Stellaris

Yeah that neighbor is gonna fuck you up.

Influence cost would be the same if you go system by system, while being able to get mining and research in it. Only reason to skip systems is to rush the AI to a choke point.
Otherwise streamline your expansion down the highway basically until you hit another borders at a choke, while ignoring the side systems , that lead nowhere until later.

Dom said:

This is the current state:



There's only 3 ways into my section of space and I've managed to get outposts setup in the systems to the sides, but while the idea of locking them down early feels right, I don't know enough about the game mechanics to understand exactly how this approach will playout compared to focusing closer to home.

My AI neighbour - which I'll assuredly be at war with soon due to conflicting ideologies - and I assume all other AI's grow system by system

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A note, chokepoints work a little differently now - a few patches ago they changed it so that if another civ has access through your space, and you don't have 2 consecutive systems claimed, the civ will build past your chokepoint. So for example, in your western choke (Scorum) you need to also claim Manthall, otherwise if that civ has open borders, they will leapfrog you and take Manthall themselves if they claim the system closest to Scorum. Same goes for your northern choke (Fillamir) - either claim the system north of that or south of that to ensure you don't get leapfrogged

And yeah, not having a contiguous snake to the chokepoint is prohibitively expensive from an influence standpoint - plus it makes you weaker because you're missing out on all of the economy nodes along the way (which makes you vulnerable and the AI might attack).

Also, side note; Breggar has primitives on it - you should claim that system ASAP and invade. Free world + population + (hopefully) a different planetary preference is a huge power spike early game. You get between 10-20% more population early, save on a Colony ship and the development time to settle a planet, plus unlock more planets to settle for the cost of 1-2 army units

Wellp my first Federations playthrough just came to an end. Was doing super well, my federation controlled 40% of the galaxy....then the Scourge landed EXACTLY on my core worlds, including my capital, my Ecumenopolis and my ringworld construction site... I did poorly enough on the scout wave but the main force arrived with 250k stacks and that's that.

Dom said:

Playing a different game and I found this pretty nice system with two primitive societies on tomb worlds with tomb world habitability bonuses on the species. So, being the xenophobic wunder-men species that I was, I of course land armies and take over the worlds. Problem is that I haven't quite learned how to handle rebellion yet. I managed to get one planet happy but the other revolted and took over the planet... but it also somehow conquered the other planet too and just automatically flipped it to them.

I started the purge too late, but I thought that keeping them as slaves due to being the only species I had available for tomb worlds was the way to go.

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Yeah you wanted to pacify and integrate those species somehow, unless you're a racial purist build. But even then it might be worth the faction approval hit to have a race of roaches to colonize other planets with.

About to hit 5x mid game crisis in my first federation playthrough. I think a few of my mods make the game too easy. I already have my battleship fleet ready and only laziness prevents me from taking over my neighbors.I need to trim down a bit on my mods.

Dont need mods for that just play the Shattered Ring origin.

I played a Doomsday origin, but it was annoying af to transfer all my machine pop over and keeping amneties up. Shattered Ring was my last game. It was fine. Time to go Purifier!

Oh I'm actually playing for some of the achievements so only some cosmetic and music mods will keep the game valid. Achievements require Ironman+steam saves which can be seriously rustling, considering how RNG the crises can get.

Anyways second playthrough is going much better, specially after getting the hang of the new diplomacy system.

Is there some way to turn off this war system? So that war acts like every other game out there?

LOL no. Some extremely antagonistic government builds can bypass it and basically conquer what they take over right away though.

It's probably the best part of the Clausewitz engine games, but also the most obtuse.

This way a losing war doesnt out right end your game. Yesterday I had piss poor starting conditions and had some back and forth wars with my giant neighbours. Without the war system my game would have ended. Now I destroyed them both in late game.

It just gets very annoying, if you want to clean up in endgame.

Gets REAL annoying when you're defending a Federation member who refuses to take the status quo because not all his claims are occupied yet.

Kiroy said:

how the fuck do I nominate proposals myself? (or try to get rid of em?)

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In the proposals tab you can see all the current options for each category. Look at it as a "Policy" tab but for the whole galaxy except everyone has to vote on the current option for each.

Thing is each faction can only propose one legislation at a time and they're voted on the order they're proposed. If you're on the council you can spend influence to push certain legislation to the floor and (later) delay or veto it.