Paradox Games

In Stellaris quantity really has a quality all its own.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Especially since it's just so hard to get significantly behind on tech, apart from Fallen Empires. "Oh, no, you got level four armour while I only have level three. Guess I'll just recall my fleet that outpowers yours three-to-one in the face of your incredible technological prowess."

I mean, seriously, I'm not even trying that hard. Sure, my main species has the "Intelligent" trait which probably counts for something, but other than that I'm not doing anything special besides building labs on the proper tiles. Lose a few more ships than I should in a given engagement? Bitch, I bleed money. Replacing corvettes is the only thing left for me to spend minerals on.

I've been feeling a bit squeamish lately over doing even more expanding, but maybe I don't even need to be that careful in the first place. Just keep expanding, keep building, and drown any who oppose you in somewhat outdated plasma fire.

edited 16th May '17 1:54:23 PM by Kayeka

It likely won't because governing ethics attraction is a completely nonfunctional modifier

Huh, so its totally busted and not just a little off? Good to know.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Really? In that case I should really turn off Information Quarantine.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Okay, my Sadistic Space Spider Slaver game took a rather painful turn downward. The resident Xenophobe Fallen Empire had awoken, and soon demanded that I'd become their Thrall. I was in no position no fight them, so now the slavers have been enslaved.

I don't care much for being forbidden to colonise outside of my borders, since I already own about a third of the galaxy, but having to turn in 25% of my credits and minerals actually stung a lot more than I expected. I had a veritable energy crisis on my hands all of a sudden and I'm also really starting to feel my size turning against me in tech and Unity. Seeing my resources being used to conquer the galaxy for someone else just adds insult to injury.

Now my focus is entirely on clawing myself out of this situation, as opposed to, say, preparing for the Endgame Crisis. I finally got to choose my third (holy crap, that sounds pathetic) Ascension Perk, and while Galactic Contender sure seemed tempting under the circumstances, I went with yet another "Quantity over Quality" option: Voidborne. Now I can build Habitats wherever I want and stack them with energy producing buildings. Even modified one of my slave races for Thrifty to get more out of it.

So the plan is: give my energy production a kick to the behind by building all the habitats, use those credits to sustain a fleet double the size of what I have now, and use it to conquer the other fallen empire for their tech and production facilities. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off before they awaken as well and trigger the War in Heavens. Not that I'd have any problem winning, since I'm friggin' huge and attached to the current school yard bully, but I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to catch up with my overlords if they use this opportunity to expand even further than they already have.

It's gonna be a doozy.

So, I just had the Prethoryn Scourge invade and now I'm a bit bummed out. I expected the invasion to be beaten back easily, considering I had a 500k+ fleet at this point and the whole galaxy under my iron rule.

What I didn't expect was not getting anything for my troubles because the achievement's not about defeating the invaders - you have to capture a queen to get the achievement and the queen apparently never showed up.

And if I understand the description of the AI Rebellion-related achievement correctly, you get it for making your synths immune to infection, not for actually defeating the rogue A.I.s.

So that's a bit of a shame. :/

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

I was too quick in saying "The local Keepers of Knowledge are cool with me keeping robots now" because they finally did a satellite request. Accepted and immediately savescummed when they disabled my robots. I will probably lose the war but next time I'm telling them to go to Hell and seeing how they handle being in a Federation with me. I should have tried killing them before the Unbidden came along, but it was the Unbidden that spurred my tech and fleet building.

Yep, completely, 100% non-functional. Players have tested extreme positive and negative governing ethics attraction modifiers and it does absolutely nothing (including in 1.6.1 beta). Nornal ethics attraction modifiers are hunky-dorry, though.

I think what they do is that they affect new pops that grow but it doesn't change old pop's ethics like its supposed to?

Oh hey Paradox is going to Mars!

It's more like Paradox is funding somebody else's trip to Mars, rather than going themselves. Probably wanna do that in a separate thread the way Mount And Blade was done, in case Haemimont has a falling out with them like Taleworlds did.

Paradox is massively increased prices in multiple countries, including here were I live.

That might signal the end of my Paradox purchases. A 50% increases in prices is simply way too much for me to accept.

edited 18th May '17 8:06:41 AM by Heatth

Heard about that, it seems to be very unfortunate. I'm not sure what they're thinking, what could this do other than drain community goodwill?

