I suck and it kills my enthusiasm to play.

[Sizzlor]

I want to get back into stellaris, but every time I load up the game I remember how bad I am at it. Im constantly fighting my economy. I never feel like I have enough stuff and Im so bad at war its pathetic. When I do play I normally find myself just sitting around trying to keep my economy from falling apart. I go full blown isolationist and just wait for the game to end. Which is usually when I get bored of waiting for it to end.

[MP]

Just keep sucking at it and you will find yourself improving. Such is the way the world revolves.

Sometimes, failing can be rewarding.

[Sizzlor]

I can not get a feel for the pacing of the game. What I mean by that is I do not know what is expected at what point in the game. Im usually near last or right behind the fallen empires. Regardless of my position my military is always weaker. The AI always has larger fleets, faster ships and way more reinforcements. I have had double the power of a station and lost. Military strength of overwhelming and barely won with heavy casualties. I can't sustain the thousands of alloys a month I feel like I need to keep an army going. I can manage an economy right up until I need more alloy for war. I can't support the multiple ship yards, the constant upgrades and heavy losses with out seriously crashing my entire empire.

The reason why I do not enact population controls is because I need more alloy workers. Despite building my ships to counter they are always slow and weak. I have lost fleets to the random space monsters. I lost a really good start once because I wanted to be aggressive early. Got the military unity and everything. Took 20 years to prepare and my entire armada was wiped out because of a single station. I want to actually be able to win a fight with out taking 150 years of prep work. The worst part is the alloy upkeep. It is infuriating having hundreds of pop working alloy and still only making a few hundred a month.

[Nightskies]

Please upload a play video so we can stop speculating and see what's going on. Let us know the mods and settings you have for the galaxy, empires, and other settings at the start of the game.

Doesn't have to be a whole game, just snippets showing your worlds, ship designs, government, races, fleet use, galaxy view, researched techs, leaders, neighbors and your diplomacy with them, and then maybe a year or two of play.

[Sizzlor]

Originally posted by Nightskies:

Please upload a play video so we can stop speculating and see what's going on.

how would one go about doing that?

[Nightskies]

yay google
https://www.apowersoft.com/how-to-record-steam-games.html

[Sizzlor]

Originally posted by Nightskies:

yay google
https://www.apowersoft.com/how-to-record-steam-games.html

thank you. I should have something posted in the next couple of days. I can assure you though that a non handicapped AI kicks my ass constantly. My game settings are pretty much untouched. I have no scaling difficulty. Im playing on captain with six empires and two fallen. Galaxy size is medium. I do have the gates turned off because that was causing some late game lag.

[wolkenwand]

I think the problem is you want to play agressive early while you are not too understand the game concept, as a player from before the 2.0 i already understand most of the how the game works yet i still cant properly attacking early, i always wait my military until stronger than the enemy before attacking and it needs long time to build the fleet. Usually i need more than 100 years to achieve strong fleet, i can took an attack before that by building starbase but i can't make an offensive campaign before 100+ years usually.

[Hotaka]

What is your research priority? Sometimes that can also break things when you focus on certain paths of research while neglecting other things and next thing you know you fall behind.

One thing I have noticed is early on you will always be behind AI empires.

[Cellulanus]

Cheats are always an option. I like to just give myself resource dumps every once in a while and dump a bunch into the sector AI. By the time I reach the endgame I can usually stop cheating since the sector AI does somehow create a functioning economy when you give it enough time and unlimited resources.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Sizzlor:

Originally posted by Nightskies:

yay google
https://www.apowersoft.com/how-to-record-steam-games.html

thank you. I should have something posted in the next couple of days. I can assure you though that a non handicapped AI kicks my ass constantly. My game settings are pretty much untouched. I have no scaling difficulty. Im playing on captain with six empires and two fallen. Galaxy size is medium. I do have the gates turned off because that was causing some late game lag.

Maybe it would be enough if you upload a savegame

[Sizzlor]

Originally posted by Hotaka:

What is your research priority? Sometimes that can also break things when you focus on certain paths of research while neglecting other things and next thing you know you fall behind.

One thing I have noticed is early on you will always be behind AI empires.

