@@KittenyKat it sounds like it because this dude seems to fucking hate the game lol! As someone with 700 hours, I can say that while yes most games play similarly and with optimised empires that's even worse. But the way this guy shows the game to be identical every time is just insane, the way the guy rates the game while using some of those mods just eviscerates the legitimacy of the review, like yes it won't be hard if you use op mods. Then he goes in about how "no empire is different" while also complaining that "this trait is locked to the portrait and type of species it was designed for and is thematic with". The entire game is about the stories you make, hell paradox literally made a song "we make games, you make the stories" so the fact this guy looks at the biggest draw to the game and goes "meh" just shows how this guy either: wants to disparage the game or wants the views from all the people who came to actually see someone's review of the game. This review ignores all the good parts, exaggerates all the bad parts and ignores all the best parts. It seems like this person just wants to dunk on the game and label it an honest review. Like the only way this review isn't just a guy lieing is if this person just hates the grand strategy genre entirely, at which point he shouldnt be reviewing a game and calling it honest.
Creating your own empire with your own lore is argueably something that's the best about it. I wouldn't play other games because of their set lore and no faction fits me, so I can create my own empire in stellaris
Except that the "roleplay" basically amounts to writing fanfiction. Because the actual internal culture and power-structure of every empire is the same fat drab nothing. When nonsensical shit happens, you have to invent some headcanon about what "really" happened, because the actual game gives you practically nothing to work with. If the bar for quality roleplaying is that low, I could go and play almost ANY OTHER space 4X game and have the exact same experience.
@@tbotalpha8133 i mean its called imagination ya kinda need it to roleplay and have fun otherwise the usual other 4x set faction games are probably more your style where you already have a good baseline to go off of
I agree. That's why Im loving age of wonder4. I get to roleplay rat leading orcs on a holy crusade against evil frogs. I might check this game out next.
and here I am. on the opposite end of the idea. having spent 1500 hours and gotten half the achievements, and am friends with a man who has spent 2600 hours in this game. Creating the story of the galaxy in my mind is what i actually enjoy the most of it.
I'm at 2328 hours with 57% achievements. Still play stellaris more than any other game. I pick traits and origins based on my idea about who they are, not what is minmax. This game is what you make it, if you minmax, its always going to be samey! I suppose thats why we like it and others don't maybe?
@@randomnutcase8926 it's the one achievement I don't have that I most definitely should have. first it started off as everytime a major update would come out. id restart the campaign. and now it's a running joke that the last achievements I'll try to get are all the ones related to actually winning the game. if I could manage it, I'd love to do that as a joke "win the game" as the very last achievement I get from a game.
@@randomnutcase8926 Minmax really bores me silly. I usually mod my game to give more interesting events and a more correct galaxy. Realspace/Gigastructures/Guillis planet modifiers/more events are the better ones.
Sorry but I think you're pretty nitpicky here. I don't spend time keeping up with the meta for the 'optimal' way to play a solo game. I do like your editing though
Love Stellaris and even though She’s right I’m still triggered.😤 I could play this game until the end of time and still be completely satisfied purging the same Xenos over and over again, or cut them a little slack and let them work for free. Great vid btw👍
I think the problem is you are more interested in winning the game, than roleplaying a galactic colony. It sounds like that you have found a optimal way of winning and can't let yourself try anything that would be suboptimal. Just a suggestion, maybe try to go the opposite force yourself to go full pacifist for a full playthrough and try to problem solve that.
exactly, this aspect isn't just with Stellaris, every game has it I have 5k total hours in another game, Terraria, and even if you use different items every run, a lot of things boil down to utilizing the same strategies, unless you're absolutely willing to handicap yourself to present a challenge or have some more fun by intentionally using something suboptimal same with games like FTL: Faster than Light, RTS games like Command and Conquer series essentially come down to using the same thing you use to win it's much more so of an issue of the player mindset rather than the game itself in my opinion
That's literally talked about in the video. IMO it's not a good argument, because a good RP game should have mechanics that encourage RPing. If you don't need the game to RP, then might as well just star at a blank wall and RP in your head.
Well I don't think most people are expecting a "galactic roleplay" when they buy a RTS which is obviously centered around war. Like most people aren't buying call of duty games for the story.. they buy it for the killing. I think most people don't want stellaris for role playing.
I think the main issue with "galactic UN" is that it takes too long. You could absolutely use it to isolate empires or make yourself stronger and your enemies weaker. But it takes such a long time that your game will be over before your galactic political machinations come to fruition. And I say this as someone with 1500 hours on Stellaris.
I wonder if there is a mod that reduces recess time. Passing minor administrative sanctions and going on a 5 year break is absurd. I could justify 1-2 years as the empires need to enforce the laws but 5 years is ridiculous.
I don't wanna be that guy but with my 2700 hours in Stellaris, I can see that you've fallen into rabbit hole of playing a game that's not really suited for you then. I heavily disagree with you and here's few points. 1:21 Except they don't play exactly the same. That's your own notion to do the same thing over and over because it's "the most viable" way to do it. Xenophile empires for example play VASTLY different than Purifiers. Neat thing is that you can be equally evil with xenophiles too if you do some... things. 1:34 Automating your auto-exploration is one of ways to actually ruin your own fun. You get nothing out of just waiting there. Manually explore the systems, after it's done, actually CHECK the solar system. Maybe it actually has planets of great interest. 1:36 Those "long-ass text popups" are actual stories that your scientist or empire is experiancing. It's storytelling. Something that Stellaris tries to do. Similarly how Crusader Kings does but with lesser focus. 1:53 You ignoring the empire is your own playstyle. Depends how you play but your interactions with them should be on more regular basis. Like trade, buying in early favors, securing resources they have. Attempting to improve relations. Eventually even joining a federation if you feel like it. 2:07 Partially true. Except AI often times takes different routes if they are possible to find. They can do literally the same, by the way when you declare wars. You deciding to build starbases and play with a turtle strategy is absolutely on you. Can be pretty fun but not if you do it constantly. 2:18 This is just being a meta slave. Spamming research is one of the most boring ways to play the game. Is it effective? Yeah. But part of what makes Stellaris great is being able to play gimmicky empires and succeed. Instead of going for yet another tech rush empire. Also try to play tall. 2:54 This is a horrendously shit take. Nemesis was... questionable, sure. The Espionage system wasn't the best addition, we all can agree on that as it's underpowered. Yet it's another mechanic that you have to play around. Friends and Foes DLC for CK3 I will defend. That DLC is five fucking dollars for 100+ events and minor mechanics like nemesis/house feuds. It adds flavor, that's why it's called a flavor pack. 3:39 No shit. It costs influence to influence entire galaxy as a whole? Influence isn't a problem in mid-lategame. Especially lategame where it becomes kind of an irrelevant resource. You can vastly choose if you prefer to make resolutions OR claim another system. Galactic Community is an amazing way to mess with other AI and their gameplans. Alternatively sway the voting in your favor as it can have vast benefits for specific style of empires. Which you can accomplish by having envoys, civics, ascensions etc. 4:10 B-because it's a plantoid specific trait? Because it makes ZERO sense for humans to be budding? Because you can pick it with zero downsides whatover and meta-game the shit out of species with no drawbacks? Lmao 4:30 Your gripe is that, gee... a completely different form of life behaves and has different advantages? Yes. The pop growth penalty sucks balls. It IS the most important modifier out there. Lithoid portraits giving you lithoid trait simply makes sense. You're nitpicking for sense of just nitpicking. 5:20 Incorrect. They allow you to do so much more. They first of all, allow you to take on specific civics. Additionally you have some techs which have heavier weights to appear due to your ideology. In events you have variety of choices depending on your ethics. They also lock you out from specific government types, which makes sense. They give you choice between various ascension perks. So yeah, vasty incorrect. 5:25 True but also nitpicking. 5:44 Spiritualists hate machines because they go against what they believe is right. The sanctity of soul. The belief that machines can't replace humans, their souls and that machines have no souls. As they are abominations against creation. This honestly should have an actual exception with a civic though. With some kind of a techno-cult. That should've been a thing. Regardless, the don't like machines and while it's crippling, Spiritualists have other ways to make up for it. 5:55 Battleship spam is not only boring but also really not that viable. You can get much better results with other ships. Thanks to the way game works, you can basically invalidate most enemies with tech you have. Instead of spamming one design for the battleship and calling it a day. 6:20 Pacifists get advantages in their own territory. So of course it was significantly easier. Also, pacifists aren't restricted in wars unless you're a fanatic. I'm sorry but you picked a ethic that's inherently, well... pacifist? You get stability bonuses so you can focus on internal economy and exploration. Rather than waging wars. 6:38 Its almostl ike 80% of the game. Where difficulty simply adds more resources/health etc to the AI. And you trying to ''cheat'' against a harder AI is entirely on you. 8:01 They get advantages in their own different ways. How exactly is... growth of robots influenced lmao? You can literally settle on EVERY planet out there. From start of the game! And you work off a different growth which can actually get ridiculous. Where organic hiveminds get absolutely ridiculous pop growths. As for everyone hating you? Duh. You're a fucking hive mind lmao. 8:31 I highly disagree. This comes down to roleplay. While Stellaris gives you modifiers, it also gives you some special buildings, units etc. Which are meant to simulate your empire's characteristics and quirks. Other games make pre-set empires. That have very specific way of gameplay. Stellaris allows you to create YOUR OWN empire. Hell, even fill the galaxy with your own creations. Seriously, this is such a shit take. Beyond shit take. Go play another game, I guess? The fact that you can make your own empires is one of the best qualities of Stellaris. Alongside the ever-evolving discoveries and changes that your empire can experience through player choices. 9:15 Incorrect once again. You can deeply customize your empire via your origin, traditions, ascension perks, variety of event decisions that you take which reflect your empire. Your interactions with empires and Galactic community. Hell, even by issuing some general rules or edicts that reflect the way your empire functions. 9:50 Haha die xeno scum is not to be taken seriously. As there's ungodly amount of ways to play this game. To add further to this - you also have mods. Which enhance the roleplay, mechanics, origins, traditions, events, planets, visuals etc. There is a very good reason why Stellaris is among most valuable IPs Paradox has. Apologies but your video is simply at points incorrect, has points which are reeking of attempting to metagame and minmax, lacks any imagination on HOW you should play the game. Neither it seems like you took in account gimmicks available in this game. Stellaris is absolutely one of the best 4X games out there. Your can see people in comments who have written the same.
What do you mean by IP? "Stellaris is among most valuable IPs Paradox has". I don't think I can get the correct meaning just by googling, for it can have so many different meanings and it's almost impossible to find the right one for the context. Initial point? Innings pitched? Intermediate pressure? Inernet protocol?
This whole video just sounded to me like "i didn't like stellaris, som i'mma nitpick and complain about it" kinda thing. If the guy wants to put himself in the "metaslave always doing the meta stuff" all the time, that's on him. Not the game's fault he chose to play the same way every time.
Came back to this video after TH-cam recommended me another (crap) take from this guy and just noticed your comment and wanted to give you props for pointing all those mistakes out in detail. All of those things bothered me too the first time watching it. It is actually infuriating to me how someone can be so confidently factually wrong in so many things. And with a cocky attitude to boot. Gross.
If you applied the trains of thought and reasoning you applied towards this review, the amount of games you could put on blast would be staggering. Ya missed the mark on what people enjoy about Stellaris, and the sessions you described DO sound like they must've felt homogeneous and samey, so I feel you on that - but it sounds like user error to me
@@Juhnte which Is not that different from people creating character sheets with background and nice stuff while not even playing dnd It's Just fun, people like that
Yeah, it seems like they are playing the game with the only objective being win by the most optimal and metagaming way possible. I get that some people like that, but stellaris doesn't seem it was made for that. Maybe multiplayer, but single player they put the effort in to actually give you the tools to role play.
@@chuckles471 I wouldn’t quite put it that way but rather, if your approach to the game is to minmax every time (which is totally fine if that’s what the player wants to do) then you really shouldn’t be complaining it feels samey regardless of your starting condition. You’ve put yourself in a box (to minmax), realizing that making the same choices results in experiencing the same box in the same way is an obviously direct consequence of that choice and a massive no shit Sherlock.
I don't know about anyone else, but the part of Stellaris I always enjoy is the exploration part - I guess one would say the beginning. Getting out into the unknown, seeing what happens, getting my little corner of the galaxy up and running...and then the game changes into a massive clusterfuckyou. By the midgame (assuming it even is playable due to massive lag), every single empire is soley interested in fucking over it's neighbors as much as they can (which also includes you). If one happens to make it to the endgame (which I used to be able to, but for about 2 years now I just don't have the energy to do so), it is kill everything, get prize...it's a shame, because truly, all I want is for the beginning fun to continue...not change into a different game entirely. Oh well, start another...the only option there is.
Vanilla stellaris doesn't really suffer from all that lag, you Need a really potato PC or Reaching like year 2500 to get fucked up. Midgame goes fast af. Also, yeah, wars happen, but you can Just be stronger, nodoby would bother you. But they fixed even that, unless you are unlucky or make your Life as hard as possible
There's actually a lot of variety to get out of the game. But if you are the kind of player who will ignore the sub-optimal alternative strategies and regardless of what empire you create only do the meta type playstyle then yeah thats all you'll get out of the game. Which is fine to be that way to be clear.
