End-game boredom? Has anyone else run into this?

[Salami Tsunami]

So I've had at least half a dozen long term playthroughs of Stellaris. And they all tend to go the same way. I start out having a great time, conquer some stuff or whatever goal I'm going for this time round. But then by around 2400, I'm just lose interest.

The Khanate crisis added a much needed event in the mid game, and I personally feel that it's mcuh better designed and more engaging than the end game. But once I'm done with it, I feel as if there's nothing left to do except conquer some Fallen Empires, build some megastructures, and wait around for the end game crisis.

As soon as I take out a Fallen Empire, I get the dark matter technology set, which now renders research a moot point other than the repeatable buffs. Megastructures are neat, but by the time I can build a Dyson Sphere, I have no actual purpose for it other than to switch all my energy production to mass production. Mass, incidentally, that I have literally no use for. Seriously, If I was short on mass, I wouldn't have spent a quarter mil building the sphere in the first place. In the early and mid game, there's that sense of competitive improvement, of always having some project to work toward. But that goes away pretty quickly.

I've tried increasing the difficulty so I have powerful enemies to play with. But giving them the ability to cheat doesn't make them worthy opponents, it just means their economy has a flat rate multiplier. Either I exploit their repetitive and predictable tactics to destroy them, or they just steamroll me with a massive fleet.

And the end game crisis. Oh dear. They're all practically identical. And they all play out the same way. And spamming doomstacks at 250K fleets until they die just isn't interesting to me in the slightest.

Now I know why the Cybrex didn't put up a fight when they got wiped out. Once you've been a galactic civilization for more than a few centuries, there's just no point in doing anything.

[sardine scout]

Yeah, it gets dull after a few games. I'm now getting into multiplayer, there, I never know what to expect and I have real skilled opponents.

[Chastity the Celibate]

The tech tree needs to be expanded, and trade abd espionage added, dipomacy and federations need to be improved too.

Next DLC will probably be species pack, then next expansion will be diplomacy focused, after that a story pack (hopefully Silicoids) and later another expansion on trade.

[�[Dire_Venom]�]

Mods do add a ton of interest during the game, but the core mechanics do need expanding (diplo, esp as said above).
We can hope they get round to them sometime

[Azunai]

in my opinion that's the natural outcome in an open ended sandbox game. at some point, you've overcome all challenges and it becomes pointless to continue. all good things come to an end.

in some games i waited for the endgame crisis as a grand finale to the campaign. once you've beaten them a few times and know what to expect, it may not be worth actually waiting for them to pop up if you're already prepared and know that they will be little more than a little speedbump on the road.

[Red Dox]

I know what you mean and it kinda depends on you how to spice up the game. My advise would be
-1000 star galaxy
-max. AI, FE & Marauder Empires
-dificulty Grand Admiral; Scaling on/off depends entirely on your abilities.
-and then throw some mods in like these
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692253918
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1140543652
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=886283243
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1112740619
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1316044027
That should keep things interesting a bit longer.

[Cadelanne]

Honestly that's pretty much the same in every 4X, and I'd even say every strategy game.

It's just that you end the game before it's "officially" over and that AI won't capitulate but as soon as you have no more competition then it means it's obviously game over.

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by Red Dox:

I know what you mean and it kinda depends on you how to spice up the game. My advise would be
-1000 star galaxy
-max. AI, FE & Marauder Empires
-dificulty Grand Admiral; Scaling on/off depends entirely on your abilities.
-and then throw some mods in like these
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692253918
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1140543652
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=886283243
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1112740619
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1316044027
That should keep things interesting a bit longer.

Probably should use Extended Map Sliders too.

[sardine scout]

Originally posted by xnadu27:

The tech tree needs to be expanded, and trade abd espionage added, dipomacy and federations need to be improved too.

Next DLC will probably be species pack, then next expansion will be diplomacy focused, after that a story pack (hopefully Silicoids) and later another expansion on trade.

I was thinking that would add something like "Toxic Preference" like the chlorine breathing aliens from a certain event.

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by Vengeance From Above:

Originally posted by xnadu27:

The tech tree needs to be expanded, and trade abd espionage added, dipomacy and federations need to be improved too.

Next DLC will probably be species pack, then next expansion will be diplomacy focused, after that a story pack (hopefully Silicoids) and later another expansion on trade.

