Frustrated

[ColorsFade]

I'm an experience 4X player, back to my days of playing Civ2. I've put 1600+ hours into Galactic Civilizations 3. I play as a conquest style player in those games because that's what's fun.

Stellaris seems designed to really clamp down on Conquest players.

I've played three games now on the easiest AI and they're all losses (or games I just quit when it was obvious I was going to lose).

There's some stuff I don't understand:

1) Administration, which seems to severely discourage wide growth. This seems to be the direction that 4X developers are taking nowadays, which is disappointing. Civ 5 is setup that way and I hate it. I've read a lot of forum posts where people say, "Just go over it, the penalties aren't that bad", but the thing is, yeah, they kind of are. But to the root level problem here: If you're going to create an artificial way to limit players from growing their empire, at LEAST give them tools to grow that limiter first, so they can THEN grow their empire. There are a few Administrator Research options, from what I've seen, but since the Research "tree" isn't something you can see and plan with, this isn't a reliable way to actually grow your empire. This is one of those mechanics that is just disappointing at best, frustrating at worst.

2) Navy. Ugh. I hate this part of the game. War should be interesting and fun; it's not. The fleet size (logistics, or whatever they call it) effectively works like Administration for your Navy; limiting you in really server ways. Oh sure, you can go over it - with massively penalties to upkeep. I've tried hoarding my energy credits and alloys so I can pump out several max fleets, go to war, and hope it's over before I go into the red on credits; forget it. Doesn't work. I had my Researchers take every fleet max option there is and put at least one Anchorage on every shipyard, but to no avail. I can only MAINTAIN two max fleets at a time. And since any battle that isn't against small forces results in lost ships, that means more and more time at Shipyards building new ones.

But to the larger point - how the flip are you supposed to protect a fairly sizable empire with TWO fleets? I can't be done. And then the enemy, who is supposed to be "even" with me, rolls in with fleets doing 7LK damage. I put a max fleet together and it's somewhere around 4-5K. Forget if I don't have a max fleet; they're destroyed in seconds, and then the AI just hop-skip-jumps through my empire dominating everything in a matter of minutes. Then it's OVER.

Like, what kind of empire can't afford to have max fleets positioned at every choke point? Well, if it's Stellaris, then the player sure can't. You spend the whole game hoping and praying the AI doesn't declare war on you because no matter how fast you Research or try to build fleets, you're going to get rolled. Where is the fun in that?

And it's not that I don't know how to prep for this stuff or plan ahead - it's that the game purposely clamps down on the players' ability to do any of that. Want to spread out and grab habitable planets? You're going to take a huge penalty. Want to build fleets so you're ready for that pesky neighbor? Well, don't, because if you do there's a good chance you'll be broke before your fleets have a chance to fire a shot. And heaven forbid you don't build your fleets at EXACTLY the right time... too soon, you're in the red, but too late... you're dead.

I don't get it. So much of this game does stuff right. So much of the UI is good. But these clamp-down mechanics stink. And then Influence... krikey, it's needed FOR EVERYTHING, but you can only grow it a couple units per month? What? So if I want to be diplomatic and offer diplomatic things to my neighbors, well, then I won't be able to expand, because that's going to use up all my Influence. Or I can expand, and then not be able to do things like Edicts, or make offers. What the heck is that?

I thought GC3's latest DLC was an exercise in bondage, but good golly... Stellaris feels like handcuffs are around your wrist, feet, arms... and you're tired to a post.

[MaGicBush]

Everything you griped about; admin cap, and navy I find a good addition to the game lol. So I totally disagree. I am a wide player as well. You can basically ignore the admin cap just fine(my current game I have 25 planets, and own the top half of my galaxy, and all of my resources are over +50). Puts me about 300 above the cap lol. It helps to distinguish from a tall empire, and a wide one by giving a bonus to the smaller empire that stays under this cap. So I think it's fine.

