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[Rolan7]

I wasn't going to say because I'm not sure, but I thought I saw pirates next to another empire as I did my devouring swarm run.  Not rogue drones, but regular pirates.  And later some other rogue drones which appeared to be spawned by a different hive mind.

[Paul]

They didn't get pirates when 2.0 released, but the backlash from NPCs playing with different rules on standard difficulty included them not having to deal with pirates. And when they changes things to remove the 50% across the board reduction in upkeep for AI empires they added pirates for all too.

[Rolan7]

Bluh, I forgot that it's essentially impossible to invite someone to your federation if you're pacifist and they aren't.  (Specifically, if you don't allow wars of aggression, and they do).

Which would be fine - I just federated with some militarist egalitarians.  I had to forcefully change their minds first, so they thought alike!

Except I was hoping to federate with two machine empires, immune to my ethical ways.  Meh...  they have a -30 to federating for some reason anyway, so screwit.  They have association status and my southern front covered, that'll have to do.  Basically I'm Rogue Servitoring in reverse - no one will harm my precious metal friends.

Speaking of, that federation to the north that accepted me...  Two spiritualists, one fanatical (and then both fanatical).  It sure was nice of them to invite my materialist empire, and then to help enforce my ideology on our neighbor.  I felt more than a little bad when I immediately left the federation and formed my own, with beer and robo-hookers.

Except it's FINE.  I'm still a pacifist xenophile materialist, they have nothing to fear.  Yes, I'm going to change their ideologies by force, but ONLY because that's the only path to peace.  Otherwise it's a matter of when, not if, they try to destroy my robo-friends (not to mention me, having just unlocked Flesh Is Weak).   I'm not even going to bomb their worlds.  Considering that none of us are even egalitarian (anymore), I'm basically the good guy here.  Yeah...
I don't like betraying people ):

[Telgin]

I finally got a foothold against the pirates on another playthrough by building up a fleet of 10 corvettes as soon as I possibly could.  Things are going much better, but my starting placement in this galaxy is pretty terrible.  Zero habitable planets over 20% habitability in the space I have available, and only 3 even that good.

Then again, I'm starting to see what people are talking about when they say that colonizing is almost a net detriment.  Research appears to be going much faster for a single planet, but it's hard to remember where I stood last time I got this far.

I'm also experimenting with playing xenophobes this time, and I'm not sure I like it.  Everything is flavored in a suitably paranoid way, but even the first level of xenophobe feels extreme, and I had to remember to change things like first contact policies and slavery to be closer to what I wanted.  Sometimes I wish I could leave ethics points unspent during empire creation, so I could be just a little materialist and a little pacifist, without having to be fanatical either nor a xenophile nor xenophobe.  I guess there's really no drawback to going back to fanatical materialist, aside from spiritualists liking you less.

Speaking of that, what does it take to get someone to declare war on you?  In my last game, I had rivals for 200+ years and never had them declare war on me despite their opinion dropping to nearly -300.  Even when their fleet power was comparable to mine.  So far, it's looking like the same will happen with my new spiritualist neighbors.

Is that just because I'm playing on Ensign?

[umiman]

Is that just because I'm playing on Ensign?

That's more or less it.

The AI in this game is beyond hopeless. You need to allow them to cheat dramatically before they even come close to a semblance of a threat.

Also there's no real downside to expanding as much as you can. On paper you tech and unity slower, but in practice you get so much tech and unity from having more planets that it doesn't even make a difference. Not to mention in vanilla there's so few unity and tech choices you will max out way too fast anyway. Not to mention the HUGE production and fleet cap advantages from having more planets is way better.

I actually play tall empires to handicap myself against the AI. Though I think there are ways to cheese one planet strategies to basically become invincible.

That being said, it's not like the AI can even keep up with you tech or unity-wise. As mentioned, they're hopeless. I don't actually know how they can be so dumb, as even with 2x bonuses to everything they are still easily worse than regular players playing normally, but that's just how it is. You should also turn on aggressive AI if you haven't already. Or if you don't care about achievements at least get Glavius's AI mod to at least give the AI a fighting chance.

[Rolan7]

Everyone talks about running out of traditions, but I haven't had it happen.  But none of the 6 games I ran (4 successes, one in progress, one curbstomped) reached 2400 - the default magical "endgame".  I always won before then.  Because in the game of stars, you yadda yadda meme.

I merely just kept using my influence as it accrued, and that inevitably leads to snowballing and painting the map.  Hence this much more interesting pacifist/xenophile/materialist run, AKA federation building.  Not to be confused with the Blorg run, my first run, which was almost as map-painty as the devouring swarm. (Blorg run was pre 2.0, but still).
Acquire all hugs <:

Edit:
My run as human federation was actually what sold me on this game, and involved some federation-building.  But federation mechanics basically locked me out of playing, because I federated with someone who vetoed everything.  So I just broke alliance and painted the map, with my vast psychic powers (thanks to events that made me spiritualist).

[Hanzoku]

Yeah, I want to like and use Federations, but Stellaris really, REALLY sucks at them. It's near impossible to join a federation, and when you do, you'll either end up with someone screwing you over, or you're fighting everyone else's wars while they don't want to join yours. Every victorious game I've played in this game has been going it alone and just becoming a superpower that can take on federations on my own.

