Can I play Stellaris in a relaxed manner?

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

I will try to keep it short. Last I played was back in 2019 (2.2 or 2.3) - I played until the mid game and then life took over. Now, I am back to this game and have watched a few videos to get a handle on what is important currently.

The problem is that my natural tendency and life situation are in opposition to each other currently. I want to play well, beat higher difficulties, read guides etc. But I barely have 10-15h per week to play, and not every week! Ultimately, what ends up happening is that I leave and play something simpler like an RPG.

Can I play it in a relaxed manner like Ensign or the difficulty above it? I tried Cadet, but we get bonus production there, which just won't teach me how to handle the economy. What is the difficulty (scaling) where you can no longer relax and have to min-max? How do you play when you want to relax - I mean what do you focus on, and what do you kind of do in a hands off manner?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

The difficutly scale you can relax on depends on your skill level.
A friend of mine refuses to play below grand admiral because he is that good.
Without the cheats he woudnt feel challange.
Where i refused to play above normal because i hate ai cheats.

In order to play a relaxing game of stellaris:
Play on normal.
Play roleplay builds.
Min max builds are boring.
For example:
The reign of challange is all about getting as much done before your ruler dies.
Or the relection challange.
Where you lose if your voted out of office.
or the turn into a dicatorship challange.
Where you got to furn a fanatic elegerian into a fanatic authorian dicatorship.

I find fun lies in creating stories with your empire.
Meaby name the leaders and record there success.

[Half Phased]

Scaling difficulty means that the AI starts the game with no bonuses, but steadily gains them as the game progresses, reaching the full bonuses that it’s difficulty level would get at the end game date.

Generally it’ll mean that the AI can’t curb stomp a player early game with massive inflated production, at the trade off that it’ll not provide as much of a challenge.

[jacobellinger]

Originally posted by Strategy_Game_Lover:

I will try to keep it short. Last I played was back in 2019 (2.2 or 2.3) - I played until the mid game and then life took over. Now, I am back to this game and have watched a few videos to get a handle on what is important currently.

The problem is that my natural tendency and life situation are in opposition to each other currently. I want to play well, beat higher difficulties, read guides etc. But I barely have 10-15h per week to play, and not every week! Ultimately, what ends up happening is that I leave and play something simpler like an RPG.

Can I play it in a relaxed manner like Ensign or the difficulty above it? I tried Cadet, but we get bonus production there, which just won't teach me how to handle the economy. What is the difficulty (scaling) where you can no longer relax and have to min-max? How do you play when you want to relax - I mean what do you focus on, and what do you kind of do in a hands off manner?

world gen settings can help here. play as a race that does not care about world habitabillity, disable garanteed worlds (otherwise the ai gets them too) then choose whatever difficulty you want, ALLOW advanced nahbers and make friends with them and they will defend you. now you can still play on harder difficulties with a little more breathing room.
the only thing to take note of is this requires a bit of rng that you are able to make friends with your neighbor. Also a little trick that I use to do is intentionally get in a war with a fallen empire mid game before I can beat them but white peace after killing a few ships because researching their broken ships can give op tech early even if they beat you they usually just humiliate but it's worth the tech it gets you.

There are a lot of builds that are not (op) but lets say "strong' but without knowing how you like to play I don't want to say which one you should pick but I like playing as fanatic speritulest/zenophile because you can make friends quickly and unity basically makes itself so for me I consider that specific type of empire more relaxed both from what I mentioned and also because keeping your factions happy is pretty easy and also aside from a few specific empire types it's not that hard to make friends with pretty much anyone.

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

The difficutly scale you can relax on depends on your skill level.
A friend of mine refuses to play below grand admiral because he is that good.
Without the cheats he woudnt feel challange.
Where i refused to play above normal because i hate ai cheats.

In order to play a relaxing game of stellaris:
Play on normal.
Play roleplay builds.
Min max builds are boring.
For example:
The reign of challange is all about getting as much done before your ruler dies.
Or the relection challange.
Where you lose if your voted out of office.
or the turn into a dicatorship challange.
Where you got to furn a fanatic elegerian into a fanatic authorian dicatorship.