The navy cap just makes sense. In real life you have to consider logistics, and it makes sense if you can't support a mass amount of tanks or whatever it's going to cause a lot of issues and be a nightmare.

It seems you need to focus more on alloys and energy with your economy to support your fleets. I easily get up to 100k fleets and don't have any problems.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by MaGicBush:

Everything you griped about; admin cap, and navy I find a good addition to the game lol. So I totally disagree.

Well, okay - so how do I make this work? How do I build a large enough contingent of fleets to protect myself? How do I build a large enough contingent of fleets to wage war? It seems like if the AI declares war and waltzes into my space with a 7K fleet, it's all over. I don't see how you recover from that, but more importantly I don't see how you prepare to defend against that?

[MaGicBush]

I edited my above post. But you need to focus more on alloys and energy it sounds like your running into the red after just a 7k fleet. Also build stations and defense platforms at choke-points. Make sure you are countering what modules they have equipped on their ships as well. 7k is really nothing. I get up to 100k+ without much issue by the end of the game. If you find your running out of buildings, or low on a resource just keep expanding(not if your negative though, fix it first). I have pretty much constantly been at war and expanded every time I can. I will declare war, fix my economy, find a new enemy, declare war, etc. I play as a Driven Assimilator though.

[Cebertus]

Originally posted by ColorsFade:

...put at least one Anchorage on every shipyard...

Dont do this, you mostly want to specialize stuff. There is a building for your starbases that adds 2+ fleetpower to each anchorage. So try to go für 6 anchorage and that building, instead of spreading your anchorages.

Try to build defensive starbases on your chokepoints so you dont have to defend all your chokepoints. Going above your fleetcap is necessary. In lategame its not unusual to have 2 times or even 3 times bigger fleets then your cap, but you have to build a solid economy for it.

I dont know if you have the synthetic dawn dlc, its the one where you can start as a robot ai empire. Determined exterminator sounds like something you want to play, being a Robot Nations makes alot of stuff easier, you dont have to worry about food and consumergoods, which makes the economical part of the game MUCH easier, you dont have to worry about factions because you dont have any AND you can stop producing population, when your planets are full. You can settle on every planet, and if you pick the ascension perk you can terraform your planets into machine worlds which gets rid of the specific district limit(like for example 8 generator districts on a 15 size world, in that case you could build 15 generator districts but no other districts.)

As a determined exterminator you dont have to claim the systems of your enemies when declaring war because of your special CB. On the other hand you can be completly conquered in one war and everyone will hate you.

And about admincap... just spam some science buildings and get more unity. For most empires it is beneficial to just grow as much as they can.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Yes, machine empire is good to learn the game - just not as determined exterminator. It´s not like other machines are harder. Just don´t forget to pick the civic trait that gives +20% to engineering - it probably is the BEST civic in the game.

[Gustuv Wynd]

The administrative cap sounds horrible when you first read it in the game...but in reality it ends up not meaning that much. Though that is why I wish they just do away with it. It doesn't seem to matter much. Compared to what you get when you expand you should always be well in the black.

I've always hated influence though...completely agree there. It really makes no sense at all outside of the democratic empires. Even a machine or hive intelligence empire needs influence to do things...influence with what? Itself? I mod my game so I generate more per turn...I modified all the capital buildings so that they have a negative amount of influence as "upkeep". Then this way the AI gets it too. Also, all edicts have had influence costs replaced with energy costs. I find this a lot more fun and it kind of makes sense that the more government buildings you have...the more outposts you can over see...have more diplomatic relations...ect.

Though I also play the 1.9.1 version most of the time as well. They let you roll back the version. I highly recommend you give the old version a try before giving up on the game. In my opinion, it is much more fun overall and also is much more friendly to a conquest play style. There isn't really any hard limits on expanding.

[Lightninglash]

Admin cap issue: Never had that problem. Ever. It used to actually be worse as memory serves where even the stations you built to claim a system would count towards your station cap so you would be super small from that.

