How many stars do you play on?

[Paddy]

I'm playing on a 1000 star galaxy at the moment and to be honest I thought i would enjoy it alot more but mid game is quite overwhelming. I am playing as a human faction and there is Two other human factions however the Two other human factions are expanding so fast. They aren't stopping. So I am trying to do the Same with a 500k fleet which is overwhelming to say the least. I was just wondering what size do you guys play on and how is working out? I was hoping the Ai would expand slower but the two human factions are taking territory constantly from other Ai factions lol

[DrPhiloponus]

I tried everything. Am just in the end game with 700 stars and it's quite overwhelming. I automated everything an watch... The smallest galaxy size can be a lot of fun, too.

[ZumZoom]

I settled on playing 1000 stars as it's the biggest my rig can run half-decently to late game.
I haven't used randomized empires in a long while, and use predetermined set of 1 of each race with everything randomized except an excellent home system and all tech 0 or 1 unlocked. Reduced home systems to agreeable in last game, because I don't like how OP it is for me or other AI to capture such a system (2-5 colonies in a single system).
In my games usually Dhayut or Gizureans get the most growth, once I saw Humans get big. Almost always the Teekans get big, but rarely are they effective at warfare. Mortalens end up split and conquered by others. Boskara have been underwhelming recently - slow to expand.
Cat people are almost always lagging behind, others are average for the most part.

Interesting, this made me consider boosting starting conditions for some and reducing for others next time I play, cool!

[Paddy]

Originally posted by DrPhiloponus:

I tried everything. Am just in the end game with 700 stars and it's quite overwhelming. I automated everything an watch... The smallest galaxy size can be a lot of fun, too.

Originally posted by ZumZoom:

I settled on playing 1000 stars as it's the biggest my rig can run half-decently to late game.
I haven't used randomized empires in a long while, and use predetermined set of 1 of each race with everything randomized except an excellent home system and all tech 0 or 1 unlocked. Reduced home systems to agreeable in last game, because I don't like how OP it is for me or other AI to capture such a system (2-5 colonies in a single system).
In my games usually Dhayut or Gizureans get the most growth, once I saw Humans get big. Almost always the Teekans get big, but rarely are they effective at warfare. Mortalens end up split and conquered by others. Boskara have been underwhelming recently - slow to expand.
Cat people are almost always lagging behind, others are average for the most part.

Interesting, this made me consider boosting starting conditions for some and reducing for others next time I play, cool!

i have a high end rig and still get lag spikes every 10 seconds late game. It's weird how OP one of the human Ai factions is as the have a similar fleet to me and just conquer a new colony every few minutes. I didn't think the Ai would expand so fast lol

[Paddy]

Originally posted by DrPhiloponus:

I tried everything. Am just in the end game with 700 stars and it's quite overwhelming. I automated everything an watch... The smallest galaxy size can be a lot of fun, too.

I'm surprised even on 700 stars it is overwhelming. No wonder i feel the same about 1000 stars. It's more to do with me trying to keep up with the Ai expansion.

[Wraith_Magus]

I learned back in the 90's that you should suppress that urge in you that tells you to play on the biggest galaxy size because "bigger is better, right?" You'll get sick of empire management when you get to a certain size, so the game is a lot more fun if you keep things relatively small. The whole "victory threshold" thing exists because you basically are just playing mop-up once you get halfway through the game, anyway, and the early game is the only part where it's tense - once you get a clear lead, you just compound victory on top of victory once you're just clearly larger than and technologically superior to everyone else, and it's just busywork from there on out. I don't play at anything more than 700 stars, and you will probably enjoy the game more at 500 stars than 1,000.

[ZumZoom]

Originally posted by Paddy:

Originally posted by DrPhiloponus:

I tried everything. Am just in the end game with 700 stars and it's quite overwhelming. I automated everything an watch... The smallest galaxy size can be a lot of fun, too.

I'm surprised even on 700 stars it is overwhelming. No wonder i feel the same about 1000 stars. It's more to do with me trying to keep up with the Ai expansion.