The AI empires are more like minecraft enemies. They are there to make the play experience more dynamic while you build, explore and generate a story. Theres not a great need to paint the map, it mainly just adds busywork. (You'll need some sprawl if you are heart set on archaeology though)
Where I agree with you is that the game usually boils down to building a doomstack fleet and steamrolling the galaxy. This can however be archieved in many different ways other than outright conquest in the early game. Playing tall by building habitats, orbital rings and mega structures instead of conquering the galaxy is often even more powerfull because of empire size. Larger empires need more research for new tech and traditions and are obviosly more vulnerable to attacks. By playing tall you can rush tech to build more advanced ships, you can rush traditons edicts and ascencions to give your empire boosts and new options. Diplomacy is also far more usefull than you make it out to be. Federations are very powerfull, they give great bonuses and you allies will often build a giant federation fleet for you. The galactic council is the same. Pass the right solutions and you can massivly improve your empire and cripple your rivals. Yes the main benefit of resolutions is to modify diplomatic power but they also always have other effects like boosting research, reducingncondumer good usage, banning slavery or robots etc. And lets talk aout that diplomatic power. You act like thats the endgame of the galactic union and cant be used except to gain more diplomatic power. But once you dominate the galactic union you can become custodian or even emperor which massivly boosts your influence, allows you to build a galactic fleet that will be paid for by the community and give you even more ways to manipulate resolutions. At that point you can sanction empires to cripple their economy, research or military and even declare them a galactic thread and make the whole community go to war with them. It seems to me like you just havent figuered the system out quit yet, which to be fair I didnt either at first. And last but not least there are vassals which you can specialice and manipulate to your advantage. Empires will often willingly subjegate themselves if you offer them good terms that youbrenegotiate later to squeeze them for resources. Unironically by far my strongest run was a xenophile feudal empire where i bribed my neighbors to like me, offered them good vasall terms and forced them into my faction. All without a single war. Spying is dogshit though, operarions are almost neber worth it and cant realy be used effectibly and the system need a rework. I simply dont understand how someone can call the hivemind empires weak. Both robotic and biological hiveminds habe been meta picks for years now. If anything they are too strong. Last but not least, the point about storytelling. I and most people who play stellaris like it because it allows me to create my own story. But even if thats not your thing the game still offers many pre written stories through events, anomalies, archeology sites, space creatures, sytsems, the crisis and precourser civilisations and pre FTL cultures. Your empire has no story but the galaxy most defenitly does. As I said you make a lot of good points and there is nothing wrong with not enjoying the game. But some of your points are just plain wrong and telling people not to buy the game also feels like a dick move like they cant decide that on their own. Mayby the game just isnt for you, that doesnt make it bad.
Exactly. Obviously, in order to win you have to defeat all of the rest of the empires. Its up to how you do it that is the entire point of the game, and he seems to be skipping over that part.
@@quindarius_bingleton you don't even have to do that, I've won entirely by ignoring the galaxy and just out performing then tech wise and economy wise, never once entering a war never once looking at the galactic community, the game was boring until I got to spread out when the crisis came and started fucking shit up.
I personally disagree, though I agree with some points you've stated (such as the interaction between empires needing more depth), I also just don't see how "samey" is really a big issue. As a person who plays many genres, most games will just play the same way in their perspective genre. Stellaris is a 4X game - so the game will always play like a standard 4X game. If i play Terraria for instance, I will always go mine, explore, fight bosses, go do wall of flesh etc. It will feel the same in every playthrough, even if I am a different class and so on. This applies for almost all games.
I don’t know if this counts to what you’re saying but you can use espionage, build a spy network, and hire their mercenaries to fight their home empire.
Stellaris is bad as a base game, the game costs my kidney and if I pay for DLCs I'm paying for my cremated funeral. Dude the game is limited, you spend hours creating little stories about the game and try to feel rewarded in some way, but then the game slows down too much, you reach all the research and you only have upgrades left, there is no megastructure besides the portal, if you can call that a megastructure, I played the game for so long, and now I feel useless knowing that I never get rewarded for anything for a base game so limited and so expensive, I'm on PS4 and I'm playing "free" without any DLC for that they cost me a fortune. The game is repetitive, you're probably on PC and have the DLCS, your experience must have been better than mine, but imagine yourself in my place, the game is a sh#t.
I disagree. The game is great, it's just not for your taste. Stellaris is the only Paradox game I play (500+h, playing since 1.0), and I think it's the example of a good live-service game. Each DLC comes with a free update (we even had 2 updates without DLC) that adds quality of life changes, new mechanics and even new content to old DLCs. The base game today is basically a sequel when compared to the 1.0. Yeah, there's a lot of DLCs. But 1) you can pick just the ones you're interested by and ignore the others, 2) in MP the host shares all their DLCs 3) it's a better way to sustain the game than microtransactions, lootboxes and battle passes. You complain that the species pack lock mechanics, but they used to be purely cosmetic. They retroactively added new mechanics that fit the theme of each pack. It's not arbitrary. Ethics don't just give stat changes, they change which tech you will get and the way other empires interact with you. Yes, most empires play mostly the same way, but there's still a lot of small variations. Asymetric gameplay is hard to make, especially if you want the amount of customization that Stellaris allows. "You get percentage buffs. Go make your own lore." THAT'S WHAT MAKES THE GAME SO GREAT !
Yeah this is a really awful ignorant take. some valid points but all either exaggerated or not enough to change the result that Stellaris is an amazing game. not our fault if someone lacks the brain cells for it.
to add onto the species pack things, the vast majority of stellaris players were really happy to get actual content added to species packs because buying for a purely cosmetic pack makes the pack seem worthless
I understand what you are trying to say, but you are often missing the important points why it is designed like that: 3:27 Influence is only rare in the early game, afterwards its always near 1k (empire limit). 4:12 Well, that makes sense? The name "budding" is for plants. Stuff like this exists to make species a bit more different, and thats good. 4:33 Thats for balance reasons. The base habitability (+50%!) adds more pop growth on the normal average planet (higher hab = higher hab + job resources), because its easier to find the correct type for you. The -25% growth is not really noticable once your empire has the basic colonies. 5:17 Thats not true, the ethics/government have a big impact on diplo, events and overall build setup for your empire. 6:00 Onwards: You play with such strong mods and expect the AI to be able to beat that? Yes the AI isnt the best, but Admiral/GrandAdmiral AI is very strong nowadays. Try Vanilla games. 7:50 Once again: Balance. In my >1860h I mostly played robots (and hives), and recently switched a lot to bio empires. Machines have GREAT advantanges, and the growth debuff is similar like Lithoids - you can colonize any planet, which is incredibly strong. And you can easily do diplo with robits. Its a bit harder, but in general its possible. And yes, the "space UN" is useless - but isnt that kinda like realistic politics? xD Apart from that, Stellaris is a story generator. If you minmax everything, it doesnt make fun. Thats the reason the large part of the playerbase does this - singleplayer and multiplayer. About DLCs: Yes it sucks, but its the only way to have the game supported after 7 years. Creating games is very expensive nowadays, we could expect even higher prices to be honest :P
Yeah as soon as I saw the modlist I thought “well I guess he wanted difficulty to be irrelevant in this review.” Some of the points presented weren’t too bad, but overall it just sounds like either a hit piece or the opinions of someone who expected Stellaris to play _their_ way if it wanted to be any good. It’s not a good competitive game by any standard. Its charm lies in playing out a civilization _you_ want to build and influencing the galaxy the way _you_ want to affect it.
@@OneBiasedOpinionagree, wtf do you expect when you male things easier on yourself, I get that the AI sucks, but that is because the game is actually very complex number crunching and managing that a simple AI has trouble keeping up... lookin at you awakened empire with 3 "forge worlds" that have every district *but* industrial districts
Ya he has a weird argument of “everything feels the same and plays the same” but also “how dare certain thematic abilities be locked to their intended faction and not available to everyone!?” Im not really sure how someone can both be upset that there is too much similarity while also complaining that anything is distinctive. Also completely glossing over the habitability mechanic in its entirety is pretty sus considering it is a critical part of basically every campaign.
Here’s the thing. I like stellaris but I absolutely get where this guys coming from. The game has MANY issues that annoy me. Like why can’t I just declare a war for whatever reason I want? I shouldn’t need to go out of my way just to make someone a tributary because all the hard work should be preparation for the the war itself not meeting a prerequisite. Similarly I find it hard to enjoy a game about making your custom alien empire when I conveniently am forced to engage with the galaxy on equal terms. If I want to break a defensive pact and fight someone I’m willing to take a hit to trust or something long as I’m not forced into playing nice. And yeah the space UN is useless and there’s no excuse. Unless your planning to go the galactic emperor or custodian it’s a meaningless system because it’s just self perpetuating with no benefit Overall I think the videos point is just yeah you can make different empires but they all are completely subservient to the same set of rules to a T and it severely limits build variety since dozens of empire will still play wide or tall and not much else changes. I love that we can make custom empires but there’s a lot of systems you could take out entirely and remarkably little is effected.
What makes Stellaris great to me is kind of just larping as my empire. The meta is kind of boring because just steam rolling everything gets boring fast. I like to just make up my own lore for whatever empire Im playing and just act how I think they would act.
@@maxs.5112 No, I won the game role playing the most outlandish empires in span of many patches, starting from "RP UNE Arsenal of Democracy" style, when I pumped poor empires with tones of alloys I produced by my own, to playing Honorbound warriors style when I automaticaly declared wars to any empire who insulted me + raiding the marauders for demands. Unless you play some multiplayer or some ultra-aggresive difficulty settings, like super early 25xcrisis/grand-admiral/aggresive/0,25xtech/max numer of advanced empires, you can easily win playing by basicaly anything just by exploiting what you have.
@@maxs.5112 Only in Multiplayer and if the multiplayer allows it. Me and my friends ban meta gaming in our sessions and emphasize roleplay over steamrolling everyone
@@secondaryfront But you still have to play super optimal. I for example tried to play the was so my population is happy and didnt expand, because thats how i seen my empire. Turns out, its useless, unless there is threat or revolt there is absolutely nothing to be gained by low happy population. Its better to build more useful buildings and have unhappy large pop actually. So you cannot play how you want ever, you have to play meta all the time.
@@Zoltan1251 I aready talled you I won outlandish games by definitely playing NOT meta, so you deffinitely don't have to play meta all the time. I played a cyborg only style without ascending to full-synth in times when it was not a seperate thing, cyborgs were weaker and it was deffinitely not optimal play. I still menaged to win. Anyway, what was your plan for non-expanding empire? Trading? Because you have to have some income. Playing without income is like playing without spaceships. It won't give you victory or even a suvival past early-mid game. If I had to try that weird play, I would go megacorp with max trade/politics/diplomatic/traditions and still probably had to become vasal of one of my neightbours. Also, remmember that some patches were more forgiving than others.
I really disagree with a lot of the things in the video. For exemple how can you say a resolution on the space UN has the main reward being having more influence on it, when in the screen you show the thing giving you a massive bonus to worker and mineral output, is it just because its the highest percentage??? It does not make a lot of sense. I like your vids and editing style but this is not your best take
I have to mod every single AI into cute anime girls to prevent myself from attacking them for daring to exist near my borders and having things I want within theirs.
That’s your opinion I suppose. Some of the points were genuinely good, but the title reads like a hit piece, the opening is ABSOLUTELY geared to incite dislike for the game right from the start, and overall, the majority of the things you point out as being problematic (clicking through the pop-ups generated from exploration, various species locking you into certain traits, “go make your own lore,” and many more) are the things that make me genuinely enjoy Stellaris. Being a pacifistic robot civ means that I _have_ to pay attention to my borders, build up fleets, and balance the never-ending drain of credits for self-defense against my incessant need for more power for my pops. Being a Devouring Swarm means I _have_ to play hyper-aggressive against an AI that can ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT kick my teeth in at max difficulty if I’m not using all the mods you had installed. Getting backdoored by your second neighbor while you’re trying to consume the first is _such_ fun early game, and it WILL happen more than once if you’re a hated empire type. I guess in the end, this just wasn’t the game for you. And that’s fine, but I’d prefer you not word everything from start to near-finish like a hit piece for clicks. It’s amateurish in my (very biased) opinion and not a little dishonest towards the game and its community.
I think the most odd opinion in this review was that if one plays the game optimally (minmax) it’s always samey. No duh. That’s what optimal means. While there can be some minor nuances with what optimal means for any starting condition, on the grand scheme of things minmaxing will always end up feeling samey. Which is why it’s not recommended to do that every time unless that’s just your preferred way of playing the game. Which then resolves the problem: you. If you keep playing samey and complaining that it’s always samey then…make different choices or stop complaining that you’ve created your very own prison?
If the thumbnail said "I don't like Stellaris" then this video would be fine. But saying that the game is not good is just not objective and mega clickbait (I fell for it so good job I suppose). The reason why all games play the same is because you want to play them all the same. You don't have to play them all the same. It's your choice to do so. Blaming the game for it is just silly. Especially the comparison with the "Endless" games is baffling to me. Because in those games you can basically play all the different factions once and that is it. They will play exactly the same the next time around because of how railroaded they are. The "story" behind them is also not particularly interesting either and doesn't make sense on a greater scale which is quite immersion breaking. And apparently immersion is what you want. So it seems to me that you just lack the necessary ability or willingness to make up a story of your own and that you do not like experimenting. You want a railroaded, gimmicky playthrough that sets the course for you and where you do not have to come up with your own setup. Which is fair enough but calling a game bad because it does not fit your preferences is just absurd. I don't go around and call Age of Empires bad because I don't like RTS games. At least be decent enough to admit that this is your subjective preference. Besides that this video had a lot of complaints with very few if any suggestion for solutions. Now I don't think that you always have to offer a solution when you want to criticize something, but if you make a whole video out of it then you better be prepared to put some substance into it. This here looks and sounds like just meaningless whining. Like you wanted to rant about something because you were bored. The only things I agree on are espionage and diplomacy being lackluster. But I have yet to see a 4X game (or any game really) where those things are not just an afterthought. AI is simply not at a point yet where it could realistically handle those mechanics the same way a human (or alien) could. So it has to be dumbed down a lot. Still, definitely room for improvement there.
Yup, I agree with you. This isn't a video that shows that Stellaris is bad, it's a video were he says he doesn't like Stellaris and tries to paint it as the game being bad.
@@jnk4832 Also said that Gestalts have poor pop growth. Meanwhile Hive Minds have some of the best growth in the game. Just extremely nitpicky at best or uninformed at worst.
@@TheGrouch91 worse, he specifically spoke of machine intelligences regarding pop growth. While you're not supposed to keep much organics in your empire as a machine intelligence.
@@Juhnte Yeah he said Gestalts first without specifying and then later mentions Machines in particular. Was unclear to me what exactly he meant. Eitherway he seems to not understand the importance of habitability and how it has a massive effect on the growth of your empire. His points about Lithoids made that very clear as well.
Totally agree. If you make the same choices (due to wanting to minmax), expect samey results (minmax). If you want diverse gameplay the onus is on you to create that flavor with all the tools the game provides you with. Which may not be the optimal way to play, but that’s the consequence of diversity. Every style can’t be the optimal way to play, there’s generally only going to be one best approach and repeating that over and over regardless of which starting empire you created will make them feel samey. The problem here is primarily the player, though the game does have some aspects that it could do better.
I wanted to like this game so bad. The only things this game has to its advantage is story telling in the research missions or events or whatever, but that doesn't even last that long because there aren't very many in reality for a game you planned on putting a thousand hours in. Sins of a Solar empire, an obscure and ancient game, was basically better when it came to combat and base building and it had almost no story but that doesn't even matter once you heard the Stellaris stories more than once :/ and SoaSE is like... Basically free
All in all I still like it for the stories that emerge from game to game. Sure, plenty of times I'll get rolled over, but there are still some "1 week from complete defeat, turned into a resounding win" that I enjoyed.