Navy Limit: The more pop you have the more Navy you can have, its pretty simple. The Navy Cap is less logistics of running the ships and more having bodies to crew the things.

The issue you seem to be having is that you just need to play around a bit more to get better at this game, now don't take this as me being: Haha your ♥♥♥♥ skrub git good, cause thats not what I'm saying. These concepts are pretty hard to deal with in Stellaris for new players and even old ones that re-play the game for the first time in a while. My solution to this was simple: 1. I make sure that I expand early on and quickly, to at least 5 planets. Have your core world do trading and research buildings and the other 4 provide resources like food, minerals and energy then have the 5th planet doing consumer goods and alloys. With a set size like this you can just bunker down and slam through technology and research stuff fast. You dont need to beat the AI in numbers but tech. In my current game thats running as I type this I have half the fleet of the smallest AI Empire but my tech is end game within 100 years of starting the game because my homeworld has something like 600 of each research on it, as well as good scientists. Its a good strat then cause your a small empire with a few ships that are really good and you can focus your economy onto building your nation to be able to support a large fleet. Its around 250 years into the game and my weakest fleet could take all the AI fleets at once now cause after getting end game as a tall empire I just slammed into a wide one by taking like 80 systems and colonizing 30 or so planets. Suddenly I have 100-150+ gain in all resources and can have a fleet cap of about 500 or so.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by Cebertus:

Originally posted by ColorsFade:

And about admincap... just spam some science buildings and get more unity. For most empires it is beneficial to just grow as much as they can.

Yeah, this is one of the things I'm having difficulty with. In a game like Galactic Civilizations 3, I can see the whole tech tree, so I can look down it and find what I need and research specific nodes to get the tech I want. In this game, I get random choices, and so far I have yet to see any tech in any of the three branches that allows for more Influence. It's been kind of a bummer.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Tech is partially random so people can't just do the same research line every time. Can make you have to take different decisions.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by Lightninglash:

The issue you seem to be having is that you just need to play around a bit more to get better at this game, now don't take this as me being: Haha your ♥♥♥♥ skrub git good, cause thats not what I'm saying. These concepts are pretty hard to deal with in Stellaris for new players and even old ones that re-play the game for the first time in a while.

Absolutely no offense taken man. I got to be a pretty skilled player at GC3; wrote some guides for it, got invited to two DLC beta tests because of that and my YouTube channel. My tutorial series for GC3 is easily the most watched thing on my channel. I'm accustomed to being on the other end of a post like this, telling players, "Hey, do X, Y and Z and you'll get a better outcome." Totally understand. I'm looking for all the wisdom here.

Some stuff I still haven't figured out how to deal with:

1) Unemployment. Occasionally I'll be able to move one or two people to a new planet, but it's not usually a lot (since if you remove too many, it destroys a building - that sucks).

2) How come when I create colonies, it doesn't just take the unemployed pop off my homeworld and use them? Or does it, but it's only using 1?

Anyway, I'm still working it all out because I'm stubborn.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by Gustuv Wynd:

I've always hated influence though...completely agree there. It really makes no sense at all outside of the democratic empires. Even a machine or hive intelligence empire needs influence to do things...influence with what? Itself? I mod my game so I generate more per turn...I modified all the capital buildings so that they have a negative amount of influence as "upkeep". Then this way the AI gets it too. Also, all edicts have had influence costs replaced with energy costs. I find this a lot more fun and it kind of makes sense that the more government buildings you have...the more outposts you can over see...have more diplomatic relations...ect.

I may have to look into a mod for influence, or modding it myself, because as it stands, that's by far the most annoying limitation of the game. It's a real choke-hold.

[Nolo Contendere]

Originally posted by ColorsFade:

I'm an experience 4X player, back to my days of playing Civ2. I've put 1600+ hours into Galactic Civilizations 3. I play as a conquest style player in those games because that's what's fun.