I find fun lies in creating stories with your empire.
Meaby name the leaders and record there success.

Thanks for the reply. I guess my question would be more along this line - you say that you have fun creating your stories. Can you do that without worrying about falling behind at Ensign difficulty or slightly above it? Can you ignore some parts of the annoying micromanagement - eg resettling pops manually.

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

Originally posted by jacobellinger:

Originally posted by Strategy_Game_Lover:

I will try to keep it short. Last I played was back in 2019 (2.2 or 2.3) - I played until the mid game and then life took over. Now, I am back to this game and have watched a few videos to get a handle on what is important currently.

The problem is that my natural tendency and life situation are in opposition to each other currently. I want to play well, beat higher difficulties, read guides etc. But I barely have 10-15h per week to play, and not every week! Ultimately, what ends up happening is that I leave and play something simpler like an RPG.

Can I play it in a relaxed manner like Ensign or the difficulty above it? I tried Cadet, but we get bonus production there, which just won't teach me how to handle the economy. What is the difficulty (scaling) where you can no longer relax and have to min-max? How do you play when you want to relax - I mean what do you focus on, and what do you kind of do in a hands off manner?

world gen settings can help here. play as a race that does not care about world habitabillity, disable garanteed worlds (otherwise the ai gets them too) then choose whatever difficulty you want, ALLOW advanced nahbers and make friends with them and they will defend you. now you can still play on harder difficulties with a little more breathing room.
the only thing to take note of is this requires a bit of rng that you are able to make friends with your neighbor. Also a little trick that I use to do is intentionally get in a war with a fallen empire mid game before I can beat them but white peace after killing a few ships because researching their broken ships can give op tech early even if they beat you they usually just humiliate but it's worth the tech it gets you.

There are a lot of builds that are not (op) but lets say "strong' but without knowing how you like to play I don't want to say which one you should pick but I like playing as fanatic speritulest/zenophile because you can make friends quickly and unity basically makes itself so for me I consider that specific type of empire more relaxed both from what I mentioned and also because keeping your factions happy is pretty easy and also aside from a few specific empire types it's not that hard to make friends with pretty much anyone.

Thanks for the reply. Until now, I have played more of a standard peaceful human democratic state who won't commit evil acts most of the time. But is also ruthless if someone wrongs us. And loves technology. Personally, I am more into economy and politics in these kind of games, with a bit of war when necessary. That is also kind of how I play Civ 6.

But I am thinking of different gameplay styles next, eg machine empire. Or an empire with kind of a living God at the helm, and depending on if the the ruler is good/evil (ie my modd when starting the game), the empire will behave. But the question is, can I play it with a relaxed mindset ie without worrying about being overrun by the AI? Can I ignore some parts of the annoying micromanagement - eg resettling pops manually.

[failsafe]

You can play easily. This is the way I'm doing this. I have little time and don't feel like jumping totally into the game. I play 1-2 hours a day, not that much really, but kind of enough.

The thing is that You need about 100-150 hours to really understand how to play this game. This is not the issue if You don't need to have results in very first week. I think I have some 220 hours equivalent to two or three months of playing (and also, same like with u, I had one approach to game earlier, more than year ago).

Cadet is good for first attempt - game is easy, so u can focus on all other aspects than just fighting hard ;-P. Second difficulty is much better for longer gameplay. I've noticed that AI is capable of beating human player in terms of economy management on all difficulties, but lacks certain skills regarding waging wars. So, the higher difficulty u play, the more powerfull AI will be, but not more capable of using its power.

I believe that playing on top difficulty might be difficult for you if you dont play on regular basis. On lower difficulties you don't need to optimise your economy that much and when u have 15 planets u spend most of the time dealing with those planets - if you play from time to time you will miss the fun.

[Bumc]

Main problem about playing a hour every so often is that most patches brick your save mid-run, so you should be prepared to restore to the previous version.

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

Originally posted by failsafe:

You can play easily. This is the way I'm doing this. I have little time and don't feel like jumping totally into the game. I play 1-2 hours a day, not that much really, but kind of enough.

