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[Rolan7]

I just finished a Devouring Swarm playthrough, so maybe I'm biased, but the tile game is so simple and tedious that I am considering getting a mod...  Specifically to change the pacifist core-planet "bonus" to something of any value whatsoever.

After the first ~50 years I only had two core planets, kept neglecting them, and *still* constantly had to resettle pops around every time I won a fight.  It sucks and I don't like it...  At least right now

Also I keep winning before the "end game" starts, oops.  Even my very first game as egalitarian xenophiles who became spiritualists, though that was default/ensign difficulty.

This time I'm trying pacifist/xenophile/materialist.  It's Commodore like my devouring swarm, but I expect a "normal" race like this to have more trouble (that is to say, any whatsoever).
I'm looking to federation build, like in my first game, but this time I know to "liberate" everyone first.  Forming a federation with authoritarian pacifists, as aggressive egalitarians, kinda obviously resulted in them vetoing ever war in my first game.  This time I know better heh.

First issue with that plan:  Both my neighbors so far are machine empires.  That's kinda exciting, this being my first SD game and my people being materialist...  and they are pretty friendly...  but I hope they're cooperative federation members despite being immune to ethics.

[StagnantSoul]

I tried to join a federation as a robot nation, they kept saying no despite everyone liking me.

[Rolan7]

Aww, you can join mine!  Errr maybe.  I hope the problem isn't... mechanical

I'm not playing at the moment, but thinking about the game, I might want to see about implementing more diplomatic actions a la The Last Federation or something.  Bored ideas I just had (these would probably cost influence mainly):

• "Peacebrokering", increasing the war exhaustion of an aggressor.  Defender would like this of course.
• "Cultural exchange" treaty which grants society research in both directions, but dramatically increases all ethics exchange (unlike research treaties which cause both sides to be more materialist)
• "Infiltration" action which promotes a chosen ethic on a chosen planet for X years.
• "Coup" wargoal, auto-succeeds if you occupy their capitol, but only replaces the state's governing ethics with those of the capitol.
• "Incite riots", just raises unrest on a planet.

I'm kinda talking out my butt, of course.  I'll see how this diplomat-y run goes, since I was stuck playing hive-mind for quite a while.

[Telgin]

My sole experience with federations so far was a little wonky.  My neighbor invited me to join one, which I did since I knew the end game was coming up.  I was a pacifist, and they were pacifist.

So, naturally, they immediately start wanting to declare war on their neighbors, who haven't done anything to hurt anyone.

I declined, and they got miffed.  They tried to declare war again, which I declined again, which made them more miffed.  Repeat about 4 times, at which point I started letting the requests time out instead of declining immediately.  For some reason, that stopped them from gaining more negative opinion on me, but maybe I just hit the cap at -200 for declining war.

They did finally stop asking at that point, and their opinion of me was about to turn negative.  Could just be a coincidence that they gave up asking then.


After watching a video on the Star Trek mod for Stellaris, I realized that Stellaris doesn't have any equivalent to the intelligence mechanic from Birth of the Federation, where you could sabotage enemy facilities, ships and populations, or spy on them to steal information.  Something like that could be pretty cool, although it could also be very annoying in BotF if you weren't massively better at it than the enemy empires and had it focused on internal security.  Having stuff blown up every other turn got old really fast if you didn't.

If they were going to keep the tile system, having intelligence structures would at least give a little more variety.  Still, I'm not sure more variety is really the solution to it, since it's really just a shallow system right now.  I did get quite tired of dealing with it by the end of the game, since I was usually just slapping research facilities down on almost every free tile, interspersed with the odd power plant or mine just to break up the monotony, and building the odd robot pop for the same reason.

[StagnantSoul]

Aww, you can join mine!  Errr maybe.  I hope the problem isn't... mechanical

I'm not playing at the moment, but thinking about the game, I might want to see about implementing more diplomatic actions a la The Last Federation or something.  Bored ideas I just had (these would probably cost influence mainly):
"Peacebrokering", increasing the war exhaustion of an aggressor.  Defender would like this of course.
"Cultural exchange" treaty which grants society research in both directions, but dramatically increases all ethics exchange (unlike research treaties which cause both sides to be more materialist)
"Infiltration" action which promotes a chosen ethic on a chosen planet for X years.
"Coup" wargoal, auto-succeeds if you occupy their capitol, but only replaces the state's governing ethics with those of the capitol.
"Incite riots", just raises unrest on a planet.