Stellaris seems designed to really clamp down on Conquest players.

I've played three games now on the easiest AI and they're all losses (or games I just quit when it was obvious I was going to lose).

thats good and all, but as you (theoretically) learned, this ain't civ. what is interesting about your complaint is that for the longest time (up until megacorp iirc), going wide was the most optimal way to play and it's still a really strong way to play as the only real strength to going tall was in fact potentially faster advancements.

quitting when you're about to lose kinda doesn't work that well as it doesn't let you learn from your mistakes or how to power through setbacks. to each their own though.

Originally posted by you and literally everyone learning every game in existence:

There's some stuff I don't understand:

see quote attribution.

1) Administration, which seems to severely discourage wide growth. This seems to be the direction that 4X developers are taking nowadays, which is disappointing. Civ 5 is setup that way and I hate it. I've read a lot of forum posts where people say, "Just go over it, the penalties aren't that bad", but the thing is, yeah, they kind of are. But to the root level problem here: If you're going to create an artificial way to limit players from growing their empire, at LEAST give them tools to grow that limiter first, so they can THEN grow their empire. There are a few Administrator Research options, from what I've seen, but since the Research "tree" isn't something you can see and plan with, this isn't a reliable way to actually grow your empire. This is one of those mechanics that is just disappointing at best, frustrating at worst.

Empire Sprawl (of which one part is admin cap) has been in the game since I started playing (which, iirc was 1.7/1.8). it is also something that the majority of wide players typically ignore for the following reasons:

A) it's a soft cap, not a hard one.
B) it doesn't reduce anything, it just magnifies the costs by a percentage (meaning if you ramp up your production by that percent you nullify that)
C) as you grow, your cap grows and the penalty shrinks.

2) Navy. Ugh. I hate this part of the game. War should be interesting and fun; it's not. The fleet size (logistics, or whatever they call it) effectively works like Administration for your Navy; limiting you in really server ways. Oh sure, you can go over it - with massively penalties to upkeep. I've tried hoarding my energy credits and alloys so I can pump out several max fleets, go to war, and hope it's over before I go into the red on credits; forget it. Doesn't work. I had my Researchers take every fleet max option there is and put at least one Anchorage on every shipyard, but to no avail. I can only MAINTAIN two max fleets at a time. And since any battle that isn't against small forces results in lost ships, that means more and more time at Shipyards building new ones.

again, this is another soft cap. if your capacity is 100 but your economy can support 200, you build 200 when you're in war. the penalties to upkeep aren't all that extreme, they scale with how far over your capacity you are and from what I've seen isn't 1:1 (though i'm open to being proven wrong).

Don't hoard your resources, building your fleet steadily will allow you to see what you need and how to steer your economy so you can afford a bigger fleet. Once you reach the command limit for that fleet, start a new one (hell, you can even specialize them for cooperative engagements. have on fleet designed for close engagements and another for artillery in the same battles). if you need more than 2 fleets to take something on, you don't take it on.

But to the larger point - how the flip are you supposed to protect a fairly sizable empire with TWO fleets? I can't be done. And then the enemy, who is supposed to be "even" with me, rolls in with fleets doing 7LK damage. I put a max fleet together and it's somewhere around 4-5K. Forget if I don't have a max fleet; they're destroyed in seconds, and then the AI just hop-skip-jumps through my empire dominating everything in a matter of minutes. Then it's OVER.

sounds like you need to learn how starbases and platforms work. put a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of guns, debuff auras, and as many platforms as you can get away with and you have a base that will repel most fleets outright in the best case scenario and delay enemies from advancing long enough that you can send your fleets to intercept them. also, your 2 fleets of 4k beat a fleet of 7k.

Like, what kind of empire can't afford to have max fleets positioned at every choke point? Well, if it's Stellaris, then the player sure can't. You spend the whole game hoping and praying the AI doesn't declare war on you because no matter how fast you Research or try to build fleets, you're going to get rolled. Where is the fun in that?