It may help to have less colonies by setting prevalence to rare/very rare, and reducing colonization range. Same for indies.

[Paddy]

Originally posted by 76561198047503441:

Originally posted by Paddy:

I'm surprised even on 700 stars it is overwhelming. No wonder i feel the same about 1000 stars. It's more to do with me trying to keep up with the Ai expansion.

It may help to have less colonies by setting prevalence to rare/very rare, and reducing colonization range. Same for indies.

Nice, i never thought of this. I'll be sure to try it next time. What setting do you play on and how you find your game plays out with such settings? Having everything set to very rare might make for much more manageable fleets do you think as there would be far less colonies to conquer and manage

[ZumZoom]

Originally posted by Paddy:

Originally posted by 76561198047503441:

It may help to have less colonies by setting prevalence to rare/very rare, and reducing colonization range. Same for indies.

Nice, i never thought of this. I'll be sure to try it next time. What setting do you play on and how you find your game plays out with such settings? Having everything set to very rare might make for much more manageable fleets do you think as there would be far less colonies to conquer and manage

I play on extreme/restless + 10 predetermined empires with excellent or agreeable home systems, tech 0 unlocked for them, pre-warp. I set colony prevalence and indies to rare and colonization range to 150M on a 8x8 sectors map size, 1000 stars. AI has a bit of a trouble expanding with such conditions (unless they are agressive and take colonies through war), and might have a LOT of problems if you set prevalence to very rare, unless you increase colonization range a couple of steps higher.
Definitely makes managing colonies easier, though in my last game I actually got close to 300 colonies by endgame, where I was mopping up the Dhayut, who grew to 65 or so colonies, my 3 allies had 15-30 colonies. I had all the colonization techs (so +10 to suitability) and was mostly colonizing worlds that were 5000+ diameter, or very high quality smaller worlds.

[Strap me to a Missile]

IMO larger galaxies are fun, but the excessive message notifications really annoy me. I would like to be able to set notification settings per message-type more easily.

[TyborPL]

300. And I wish there was an option for even less, because it helps you learn the ropes.

[Zenserten]

i would like to play with 400 stars but with bigger map like dw 1

[northernwater]

1000

[Trappist]

300, every time. I find the larger galaxies just become overwhelming fast. I like to micromanage and play on normal speed tho so that's probably a factor.

Plus, 300 stars means war happens early and I have to contend with a lot more close neighbours without ever sacrificing fps.

[shawn]

I wish the colonies setting was more robust. I'd like decent colonies just less of them. As it stands ALL planets take a quality hit. Even with this, with tech it gets to where you can have tons of colonies. This is why I'd like it as I mentioned before.

I'd also prefer a different model for colonizable worlds where 'continental' planets were the best and moved down from there for EVERYONE. I just don't see any sentient race 'preferring ' a glacial or toxic world. This would also create more tension over desirable worlds. Adding in 'outposts' for the acquisition of bonuses, research, resources and espionage would be great as well. So many bonuses are on completely useless worlds and it would be nice to be able to get some benefit even if it was reduced.

Having a 1000 or 1500 star setup with about 10-20 colonies per faction on average and having outposts would be ideal for me. For clarification outposts could be an extension of a mining platform providing greater effect and allowing a smaller number of unique additions than an actual colony and less population of course.

At a danger of rambling here, I'd also like to have random unique resources appearing in every game. These could be AI or procedurally generated and there would only be 1 in the game. Have a setting to have anywhere from 0-10 or so of these. Being 'known' for possessing/trading a particular unique resource would add a nice bit of flavor for an empire and could be a cornerstone of their economy/diplomacy.

[The Doctor]

500 stars with 15-20+ colonies can get pretty difficult to manage once everyone's expanded out mid-game. I've completed a few 700 star runs but they get overwhelming as the game progresses and it feels a bit frantic when war breaks out so 500 is what I'm most comfortable with.