How hard is this game?

[Usernamehere]

I want to get into this game but I feel discouraged by the fact that it might be unbalanced and difficult.
By unbalanced, I mean sort of like in EU4 where Ragusa can't put a dent in the Ottoman Empire. I want to be able to fight back against threats in this game, and not just know I'm going to die as soon as a rival empire declares war on me. That's no fun.

Hopefully it's not too bad on easier difficulties? I'm looking for an experience where I can use skill and expertise to overcome opponents that are stronger than myself, if not just to get stronger than them outright.

[Leoscar]

The AI can't do anything without the bonuses of higher difficulties. The game is easy even for a newer player. You can play whatever you like and win against the AI unless you're playing with settings that give it huge advantages, and even then I'm sure some madman could do it with a poorly built Empire.

The only difficulty comes from actually learning the game, there is a lot to keep track of when you're a new player and you might need a few games to figure which thing does what, but as you get better you'll realize it's really not that bad. Oh and the tutorial is useless, like, completly.

Is the game balanced? Absolutly not. Some origins, ethics and civics are very strong and will give you a serious advantage, while some are straight up useless. This isn't a problem when playing against the AI, but in PVP, well it's something.

[Usernamehere]

Originally posted by Leoscar:

The AI can't do anything without the bonuses of higher difficulties. The game is easy even for a newer player. You can play whatever you like and win against the AI unless you're playing with settings that give it huge advantages, and even then I'm sure some madman could do it with a poorly built Empire.

The only difficulty comes from actually learning the game, there is a lot to keep track of when you're a new player and you might need a few games to figure which thing does what, but as you get better you'll realize it's really not that bad. Oh and the tutorial is useless, like, completly.

Is the game balanced? Absolutly not. Some origins, ethics and civics are very strong and will give you a serious advantage, while some are straight up useless. This isn't a problem when playing against the AI, but in PVP, well it's something.

Alright, I appreciate it. Still, I don't like the idea of having no chance against a hostile faction just because they're bigger than me. In other strategy games I excel at making a small force fight with the strength of a large army, so enemy size often doesn't matter. How bad is the fleet combat, since it's decided by numbers and RNG?

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Starting conditions here remind your average RTS rather than average PDS title, so it's relatively balanced. Same with progression: everyone gets same(ish) bonuses. You can still get screwed by RNG of galaxy generation somewhat, but can always start over if that's the case.

It also has trademark PDS AI that is notoriously bad at every game they try to make it play, so shouldn't be too bad, yeah.

[Zane87]

Most would agree that it is not very difficult after a while, especially since the AI in vanilla is not really "top notch". Even on highest difficulty you can win against the AI because of that.

However, first that doesn't mean it's boring. The game has several scripted crises that can seriously screw you over if you are not prepared and they add quite the nice challenge.
Second, the game has quite the learning curve. It is not exactly complex, most things are easy to grasp and understand, but there are a lot of different mechanics just like I imagine in EU4.

About balance, well, if you play multiplayer there are some origins banned because they make things too easy for the others to be competitive. But for Single Player, no enemy faction is unbeatable. You will lose the first time, probably not against standard empires but against crises factions or fallen empires, but that's part of the learning curve. But there are no unbeatable enemies in Singleplayer imo.

[θάνατος]

is 5/10 with 10/10 if you muck up your build. or the ai get ahead of you.

it can be unbeatable.

[coolman552]

if you have experience on any other paradox game then this is the easiest paradox game ever

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Usernamehere:

Alright, I appreciate it. Still, I don't like the idea of having no chance against a hostile faction just because they're bigger than me. In other strategy games I excel at making a small force fight with the strength of a large army, so enemy size often doesn't matter. How bad is the fleet combat, since it's decided by numbers and RNG?

That is mostly decided by fleet size (and saner composition/designs, since AI pretty much uses randomizer for their fleets). Sure, you can tech up to compensate for smaller fleet sizes, but if you let some genocidal take over half the galaxy, don't expect to win: in the end, it all comes down to attrition and amount of resources you can pump out for your fleet.

If you want a game that rewards "tall" playstyle - this is not it; at least, over the years it was steadily moving away from any kind of penalties that slow down snowballing of large empires. Sure, you can still play "tall" (even successfully against incompetent AI), but it's suboptimal. This might change in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.

[Usernamehere]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by Usernamehere:

Alright, I appreciate it. Still, I don't like the idea of having no chance against a hostile faction just because they're bigger than me. In other strategy games I excel at making a small force fight with the strength of a large army, so enemy size often doesn't matter. How bad is the fleet combat, since it's decided by numbers and RNG?

That is mostly decided by fleet size (and saner composition/designes, since AI pretty much uses randomizer to get their fleets). Sure, you can tech up to compensate for smaller fleet sizes, but if you let some genocidal take over half the galaxy, don't expect to win: in the end, it all comes down to attrition and amount of resources you can pump out for your fleet.

If you want a game that rewards "tall" playstyle - this is not it; at least, over the years it was steadily moving away from any kind of penalties that slow down snowballing of large empires. Sure, you can still play "tall" (even successfully against incompetent AI), but it's suboptimal. This might change in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.

What I was basically referring to in that respect was the time that, in another strategy game (not a Paradox one, mind you) I took on an empire that was three times my size head-on and was able to win.

I guess what I mean when I ask this is, is this a game that has some strategic skill involved? Or just rewards numbers know-how? All my strategic knowledge from strategy games might be useless in a game that's really about making sure your number is higher than everyone else's number.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Usernamehere:

I guess what I mean when I ask this is, is this a game that rewards skill? Or just rewards numbers know-how? All my strategic knowledge from strategy games might be useless in a game that's really about making sure your number is higher than everyone else's number.