I start with basic resource generation and move into weapons and science as the game allows. Im kind of at the mercy of the random tech generator which is something Im not a fan of, but I have to live with it. I usually plan a head and pick research that will help with that goal.

Still research takes forever despite me being materialistic and having natural engineers. I always hear don't build more research buildings you don't need them. I really want to though so I can actually get things at a decent pace.

[Metempsychosis O BILLOfy]

Originally posted by Sizzlor:

I can not get a feel for the pacing of the game. What I mean by that is I do not know what is expected at what point in the game. Im usually near last or right behind the fallen empires. Regardless of my position my military is always weaker. The AI always has larger fleets, faster ships and way more reinforcements. I have had double the power of a station and lost. Military strength of overwhelming and barely won with heavy casualties. I can't sustain the thousands of alloys a month I feel like I need to keep an army going. I can manage an economy right up until I need more alloy for war. I can't support the multiple ship yards, the constant upgrades and heavy losses with out seriously crashing my entire empire.

I have around 6 or 7 stacked 100k+ fleets right now (1600 naval capacity) and still making over 900 alloys a month. Just try and focus on one thing. If you want a massive military, research is going to have to suffer. As for the ships, you can't just have double the size and expect to win. It is all based on loadout. The only time size really matters (giggity), is if you both have similar loadouts, then a bigger fleet would win. I recommend trying this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839
I used that when 2.2 came out since they changed a lot of things. Needless to say, I've never lost in any battle. I still use it to this day.

[Sizzlor]

Originally posted by wolkenwand:

I think the problem is you want to play agressive early while you are not too understand the game concept, as a player from before the 2.0 i already understand most of the how the game works yet i still cant properly attacking early, i always wait my military until stronger than the enemy before attacking and it needs long time to build the fleet. Usually i need more than 100 years to achieve strong fleet, i can took an attack before that by building starbase but i can't make an offensive campaign before 100+ years usually.

My preferred military tactics are very zerg in nature. I tend to rely on heavy economy and mobility plays. Large numbers, hit and run tactics, flanks, ambushes and superior macro because I do not move fast enough to micro manage everything.

The issues that I have are I can't seem to achieve a strong enough ship to avoid heavy casualties or a strong enough alloy economy to shrug off those heavy losses. My ships are never fast enough to preform the mobility plays. I am constantly fighting with alloy upkeep and command limit. I build my ships to counter. Lasers against armor, guns against shields. Missiles seem practically worthless though and I rarely ever find better engines because of the random tech generation.

My room is usually very limited because I can't expand after a certain point. There is usually a lot of contention between research, alloy foundries and military bases in my empire.

[Sizzlor]

Originally posted by Metempsychosis O BILLOfy:

Originally posted by Sizzlor:

I can not get a feel for the pacing of the game. What I mean by that is I do not know what is expected at what point in the game. Im usually near last or right behind the fallen empires. Regardless of my position my military is always weaker. The AI always has larger fleets, faster ships and way more reinforcements. I have had double the power of a station and lost. Military strength of overwhelming and barely won with heavy casualties. I can't sustain the thousands of alloys a month I feel like I need to keep an army going. I can manage an economy right up until I need more alloy for war. I can't support the multiple ship yards, the constant upgrades and heavy losses with out seriously crashing my entire empire.

I have around 6 or 7 stacked 100k+ fleets right now (1600 naval capacity) and still making over 900 alloys a month. Just try and focus on one thing. If you want a massive military, research is going to have to suffer. As for the ships, you can't just have double the size and expect to win. It is all based on loadout. The only time size really matters (giggity), is if you both have similar loadouts, then a bigger fleet would win. I recommend trying this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=911980839
I used that when 2.2 came out since they changed a lot of things. Needless to say, I've never lost in any battle. I still use it to this day.

this guide has been very helpful in explaining some of my mistakes. Given how often this game is patched and changed it is rather difficult to find relevant guides. I'll give some of this a try and if Im still running into problems I'll post a save game for people to look at.

[Metempsychosis O BILLOfy]

This guide should be effective so long as they don't make a massive meta change like 2.2 again..