand their own design, by making pacifists literally unable to conquer they make it so pacifists literally can't ever win.

Old pacifists were able to partake in war, they just benefited from really short wars. Good pacifist play was about gobbling people up quickly rather than getting in a slugfest.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:30 pm #185284

That's fine though. Winning doesn't really matter because at some point the game devolves into you being so powerful you can't possibly lose. In my current game with the fox collectivist materialists I'm so powerful that I could march across the galaxy and fight both the Unbidden and the Prethoryn and every other nation at the same time. I already crushed the AI rebellion and several fallen empires pretty much immediately when I went against them.

dezzmont · Post by **dezzmont** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:34 pm #185288

That is called the endgame.

Preventing fanatic pacifists from being allowed to participate at all is amazingly stupid. You get locked out insanely early if you can't take over planets.

The only way to make what they are doing work is to make it so that it is easier to vassalize through diplomacy.

It also is just thematically dumb, and further highlights the problem with their war demand system being the only real way war works.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:36 pm #185290

Pacifists can still "Liberate" and then vassalize the liberated empire. They're going to have an easier time too since now they get +15% happiness and up to +10 core systems.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 09, 2016 9:42 pm #185292

It is annoying that you can't vassalize empires that aren't touching your borders though. I had this as a problem last game where I liberated a decently sized empire and gave them a ton of shit but I still couldn't vassalize them because they had -200 to their acceptance since they were 3 jumps away from my empire rather than 1

Edit: Materialists are ridiculous. Because of how they work, you tend to balloon in science at a stupid rate and be way more advanced than everyone. This lets you conquer way more, but something else I find that's fantastic about it, is that it lets you work around the vassalizing changes. You aren't supposed to be able to vassalize large empires, but that doesn't extend to turning them into protectorates. If you're stupidly more advanced than another empire you can turn them into a protectorate if they have one planet or 20.

ThanatosRa · Post by **ThanatosRa** » Fri Jun 10, 2016 12:09 am #185333

Pacifists can still fight, liberate, vassalize, and integrate their neighbors. Or if they don't fight, just vassalize and integrate. But ye,a sucks that they can't vassalize non-neighbors.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Fri Jun 10, 2016 12:12 am #185336

You can forcefully vassalize non-neighbours, but you can't demand vassalization on someone who isn't a neighbour which is retarded.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Fri Jun 10, 2016 6:30 am #185428

>Zilenan mods out influence maintenance for frontier outposts because he can't deal

Git gud

srifenbyxp · Post by **srifenbyxp** » Fri Jun 10, 2016 9:01 am #185448

Just got done dismantling a fallen empire while being outnumbered 3:1. I had all of my vassals move the the front and once they all got fucked I moved my IMPERIUM MIGHT and it's back up 17k fleet to victorhy for the emperah. I now offically own the galaxy. There's only one other empire that matches my fleet power 1v1 but I have 9 vassal slaves.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 2:10 am #186292

Started a new game, critfailed an anomaly roll on the tree of life and 3 1400 power fleets of space creatures destroyed my empire 2 years into the game 10/10

starmute · Post by **starmute** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 1:39 pm #186433

srifenbyxp wrote:Just got done dismantling a fallen empire while being outnumbered 3:1. I had all of my vassals move the the front and once they all got fucked I moved my IMPERIUM MIGHT and it's back up 17k fleet to victorhy for the emperah. I now offically own the galaxy. There's only one other empire that matches my fleet power 1v1 but I have 9 vassal slaves.

This is something I actually don't like. If your vassals can beat you in a fight they should have liberty desire. Same with slaves. They said they would do something about it in asimov or heinlein though.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 1:11 am #186913

Finished a precursor quest today. The Irassian one. It was fucking awful what the fuck it was literally an empty system and nothing else after all of that build-up.

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 5:36 am #186928

>Still never saw a ringworld
>Still never finished a precursor quest (hard as fuck)
>Won my second game before any crisises can show up

I'm going to wait until Asimov before I start my third game, though. It just overhauls so many systems and I want to play a pacifist-diplo empire next.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:12 am #186946

I intentionally ran a game with a low amount of AIs. 10 other AIs and zero advanced starts on a 600 star galaxy because I didn't feel like dealing with clustered spawn instability clusterfucks. It was a happy accident that it let me get the precursor artifacts so easily. The only empire near me had similar ethics so I ate them and purged most of their pops. Funnily enough I found most of the precursor artifacts near their systems, and Irass itself spawned just to the southeast of the new Zurukk bloc.