I wouldn't put a fleet/army at every chokepoint in literally any game as i can find much more important and useful things to do with them (such as actually working towards winning the war....). Most (sane....) players will use whatever static defenses the game provides for that purpose. You also don't have to pray that you don't have war forced upon you as simply having a fleet (even if it's just a token one) works wonders for deterring hostility.

And it's not that I don't know how to prep for this stuff or plan ahead - it's that the game purposely clamps down on the players' ability to do any of that. Want to spread out and grab habitable planets? You're going to take a huge penalty. Want to build fleets so you're ready for that pesky neighbor? Well, don't, because if you do there's a good chance you'll be broke before your fleets have a chance to fire a shot. And heaven forbid you don't build your fleets at EXACTLY the right time... too soon, you're in the red, but too late... you're dead.

If this is the case, then you aren't just doing something fundamentally wrong. you are doing quite a lot fundamentally wrong.

I don't get it. So much of this game does stuff right. So much of the UI is good. But these clamp-down mechanics stink. And then Influence... krikey, it's needed FOR EVERYTHING, but you can only grow it a couple units per month? What? So if I want to be diplomatic and offer diplomatic things to my neighbors, well, then I won't be able to expand, because that's going to use up all my Influence. Or I can expand, and then not be able to do things like Edicts, or make offers. What the heck is that?

I'll concede the influence part because it's also a gripe of mine (and I'm a tall player). I simply accept this purely on the grounds of of the fact that while it may not be fun to have expansion throttled, it's a lot less fun when the only real strategies are zerg rush and zerg rush harder.

I thought GC3's latest DLC was an exercise in bondage, but good golly... Stellaris feels like handcuffs are around your wrist, feet, arms... and you're tired to a post.

kinky.

EDIT: also, as far as research is concerned, yeah it can be frustrating at first (like you, i come from a pedigree of having the full tree laid out before me in all it's glory) but it becomes less so when you learn how to stack the deck in your favor.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Originally posted by ColorsFade:

I'm an experience 4X player, back to my days of playing Civ2. I've put 1600+ hours into Galactic Civilizations 3. I play as a conquest style player in those games because that's what's fun.

Stellaris seems designed to really clamp down on Conquest players.

I've played three games now on the easiest AI and they're all losses (or games I just quit when it was obvious I was going to lose).

There's some stuff I don't understand:

1) Administration, which seems to severely discourage wide growth. This seems to be the direction that 4X developers are taking nowadays, which is disappointing. Civ 5 is setup that way and I hate it. I've read a lot of forum posts where people say, "Just go over it, the penalties aren't that bad", but the thing is, yeah, they kind of are. But to the root level problem here: If you're going to create an artificial way to limit players from growing their empire, at LEAST give them tools to grow that limiter first, so they can THEN grow their empire. There are a few Administrator Research options, from what I've seen, but since the Research "tree" isn't something you can see and plan with, this isn't a reliable way to actually grow your empire. This is one of those mechanics that is just disappointing at best, frustrating at worst.

2) Navy. Ugh. I hate this part of the game. War should be interesting and fun; it's not. The fleet size (logistics, or whatever they call it) effectively works like Administration for your Navy; limiting you in really server ways. Oh sure, you can go over it - with massively penalties to upkeep. I've tried hoarding my energy credits and alloys so I can pump out several max fleets, go to war, and hope it's over before I go into the red on credits; forget it. Doesn't work. I had my Researchers take every fleet max option there is and put at least one Anchorage on every shipyard, but to no avail. I can only MAINTAIN two max fleets at a time. And since any battle that isn't against small forces results in lost ships, that means more and more time at Shipyards building new ones.