Seems like you didn’t play on high enough difficulty. Needs to be grand admiral. Also I would add a difficulty adjustment mod. Those can make the game so hard. That actually you see different mechanics, that often get overshadowed, come into play and be useful.
I played 2 games some time ago (on the same patch), 2.5 actually, and for me it's completely opposite to what you are saying. Both of the campaigns went completely different, in one I opted on the influence path, were I had several vasals and later become a galactic emperor via the senate (why would you want to use recourses on the senate, as long as you are expanding, you are only voting on the things other people proposed...) and in the other game I went technology and military and took control via war. Completely different expieriences, not to mention how different stories went. But yeah, I play that mostly for flavour.
Each game plays the same... No. That's false. Hive mind plays completely different than normal empires. Even "normal" empires play differently. The amount of authority and cost reduction in claims differs a militaristic empire from the others. A peaceful empire can't even conquer other empires the normal way. Xenophobes can't get along with other empire though all those debuffs they get and don't get me started with the megacorps. My personal favorite before paragons was overturned fanatic xenophobic, militarist. Conquer everything and build insanely fast to match the speed of my pop growth. With the paragon dlc is fanatic authoritarian, materialist(totalitarian regime) plus dystopia+mechanist origin. Your goal with this build is to use your main pop as leaders and robots as servitors. You also add technocracy in the late game and play with hundreds of habitats... Yeah the same... Exactly the same. Take now your dislike, because your main goal of your video was controversy and nothing more.
@@davidanderegg1232 if have played Stellaris more than 20 hours so you could bother to learn how different playstyles work, you would know you are wrong. Play Stellaris my friend... This video is just bait for views for Stellaris funs to get angry.
@@gerasimosnektarios4077 played more than that and honestly I was thinking the same thing before watching. Aside from ship design, combat is all the same, except maybe some wormhole camping cheese. And every game is ultimately combat because the final challenge is a big army. How you fund it doesn’t really change you need to fight and combat simply isn’t engaging.
@@gerasimosnektarios4077 you say there's "different playstyles" when playing tall isn't viable at all but you sound like a reddit sperg so you'll obviously defend whatever lame mechanic they add to make the game even more repetitive and the ai shit face itself
Have you ever heard of Endless Space 2? It has this Asymmetrical Gameplay that you are talking about. Each of the playable Empire has at least one unique mechanic, sometimes miniscule and sometimes game changing. The Sophons get a simple research buff if no other empire has that technology. The Vodyani on the other hand literally eats the population of other empires to gain essence, to make more of their ships and population.
See, I think that's the really fundamental problem you have here: You treat Stellaris as pretty much just another grand strategy game. I, however, treat it as a story generator title, similar to something like Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld. And I have well over 2000 hours played in spite of only really starting to first play it around Nemesis release. Truly, we are not the same.
I've noticed Stellaris feels like Spore with extra steps but without all the creativity. I like the concept of civics and the like when creating an empire but the rest of the gameplay feels really stale. Every time I play I find myself constantly wanting to do something else.
I just want to saw, since you're a small channel - I loved this video. I reinstalled Stellaris (for that 100th time) because... sometimes you just feel that itch. Then on my better judgement I searched for new reviews of the game and found your video. It's hilarious - I've subbed the channel for future commentary. And also so true. You basically saved me two weeks of frustration fighting against a game I fundamentally don't enjoy for the same reason but somehow always end up losing 20+ hours to in each reinstall.
I'd love to see a grand strategy game that at it's core has not the same problem if you want to see it like that... They all are always the same, most of the variance happens in the players mind and not in actual mechanics.
@@slash891 It's the same. The variaty happens mainly in the players minds with some storys. The perks and such are just small number changes that can very well be ignored. After a while you'll also know all events like in Stellaris. You can try a few mildly different playthroughs with different cultures like you can in stellaris with different gouverment systems. But all in all the gameplay is pretty samy. The variaty with these games are in the small details and the narratives the players build ins their own heads.
I was once really into Stellaris, but evertime I returned from a break they changed the gameplay, my campaign was broken, my mods were broken, I had to learn things anew. And I was increasingly frustrated by being unable to design ships or factions that I wanted.
sounds pretty accurate used to watch lathland try really really hard to roleplay and then a little later its the same thing again over and over and over again
Overall it feels like it just isn't your kind of game. Still a cool video. Made me think of stuff differently and I do agree with a lot of mechanical criticisms like the stuff said about Ethics.
It used to be a good game. But DLC should all be free. That's what it used to be. You used to buy a game and it's finished, now you buy a game that won't be finished for a decade. And it'll cost you a fk ton. I bought dlcs. All of them are not really worth shite. I shouldn't be forced to buy things in a game I already bought. Wtf is this...
To be fair, the game gets a free update every time a DLC comes out. (roughly twice a year, I think?) Most of the DLC is to add flavor to the narrative, anyways, so if you're not looking for that you won't find much value in them. Hell, all of the species packs were originally cosmetic and just got new stuff added on over time. Almost every part of the game has improved from launch. This is Paradox; not expecting DLC in their games is like not expecting mold in left-out bread: it's only a matter of time. The only thing that's actually worsened from launch is performance. TL;DR: The game has only gotten better, the base game has been in a complete state for longer than I've been playing, the devs put out free updates regularly. You don't need to buy any DLCs to play, and it sounds like you should have considered them more before buying them. A lot of the DLCs aren't really worth buying, though, you're definitely right about that. You can just get Utopia and call it a day, it's the best by far.
There's a lot to read/write about this, but it seems that most (if not all) of it has already been said, so I just wanted to thank everyone in this sea of 526 other comments (except for that one guy going around saying that not being able to afford $300 worth of DLCs is a "poor person problem") for being really kind. I was 100% expecting a fecal tsunami of hate comments raging & defending Paradox at all costs, but instead there's a lot of healthy debate, kindly shared opinions and personal experiences, conversations about mods, customization ideas/unique challenges, and suggestions on how to change your perspective (if you'd like to get more out of what Stellaris already is, especially if you bought all the DLCs/expansions already) to better enjoy the game. I don't think I saw any name-calling, blind rages, or anything other than discussion and support for one another (again, barring that one rich person that hates poor people or whatever his/her deal is). So thanks again! This brightened my day (well, my 1 in the morning).
I came back to Stellaris after an extended break. In that time I realized that I'm drawn to games with micromanagement, optimization, and sweet percentage bonuses. I like to make numbers go up. . .I guess the roleplay is fun too lol
I with the statment only in a single player perspective, multiplayer is more diverse. The different alien types are for ways to create a different level of difficulty in the game. Every game is also always going to have a meta, it just so happens that is you can out produce the opposition. your going to win. The starbases only provide adiquit protection for so long and you can't always just sit behind them. Yes, some aspects of the game are usely. However, the moment you open up to a multiplayer stage. The whole game flips onto its head. suddenly empires can keep up with you and some of those usely systems gain some attraction. The meta only give you a shot at winning the game at that point. You said you only had two hundred hours, too me it seems like you just glanced over the multiplayer aspect of the game because it would have been missed.
What is the point of this video? Is this video just some effort to try to get a weak ass negative review more attention? lol I am just shy of 5k hours on this game and it is my primary game I play most days and is even part of my regular unwinding-at-the-end-of-a-rough-day routine. I play primarily from a role play perspective and absolutely none of the different styles of empires have fealt remotely the same outside of whatever the current fleet meta is against ai at any givin time. (which has changed substantially since the most recent updates) This is clearly a perspective issue. And a weak one at that.
i love stellaris :D its so good, making my own character after your own alien species! like going to a movie and being like "IM GONNA MAKE A XENOMORPH ALIEN SPECIES WHOS SENTIENT" is something you can almost do in your mind. i feel like the game is very creative and super fun with friends in a call and the different spawns and different research options, different species, different play styles. amazing game for me but i get not everybody thinks the same way i do
I mean you could frankly say the same about civ V, endless space, and more. Civ V has too many dlc, while it’s got 2 big ones, it’s a pretty penny. Beyond that in its base form it plays fairly similarly for most empires with a few exceptions and it’s stat buffs all the way down. Even the unique units are barely unique, often just being a free promotion which is… just a stat buff… or a situational stat buff on a specific terrain or against a specific enemy. There’s a few small unique units like hoplites building roads and the Zulu, but as you progress into later eras those don’t matter anyways. Combine that with how tech is literally how you win in that game, and it becomes very samey if you metagame it all the time like you do with stellaris. For endless space II, there is some more uniqueness, but it’s all the same in the end for most empires. You try to get science and productivity for technology and ships. Maybe the riftborn have a unique need to build pops or the cravers and their planetary depletion encouraging you to keep expanding, but with all of that democracy is still the meta government type you’ll swap to every game, and your goal is to hit some arbitrary number to "win" something. Like, go collect a bunch of dust and just get rich. Go research these 4 techs. The most "fun" way to win might just be domination because then you do more than sit around waiting for a number to go up. Surprise, when you meta-game a game every time and play the one strategy considered optimal every game, the game feels the same every time.
I hear the guy, but I have no issue makeing up my own lore and I have no issue roll playing my own story's in Stellaris, I'll often design 10 empires from the ground up, lock them in and launch a 1000 star galaxy with up 25 empires and have a good time, I like their arn't heaps of one of a kind faction bonus/ switch ups to exploit or to be left unbalanced.
I see where your coming from but no. Paradox focuses on providing a gameplay experience that only two types of players absolutely LOVE that is the min/max player and the roleplayer. If you are one of those two very specific types of players you will adore Paradox games.
The games do run the same at lower difficulties but when you crank up the difficulty to where you are eventually matched it’s actually fun. because you have to use espionage, make allies, and build your economy to take down the other empires. And you don’t need to own all the dlcs to have fun you can just have a friend who owns them all. But it also help if you try to get invested in the story of the game and read the long ass text boxes.
I havent played singleplayer stellaris in over a year. But multiplayer is a lot more deep of an experience. Roleplay can actually exist, and the faster pace of no pause makes you have to decide what you want to micro and what is fine without being touched.
I made 40+ Races each with different Empire Names and few duplicate Origins and such, I made various playstyles for each Empire with half of them usually going towards the same style I like to play, but I try to play every "Empire Style" in the game and enjoy my imagination of the game and play very idealistically, I also try hard when I play Multiplayer on it and well ... The game DOES repeat itself a lot, but it does it in different locations and timings and circumstances, I also forgot to mention I played 1300+ Hours so far, it's my favourite game ever and I can play all try hard like or imaginative-like ... And I personally think it's an underrated game, there is TONS of potential that can be added to the Stellaris Community from watching Stellaris or playing Stellaris (Watching as in Let's Play's or Trailers or a potential show/movie if there ever is one). Imagination and Wonder makes this game TONS better, it doesn't need to only be mentally rationalized. Like the Psionic Theory Research "The Mind is a greater tool than any other"
As a person with 3,118 hours on hoi4 and 900 on stellaris i can say u are over simplifying the game. Each dlc has a major impact on the game. Early game is just as fun as end or mid game. All it depends on is how YOU play, if you rp u will love the game and have a great time but if u just try to win everything then its boring cuz its all just rise and no fall. But also if u play only against ai then its gonna be more boring. But if u have a problem with the game there are so many mods that u can fix every problem. Dont like the stats of smthing theres a mod for it, want more ship types, mod, portraits, mod, bugger galaxy, mod. Sinply find whats fun in the game for you, not just win the game but play it, explore and experience all the play styles
Over 2k hours here and with mods, I really enjoy it. They do need to improve the AI by a lot though. The latest 3.8 DLC is different and does change things up a bit.
To be honest, the AI already got a lot better. To the point that I have actually games with friends where the top empires in the end aren't necessarily all players.
I play this game for the politicking with and against friends. Truly amazing moments to be had in multiplayer, especially with all the DLC and varied cultures. I will never understand the deep loneliness that drives people to play paradox games, with no aet challenges in single player.
As someone that has 800 hours in Stellaris, the key is to try out different playstyles. Despite the claim that, for example determined exterminators play almost the same as communist empires, both are still substantially different. With exterminators you'll basically be isolated (except from other machine empires) for the entire game and everyone will be hostile to you. If you play as a xenophile megacorporation, diplomacy and federations can be key to win the game. It's also important to set goals for every game before you start: Do you want to be the sole ruler of the galaxy, destroy every biological lifeform or just build a big prosperous empire? Also, using mods like 'Ethics and Civics Classic' can really spice up the game.
I dont think you get the point. You still have to be optimal in every case, there is no flexibility once you start a game. You have to have pops and armies, sure you can do it differently but never sub-optimally. Its annoying when you start with xenophobe, you have to be optimal xenophobe otherwise game over. I wanted to change mind of population with changes in galaxy and just got penalties. Thats not very sandbox.
@@Zoltan1251 Unless you mind losing a game, you don't necessarily have to play in an optimal way. Suppose you are famatic pacifist or a pacofost corporation, you wouldn't build up a huge navy even though you might have an aggressive neighbour. Instead you would "turtle". Building fortresses and space stations.
@@Odoxon7522 Well thats my issue. You cannot go bits a pieces. Reasearch was my main and wanted to have fairly good navy but at the same time wanted to sway things my way diplomatically. Well, tough luck, pick one otherwise you are bad at everything. Not that its unplayable, but saying you can do whatever is not correct. You have to minmax every game otherwise you will lag behind which gets old after 3 games or so.
The secret to finding joy in Stellaris is overfocusing on an incredibly obscure minor mechanic and just seeing how far you can take it. Cloaking Strength number? What happens if I push it to the MAX?! Society Research Bonus? What if I push it to the MAX?! Army Moral Damage? You get the idea. Sure, there are no major changes to gameplay, in that you are correct. But there are so many small mechanics thrown around that are just begging to be explored to maybe find something interesting to do with them. And even if nothing ultimately gets discovered... there are always mods.
For me it's just exploring dumb ideas and DLC's specific features. For example I'm playing as a rogue servitor, that means the original creators of the machines are mostly dead but some remain and are pampered like cats ( Gameplay wise, it forces you to have food and consumer goods ) So what would I do if there was a fallen empire with the zealot ideology ( They hate me basically ) just right above me? Simple, get the relic which summons their fleet, gains their trust and allows me to setlle on holy worlds. What? Did you think I would actually avoid them like the plague because the moment they wake up I'm basically dead? Of course not, just friend, all friends, everyone friend.
