@Expocat69420The diadochi are the most varied and interesting factions to play with the exception of rome and MAYBE Carthage. Each are trying to achieve the same thing but in very different ways
My personal problems: - There are no regression mechanics, so losing is boring (and you can't roleplay the Imperium of Man properly). - Empires are too stable, making them impossible to topple outside of direct warfare. - - Both of the above rob the player of interesting struggles, as they try to hold their empire together or undermine their enemies. - Every empire's power grows exponentially, with no meaningful checks or limits. So once an empire starts winning it will most likely continue to win, forever. - It's far too easy for empires to achieve economic self-sufficiency, even in the late-game. Why is a game that's ostensibly about politics making it easy for me to isolate myself? - The market mechanic is stupid and makes the game too easy, by exasperating all the other problems with the economic balance that I've already mentioned. - - Also why do hive-minds have internal markets? That makes no sense. - - - Also also the existence of the market mechanic means there is no need, nor any incentive, to specialize your empire into a certain kind of production. You can't make other empires dependent on your exports, and use that dependence as political leverage. Because empires can always just use the market to conjure the goods they need out of thin air. - Outside of wars, galactic geography is practically irrelevant. Empires can trade, treaty, ally, vassalize and federate with each other whenever they want, so long as they have comms. They can do this even if they're on opposite sides of the galaxy, separated by a wall of hostile territory. - - Because of this, there's no reason to give a shit about your neighbours outside of picking the target of your next war. You don't have to make any difficult political compromises with your neighbours, in the name of maintaining peace in your own backyard. - How "closed borders" work is stupid. Why should an empire be able to completely block outsiders from passing through its territory, if it lacks the military means to actually enforce its borders? - - Also, the fact that there's no way to bargain for territory access is ridiculous. - There is no way to influence foreign empires besides waging war against them. Espionage is useless. Embargos, blockades and sanctions don't exist. And you can't back foreign political minorities, insurgencies or criminals. - Vassals, federations and the Galactic Community are all separate systems, instead of a single unified system that models all kinds of political autonomy and entanglement. - - Also, the idea that every empire in the galaxy would jump onboard with the Galactic Community, and yield to its laws and policies so willingly, feels nonsensical. That's not how the UN works. - Ships and armies cost zero population to create or field, allowing them to be spammed and destroyed with zero demographic consequences. - - This also renders clone armies, robot armies and slave armies completely pointless, since you're not risking any population in wars in the first place. - There are no real downsides to losing a war as an aggressor. At most you'll lose a bit of territory. You'll rarely have to deal with internal political instability, from failing to achieve your stated goals, or getting lots of people killed for nothing. - The wargoals system is too artificial and arbitrary, frequently locking players out of completely natural behaviours for no good reason (can't directly join a war in progress on another empire's side, can't pursue more than 1 Secret Fealty wargoal in a single war, can't pursue multiple wargoals period). - - Also, the wargoals system completely fails to model low-intensity warfare, like border raids and skirmishes. You're either at peace or engaging in total war, with nothing in-between. - The game's attempts to keep every ethical position and government type "viable" has lead to every empire behaving functionally the same. - - It's also why so many of the other problems I've mentioned exist. If the game actually asserted a coherent model of reality, it would naturally lead to some types of empires surviving and thriving better than others, in various different contexts. - - - And if it made the upsides and downsides of different ethics and governments more pronounced, players might actually bother reforming their empire now and then, to adapt to changing circumstances. Admittedly, a bunch of these are issues common to much of the 4X genre, like the problem of exponential growth or geography being meaningless. But Stellaris has plenty of its own issues, too.
Wow, you put all of my thoughts into words dude, thanks. Sadly the only game I have seen to ever get close to checking everything off has been Vicky 2 and CK2/3, but neither of those are 4x and both have issues of their own. You also forgot to mention the issue of Late Game Stellaris, that being that as pop count grows large your game begins to grind to a holt regardless of how good your comp is. This is a common problem in all Paradox games except Vic 2 becuase they did't use a pop system, but a demographics system which work sooo much better in both ability to run the game, and in the RP elements as well.
@@athingwhichexists I didn't mention late-game slowdown, because that's more a technical problem than a game design problem. It would be nice if it didn't exist, but you can also avoid it by playing on a smaller galaxy, so it's not too bad. But you can't avoid any of the problems I described by just changing some settings.
I’ve definitely noticed the limits of consistent, exponential power growth and the lack of interesting diplomatic behavior behavior in my games. Everyone’s a generalist, which is good for balance but very bad for achieving unique role-play experiences. It’s frustrating how few truly game-altering decisions can be made during empire creation, and most of those are locked behind DLC.
I've played this game for a long time and I think your argument around asymmetrical mechanics is totally on point. Its a bit frustrating because the sci-fi setting makes it sort of the perfect place to really get weird with things. That said, I understand that asymmetrical strategy is a very hard problem to crack for a designer and a huge risk for a big studio if you don't stick the landing. I would err on the side of those saying the enjoyment comes from roleplaying space communism or what have you - but I understand that ultimately its only the mystification of the resource economy which allows us to craft narratives around any given campaign. Would be great to hear some suggestions for something better, but only spec-fic stuff, I can't really stomach the historical baggage of strategy games in the real world.
The thing with Stellaris, and it's kinda hard to express, is that in terms of a non turn based grand strategy space game it's really the only one. Or rather the only one with multiplayer. I love Sins of a Solar Empire. But there's no real empire management, and is closer to Starcraft than say Victoria or EU4. I have many issues with Stellaris, above and beyond the points you raise here, almost all of which i can unequivocally agree with. However, it does have that sheer quantity of content. None of its mechanics are deep, but it has so many. Look at Distant Worlds 2, and putting aside Stellaris origin as a massively dumbed down 3d distant worlds with planetary management, I have to say that overall "In my opinion" Distant Worlds 2 does literally every single thing better which both games share. Diplomacy, ship design, resource management, ship sets actually having impact, etc etc. With possibly the exception of Distant Worlds planetary management being nearly non existent. However, Distant Worlds 2 doesn't have a species creator, mega structures, and has frankly even less meaningful differences in play style between the included races, with the exception of ship sets. I suppose in summery, I literally play it because it's really the only game in its genre with anywhere near its level of content. Few of the mechanics are particularly good, but between their quantity, and mods, you have the most expansive real time space grand strategy out there. use mods to rework gestalts, megacorps, the species packs, adding and changing existing civics and ethics, origins, ascensions, add new megastructures, rework diplomacy, ship designing, technology, and combat.............and there's really nothing in its class. It's like pointing out all the issues with Cities Skylines. The argument can be quite easily made there are better city builders out there due to its many missing or badly implemented features or design choices, but when mods get involved any argument pretty much goes out the window because its community took it upon themselves to fix the game for the developer. Personally, to make the ultimate grand strategy space game, I would say take the foundation of Distant Worlds 2, double down on the aspects that make that good, add a species and actual empire creator, "the one in the game doesn't matter" and make the choices actually matter, then take much of the content Stellaris has put out over the past eight years, and give it literally any depth...........
There is definitely something about stellaris that allows you to spend hundreds or thousands of hours into it, but it always left me with a sense it fell short. I think an integration of all the great 4x is definitely needed.
The customization is stellaris' main strength and problem. the need to be open ended forces the game to have a high level of abstraction and have % modifiers instead of detailed overhaul for civics and factions. Not to mention the fact that there's a trade off of balance and customizability (which I feel like they are ignoring lately, and I'm all for it. except for the leader jank of -90% ship build cost).
Your last sentence perfectly explains why I play Stellaris sometime but only one game and only once a year at max. It looks so good on the surface, but it is completely shallow water beneath.
However, losing also needs to be both interesting in its own right, and very likely to happen. Losing in Dwarf Fortress is fun, because the game's simulation is so granular that watching a fortress collapse is a riveting narrative in itself. And Dwarf Fortress' economics and Dwarf psychology are so tenuous and fragile that every fortress is sitting on a slippery slope, liable to slide into mayhem at a moment's notice. So losing is common, and entertaining. Meanwhile in Stellaris, the simulation is so abstract and distant that you don't get any of those interesting narrative beats. If you're being conquered by an enemy, you don't get to see any bold attempts at resistance by determined civilians. Or if your economy is collapsing, you can't see food shortages, or riots, or any other kind of unrest. There's just a number ticking down until Bad Things happen. But neither of these things are likely to happen, because it's stupidly easy to win wars and maintain a healthy economy. But there's another aspect to it - the possibility of recovery. In Dwarf Fortress, a fortress that collapses may still have a handful of survivors, which a canny player can use to recover and rebuild. A fortress can survive multiple such falls. Death is common, but so is rebirth, allowing fortresses to have terrifying falls and glorious rises in continuous succession. Meanwhile in Stellaris, every empire's power grows constantly and exponentially. And if an empire falls behind the curve, it will most likely remain behind the curve. So if a player's empire collapses or is half-conquered, they may as well abandon the game and start over. Because there is no way to catch up once an empire falls behind. The player will either end up a vassal for the rest of the game, or they'll just be conquered outright. In Stellaris, losing is boring. And trying to recover from a near-loss is also boring.
@@tbotalpha8133 great post but dwarves have been extremely mentally stable for years now, they gutted the spiral. a bit of miasma used to be FUN, but now even a lot is not notable on total fortress mood. with bad RNG it's possible to get a bunch of fussy dwarves, but a waterfall and some nice gold statues will generally fix that such that tantrums are rare.
@@boldCactuslad Aw, dang. I haven't played in years, and tantrum-spirals were so ingrained in DF fandom culture back then that I assumed they were never going away.
You make some good points, and while I still greatly enjoy the game, I can just chalk that up to "I am easily amused". Because I am. However there are three things that I want to point out. 1) Winning the game comes to having the highest score, and it's real easy to do without ever taking so much as another system or even a single vassal. 2) Comparing factions to HOI IV US Congress? Really, because in my experience, that one bland mechanic. It is essentially just clicking a button until you have a high majority to leave it alone for a bit. 3) Yeah we can harp about PDX DLC policy all people want, but what I want to point out is that Stellaris is better than other PDX games in that regard. You get some mechanics with the free patch, and don't have rubbed in your face by the game that you need the DLC to explore that stuff more, like EU IV and HOI IV. I guess the big thing with stellaris, is that it really comes down to timeframe. Under default standards, that's ~250-300 years of game time. So that what your engagement needs to be spread out over. The only other PDX game with a similar timeframe is EU IV, and you have a lot more control over your nation in Stellaris than you do in EU IV.
Agree again, stellaris is so broad and expansive yet doesn't go deep on enough on every front to make it all work and connect with each other. Everything ends up shallow and dry at the end of the day. I had a mate try and get into stellaris as he plays mostly hoi4 and ck3 and at some point he said to me 'does anything happen?'.
See I just don't understand that, he enjoys ck3, but says nothing happens in stellaris? Ck3 is by far has the least amount of depth out of all recent paradox games.
As someone who has now over 2000 hours of stellaris multiplayer, I agree. Although the dysinc hell is much tamer than HOI4. Most mp games don't last past year 60-80, so it's mostly and all out war for who can tribute the galaxy first.
Coming off the first video, again I completely agree. Sigh, i wish the diplomacy system was advanced as you pitched cos that would be amazing compared to what it is now. Just watching these has made me realize how shallow the actual gameplay is. Minor critique though, technically there is a wholly unique playstyle that does have a system that is asymetrial (if only slightly) and thats the Criminal Heratige megacorp which plays very differently to every other empire type. Funly enough its also not very good and barely anyone (including me) has ever played it
Mod: "REAL SPACE" Collection Why: Increases scale of planets, decreases ship speed and lowers ranges of weapons. Result: You tend to build fleets like real life. Some ships are dedicated Artillery for Long range, while some are pickets meant to harass and soak up damage. Reduced speed makes fighters an actual strategic threat, and you must now have border fleets to slow down any potential wars. This mod alone seriously changes stellaris in so many ways, its a whole new game that stops feeling like babies 1st 4x Or you could play Aurora 4x...
Stellaris noob here with maybe a dozen hours of actual gameplay, with probably 100+hrs watching & reading about the game lol! On my 5th 'play through', yet to get to year 10 eh, just can't make any species/game origin/parameters stick. Maybe Stellaris is not for me either...? 8-/ I love the scale, the scope, all the options and complexity, but I just can't seem to get a smooth start. Either I run out of Unity, alloys or Influence, or some other resource. I tried a necro empire, just grew too slow for my liking. Tried a pure machine/Shattered Ring, super-tall isolationist & ran out if Influence before I could build my 3rd outpost to shore up my last choke point. Just some very weird mechanics that seem entirely arbitrary and only there to add artificial limitations to the game, which really breaks immersion for me. I like an awful lot about the game, but there are several key things I don't like: hyperlanes on rails (why?) - computers can do 3D Cartesian coordinates I'm sure!; super slooooooow start, very limited expansion early on, no control over a resource/tech tree, just have to keep researching randomly in the hopes you eventually get that tech you really want; forced limit on starbases and planets you can colonise via cheesy artificial limits. I could go on, but I'm just a grumpy old bastard gamer, who prob played far too many TB games in the 80s & 90s and is now jaded beyond redemption he he.