But to the larger point - how the flip are you supposed to protect a fairly sizable empire with TWO fleets? I can't be done. And then the enemy, who is supposed to be "even" with me, rolls in with fleets doing 7LK damage. I put a max fleet together and it's somewhere around 4-5K. Forget if I don't have a max fleet; they're destroyed in seconds, and then the AI just hop-skip-jumps through my empire dominating everything in a matter of minutes. Then it's OVER.

Like, what kind of empire can't afford to have max fleets positioned at every choke point? Well, if it's Stellaris, then the player sure can't. You spend the whole game hoping and praying the AI doesn't declare war on you because no matter how fast you Research or try to build fleets, you're going to get rolled. Where is the fun in that?

And it's not that I don't know how to prep for this stuff or plan ahead - it's that the game purposely clamps down on the players' ability to do any of that. Want to spread out and grab habitable planets? You're going to take a huge penalty. Want to build fleets so you're ready for that pesky neighbor? Well, don't, because if you do there's a good chance you'll be broke before your fleets have a chance to fire a shot. And heaven forbid you don't build your fleets at EXACTLY the right time... too soon, you're in the red, but too late... you're dead.

I don't get it. So much of this game does stuff right. So much of the UI is good. But these clamp-down mechanics stink. And then Influence... krikey, it's needed FOR EVERYTHING, but you can only grow it a couple units per month? What? So if I want to be diplomatic and offer diplomatic things to my neighbors, well, then I won't be able to expand, because that's going to use up all my Influence. Or I can expand, and then not be able to do things like Edicts, or make offers. What the heck is that?

I thought GC3's latest DLC was an exercise in bondage, but good golly... Stellaris feels like handcuffs are around your wrist, feet, arms... and you're tired to a post.

Actually I love the discouragement of wide because (like in civ6) it becomes extremely broken if you just mass take over.. you just keep snowballing it.

The one thing civ5 has over civ6 is that better balance on wide/tall.

So my tastes are different from yours in that area. I just prefur more balance over power.

Stellaris is pretty fine on conquest I feel, as larger is better if you properly manage it. However it's generally worse to take over depending on your ethics so you do have to plan accordingly.

For example my fanatic egalitarian xenophiles are great at taking over people because my people are generally very happy in the empire and easily drawn to the ethics.

The influence is done in a limited amount in order to provide that balance on how much you can just take over. Though you can still take over a fair amount just by vassalizing which is the big work around.

Edicts are primarily there for empires that aren't expanding or have it to spare.
If you don't have enough for edicts then you're spending them elsewhere.. that's the cost.
You don't have to have edicts.. they're generally just a nice boost for people who have influence.

If you want to be diplomatic and still hold influence with no cost at all. Be a fanatic xenophile with the diplomatic tradition. No cost at all.

If you want to expand no costs then a total war type of empire is for you, otherwise you have to plan out claims carefully if you want their systems directly. It's just the cost rather than grabbing swaths of territory with no real investment beyond getting the jump on someone else.

[Minoris]

A lot of good answers here, lots of good tips, but one thing was never mentioned, so I'll allow myself to be "that guy": Stellaris started its life as a hybrid between 4X and grand-strat, but with every update it's always getting a tad closer and closer to other Paradox grand-strat titles. Any comparison with traditional 4X is to be taken with a grain of salt, particularly Civilizations (and GalCiv) games.

When compared to other PDS titles, limitations on war, expansion, battles take an all new meaning and is something to be expected.

[Nolo Contendere]

Originally posted by Minoris:

A lot of good answers here, lots of good tips, but one thing was never mentioned, so I'll allow myself to be "that guy": Stellaris started its life as a hybrid between 4X and grand-strat, but with every update it's always getting a tad closer and closer to other Paradox grand-strat titles. Any comparison with traditional 4X is to be taken with a grain of salt, particularly Civilizations (and GalCiv) games.

When compared to other PDS titles, limitations on war, expansion, battles take an all new meaning and is something to be expected.

tbf, this is my only pdx grand strat. so I didn't bother mentioning it.