The Irassians are the precursors who dealt with disease. The end of their quest is such a fucking let-down after going through the effort of getting everything. Literally a barren fucking system. The Cybrex supposedly spawn a ringworld and the first league has a similar barren system as far as I know.

Oh I also got particle lances really early in the same game. My pops were spiritualist so they triggered the cultist quest. On blowing up their space station I reverse engineered it and got some points towards particle lances, and some physics grants later I was the most powerful force in the whole galaxy. Again. The end of this quest was also dissapointing. All you get is a shitty 200 strength battleship even if it is really cool looking.

TheWiznard · Post by **TheWiznard** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:58 pm #187056

Zilenan91 wrote:I intentionally ran a game with a low amount of AIs. 10 other AIs and zero advanced starts on a 600 star galaxy because I didn't feel like dealing with clustered spawn instability clusterfucks. It was a happy accident that it let me get the precursor artifacts so easily. The only empire near me had similar ethics so I ate them and purged most of their pops. Funnily enough I found most of the precursor artifacts near their systems, and Irass itself spawned just to the southeast of the new Zurukk bloc.

The Irassians are the precursors who dealt with disease. The end of their quest is such a fucking let-down after going through the effort of getting everything. Literally a barren fucking system. The Cybrex supposedly spawn a ringworld and the first league has a similar barren system as far as I know.

Oh I also got particle lances really early in the same game. My pops were spiritualist so they triggered the cultist quest. On blowing up their space station I reverse engineered it and got some points towards particle lances, and some physics grants later I was the most powerful force in the whole galaxy. Again. The end of this quest was also dissapointing. All you get is a shitty 200 strength battleship even if it is really cool looking.

I did the cybrex one during a multiplayer game and the ending was

Spoiler:

also in another multiplayer game, just me and my buddy on max size 4 arm spiral galaxy normal starting ai/advanced ai I spawned on the tail end of one arm and using wormhole generators I jumped to the edge of the next arm up only to see a ancient civ/advanced civ taking up the whole thing, all of their planets were 25 slot ringworlds, like each system only had ringworlds and no planets, they were military isolationists though so they never attacked me thankfully

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:35 pm #187060

Is there a better feeling than getting the tail end of a galaxy arm all to yourself?

It's like getting Austrailia in Risk.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Thu Jun 16, 2016 12:52 am #187130

TheWiznard wrote:
I did the cybrex one during a multiplayer game and the ending was
Spoiler:
a giant ringworld that is destroyed and you can't settle on it or do anything on it.... basically a fucking waste of time
also in another multiplayer game, just me and my buddy on max size 4 arm spiral galaxy normal starting ai/advanced ai I spawned on the tail end of one arm and using wormhole generators I jumped to the edge of the next arm up only to see a ancient civ/advanced civ taking up the whole thing, all of their planets were 25 slot ringworlds, like each system only had ringworlds and no planets, they were military isolationists though so they never attacked me thankfully

Yeah that's a Fallen Empire. Fallen Empires frequently spawn with Ringworlds like that. The Beacon of Infinity has 4 of those in one system and then the Beacon of I think Perpetuity has one called Eternal Bastion which is full of military stuff and a really well upgraded spaceport for military ships.

Edit: So all of the precursor quests are utterly pointless? I mean, I guess the Cybrex one isn't totally pointless since you can get living metal from the blown up parts of it but that still sucks you can't settle on them.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:00 am #187756

I hope the update hits soon. I keep hearing about really cool mods and reinstalling fuck

Ikarrus · Post by **Ikarrus** » Sat Jun 18, 2016 1:41 pm #187781

I wouldn't expect it until the end of the month.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:40 am #187991

The new changes they were talking about to Xenophiles, 'phobes, Pacifists, diplomacy, and war stuff sounds really interesting.

It's silly to keep bringing them up but every time I see one of these changes I can't help but think

The Yiff Collective grows even stronger. Dumbass joke race is probably the strongest civilzation I've ever come up with.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:42 am #187992

I really want to try out Divine Mandates but without slave revolts the insane slave tolerance you get is pretty much pointless. I think it would be pretty strong if slave revolts were in.