@@Nostromo2144 Hyperlanes were one of 3 modes of FTL in the 1.0 version. They scrapped the others so you could have options like fortifying chokepoints - also it was very difficult to make sense of warfare when some civs used gateways and others used jump drives. There's a civic called early explorers that replaces the hyperlane tech with crude jump drives (you can still get hyperlane tech later) it doesn't work well from a UI perspective, but veteran players seem to really enjoy the variety. As far as getting a good start - parlimentary system + technocracy and set the living standards to academic privilege, this provides the political power for your specialists to deliver unity via factions and you'll have one less thing to focus on and get to recruit scientists who all have specialties to help stack the tech deck in favor of your strat. I like to keep empire sprawl down as much as possible, you can do that by sticking to the two reliable habitable worlds until you've built up the leader traits/ techs/ traditions/ascenion perks that let you expand without the penalties from sprawl. It lets you snowball more on your own terms and with the sprawl under control you can still quickly catch up to AI that's been spreading more aggressively. Hope that helps.
After my first play session as a pacifist I endedup befriending all empires except one or two. Then some Ai in my federation went rogue and declared war on another big group so i was forced to build up a defense fleet because one of my black holes was a popular spot. In the end there was a crysis and I just waited for the AI to finish the job. I tried to participate in the galactic council but I never managed to archieve anything important and my influence was very minimal over all x)
civ6 is so weird and imbalanced in its victory condition, that (, besides civ6 only being about archer rushes in any serious game that is played to get a victory most efficiently,) ... there is also an EASY to perform "no city challenge", where 1 player faction can win a game, without ever controlling of founding ANY city all game long (works only against ai in certain versions). worth checking a video on that for a laugh.
The one thing I really like about the the Federation mechanic is the Federal Fleet. When you are in charge you have control over it, and you can always design and build ships for it without breaking your own naval cap. Ships you design have your factions aesthetics, but you have access to everyone's technologies, enabling stronger ships. It really feels like a United Federation of Planets thing.
Early Stellaris had one of my favorite asymmetries, and then they ripped it out. I looked the different FTL types, now, by personal preference I pretty much only ever played with wormholes, and on occasion warp, but 8 just lived the idea of these different races being on completely different playing fields. Now, I recognize they took them out for strategy and balance reasons, but it took me like, a half hour of thought to come up with at least some ideas of how to solve that problem, and I'm not someone who actually cares about it. Someone who actually does would be way better at it than 8 am, and the only solution they came up with was "Restrict them to the FTL with bottlenecks, and then remove the capacity to actually fortify systems as hard points."
Any hope I had in Stellaris died with the removal of the starting FTL option. If the devs couldn't be bothered to balance the only asymmetrical element of their game, they were certainly not going to allow for any emergent gameplay down the line. Lo and behold, Stellaris never lived up to the potential of its early day and the concept of unique empire interacting with each other.
Total Warhammer actually does a decent job of giving factions identity through asymmetric gameplay mechanics and units. Ive been playing Age of Wonders 4 and checking out Paradox 4x games and i fully get what you're talking about by everything being the same. The "factions" are just skins in Paradox games. TW:Warhammer might have had a rough patch recently but damn i'll give them props for atleast Trying to make unique faction gameplay. To be fair they have a tabletop game to steal mechanics and ideas from.
higher difficulty DOES change the way the game is played, having strong neighbors forces the player to try to get defense pacts and good relations with them, use chokepoints and environment modifiers to their advantage, design ships specifically to fight the AI and fortify planets with armies, it completly changes the player's strategy
@@cassius_scrungoman No that is change in the way one plays the game in response to difficulty thus changing their strategy because of the difficulty change. Also people pointing out how nonsensical and wrong many of your points are/were is not a vitriol. You lying about paid updates etc. is more vitriolic and toxic behaviour than that.
@@iamcheese4519 Allow me to try and explain better: In stellaris you no matter how your nation is designed, no matter what difficult you are set at, etc. There is still only 1 optimal strategy, that being to pick the optimal ship design for your patch, to bee line chokepoints, to min max your planets, to go for specific techs, and then prepare to aggressively expand while tech rushing. You do not have to make different ship types, you do not have to change how your planets are set up, you don't need to prioritize different resources, you do not need to change the fact that you beeline chokepoints, you don't even really need to change anything about how you play compared to high vs low difficulty, or even for what origin you pick either (with a few exceptions, but said exceptions are ussually a detriment to your ability to win rather than an alteration to what counts as victory or how you get to win). In comparison to use Civ as an example (although civ isn't perfect either), let's say you pick Venice, you are now locked to one city, instead of expanding with settlers you now have to expand to city states but said city states also give you your money and influence so you have to choose which ones have what you need and which ones you can ignore. Your resource preference is fundementally altered thus changing almost everything about what the optimal strategy for playing the game is (less units, more naval, money more important than any other resource, tech theft over direct science, etc.) More than that, the game also encourages this strategy change as well. Venice gets more traderoutes, Venice gets special naval units, and venice gets a way to take city states peacefully and can buy buildings AND units (but another gameplay alter happens here where each city besides the capital is puppeted) etc. There aremany total changes to gameplay and features only that civ has access to. In stellaris, the only way to atchieve a similar level is by giving yourself a handicap outside of the game (like the one planet challenge), but there is no in-game system for this. Now then, if stellaris were to have something similar for example: democracies having an internal senate that you have to influence to get what you want, fenatic purifiers having to deal with generals declaring wars without your control (or an ever ticking stat that punishes you for not genociding a planet), spiritualist empires not needing to research tech but instead rely on their psychic abilities to improve, these would be the bear minimum for variety in gameplay but they simply aren't present. A democracy plays like a gestault plays like an empire plays like a purifier. No matter the difficulty you have the same resource priorities, the same optimal ship builds the same chokepoint rush the same method of expansion the same method of FTL the same policy and edict system the same policies and edicts the same buildings (with a few texture or name swaps) the same techs the same optimal strategy
@@athingwhichexists thank you for this writeup! unfortunately for me it feels a bit petty to just copy paste bits of my script *which are already in the video* which answer people's criticisms, so thanks for this!
It could perhaps be said sins of a solar empire plays closer to a RTS, endless space more a true 4x, while stellaris aimed to be something like an RPG but didn't quite cut it.
You might feel like you adressed certain things in the original video, but if people still choose to bring it up that doesn’t mean they didn’t hear you it just means they don’t think your reasoning was valid.
Good follow up, brought a lot of clarity on prior points! Though I really disagree with the... snark? In the description, if a large majority that you even acknowledge as the 'cabal' quote unquote "misunderstand" your point I think it's less so they misunderstood and more so you didn't originally convey your point very well. 💀 Like when a large majority has the same main takeaway and disagreement and then you do a follow up video with of clarification and explaining what you ACTUALLY meant to be the main takeaway and everyone agrees... I feel like it should be pretty obvious what the original issue was 😭 Because honestly I got the same exact vibe a lot of other people did the first video- one brief sentence saying "Stellaris' difficulty is irrelevant to my gameplay experience because it reminds me of cheesing in XCom" is a really random and confusing sentence- let alone after all the prior built up context. I can see how a creator point of view having an idea in mind of what you MEANT to convey can be frustrating and having a brief but important quote being glanced past- but then on top of that using a reference not everyone will get as an example, c'mon- gotta take some fault LOL.
Stellaris isn't a bad game, it's just not to your taste. You literally say that you prefer heavy asymetric games. And now you're complaining because people pointed out how your criticism was flawed. You complain a lot about stuff that isn't in the game, but there's already a lot of mechanics that do their job properly. "your argument is wrong when i misinterpret all of your points!" You explicitly said that making your own lore was a bad thing. Percentage modifiers aren't a bad mechanic. Ethics do have impact, they change which techs and policies you have access to and other Empire's opinion. Yeah, playing in higher difficulties forces you to play in a more effective way... That's how every game works. I do agree that the game needs more alternate victory conditions. But I never play the meta and still manage to win most of my games.
@@AlphaWolfShade Its note boring for me tbh, there is always something you can tweak to improve your strategy, I like finding those tweaks and getting rewarded by an even faster victory.
Mods have really made the game more enjoyable for me. Yeah, I agree about diplomacy and the council. They definitely should bring some features from ck3 and eu4 to stellaris.
there is a huge problem in fiction, where you must never define anything, by what it is lacking, because that list is infinitely long and nonsensical, compared to a list of what what anything posses.
Ngl, the only thing driving me in solo is the power fantasy and achievement hunting also totally agree, we should have a way to never use minerals just like there is way to never use consumer goods (gestalt) or food (lithoid), catalytic processing still needs minerals to build districts/buildings there are actual detailed commercial pacts for individual ressources in offer trade option, but it's completely useless outside of bankrolling your friend in multiplayer, AI will never trade a system and will never act upon being bankrolled, i wish we could do that in exchange for loyalty/friendship so they overthrow their overlord (secret fealty is incredibly random) or strait up cause instability by bankrolling a politician. Trading tech should also be a thing there is a faction system but they just affect happyness which can be countered incredibly easily the policy screen is indeed hot garbage, as is most of the UI anyway waiting for episode 3 on new cosmogenesis victory condition and cetana who actually has more interactions than kill
I have four digits of hours in Stellaris, and I thought your criticisms were dead on. Except for one: complaining about micro. I think micromanagement is part and parcel of the 4x genre, and one the aspects I enjoy the most.
While the game seems to claim deep lore and complex narrative. Even with all the DLCs which is behind a good sized paywall. The lore is about as deep as a puddle. There are bunches of anomalies and archeology sites, but they don't really seem to do anything. At least with the space born critters you can sometimes get neat tech (big sometimes). One or two extra units, which really do nothing and can't be upgraded. Everything has an air of mystery, but in reality the box is empty. A world hatching, titanic foot prints, and subterranean population they are just there. There is nothing more. Not even some special tech or anything. There are no brain slugs, no space police, and I can't be a pretend god to lesser life forms. Everything pretty much is atheistic and role playing isn't really a thing. There is so much si-fi to pull from, but it ain't there or at least nothing more than a foot note.
Solo And TBH most RP is based upon in-game experiences affecting choices. Example: I wanted to become cyborgs BUT in-game my empire fought an existential war with a neighboring machine empire so Engineered Evolution it went..... EDIT: My major complaint about Stellaris is two Spiritualist empires will get along LOL. When do different religions (from the same species) get along IRL? LOL
Not entirely related to the game, but you would be surprised to see how steamy religious groups from different beliefs can get when they're persecuting atheist group. I guess the principle here is uniting for common enemy.
I think the problem is that we wanted to play Master of Orion 2, the devs have made the game in the image of MoO 2 and we started playing MoO2, then the devs started to add many many mechanics but at the barebones we are still playing MoO2. That is why all other mechanics are secondary to technology and war (just like in MoO2, there were populations, unrest etc but all were superficial as it should be)
I really wish they did more with the council stuff then they did. I understand why you don’t need to manage the council member’s happiness since that could get annoying, like in CK2. However I wish there were events to spice it up. For example let’s say your playing a monarchy and then, suddenly, one of your leaders switches ethics to be libertarian. A bunch of pops, maybe on a specific world, also become libertarian. Now you need to deal with the unhappy population and the dissenting councilor without looking bad.
I've never personally had any issues with multiplayer connections, but honestly it does kinda have the problem of little player interaction. Feel like everyone is usually off in their own corner of the galaxy doing their own thing
I definitely agree with you about the lack of options with diplomacy / politiking in Stellaris, Paradox games have the funny habit of claiming to have lots of options of winning the game, but only building out systems to win with war or science victories. Diplomacy feels frustrating in Stellaris as well in Civ, once a civ hates you it's either destroy them or ignore them for the rest of the game, I feel like Stellaris sounds more fun than it actually is to play.
wait so you havent actually played stellaris? because you can completely reverse another empires opinion of you depending on what you do, its sometimes slow but you can absolutely change your ethics to fit with them if you want, you can do things to appease them and even manipulate them into liking you. it is not as cut and dry and cassius is making it sound
My issue with Stellaris is the low replayability factor that comes with it. I've seen the argument raised that playing an RP empire is the way to go, but I honestly fail to see how that changes anything when the mechanics within the game fail to enforce any kind of nuance other than building up fleet power. Even more frustrating is core mechanics present in other 4x games (i.e. Civilization and Age of Wonders) includes these more complex versions of diplomacy and religion as core features. It's likethe developers are capability of implementing engaging dynamics between empires, but are forced to drip feed it to the player through overpriced DLC. I'm also seeing the argument that if you dislike Stellaris it's because you're playing it wrong? What? How is that a valid argument? Every single match boils down to the same outcome: hope you get a decent precursor empire, build up a fleet to fight the crisis, and hope you don't get wiped by the AI empires steamrolling you with 1m fleet power by year 2300. The nuances that do exist in the game, such as destroying stars with parasites, don't effect the core gameplay loop enough. Stellaris is complex only in the number of menu items and resources that are needed for the few mechanics that matter, but that's about it. I think the issue with some arguments here is the belief that any criticisms towards a game means that it's bad, but that's not true at all. Stellaris is an enjoyable game for the most part despite the lack of gameplay dynamics. However, it's difficult to recommend the game to anyone else when DLC are REQUIRED to get the full experience, and even then it's just for flavor most of the time.