The meta for all of these games is constantly changing. The meta for HOI4 changes every few months, for different countries, and choosing between heavy artillery gameplay or tanks and mtorized or heavy air and infantry is completely legit. You are just straight up wrong. Stellaris allows you a TON of roleplaying opportunities, basically every sci-fi story can be re-enacted, and the most basic gameplay mechanics from all the dlcs are always included for free in the base game. If you play with friends, which is the best part of paradox games, all you need is for one person to have a DLC installed, and everyone gets to play with its features fully unlocked in the game. Almost everything, and I mean everything in Stellaris can be customized or randomized, and if not, you can install mods to fix it. Mods, which paradox actively supports. They even change the code of the base game to allow modders to have an easier time changing it. The devs are also actively engaging with the community all the time, they respond to our questions and complaints, they let us beta-test, they are overall a fantastic company. Most problems you mentioned are either not a problem (Of course every empire will expand and grow in the start of the game, that is how you get stronger), taken out of context, or just a straight up lie (Interacting with other empires is often essential to do as soon as possible, as it allows you to settle different planets with their species, gain research bonuses etc.) And the space UN is very useful for gaining further bonuses to alloys, amenities and happines, and you can totally try to go for these bonuses by getting favors or investing in diplo-power. The one thing I do agree with is the espionage, which, while useful, is underpowered and needs changing.
I now have 53H of playtime in Stellaris and own the game for 3.5 days, and I haven’t had one game which was the same. Granted the start tends to be the same. But I had a game where I became the Crisis and blew everyone up. I had a game where I became the council and just vassalized and integrated almost every other empire without wars. And I had a game where I became the defender of the galaxy and attacked and destroyed most hostiles empires as well as defend the crisis until my untimely demise
Your definitely missing part of the genuinely exciting and fun parts of the game, but im not gonna blame you for that, its UX is kinda shit for beginners and doesnt tell you about the interesting ways to play. Also its best in multiplayer by far as it has the least amount of randomness and asymmetry of all the paradox games but that also means pvp is by far the best in stellaris compaired to any other paradox game.
I like to have a set of objectives, for example as a technocracy my objectives were to eliminate the spiritualists, ascend to machine, build the biggest mega structures and research as many anomalys and excavation sites as possible, as the objectives gave me side mission to do while not having the greatest fleet in the game I was able to pull that off before the game ended
You seem more interested in “winning” than “playing”. Some of my favourite games of Stallaris have been the ones that I lost. My all time favourite was loosing against an opponent that was slowly grinding me down system by system till I was fighting a last stand in my home system. It’s not about winning, it’s about playing.
Creating your own lore is the best about the game. For an example I had a game where me and the first empire I found had the same government type as me, but we hated each other and had fleets at each other borders really to declare war. Then a galactic purifier got to both our borders at the same time so we banded together to wipe it out and won. And you’d expect us to become close Allie’s but no we just got back to being on the verge of war with each other again. Then another purifier got to our borders at the same time again and we both banded together to take that one out. But when we were nearing the end of that war the Kahn woke up and basically steamrolled us because our fleets were on the opposite side of the galaxy and the few that were at our planets were damaged and needing more ships. Both of us hated each other but what matters most is that we both had other we hated more than each other.
It doesn't get much more samey than most popular online FPS and they're king. Some people find different things compelling and that's cool, to each their own. I respect your opinion, and I even agree to a point but most games are like that to some degree and in Stellaris, for me, the variety comes in *what* you choose to do during the game - I don't always end up winning or losing by the exact same meta strat every time I play it. I'm also perpetually rotating between at least a few different games at any given time.
Ive got 210 hours in stellaris, and ive enjoyed most of it (but by far not everything). But that mainly is due to (deliberate) ignorance of whats optimal, playing on none too high difficulty, and mainly to just RP by my self while i sulk that all my TTRPG games currently are dead or on ice. Tried playing it with other people, i can confirm my strategies are very much suboptimal. However playing a game while severally limiting myself from optimal (or even par) plays, only to actually have fun playing, doesnt exactly make it a great game. Especially if you are acutely aware of the optimal strategy, there will always be a temptation to use it, and if all the working strategies arent fun and not diverse whatsoever that leads to issues. Some people are better at intentionally not playing optimal and not having the fun be ruined by knowing that its sub optimal, I'm not which is why i intentionally dont look up anything about the meta or optimal/good play.
Play for your enjoyment, not for the meta. I have over 1200 hours in the game and I have no clue what the metas are and I don’t give a shit. I have fun making my empire, not some meta empire.
its funny how the sum of the disagreeing comments here boils down to "just imagine it bro" ...keep forking for those DLCs, piggies, my imagination is free (and so is my schedule, free of this glorified art gallery)
thats a you problem if all your games play exactly the same. i STILL am come up with new ways to play the game and ive been playing since apocalypse came out, everything youve said has LITERALLY been user error because you play a specific very straight edge way no matter your empire, youre expecting the game to play for you and tell you to do certain things or force you into them whereas thats actually reliant on you as a player to do that. you are literally shooting yourself in the foot by shaping all of your games the same way and then complaining like a baby that it doesnt do anything new im glad everyone is calling you out for how wrong and bad faith youre being about this game though, its a good stark contrast
All what you have said is more relative to MP game where you have to follow the meta and act the same optimal way to achieve better results. In SP you can roleplay and it is not forced by something but your own imagination. If you feel overwhelming over AI there are dozents (ok less) of options to set up difficulty that would be challenging. I think I have over 1k in stellaris and yeah, sometimes it's boring and new dlcs sometimes peace of crap, but if I read some sci-fi book or whatch a movie and then think "Hey, i wanna make somthing like that in a game" i go to stellaris, spend 2h creating couple of empires for a roleplay galaxy and here we are.
You only have to follow the meta in public lobbies that don't ban Meta gaming, me and my friends banned meta gaming and emphizise roleplaying over steamrolling the galaxy. If anyone gets too powerful and decides to go ham, the galaxy roleplays and bands together to enect a peace operation to restore order in the galaxy haha. At one point I was strong enough to almost take on all my friends, like 10 other empires, but I made the fatal error of allowing my fleets to get ambushed hahaha
Buddy is a power gamer that is upset he can’t power game effectively. That’s literally his complaint, he can’t power game his way to a victory and enjoy it. Yea you have to explore the surrounding areas and protect your borders that’s kinda what exploring and expanding is about. Play it in a fun way instead of always optimally.
I mean I think the two things that are defiantly needed are a verity of gameplay styles and not just stat modifiers, and a complete diplomacy overhaul cause every ai that is planning to kill/eat you or is inward perfectionist is the same, unless their so Ideologically different that they attack you cause you not like them.
There are different gameplay styles though. You can be a devouring swarm, determined exterminator, or fanatic purifier if you want to go full antagonist. You can go necrophage if you want to be a parasite. You can go xenophile if you want to make friends.
@@DashhunterLP For necrophage, you need to abduct pops to get new one. For determined exterminator, devouring swarm, and fanatic purifier, you cannot diplomatically interact with other empires. While I admit xenophile does add stats, all other add game mechanics that make every playthrough different and fun.
thanks for taking the time to paste the script into the captions but please edit your subtitles/script after recording or follow the script. take for example 9:31 missing kinda after has and it should be "haha, funny genocide the xenos" instead of "haha, kill the xenos" may or may not be the only deviations the script/audio have since i wasn't paying attention to the subtitles due to me not needing them. subtitles are meant accurately reflect what is said instead of what you meant/what the script was. you don't have to be verbatim about ummms and uhs but when words are different from the captions to the audio it changes the video for those who are deaf/hard of hearing. it might not seem like much but the words "funny genocide" and "kill" convey different messages.
the part when you actually get to give TH-cam your script for captions is the very last step before uploading, and at that point, I just want to move on to the next project. the deviations from the script come from me improvising parts in the moment. i could read off all my scripts like a robot but I think not being afraid to improvise sections makes it more enjoyable to watch and I never deviate enough for it to be confusing. maybe this is just be me being a sensitive snowflake gamer, but i also think this is kind of a rude thing to complain about. it's either this or no subtitles at all.
8:31 I mean that is the whole point! Ur own idea, it is not 'encouraged' by anything other than you wanting it to be that way, which is why you are playing the game in the first place- getting 'rewarded' by the game getting easier etc. is a differnet hing
Local man complains that not every single mechanics is gameplay defining. Bro, you literally said for CK that "Its a role playing game but if you strip that away.." yea, okay, cool, if you strip guns from CoD its just people kniffing each other. Its the same with stellaris. They introduce new features, like espionage, to not be intrusive and mandetory and you can chose to engage with them. Also the fact that you seemingly dont understand the mechanics of the galactic community and how you can use it to severely harm other players makes the video strike me more as a complainy reddit post rather than an actual critique from someone who understands the games mechancis. Unironically, almost every point you make comes from a lack of understanding on how these systems work and I am saying this not to call you stupid but because the alternative is that you are intentionally misleading viewers with how you are protraying these things. I agree, how your empire looks shouldnt affect how it plays BUT lithoids have a massive amount of ways to compensate for that pop growth reduction. This video can be summed up as: man refuses to interact with the elements of the game that may change the experience from game to game, and complains that it feels samey
Couldn't agree more. Of course the main point of the game is to expand, build colonies, conduct research and manage your economy, but there is so much more to the game. It feels like he payed zero attention to all the other things you can do. Diplomacy, federations, galactic community, espionage, storylines, origins and of course, roleplay.
I'd love to play another round of Stellaris, but the fact that some of the newer DLCs seem to be rather mandatory and their cost adding up just throws me off. My issue with Paradox is not that they maintain games via DLC, (thats probably a good thing) but that they maintain the prices on those DLCs over years.
Between 2016 and 2018 the game was very fun. Then they removed micro management in planets (you could choose what buildings to build). They removed defense stations (you could build fortress systems) Then they changed almost everything else and decided to bring sectors and make extra territory hard to manage and to get. Now you need to build stations to colonize systems , ridiculous. A lot of good mods lost forever, i have more than 1000 hours till 2019, but lately i never want to play it, its not the same, and still a lot of time consuming with less fun to have. And the combat is still the same since launch, not great, automatic, requires almost no strategy, weapons are boring unless you use Mods.
The thing is you don't always need to play the optimal way, the optimal way is boring to me as well, that is why I like to roleplay the empire I am playing. Just imagine an empire that focuses purely on technology they believe that technology leads to the best societies and so don't maintain a strong fleet but focus on a small but strong fleet using ancient technology. The way I play most Paradox games is for the roleplay, not for universe or planet conquering because I find that makes Paradox games boring also I prefer DLC to the alternative which a lot of video game companies are getting into nowadays and that is heavy microtransactions. I love the fact that no Paradox game lets you buy XP Boosts or anything like that, it's just get the DLC and play because DLC legitimately add content into the game and yes it can be annoying that it does cost a lot to get all the DLC but it adds to the roleplaying or story experience that you get to play.
If battlefields V guns all have gun clips with different ammo amounts, aren’t those modifiers? They sound different and feel different. Y can’t that be applied to planets a technology and governments. your restricted only to your imagination in stellaris. You can dominate for 1000 years, then suck dry the res. In a rpg, don’t you pick up weapons that sound different and have modifiers to your abilities? All games has these things your complaining about. Your complaining about mechanics that has changed multiple times to make the game feel like the thing your not getting.
![Harnessing Sun Tzu's Wisdom to Fix Total War | Cassius' Compendium™ [cc]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RsNq5a2xtAs/mqdefault.jpg)
Am I able to use that fibre optic trick on an NVME SSD as well or is it only hard drives?
unsure, give it a try and let me know
@@cassius_scrungoman Update: I don't think so, however Umart employees don't seem to give a shit and gave me a refund anyway so it's fine
Either way it sounds like a more enjoyable experience than playing this game.
@@KittenyKat it sounds like it because this dude seems to fucking hate the game lol! As someone with 700 hours, I can say that while yes most games play similarly and with optimised empires that's even worse. But the way this guy shows the game to be identical every time is just insane, the way the guy rates the game while using some of those mods just eviscerates the legitimacy of the review, like yes it won't be hard if you use op mods. Then he goes in about how "no empire is different" while also complaining that "this trait is locked to the portrait and type of species it was designed for and is thematic with". The entire game is about the stories you make, hell paradox literally made a song "we make games, you make the stories" so the fact this guy looks at the biggest draw to the game and goes "meh" just shows how this guy either: wants to disparage the game or wants the views from all the people who came to actually see someone's review of the game.
This review ignores all the good parts, exaggerates all the bad parts and ignores all the best parts. It seems like this person just wants to dunk on the game and label it an honest review.
Like the only way this review isn't just a guy lieing is if this person just hates the grand strategy genre entirely, at which point he shouldnt be reviewing a game and calling it honest.
optic, newton
Creating your own empire with your own lore is argueably something that's the best about it. I wouldn't play other games because of their set lore and no faction fits me, so I can create my own empire in stellaris
Except that the "roleplay" basically amounts to writing fanfiction. Because the actual internal culture and power-structure of every empire is the same fat drab nothing. When nonsensical shit happens, you have to invent some headcanon about what "really" happened, because the actual game gives you practically nothing to work with.
If the bar for quality roleplaying is that low, I could go and play almost ANY OTHER space 4X game and have the exact same experience.
@@tbotalpha8133 Never been a problem honestly 😂
@@tbotalpha8133 i mean its called imagination ya kinda need it to roleplay and have fun otherwise the usual other 4x set faction games are probably more your style where you already have a good baseline to go off of
I agree. That's why Im loving age of wonder4. I get to roleplay rat leading orcs on a holy crusade against evil frogs. I might check this game out next.
@@tbotalpha8133your the type of guy to think the Lego gun actually works💀
and here I am. on the opposite end of the idea. having spent 1500 hours and gotten half the achievements, and am friends with a man who has spent 2600 hours in this game.
Creating the story of the galaxy in my mind is what i actually enjoy the most of it.
I'm at 2328 hours with 57% achievements. Still play stellaris more than any other game. I pick traits and origins based on my idea about who they are, not what is minmax. This game is what you make it, if you minmax, its always going to be samey! I suppose thats why we like it and others don't maybe?
@@randomnutcase8926 a very likely possibility. now. I have an important question. Have you got the "Win a game" achievement yet?
