Stellaris
I'm ready to join flaming the new pop growth mechanics
I was kind of taking a "let's just see how bad it is" position to the new pop mechanics. But that is now over. I invited a few friends to try Stellaris for more or less the first time. One guy had tried the game waaay back before even the megacorp expansion.
We decided to play in a federation, and therefore, to not get in each others way too much.

You would think i would end up getting ahead with my 700 hours of experience, so i decided to play a pacifist habitat-dweller megacorp and not an aggressive empire, just to see how badly the game has gotten balanced towards aggresive empires. And lo and behold, I was crazy ahead on both tech and pop growth for the first half of the game, but once i hit 500 pops (with the other being under 300 at that time) my popgrowth more or less stopped and i was quickly overtaken, without any way other than aggressive expansion to save me. Considering pops are the most important resource, I don't see any way to win the game without conquest or raiding fleet stance anymore. You simply stagnate mid-game no matter how far you are ahead. I was almost twice the pop-size of my human co-players and once i hit 500 pops i was quickly overtaken in tech and resources.

It just seems odd to balance a game that had so many avenues of winning to these two options.
Devs, you should either let pops grow late game, or impose some serious hinderances to just eating other civs population. The fact that you can grow 200 pops pr conquest war mid-game with pretty much zero consequences with pacifist empires stagnating completely around the same time makes me seriously question how much you playtested your patch before pushing it.

Also, ringworlds are pretty useless now. By the time you get them, your pops have stopped growing.
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Εμφάνιση 16-30 από 49 σχόλια
500 pops aren't really much, with the 3.0.2 version this would translate into 350 required progression. The fabulous immigration Ecumenopolis with 25.6 / month would still produce a pop every 13.7 months. And you already need less pops to produce the same.

Just the classic thing where your population spins completely out of control past 2300 is gone for good (where you would build ring world after ring world), so you need to plan ahead and have most of your colonies in place at that point.

Note that this mechanic change has also removed all the mid/endgame slowdown on larger maps. So it's not like they did this to troll the players.



You could also try the beta, which has a base curve of pops *0.25 rather than *0.5 in the live version. Even less jobs producing more, and two sliders to adjust the new mechanics to your taste.
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από CrUsHeR; 8 Μαϊ 2021, 12:42
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από CrUsHeR:
500 pops aren't really much, with the 3.0.2 version this would translate into 350 required progression. The fabulous immigration Ecumenopolis with 25.6 / month would still produce a pop every 13.7 months. And you already need less pops to produce the same.

Just the classic thing where your population spins completely out of control past 2300 is gone for good (where you would build ring world after ring world), so you need to plan ahead and have most of your colonies in place at that point.

Note that this mechanic change has also removed all the mid/endgame slowdown on larger maps. So it's not like they did this to troll the players.



You could also try the beta, which has a base curve of pops *0.25 rather than *0.5 in the live version. Even less jobs producing more, and two sliders to adjust the new mechanics to your taste.
I didn't say progress stopped. I said i stagnated and fell behind from that point on, even though I was well in the lead from the beginning. I understand the mechanics of it. My point was that the changes made to pops only negatively impact more peace-loving pacifist empires, which kind of sucks for a game that prides itself on being "play your way".
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από RodHull:
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από PhailRaptor:
The pop growth changes are inherently nonsensical before you even get to the gameplay ramifications from them.

Lets not go back there, these arguments were had largely a week ago and it wasn't pretty. By and large the upshot of most of them was "lots of things in Stellaris are nonsensical so why are we singling that bit out as special?"

Argue its not fun, or it ruins the game for you or that you want the freedome to choose your own limits. But for the love of god don't go down the 'it nonsensical' rabbit hole.

Oh, so the term "nonsensical" is offensive to you? Ok I'll try to rephrase.

It completely breaks immersion that a newly founded colony would care even the slightest how many people live on the capitol planet, or that this caring would in any way reflect on their ability to reproduce.

Is that better?
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από PhailRaptor:
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από RodHull:

Lets not go back there, these arguments were had largely a week ago and it wasn't pretty. By and large the upshot of most of them was "lots of things in Stellaris are nonsensical so why are we singling that bit out as special?"

Argue its not fun, or it ruins the game for you or that you want the freedome to choose your own limits. But for the love of god don't go down the 'it nonsensical' rabbit hole.

Oh, so the term "nonsensical" is offensive to you? Ok I'll try to rephrase.

It completely breaks immersion that a newly founded colony would care even the slightest how many people live on the capitol planet, or that this caring would in any way reflect on their ability to reproduce.

Is that better?

What he said...
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Blech:
I’m ready to join flaming the new pop growth mechanics
Too late. There is now a beta where you can customize these mechanics in the galaxy creation
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Blech:
I was kind of taking a "let's just see how bad it is" position to the new pop mechanics. But that is now over. I invited a few friends to try Stellaris for more or less the first time. One guy had tried the game waaay back before even the megacorp expansion.
We decided to play in a federation, and therefore, to not get in each others way too much.