Grand strategy games as a genre go much further in this regard. As far as 4X goes - IDK. But its important to point out the original pitch for Stellaris was a 4x/Grand Strategy hybrid.
I enjoy the heck out of Stellaris. I'm still finding new things in the game after 400 hours. I think my money was well spent. Kinda like my Shark vacuum.
@@salce_with_onion as a proud 1k+ hoi4 gamer chair bound member of alcoholics anonymous, stellaris just has a few more buttons to mash so i disagree maan
THE Genre, to make it only enjoyable by "not trying" is... ANY online multiplayer shooter with a lot of occludeers (walls or caves), and a lack of aviation or rocketry or radar/sonar, that is therefore always invested by wall-hackers within a few years. (basically EVERY first person online shooter) because: - wall hackers want to remain anonymous, but only cooperate with other wall hackers, even hackers on the opponent ingame faction. - wall hackers recognize other wall hackers by long-distance non-verbal-communication, visible through walls for them, this is usually "wiggling" - wall hackers are easy to make and trade for more money than the game, and game devs care less for integrity than even wall-hack makers+traders+users. the "not try" aspect is in either - not trying to kill-or-get-killed (by) other wall-hackers (they expect that, do not feed their expectations), in favor of just making them anxious and paranoid, by showing than that YOU KNOW what they are doing, without knowing them personally. Then reporting al the hackers. - not killing too many people too easily, making it WAY too obvious and impossible to hide that you are a cheater (especially to other likely antagonistic wall-hackers) , getting reported (likely by other cheaters) Seriously, this is THE only meta in such games, and all else i s a farce, because devs rather make a new game that is almost-wallhack-free for maybe 1 year, than caring more for integrity than wallhack-coders and wallhack-ellers.
"Locking updates to your game behind 20$ every few months" isn't what Paradox does with Stellaris, you're straight up lying. We had major updates without DLC. Each DLC comes with a free updates that reworks the base game, the payed DLC is only for more new content, which is optional (I have 500h+, I don't even own every DLC). If you don't spend any money in the game, you would still get new stuff for free. Stellaris is a much better live-service game than most AAA games filled with microtransactions, loot boxes and battle passes.
exactly. The biggest "problem" of several dlcs was that they don't offer that much content because many things were added with the free patch already. I'd say that is the most consumer-friendly way to keep a game going for that long since it's release.
Yall are coping. I am an eu4 player and I used to make this argument and eventually came around to his point: there are major updates, but they synergize with the DLC content every single time. If you don’t have the DLC, you feel it every time you ALMOST use a cool mechanic.
Im stuck in the same whirlpool like same one that made me stuck in Fallout 4; endless modding. And that's how I got my 1k+ hours playtime :) and also as a sci-fi enjoyers might also help me to got into this situation
What mods would you recommend to a complete newb with all of the DLCs already...? Is there anything to kickstart you past the grass-growing of the first 10-20 years in the game lol?
@@Nostromo2144 this is really depend on your playstyle, but my all-time must add is gigastrcuture, planet diversity / real space, extra ship component, any addon for event/stories, and any shipset
its good to see a fellow tryhard playing paradox. I quite like my paradox, game of choice Hoi4 but I almost never Play it outside of MP anymore I think this is because of how llimited the mods are, you just have 20 different alt hist reskins, which leads into the funniest and worst part of hoi4, that its best mod is the MLP total conversion mod and its not even close, because they have left the confines of the real world the dev team has more options on what to do, and so do you. the massively reduced pop of the world also makes the mod harder than most, the largest late game nation has the pop of the soviet union, now its still not hard mostly because you cannot make good AI for a game like hoi4, as if you make it actually good at your game it would be a nightmare to fight. the other problem with paradox games is people do not think, and play the game REALLY bad, so if you pay attention its super easy
Been playing Stellaris since launch, it holds a special place in my hearth but ... the game is kinda meh when it comes to unique factions/gameplay options.
4:50 this extremely funny. also I have over 2000 hours in stellaris and I do agree with most of his points so he does have my support and believe that the game needs to make better ai not better cheats for the difficulty increases. also a mention to another stellaris player that pointed this out the fleets are getting stupidly big and lag is unbearable now adays. I also agree on the point of more asymmetrical gameplay particularly making each empire focus on different resources for warfare like his idea of consumer goods as scrap weapons.
This was a better video than the other. I think you should've still touched on traditions and ascention perks, but the criticisms have more thought put into them through it being a reply to the comments. It's too bad you haven't played any quality multiplayer games for Stellaris, a word of advice though. The person with the worst connection speed should be host, due to the fact the game woukd desync too often if they aren't host. If you can get proper games in with consistent people, like my friend group does. I think you'd find the game mkre enjoyable since it forces you to learn mkre mechanics.
well it doesn't. My Knights of the Toxic God felt vastly different to my recent Under One Rule playthrough. Or my Clonearmy playthrough. Or my UNE playthrough. Or my Opressive Autocracy playthrough. Or my Overtuned playthrough. Or my Ocean Paradise playthrough. Or my current Necrophage/Reanimator playthrough. They all offer a different playstyle, you can't really use the same exact strategy for all of them. And depending on your starting location, neighbours, anomalies/precursors and digsites even the same empire can develop in different ways during the playthrough.
@@Magmakojote Nope, you're right that it doesnt. Hive Minds and Habitat Dwellers are very unique playstyles that are absolutely dysfunctional if you try to play one or the other, and vice versa. The economy would quite literally crash out by year 20. In fact, learning to balance the economies of different origins/species was a fun challenge in itself. Robots v Organics v others, etc are rather unique in how they drain your resources. In truth if that dude spent even just the few seconds in Stellaris that he spent making that comment, he'd know it was full of shit lmao but falling back on an unsupported opinion as the follow-up argument makes that lack of real experience pretty clear if it wasn't already E: i did really enjoy OP video's take on expanding vassalization concepts throughout Diplomacy bc holy fuck some parts of that pool are either real deep or reaaaaal shallow
@@anna-flora999 not really, games can ether don’t rely on role play, have enough mechanical depth to make it in context, or don’t have the depth for in context role play.
Can you recommend some more mods that add this kind of asymetrical gameplay, I'm sure there are more mods then expanded gestalts that add asymetrical gameplay. Maybe some that don't exclusivly focus on hives.
Didnt the “becoming the crisis” part release years before? Did this guy not play past the first few years? Becoming the crisis alters the game quite alot
Imagine making the exact same video out of spite but just using different words just because people pointed out genuine mistakes in your last vid. Stellaris isn't perfect by far, but there's a reason people (like me) have thousands of hours of gameplay. The game isn't for you, we get it.
on alpha-strike-meta in space-fiction. This seems to be an inevitable reality, emergent from the fact that "impact force"is squared-by projectile-speed, but only linear-to projectile-mass. This makes "projectile mass" nearly irrelevant. this makes "detonators" of any kind nearly irrelevant, because space is ALL about speed, and almost nothing else. Even surveillance only works bet at short range, because photo-resolution is inverse-squared-to-distance, so camera probes are superior, and ye again, better the faster they are. As a result, its all rocketry and colony ships, because that speeds up and hits a tiny far away target most reliably the most efficiently. any other weapon than unmanned rockets is just dumb scifi. small mobile Laser weapons have the very same problem asp photography, inverse square makes them weak at long distance. one weak exception is immobile long range laser weapons, due to time dilation, large energy-lasers disperse a lot less less than small energy lasers, but that is a "laser that feeds from a nearby star and that sterilizes a whole planet instantly", so it is almost certainly long range and immobile. building such a huge laser however is easily seen long in advance from nearby opponents, and easily prevented. the emergent meta from all those basic physics is: - space warfare is 100% unmanned long range (cluster munition) rocketry, extremely fast, strong impacts, hard to intercept. - space warfare is 100% mutually-assured destruction (due to long distances and large explosions from impact-speed alone) - space warfare is 95% unconditional surrender and 5% suicide, because fast drones KNOW when to surrender, because space is just deadly (small holes in a hull quickly kill large ships and we use cluster rocketry) (due to all of the above) but all of the above makes for worse drama than having teleportation-,mushrooms and glory-holes, arbitrary warp drive speeds or whatever constrains arbitrarily create more drama than a significantly less exciting "95% chance of any conflict ending in a surrender before anyone gets in anyone else's range) reality. a VERY reasonable seti-message for a first-contac to an unknown target is "we hereby surrender, because it is almost certain, that whoever is able to respond to this and reach us, is dominant over us".
Currently towards the end of my first stellaris game. I played under the defensive war only war philosophy and managed to avoid ever having to fight a war. If I wasn't spending my time enjoying learning how to play the game, I would have been so bored. I'll probably play one more game after this but as a militaristic empire just so I don't miss out on the only well developed mechanic
As a fan of Stellaris since all we had was dev diaries and the preview streams, and somebody who owns every DLC, with thousands of hours in the game... you've really hit the nail on the head. It really is just kinda... like that, after a while. I mostly use it for drafting up alien species and nation ideas, a role which it fills very nicely, but the actual gameplay just doesn't hold me the way it used to. I can't even live out my dreams of playing a knockoff Federation without seeing what else is on TV :( The first and biggest change it needs is for the game engine to be taken out behind the sheds and shot. Seriously, this fucking awful mess of an engine is severely limiting what the game can achieve. Just look at how pop-related lag has been consistently there since day one, and made infinitely worse in the update that was supposed to alleviate it (the one I like to call the "tiles delenda est" update, as of five seconds ago). Thank you for putting words to my problems. Have a sub. I was going to ask what pronouns I should use for you, but then I had the genius idea of checking your goddamn bio, and sure enough, there they are.
luckily there are mods for counter many of the problems; I recommend the channel Michael~ he had showcased some diplomacy mod and also other mods he had recensed are amazing like one witch add a wide variety of planets well differentiated or some roleplay mods witch add more civics like the ethics and civics bug branch or the species diversity witch adds specific traits for each species, Unfortunately Paradox will probably never add these features but maybe it's better this way because they're free
I am reaching 1000 hours on Stellaris and have to pretty much say I mostly agree with you on your points. I find myself really enjoying the beginning of my games and then feeling bored when Ive built all the megastructures for the millionth time and took out the crisis. What I get the most enjoyment out of in the game is making empires and playing modded (When I can get the mods to work). I like looking at stellaris as a sandbox to help me world build and use that galaxy for future stories or tabletop games but even then I find that lacking as well since all originality is lost and I'm locked in to the mechanics of the game. No mods can fully remedy the game limitations as well. Basically I play and in the end just think "Do I really like the game and role play invovled or do I just want to write a story?" I will say I do love the game since its best one of the only sci-fi space 4x games out there with this level of customization. Also multiplayer role play is fun and having a group makes it fun because it adds an abstract layer to the game that changes things up. There is so much I could say about this to the point I could create my own video to be honest. Maybe some day with the motivation. I like this channel.
Pretty much the only reason I play this game is because it is the most easiest paradox game. I dont like micromanaging but I can tolerate it in this game as there is little of it yet I get to roleplay. I guess I just really like to roleplay. Also for extra, Mod support.
Disagree but amazing critique. Apart from the enjoyment factor I only materially disagree that a) diplomacy feels quite impactful and realistic and b) their dlc policy is totally fine. Every dlc they release a massive free patch with tonnes of content along with the dlc. The dlc are truly optional, the game gets better without them but because they pay for devs to support a game a decade after release ( you know this guys cost hundreds of thousands of euros?).
Yeah I don't find the DLC predatory. Especially with the custodian program, I feel like someone in the company is arguing in favor of their customers against what executives may want.
Imo sellaris is the only one of its genre. The only game trying to do everything at once (customizable 4x with multiplayer and roleplay) and it suffers for it. Pretty much every other game does a part of stellaris but better. The high level of abstraction means that they can't have a detailed anything (the more detailed the mechanics, the narrower the fantasy it applies to). Customizability means balance and competitive pvp is harder. Pops mean that even simple biology standardization is out of the window. Religion simulation is out of the window for the simple fact that no religion works the same, not withstanding alien psychology.
I want to agree with you but it irks me that you give civ a pass for faith, gold, and science all being unique and different but stellaris's minerals, unity, and science are all the same. At the end of the day you're just making numbers go up and meeting the same empires and building the same buildings. but only Stellaris gets blamed for being the same game each time.
Having played a lot of TW:WH (a series I genuinely also enjoy from time to time both SP and with the lads), the problem with asymmetrical balancing that you mention at 6:25 is that, unfortunately, that results in some factions just being shit or outdated (Bretonnia, VCs, Lizardmen outside of Oxy & Tehe etc...). % differences might not be the most exciting or diverse way to differentiate empire civilizations, but it does keep every empire on a relatively level playing field imo, especially with the added "Bannerlord-esque" way that the game happens with or without you, which is something else I appreciate. You're not the main character in this game, you're just one of many players on a galactic stage.
