After 19 hours...too hard!?

[tc1961]

I'd like to express either my inability to play this game correctly without a bigger inverstment in time or I'm too dumb to play this type of game or the game is too hard even on the easy level. Fist time I lasted about 57 years before some enemy with 4k came to wipe me out. The second time I lasted about 58 years before an enemy came with 5.6k to wipe me out. My army was about 400ish the first time and not enough resources to build faster.

The second time I had about 1.2k in 3 armies and managed to firgure out the planet tile stuff and how to keep people happy and generate more resources, but it seems like as you expand your energy gets drained fast than you can produce it. Plus expansion wise, for my games I wouldn't need anymore than about 20 or 30 star systems because I'd never have the resources to expand.

I run out of leaders with 2 colonies and 3 armies and science and construction ship or two. I can't see how anyone could expand their territory beyond a 5 or 10 planets before being spread too thin. You can't mine anything unless you own the star system. You can't own the star system unless you make a colony.

Maybe I'm just playing the game wrong, but for what it's worth I really like the game I just can't get far enough to feel like I have a real empire before I get squashed.

[kilen]

19h is few.
Still a lot to discover/understand (and read in details in wiki too ! It counts...).

Too earlier to say RTS games arent made for u, average player rate is around 100to150h i expect (?), more or less... (with hundreds more for fanatic players lol)

U should retry and learn more i think but ots zlso a matter of mindstate and way to enjoy pc games... some ppl are defenatly not born to master/enjoy RTS ! Lol

Up to u to see, but u will miss many things if u stop already (tooearlier) to play stellaris. :'(

Cya :)

[The Chronic Cleric]

What are your initial steps? Do you research new ship types? What was your fleet limit around that time? What is your race/ship setup?

I'm just curious about gathering some information to make suggestions. It sounds like you might be slow to start expanding and mining, which reduces resource intake, which then reduces expansion, kind of leading to a downward cycle until the AI eats you.

edit: I noticed this part, and wanted to comment:

Originally posted by tc1961:

I run out of leaders with 2 colonies and 3 armies and science and construction ship or two. I can't see how anyone could expand their territory beyond a 5 or 10 planets before being spread too thin. You can't mine anything unless you own the star system. You can't own the star system unless you make a colony.

I really don't bother with governors or extra admirals at the start of the game. I keep my initial science and construction ship going to start with, and keep the influence for planetary edicts.

You also can gain ownership of a star system by constructing a frontier outpost, which costs you minerals and influence. Sometimes this is a good way to nab some impressive looking systems.

[NixBoxDone]

The problem is that many beginners build too many mineral buildings on planets, forgetting that mining stations, research stations, star ports, ships and buildings on the planet cost energy to maintain.

Even if they don't, they often underestimate how much energy the fleet eats when it undocks from the star ports (those give massive reductions in upkeep because your ships are powered down in port^^), so when the enemy declares war they suddenly go from + 40 energy per month to - 60 with no way to really gain that much of an increase during war.

You should always check the main page of your planet (summary) and make sure to AT LEAST produce as much energy as the buildings on it use up. Then you can make one planet that focuses only on energy so you generate a big surplus knowing that you'll actually get that surplus instead of it being fed into other planets that run up a deficit.

Or you could just check your energy income when you settle a new planet and distribute all tiles that have no markers (blanks) towards energy until you have a nice + rate going, before doing anything else with it.

I wouldn't bother with giving all three of your subfleets admirals or putting governors on every planet. Governors are usually good either for sectors (because their bonus goes to all planets in a sector, which is niiiice) or for boosting a planet until it gets somewhat profitable. Just have one or two governors (one good at boosting research, one good at boosting either happiness, building costs or growth) and switch them from old planets to new ones to make them grow faster.

You don't want three admirals with little experience, you want one admiral who becomes a veteran. Having three fleets is fine, but I'd use only one of them for wiping out stuff and give that one the admiral, so he can gain levels - levels make your ships eat less upkeep and shoot faster, in addition to any perks they get anyways.

If your problem with getting leaders is too little influence, consider either rivaling some far off weaker empire for a nice per turn bonus, or declaring war and making one of your less lovey dovey neighbours a tributary - they pay you a good chunk of their energy and minerals and give you +1 in influence per turn, too.

If your problem is the leadership cap, you'll just have to wait a bit - the first technologies that can give you a bigger leader pool come pretty soon in society research, you just have to tough it out until then.