@levihinkle1400 yes! I haven't finished every game I've played but I do grind my way to the end sometimes. Especially if an achievement requires it!
@@randomnutcase8926 it's the one achievement I don't have that I most definitely should have. first it started off as everytime a major update would come out. id restart the campaign. and now it's a running joke that the last achievements I'll try to get are all the ones related to actually winning the game. if I could manage it, I'd love to do that as a joke "win the game" as the very last achievement I get from a game.
@@randomnutcase8926 Minmax really bores me silly. I usually mod my game to give more interesting events and a more correct galaxy. Realspace/Gigastructures/Guillis planet modifiers/more events are the better ones.
Sorry but I think you're pretty nitpicky here. I don't spend time keeping up with the meta for the 'optimal' way to play a solo game. I do like your editing though
Love Stellaris and even though She’s right I’m still triggered.😤 I could play this game until the end of time and still be completely satisfied purging the same Xenos over and over again, or cut them a little slack and let them work for free. Great vid btw👍
@@bigbobmcswag5428agreed
@@bigbobmcswag5428she?
@@nicholasleblanc2606She?
@@bigbobmcswag5428brother this is indubitably a male
I think the problem is you are more interested in winning the game, than roleplaying a galactic colony. It sounds like that you have found a optimal way of winning and can't let yourself try anything that would be suboptimal.
Just a suggestion, maybe try to go the opposite force yourself to go full pacifist for a full playthrough and try to problem solve that.
@@zipster6393She?
exactly, this aspect isn't just with Stellaris, every game has it
I have 5k total hours in another game, Terraria, and even if you use different items every run, a lot of things boil down to utilizing the same strategies, unless you're absolutely willing to handicap yourself to present a challenge or have some more fun by intentionally using something suboptimal
same with games like FTL: Faster than Light, RTS games like Command and Conquer series essentially come down to using the same thing you use to win
it's much more so of an issue of the player mindset rather than the game itself in my opinion
@@aloe7794 a famous game designer quote is "players will optimize the fub out of the game"
That's literally talked about in the video. IMO it's not a good argument, because a good RP game should have mechanics that encourage RPing. If you don't need the game to RP, then might as well just star at a blank wall and RP in your head.
Well I don't think most people are expecting a "galactic roleplay" when they buy a RTS which is obviously centered around war. Like most people aren't buying call of duty games for the story.. they buy it for the killing. I think most people don't want stellaris for role playing.
I think the main issue with "galactic UN" is that it takes too long. You could absolutely use it to isolate empires or make yourself stronger and your enemies weaker. But it takes such a long time that your game will be over before your galactic political machinations come to fruition. And I say this as someone with 1500 hours on Stellaris.
Probably the single most realistic part of the game lol.
Becoming the custodian Is mandatory because it's the only way to make things faster
Just don't join it. Unless you like playing politics and ULTIMATE POWERRRR!!! I don't like how it's slowly becoming Crusader Kings in space.
I wonder if there is a mod that reduces recess time. Passing minor administrative sanctions and going on a 5 year break is absurd. I could justify 1-2 years as the empires need to enforce the laws but 5 years is ridiculous.
@@antonycharnock2993 What's wrong with more realism?
I don't wanna be that guy but with my 2700 hours in Stellaris, I can see that you've fallen into rabbit hole of playing a game that's not really suited for you then. I heavily disagree with you and here's few points.
1:21 Except they don't play exactly the same. That's your own notion to do the same thing over and over because it's "the most viable" way to do it. Xenophile empires for example play VASTLY different than Purifiers. Neat thing is that you can be equally evil with xenophiles too if you do some... things.
1:34 Automating your auto-exploration is one of ways to actually ruin your own fun. You get nothing out of just waiting there. Manually explore the systems, after it's done, actually CHECK the solar system. Maybe it actually has planets of great interest.
1:36 Those "long-ass text popups" are actual stories that your scientist or empire is experiancing. It's storytelling. Something that Stellaris tries to do. Similarly how Crusader Kings does but with lesser focus.
1:53 You ignoring the empire is your own playstyle. Depends how you play but your interactions with them should be on more regular basis. Like trade, buying in early favors, securing resources they have. Attempting to improve relations. Eventually even joining a federation if you feel like it.
2:07 Partially true. Except AI often times takes different routes if they are possible to find. They can do literally the same, by the way when you declare wars. You deciding to build starbases and play with a turtle strategy is absolutely on you. Can be pretty fun but not if you do it constantly.
2:18 This is just being a meta slave. Spamming research is one of the most boring ways to play the game. Is it effective? Yeah. But part of what makes Stellaris great is being able to play gimmicky empires and succeed. Instead of going for yet another tech rush empire. Also try to play tall.
2:54 This is a horrendously shit take. Nemesis was... questionable, sure. The Espionage system wasn't the best addition, we all can agree on that as it's underpowered. Yet it's another mechanic that you have to play around. Friends and Foes DLC for CK3 I will defend. That DLC is five fucking dollars for 100+ events and minor mechanics like nemesis/house feuds. It adds flavor, that's why it's called a flavor pack.
3:39 No shit. It costs influence to influence entire galaxy as a whole? Influence isn't a problem in mid-lategame. Especially lategame where it becomes kind of an irrelevant resource. You can vastly choose if you prefer to make resolutions OR claim another system. Galactic Community is an amazing way to mess with other AI and their gameplans. Alternatively sway the voting in your favor as it can have vast benefits for specific style of empires. Which you can accomplish by having envoys, civics, ascensions etc.
4:10 B-because it's a plantoid specific trait? Because it makes ZERO sense for humans to be budding? Because you can pick it with zero downsides whatover and meta-game the shit out of species with no drawbacks? Lmao
4:30 Your gripe is that, gee... a completely different form of life behaves and has different advantages? Yes. The pop growth penalty sucks balls. It IS the most important modifier out there. Lithoid portraits giving you lithoid trait simply makes sense. You're nitpicking for sense of just nitpicking.
5:20 Incorrect. They allow you to do so much more. They first of all, allow you to take on specific civics. Additionally you have some techs which have heavier weights to appear due to your ideology. In events you have variety of choices depending on your ethics. They also lock you out from specific government types, which makes sense. They give you choice between various ascension perks. So yeah, vasty incorrect.
5:25 True but also nitpicking.
5:44 Spiritualists hate machines because they go against what they believe is right. The sanctity of soul. The belief that machines can't replace humans, their souls and that machines have no souls. As they are abominations against creation. This honestly should have an actual exception with a civic though. With some kind of a techno-cult. That should've been a thing. Regardless, the don't like machines and while it's crippling, Spiritualists have other ways to make up for it.
5:55 Battleship spam is not only boring but also really not that viable. You can get much better results with other ships. Thanks to the way game works, you can basically invalidate most enemies with tech you have. Instead of spamming one design for the battleship and calling it a day.
6:20 Pacifists get advantages in their own territory. So of course it was significantly easier. Also, pacifists aren't restricted in wars unless you're a fanatic. I'm sorry but you picked a ethic that's inherently, well... pacifist? You get stability bonuses so you can focus on internal economy and exploration. Rather than waging wars.
6:38 Its almostl ike 80% of the game. Where difficulty simply adds more resources/health etc to the AI. And you trying to ''cheat'' against a harder AI is entirely on you.
8:01 They get advantages in their own different ways. How exactly is... growth of robots influenced lmao? You can literally settle on EVERY planet out there. From start of the game! And you work off a different growth which can actually get ridiculous. Where organic hiveminds get absolutely ridiculous pop growths. As for everyone hating you? Duh. You're a fucking hive mind lmao.
8:31 I highly disagree. This comes down to roleplay. While Stellaris gives you modifiers, it also gives you some special buildings, units etc. Which are meant to simulate your empire's characteristics and quirks. Other games make pre-set empires. That have very specific way of gameplay. Stellaris allows you to create YOUR OWN empire. Hell, even fill the galaxy with your own creations. Seriously, this is such a shit take. Beyond shit take. Go play another game, I guess? The fact that you can make your own empires is one of the best qualities of Stellaris. Alongside the ever-evolving discoveries and changes that your empire can experience through player choices.
9:15 Incorrect once again. You can deeply customize your empire via your origin, traditions, ascension perks, variety of event decisions that you take which reflect your empire. Your interactions with empires and Galactic community. Hell, even by issuing some general rules or edicts that reflect the way your empire functions.
9:50 Haha die xeno scum is not to be taken seriously. As there's ungodly amount of ways to play this game.
To add further to this - you also have mods. Which enhance the roleplay, mechanics, origins, traditions, events, planets, visuals etc. There is a very good reason why Stellaris is among most valuable IPs Paradox has.
Apologies but your video is simply at points incorrect, has points which are reeking of attempting to metagame and minmax, lacks any imagination on HOW you should play the game. Neither it seems like you took in account gimmicks available in this game. Stellaris is absolutely one of the best 4X games out there. Your can see people in comments who have written the same.
Seriously right? This is just a contrarian take for the sake of it. The awful cocksure prose and attitude just made it worse, god damn.
What do you mean by IP? "Stellaris is among most valuable IPs Paradox has". I don't think I can get the correct meaning just by googling, for it can have so many different meanings and it's almost impossible to find the right one for the context. Initial point? Innings pitched? Intermediate pressure? Inernet protocol?
@@Pseudoplasmagoreintellectual property if you’re still trying to find the correct definition in this context.
This whole video just sounded to me like "i didn't like stellaris, som i'mma nitpick and complain about it" kinda thing. If the guy wants to put himself in the "metaslave always doing the meta stuff" all the time, that's on him. Not the game's fault he chose to play the same way every time.
Came back to this video after TH-cam recommended me another (crap) take from this guy and just noticed your comment and wanted to give you props for pointing all those mistakes out in detail. All of those things bothered me too the first time watching it. It is actually infuriating to me how someone can be so confidently factually wrong in so many things. And with a cocky attitude to boot. Gross.
If you applied the trains of thought and reasoning you applied towards this review, the amount of games you could put on blast would be staggering.
Ya missed the mark on what people enjoy about Stellaris, and the sessions you described DO sound like they must've felt homogeneous and samey, so I feel you on that - but it sounds like user error to me
Yeah, the fact that he put "make your own lore" as a negative point is baffling. That's the most fun part of the game.
@@vaniellysYeah, that's absolutely baffling. There is tons of people who pass more time creating empires than actually playing the game!
@@Juhnte which Is not that different from people creating character sheets with background and nice stuff while not even playing dnd
It's Just fun, people like that
Yeah, it seems like they are playing the game with the only objective being win by the most optimal and metagaming way possible.
I get that some people like that, but stellaris doesn't seem it was made for that. Maybe multiplayer, but single player they put the effort in to actually give you the tools to role play.
@@chuckles471 I wouldn’t quite put it that way but rather, if your approach to the game is to minmax every time (which is totally fine if that’s what the player wants to do) then you really shouldn’t be complaining it feels samey regardless of your starting condition. You’ve put yourself in a box (to minmax), realizing that making the same choices results in experiencing the same box in the same way is an obviously direct consequence of that choice and a massive no shit Sherlock.
I don't know about anyone else, but the part of Stellaris I always enjoy is the exploration part - I guess one would say the beginning. Getting out into the unknown, seeing what happens, getting my little corner of the galaxy up and running...and then the game changes into a massive clusterfuckyou. By the midgame (assuming it even is playable due to massive lag), every single empire is soley interested in fucking over it's neighbors as much as they can (which also includes you). If one happens to make it to the endgame (which I used to be able to, but for about 2 years now I just don't have the energy to do so), it is kill everything, get prize...it's a shame, because truly, all I want is for the beginning fun to continue...not change into a different game entirely. Oh well, start another...the only option there is.
they changed a lot of the endgame in the past 2 years so you dont have to kill everuone.
Vanilla stellaris doesn't really suffer from all that lag, you Need a really potato PC or Reaching like year 2500 to get fucked up.
Midgame goes fast af.
Also, yeah, wars happen, but you can Just be stronger, nodoby would bother you. But they fixed even that, unless you are unlucky or make your Life as hard as possible
I think a cultural expansion should be a thing so races join you based on that. Perfect for pacifist empires. A bit like what Civilisation does.
Sounds like you would juste LOVE spore's space phase, litterally you playing the exploration phase endlessly
Same. Beginning is best.
There's actually a lot of variety to get out of the game. But if you are the kind of player who will ignore the sub-optimal alternative strategies and regardless of what empire you create only do the meta type playstyle then yeah thats all you'll get out of the game. Which is fine to be that way to be clear.
The AI empires are more like minecraft enemies. They are there to make the play experience more dynamic while you build, explore and generate a story. Theres not a great need to paint the map, it mainly just adds busywork. (You'll need some sprawl if you are heart set on archaeology though)
Where I agree with you is that the game usually boils down to building a doomstack fleet and steamrolling the galaxy. This can however be archieved in many different ways other than outright conquest in the early game. Playing tall by building habitats, orbital rings and mega structures instead of conquering the galaxy is often even more powerfull because of empire size. Larger empires need more research for new tech and traditions and are obviosly more vulnerable to attacks.
By playing tall you can rush tech to build more advanced ships, you can rush traditons edicts and ascencions to give your empire boosts and new options.
Diplomacy is also far more usefull than you make it out to be.
Federations are very powerfull, they give great bonuses and you allies will often build a giant federation fleet for you.
The galactic council is the same.
Pass the right solutions and you can massivly improve your empire and cripple your rivals.
Yes the main benefit of resolutions is to modify diplomatic power but they also always have other effects like boosting research, reducingncondumer good usage, banning slavery or robots etc.
And lets talk aout that diplomatic power. You act like thats the endgame of the galactic union and cant be used except to gain more diplomatic power.
But once you dominate the galactic union you can become custodian or even emperor which massivly boosts your influence, allows you to build a galactic fleet that will be paid for by the community and give you even more ways to manipulate resolutions. At that point you can sanction empires to cripple their economy, research or military and even declare them a galactic thread and make the whole community go to war with them.
It seems to me like you just havent figuered the system out quit yet, which to be fair I didnt either at first.
And last but not least there are vassals which you can specialice and manipulate to your advantage. Empires will often willingly subjegate themselves if you offer them good terms that youbrenegotiate later to squeeze them for resources.
Unironically by far my strongest run was a xenophile feudal empire where i bribed my neighbors to like me, offered them good vasall terms and forced them into my faction.
All without a single war.
Spying is dogshit though, operarions are almost neber worth it and cant realy be used effectibly and the system need a rework.