Lmao I'm really amused to see this. Although I still agree with the engine comment. I did have a decent game yesterday for the first time in a while without expecting too much. Edit: I've also found the issue in Surviving Mars
Stellaris is going from somewhwat pseudo immersive roleplay empire building space exploration game into min maxing speed chest in galactic view. I always wished it was more from the first and less from the latter, but im no 4X fan anyway i find your arguments very solid.
I disagree on so many levels. Look people. I can understand when you don't like a game you will find a thousand reasons to dislike it. So yes every point on this video is correct on some degree.. What you find tho as gameplay weakness i personally call them strengths. Each game is more or less the same. Yes. It's game session is familiar with each other however that could be told on every game ever. Oh look Fortnite plays the same every match, same with red alert, same with every game ever. However it's game feels different at fhe same time doesn't it?
This felt like “oh, I got Internet Points, time to make second video” before I watched it, but now after watching it, I have some things to say, It felt like you discarded roleplay and attempts at it completely, and threw half baked “if I wanted story I would write/read a book” which is one of poorest arguments I heard, Roleplay is huge part for me and a lot of people who I play with, I guess it’s individual experience then. Paradox policy is EXTREMELY Predatory, and that’s why I am a filthy Pirate so we agree on that. Aside from that, it felt like I stated in the begining “let’s farm internet points” which I guess is your job as TH-camr. Generally good video
Agreed. Personally I can tolerate similar play style stuff but for me my pet peeve is the painfully arbitrary limitations to player agency. I wanna declare a war on someone to make them my vassal but can’t because of an arbitrary rule that I have to be stronger. Just stuff like that really bugs me since mechanically there’s no reason to stop the player from doing that. That and the absurdity of war exhaustion. The idea that you can improve that with tech will always be dumb.
That means I guess you aren't into CRPG games, because a lot of those involve roleplaying and to kinda dismiss games as not having roleplay potential is kinda dumb. Games with roleplaying potential tend to be more fun to me than games without roleplaying potential because at the end of the day, games with zero roleplay potential just feel dumbed down. Yes Stellaris isn't the best for roleplaying but at the same time, I feel like you cannot roleplay outside of game mechanics like forcing yourself to do different things aka a good example of a roleplay style playthrough of Stellaris would be to set up your species to be a Life bringer species by turning destroyed worlds into Gaia worlds, this basically makes you potentially only want to settle Tomb Worlds and it allows you to force yourself to roleplay as a specific type of species. For me Stellaris doesn't feel like a 4X game and maybe that's why you dislike it, it is a kinda game that gives you the freedom to play how you want to and potentially roleplay. But to me roleplay isn't just how you interact with other alien empires, it is how you build your worlds, it is what worlds you settle, it is the narrative within your own empire. Stellaris does have a different type of roleplay, it's not like a Crusader Kings style roleplay in which it is all about your dynasty and creating stories of rulers in those dynasties and forming relationships with other empires and other counts and all that jazz, it is more about the species rather than the individuals. You create a specific alien type with an origin, you get creative like maybe you are a Intelligent Voidborn species so you focus on technology in your own game and everything works toward that goal. Or you might be a species of Great Miners and focus on majority mineral production.
I think it's hilarious people think it's fine that quality of life features or reworks to old mechanics added to Paradox games are gated behind paid DLC. Creative Assembly doesn't do that. Remember when they overhauled LITERALLY ALL of the Warhammer 1 factions FOR FREE. All of them, even the DLC ones. And the only thing you had to pay for in those updates were new Legendary Lord packs. Why is it that Paradox gets a pass for a total downgrade of policy? They can do better, and other companies ARE doing better.
You and the creator do not realize every DLC comes with a free update. No company does for 7 years free updates, and the DLCs arent needed to play the game how you want.
@@Exakan pretty sure total war literally contradicts that but oh well. Besides I’d say the point is features within the dlc itself are more in line with what people would consider update material and not dlc worthy stuff. It certainly explains why some recent dlc are poorly regarded. After all the most of first contact was just primitives interactions. The origins are mostly minor and not really that intriguing.
After spending thousands of hours in stellaris, i have to say i have to opposite problem:, stellaris is so bad at war, the claim and influence mechanic suck and makes things super boring
I personally love the crunch of the Stellaris game but there is absolutely a problem with martial diplomacy (Fleet Power, Wars, Subjugation, ect.) being over represented. The non-hive mind government types all feel samey which really sucks. Where is my back room intrigue? The Shadow Council civic is a big example of this. In the patch I last played the game, Shadow Council should sound on paper should be sweet. There's so much interesting potential events and RP that could be happening but nothing ever comes of it. The vassal system is however one of my favourites though. It's granular paperwork details that make it feel like a genuine contract that two nations are trying to strong arm the other into accepting. Heck, becoming a Bulwark is extremely tempting. Essentially becoming a bodygaurd for another nation and military upgrades. But in practice it's ironically too good as Bulwarks are easily one of the few subject nations that are I found to consistently plot behind my back. This is probably why I like playing Megacorps. I have essentially an alternate route to achieve a state of galactic dominance. Same goes for espionage as it just feels nice to do something isn't "Build Big Fleet and zerg rush the enemy space station". But If I recall from the previous video, You made the same assessment about espionage being just tacked on. It's ultimately not doing enough to open other play-styles. The biggest update that Stellaris needs is an genuine RP and alternate victory condition. Anything to help push players into alternate play-styles or even take unorthodox routes to victory.
As someone who was over 3k hours, I agreed with very few of your statements, I believe there is more that you can find in Stellaris seeing as you played essentially very little of it. (or something, modded or not, both have their own experiences)
This will keep happening with their every new game. Paradox just isn't that creative, their business model is built on postponing interesting ideas forever for later DLCs. This is literally their every game, most recently victoria 3 where they only fleshed out the construction queue, then they wondered why people have 1000s of buildings queued.
Nowadays people call arguments "misinterpret all of MY points!", what a joke. People did not misinterpret your points, we literally told you what was wrong about them and it still is. You said the exact same topics just with different words. And you are again lying about DLCs. Every update comes with free stuff, and I am pretty sure you do not know how expensive game development is. No game with 7 years of support (like Stellaris gets) does only free updates, its not possible for a company. In general you don't really seem to know much about game design while talking like you know what you are saying. Just 5:20 shows it too well: Yes, its obvious to lock certain parts of the game for certain playstyles - because that makes them DIFFERENT. And the % modifiers are for war, because thats what the empire is about. You cant make friends, so thats your only way and you should better be good at it. Federations will kick your ass otherwise. 9:40 is wrong on so many levels. Of course they change your game, your build up, diplomacy, growth and everything else heavily depends on them. Thats the case in every strategy game. 10:55 No, your argument is entirely bullshit. You say Stellaris lacks diversity, while you want to give everyone the same abilities. Sorry, but thats stupid. 11:57 Is the final crap "argument" of yours. At first you say difficulty is too low, then you say "I do not care if you blame me for OP mods". Seriously, is that video an entire joke?? Just for your information - NSC2 adds HEAVY changes to the game, especially stronger components & ships. Its right and needed to point out bad parts of the game, but what you say is to 95% just wrong and misinformation.
Dude the game is mid, most people think it’s mid, you may like it but some ppl like things that you would find average She was just clarifying her points
@@noirekuroraigami2270 Most think its far above mid, thats why the community is so large. Is far from perfect, but the points in this video are simply wrong and without any fact. The video creator does not have a single clue how game design and restrictions work, and most of his video is wrong because of that lack of understanding.
A disgusting and borderline malicious use of leaving out context. No, the leaders and council that come with the new dlc are not behind the pay wall. The origins and some mechanics are like EVERY OTHER DLC ARE THE PAID PART. The AI literally have access to all dlc so you can see what there is/what you miss out on. You can encounter rouge ai without synthetic dawn etc. It's just a game you don't vibe with, as you've said before "in your experience". To then parade it around as a known fact and also throw in false information to boot is the despicable part. That is the reason you had people upset. You exaggerate and lie.
The civics part is even worse. My God, they don't even pay attention to in game events do they? The civic you pick changes your reaction to events and warfare. Everyone has the same tech but also their own civic related tech. Yes you can be a hungering swarm that wants blood. Yes there is a civic for being a tribal society, there are events for government structure as well as societal structure. Ever saw a pop up about an empire changing to be more outwardly xenophobic or vice versa?
@@DashhunterLP How tho? Are you talking about core gameplay like going to war because there are various options depending on what your civics are, or are you referring to the very game mechanic of going to war and watching ships fight? If you strip all the extra civics and gameplay changes then yeah its the same, why wouldn't it be? You took away what makes it different. Would you care to call me a dingus again and tell me about how them lying about dlc/updates being locked away behind a paywall is not lying? The stuff that is locked is what I've already pointed out. The part where they talk about the leaders changes IS NOT BEHIND A PAYWALL AND WAS PART OF THE UPDATE. What WAS behind the DLC was the origins starts and some civics. Which btw is not locked away from the ai so you can experience it from an outsiders view. Just not yourself unless you pay for the add ons like any other game. OMG if you take away the campaign and characters from COD the gameplay is so boring, just shoot rinse and repeat smh. What a negative why of viewing it all. What would you change then? If you dont know then why all the fuss? Constructive criticism about nearly every update they bring out crashes games and makes the end game lag EVEN WORSE would have been a great point about the downsides of the game. Why just get lazy with research and call any who honestly criticize names is not the way people should be interacting.
@@epkoknol9131 sorry for calling you that, that was uncalled for. My hateboner got a bit too stiff there. However, in my opinion, incremental stat changes and different pop-ups aren't substantial enough to warrant true gameplay diversity. About the DLCs, I don't know, never *bought* any of them. However what pissed me off so much was that the AI has access to ALL DLC content, even if you don't own them. So I'd be getting my darkest most confidential secrets spied out and couldn't do shit about it.
@@epkoknol9131 sorry for calling you that, that was uncalled for. My hateboner got a bit too stiff there. However, in my opinion, incremental stat changes and different pop-ups aren't substantial enough to warrant true gameplay diversity. About the DLCs, I don't know, never *bought* any of them. However what pissed me off so much was that the AI has access to ALL DLC content, even if you don't own them. So I'd be getting my darkest most confidential secrets spied out and couldn't do shit about it.
I’m sorry but I came across your first video as well(not subscribed btw) and I got this video too. Once again I strongly disagree, I always have a problem comparing a game with other similar games, the problem being if the first game has the same features/game mechanics as the second game…then what’s the point of the first game? All games would play the same at that point! The fact that stellaris does not have the same mechanics as other games is great in my opinion, again it seems you want it spoon fed to you, stellaris takes some imagination so if you have none then you have an opinion like this
Stellaris isn't a 4x game... it might be sold as one, and could be played as one, but in its essence its an rp game with numbers go brrr mechanics... I like to rp on some level while watching my monthly tech and/or political power go as high as possible at outrank everyone.
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Lucky you! The USB drive I stole only had a copy of Imperator: Rome
my condolences
@Expocat69420The diadochi are the most varied and interesting factions to play with the exception of rome and MAYBE Carthage. Each are trying to achieve the same thing but in very different ways
My personal problems:
- There are no regression mechanics, so losing is boring (and you can't roleplay the Imperium of Man properly).
- Empires are too stable, making them impossible to topple outside of direct warfare.
- - Both of the above rob the player of interesting struggles, as they try to hold their empire together or undermine their enemies.
- Every empire's power grows exponentially, with no meaningful checks or limits. So once an empire starts winning it will most likely continue to win, forever.
- It's far too easy for empires to achieve economic self-sufficiency, even in the late-game. Why is a game that's ostensibly about politics making it easy for me to isolate myself?
- The market mechanic is stupid and makes the game too easy, by exasperating all the other problems with the economic balance that I've already mentioned.
- - Also why do hive-minds have internal markets? That makes no sense.
- - - Also also the existence of the market mechanic means there is no need, nor any incentive, to specialize your empire into a certain kind of production. You can't make other empires dependent on your exports, and use that dependence as political leverage. Because empires can always just use the market to conjure the goods they need out of thin air.
- Outside of wars, galactic geography is practically irrelevant. Empires can trade, treaty, ally, vassalize and federate with each other whenever they want, so long as they have comms. They can do this even if they're on opposite sides of the galaxy, separated by a wall of hostile territory.
- - Because of this, there's no reason to give a shit about your neighbours outside of picking the target of your next war. You don't have to make any difficult political compromises with your neighbours, in the name of maintaining peace in your own backyard.
- How "closed borders" work is stupid. Why should an empire be able to completely block outsiders from passing through its territory, if it lacks the military means to actually enforce its borders?
- - Also, the fact that there's no way to bargain for territory access is ridiculous.
- There is no way to influence foreign empires besides waging war against them. Espionage is useless. Embargos, blockades and sanctions don't exist. And you can't back foreign political minorities, insurgencies or criminals.
- Vassals, federations and the Galactic Community are all separate systems, instead of a single unified system that models all kinds of political autonomy and entanglement.
- - Also, the idea that every empire in the galaxy would jump onboard with the Galactic Community, and yield to its laws and policies so willingly, feels nonsensical. That's not how the UN works.
- Ships and armies cost zero population to create or field, allowing them to be spammed and destroyed with zero demographic consequences.
- - This also renders clone armies, robot armies and slave armies completely pointless, since you're not risking any population in wars in the first place.