Latter, mostly. Unless your'e into abusing AI inability to mnake proper strategic decisions: like taking detour to enter your space from undefended side, while you safely take all their platets. Ultimately, combat is still about having bigger doomstack, despite few changes that were supposed to fix that.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Usernamehere:

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

That is mostly decided by fleet size (and saner composition/designes, since AI pretty much uses randomizer to get their fleets). Sure, you can tech up to compensate for smaller fleet sizes, but if you let some genocidal take over half the galaxy, don't expect to win: in the end, it all comes down to attrition and amount of resources you can pump out for your fleet.

If you want a game that rewards "tall" playstyle - this is not it; at least, over the years it was steadily moving away from any kind of penalties that slow down snowballing of large empires. Sure, you can still play "tall" (even successfully against incompetent AI), but it's suboptimal. This might change in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.

What I was basically referring to in that respect was the time that, in another strategy game (not a Paradox one, mind you) I took on an empire that was three times my size head-on and was able to win.

I guess what I mean when I ask this is, is this a game that has some strategic skill involved? Or just rewards numbers know-how? All my strategic knowledge from strategy games might be useless in a game that's really about making sure your number is higher than everyone else's number.

That is very much possible against the AI. But here size is more represented by pops. Hugs is correct though, you will almost always have more pops and thus more economic output and also thus better research and better/more ships if you go wide.

You can win as a small tall empire, especially against the AI, and you can go reasonably far with a tall empire when you build Ringworlds and Habitats near everywhere, but wide is better, all else equal. Not that the AI can make much use of that though.

[Leoscar]

Originally posted by Usernamehere:

Alright, I appreciate it. Still, I don't like the idea of having no chance against a hostile faction just because they're bigger than me. In other strategy games I excel at making a small force fight with the strength of a large army, so enemy size often doesn't matter. How bad is the fleet combat, since it's decided by numbers and RNG?

Fleet combat isn't random, the outcome is decided by the size of the fleet, so whoever has the bigger D wins. But there is subtelty, if you build your ships to counter your ennemy, you can win with a weaker fleet, and there is your general fleet composition, a fleet of battleship will be countered by corvettes for example. Unfortunatly the AI will never adapt to your ships so going full long range battleship will always have the best results.

In general though, smaller=weaker. This is especially true since the recent updates, that made it so there is absolutly no reason to play tall beyond roleplaying/challenge runs.

Originally posted by Zane87:

However, first that doesn't mean it's boring. The game has several scripted crises that can seriously screw you over if you are not prepared and they add quite the nice challenge.
Second, the game has quite the learning curve. It is not exactly complex, most things are easy to grasp and understand, but there are a lot of different mechanics just like I imagine in EU4.

About balance, well, if you play multiplayer there are some origins banned because they make things too easy for the others to be competitive. But for Single Player, no enemy faction is unbeatable. You will lose the first time, probably not against standard empires but against crises factions or fallen empires, but that's part of the learning curve. But there are no unbeatable enemies in Singleplayer imo.

This guy gets it, Stellaris might not be a difficult or particulary deep game but it's very fun, and the randomness really makes the game replayable. Though as you get better these events that can "screw you over" will always kneel under your overwhelming strengh, but if that's the case the crisis strengh slider exists :p

[Glorwyn]

By the sounds of things it would appear you want to be this tiny city state of a nation using the best of the best stuff to zip around and take out 30 ships each.

That's not how it works.

It plays almost like WW2 but in space where at the end of the day it's your industrial capacity multiplied by your tech versus their industrial capacity multiplied by their tech.

Against AI you can get some inherit advantages, knowing where fleets go, fleet composition, luring enemy fleets into stations and then attacking them with everything in the area, etc. But at the end of the day you can't be a nationlet with 5 systems and hope to take out someone with 250 systems.

[MikeisaGoob]

The game really isint that hard even on max difficulty short of being a madman and setting the crisis empire to x25. All the "difficulty" slider does is give enemy empires bonus resources and fleet capacity basically forcing you to have to work twice as hard to be able to keep up with enemy empires economies and tech levels but the thing is is that AI is still stupid, it will waste resources on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and build non optimal fleets meaning just the fact that you are smarter than the AI outweighs all the bonuses they get on higher difficulty.

TLDR The game cant really be considered hard just so confusing for new players to learn that it has the illusion of being hard, honestly IMO it isint hard enough as right now I can only enjoy the game and have a slight challenge at grand admiral with around 5x crisis fleet strength but hey there are always mods to fix that

[MikeisaGoob]

The fun in stellaris doesent come from difficulty but from the replayability, there are so many different origin and government combinations you can try plus so many events that you will never have the same game, hell play around till you get the worm in waiting quest line, its one of the longest and coolest lines in the game also try on the shoulders of giants origin

[Usernamehere]

Originally posted by Glorval:

By the sounds of things it would appear you want to be this tiny city state of a nation using the best of the best stuff to zip around and take out 30 ships each.

That's not how it works.

It plays almost like WW2 but in space where at the end of the day it's your industrial capacity multiplied by your tech versus their industrial capacity multiplied by their tech.

Against AI you can get some inherit advantages, knowing where fleets go, fleet composition, luring enemy fleets into stations and then attacking them with everything in the area, etc. But at the end of the day you can't be a nationlet with 5 systems and hope to take out someone with 250 systems.

You're half right, but not completely. Using World War II as the example, beating the entire Axis as Luxembourg is ridiculous and I know that's not likely to happen and that's not what I want - but I just want to make sure I'm not getting into a game where the Frances will ALWAYS die to the Germanies, and the Germanies will ALWAYS die to the Soviet Unions. You know what I mean?

And again, I've played other strategy games before where I've been able to use strategy and planning to beat opponents that were much larger and more powerful. I just want to make sure this game has room for skill and it's not entirely numbers.