I simply dont understand how someone can call the hivemind empires weak. Both robotic and biological hiveminds habe been meta picks for years now. If anything they are too strong.
Last but not least, the point about storytelling.
I and most people who play stellaris like it because it allows me to create my own story.
But even if thats not your thing the game still offers many pre written stories through events, anomalies, archeology sites, space creatures, sytsems, the crisis and precourser civilisations and pre FTL cultures.
Your empire has no story but the galaxy most defenitly does.
As I said you make a lot of good points and there is nothing wrong with not enjoying the game.
But some of your points are just plain wrong and telling people not to buy the game also feels like a dick move like they cant decide that on their own.
Mayby the game just isnt for you, that doesnt make it bad.
Exactly. Obviously, in order to win you have to defeat all of the rest of the empires. Its up to how you do it that is the entire point of the game, and he seems to be skipping over that part.
@@quindarius_bingleton you don't even have to do that, I've won entirely by ignoring the galaxy and just out performing then tech wise and economy wise, never once entering a war never once looking at the galactic community, the game was boring until I got to spread out when the crisis came and started fucking shit up.
"You have to doomstack" aka 'I have one goal and it gets boring eventually'
I personally disagree, though I agree with some points you've stated (such as the interaction between empires needing more depth), I also just don't see how "samey" is really a big issue. As a person who plays many genres, most games will just play the same way in their perspective genre. Stellaris is a 4X game - so the game will always play like a standard 4X game. If i play Terraria for instance, I will always go mine, explore, fight bosses, go do wall of flesh etc. It will feel the same in every playthrough, even if I am a different class and so on. This applies for almost all games.
I don’t know if this counts to what you’re saying but you can use espionage, build a spy network, and hire their mercenaries to fight their home empire.
No one tell him about roguelites
Stellaris is bad as a base game, the game costs my kidney and if I pay for DLCs I'm paying for my cremated funeral.
Dude the game is limited, you spend hours creating little stories about the game and try to feel rewarded in some way, but then the game slows down too much, you reach all the research and you only have upgrades left, there is no megastructure besides the portal, if you can call that a megastructure, I played the game for so long, and now I feel useless knowing that I never get rewarded for anything for a base game so limited and so expensive, I'm on PS4 and I'm playing "free" without any DLC for that they cost me a fortune.
The game is repetitive, you're probably on PC and have the DLCS, your experience must have been better than mine, but imagine yourself in my place, the game is a sh#t.
@@KingMutoOfficial poor person problem
@@KingMutoOfficial Yeah, I get what you mean if you are on console. So I agree with you on that
I disagree. The game is great, it's just not for your taste.
Stellaris is the only Paradox game I play (500+h, playing since 1.0), and I think it's the example of a good live-service game. Each DLC comes with a free update (we even had 2 updates without DLC) that adds quality of life changes, new mechanics and even new content to old DLCs. The base game today is basically a sequel when compared to the 1.0.
Yeah, there's a lot of DLCs. But 1) you can pick just the ones you're interested by and ignore the others, 2) in MP the host shares all their DLCs 3) it's a better way to sustain the game than microtransactions, lootboxes and battle passes.
You complain that the species pack lock mechanics, but they used to be purely cosmetic. They retroactively added new mechanics that fit the theme of each pack. It's not arbitrary.
Ethics don't just give stat changes, they change which tech you will get and the way other empires interact with you. Yes, most empires play mostly the same way, but there's still a lot of small variations. Asymetric gameplay is hard to make, especially if you want the amount of customization that Stellaris allows.
"You get percentage buffs. Go make your own lore." THAT'S WHAT MAKES THE GAME SO GREAT !
Yeah this is a really awful ignorant take. some valid points but all either exaggerated or not enough to change the result that Stellaris is an amazing game. not our fault if someone lacks the brain cells for it.
to add onto the species pack things, the vast majority of stellaris players were really happy to get actual content added to species packs because buying for a purely cosmetic pack makes the pack seem worthless
Tell me more, I am considering buying.
@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 well, it’s open from the 22nd to the 26th so now’s your time to check it out for yourself
@@_apsis Ah okay cool, how do I get into the free trial of it? Download it?
I understand what you are trying to say, but you are often missing the important points why it is designed like that:
3:27 Influence is only rare in the early game, afterwards its always near 1k (empire limit).
4:12 Well, that makes sense? The name "budding" is for plants. Stuff like this exists to make species a bit more different, and thats good.
4:33 Thats for balance reasons. The base habitability (+50%!) adds more pop growth on the normal average planet (higher hab = higher hab + job resources), because its easier to find the correct type for you. The -25% growth is not really noticable once your empire has the basic colonies.
5:17 Thats not true, the ethics/government have a big impact on diplo, events and overall build setup for your empire.
6:00 Onwards: You play with such strong mods and expect the AI to be able to beat that? Yes the AI isnt the best, but Admiral/GrandAdmiral AI is very strong nowadays. Try Vanilla games.
7:50 Once again: Balance. In my >1860h I mostly played robots (and hives), and recently switched a lot to bio empires. Machines have GREAT advantanges, and the growth debuff is similar like Lithoids - you can colonize any planet, which is incredibly strong. And you can easily do diplo with robits. Its a bit harder, but in general its possible.
And yes, the "space UN" is useless - but isnt that kinda like realistic politics? xD
Apart from that, Stellaris is a story generator. If you minmax everything, it doesnt make fun. Thats the reason the large part of the playerbase does this - singleplayer and multiplayer.
About DLCs: Yes it sucks, but its the only way to have the game supported after 7 years. Creating games is very expensive nowadays, we could expect even higher prices to be honest :P
Yeah as soon as I saw the modlist I thought “well I guess he wanted difficulty to be irrelevant in this review.”
Some of the points presented weren’t too bad, but overall it just sounds like either a hit piece or the opinions of someone who expected Stellaris to play _their_ way if it wanted to be any good. It’s not a good competitive game by any standard. Its charm lies in playing out a civilization _you_ want to build and influencing the galaxy the way _you_ want to affect it.
@@OneBiasedOpinionagree, wtf do you expect when you male things easier on yourself, I get that the AI sucks, but that is because the game is actually very complex number crunching and managing that a simple AI has trouble keeping up... lookin at you awakened empire with 3 "forge worlds" that have every district *but* industrial districts
Destroyed by facts and logic. There have been some really shit takes in the video
Ya he has a weird argument of “everything feels the same and plays the same” but also “how dare certain thematic abilities be locked to their intended faction and not available to everyone!?”
Im not really sure how someone can both be upset that there is too much similarity while also complaining that anything is distinctive. Also completely glossing over the habitability mechanic in its entirety is pretty sus considering it is a critical part of basically every campaign.
Here’s the thing. I like stellaris but I absolutely get where this guys coming from. The game has MANY issues that annoy me. Like why can’t I just declare a war for whatever reason I want? I shouldn’t need to go out of my way just to make someone a tributary because all the hard work should be preparation for the the war itself not meeting a prerequisite.
Similarly I find it hard to enjoy a game about making your custom alien empire when I conveniently am forced to engage with the galaxy on equal terms. If I want to break a defensive pact and fight someone I’m willing to take a hit to trust or something long as I’m not forced into playing nice. And yeah the space UN is useless and there’s no excuse. Unless your planning to go the galactic emperor or custodian it’s a meaningless system because it’s just self perpetuating with no benefit
Overall I think the videos point is just yeah you can make different empires but they all are completely subservient to the same set of rules to a T and it severely limits build variety since dozens of empire will still play wide or tall and not much else changes. I love that we can make custom empires but there’s a lot of systems you could take out entirely and remarkably little is effected.
What makes Stellaris great to me is kind of just larping as my empire. The meta is kind of boring because just steam rolling everything gets boring fast. I like to just make up my own lore for whatever empire Im playing and just act how I think they would act.
Agreed, but the game is made so larping is punished, and playing the meta is key.
@@maxs.5112 No, I won the game role playing the most outlandish empires in span of many patches, starting from "RP UNE Arsenal of Democracy" style, when I pumped poor empires with tones of alloys I produced by my own, to playing Honorbound warriors style when I automaticaly declared wars to any empire who insulted me + raiding the marauders for demands. Unless you play some multiplayer or some ultra-aggresive difficulty settings, like super early 25xcrisis/grand-admiral/aggresive/0,25xtech/max numer of advanced empires, you can easily win playing by basicaly anything just by exploiting what you have.
@@maxs.5112 Only in Multiplayer and if the multiplayer allows it.
Me and my friends ban meta gaming in our sessions and emphasize roleplay over steamrolling everyone
@@secondaryfront But you still have to play super optimal. I for example tried to play the was so my population is happy and didnt expand, because thats how i seen my empire. Turns out, its useless, unless there is threat or revolt there is absolutely nothing to be gained by low happy population. Its better to build more useful buildings and have unhappy large pop actually. So you cannot play how you want ever, you have to play meta all the time.
@@Zoltan1251 I aready talled you I won outlandish games by definitely playing NOT meta, so you deffinitely don't have to play meta all the time. I played a cyborg only style without ascending to full-synth in times when it was not a seperate thing, cyborgs were weaker and it was deffinitely not optimal play. I still menaged to win.
Anyway, what was your plan for non-expanding empire? Trading? Because you have to have some income. Playing without income is like playing without spaceships. It won't give you victory or even a suvival past early-mid game.
If I had to try that weird play, I would go megacorp with max trade/politics/diplomatic/traditions and still probably had to become vasal of one of my neightbours.
Also, remmember that some patches were more forgiving than others.
you bring up good points, but have you considered numbers go up? I will continue to play
I really disagree with a lot of the things in the video. For exemple how can you say a resolution on the space UN has the main reward being having more influence on it, when in the screen you show the thing giving you a massive bonus to worker and mineral output, is it just because its the highest percentage??? It does not make a lot of sense. I like your vids and editing style but this is not your best take
I have to mod every single AI into cute anime girls to prevent myself from attacking them for daring to exist near my borders and having things I want within theirs.
based
That’s your opinion I suppose. Some of the points were genuinely good, but the title reads like a hit piece, the opening is ABSOLUTELY geared to incite dislike for the game right from the start, and overall, the majority of the things you point out as being problematic (clicking through the pop-ups generated from exploration, various species locking you into certain traits, “go make your own lore,” and many more) are the things that make me genuinely enjoy Stellaris. Being a pacifistic robot civ means that I _have_ to pay attention to my borders, build up fleets, and balance the never-ending drain of credits for self-defense against my incessant need for more power for my pops. Being a Devouring Swarm means I _have_ to play hyper-aggressive against an AI that can ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT kick my teeth in at max difficulty if I’m not using all the mods you had installed.
Getting backdoored by your second neighbor while you’re trying to consume the first is _such_ fun early game, and it WILL happen more than once if you’re a hated empire type.
I guess in the end, this just wasn’t the game for you. And that’s fine, but I’d prefer you not word everything from start to near-finish like a hit piece for clicks. It’s amateurish in my (very biased) opinion and not a little dishonest towards the game and its community.
I think the most odd opinion in this review was that if one plays the game optimally (minmax) it’s always samey. No duh. That’s what optimal means. While there can be some minor nuances with what optimal means for any starting condition, on the grand scheme of things minmaxing will always end up feeling samey. Which is why it’s not recommended to do that every time unless that’s just your preferred way of playing the game. Which then resolves the problem: you. If you keep playing samey and complaining that it’s always samey then…make different choices or stop complaining that you’ve created your very own prison?
This video is a joke lol. Stellaris is amazing, not our fault some people are too smallbrain.
If the thumbnail said "I don't like Stellaris" then this video would be fine. But saying that the game is not good is just not objective and mega clickbait (I fell for it so good job I suppose).
The reason why all games play the same is because you want to play them all the same. You don't have to play them all the same. It's your choice to do so. Blaming the game for it is just silly. Especially the comparison with the "Endless" games is baffling to me. Because in those games you can basically play all the different factions once and that is it. They will play exactly the same the next time around because of how railroaded they are. The "story" behind them is also not particularly interesting either and doesn't make sense on a greater scale which is quite immersion breaking. And apparently immersion is what you want.
So it seems to me that you just lack the necessary ability or willingness to make up a story of your own and that you do not like experimenting. You want a railroaded, gimmicky playthrough that sets the course for you and where you do not have to come up with your own setup. Which is fair enough but calling a game bad because it does not fit your preferences is just absurd. I don't go around and call Age of Empires bad because I don't like RTS games. At least be decent enough to admit that this is your subjective preference.
Besides that this video had a lot of complaints with very few if any suggestion for solutions. Now I don't think that you always have to offer a solution when you want to criticize something, but if you make a whole video out of it then you better be prepared to put some substance into it. This here looks and sounds like just meaningless whining. Like you wanted to rant about something because you were bored.
The only things I agree on are espionage and diplomacy being lackluster. But I have yet to see a 4X game (or any game really) where those things are not just an afterthought. AI is simply not at a point yet where it could realistically handle those mechanics the same way a human (or alien) could. So it has to be dumbed down a lot. Still, definitely room for improvement there.
Yup, I agree with you. This isn't a video that shows that Stellaris is bad, it's a video were he says he doesn't like Stellaris and tries to paint it as the game being bad.
@@jnk4832 Also said that Gestalts have poor pop growth. Meanwhile Hive Minds have some of the best growth in the game. Just extremely nitpicky at best or uninformed at worst.
@@TheGrouch91 worse, he specifically spoke of machine intelligences regarding pop growth. While you're not supposed to keep much organics in your empire as a machine intelligence.
@@Juhnte Yeah he said Gestalts first without specifying and then later mentions Machines in particular. Was unclear to me what exactly he meant.
Eitherway he seems to not understand the importance of habitability and how it has a massive effect on the growth of your empire. His points about Lithoids made that very clear as well.
Totally agree. If you make the same choices (due to wanting to minmax), expect samey results (minmax). If you want diverse gameplay the onus is on you to create that flavor with all the tools the game provides you with. Which may not be the optimal way to play, but that’s the consequence of diversity. Every style can’t be the optimal way to play, there’s generally only going to be one best approach and repeating that over and over regardless of which starting empire you created will make them feel samey. The problem here is primarily the player, though the game does have some aspects that it could do better.
I don't like the mid to end game, but I love the exploration and random event in the early game. That's what good about stellaris to me.
I wanted to like this game so bad. The only things this game has to its advantage is story telling in the research missions or events or whatever, but that doesn't even last that long because there aren't very many in reality for a game you planned on putting a thousand hours in. Sins of a Solar empire, an obscure and ancient game, was basically better when it came to combat and base building and it had almost no story but that doesn't even matter once you heard the Stellaris stories more than once :/ and SoaSE is like... Basically free
All in all I still like it for the stories that emerge from game to game.