[Loud Whispers]

Why would anyone want the game to devolve though?

It's a clear evolution from Stellaris's current pop mechancis though; the proposed one seems to model job specialization, population rise/decline from fertility, instead of the current system where all pops expand like a vapour to fill planet tiles and then they're done, with all pops being the same

[Majestic7]

Also there's no real downside to expanding as much as you can. On paper you tech and unity slower, but in practice you get so much tech and unity from having more planets that it doesn't even make a difference. Not to mention in vanilla there's so few unity and tech choices you will max out way too fast anyway. Not to mention the HUGE production and fleet cap advantages from having more planets is way better.

The point of return investment is around size 15 for planets IIRC, unless the planet has extraordinary tile bonuses. Colonizing small planets is just not worth it. In a way, the new border system removed the reason to grab small planets since in ye Olde Times it was sometimes useful for border expansion.

[Telgin]

I was wondering at what specific point planets were worthwhile, but never sat down to do the math.  I'm sure it varies between research and unity as well, since unity structures are a bit more limited.  I think I'm fine with that though, since it seems natural that populations on multiple planets would be harder to unite, while the justification for research being harder with more planets feels a little more flimsy to me.

Thinking on it, I'm actually not sure how to do the math to calculate the break even point, at least in the general case.  A quick calculation implied that even 1 basic science lab with no tile bonuses on a new planet makes up for its increase in research costs for the low level technologies, but I'm less sure about the high level techs.  My hunch is that you'd probably need 3 science labs (one of each kind) upgraded to the max to make a planet worth it at the end game, but even that's complicated by the fact that some other useful buildings like the gene clinic give research.

It probably would be challenging to fit 3 science labs on the tiniest planets.

[BurnedToast]

Also there's no real downside to expanding as much as you can. On paper you tech and unity slower, but in practice you get so much tech and unity from having more planets that it doesn't even make a difference. Not to mention in vanilla there's so few unity and tech choices you will max out way too fast anyway. Not to mention the HUGE production and fleet cap advantages from having more planets is way better.

The point of return investment is around size 15 for planets IIRC, unless the planet has extraordinary tile bonuses. Colonizing small planets is just not worth it. In a way, the new border system removed the reason to grab small planets since in ye Olde Times it was sometimes useful for border expansion.

This is simply not true. Planets are almost always worth adding, the exception being maybe very late game - but at that point you've finished the unity trees and are in repeatable researchs anyway so who cares?

It's also not true because research and unity don't really matter enough to be worth optimizing for. They just aren't very important compared to more minerals and more fleet capacity from having more planets.

[Criptfeind]

How it used to work is that research costs were increased per population and planet in a linear way, each planet added X research cost and each pop added Y research cost, which meant if your second planet was worth adding, so was your two hundredth (well, not literally 200th, because eventually you hit an increasing amount of consumer goods costs, which means more planets need more mineral production until eventually you can't research on them.) But in certain circumstances (specifically a science nexus+orbital science) you could get to a point where the second planet wasn't worth it. Although this came at the cost of everything BUT science. So the ideal was either 1 or as many as you could get.

But unity increased exponentially, since it multiplied your unity by your population and your population by your unity, so the ideal number of planets for unity was somewhere between 5 to Twentyish I believe, depending on your tech and whatnot.

With 2.0 they changed it so that both are linear, so they are probably both worth getting as many planets as possible, unless you can finagle a situation where even a second planet isn't worthwhile, which since space resources cost both science and unity now, is a lot less possible.

[umiman]

Also there's no real downside to expanding as much as you can. On paper you tech and unity slower, but in practice you get so much tech and unity from having more planets that it doesn't even make a difference. Not to mention in vanilla there's so few unity and tech choices you will max out way too fast anyway. Not to mention the HUGE production and fleet cap advantages from having more planets is way better.

The point of return investment is around size 15 for planets IIRC, unless the planet has extraordinary tile bonuses. Colonizing small planets is just not worth it. In a way, the new border system removed the reason to grab small planets since in ye Olde Times it was sometimes useful for border expansion.

This is simply not true. Planets are almost always worth adding, the exception being maybe very late game - but at that point you've finished the unity trees and are in repeatable researchs anyway so who cares?

It's also not true because research and unity don't really matter enough to be worth optimizing for. They just aren't very important compared to more minerals and more fleet capacity from having more planets.

Yup.

On paper there are theoretical points of optimized research and unity, but like we mentioned earlier in practice this means bupkiss as there's so few tech and unity anyway. Having a shittonne of production, minerals, fleet cap, and resources is way better.

Honestly I don't even really bother researching tech boosts or switching leaders any more. The effort of my mouse clicks is worth more than the research boosts.

[Telgin]

Switching leaders is something I didn't even really consider before I saw someone doing it on a YouTube video.  I knew that scientists could have bonuses to specific fields of research, but I never even considered switching them out to optimize research projects.  I usually only had the bare minimum anyway, but I guess it was possible to switch out those on science ships with those leading research if they were better fits.

Incidentally, I find it funny that it almost seems invariable that you'll have more scientists than any other kind of leader.  They don't really feel like they should have the same level of importance as governors, admirals and generals (which I've never used) either.

[Hanzoku]

My solution for scientists is to find a spark of genius scientist for each field and call it good. Trying to match specialty to specialty was indeed way too much work for too little benefit.