Stellaris

sakkath · May 13, 2021

Jozu said:
Next game I awakened a fucking Dragon leviathan by doing an archeological dig and wiped my whole civ.

The rubricator? It should only kill the relic world colony you dug it from, then sit there in that system waiting for you to come kill it. I had that happen to me once, now I know not to do that arch dig until I'm ready to kill the dragon. It seems like a common event, I get it every second game or so.

Furry said:
effectively. I'm putting everything into building a force that can take them out proactively, but running low on time. If the khan wakes up soon I'm gonna be royally fucked.

Are you playing total war? If not can't you just surrender to the Khan and wait for them to break up?

I found that most of the luck is to be found right at the start of the game. If you can get past the early game you're set.

Since I play total war 2/3 of my games I usually either lose in a hurry, or I slowly grind out a win. Many of the games all hinge on the very first fight. If I win that I will win the whole game. If I lose the first fight I usually start again.

Often the first neighbour I find declares war on me immediately, send a fleet way bigger than I could possibly build, and it's down to whether or not I can find a way to beat it. I had one where I was fanatical purifiers, and the neighbours 1.8k fleet engaged my border starbase right as it finished upgrading, my 1k fleet got wiped, the star base held out while i was building corvettes 2 at a time to join the fight (selling every other material I owned for alloys), enemy fleet died with about 10% hull left on the base. My counterattack rolled through half of their empire and I never looked back. ~200 years later what was left of galaxy was introduced to my Aetherophasic Engine.

My current game (Lithoid Terravores) I lucked out by having one of my neighbours be a pacifist and they are between me and the 2 strongest empires. My other neighbour were some kind of slaver empire who never stood a chance. I can definitely still lose from here but I'm out of the early game danger zone.

Even on high difficulties the AI makes stupid mistakes which you can capitalize on. Things like even if they have 2x your fleet power, you can bait them into splitting them apart then kill half their fleet at a time. And also they don't seem to remember where your fleets go, once your fleet moves outside their sensor range they move as if your fleet has disappeared entirely so you can easily lure them into traps.

The next patch looks interesting, they are fixing/buffing clerks, and also changing/reverting some of the alloy/consumergoods production changes they made in 3.0.

Furry · May 13, 2021

sakkath said:
Are you playing total war? If not can't you just surrender to the Khan and wait for them to break up?

I found that most of the luck is to be found right at the start of the game. If you can get past the early game you're set.

Since I play total war 2/3 of my games I usually either lose in a hurry, or I slowly grind out a win. Many of the games all hinge on the very first fight. If I win that I will win the whole game. If I lose the first fight I usually start again.

I play total war fairly often, but I'm currently not in this game. I often go in with very strict roleplay rules that I apply to all decisions in the game. In this one I'm a Scheming technocrat that thinks all other races are valued in how useful they are for our goals. Aggression is purely limited to political maneuvering and defensive wars. Surrendering to aliens is nigh unthinkable, though.

The big issue I have with total war is that on grand admiral I'll have AI's throwing themselves at me left and right, I had one game where the AI had a 7k fleet kicking my shit down on fucking year 10. No amount of skill can deal with bullshit like that, and luck with your neighbors is pretty much the deciding factor on if you can escape the terrors of early game. I also tend to crank the crisis levels up a bit, cause I feel like end game becomes a cakewalk if I don't.

sakkath · May 13, 2021

Furry said:
The big issue I have with total war is that on grand admiral I'll have AI's throwing themselves at me left and right, I had one game where the AI had a 7k fleet kicking my shit down on fucking year 10.

I'm only playing on admiral, never seen 7k fleets that early but that does sound like the typical way I lose the early game. Last week I had 3 restarts in one afternoon after overpowered early aggression against my fanatical purifiers.

Jozu · May 14, 2021

It was called a dragon leviathan or something. And it destroyed multiple systems.

I actually ended up quitting my last game due to lack of resources, I think I played too wide and just randomly built buildings. I got to figure out how jobs work.

My L drake skull unit was the bees knees though it gonna suck losing that thing by starting over. It destroyed a 1.8k alien fleet by itself and moves faster than all regular ships.

edit: Im sorry guys, but I cant figure out how to disable jobs? Im trying to salvage my last game and get my economy in the green again. (im a total newb)

Furry · May 14, 2021

It's pretty weird to disable jobs. Second tab of the planet view, if you expand a category such as specialist, there's a -/+ next to jobs so you can lower or raise them. If you want to be autist, its important to play with this early, especially with builds that get access to a lot of really shit jobs to fill out before good ones, I/E devouring swarms and what not.

And holy fucking shit my species this play-through. I get fucking brain slugs right at the start. From there I get social pheromones. Was gonna go psychic, but aimed for engineered evolution. Then the cache comes along and uplifts me on top of it all. I've played a lot of games and this is definitely the scariest technocrat combo I've ever gotten. Bonus over 100 heyo.