- There are no real downsides to losing a war as an aggressor. At most you'll lose a bit of territory. You'll rarely have to deal with internal political instability, from failing to achieve your stated goals, or getting lots of people killed for nothing.
- The wargoals system is too artificial and arbitrary, frequently locking players out of completely natural behaviours for no good reason (can't directly join a war in progress on another empire's side, can't pursue more than 1 Secret Fealty wargoal in a single war, can't pursue multiple wargoals period).
- - Also, the wargoals system completely fails to model low-intensity warfare, like border raids and skirmishes. You're either at peace or engaging in total war, with nothing in-between.
- The game's attempts to keep every ethical position and government type "viable" has lead to every empire behaving functionally the same.
- - It's also why so many of the other problems I've mentioned exist. If the game actually asserted a coherent model of reality, it would naturally lead to some types of empires surviving and thriving better than others, in various different contexts.
- - - And if it made the upsides and downsides of different ethics and governments more pronounced, players might actually bother reforming their empire now and then, to adapt to changing circumstances.
Admittedly, a bunch of these are issues common to much of the 4X genre, like the problem of exponential growth or geography being meaningless. But Stellaris has plenty of its own issues, too.
Wow, you put all of my thoughts into words dude, thanks. Sadly the only game I have seen to ever get close to checking everything off has been Vicky 2 and CK2/3, but neither of those are 4x and both have issues of their own. You also forgot to mention the issue of Late Game Stellaris, that being that as pop count grows large your game begins to grind to a holt regardless of how good your comp is. This is a common problem in all Paradox games except Vic 2 becuase they did't use a pop system, but a demographics system which work sooo much better in both ability to run the game, and in the RP elements as well.
@@athingwhichexists I didn't mention late-game slowdown, because that's more a technical problem than a game design problem. It would be nice if it didn't exist, but you can also avoid it by playing on a smaller galaxy, so it's not too bad. But you can't avoid any of the problems I described by just changing some settings.
Hivemind internal markets is letting few deviant drones trade with the hive, probably. They should have a massive cost increase in internal market tbh
Damn and i thought i had problems with this game..
I’ve definitely noticed the limits of consistent, exponential power growth and the lack of interesting diplomatic behavior behavior in my games. Everyone’s a generalist, which is good for balance but very bad for achieving unique role-play experiences. It’s frustrating how few truly game-altering decisions can be made during empire creation, and most of those are locked behind DLC.
I've played this game for a long time and I think your argument around asymmetrical mechanics is totally on point. Its a bit frustrating because the sci-fi setting makes it sort of the perfect place to really get weird with things. That said, I understand that asymmetrical strategy is a very hard problem to crack for a designer and a huge risk for a big studio if you don't stick the landing. I would err on the side of those saying the enjoyment comes from roleplaying space communism or what have you - but I understand that ultimately its only the mystification of the resource economy which allows us to craft narratives around any given campaign. Would be great to hear some suggestions for something better, but only spec-fic stuff, I can't really stomach the historical baggage of strategy games in the real world.
The thing with Stellaris, and it's kinda hard to express, is that in terms of a non turn based grand strategy space game it's really the only one. Or rather the only one with multiplayer. I love Sins of a Solar Empire. But there's no real empire management, and is closer to Starcraft than say Victoria or EU4.
I have many issues with Stellaris, above and beyond the points you raise here, almost all of which i can unequivocally agree with. However, it does have that sheer quantity of content. None of its mechanics are deep, but it has so many.
Look at Distant Worlds 2, and putting aside Stellaris origin as a massively dumbed down 3d distant worlds with planetary management, I have to say that overall "In my opinion" Distant Worlds 2 does literally every single thing better which both games share. Diplomacy, ship design, resource management, ship sets actually having impact, etc etc. With possibly the exception of Distant Worlds planetary management being nearly non existent.
However, Distant Worlds 2 doesn't have a species creator, mega structures, and has frankly even less meaningful differences in play style between the included races, with the exception of ship sets.
I suppose in summery, I literally play it because it's really the only game in its genre with anywhere near its level of content. Few of the mechanics are particularly good, but between their quantity, and mods, you have the most expansive real time space grand strategy out there.
use mods to rework gestalts, megacorps, the species packs, adding and changing existing civics and ethics, origins, ascensions, add new megastructures, rework diplomacy, ship designing, technology, and combat.............and there's really nothing in its class.
It's like pointing out all the issues with Cities Skylines. The argument can be quite easily made there are better city builders out there due to its many missing or badly implemented features or design choices, but when mods get involved any argument pretty much goes out the window because its community took it upon themselves to fix the game for the developer.
Personally, to make the ultimate grand strategy space game, I would say take the foundation of Distant Worlds 2, double down on the aspects that make that good, add a species and actual empire creator, "the one in the game doesn't matter" and make the choices actually matter, then take much of the content Stellaris has put out over the past eight years, and give it literally any depth...........
There is definitely something about stellaris that allows you to spend hundreds or thousands of hours into it, but it always left me with a sense it fell short. I think an integration of all the great 4x is definitely needed.
The customization is stellaris' main strength and problem. the need to be open ended forces the game to have a high level of abstraction and have % modifiers instead of detailed overhaul for civics and factions. Not to mention the fact that there's a trade off of balance and customizability (which I feel like they are ignoring lately, and I'm all for it. except for the leader jank of -90% ship build cost).
Your last sentence perfectly explains why I play Stellaris sometime but only one game and only once a year at max. It looks so good on the surface, but it is completely shallow water beneath.
I know we play for winning but like dwarf fortres teached me "loosing is fun"🎉❤
Loosing is TIGHT! ;)
However, losing also needs to be both interesting in its own right, and very likely to happen.
Losing in Dwarf Fortress is fun, because the game's simulation is so granular that watching a fortress collapse is a riveting narrative in itself. And Dwarf Fortress' economics and Dwarf psychology are so tenuous and fragile that every fortress is sitting on a slippery slope, liable to slide into mayhem at a moment's notice. So losing is common, and entertaining.
Meanwhile in Stellaris, the simulation is so abstract and distant that you don't get any of those interesting narrative beats. If you're being conquered by an enemy, you don't get to see any bold attempts at resistance by determined civilians. Or if your economy is collapsing, you can't see food shortages, or riots, or any other kind of unrest. There's just a number ticking down until Bad Things happen. But neither of these things are likely to happen, because it's stupidly easy to win wars and maintain a healthy economy.
But there's another aspect to it - the possibility of recovery. In Dwarf Fortress, a fortress that collapses may still have a handful of survivors, which a canny player can use to recover and rebuild. A fortress can survive multiple such falls. Death is common, but so is rebirth, allowing fortresses to have terrifying falls and glorious rises in continuous succession.
Meanwhile in Stellaris, every empire's power grows constantly and exponentially. And if an empire falls behind the curve, it will most likely remain behind the curve. So if a player's empire collapses or is half-conquered, they may as well abandon the game and start over. Because there is no way to catch up once an empire falls behind. The player will either end up a vassal for the rest of the game, or they'll just be conquered outright.
In Stellaris, losing is boring. And trying to recover from a near-loss is also boring.
@@tbotalpha8133correct answer
@@tbotalpha8133 great post but dwarves have been extremely mentally stable for years now, they gutted the spiral. a bit of miasma used to be FUN, but now even a lot is not notable on total fortress mood. with bad RNG it's possible to get a bunch of fussy dwarves, but a waterfall and some nice gold statues will generally fix that such that tantrums are rare.
@@boldCactuslad Aw, dang. I haven't played in years, and tantrum-spirals were so ingrained in DF fandom culture back then that I assumed they were never going away.
You make some good points, and while I still greatly enjoy the game, I can just chalk that up to "I am easily amused". Because I am.
However there are three things that I want to point out.
1) Winning the game comes to having the highest score, and it's real easy to do without ever taking so much as another system or even a single vassal.
2) Comparing factions to HOI IV US Congress? Really, because in my experience, that one bland mechanic. It is essentially just clicking a button until you have a high majority to leave it alone for a bit.
3) Yeah we can harp about PDX DLC policy all people want, but what I want to point out is that Stellaris is better than other PDX games in that regard. You get some mechanics with the free patch, and don't have rubbed in your face by the game that you need the DLC to explore that stuff more, like EU IV and HOI IV.
I guess the big thing with stellaris, is that it really comes down to timeframe. Under default standards, that's ~250-300 years of game time. So that what your engagement needs to be spread out over. The only other PDX game with a similar timeframe is EU IV, and you have a lot more control over your nation in Stellaris than you do in EU IV.
Agree again, stellaris is so broad and expansive yet doesn't go deep on enough on every front to make it all work and connect with each other. Everything ends up shallow and dry at the end of the day. I had a mate try and get into stellaris as he plays mostly hoi4 and ck3 and at some point he said to me 'does anything happen?'.
"It gets better after the 200th year" (it did not)
See I just don't understand that, he enjoys ck3, but says nothing happens in stellaris?
Ck3 is by far has the least amount of depth out of all recent paradox games.
As someone who has now over 2000 hours of stellaris multiplayer, I agree. Although the dysinc hell is much tamer than HOI4. Most mp games don't last past year 60-80, so it's mostly and all out war for who can tribute the galaxy first.
Coming off the first video, again I completely agree. Sigh, i wish the diplomacy system was advanced as you pitched cos that would be amazing compared to what it is now. Just watching these has made me realize how shallow the actual gameplay is.
Minor critique though, technically there is a wholly unique playstyle that does have a system that is asymetrial (if only slightly) and thats the Criminal Heratige megacorp which plays very differently to every other empire type. Funly enough its also not very good and barely anyone (including me) has ever played it
Mod: "REAL SPACE" Collection Why: Increases scale of planets, decreases ship speed and lowers ranges of weapons. Result: You tend to build fleets like real life. Some ships are dedicated Artillery for Long range, while some are pickets meant to harass and soak up damage. Reduced speed makes fighters an actual strategic threat, and you must now have border fleets to slow down any potential wars. This mod alone seriously changes stellaris in so many ways, its a whole new game that stops feeling like babies 1st 4x
Or you could play Aurora 4x...
i have 1k hours in stellaris and i agree with all of the points above
Agree with his points just not the conclusion. But I WISH the devs would act on these critiques, they would make the game better.
Stellaris noob here with maybe a dozen hours of actual gameplay, with probably 100+hrs watching & reading about the game lol! On my 5th 'play through', yet to get to year 10 eh, just can't make any species/game origin/parameters stick. Maybe Stellaris is not for me either...? 8-/
I love the scale, the scope, all the options and complexity, but I just can't seem to get a smooth start. Either I run out of Unity, alloys or Influence, or some other resource.
I tried a necro empire, just grew too slow for my liking. Tried a pure machine/Shattered Ring, super-tall isolationist & ran out if Influence before I could build my 3rd outpost to shore up my last choke point. Just some very weird mechanics that seem entirely arbitrary and only there to add artificial limitations to the game, which really breaks immersion for me.
I like an awful lot about the game, but there are several key things I don't like: hyperlanes on rails (why?) - computers can do 3D Cartesian coordinates I'm sure!; super slooooooow start, very limited expansion early on, no control over a resource/tech tree, just have to keep researching randomly in the hopes you eventually get that tech you really want; forced limit on starbases and planets you can colonise via cheesy artificial limits. I could go on, but I'm just a grumpy old bastard gamer, who prob played far too many TB games in the 80s & 90s and is now jaded beyond redemption he he.
@@Nostromo2144 Hyperlanes were one of 3 modes of FTL in the 1.0 version. They scrapped the others so you could have options like fortifying chokepoints - also it was very difficult to make sense of warfare when some civs used gateways and others used jump drives. There's a civic called early explorers that replaces the hyperlane tech with crude jump drives (you can still get hyperlane tech later) it doesn't work well from a UI perspective, but veteran players seem to really enjoy the variety. As far as getting a good start - parlimentary system + technocracy and set the living standards to academic privilege, this provides the political power for your specialists to deliver unity via factions and you'll have one less thing to focus on and get to recruit scientists who all have specialties to help stack the tech deck in favor of your strat. I like to keep empire sprawl down as much as possible, you can do that by sticking to the two reliable habitable worlds until you've built up the leader traits/ techs/ traditions/ascenion perks that let you expand without the penalties from sprawl. It lets you snowball more on your own terms and with the sprawl under control you can still quickly catch up to AI that's been spreading more aggressively. Hope that helps.
After my first play session as a pacifist I endedup befriending all empires except one or two.
Then some Ai in my federation went rogue and declared war on another big group so i was forced to build up a defense fleet because one of my black holes was a popular spot. In the end there was a crysis and I just waited for the AI to finish the job.
I tried to participate in the galactic council but I never managed to archieve anything important and my influence was very minimal over all x)
civ6 is so weird and imbalanced in its victory condition, that (, besides civ6 only being about archer rushes in any serious game that is played to get a victory most efficiently,) ...
there is also an EASY to perform "no city challenge", where 1 player faction can win a game, without ever controlling of founding ANY city all game long (works only against ai in certain versions).
worth checking a video on that for a laugh.
The one thing I really like about the the Federation mechanic is the Federal Fleet.