You would think i would end up getting ahead with my 700 hours of experience, so i decided to play a pacifist habitat-dweller megacorp and not an aggressive empire, just to see how badly the game has gotten balanced towards aggresive empires. And lo and behold, I was crazy ahead on both tech and pop growth for the first half of the game, but once i hit 500 pops (with the other being under 300 at that time) my popgrowth more or less stopped and i was quickly overtaken, without any way other than aggressive expansion to save me. Considering pops are the most important resource, I don't see any way to win the game without conquest or raiding fleet stance anymore. You simply stagnate mid-game no matter how far you are ahead. I was almost twice the pop-size of my human co-players and once i hit 500 pops i was quickly overtaken in tech and resources.

It just seems odd to balance a game that had so many avenues of winning to these two options.
Devs, you should either let pops grow late game, or impose some serious hinderances to just eating other civs population. The fact that you can grow 200 pops pr conquest war mid-game with pretty much zero consequences with pacifist empires stagnating completely around the same time makes me seriously question how much you playtested your patch before pushing it.

Also, ringworlds are pretty useless now. By the time you get them, your pops have stopped growing.
Now wait to see how it feels like as a devouring swarm when you can't conquer pops, abduct pops, enslave pops, create vassals for pops, or any other way to get around this crap.

It's the worst civ you could possibly play in stellaris History, and the crisis buffs don't even make up for 1/100th of the debuffs.

I really hope they are looking in a way around it that 100% involves deleting this mechanic from the game, it's not compatible with stellaris period.
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από VoiD; 8 Μαϊ 2021, 14:23
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από VoiD:
I really hope they are looking in a way around it that 100% involves deleting this mechanic from the game, it's not compatible with stellaris period.

The current beta has two new game settings; both for the logistics growth as well as the progression variables.

So if you want, you can change these to pre-nemesis values (1x logistics and 0x progression).
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από CrUsHeR; 8 Μαϊ 2021, 14:36
RodHull (Αποκλεισμένος) 8 Μαϊ 2021, 15:32 
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από PhailRaptor:
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από RodHull:

Lets not go back there, these arguments were had largely a week ago and it wasn't pretty. By and large the upshot of most of them was "lots of things in Stellaris are nonsensical so why are we singling that bit out as special?"

Argue its not fun, or it ruins the game for you or that you want the freedome to choose your own limits. But for the love of god don't go down the 'it nonsensical' rabbit hole.

Oh, so the term "nonsensical" is offensive to you? Ok I'll try to rephrase.

It completely breaks immersion that a newly founded colony would care even the slightest how many people live on the capitol planet, or that this caring would in any way reflect on their ability to reproduce.

Is that better?

You missed the point of my post sport. I am not 'offended' by anything you said (or will ever say fyi) I was merely pointing out the folly of going down the 'its nonsensical' rabbit hole in a game filled to the brim with utterly nonsensical ideas and mechanics, few of which hold up under any close examination. Like for some reason nobody has ever thought it 'nonsensical' that...

- Every organic race eats the same food
- Breaths the same gases
- All races (even robots) use the same propulsion and weapons systems in all their ships
- All use some weird form of currency called influence to talk to one another
- All observe odd Medieval rules of declaring war
- Respect each others borders in open space
- Space only operates in 2 dimensions
- I could go on like this for literally ages......

My point was complain about the mechanic being bad, or not fun. But to complain about it being nonsensical is pointless.
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από CrUsHeR:
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από VoiD:
I really hope they are looking in a way around it that 100% involves deleting this mechanic from the game, it's not compatible with stellaris period.

The current beta has two new game settings; both for the logistics growth as well as the progression variables.

So if you want, you can change these to pre-nemesis values (1x logistics and 0x progression).

Does this remove the mechanic effectively completely? Does it make it so a late-game colony doesn't decide to have less children just because the empire they belong to is at some arbitrary threshold?

I remember when the FTL changes came, and people were actually peddling the BS that no FTL options had been removed, just made research rather than starting options, which really didn't make sense alongside all the other talking-points PDX and their defenders were spouting.
This thread is kinda late.
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από RodHull:
You missed the point of my post sport. I am not 'offended' by anything you said (or will ever say fyi) I was merely pointing out the folly of going down the 'its nonsensical' rabbit hole in a game filled to the brim with utterly nonsensical ideas and mechanics, few of which hold up under any close examination. Like for some reason nobody has ever thought it 'nonsensical' that...

- Every organic race eats the same food
- Breaths the same gases
- All races (even robots) use the same propulsion and weapons systems in all their ships
- All use some weird form of currency called influence to talk to one another
- All observe odd Medieval rules of declaring war
- Respect each others borders in open space
- Space only operates in 2 dimensions
- I could go on like this for literally ages......

My point was complain about the mechanic being bad, or not fun. But to complain about it being nonsensical is pointless.

Let's break those down and compare them to the pop mechanic, shall we?

- Every organic race eats the same food
I mean, for starters, we don't know what "food" constitutes. It's a catch-all term. And, really, is it all that surprising that species are eating the same food? Most species on Earth eat similar things; large variance is rather rare.

So, one can easily suspend their disbelief here.