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

I think the most infuriating thing is the excuse they gave. They said they are updating the prices (largely stagnant since release) to reflect market forces and to matching purchasing power. That last bit is positively absurd. I can't speak for all countries, of course, but over here our purchasing power have certainly not gone up in the last few years. If anything, it went down, thanks to the crisis. From what I have heard the situation is the same in many of the effected countries.

Of course, the value of our currency have plummeted down when compared to the dollar, which is probably the actual real reason this change happened. But in that case, why did they bring purchasing power in the first place? And steam local prices aren't really pegged to dollar anyway. Not to mention, we have no guarantee the prices will go down if the currency strengthen again.

Well, there's your problem. If you're at three perks when the Fallen start waking up, you're probably not unitying up enough - even as a conquering slaver empire, you should be able to generate better than that. Unity (especially the "first four" perk chains - Discovery, Expansion, Prosperity. Supremacy) gives your empire a huge leg up in the quantity-is-quality biz.

Voidborne is pretty darn powerful if you have the minerals to burn, and if you have access to a merchant guild, it's great for production snowballing. And yes, use a Thrifty race/subrace to maximize profit (just like you use an intelligent one to maximize teching from habs) - just make sure that you don't use a slave race for that .

I'm like 40 years into my Materialist Democracy game and I was on my second perk, and I considered getting Voidborne but decided to put it off for The Flesh Is Weak, largely because my mineral reserves won't yet support habitat spam. I expect it'll be my third perk, and then I'll be like "who needs to go conquering?"

It's Leviathans that contains enclaves, right? Artist enclaves greatly improve Unity, to the point it almost counts as Bribing Your Way to Victory...

On the other hand, I'm starting to tire of my Stellaris games suddenly losing achievement eligibility without so much as a notice in-game. I think it's the recent patches that did that, removing achievement eligibility for games started pre-patch even when they're not save-incompatible.

Guess I'll have to restart a Commonwealth of Man game again to get the Payback achievement... and this time humans are Wasteful. Great.

Edit: Or maybe later when the anger has cooled down. For now it's time for Fanatical Purifiers xenophage MLPs.

edited 19th May '17 4:21:04 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Yeah, I figured. I had real trouble producing unity for whatever reason.

Well, that run was borked anyway. The Fallen Empire declared war on a guy, and besides taking a bunch of planets, they also liberated a couple in my name because that's apparently a thing you can do. Because "I" liberated them, I was also guaranteeing their independence, but as a Thrall I was incapable of any diplomacy besides warfare, so I was unable to stop guaranteeing them. Then the Fallen Empire attacked the tiny nation I was forced to guarantee, thus cunningly bypassing that whole "can't attack your own thralls" bit and invading my shit with a 500K fleet.

This game sometimes.

Started over with a bunch of pacifist butterflies. Got the civic that allows Farms to produce Unity. I'm not having as much trouble producing unity now.

edited 19th May '17 3:59:45 AM by Kayeka

You should probably report that as a bug.

The releasing nations in your name thing? Totally not a bug, you can do it yourself if you have allies in a war. When you do Wargoal selection, you can choose wargoals for other people too. In fact, it can be encouraged as there's less wargoal cost for doing it on behalf of a smaller nation. Or larger, I forget which. If you're a junior partner in a defensive war, you can't even choose Wargoals, you can only suggest them.

ETA: I'm thinking of restarting my Yamacera campaign and doing away with Fallen Empires, just to see how it goes. Too many nations get bogged down by those things and it might be fun to see that not happen.

edited 19th May '17 7:40:44 AM by Journeyman

I think that an AE shouldn't be able to attack a vassal with that move though. That's just stupid.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Yeah, that probably shouldn't happen. But who knows besides Paradox? It seems to be something a skeevy empire might actually pull.

I think the problem is that the liberation shouldn't add the "guarantee independence" bit to an empire that cannot do its own diplomacy.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Eh, it probably should just because "We're your overlord, you will do what we tell you to do, period" is kind of how being a vassal to a larger state works. The best way to handle it is simply not allowing an overlord to attack anybody defensively aligned with their vassals (since they can no longer control their own diplomacy, it's not like the vassal can get into an independent defensive pact with someone the Overlord hates anyway.) Or even forcing the Overlord to ALSO guarantee the independence of states protected by their vassals.

That particular situation is a bug (my solution would be that liberations should only happen under the aegis of the warleader). And yeah, vassals shouldn't have an independent foreign policy. They're their overlords' bitches, full stop. (AE vassals, particularly Thralls, should have more diplomatic freedom, because the JR only care that they don't colonize and that they pay up their whack.)

edited 20th May '17 2:46:55 PM by Ramidel