I was thinking that would add something like "Toxic Preference" like the chlorine breathing aliens from a certain event.

Yeah an Extremophiles story pack would be cool, you could start on any uninhabitable type (except AI/Infested) and only that type.

[Dialask]

Yeah, pretty much. You need to adjust the timing for awakening/end game crises in order for it to happen right at a point where meaningful expansion has ended so it is a challenge without too much down time. And don't try going for one-empire conclusions... it is slooooww.

CK2 keeps things spiced up by making internal problems grow and compound as you get larger... meaning a civil war can turn into a full scale national crisis if you aren't careful.... obviously many of those mechanics wouldn't work in Stellaris, but using those ideas as a foundation and building up from them might be a good start for solving the game's late-game stagnation.

[Salami Tsunami]

I think it would be great to have more end game research and tech options besides just flat rate bonuses. Come on dudes, this is science fiction, and the end game is the time to go all out with the crazy stuff. Let's get some singularity engines, black hole launchers, nanite missiles, and whatnot.

When I was playing for the first time, I got really excited about the little *dangerous technology* tag on some of the research options. I think we need research that is actually dangerous, which provides technology that has the potential to go very, very wrong with galaxy altering consequences. For example, some type of nanotechnology processing plant that gives out massive mineral gain, but if it's ever destroyed by bombardment or suffers a power outage, will spawn some sort of nanite plague that turns the planet into a ball of grey soup.

Or maybe an event where we find out a century after researching it, that the use of jump drives is causing irreparable damage to the fabric of space and time.

Perhaps a new crisis in which a science nexus evolves into a self aware, cybernetic space station, merges with a 60K fleet power citadel, and declares itself to be a sovereign empire.

But we really need more stuff to do after the mid game. And the game needs to be less predictable. There's never any surprises anymore.

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by Meat Baton:

I think it would be great to have more end game research and tech options besides just flat rate bonuses. Come on dudes, this is science fiction, and the end game is the time to go all out with the crazy stuff. Let's get some singularity engines, black hole launchers, nanite missiles, and whatnot.

When I was playing for the first time, I got really excited about the little *dangerous technology* tag on some of the research options. I think we need research that is actually dangerous, which provides technology that has the potential to go very, very wrong with galaxy altering consequences. For example, some type of nanotechnology processing plant that gives out massive mineral gain, but if it's ever destroyed by bombardment or suffers a power outage, will spawn some sort of nanite plague that turns the planet into a ball of grey soup.

Or maybe an event where we find out a century after researching it, that the use of jump drives is causing irreparable damage to the fabric of space and time.

Perhaps a new crisis in which a science nexus evolves into a self aware, cybernetic space station, merges with a 60K fleet power citadel, and declares itself to be a sovereign empire.

But we really need more stuff to do after the mid game. And the game needs to be less predictable. There's never any surprises anymore.

And better Ascensions like turning your people into energy beings, colonizing the Shroud, building your own Infinity Machine, building a supermassive computer around a star, bioships, and Supernova.

And build my own Shiva Prime. Gauge was the good guy all along.

[Cpl.Facehugger]

Originally posted by Dialask:

Yeah, pretty much. You need to adjust the timing for awakening/end game crises in order for it to happen right at a point where meaningful expansion has ended so it is a challenge without too much down time. And don't try going for one-empire conclusions... it is slooooww.

There's a mod that lets you do this and customize all sorts of other things about the crises too. Crisis manager I think it's called? I don't remember, but it's one of the more popular recent mods out there.

I like to set the crisis to maximum pain, force spawn all three of them, and then see if I can't survive. It's great, and if the OP is having trouble with boredom I heartily recommend it.

[Asuzu]

If PDX would just fix the atrocious AI, it would have been more than enough to keep you occupied.
But why bother, when you can make eye-candy DLC and cash it out EZ mode

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Asuzu:

If PDX would just fix the atrocious AI, it would have been more than enough to keep you occupied.
But why bother, when you can make eye-candy DLC and cash it out EZ mode

The SP AI is problem for all of the 4X and/or grand strategy games, machine learning could lead to improvements, but the question is whether the devs think it is worth the moneysink, especially since it would have to be finetuned after each new patch/DLC to not ignore the new mechanics, actual humans haven't all went through the shift in FTL mechanics smoothly, how would AI programmed to work around those old mechanics feel, plus AI for mods would be not nearly as good if that was the case.