Sure, plenty of times I'll get rolled over, but there are still some "1 week from complete defeat, turned into a resounding win" that I enjoyed.
Seems like you didn’t play on high enough difficulty. Needs to be grand admiral. Also I would add a difficulty adjustment mod. Those can make the game so hard. That actually you see different mechanics, that often get overshadowed, come into play and be useful.
I played 2 games some time ago (on the same patch), 2.5 actually, and for me it's completely opposite to what you are saying. Both of the campaigns went completely different, in one I opted on the influence path, were I had several vasals and later become a galactic emperor via the senate (why would you want to use recourses on the senate, as long as you are expanding, you are only voting on the things other people proposed...) and in the other game I went technology and military and took control via war. Completely different expieriences, not to mention how different stories went. But yeah, I play that mostly for flavour.
Each game plays the same... No. That's false. Hive mind plays completely different than normal empires. Even "normal" empires play differently. The amount of authority and cost reduction in claims differs a militaristic empire from the others. A peaceful empire can't even conquer other empires the normal way. Xenophobes can't get along with other empire though all those debuffs they get and don't get me started with the megacorps. My personal favorite before paragons was overturned fanatic xenophobic, militarist. Conquer everything and build insanely fast to match the speed of my pop growth. With the paragon dlc is fanatic authoritarian, materialist(totalitarian regime) plus dystopia+mechanist origin. Your goal with this build is to use your main pop as leaders and robots as servitors. You also add technocracy in the late game and play with hundreds of habitats... Yeah the same... Exactly the same. Take now your dislike, because your main goal of your video was controversy and nothing more.
That’s the same thing though… and exactly the play style he said he did and got bored of.
@@davidanderegg1232 if have played Stellaris more than 20 hours so you could bother to learn how different playstyles work, you would know you are wrong. Play Stellaris my friend... This video is just bait for views for Stellaris funs to get angry.
@@gerasimosnektarios4077 played more than that and honestly I was thinking the same thing before watching. Aside from ship design, combat is all the same, except maybe some wormhole camping cheese. And every game is ultimately combat because the final challenge is a big army. How you fund it doesn’t really change you need to fight and combat simply isn’t engaging.
@@davidanderegg1232 whatever floats your boat. If you don't like the gameplay loop that's not for me to judge.
@@gerasimosnektarios4077 you say there's "different playstyles" when playing tall isn't viable at all but you sound like a reddit sperg so you'll obviously defend whatever lame mechanic they add to make the game even more repetitive and the ai shit face itself
Have you ever heard of Endless Space 2? It has this Asymmetrical Gameplay that you are talking about.
Each of the playable Empire has at least one unique mechanic, sometimes miniscule and sometimes game changing.
The Sophons get a simple research buff if no other empire has that technology.
The Vodyani on the other hand literally eats the population of other empires to gain essence, to make more of their ships and population.
See, I think that's the really fundamental problem you have here: You treat Stellaris as pretty much just another grand strategy game.
I, however, treat it as a story generator title, similar to something like Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld. And I have well over 2000 hours played in spite of only really starting to first play it around Nemesis release.
Truly, we are not the same.
I've noticed Stellaris feels like Spore with extra steps but without all the creativity. I like the concept of civics and the like when creating an empire but the rest of the gameplay feels really stale. Every time I play I find myself constantly wanting to do something else.
"and watch as the Fermi Paradox is promptly SmartphOWNED"
I disagree with you on just about everything you said, except for the espionage/ subterfuge, that needs updated.
I just want to saw, since you're a small channel - I loved this video. I reinstalled Stellaris (for that 100th time) because... sometimes you just feel that itch. Then on my better judgement I searched for new reviews of the game and found your video. It's hilarious - I've subbed the channel for future commentary. And also so true. You basically saved me two weeks of frustration fighting against a game I fundamentally don't enjoy for the same reason but somehow always end up losing 20+ hours to in each reinstall.
I was about to install it and play again but now feel like you did. Why bother? I was unimpressed the first time I had it installed.
I'd love to see a grand strategy game that at it's core has not the same problem if you want to see it like that...
They all are always the same, most of the variance happens in the players mind and not in actual mechanics.
Good point.
But what about crusader kings 3 for instance?
@@slash891 It's the same. The variaty happens mainly in the players minds with some storys. The perks and such are just small number changes that can very well be ignored. After a while you'll also know all events like in Stellaris. You can try a few mildly different playthroughs with different cultures like you can in stellaris with different gouverment systems. But all in all the gameplay is pretty samy.
The variaty with these games are in the small details and the narratives the players build ins their own heads.
I was once really into Stellaris, but evertime I returned from a break they changed the gameplay, my campaign was broken, my mods were broken, I had to learn things anew.
And I was increasingly frustrated by being unable to design ships or factions that I wanted.
you do realize that pardox unlike most devs allows you to use older versions of the game so you can still use your mods and old saves
sounds pretty accurate
used to watch lathland try really really hard to roleplay
and then a little later its the same thing again
over and over and over again
Overall it feels like it just isn't your kind of game. Still a cool video. Made me think of stuff differently and I do agree with a lot of mechanical criticisms like the stuff said about Ethics.
It used to be a good game. But DLC should all be free. That's what it used to be. You used to buy a game and it's finished, now you buy a game that won't be finished for a decade. And it'll cost you a fk ton.
I bought dlcs. All of them are not really worth shite. I shouldn't be forced to buy things in a game I already bought. Wtf is this...
To be fair, the game gets a free update every time a DLC comes out. (roughly twice a year, I think?)
Most of the DLC is to add flavor to the narrative, anyways, so if you're not looking for that you won't find much value in them. Hell, all of the species packs were originally cosmetic and just got new stuff added on over time.
Almost every part of the game has improved from launch. This is Paradox; not expecting DLC in their games is like not expecting mold in left-out bread: it's only a matter of time. The only thing that's actually worsened from launch is performance.
TL;DR: The game has only gotten better, the base game has been in a complete state for longer than I've been playing, the devs put out free updates regularly. You don't need to buy any DLCs to play, and it sounds like you should have considered them more before buying them.
A lot of the DLCs aren't really worth buying, though, you're definitely right about that. You can just get Utopia and call it a day, it's the best by far.
There's a lot to read/write about this, but it seems that most (if not all) of it has already been said, so I just wanted to thank everyone in this sea of 526 other comments (except for that one guy going around saying that not being able to afford $300 worth of DLCs is a "poor person problem") for being really kind. I was 100% expecting a fecal tsunami of hate comments raging & defending Paradox at all costs, but instead there's a lot of healthy debate, kindly shared opinions and personal experiences, conversations about mods, customization ideas/unique challenges, and suggestions on how to change your perspective (if you'd like to get more out of what Stellaris already is, especially if you bought all the DLCs/expansions already) to better enjoy the game. I don't think I saw any name-calling, blind rages, or anything other than discussion and support for one another (again, barring that one rich person that hates poor people or whatever his/her deal is). So thanks again! This brightened my day (well, my 1 in the morning).
most of the transphobes got smited. by me. there were a lot of them, unfortunately
I came back to Stellaris after an extended break. In that time I realized that I'm drawn to games with micromanagement, optimization, and sweet percentage bonuses. I like to make numbers go up. . .I guess the roleplay is fun too lol
Type “Stellaris -200” so you don’t see this video when you search for Stellaris related content, you’re welcome!
I with the statment only in a single player perspective, multiplayer is more diverse. The different alien types are for ways to create a different level of difficulty in the game. Every game is also always going to have a meta, it just so happens that is you can out produce the opposition. your going to win. The starbases only provide adiquit protection for so long and you can't always just sit behind them. Yes, some aspects of the game are usely. However, the moment you open up to a multiplayer stage. The whole game flips onto its head. suddenly empires can keep up with you and some of those usely systems gain some attraction. The meta only give you a shot at winning the game at that point. You said you only had two hundred hours, too me it seems like you just glanced over the multiplayer aspect of the game because it would have been missed.
Multiplayer requires a lot of communication and working around another person schedule
You follow the meta for a single player game? Oof. I have never even thought of looking up a meta.
What is the point of this video? Is this video just some effort to try to get a weak ass negative review more attention? lol
I am just shy of 5k hours on this game and it is my primary game I play most days and is even part of my regular unwinding-at-the-end-of-a-rough-day routine. I play primarily from a role play perspective and absolutely none of the different styles of empires have fealt remotely the same outside of whatever the current fleet meta is against ai at any givin time. (which has changed substantially since the most recent updates)
This is clearly a perspective issue. And a weak one at that.
i love stellaris :D
its so good, making my own character after your own alien species!
like going to a movie and being like "IM GONNA MAKE A XENOMORPH ALIEN SPECIES WHOS SENTIENT" is something you can almost do in your mind.
i feel like the game is very creative and super fun with friends in a call and the different spawns and different research options, different species, different play styles.
amazing game for me but i get not everybody thinks the same way i do
I mean you could frankly say the same about civ V, endless space, and more. Civ V has too many dlc, while it’s got 2 big ones, it’s a pretty penny. Beyond that in its base form it plays fairly similarly for most empires with a few exceptions and it’s stat buffs all the way down. Even the unique units are barely unique, often just being a free promotion which is… just a stat buff… or a situational stat buff on a specific terrain or against a specific enemy. There’s a few small unique units like hoplites building roads and the Zulu, but as you progress into later eras those don’t matter anyways. Combine that with how tech is literally how you win in that game, and it becomes very samey if you metagame it all the time like you do with stellaris.
For endless space II, there is some more uniqueness, but it’s all the same in the end for most empires. You try to get science and productivity for technology and ships. Maybe the riftborn have a unique need to build pops or the cravers and their planetary depletion encouraging you to keep expanding, but with all of that democracy is still the meta government type you’ll swap to every game, and your goal is to hit some arbitrary number to "win" something. Like, go collect a bunch of dust and just get rich. Go research these 4 techs. The most "fun" way to win might just be domination because then you do more than sit around waiting for a number to go up.
Surprise, when you meta-game a game every time and play the one strategy considered optimal every game, the game feels the same every time.
I hear the guy, but I have no issue makeing up my own lore and I have no issue roll playing my own story's in Stellaris, I'll often design 10 empires from the ground up, lock them in and launch a 1000 star galaxy with up 25 empires and have a good time, I like their arn't heaps of one of a kind faction bonus/ switch ups to exploit or to be left unbalanced.
What is blud yapping about
I see where your coming from but no. Paradox focuses on providing a gameplay experience that only two types of players absolutely LOVE that is the min/max player and the roleplayer. If you are one of those two very specific types of players you will adore Paradox games.
I love this gem and it has now become the game that all my friends have obsessed over. Its great
1:57 lol anime girls in stellaris
Based Endless Universe Enjoyer! Love to find another lover of the series.
The games do run the same at lower difficulties but when you crank up the difficulty to where you are eventually matched it’s actually fun. because you have to use espionage, make allies, and build your economy to take down the other empires. And you don’t need to own all the dlcs to have fun you can just have a friend who owns them all. But it also help if you try to get invested in the story of the game and read the long ass text boxes.
I havent played singleplayer stellaris in over a year. But multiplayer is a lot more deep of an experience. Roleplay can actually exist, and the faster pace of no pause makes you have to decide what you want to micro and what is fine without being touched.
Multiplayer is too close to DND for me😂. Two many games never made it to year 2400
Thanks for your honest takes! Good stuff!
I love the game, played it since launch and never deleted it from my library once.
I made 40+ Races each with different Empire Names and few duplicate Origins and such, I made various playstyles for each Empire with half of them usually going towards the same style I like to play, but I try to play every "Empire Style" in the game and enjoy my imagination of the game and play very idealistically, I also try hard when I play Multiplayer on it and well ... The game DOES repeat itself a lot, but it does it in different locations and timings and circumstances, I also forgot to mention I played 1300+ Hours so far, it's my favourite game ever and I can play all try hard like or imaginative-like ... And I personally think it's an underrated game, there is TONS of potential that can be added to the Stellaris Community from watching Stellaris or playing Stellaris (Watching as in Let's Play's or Trailers or a potential show/movie if there ever is one). Imagination and Wonder makes this game TONS better, it doesn't need to only be mentally rationalized. Like the Psionic Theory Research "The Mind is a greater tool than any other"
As a person with 3,118 hours on hoi4 and 900 on stellaris i can say u are over simplifying the game. Each dlc has a major impact on the game. Early game is just as fun as end or mid game. All it depends on is how YOU play, if you rp u will love the game and have a great time but if u just try to win everything then its boring cuz its all just rise and no fall. But also if u play only against ai then its gonna be more boring. But if u have a problem with the game there are so many mods that u can fix every problem. Dont like the stats of smthing theres a mod for it, want more ship types, mod, portraits, mod, bugger galaxy, mod. Sinply find whats fun in the game for you, not just win the game but play it, explore and experience all the play styles
Over 2k hours here and with mods, I really enjoy it. They do need to improve the AI by a lot though. The latest 3.8 DLC is different and does change things up a bit.
To be honest, the AI already got a lot better. To the point that I have actually games with friends where the top empires in the end aren't necessarily all players.
Just get starnet if the ai isn't good enough for you
@@roguephantom8823 Sadly it isn't being updated now, the modder is on break.
@@malikto1 my bad wasn't aware
Anyone thar makes a video about not liking stellaris is just max they dont have the creativity to play if
I play this game for the politicking with and against friends. Truly amazing moments to be had in multiplayer, especially with all the DLC and varied cultures.
I will never understand the deep loneliness that drives people to play paradox games, with no aet challenges in single player.
As someone that has 800 hours in Stellaris, the key is to try out different playstyles.
Despite the claim that, for example determined exterminators play almost the same as communist empires, both are still substantially different.
With exterminators you'll basically be isolated (except from other machine empires) for the entire game and everyone will be hostile to you.
If you play as a xenophile megacorporation, diplomacy and federations can be key to win the game.
It's also important to set goals for every game before you start: Do you want to be the sole ruler of the galaxy, destroy every biological lifeform or just build a big prosperous empire?
Also, using mods like 'Ethics and Civics Classic' can really spice up the game.
I dont think you get the point. You still have to be optimal in every case, there is no flexibility once you start a game. You have to have pops and armies, sure you can do it differently but never sub-optimally. Its annoying when you start with xenophobe, you have to be optimal xenophobe otherwise game over. I wanted to change mind of population with changes in galaxy and just got penalties. Thats not very sandbox.