Jozu · May 15, 2021

thanks man!

I just had an awesome game I figured out how to balance my economy now and was doing well. Won my first war with neighbor, and then a second with another, but then all of the sudden one of my enemies was wiped out by the great khan and then a 30k fleet just facerolled my shit.

This game sure knows how to fuck you over.

How do you unlock/access the caches?

Furry · May 15, 2021

Jozu said:
thanks man!

I just had an awesome game I figured out how to balance my economy now and was doing well. Won my first war with neighbor, and then a second with another, but then all of the sudden one of my enemies was wiped out by the great khan and then a 30k fleet just facerolled my shit.

This game sure knows how to fuck you over.

How do you unlock/access the caches?

Do you mean the enigmatic cache? If so it's pretty much random and does what it wants. You can shoot at it and it teleports around randomly is about all, which is usually worth a gamble, since the cache is a really massive research bonus if it goes to the right place.

A good tip for defense is building starbases with strike craft. Those in choke points do a lot to help you hold your lines. Another important thing for econ is to really specialize your planets. You'll have to take in your planets and adjust to what they're strong at, but every planet should have a purpose, especially if it has relevant bonuses. You want your alloy production to constantly be going up. I used to name planets based on their specs to help me remember, but now I only do that if I'm a race that would for RP reasons, like hive minds/machine empires.

Jozu · May 15, 2021

Ahhh I see. So just specializing enough worlds should get you where you want to go.

I have been learning slowly but surely. The best part about this game for me is the little things. The little nuggets of lore, or rare events that lead to quirky outcomes. For instance I had a sub race of little racoon things that wre constantly asking for help and ended up trading me a bunch of starships for small amounts of mineral until I had over 2.5k of them lol. It was strange but awesome.

Furry · May 15, 2021

Jozu said:
Ahhh I see. So just specializing enough worlds should get you where you want to go.

I have been learning slowly but surely. The best part about this game for me is the little things. The little nuggets of lore, or rare events that lead to quirky outcomes. For instance I had a sub race of little racoon things that wre constantly asking for help and ended up trading me a bunch of starships for small amounts of mineral until I had over 2.5k of them lol. It was strange but awesome.

One thing to point out is government can have a big influence on these things. You can get different events or outcomes, different interactions with others or different techs. This is usually most obvious in the extreme situations, such as devouring swarm, but there are lots of little things, which is why it makes the game more enjoyable to not always pick super optimal and be technocrats every time.

Currently RPing as a rogue servitor. Organics can do no wrong, and I don’t even respond to invaders blowing up my stations or fleets if they are organics and plan to vote yes to everything on the galactic senate and have been agreeing to every offer. If a bio trophy is slain by another, that race will experience exterminatus, though. No idea where this game will end up.

Ridas · May 16, 2021

Expand to chokepoints, prioritise alloys and research destroyers and Starhold early and you should be fine early game for the most part. I go for Military unity perks second after technology, which helps a lot. This way you can survive early aggression and get an edge over neighbours.
Once you have the early game mastered, you can cruise through mid/endgame.

sakkath · May 17, 2021

My ravenous hive got this far through eating the galaxy when the Raltek Peacekeepers FE decided that I was a galactic menace (probably due to my liberal eating and neutron sweep usage), awoke and declared war

So I decided to show them what being neutron sweeped felt like. I don't think they liked it much. Now to finish cleanup, although that other awoken empire in the corner might still be a handful.

Furry · May 17, 2021

Currently playing the beta. They made a lot of good changes to the pop system. Most importantly, the slowing of growth has been halved, and they have added sliders so you can control or eliminate the penalty. I think it's a nice compromise between those that need to worry about performance and those who don't give a fuck. I'm glad they went the rout of letting people opt in or out of the changes. I can see some people wanting it, though a lot of people won't care. I'd rather play smaller maps and deal with a bit of slowdown. I left a tiny bit of regression in my first game, though. Million other changes, but that's the most overt by far.

Jozu · May 17, 2021

Fuck this game. Dumb ass AI always activates grey scourge and i die. After building up my best empire yet, everything going well.

35k fleet comes in. I build another 25k fleet on top of the 12k one i had already, i go into epic battle 37k vs 35k scourge and i was OBLITERATED.

I didnt even dent it. So fucking dumb.

Araysar · May 17, 2021

Jozu said:
Fuck this game. Dumb ass AI always activates grey scourge and i die. After building up my best empire yet, everything going well.

35k fleet comes in. I build another 25k fleet on top of the 12k one i had already, i go into epic battle 37k vs 35k scourge and i was OBLITERATED.

I didnt even dent it. So fucking dumb.

bro did you have lasers, missiles or kinetic weapons?