When you are in charge you have control over it, and you can always design and build ships for it without breaking your own naval cap.
Ships you design have your factions aesthetics, but you have access to everyone's technologies, enabling stronger ships.
It really feels like a United Federation of Planets thing.
Early Stellaris had one of my favorite asymmetries, and then they ripped it out. I looked the different FTL types, now, by personal preference I pretty much only ever played with wormholes, and on occasion warp, but 8 just lived the idea of these different races being on completely different playing fields. Now, I recognize they took them out for strategy and balance reasons, but it took me like, a half hour of thought to come up with at least some ideas of how to solve that problem, and I'm not someone who actually cares about it. Someone who actually does would be way better at it than 8 am, and the only solution they came up with was "Restrict them to the FTL with bottlenecks, and then remove the capacity to actually fortify systems as hard points."
Any hope I had in Stellaris died with the removal of the starting FTL option. If the devs couldn't be bothered to balance the only asymmetrical element of their game, they were certainly not going to allow for any emergent gameplay down the line. Lo and behold, Stellaris never lived up to the potential of its early day and the concept of unique empire interacting with each other.
You guys buy your paradox games?
I really like Stellaris BUT you're 100% correct with your criticisms.
Total Warhammer actually does a decent job of giving factions identity through asymmetric gameplay mechanics and units.
Ive been playing Age of Wonders 4 and checking out Paradox 4x games and i fully get what you're talking about by everything being the same. The "factions" are just skins in Paradox games.
TW:Warhammer might have had a rough patch recently but damn i'll give them props for atleast Trying to make unique faction gameplay. To be fair they have a tabletop game to steal mechanics and ideas from.
higher difficulty DOES change the way the game is played, having strong neighbors forces the player to try to get defense pacts and good relations with them, use chokepoints and environment modifiers to their advantage, design ships specifically to fight the AI and fortify planets with armies, it completly changes the player's strategy
that's just playing optimally, which, like i said, i was already doing. it's not really changing strategy, it's playing well.
@@cassius_scrungoman do you also call using different units in civ or going for a victory type that maches your empire "not changing strategy"?
@@cassius_scrungoman No that is change in the way one plays the game in response to difficulty thus changing their strategy because of the difficulty change. Also people pointing out how nonsensical and wrong many of your points are/were is not a vitriol. You lying about paid updates etc. is more vitriolic and toxic behaviour than that.
@@iamcheese4519 Allow me to try and explain better:
In stellaris you no matter how your nation is designed, no matter what difficult you are set at, etc. There is still only 1 optimal strategy, that being to pick the optimal ship design for your patch, to bee line chokepoints, to min max your planets, to go for specific techs, and then prepare to aggressively expand while tech rushing. You do not have to make different ship types, you do not have to change how your planets are set up, you don't need to prioritize different resources, you do not need to change the fact that you beeline chokepoints, you don't even really need to change anything about how you play compared to high vs low difficulty, or even for what origin you pick either (with a few exceptions, but said exceptions are ussually a detriment to your ability to win rather than an alteration to what counts as victory or how you get to win).
In comparison to use Civ as an example (although civ isn't perfect either), let's say you pick Venice, you are now locked to one city, instead of expanding with settlers you now have to expand to city states but said city states also give you your money and influence so you have to choose which ones have what you need and which ones you can ignore. Your resource preference is fundementally altered thus changing almost everything about what the optimal strategy for playing the game is (less units, more naval, money more important than any other resource, tech theft over direct science, etc.) More than that, the game also encourages this strategy change as well. Venice gets more traderoutes, Venice gets special naval units, and venice gets a way to take city states peacefully and can buy buildings AND units (but another gameplay alter happens here where each city besides the capital is puppeted) etc. There aremany total changes to gameplay and features only that civ has access to.
In stellaris, the only way to atchieve a similar level is by giving yourself a handicap outside of the game (like the one planet challenge), but there is no in-game system for this.
Now then, if stellaris were to have something similar for example: democracies having an internal senate that you have to influence to get what you want, fenatic purifiers having to deal with generals declaring wars without your control (or an ever ticking stat that punishes you for not genociding a planet), spiritualist empires not needing to research tech but instead rely on their psychic abilities to improve, these would be the bear minimum for variety in gameplay but they simply aren't present. A democracy plays like a gestault plays like an empire plays like a purifier. No matter the difficulty you have the same resource priorities, the same optimal ship builds the same chokepoint rush the same method of expansion the same method of FTL the same policy and edict system the same policies and edicts the same buildings (with a few texture or name swaps) the same techs the same optimal strategy
@@athingwhichexists thank you for this writeup! unfortunately for me it feels a bit petty to just copy paste bits of my script *which are already in the video* which answer people's criticisms, so thanks for this!
What's your opinion on Endless Space 2?
It could perhaps be said sins of a solar empire plays closer to a RTS, endless space more a true 4x, while stellaris aimed to be something like an RPG but didn't quite cut it.
You might feel like you adressed certain things in the original video, but if people still choose to bring it up that doesn’t mean they didn’t hear you it just means they don’t think your reasoning was valid.
Good follow up, brought a lot of clarity on prior points! Though I really disagree with the... snark? In the description, if a large majority that you even acknowledge as the 'cabal' quote unquote "misunderstand" your point I think it's less so they misunderstood and more so you didn't originally convey your point very well. 💀
Like when a large majority has the same main takeaway and disagreement and then you do a follow up video with of clarification and explaining what you ACTUALLY meant to be the main takeaway and everyone agrees... I feel like it should be pretty obvious what the original issue was 😭 Because honestly I got the same exact vibe a lot of other people did the first video- one brief sentence saying "Stellaris' difficulty is irrelevant to my gameplay experience because it reminds me of cheesing in XCom" is a really random and confusing sentence- let alone after all the prior built up context.
I can see how a creator point of view having an idea in mind of what you MEANT to convey can be frustrating and having a brief but important quote being glanced past- but then on top of that using a reference not everyone will get as an example, c'mon- gotta take some fault LOL.
So like, if I want to play big space game (video game Twilight Imperium), but I don't want to play stellaris now, what would you recommend I play?
Stellaris isn't a bad game, it's just not to your taste. You literally say that you prefer heavy asymetric games. And now you're complaining because people pointed out how your criticism was flawed. You complain a lot about stuff that isn't in the game, but there's already a lot of mechanics that do their job properly.
"your argument is wrong when i misinterpret all of your points!" You explicitly said that making your own lore was a bad thing. Percentage modifiers aren't a bad mechanic. Ethics do have impact, they change which techs and policies you have access to and other Empire's opinion.
Yeah, playing in higher difficulties forces you to play in a more effective way... That's how every game works.
I do agree that the game needs more alternate victory conditions. But I never play the meta and still manage to win most of my games.
Playing meta is the most boring thing ever. Yeah, the game will be boring if you routinely stick to the same strategy.
Yeah, I agree.
@@AlphaWolfShade Its note boring for me tbh, there is always something you can tweak to improve your strategy, I like finding those tweaks and getting rewarded by an even faster victory.
Stellaris was originally sold as an asymetric game with the different FTL.
Casual player bullied into developing enough imagination and patience to play grand strategy again, still finds reasons to complain.
More news at 11!
facts brotha
will keep playing it tho
Mods have really made the game more enjoyable for me. Yeah, I agree about diplomacy and the council. They definitely should bring some features from ck3 and eu4 to stellaris.
Also did he not play, broken shackles, fear of the dark, knights of the toxic god, payback orgins? They change the game dramatically
there is a huge problem in fiction, where you must never define anything, by what it is lacking, because that list is infinitely long and nonsensical, compared to a list of what what anything posses.
Ngl, the only thing driving me in solo is the power fantasy and achievement hunting
also totally agree, we should have a way to never use minerals just like there is way to never use consumer goods (gestalt) or food (lithoid), catalytic processing still needs minerals to build districts/buildings
there are actual detailed commercial pacts for individual ressources in offer trade option, but it's completely useless outside of bankrolling your friend in multiplayer, AI will never trade a system and will never act upon being bankrolled, i wish we could do that in exchange for loyalty/friendship so they overthrow their overlord (secret fealty is incredibly random) or strait up cause instability by bankrolling a politician. Trading tech should also be a thing
there is a faction system but they just affect happyness which can be countered incredibly easily
the policy screen is indeed hot garbage, as is most of the UI
anyway waiting for episode 3 on new cosmogenesis victory condition and cetana who actually has more interactions than kill
I have four digits of hours in Stellaris, and I thought your criticisms were dead on. Except for one: complaining about micro. I think micromanagement is part and parcel of the 4x genre, and one the aspects I enjoy the most.
Nobody wants to play MP, because unless you play the fastest most optimized Meta Build and execute it well, you get stomped out in 10 Minutes .
While the game seems to claim deep lore and complex narrative. Even with all the DLCs which is behind a good sized paywall. The lore is about as deep as a puddle. There are bunches of anomalies and archeology sites, but they don't really seem to do anything. At least with the space born critters you can sometimes get neat tech (big sometimes). One or two extra units, which really do nothing and can't be upgraded. Everything has an air of mystery, but in reality the box is empty. A world hatching, titanic foot prints, and subterranean population they are just there. There is nothing more. Not even some special tech or anything. There are no brain slugs, no space police, and I can't be a pretend god to lesser life forms. Everything pretty much is atheistic and role playing isn't really a thing. There is so much si-fi to pull from, but it ain't there or at least nothing more than a foot note.
Solo
And TBH most RP is based upon in-game experiences affecting choices. Example: I wanted to become cyborgs BUT in-game my empire fought an existential war with a neighboring machine empire so Engineered Evolution it went.....
EDIT: My major complaint about Stellaris is two Spiritualist empires will get along LOL.
When do different religions (from the same species) get along IRL? LOL
Not entirely related to the game, but you would be surprised to see how steamy religious groups from different beliefs can get when they're persecuting atheist group.
I guess the principle here is uniting for common enemy.
Well, spiritualism in the game is completely different from religion. So that's probably why.
I think the problem is that we wanted to play Master of Orion 2, the devs have made the game in the image of MoO 2 and we started playing MoO2, then the devs started to add many many mechanics but at the barebones we are still playing MoO2. That is why all other mechanics are secondary to technology and war (just like in MoO2, there were populations, unrest etc but all were superficial as it should be)
I really wish they did more with the council stuff then they did. I understand why you don’t need to manage the council member’s happiness since that could get annoying, like in CK2. However I wish there were events to spice it up. For example let’s say your playing a monarchy and then, suddenly, one of your leaders switches ethics to be libertarian. A bunch of pops, maybe on a specific world, also become libertarian. Now you need to deal with the unhappy population and the dissenting councilor without looking bad.
Expanding espionage into council and ethic mechanics would make a great mod.
I've never personally had any issues with multiplayer connections, but honestly it does kinda have the problem of little player interaction. Feel like everyone is usually off in their own corner of the galaxy doing their own thing
thats why i play with one ai fallen empire against me so i can literally do what ever i want the rest of the game 6:55
I definitely agree with you about the lack of options with diplomacy / politiking in Stellaris, Paradox games have the funny habit of claiming to have lots of options of winning the game, but only building out systems to win with war or science victories. Diplomacy feels frustrating in Stellaris as well in Civ, once a civ hates you it's either destroy them or ignore them for the rest of the game, I feel like Stellaris sounds more fun than it actually is to play.
wait so you havent actually played stellaris? because you can completely reverse another empires opinion of you depending on what you do, its sometimes slow but you can absolutely change your ethics to fit with them if you want, you can do things to appease them and even manipulate them into liking you. it is not as cut and dry and cassius is making it sound
Everything you just just said could not be farther from the truth
I wish war was better, more like, civilization has better war conflicts than the stupid cassus beli system
My issue with Stellaris is the low replayability factor that comes with it. I've seen the argument raised that playing an RP empire is the way to go, but I honestly fail to see how that changes anything when the mechanics within the game fail to enforce any kind of nuance other than building up fleet power. Even more frustrating is core mechanics present in other 4x games (i.e. Civilization and Age of Wonders) includes these more complex versions of diplomacy and religion as core features. It's likethe developers are capability of implementing engaging dynamics between empires, but are forced to drip feed it to the player through overpriced DLC.
I'm also seeing the argument that if you dislike Stellaris it's because you're playing it wrong? What? How is that a valid argument? Every single match boils down to the same outcome: hope you get a decent precursor empire, build up a fleet to fight the crisis, and hope you don't get wiped by the AI empires steamrolling you with 1m fleet power by year 2300. The nuances that do exist in the game, such as destroying stars with parasites, don't effect the core gameplay loop enough. Stellaris is complex only in the number of menu items and resources that are needed for the few mechanics that matter, but that's about it.
I think the issue with some arguments here is the belief that any criticisms towards a game means that it's bad, but that's not true at all. Stellaris is an enjoyable game for the most part despite the lack of gameplay dynamics. However, it's difficult to recommend the game to anyone else when DLC are REQUIRED to get the full experience, and even then it's just for flavor most of the time.
I'd add that having everything but relics/unity/influence/tech being infinitely interchangeable flattens the experience quite a bit as well.
This is the first 4X game ever where diplomacy meant something and the AI acted sensibly. What is a better diplomatic experience you could suggest ?