- Breaths the same gases
No. This isn't hard to believe at all. Almost every species in Stellaris is carbon based life, meaning organic molecules comprised of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen (to keep it simple).

Organic life, as far as we're aware, will breathe primarily oxygen. That is the case for most species on Earth, like the food mentioned previously. There are exceptions, but they're just that.

The only ones that differ are Lithoids (silicon based life) and robots, both of which...can easily settle every planet.

So, one can easily suspend their disbelief here...assuming they had any?

- All races (even robots) use the same propulsion and weapons systems in all their ships
Funny, I remember people complaining about this back when they removed different FTL types...weird how that works.

Anyways, physics are constant. A gun built by a human would, functionally, be little different than a gun built by a walking mushroom. Sure, the actual engineering may vary, but the physics will remain the same.

Something Stellaris actually "simulates" as it were when you scan destroyed ships; you aren't unlocking the tech most of the time. Just getting progress in the tech; that is to say, reverse engineering to help you develop your own.

- All use some weird form of currency called influence to talk to one another
Come on...the game literally tells you influence is nothing more than political power of your empire. It's in the name.

It's not a currency, it's how willing both your people and other empires are to listen to you (or at least acknowledge you).

It's only a currency so the player can comprehend it.

- All observe odd Medieval rules of declaring war
I admit this one is a bit harder to justify, but at the same time...it's not hard to believe either.

We have some sort of universal translator after all, as well as the galactic community. Suspending disbelief here is pretty easy.

- Respect each others borders in open space
This is because the only way to travel interstellar is through hyperlanes. It makes it pretty easy to declare what your borders are if you can only travel from one specific star to the next.

Actual open/closed borders is a bit more complex. One could argue that it's not so much borders are closed as it is "enter here and we will declare war", which (most) empires would honor.

- Space only operates in 2 dimensions

Player convenience and nothing more. There's no reason why, say, space battles would go differently in 3D vs 2D, it just makes it easier for the player to follow.






Out of all of these, it's only the whole declaring war bits that are iffy. They're not unbelievable though.


The empire-wide pop cap, however, is utterly arbitrary and contrived. There is absolutely no reason why having 1000 pops spread throughout your empire would make a fresh new colony take years to grow. Carrying Capacity already covers how populations increase and decrease, while the population capacity of an empire would simply be the capacities of the planets.

The "best" argument one could make is that wealthy nations IRL tend to have lower birth rates, but even then...Japan having being near its capacity doesn't suddenly mean Niger's birth rate slows down, which is an okay comparison for planet vs planet.
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Lex Looper:
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από CrUsHeR:

The current beta has two new game settings; both for the logistics growth as well as the progression variables.

So if you want, you can change these to pre-nemesis values (1x logistics and 0x progression).

Does this remove the mechanic effectively completely? Does it make it so a late-game colony doesn't decide to have less children just because the empire they belong to is at some arbitrary threshold?

I remember when the FTL changes came, and people were actually peddling the BS that no FTL options had been removed, just made research rather than starting options, which really didn't make sense alongside all the other talking-points PDX and their defenders were spouting.
The diary has been out for a few days now, maybe read it and you will know the long answer. Short answer is yes. There is a slider for how pops affect growth. Considering the pic showed the 0.25x being the middle of the slider, we can safely assume that there is a 0x too. And lets say there is no 0x, what would be the lowest? 0.1x? I think that would be fine. People wanted a slider, here is a slider.
RodHull (Αποκλεισμένος) 8 Μαϊ 2021, 17:02 
Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από koimeiji:
So, one can easily suspend their disbelief here.

DING DING we have a WINNER !!

That was literally the point I was making. People 'suspend their disbelief' or 'invent reasons that abstract systems work' in a multitude of ways each time they fire the game up. But for some reason with pop growth they become completely literal and refuse to just accept that *Insert whatever reason* is why pop growth slows down. Like you just systematically explained away all those things (perfectly reasonably I might add) but you could use that same logic to explain away the pop growth mechanic (if you wanted to) but thats the point people don't 'want to' so they don't.

That's probably because you don't enjoy the mechanic, which is a far more solid and valid complaint. But for some reason people keep going down this odd argument dead end that it 'doesn't make sense'

As I said arguing it 'doesn't make sense' is a pointless route, loads of the things in Stellaris 'don't make sense'

Argue it is not fun, or bad, or lazy or whatever but don't argue it 'doesn't make sense' or if you do then apply that same rigid unbending logic to all areas of the game.
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από RodHull; 8 Μαϊ 2021, 17:05
OP is right, the game has forced people into playing specific types of empires. A pacifist isolationalist empire was basically thrown out by the devs.

Industrial districts murder the voidborne start, you have to get advanced habitats to keep alloy upkeep low which still murders your progression. By the time you get enough habitats your out teched and out gunned.
Just make optimal breeding worlds that make a little less resources but have max pop growth, pretty easy.I can beat ai being void dweller pacifist.You just need to shift your brain into a different meta.
Τελευταία επεξεργασία από Dustreaper; 8 Μαϊ 2021, 18:00
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