Jozu · May 17, 2021

I admit I'm a autistic idiot, but I'm still learning. I tech up with what's available in tech tree as game progress, is there a way to pick shit you want specifically?

I upgrade my fleet when I get new shit but don't fuck w ship designer. I unlock space torpedoes and regen armor etc but get raped by great khan or grey scourge like a joke.

Araysar · May 17, 2021

Jozu said:
I admit I'm a autistic idiot, but I'm still learning. I tech up with what's available in tech tree as game progress, is there a way to pick shit you want specifically?

I upgrade my fleet when I get new shit but don't fuck w ship designer. I unlock space torpedoes and regen armor etc but get raped by great khan or grey scourge like a joke.

Ship designer can give you a big advantage

Until you get battleships and titans, you basically want your fleets to be all corvettes (skip cruisers and destroyers) with kinetic weapons and regen shields. Aiming computers for accuracy buffs also are a must

Two opposing stacks being even, the corvette/kinetic/Regen stack will win far more often than not. I often beat computer stacks 10% bigger than mine playing a few months ago with that strat.

Dont know if anything changed in recent expacs/updates but that strat was true as recently as few months ago

Theres no way to "pick it" but i find researching lasers, missiles, armor to be pretty useless until you start exiting out of mid game. if you get the option to research AutoCannons, jump on that asap, and any upgrade that subsequently comes up

Corvette config i always use is
all weapon slots are kinetic
Biggest power source i can find
As many regen shields as slots will allow
Most advanced aiming computer i have

Furry · May 17, 2021

Jozu said:
I admit I'm a autistic idiot, but I'm still learning. I tech up with what's available in tech tree as game progress, is there a way to pick shit you want specifically?

I upgrade my fleet when I get new shit but don't fuck w ship designer. I unlock space torpedoes and regen armor etc but get raped by great khan or grey scourge like a joke.

You’re probably playing too carebear. What I did to get myself out of that mentality was play some games extremely toxic to carebear approach. Turn the tech cost way up, pick a total war civ with absolutely no tech bonuses in your race or civics, then focus on building a massive navy early game. Flood the galaxy with civs so you can never sleep easy. Expand minimally to start, every system you claim could be more corvettes with those alloys. Only get close, vitally important ones. Use your science ship to hunt for a home world rather than explore. Conquer them when you find it.

Proper positioning of star bases to soften attackers and keeping a power fleet ready are vital to higher difficulties, but it’s easy to lapse into the soft thinking of I need to claim all these systems, research all this stuff and do all this exploration. Those things can seem like gains, but you might actually be hurting yourself. Tech is strong, but if you play some games like that you might learn to appreciate the advantage of letting the AI build some systems and coming along to pluck them up.

Just don’t try this in grand admiral, AI will bitch slap you with ease.

Burns · May 17, 2021

Doesn't the grey scourge have 100% shield penetration on all their nanobot weapons, along with a bunch of motherships with gobs of "fighters"?

Last game I went for opening an L-gate, I rebalance my fleets to armor, hull, and a decent amount of point defense/faster tracking weapons, right before doing the final project to activate them. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the system turned out to be dead, so I wasted the resources on the refit.

Furry · May 17, 2021

Burns said:
Doesn't the grey scourge have 100% shield penetration on all their nanobot weapons, along with a bunch of motherships with gobs of "fighters"?

Last game I went for opening an L-gate, I rebalance my fleets to armor, hull, and a decent amount of point defense/faster tracking weapons, right before doing the final project to activate them. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the system turned out to be dead, so I wasted the resources on the refit.

Do you lose resources on refit? I know an autist strategy I did was strip my ships fittings and “upgrade” them for the alloys. If the new fittings are cheaper you actually generate resources. Never done the math to see if there’s loss, but you definitely don’t lose everything...

If I have a l-gate, opening it becomes a huge priority. If it’s hostile and you get it early, the tempest will totally fuck the AI for a free edge. As soon as I open it it’s wartime baby.

Burns · May 17, 2021

Furry said:
Do you lose resources on refit? I know an autist strategy I did was strip my ships fittings and “upgrade” them for the alloys. If the new fittings are cheaper you actually generate resources. Never done the math to see if there’s loss, but you definitely don’t lose everything...

If I have a l-gate, opening it becomes a huge priority. If it’s hostile and you get it early, the tempest will totally fuck the AI for a free edge. As soon as I open it it’s wartime baby.

I guess if you are keeping your ships up to date, it wouldn't be a loss (or a small one, if it was). It probably only felt like a huge cost, because of how I play.

My early game usually tends to fall into aggressively exploring then expanding into choke points, and maximize star bases at those points. Turtle up and somewhat neglect my fleet while finishing the exploration/claiming/building out systems. By the time I start pushing to a 40 or 50k fleet, most of my ships are badly out of date (they are usually sitting at a 100% defensive star base, holding the line).

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