Question about playing with 1 AI empire

[Morgan Bateson]

I'm trying to 'ease' my way into this game and struggle to grasp it's basics. That's why I thought let's play only one (1) AI empire.

Sure it's gonna be too easy maybe, but at least I won't have to worry getting overrun.

However, I've tried playing like this 2 times now and both of the times I was surrounded with AI Empires.

I've got "Fallen empires" off, but I did however add 2.25x to "Pre-FTL Civ and pre-sapient".

My current thinking is that those 'pre-FTL empires / pre-sapient' abused my time getting used to controls and seeing what does what, into growing into fully fledged empires?

Is that so ? If so, should I turn those off ? I kinda liked the idea of meeting pre-FTL AI's but was not counting on them evolving into empires bigger than myself eventually.

Perhaps there are other ways to get a very relaxed game learning all the basics ?

[Elitewrecker PT]

"My current thinking is that those 'pre-FTL empires / pre-sapient' abused my time getting used to controls and seeing what does what, into growing into fully fledged empires?"

Yes. The ones that start out at early space age can easily outpace you if you're very slow.

[TwoTonTuna]

By AI empires, do you mean empires that expand their territory and spread their colors on the galactic map? I ask because you're going to be meeting a bunch of aliens that are not expanding empires, meaning they pose no existential threat to your own empire.

Some pre-FTL empires also spawn on the verge of space-flight. These can mature into system-spanning empires in as short as ten in-game years. If you only want to play with one empire, might as well disable pre-FTL/pre-sapient species altogether.

Just in case though, make sure these settings are set as follows:

AI empires: one (as you indicated)
Advanced AI starts: zero (the one rival empire will not get powerful buffs at the start)
Fallen Empires: zero (these are dormant empires that are going to be MAJOR problems in the late-game)
Marauder Empires: zero (these are raiders that are gonna be a problem in the mid-game)
Difficulty: civilian (for an easy time)
Pre-FTL Civilizations and Pre-Sapient Species: zero (so no extra empires spawn)
AI Aggressiveness: low (so your rival is not encouraged to kill you right away)
Empire Placement: random (so there's a higher chance that your rival spawns away from you)
Advanced neighbors: off (so the one empire doesn't spawn near you)

[Morgan Bateson]

Thanks, you both been very helpful. Yes, I mean "empires that expand their territory and spread their colors on the galactic map"

And yes, I've been "very slow". Because every time I replay this game I implement new things I found out from previous run. So I take quite a lot of time expanding, whilst trying out things.

And for some odd reason, last time I lost a fleet of about 8k. So things do happen from time to time that keep me busy. But like I said, every new run of the game I try to adapt ;-)

[Draken]

Contrary to the previous advices: I would instead advise you to play normally, but on slower game speed and lower difficulty instead.

Cadet difficulty also doesn't allow genocidal empires to spawn, so its great diff to start playing on.

Remember that you can also pause the game and issue the orders while the game is paused, and generally check stuff while the game is paused. You can take all the time you want, so being slow doesn't really matter here.

There is no real reason to play in almost empty galaxy, no matter the skill level, unless you're going for specific achivements. It's not an RTS, and it removes a lot of storytelling potential that Stellaris has.

Finally, be warned that If you decide to go with just one empire, it will not nessesarly be easier - your opponent would have pretty much uncapped expansion range, and RNG decided on starting point may win or lose your game then.

[Morgan Bateson]

I still wonder about one thing though, "Alien Menace" ...

Like right now, I've started a new game again and even on all the lowest settings, I can't really go into a certain region because an "Alien Menace" is blocking it and they have a 2K fleet which I don't have (just started).

I've also had a run spawning multiple 3K of those fleets in one system. Which setting cause those seemingly random aliens to spawn ?

And @Draken:
Pausing or going to slower speeds don't keep me from going into the wrong paths and choosing foolishly. Or rather, choose something because you didn't know better (yet). And in this game, more often than not, because you didn't know what the heck it would get you into.

In a (nearly) empty Galaxy there's no one to punish you for those mistakes. For now.. I like that.

[Squircle]

Originally posted by Morgan Bateson:

I still wonder about one thing though, "Alien Menace" ...

Like right now, I've started a new game again and even on all the lowest settings, I can't really go into a certain region because an "Alien Menace" is blocking it and they have a 2K fleet which I don't have (just started).

I've also had a run spawning multiple 3K of those fleets in one system. Which setting cause those seemingly random aliens to spawn ?

In a (nearly) empty Galaxy there's no one to punish you for those mistakes. For now.. I like that.

Those are probably space fauna, stuff like space amoeba and ancient mining drones. You've probably been ignoring the "unidentified entity" pop-ups that lets you slap an ambassador on the issue to identify them, which is pretty dang crucial.
A couple of the space-fauna types have specific systems that spawn them at regular intervals, with the amoeba having the most agressive one.
There is no way to turn space fauna off as far as I'm aware, and there is no real need: by mid-game, they are utterly irrelevant.

[Chthonic Guardian]

I am just going to throw this out there, because it happened with me when I started playing.
I would go outward to explore, bypassing most nearby stuff, so I had what I felt was enough room based on the map size and # of AI opponents I was facing, with the intention of setting up control chokepoints and then working back inward, but always ran into aliens before I could get to where I thought I needed to get to.
This led me to believe I was already boxxed in by AI Empires.

I even restarted a few times to try to get a "fair" chance and not be surrounded right from the start.

Fact it those aliens are not empires but hostile fleets of mining drone, space amoebas etc. They don't do much but placehold the systems that they are in.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Morgan Bateson:

I'm trying to 'ease' my way into this game and struggle to grasp it's basics. That's why I thought let's play only one (1) AI empire.