@@Zoltan1251 Unless you mind losing a game, you don't necessarily have to play in an optimal way. Suppose you are famatic pacifist or a pacofost corporation, you wouldn't build up a huge navy even though you might have an aggressive neighbour. Instead you would "turtle". Building fortresses and space stations.
@@Odoxon7522 Well thats my issue. You cannot go bits a pieces. Reasearch was my main and wanted to have fairly good navy but at the same time wanted to sway things my way diplomatically. Well, tough luck, pick one otherwise you are bad at everything.
Not that its unplayable, but saying you can do whatever is not correct. You have to minmax every game otherwise you will lag behind which gets old after 3 games or so.
The secret to finding joy in Stellaris is overfocusing on an incredibly obscure minor mechanic and just seeing how far you can take it. Cloaking Strength number? What happens if I push it to the MAX?! Society Research Bonus? What if I push it to the MAX?! Army Moral Damage? You get the idea.
Sure, there are no major changes to gameplay, in that you are correct. But there are so many small mechanics thrown around that are just begging to be explored to maybe find something interesting to do with them. And even if nothing ultimately gets discovered... there are always mods.
Lmao bruh u got it down...
Latest DLC I went with "ship cost reduction"...
Battleships were as cheap as corvettes for standard emps lmao
For me it's just exploring dumb ideas and DLC's specific features. For example I'm playing as a rogue servitor, that means the original creators of the machines are mostly dead but some remain and are pampered like cats ( Gameplay wise, it forces you to have food and consumer goods )
So what would I do if there was a fallen empire with the zealot ideology ( They hate me basically ) just right above me?
Simple, get the relic which summons their fleet, gains their trust and allows me to setlle on holy worlds.
What? Did you think I would actually avoid them like the plague because the moment they wake up I'm basically dead? Of course not, just friend, all friends, everyone friend.
You just described a horribly designed and absolutely awful gameplay loop
"ONLY" 200 hours
I dunno man, this video is wrong on SO many levels, but ya know, if you look for issues, you will always find some. Whatever suits you man.
The meta for all of these games is constantly changing. The meta for HOI4 changes every few months, for different countries, and choosing between heavy artillery gameplay or tanks and mtorized or heavy air and infantry is completely legit. You are just straight up wrong. Stellaris allows you a TON of roleplaying opportunities, basically every sci-fi story can be re-enacted, and the most basic gameplay mechanics from all the dlcs are always included for free in the base game.
If you play with friends, which is the best part of paradox games, all you need is for one person to have a DLC installed, and everyone gets to play with its features fully unlocked in the game. Almost everything, and I mean everything in Stellaris can be customized or randomized, and if not, you can install mods to fix it. Mods, which paradox actively supports. They even change the code of the base game to allow modders to have an easier time changing it. The devs are also actively engaging with the community all the time, they respond to our questions and complaints, they let us beta-test, they are overall a fantastic company.
Most problems you mentioned are either not a problem (Of course every empire will expand and grow in the start of the game, that is how you get stronger), taken out of context, or just a straight up lie (Interacting with other empires is often essential to do as soon as possible, as it allows you to settle different planets with their species, gain research bonuses etc.)
And the space UN is very useful for gaining further bonuses to alloys, amenities and happines, and you can totally try to go for these bonuses by getting favors or investing in diplo-power.
The one thing I do agree with is the espionage, which, while useful, is underpowered and needs changing.
I now have 53H of playtime in Stellaris and own the game for 3.5 days, and I haven’t had one game which was the same. Granted the start tends to be the same. But I had a game where I became the Crisis and blew everyone up. I had a game where I became the council and just vassalized and integrated almost every other empire without wars. And I had a game where I became the defender of the galaxy and attacked and destroyed most hostiles empires as well as defend the crisis until my untimely demise
Your definitely missing part of the genuinely exciting and fun parts of the game, but im not gonna blame you for that, its UX is kinda shit for beginners and doesnt tell you about the interesting ways to play. Also its best in multiplayer by far as it has the least amount of randomness and asymmetry of all the paradox games but that also means pvp is by far the best in stellaris compaired to any other paradox game.
Last time I touched stellaris it was before they added alloys and the removal of warp drive and wormhole travel was still fresh in my memory.
How do i block a channel from showing up in my feed
Budding is available for fungoids as well
I like to have a set of objectives, for example as a technocracy my objectives were to eliminate the spiritualists, ascend to machine, build the biggest mega structures and research as many anomalys and excavation sites as possible, as the objectives gave me side mission to do while not having the greatest fleet in the game I was able to pull that off before the game ended
You seem more interested in “winning” than “playing”. Some of my favourite games of Stallaris have been the ones that I lost. My all time favourite was loosing against an opponent that was slowly grinding me down system by system till I was fighting a last stand in my home system. It’s not about winning, it’s about playing.
Creating your own lore is the best about the game.
For an example I had a game where me and the first empire I found had the same government type as me, but we hated each other and had fleets at each other borders really to declare war. Then a galactic purifier got to both our borders at the same time so we banded together to wipe it out and won. And you’d expect us to become close Allie’s but no we just got back to being on the verge of war with each other again. Then another purifier got to our borders at the same time again and we both banded together to take that one out. But when we were nearing the end of that war the Kahn woke up and basically steamrolled us because our fleets were on the opposite side of the galaxy and the few that were at our planets were damaged and needing more ships. Both of us hated each other but what matters most is that we both had other we hated more than each other.
Mad cuz bad (ok I am being a bit hyperbolic)
Do the recent patches still have that god awful mechanic where the more pops you have, the more the pop growth decreases?
Yes
God fckin dammit. Are there like mods which can disable this mechanic?
It doesn't get much more samey than most popular online FPS and they're king. Some people find different things compelling and that's cool, to each their own. I respect your opinion, and I even agree to a point but most games are like that to some degree and in Stellaris, for me, the variety comes in *what* you choose to do during the game - I don't always end up winning or losing by the exact same meta strat every time I play it. I'm also perpetually rotating between at least a few different games at any given time.
Ive got 210 hours in stellaris, and ive enjoyed most of it (but by far not everything). But that mainly is due to (deliberate) ignorance of whats optimal, playing on none too high difficulty, and mainly to just RP by my self while i sulk that all my TTRPG games currently are dead or on ice. Tried playing it with other people, i can confirm my strategies are very much suboptimal.
However playing a game while severally limiting myself from optimal (or even par) plays, only to actually have fun playing, doesnt exactly make it a great game. Especially if you are acutely aware of the optimal strategy, there will always be a temptation to use it, and if all the working strategies arent fun and not diverse whatsoever that leads to issues. Some people are better at intentionally not playing optimal and not having the fun be ruined by knowing that its sub optimal, I'm not which is why i intentionally dont look up anything about the meta or optimal/good play.
result: user error
Only 200 hours? Must be a pretty damn good game than considering most games stop being fun around 100 of its a good game.
Dude have yet to discover mods... 🤔 definitely. 😤
How do you get your game to look like that, it looks cool?
Play for your enjoyment, not for the meta. I have over 1200 hours in the game and I have no clue what the metas are and I don’t give a shit. I have fun making my empire, not some meta empire.
its funny how the sum of the disagreeing comments here boils down to "just imagine it bro"
...keep forking for those DLCs, piggies, my imagination is free (and so is my schedule, free of this glorified art gallery)
Paradox experience is learning the mechanics for a couple of hundred hours only to discover the game is a giant scam
thats a you problem if all your games play exactly the same. i STILL am come up with new ways to play the game and ive been playing since apocalypse came out, everything youve said has LITERALLY been user error because you play a specific very straight edge way no matter your empire, youre expecting the game to play for you and tell you to do certain things or force you into them whereas thats actually reliant on you as a player to do that. you are literally shooting yourself in the foot by shaping all of your games the same way and then complaining like a baby that it doesnt do anything new
im glad everyone is calling you out for how wrong and bad faith youre being about this game though, its a good stark contrast
All what you have said is more relative to MP game where you have to follow the meta and act the same optimal way to achieve better results. In SP you can roleplay and it is not forced by something but your own imagination. If you feel overwhelming over AI there are dozents (ok less) of options to set up difficulty that would be challenging. I think I have over 1k in stellaris and yeah, sometimes it's boring and new dlcs sometimes peace of crap, but if I read some sci-fi book or whatch a movie and then think "Hey, i wanna make somthing like that in a game" i go to stellaris, spend 2h creating couple of empires for a roleplay galaxy and here we are.
You only have to follow the meta in public lobbies that don't ban Meta gaming, me and my friends banned meta gaming and emphizise roleplaying over steamrolling the galaxy.
If anyone gets too powerful and decides to go ham, the galaxy roleplays and bands together to enect a peace operation to restore order in the galaxy haha.
At one point I was strong enough to almost take on all my friends, like 10 other empires, but I made the fatal error of allowing my fleets to get ambushed hahaha
Buddy is a power gamer that is upset he can’t power game effectively.
That’s literally his complaint, he can’t power game his way to a victory and enjoy it. Yea you have to explore the surrounding areas and protect your borders that’s kinda what exploring and expanding is about.
Play it in a fun way instead of always optimally.
I mean I think the two things that are defiantly needed are a verity of gameplay styles and not just stat modifiers, and a complete diplomacy overhaul cause every ai that is planning to kill/eat you or is inward perfectionist is the same, unless their so Ideologically different that they attack you cause you not like them.
There are different gameplay styles though. You can be a devouring swarm, determined exterminator, or fanatic purifier if you want to go full antagonist. You can go necrophage if you want to be a parasite. You can go xenophile if you want to make friends.
@@zipster6393 all of these change nothing but stats
@@DashhunterLP For necrophage, you need to abduct pops to get new one. For determined exterminator, devouring swarm, and fanatic purifier, you cannot diplomatically interact with other empires. While I admit xenophile does add stats, all other add game mechanics that make every playthrough different and fun.
... But can it be fixed with mods?
thanks for taking the time to paste the script into the captions but please edit your subtitles/script after recording or follow the script.
take for example 9:31
missing kinda after has
and it should be "haha, funny genocide the xenos" instead of "haha, kill the xenos"
may or may not be the only deviations the script/audio have since i wasn't paying attention to the subtitles due to me not needing them.
subtitles are meant accurately reflect what is said instead of what you meant/what the script was.
you don't have to be verbatim about ummms and uhs but when words are different from the captions to the audio it changes the video for those who are deaf/hard of hearing. it might not seem like much but the words "funny genocide" and "kill" convey different messages.
the part when you actually get to give TH-cam your script for captions is the very last step before uploading, and at that point, I just want to move on to the next project. the deviations from the script come from me improvising parts in the moment. i could read off all my scripts like a robot but I think not being afraid to improvise sections makes it more enjoyable to watch and I never deviate enough for it to be confusing. maybe this is just be me being a sensitive snowflake gamer, but i also think this is kind of a rude thing to complain about. it's either this or no subtitles at all.
Instructions unclear I ate my computer and threw up in the fibre line and now I can see in X-ray
8:31 I mean that is the whole point! Ur own idea, it is not 'encouraged' by anything other than you wanting it to be that way, which is why you are playing the game in the first place- getting 'rewarded' by the game getting easier etc. is a differnet hing
I will not watch the video as it contradicts my own opinion and leave a dislike... pal...
Local man complains that not every single mechanics is gameplay defining. Bro, you literally said for CK that "Its a role playing game but if you strip that away.." yea, okay, cool, if you strip guns from CoD its just people kniffing each other. Its the same with stellaris. They introduce new features, like espionage, to not be intrusive and mandetory and you can chose to engage with them. Also the fact that you seemingly dont understand the mechanics of the galactic community and how you can use it to severely harm other players makes the video strike me more as a complainy reddit post rather than an actual critique from someone who understands the games mechancis. Unironically, almost every point you make comes from a lack of understanding on how these systems work and I am saying this not to call you stupid but because the alternative is that you are intentionally misleading viewers with how you are protraying these things. I agree, how your empire looks shouldnt affect how it plays BUT lithoids have a massive amount of ways to compensate for that pop growth reduction.
This video can be summed up as: man refuses to interact with the elements of the game that may change the experience from game to game, and complains that it feels samey
Couldn't agree more. Of course the main point of the game is to expand, build colonies, conduct research and manage your economy, but there is so much more to the game.
It feels like he payed zero attention to all the other things you can do. Diplomacy, federations, galactic community, espionage, storylines, origins and of course, roleplay.
200 hours is a ton!
I'd love to play another round of Stellaris, but the fact that some of the newer DLCs seem to be rather mandatory and their cost adding up just throws me off.
My issue with Paradox is not that they maintain games via DLC, (thats probably a good thing) but that they maintain the prices on those DLCs over years.
Between 2016 and 2018 the game was very fun.
Then they removed micro management in planets (you could choose what buildings to build).
They removed defense stations (you could build fortress systems)
Then they changed almost everything else and decided to bring sectors and make extra territory hard to manage and to get.
Now you need to build stations to colonize systems , ridiculous.
A lot of good mods lost forever, i have more than 1000 hours till 2019, but lately i never want to play it, its not the same, and still a lot of time consuming with less fun to have.
And the combat is still the same since launch, not great, automatic, requires almost no strategy, weapons are boring unless you use Mods.
The thing is you don't always need to play the optimal way, the optimal way is boring to me as well, that is why I like to roleplay the empire I am playing. Just imagine an empire that focuses purely on technology they believe that technology leads to the best societies and so don't maintain a strong fleet but focus on a small but strong fleet using ancient technology.
The way I play most Paradox games is for the roleplay, not for universe or planet conquering because I find that makes Paradox games boring also I prefer DLC to the alternative which a lot of video game companies are getting into nowadays and that is heavy microtransactions. I love the fact that no Paradox game lets you buy XP Boosts or anything like that, it's just get the DLC and play because DLC legitimately add content into the game and yes it can be annoying that it does cost a lot to get all the DLC but it adds to the roleplaying or story experience that you get to play.
If battlefields V guns all have gun clips with different ammo amounts, aren’t those modifiers? They sound different and feel different. Y can’t that be applied to planets a technology and governments. your restricted only to your imagination in stellaris. You can dominate for 1000 years, then suck dry the res. In a rpg, don’t you pick up weapons that sound different and have modifiers to your abilities? All games has these things your complaining about. Your complaining about mechanics that has changed multiple times to make the game feel like the thing your not getting.