The thing is that You need about 100-150 hours to really understand how to play this game. This is not the issue if You don't need to have results in very first week. I think I have some 220 hours equivalent to two or three months of playing (and also, same like with u, I had one approach to game earlier, more than year ago).

Cadet is good for first attempt - game is easy, so u can focus on all other aspects than just fighting hard ;-P. Second difficulty is much better for longer gameplay. I've noticed that AI is capable of beating human player in terms of economy management on all difficulties, but lacks certain skills regarding waging wars. So, the higher difficulty u play, the more powerfull AI will be, but not more capable of using its power.

I believe that playing on top difficulty might be difficult for you if you dont play on regular basis. On lower difficulties you don't need to optimise your economy that much and when u have 15 planets u spend most of the time dealing with those planets - if you play from time to time you will miss the fun.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I did a bit of reading on other similar threads, and it seems that the answer to my original question is yes. I can play in a relaxed manner on the first few difficulties. I can take less than optimum traditions and ascension perks.

Your last point is a bit troublesome, true, but such is a the life of a gamer with a job and family. There are SO MANY games I want to play, but cannot because of lack of time. I will just try to make the best of it.

Originally posted by Bumc:

Main problem about playing a hour every so often is that most patches brick your save mid-run, so you should be prepared to restore to the previous version.

Yeah, I guess that is a risk. Hopefully I can complete the current game before the next patch drops. But I am not much of a completionist in 4X games as it is the early and mid game that I love the most.

[Oakshadow]

How relaxed / fast he game goes can be set in the game settings before starting play.

For shorter games scale down tech costs and adjust crisis/ victory years to be sooner rather than later. Play on smaller galaxy maps instead of large or huge, and lower the growth required scaling to .10x or .15.

That should speed the game up so you can finish in the time frame you have to play while not changing the strategy end of it all too much.

You might also want to tinker with clustered or random empire settings if you're finding it takes too long to meet other empires. Also AI aggression is another setting you can turn up or down in the game.

Captain is the setting where neither you or the AI get any bonuses. I'd recommend starting there and just turning the AI aggression level down.

Hope this helps!

[ChaffyExpert]

Pretty easy, pick Captain and get Mercantile and Merchants, won't have to worry too much about econ bc you will be swimming in money, plus just tech up homeworld and no AI will really be a credible threat.

[mss73055]

At the moment not. It looks like the game got no speed control. At the start it speed away, slowing more and more as the empires grow.

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

Originally posted by Jay:

How relaxed / fast he game goes can be set in the game settings before starting play.

For shorter games scale down tech costs and adjust crisis/ victory years to be sooner rather than later. Play on smaller galaxy maps instead of large or huge, and lower the growth required scaling to .10x or .15.

That should speed the game up so you can finish in the time frame you have to play while not changing the strategy end of it all too much.

You might also want to tinker with clustered or random empire settings if you're finding it takes too long to meet other empires. Also AI aggression is another setting you can turn up or down in the game.

Captain is the setting where neither you or the AI get any bonuses. I'd recommend starting there and just turning the AI aggression level down.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, I am the kind of guy who would actually slow down the tech/tradition cost, eg Epic speed in Civ but never Marathon because of time. But the idea is nice - I guess I could try it with the easiest setting to see if I find it fun in Stellaris.

I thought Ensign was the setting where neither AI nor player gets any bonus. I will double check.

Regarding AI aggression, I am currently playing with Medium - will Low aggression, will the AI just not attack the player easily or will it also not attack the other AIs? Because in the latter case, it might make games very stale.

[Strategy_Game_Lover]

Originally posted by mss73055:

At the moment not. It looks like the game got no speed control. At the start it speed away, slowing more and more as the empires grow.

I am 30 years into the game and it is quite fast. Let's see how it is in a 100 years lol.

Originally posted by Traror:

Pretty easy, pick Captain and get Mercantile and Merchants, won't have to worry too much about econ bc you will be swimming in money, plus just tech up homeworld and no AI will really be a credible threat.

Thanks, I will be sure to try it next. My first game after 3 years is more of tutorial for me - albeit a tutorial that will last 20-30 hours