Sure it's gonna be too easy maybe, but at least I won't have to worry getting overrun.

However, I've tried playing like this 2 times now and both of the times I was surrounded with AI Empires.

I've got "Fallen empires" off, but I did however add 2.25x to "Pre-FTL Civ and pre-sapient".

My current thinking is that those 'pre-FTL empires / pre-sapient' abused my time getting used to controls and seeing what does what, into growing into fully fledged empires?

Is that so ? If so, should I turn those off ? I kinda liked the idea of meeting pre-FTL AI's but was not counting on them evolving into empires bigger than myself eventually.

Perhaps there are other ways to get a very relaxed game learning all the basics ?

The rate at which pre-FTLs develop into spacefaring societies was greatly accelerated back in the 3.7 update of March 2023. If you want to have pre-FTL societies that advance over the course of centuries rather than months, you can roll back to the 3.6.1 Orion build in your betas. (from your steam library, right click stellaris, go to advanced, betas, take your pick). You lose a lot of the newer game mechanics and some pretty helpful improvements to the UI if you go that route, but it was a more carefully balanced state of play for the game than the present, which has been piling on goodies faster than it's been balancing them.

At one point, I tried slowing tech progress down to 5x rate, which didn't really help with that problem of pre-FTLs leaping into space, but did actually slow the game itself down a whole lot. I can turn it back up to full speed for multiplayer, but I've definitely found I prefer the slower pace where there's more time to live inside of each tech epoch. If you slow down the tech rate, it's also wise to slow down the population growth rate alongside it (don't mess with the logistics growth curve until you want to mix things up). Otherwise you could end up facing overpopulation problems that are redressed through technological advancements.

You may find that's a more efficient way to "ease" into understanding the game dynamics than trying to depopulate the galaxy.

[Morgan Bateson]

Originally posted by Chthonic Guardian:

Fact it those aliens are not empires but hostile fleets of mining drone, space amoebas etc. They don't do much but placehold the systems that they are in.

Exactly what I was thinking. Thing is, they blocked a quite important route I needed to take and a (presumably) pre-FTL empire had already expanded above that point.

By the time I finally had enough ships to remove them, I somehow lost half my fleet (which happened right after some message about my "volatile motes" being near empty, not sure if that was related but I didn't understand one thing about that and ignored that all together as I couldn't figure out what to do).

Once I rebuild some of my fleets, of course that "pre-FTL" empire was now blocking my way to those 'amoebas'.

[Morgan Bateson]

Originally posted by Geoff:

The rate at which pre-FTLs develop into spacefaring societies was greatly accelerated back in the 3.7 update of March 2023. If you want to have pre-FTL societies that advance over the course of centuries rather than months, you can roll back to the 3.6.1 Orion build in your betas.

Yeah... Great. Just my luck they did that. What are the chances of them adding in a slider to change it yourself ?

Or maybe there exists a mod for that ?

Originally posted by Geoff:

At one point, I tried slowing tech progress down to 5x rate, which didn't really help with that problem of pre-FTLs leaping into space, but did actually slow the game itself down a whole lot.

Interesting ... Interesting ... But of course my tech progress grinds down 5x as well, right? I mean, like I said before: My problem is not so much in the speed of the game as it is in things that happen (or things I do) that have an adverse effect on things later down the road.

So I'm like, woops maybe I shouldn't have done that (or done that earlier, or later) but hey... don't matter nobody is near to punish me for it (in a near empty galaxy).

So I wonder if 5x slower tech progress would be my answer but I'm going to give this a try anyhow, so thanks!

Edit:
I'm not able to find "Tech Progress" ? Unless what you mean is called "Technology and Tradition Cost" which can be scaled up to 5x. And should control how quickly technologies and traditions are gained.

[Rage000]

running out of resources
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Situations#Shortages

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Morgan Bateson:

Edit:
I'm not able to find "Tech Progress" ? Unless what you mean is called "Technology and Tradition Cost" which can be scaled up to 5x. And should control how quickly technologies and traditions are gained.

That is what I mean, the sliders at the start of the game. Basically it quintuples the points you have to accumulate to acquire a new tech. The same applies to population - you need to accumulate a number of points to add a new pop and you can quintuple that cost. The nice thing about slowing that down too, is you can really learn to appreciate the value of a pop and see in real time how micromanagement effects your global production.

With respect to your fear of the "whoopsies," I think you will find over time that it's hard to avoid setbacks in this game, but it's also hard to stumble into catastrophic failures. If you play on slow-tech, your early adversaries won't have the technical capacities to absorb your whole empire, so you can afford to fight and lose wars. Most wars end with a "settle status quo" that will be something of a mixed victory, giving up some territory while securing other systems.

The game is designed to discourage the impulse to ragequit or the need to always be the supreme victor without setbacks. Once you get the hang of the mechanics, I think you'll find it's a lot more forgiving and permissive than the initial pace makes you feel. As an RTS, it's got a lot of fuel for adrenaline junkies who want to perform flawlessly at a breakneck pace. But because it's designed to run at that pace, there's a lot of play in the mechanics and a lot of features that can be ignored or left to fend for themselves. Not every klaxon screaming at you to "fix something" warrants an immediate response and a lot of the scariest bad guys at the start of the game will flame out and be overwhelmed by other empires before they actually pose an existential threat to you.

Oh yeah and with respect to the first questions - I wouldn't get my hopes up that they're going to reverse course on some of the recent changes. The present dev team has been radically redeveloping the title and seem to have a pretty "dam all the hatches and carry on" approach. There may be mods for it, you can peruse them under the "workshops" tab for this title. I haven't really experimented with mods myself. I haven't heard of any mods addressing that issue of the game, but that could just be a factor of who I'm listening to, not what's out there.