I'm kinda talking out my butt, of course.  I'll see how this diplomat-y run goes, since I was stuck playing hive-mind for quite a while.

More diplomatic stuff would be pretty fun, I'd love to be everyone's favourite neighbour while slowly forcing them to think my way with subterfuge.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Wiz's Twitter account includes some grumbling against people's kneejerk reactions to the obvious prototype so... I'm assuming that it's legit but could easily be scrapped at any point. It is only a prototype after all.

Why would people backlash such an obvious improvement tho D:

The three major complaints seem to be:

• It's cliche, bland, and/or generic.
• It's oversimplifying things.
• It makes individual planets less meaningful and makes the game devolve into a spreadsheet simulator.

I don't consider 3 to be a valid complaint unless you never play empires past the early game. Planets don't feel very special or meaningful when your only interaction with them is clicking on the 'upgrade building' button a bunch of times after researching a new tech. 1 can definitely be a problem but Wiz has made it abundantly clear that obvious prototype is a prototype so we'll have to wait and see how it turns out once it's more developed. Buildings are being reworked to fit this new system and the jobs are supposed to be more complicated than just 'minerals, energy, food, research and unity'.

As for complaint number 2... Well. Vicky 3 confirmed?

[Rolan7]

Okay, "charismatic" might be better than it sounds!  I've gotten "random" gifts of energy from my two machine empire neighbors.
But some Googling suggests that that might be natural:  They're threatened by a nearby federation of two Spiritualist empires, and apparently the AI does send gifts (even to PCs!) in a bid to win friends.  That's some nice, natural gameplay IMHO.

So, I'm somewhat weaker than all 4 (2 machines, two spiritualists) because I've been desperately trying to expand and fight off pirates.  And more importantly, I'm materialist.  Surely, my best case was to form a federation with the machine empires to resist this random megablob just to our north:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1394682848
(That NNW purple is just fanatically egalitarian militarists who will inevitably get owned by either of us.  They get a -50 with me for being an oligarchy, yeesh they have no friends)

Here's the thing...
The fanatic spiritualists offered me association!  Wow!
That's pretty great for me, short term, I can keep tamping down pirates and finishing expansion on cordoned-off areas.  And then treat them with all fairness.

I'm not sure what that means either.  But I'm pretty sure it includes a place for the two machine empires who could have steamrolled me, but didn't.
It likely involves me forcing the federation to accept the robot, the machine, the heretic.  Because they mechanically can't tolerate, so this situation is untenable.  All must be united, to face the future.

But they can keep their land and lives, of course!  I just have to force them to accept -
This game is kinda real sometimes.
/drunkish

[Cruxador]

Wiz's Twitter account includes some grumbling against people's kneejerk reactions to the obvious prototype so... I'm assuming that it's legit but could easily be scrapped at any point. It is only a prototype after all.

Why would people backlash such an obvious improvement tho D:

The three major complaints seem to be:

• It's cliche, bland, and/or generic.
• It's oversimplifying things.
• It makes individual planets less meaningful and makes the game devolve into a spreadsheet simulator.

I don't consider 3 to be a valid complaint unless you never play empires past the early game. Planets don't feel very special or meaningful when your only interaction with them is clicking on the 'upgrade building' button a bunch of times after researching a new tech. 1 can definitely be a problem but Wiz has made it abundantly clear that obvious prototype is a prototype so we'll have to wait and see how it turns out once it's more developed. Buildings are being reworked to fit this new system and the jobs are supposed to be more complicated than just 'minerals, energy, food, research and unity'.

Well, the other thing is that people are feeling burnt by 2.0, where features were cut for the sake of balance but then it was pretty badly broken and in some ways remains so, because while core mechanics were changed, the polish on top of that isn't there.

As for complaint number 2... Well. Vicky 3 confirmed?

Vicky 3 is unlikely to be in serious development since it seems that Johan is working pretty directly on Imperator, and Vicky is his baby. I would expect CK3 to come next. Then after those two, Vicky 3, something totally new (perhaps another try at the cold war time period) or even EU5 might be on the table.