As to war - that really is a deeper topic. You should search this forum for topics about it, as there are mountains of text regarding it. Generally I'd make sure to check all my nearest neighbours.
On the diplomatic page, it shows you how strong your fleet is compared to theirs, and you'll want to be equivalent or better to them at all times unless you are part of a big alliance.
The AI is programmed to weigh your fleet strength against how much they hate you and will only rarely declare war when you have the superior fleet - keep in mind that the AI is fast to exploit you when you lose a significant amount of ships to neutral monsters or other empires. Before sending ships out against crystals/energy beings, check to make sure you can beat them with no losses or that your losses don't make you "inferior" to any hostile AI in your surroundings.

[Pontiac Jones]

Have you watched some Let's Plays to get an idea about how to expand and build?

You don't really need leaders on planets to manage them early on. They are just kind of a nice bonus, but are only really necessary once you start divying out various colonies to sector leaders. Even then, unless the sector has 3-5+ worlds I don't usually bother with a governor, unless I just have extra resources to throw around.

I'm pretty sure you can mine any worlds that are within your sphere of influence and if you find a good section of the galaxy with mineral/energy rich worlds just build an outpost to extend your influence.

I am only about 60 hours in and I've lost my two main games to the end game crisis, so I may not be giving sound advice overall. I'm sure a veteran player has something better to offer.

[Beliar]

It's all about having resources to sustain big fleets and enough research to not fall behind too much.

Some general tips from me:
-Specialize your planets. Planet with only minerals , energy or research. There is a building which boosts entire planet production of either energy or mineral by 15% and edicts which boosts by another 20%. On planets with only mines/powerplants its nice boost and should be used.

-Leaders for colonies are not necessary. Admirals for fleets yes but governors can be skipped if you struggle with influence.Also leaders for sector provide boost for whole sector while planet governors only for said planet.

-When you start colonizing more planets and have to put them in sector they won't do much on their own. You need to feed them minerals or they will just weight you down. When possible set their tax rate to 75% and manually give them resources.

-Try to conquer your nearest empire as soon as you can. Their populated and developed homeworld should give you good early boost in economy.

-AI won't attack you if you have big enough fleet. Even when you don't want to fight anyone you need a fleet.

-Happiness at 50% is good enough in most cases.

-At the start you should use almost all your energy to sustain mineral buildings. Later you need more energy to use your big fleets. Keep fleets docked when not using them and get upgrades for starports which reduces fleet upkeep.

[tc1961]

I really love the game, it just seems as big as the galaxy is I get killed before I get very far.. I guess next time around I will focus less on leaders. It seems like if I expand, my resources run dry. I guess I will try to stay small , stay in my "area" untill I have resources aplenty, then try to expand a little at a time. Is it even possible to have colonies on 10-20 different star sytems? I'm quite sure I have plenty to learn about the game, the second game I played showed me how the planet tiles should be managed so I can maintain happiness and keep the pops growing. I've been reading the wikis and watching youtube videos to learn.

[Beliar]

Originally posted by tc1961:

I really love the game, it just seems as big as the galaxy is I get killed before I get very far.. I guess next time around I will focus less on leaders. It seems like if I expand, my resources run dry. I guess I will try to stay small , stay in my "area" untill I have resources aplenty, then try to expand a little at a time. Is it even possible to have colonies on 10-20 different star sytems? I'm quite sure I have plenty to learn about the game, the second game I played showed me how the planet tiles should be managed so I can maintain happiness and keep the pops growing. I've been reading the wikis and watching youtube videos to learn.

If you try to turtle for a long while you will get crushed by some AI which is on the other side of galaxy and has 50 planets. I made similar mistakes. In this game expansion and fleets are everything. Once you get the general idea on what to do you will easily be able to have a 100 planet empire.

[chefcook90]

>Spend resources to make resources.
A good "beginner" build is to take Industrious and Very Strong as racial traits for a +25% mineral boost and Plutocratic Oligarchy government for another +5% plus the -25% mining station build cost. Plutocratic Oligarchy is availiable to all ethics except for fanatic collectivist and fanatic individualist, so it's pretty easy to fit into most ethos builds.
This should help you squeeze more minirals out of your planets, which is much more energy efficient than spamming mineral mining stations, and makes it much easier to spam energy mining stations & build up your fleet strength.
As a rule of thumb, you should only build mineral mining stations that give at least +3 minerals early on to get the most out of your energy. NEVER build mining networks on tiles that don't have mineral bonuses - blank tiles should be reserved for power plants and strategic buildings (and possibly science labs if you're behind on research).
Build energy mining stations wherever and whenever possible. Prioritize energy credit production: if a tile has both minerals and energy, build a powerplant on it insead of a mining network.