Grand strategy games as a genre go much further in this regard. As far as 4X goes - IDK. But its important to point out the original pitch for Stellaris was a 4x/Grand Strategy hybrid.
Stellaris is a single player game that’s been balanced for multiplayer
I enjoy the heck out of Stellaris. I'm still finding new things in the game after 400 hours. I think my money was well spent. Kinda like my Shark vacuum.
Cas: Democracies have no parliaments and people to appease
Factions, pop happiness and planet approval ratings: am I joke to you?
Lmao literally can be fixed by few decisions. Even HOI has better politics and trade system at this point
@@salce_with_onion as a proud 1k+ hoi4 gamer chair bound member of alcoholics anonymous, stellaris just has a few more buttons to mash so i disagree maan
THE Genre, to make it only enjoyable by "not trying" is...
ANY online multiplayer shooter with a lot of occludeers (walls or caves), and a lack of aviation or rocketry or radar/sonar, that is therefore always invested by wall-hackers within a few years. (basically EVERY first person online shooter)
because:
- wall hackers want to remain anonymous, but only cooperate with other wall hackers, even hackers on the opponent ingame faction.
- wall hackers recognize other wall hackers by long-distance non-verbal-communication, visible through walls for them, this is usually "wiggling"
- wall hackers are easy to make and trade for more money than the game, and game devs care less for integrity than even wall-hack makers+traders+users.
the "not try" aspect is in either
- not trying to kill-or-get-killed (by) other wall-hackers (they expect that, do not feed their expectations), in favor of just making them anxious and paranoid, by showing than that YOU KNOW what they are doing, without knowing them personally. Then reporting al the hackers.
- not killing too many people too easily, making it WAY too obvious and impossible to hide that you are a cheater (especially to other likely antagonistic wall-hackers) , getting reported (likely by other cheaters)
Seriously, this is THE only meta in such games, and all else i s a farce, because devs rather make a new game that is almost-wallhack-free for maybe 1 year, than caring more for integrity than wallhack-coders and wallhack-ellers.
I actually agreed with all your points last video. I mostly like Stellaris because I can mod the shit out of it and treat it like a big sandbox
"Locking updates to your game behind 20$ every few months" isn't what Paradox does with Stellaris, you're straight up lying. We had major updates without DLC. Each DLC comes with a free updates that reworks the base game, the payed DLC is only for more new content, which is optional (I have 500h+, I don't even own every DLC). If you don't spend any money in the game, you would still get new stuff for free. Stellaris is a much better live-service game than most AAA games filled with microtransactions, loot boxes and battle passes.
exactly. The biggest "problem" of several dlcs was that they don't offer that much content because many things were added with the free patch already. I'd say that is the most consumer-friendly way to keep a game going for that long since it's release.
Yall are coping. I am an eu4 player and I used to make this argument and eventually came around to his point: there are major updates, but they synergize with the DLC content every single time. If you don’t have the DLC, you feel it every time you ALMOST use a cool mechanic.
try playing without DLCs
live service games are a blight
You talk like people aren't capable of reading the store page for the dlc. Sad that people like your comment tbh. Really sad
Im stuck in the same whirlpool like same one that made me stuck in Fallout 4; endless modding. And that's how I got my 1k+ hours playtime :)
and also as a sci-fi enjoyers might also help me to got into this situation
What mods would you recommend to a complete newb with all of the DLCs already...? Is there anything to kickstart you past the grass-growing of the first 10-20 years in the game lol?
@@Nostromo2144 this is really depend on your playstyle, but my all-time must add is gigastrcuture, planet diversity / real space, extra ship component, any addon for event/stories, and any shipset
@@Bayofthe91st Cheers, is the best place to get these mods from somewhere like Vortex...?
@@Nostromo2144 nah you can get pretty much all of them from the steam workshop
its good to see a fellow tryhard playing paradox. I quite like my paradox, game of choice Hoi4 but I almost never Play it outside of MP anymore I think this is because of how llimited the mods are, you just have 20 different alt hist reskins, which leads into the funniest and worst part of hoi4, that its best mod is the MLP total conversion mod and its not even close, because they have left the confines of the real world the dev team has more options on what to do, and so do you. the massively reduced pop of the world also makes the mod harder than most, the largest late game nation has the pop of the soviet union, now its still not hard mostly because you cannot make good AI for a game like hoi4, as if you make it actually good at your game it would be a nightmare to fight.
the other problem with paradox games is people do not think, and play the game REALLY bad, so if you pay attention its super easy
Been playing Stellaris since launch, it holds a special place in my hearth but ... the game is kinda meh when it comes to unique factions/gameplay options.
4:50 this extremely funny. also I have over 2000 hours in stellaris and I do agree with most of his points so he does have my support and believe that the game needs to make better ai not better cheats for the difficulty increases. also a mention to another stellaris player that pointed this out the fleets are getting stupidly big and lag is unbearable now adays. I also agree on the point of more asymmetrical gameplay particularly making each empire focus on different resources for warfare like his idea of consumer goods as scrap weapons.
for anyone curious the exact hours I have is 2679
Wait that optic fibre thing was a myth???
Worked for me
This was a better video than the other.
I think you should've still touched on traditions and ascention perks, but the criticisms have more thought put into them through it being a reply to the comments.
It's too bad you haven't played any quality multiplayer games for Stellaris, a word of advice though.
The person with the worst connection speed should be host, due to the fact the game woukd desync too often if they aren't host.
If you can get proper games in with consistent people, like my friend group does. I think you'd find the game mkre enjoyable since it forces you to learn mkre mechanics.
What mods are you using for the graphics?
I’m of the opinion that if games need players to engage in out of context role play to make each run feel unique then your game has failed.
well it doesn't. My Knights of the Toxic God felt vastly different to my recent Under One Rule playthrough. Or my Clonearmy playthrough. Or my UNE playthrough. Or my Opressive Autocracy playthrough. Or my Overtuned playthrough. Or my Ocean Paradise playthrough. Or my current Necrophage/Reanimator playthrough.
They all offer a different playstyle, you can't really use the same exact strategy for all of them. And depending on your starting location, neighbours, anomalies/precursors and digsites even the same empire can develop in different ways during the playthrough.
@@Magmakojote in truth all those games just play the same.
@@Magmakojote Nope, you're right that it doesnt.
Hive Minds and Habitat Dwellers are very unique playstyles that are absolutely dysfunctional if you try to play one or the other, and vice versa. The economy would quite literally crash out by year 20.
In fact, learning to balance the economies of different origins/species was a fun challenge in itself. Robots v Organics v others, etc are rather unique in how they drain your resources.
In truth if that dude spent even just the few seconds in Stellaris that he spent making that comment, he'd know it was full of shit lmao but falling back on an unsupported opinion as the follow-up argument makes that lack of real experience pretty clear if it wasn't already
E: i did really enjoy OP video's take on expanding vassalization concepts throughout Diplomacy bc holy fuck some parts of that pool are either real deep or reaaaaal shallow
@@colebehnke7767 which is basically the case in every game
@@anna-flora999 not really, games can ether don’t rely on role play, have enough mechanical depth to make it in context, or don’t have the depth for in context role play.
Can you recommend some more mods that add this kind of asymetrical gameplay, I'm sure there are more mods then expanded gestalts that add asymetrical gameplay. Maybe some that don't exclusivly focus on hives.
Didnt the “becoming the crisis” part release years before? Did this guy not play past the first few years? Becoming the crisis alters the game quite alot
Imagine making the exact same video out of spite but just using different words just because people pointed out genuine mistakes in your last vid.
Stellaris isn't perfect by far, but there's a reason people (like me) have thousands of hours of gameplay. The game isn't for you, we get it.
on alpha-strike-meta in space-fiction.
This seems to be an inevitable reality, emergent from the fact that "impact force"is squared-by projectile-speed, but only linear-to projectile-mass.
This makes "projectile mass" nearly irrelevant. this makes "detonators" of any kind nearly irrelevant, because space is ALL about speed, and almost nothing else.
Even surveillance only works bet at short range, because photo-resolution is inverse-squared-to-distance, so camera probes are superior, and ye again, better the faster they are.
As a result, its all rocketry and colony ships, because that speeds up and hits a tiny far away target most reliably the most efficiently.
any other weapon than unmanned rockets is just dumb scifi.
small mobile Laser weapons have the very same problem asp photography, inverse square makes them weak at long distance.
one weak exception is immobile long range laser weapons, due to time dilation, large energy-lasers disperse a lot less less than small energy lasers, but that is a "laser that feeds from a nearby star and that sterilizes a whole planet instantly", so it is almost certainly long range and immobile. building such a huge laser however is easily seen long in advance from nearby opponents, and easily prevented.
the emergent meta from all those basic physics is:
- space warfare is 100% unmanned long range (cluster munition) rocketry, extremely fast, strong impacts, hard to intercept.
- space warfare is 100% mutually-assured destruction (due to long distances and large explosions from impact-speed alone)
- space warfare is 95% unconditional surrender and 5% suicide, because fast drones KNOW when to surrender, because space is just deadly (small holes in a hull quickly kill large ships and we use cluster rocketry) (due to all of the above)
but all of the above makes for worse drama than having teleportation-,mushrooms and glory-holes, arbitrary warp drive speeds or whatever constrains arbitrarily create more drama than a significantly less exciting "95% chance of any conflict ending in a surrender before anyone gets in anyone else's range) reality.
a VERY reasonable seti-message for a first-contac to an unknown target is "we hereby surrender, because it is almost certain, that whoever is able to respond to this and reach us, is dominant over us".
Still better than Sin's carrier spam.
Currently towards the end of my first stellaris game. I played under the defensive war only war philosophy and managed to avoid ever having to fight a war. If I wasn't spending my time enjoying learning how to play the game, I would have been so bored. I'll probably play one more game after this but as a militaristic empire just so I don't miss out on the only well developed mechanic
As a fan of Stellaris since all we had was dev diaries and the preview streams, and somebody who owns every DLC, with thousands of hours in the game... you've really hit the nail on the head. It really is just kinda... like that, after a while. I mostly use it for drafting up alien species and nation ideas, a role which it fills very nicely, but the actual gameplay just doesn't hold me the way it used to. I can't even live out my dreams of playing a knockoff Federation without seeing what else is on TV :(
The first and biggest change it needs is for the game engine to be taken out behind the sheds and shot. Seriously, this fucking awful mess of an engine is severely limiting what the game can achieve. Just look at how pop-related lag has been consistently there since day one, and made infinitely worse in the update that was supposed to alleviate it (the one I like to call the "tiles delenda est" update, as of five seconds ago).
Thank you for putting words to my problems. Have a sub. I was going to ask what pronouns I should use for you, but then I had the genius idea of checking your goddamn bio, and sure enough, there they are.
luckily there are mods for counter many of the problems; I recommend the channel Michael~ he had showcased some diplomacy mod and also other mods he had recensed are amazing like one witch add a wide variety of planets well differentiated or some roleplay mods witch add more civics like the ethics and civics bug branch or the species diversity witch adds specific traits for each species, Unfortunately Paradox will probably never add these features but maybe it's better this way because they're free
The game needs objectives, rewards and victories.
do you have a mod list for xcom 2 that fixes the alpha strike issue or is it just long war 2
I am reaching 1000 hours on Stellaris and have to pretty much say I mostly agree with you on your points. I find myself really enjoying the beginning of my games and then feeling bored when Ive built all the megastructures for the millionth time and took out the crisis. What I get the most enjoyment out of in the game is making empires and playing modded (When I can get the mods to work). I like looking at stellaris as a sandbox to help me world build and use that galaxy for future stories or tabletop games but even then I find that lacking as well since all originality is lost and I'm locked in to the mechanics of the game. No mods can fully remedy the game limitations as well. Basically I play and in the end just think "Do I really like the game and role play invovled or do I just want to write a story?"
I will say I do love the game since its best one of the only sci-fi space 4x games out there with this level of customization. Also multiplayer role play is fun and having a group makes it fun because it adds an abstract layer to the game that changes things up.
There is so much I could say about this to the point I could create my own video to be honest. Maybe some day with the motivation. I like this channel.
Pretty much the only reason I play this game is because it is the most easiest paradox game. I dont like micromanaging but I can tolerate it in this game as there is little of it yet I get to roleplay. I guess I just really like to roleplay. Also for extra, Mod support.
I like Stellaris. But it needs more interactions. For example. Give me an RTS style of play on planets????
Disagree but amazing critique. Apart from the enjoyment factor I only materially disagree that a) diplomacy feels quite impactful and realistic and b) their dlc policy is totally fine. Every dlc they release a massive free patch with tonnes of content along with the dlc. The dlc are truly optional, the game gets better without them but because they pay for devs to support a game a decade after release ( you know this guys cost hundreds of thousands of euros?).
Yeah I don't find the DLC predatory. Especially with the custodian program, I feel like someone in the company is arguing in favor of their customers against what executives may want.
@@Mr._Newb_McMuffin lol big words.
Imo sellaris is the only one of its genre. The only game trying to do everything at once (customizable 4x with multiplayer and roleplay) and it suffers for it. Pretty much every other game does a part of stellaris but better.