[USEC_OFFICER]

_{That last one was a joke on the Paradox Community's desire for Victoria 3 and its kneejerk reaction to anything Paradox does even remotely connected to that game franchise. Just look at all of the people who expected Victoria 3 to be announced at PDX despite the fact that Paradox specifically said that they were not announcing Victoria 3. Sorry about that.}

[PTTG??]

It'd be neat if instead of ONLY PC empires getting pirates, pirates bubble up around the perhiphery of galactic civilization in general. While you're at it, have them "raid" stations instead of destroying them. Make it so that ignoring them (at least for a while) is a reasonable move.

Mid-game and on, you can probably wipe them out without effort, but early game they're credible threats. That way, they feel like a sign of progress, instead of random dudes who inexplicably can field navies the size of an empire out of one asteroid base in the middle of nowhere.

[forsaken1111]

It'd be neat if instead of ONLY PC empires getting pirates, pirates bubble up around the perhiphery of galactic civilization in general. While you're at it, have them "raid" stations instead of destroying them. Make it so that ignoring them (at least for a while) is a reasonable move.

Mid-game and on, you can probably wipe them out without effort, but early game they're credible threats. That way, they feel like a sign of progress, instead of random dudes who inexplicably can field navies the size of an empire out of one asteroid base in the middle of nowhere.

yeah mods giving NPC empires pirates was one of the first I installed. I'd love more depth to their behavior but at least they're better now than the original one-and-done early event they were originally.

[StagnantSoul]

I wish you could pay off the marauders to 'protect' you from other pirates, lowering your piracy risk a lot or completely removing it for someone like 3k energy every decade or so.

[Retropunch]

I wish you could pay off the marauders to 'protect' you from other pirates, lowering your piracy risk a lot or completely removing it for someone like 3k energy every decade or so.

Sins of a Solar Empire did a really simple version of this where they'd attack the player with the highest bounty. It was actually quite useful as if you had excess credits you could slow down the enemy without exposing yourself too much.

That said, it was a bit binary - it came down to a last minute bidding war to try and not be the person with the most bounty which was often a bit annoying. I'd prefer if you could actually build up a relationship with pirates - this would mostly be influenced by money (what they care about most I suppose) but maybe offensive tech could be traded too.

This would lower/get rid of their raids, but as the flip side it'd harm your relationships with other empires (some very badly) as they'd know you were involved with pirates - it'd be an interesting trade off between an easier early game with a potential for less allies later on.

[Cruxador]

I wish you could pay off the marauders to 'protect' you from other pirates, lowering your piracy risk a lot or completely removing it for someone like 3k energy every decade or so.

Sins of a Solar Empire did a really simple version of this where they'd attack the player with the highest bounty. It was actually quite useful as if you had excess credits you could slow down the enemy without exposing yourself too much.

That said, it was a bit binary - it came down to a last minute bidding war to try and not be the person with the most bounty which was often a bit annoying. I'd prefer if you could actually build up a relationship with pirates - this would mostly be influenced by money (what they care about most I suppose) but maybe offensive tech could be traded too.

This would lower/get rid of their raids, but as the flip side it'd harm your relationships with other empires (some very badly) as they'd know you were involved with pirates - it'd be an interesting trade off between an easier early game with a potential for less allies later on.

Rather than build a relationship with money, it would be cool if you could research and implement a privateer haven policy, giving pirates a tax haven for being based in your land, but in exchange preventing them from trashing your stuff so they go attack your neighbors instead, and give your neighbors a CB against you. Seems like great fodder for a rare tech.

[Telgin]

It'd be neat if instead of ONLY PC empires getting pirates, pirates bubble up around the perhiphery of galactic civilization in general. While you're at it, have them "raid" stations instead of destroying them. Make it so that ignoring them (at least for a while) is a reasonable move.

Mid-game and on, you can probably wipe them out without effort, but early game they're credible threats. That way, they feel like a sign of progress, instead of random dudes who inexplicably can field navies the size of an empire out of one asteroid base in the middle of nowhere.

Wait, AI empires don't get pirates?  I know I saw pirate fleets in a neighboring empire, multiple times, and they weren't originally from within my empire since there was nowhere they could have spawned.  No mods.

Related, but did pirates get some kind of buff in 2.1.0?  I've had to restart multiple times because I didn't have the resources to build up a fleet early enough on, and they've destroyed my fleet and starbases.  I've been getting jumped by two fleets, back-to-back, with 7 corvettes in them, with almost no warning.