>Diplomacy
Pro-tip: the AI is physically incapable of declairing war against other empires that aren't below a certain opinion threshold (generally it needs to be AT LEAST -75 before they turn hostile)
You can help prevent yourself from getting attacked by taking the charasmatic trait for +15 opinion to all other empires, and fanatic xenophile for another +20.
The +35 opinion to all diplomacy also makes it a lot easier to form Mutual Defense Pacts, and the -75% reduction to diplomacy costs that fanatic xenopiles get means you can support four times as many MDP's as you normally would be able to.
If it's still too hard, try seeding your galaxy with fanatic xenophiles by creating a ton of fanatic xenophile empires in the "create new empire" editor and setting them to "force empire spawning"

[The Chronic Cleric]

Originally posted by tc1961:

Is it even possible to have colonies on 10-20 different star sytems? I'm quite sure I have plenty to learn about the game, the second game I played showed me how the planet tiles should be managed so I can maintain happiness and keep the pops growing. I've been reading the wikis and watching youtube videos to learn.

Are you aware about sector management? Once you go past your 5 or so core systems, you suffer an increasing penalty to energy and other stuff unless you put it into a sector (and your sector should have a government). If you've been holding onto every planet for yourself, you've probably pushed the penalties so hard that you've made it impossible to expand anymore.

[Stuka]

1) Initial research should be solar panels ( if available as they make your spaceport free from energy credit maintainance), colony ships ( always available ), any from engineering tree

2) Concentrate mainly on minerals but keep an eye on energy credits at first

3) build another two or three corvettes when you can to counter the early pirate spawn

4) Take your time, don't expand too quickly ( better a small, strong empire than a large and weak one )

5) Don't try to play Stellaris like a standard 4x game

6) Try not to piss off any fallen empires until you are strong enough to deal with them ( when you have a couple of 20k doom stacks or so )

7) Try a mod that gives you some wiggle room, this is one I made https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=687583490 and there are others out there

8) Watch some let's play videos on youtube, there are some great ones for learners.

[chefcook90]

Originally posted by The Chronic Cleric:

Originally posted by tc1961:

Is it even possible to have colonies on 10-20 different star sytems? I'm quite sure I have plenty to learn about the game, the second game I played showed me how the planet tiles should be managed so I can maintain happiness and keep the pops growing. I've been reading the wikis and watching youtube videos to learn.

Are you aware about sector management? Once you go past your 5 or so core systems, you suffer an increasing penalty to energy and other stuff unless you put it into a sector (and your sector should have a government). If you've been holding onto every planet for yourself, you've probably pushed the penalties so hard that you've made it impossible to expand anymore.

Re-reading OP's posts, I think this might actually be the problem more than anything else.
As you expand, you should be bringing in MORE resources, not less - unless you've exceeded your core system limit that is.

If you haven't been playing with the full tutorial turned on, you definitely should - VIR does a pretty good job of walking players through the basics.

[tc1961]

Thanks for all the information, I really appreciate it! I will wait till I get to 100hrs and then see where I'm at.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Standard learning curve of a Pdox game is about 50 hours to become good. Since this isn´t EU4 with assymetrical starts, that´s all it takes for this one (there, becoming a good Byzantium player, or worse, OPM... well, it will take MUCH more than 50 hours lol).

Really, the difference between the ethos and governments it´s not THAT great, and it´s intuitive, with few exception like going xenophobe pacifist, which kinda sucks.

[Klutch]

I still can't get a good start with every build I want. Sometimes I think some of my race builds just get lucky. Pacifst worked out, but like I said I think it was luck, some really great allies and a swath of free systems, many big ones even a ringworld (that I granted independance to the 4 empires living there, only 1 supports me though)

[ColdWonder]

In Paradox games even this war-focused one diplomacy is important. Make it your mission to become allied with an A.I comparable in strength ASAP. Your best chance at this is early game. A good way to do this is to make enemies with their enemies.

Once you secured that alliance others will be much more hesitant to declare war on you and you'l last alot longer.

Also whilst the game might seem fairly relaxed - to stay ahead you need to treat it like a desperate race, race to grab those best planets and keep building up an intimidating standing army.

19 hrs isn't much playtime for a paradox game. So don't worry about still learning it.