The high level of abstraction means that they can't have a detailed anything (the more detailed the mechanics, the narrower the fantasy it applies to). Customizability means balance and competitive pvp is harder. Pops mean that even simple biology standardization is out of the window. Religion simulation is out of the window for the simple fact that no religion works the same, not withstanding alien psychology.
I want to agree with you but it irks me that you give civ a pass for faith, gold, and science all being unique and different but stellaris's minerals, unity, and science are all the same. At the end of the day you're just making numbers go up and meeting the same empires and building the same buildings. but only Stellaris gets blamed for being the same game each time.
super fair points made
Yeah, it's bad in some places, but I'm still gonna have 1k+ hours in it.
Paradox players are many things. Salty being our chief export. Now talk crap about Imperator and see what happens!
Having played a lot of TW:WH (a series I genuinely also enjoy from time to time both SP and with the lads), the problem with asymmetrical balancing that you mention at 6:25 is that, unfortunately, that results in some factions just being shit or outdated (Bretonnia, VCs, Lizardmen outside of Oxy & Tehe etc...). % differences might not be the most exciting or diverse way to differentiate empire civilizations, but it does keep every empire on a relatively level playing field imo, especially with the added "Bannerlord-esque" way that the game happens with or without you, which is something else I appreciate. You're not the main character in this game, you're just one of many players on a galactic stage.
Just play like Darkspace or Giga Engineering If you want variety. Or play one of the star wars or star trek overhauls
Honestly, nah, I can’t disagree with the mod point. Mods are the best, but that’s also most games.
Lmao I'm really amused to see this. Although I still agree with the engine comment. I did have a decent game yesterday for the first time in a while without expecting too much.
Edit: I've also found the issue in Surviving Mars
Stellaris is going from somewhwat pseudo immersive roleplay empire building space exploration game into min maxing speed chest in galactic view.
I always wished it was more from the first and less from the latter, but im no 4X fan anyway
i find your arguments very solid.
I miss the original FTL mechanics
I disagree on so many levels. Look people. I can understand when you don't like a game you will find a thousand reasons to dislike it. So yes every point on this video is correct on some degree.. What you find tho as gameplay weakness i personally call them strengths. Each game is more or less the same. Yes. It's game session is familiar with each other however that could be told on every game ever. Oh look Fortnite plays the same every match, same with red alert, same with every game ever. However it's game feels different at fhe same time doesn't it?
Cool vid, subbed
good thanks
Can you do a video like this for Distant World 2 please?
This felt like “oh, I got Internet Points, time to make second video” before I watched it, but now after watching it, I have some things to say, It felt like you discarded roleplay and attempts at it completely, and threw half baked “if I wanted story I would write/read a book” which is one of poorest arguments I heard, Roleplay is huge part for me and a lot of people who I play with, I guess it’s individual experience then. Paradox policy is EXTREMELY Predatory, and that’s why I am a filthy Pirate so we agree on that. Aside from that, it felt like I stated in the begining “let’s farm internet points” which I guess is your job as TH-camr. Generally good video
Agreed. Personally I can tolerate similar play style stuff but for me my pet peeve is the painfully arbitrary limitations to player agency. I wanna declare a war on someone to make them my vassal but can’t because of an arbitrary rule that I have to be stronger. Just stuff like that really bugs me since mechanically there’s no reason to stop the player from doing that. That and the absurdity of war exhaustion. The idea that you can improve that with tech will always be dumb.
That means I guess you aren't into CRPG games, because a lot of those involve roleplaying and to kinda dismiss games as not having roleplay potential is kinda dumb. Games with roleplaying potential tend to be more fun to me than games without roleplaying potential because at the end of the day, games with zero roleplay potential just feel dumbed down.
Yes Stellaris isn't the best for roleplaying but at the same time, I feel like you cannot roleplay outside of game mechanics like forcing yourself to do different things aka a good example of a roleplay style playthrough of Stellaris would be to set up your species to be a Life bringer species by turning destroyed worlds into Gaia worlds, this basically makes you potentially only want to settle Tomb Worlds and it allows you to force yourself to roleplay as a specific type of species.
For me Stellaris doesn't feel like a 4X game and maybe that's why you dislike it, it is a kinda game that gives you the freedom to play how you want to and potentially roleplay. But to me roleplay isn't just how you interact with other alien empires, it is how you build your worlds, it is what worlds you settle, it is the narrative within your own empire.
Stellaris does have a different type of roleplay, it's not like a Crusader Kings style roleplay in which it is all about your dynasty and creating stories of rulers in those dynasties and forming relationships with other empires and other counts and all that jazz, it is more about the species rather than the individuals. You create a specific alien type with an origin, you get creative like maybe you are a Intelligent Voidborn species so you focus on technology in your own game and everything works toward that goal. Or you might be a species of Great Miners and focus on majority mineral production.
I think it's hilarious people think it's fine that quality of life features or reworks to old mechanics added to Paradox games are gated behind paid DLC. Creative Assembly doesn't do that. Remember when they overhauled LITERALLY ALL of the Warhammer 1 factions FOR FREE. All of them, even the DLC ones. And the only thing you had to pay for in those updates were new Legendary Lord packs. Why is it that Paradox gets a pass for a total downgrade of policy? They can do better, and other companies ARE doing better.
You and the creator do not realize every DLC comes with a free update. No company does for 7 years free updates, and the DLCs arent needed to play the game how you want.
@@Exakan pretty sure total war literally contradicts that but oh well. Besides I’d say the point is features within the dlc itself are more in line with what people would consider update material and not dlc worthy stuff. It certainly explains why some recent dlc are poorly regarded. After all the most of first contact was just primitives interactions. The origins are mostly minor and not really that intriguing.
After spending thousands of hours in stellaris, i have to say i have to opposite problem:, stellaris is so bad at war, the claim and influence mechanic suck and makes things super boring
I totally agree with your points in the previous video. I'm going to watch the full video and make a further statement afterwards
I personally love the crunch of the Stellaris game but there is absolutely a problem with martial diplomacy (Fleet Power, Wars, Subjugation, ect.) being over represented. The non-hive mind government types all feel samey which really sucks. Where is my back room intrigue? The Shadow Council civic is a big example of this. In the patch I last played the game, Shadow Council should sound on paper should be sweet. There's so much interesting potential events and RP that could be happening but nothing ever comes of it.
The vassal system is however one of my favourites though. It's granular paperwork details that make it feel like a genuine contract that two nations are trying to strong arm the other into accepting. Heck, becoming a Bulwark is extremely tempting. Essentially becoming a bodygaurd for another nation and military upgrades. But in practice it's ironically too good as Bulwarks are easily one of the few subject nations that are I found to consistently plot behind my back.
This is probably why I like playing Megacorps. I have essentially an alternate route to achieve a state of galactic dominance. Same goes for espionage as it just feels nice to do something isn't "Build Big Fleet and zerg rush the enemy space station". But If I recall from the previous video, You made the same assessment about espionage being just tacked on. It's ultimately not doing enough to open other play-styles.
The biggest update that Stellaris needs is an genuine RP and alternate victory condition. Anything to help push players into alternate play-styles or even take unorthodox routes to victory.
Having to make a second video to "explain yourself" further likely means you probably should just quit while you are ahead and move on.
As someone who was over 3k hours, I agreed with very few of your statements, I believe there is more that you can find in Stellaris seeing as you played essentially very little of it. (or something, modded or not, both have their own experiences)
What about Distant Worlds 2? I like it.
And you should too - Ive seen you like FTL ( Try StarSector my Guy
Yeah, Ive seen you like Mods. Try Starsector :)
you should see the most popular videos on my channel my guy
Damn, you took the nb flag out of your pfp, Paradox fans literally stealing the gay out of this channel smh my head
This will keep happening with their every new game. Paradox just isn't that creative, their business model is built on postponing interesting ideas forever for later DLCs. This is literally their every game, most recently victoria 3 where they only fleshed out the construction queue, then they wondered why people have 1000s of buildings queued.
Nowadays people call arguments "misinterpret all of MY points!", what a joke.
People did not misinterpret your points, we literally told you what was wrong about them and it still is. You said the exact same topics just with different words.
And you are again lying about DLCs. Every update comes with free stuff, and I am pretty sure you do not know how expensive game development is. No game with 7 years of support (like Stellaris gets) does only free updates, its not possible for a company.
In general you don't really seem to know much about game design while talking like you know what you are saying. Just 5:20 shows it too well:
Yes, its obvious to lock certain parts of the game for certain playstyles - because that makes them DIFFERENT. And the % modifiers are for war, because thats what the empire is about. You cant make friends, so thats your only way and you should better be good at it. Federations will kick your ass otherwise.
9:40 is wrong on so many levels. Of course they change your game, your build up, diplomacy, growth and everything else heavily depends on them. Thats the case in every strategy game.
10:55 No, your argument is entirely bullshit. You say Stellaris lacks diversity, while you want to give everyone the same abilities. Sorry, but thats stupid.
11:57 Is the final crap "argument" of yours. At first you say difficulty is too low, then you say "I do not care if you blame me for OP mods". Seriously, is that video an entire joke??
Just for your information - NSC2 adds HEAVY changes to the game, especially stronger components & ships.
Its right and needed to point out bad parts of the game, but what you say is to 95% just wrong and misinformation.
Dude the game is mid, most people think it’s mid, you may like it but some ppl like things that you would find average
She was just clarifying her points
@@noirekuroraigami2270 Most think its far above mid, thats why the community is so large. Is far from perfect, but the points in this video are simply wrong and without any fact.
The video creator does not have a single clue how game design and restrictions work, and most of his video is wrong because of that lack of understanding.
A disgusting and borderline malicious use of leaving out context. No, the leaders and council that come with the new dlc are not behind the pay wall. The origins and some mechanics are like EVERY OTHER DLC ARE THE PAID PART. The AI literally have access to all dlc so you can see what there is/what you miss out on. You can encounter rouge ai without synthetic dawn etc.
It's just a game you don't vibe with, as you've said before "in your experience". To then parade it around as a known fact and also throw in false information to boot is the despicable part. That is the reason you had people upset. You exaggerate and lie.
The civics part is even worse. My God, they don't even pay attention to in game events do they? The civic you pick changes your reaction to events and warfare. Everyone has the same tech but also their own civic related tech. Yes you can be a hungering swarm that wants blood. Yes there is a civic for being a tribal society, there are events for government structure as well as societal structure. Ever saw a pop up about an empire changing to be more outwardly xenophobic or vice versa?
@@epkoknol9131 Dingus, his point was that behind all that fluff the gameplay loop itself barely changes. It's just some stats switched up, that's it.
@@DashhunterLP How tho? Are you talking about core gameplay like going to war because there are various options depending on what your civics are, or are you referring to the very game mechanic of going to war and watching ships fight? If you strip all the extra civics and gameplay changes then yeah its the same, why wouldn't it be? You took away what makes it different.
Would you care to call me a dingus again and tell me about how them lying about dlc/updates being locked away behind a paywall is not lying? The stuff that is locked is what I've already pointed out. The part where they talk about the leaders changes IS NOT BEHIND A PAYWALL AND WAS PART OF THE UPDATE. What WAS behind the DLC was the origins starts and some civics. Which btw is not locked away from the ai so you can experience it from an outsiders view. Just not yourself unless you pay for the add ons like any other game.
OMG if you take away the campaign and characters from COD the gameplay is so boring, just shoot rinse and repeat smh. What a negative why of viewing it all. What would you change then? If you dont know then why all the fuss? Constructive criticism about nearly every update they bring out crashes games and makes the end game lag EVEN WORSE would have been a great point about the downsides of the game. Why just get lazy with research and call any who honestly criticize names is not the way people should be interacting.
@@epkoknol9131 sorry for calling you that, that was uncalled for. My hateboner got a bit too stiff there.
However, in my opinion, incremental stat changes and different pop-ups aren't substantial enough to warrant true gameplay diversity.
About the DLCs, I don't know, never *bought* any of them. However what pissed me off so much was that the AI has access to ALL DLC content, even if you don't own them. So I'd be getting my darkest most confidential secrets spied out and couldn't do shit about it.
@@epkoknol9131 sorry for calling you that, that was uncalled for. My hateboner got a bit too stiff there.
However, in my opinion, incremental stat changes and different pop-ups aren't substantial enough to warrant true gameplay diversity.
About the DLCs, I don't know, never *bought* any of them. However what pissed me off so much was that the AI has access to ALL DLC content, even if you don't own them. So I'd be getting my darkest most confidential secrets spied out and couldn't do shit about it.
I’m sorry but I came across your first video as well(not subscribed btw) and I got this video too. Once again I strongly disagree, I always have a problem comparing a game with other similar games, the problem being if the first game has the same features/game mechanics as the second game…then what’s the point of the first game? All games would play the same at that point! The fact that stellaris does not have the same mechanics as other games is great in my opinion, again it seems you want it spoon fed to you, stellaris takes some imagination so if you have none then you have an opinion like this
Stellaris isn't a 4x game... it might be sold as one, and could be played as one, but in its essence its an rp game with numbers go brrr mechanics... I like to rp on some level while watching my monthly tech and/or political power go as high as possible at outrank everyone.