Stellaris

[Misery]

Okay, I'm playing the role of necromancer here and reviving this, as the game is very slightly over one month away now.  May 9th.

The site for anyone still interested; I haven't had a full look at it yet, need to finish a few things before taking time to browse the Net much, but here it is:

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/stellaris

Really, this being a Paradox strategy game is all I need at this point probably... if the game explains itself a bit better than their other grand strategy games.  Or is just easier to figure out on my own.

Probably going to pick it up.   Some interesting things releasing in May actually.  The new Doom game coming at the very start of the month too.  If they screw that up, I'm going to be... displeased.

[Cyborg]

Okay, I'm playing the role of necromancer here and reviving this, as the game is very slightly over one month away now.  May 9th.

The site for anyone still interested; I haven't had a full look at it yet, need to finish a few things before taking time to browse the Net much, but here it is:

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/stellaris

Really, this being a Paradox strategy game is all I need at this point probably... if the game explains itself a bit better than their other grand strategy games.  Or is just easier to figure out on my own.

Probably going to pick it up.   Some interesting things releasing in May actually.  The new Doom game coming at the very start of the month too.  If they screw that up, I'm going to be... displeased.

If you head on over to twitch, they have the gameplay videos up. It's interesting, definitely going to pick it up, but I'm going to wait for release to decide on the price I'm willing to pay.

[Misery]

Ah yes, I went and searched for that video on YouTube, found a set of videos on Paradox's channel of the Stream.

They named their custom race "Blorg", made them into talking mushrooms, and almost immediately found a monolith from a certain series of books.

I approve of these things.

[crazyroosterman]

yea this looks like fun but like that other person said It doesn't look like it'll mesh with my laptop usually my laptop punches me in the face when I try to play games like this so ill have to pass on it ): .

[Aklyon]

You really should try to get a new laptop eventually, crm.

[crazyroosterman]

You really should try to get a new laptop eventually, crm.

yea ik its just that the games that tend to take my interest usually work well on my laptop  but then there are rare games like xcom 2 that take my interest but have fancy  graphics and are quite taxing btw I may just try this any way some time since I haven't seen any in game visuals I may be wrong in assuming that my laptop won't run it.

[Misery]

You really should try to get a new laptop eventually, crm.

yea ik its just that the games that tend to take my interest usually work well on my laptop  but then there are rare games like xcom 2 that take my interest but have fancy  graphics and are quite taxing btw I may just try this any way some time since I haven't seen any in game visuals I may be wrong in assuming that my laptop won't run it.

The game is running a high-end graphics type of setup here, so your original assumption might be correct.  It isn't AI Wars with flat images (which kinda surprised me when I saw the camera zooming around in their YouTube video).  It's all 3D and sparkly with explosions.  Well okay I haven't seen actual explosions yet but I'm sure there are some, yep.

[Cyborg]

The combat visuals are actually not that good, as you can see from the 'blorg' video series. This is a paradox game, and it's interesting they bothered to even do something above the completely shitty combat visuals of Europa and Crusader. Like it or not, people are thinking this is going to be Crusader/Europa in space.

[Misery]

Eh, I for one would rather they focus on the depth and gameplay rather than visuals anyway.

And I cant get past the "TLDR" asteroid in that second video.  I just... what.

And something about "fart aliens".  Again... what.


Overall though so far, looking good to me.

[Misery]

Well some more time watching this... looking more and more promising.

One thing that has really caught my eye is the research system.  From what I can see, there's no research tree!  The research options seem somewhat random (the site says that things like researcher skill & personality affect the possible choices) and there seems to be occaisional "rare" ones, they showed one of those appearing in their playthrough and said that if the rare one isn't chosen, it's not going to appear at all again in that particular game.  Or just that the chance was extremely unlikely.

These ideas, definitely appeal to me.  That's one thing that really bugs me about 4X games, is the damn research trees.  I've never liked them in pretty much any 4X game.  I just find it very hard to care since they're so static and you're often going through tons of boring ones to get to useful ones, and... yeah, it's the same sequence each time.

All in all this really is looking very good.

Also these guys are entertaining.

[eRe4s3r]

Well... I had hoped for a more EU4 inspired diplomacy / faction system.. guess that is not on the table for this game....

[Cyborg]

Well... I had hoped for a more EU4 inspired diplomacy / faction system.. guess that is not on the table for this game....

Those gameplay systems need a serious overhaul. I don't want a copy and paste diplomacy system from Europa or Crusader, both of which are a series of gaining enough points until the tooltip turns green, irregardless of whether or not the relationship makes sense.

[chemical_art]

Well... I had hoped for a more EU4 inspired diplomacy / faction system.. guess that is not on the table for this game....

Those gameplay systems need a serious overhaul. I don't want a copy and paste diplomacy system from Europa or Crusader, both of which are a series of gaining enough points until the tooltip turns green, irregardless of whether or not the relationship makes sense.

I suppose it could just revert to "nothing you do will ever make me improve my opinion of you", and on paper that sounds nice, but in reality I find it railroads the player into certain roles. The tooltips are precisely what I need to understand the why behind an AI's actions.

I find the current system strikes a decent balance.

[Cyborg]

I suppose it could just revert to "nothing you do will ever make me improve my opinion of you", and on paper that sounds nice, but in reality I find it railroads the player into certain roles. The tooltips are precisely what I need to understand the why behind an AI's actions.

I find the current system strikes a decent balance.

Who is talking about reverting? I'm talking about having the AI have strategic objectives beyond "1 arranged marriage, 1 gift, and 12 months of compliments."

[chemical_art]

Who is talking about reverting? I'm talking about having the AI have strategic objectives beyond "1 arranged marriage, 1 gift, and 12 months of compliments."

I just mean that the policy seems arbitrary, but AI ultimately is. If you add more things the player will still game it. The only way to prevent the gaming is to make the AI flat out not do certain things, which sounds nice but ultimately limits options.