OK, so something's up. Something not working as intended I'd wager. I think it has to do with 2 opposing fleets entering a system one right after the other. I had described earlier how I had a fairly strong fleet get smoked and had no idea why. Well, they had entered a system hot on the heels of the fleet that destroyed them.

Fast forward to my latest war. Same thing, but reversed. My fleet was first in and we completely smoked the other guy this time. It's just a mass jumble fight at the system entrance. Check this screen shot of the engagement. Here you can see my fleet has dealt 12000+ damage while taking less than 1000+. The enemy dealt no damage at all for most of the fight. This is what happened to my fleet in my first war. Something to be wary of, especially if you're playing ironman.

A few random thoughts about this game...

Alliances are interesting. When one member wants to go to war the other members vote on it and if one declines then there is no war. While naturally limiting, this can sort of be abused to prevent your alliance partners from getting too strong and becoming a threat down the road. The EU IV player in me likes this. At the same time it limits your ability to wage war. I wanted to start a war and one of my partners declined, so I had to sweeten the deal and give that nation a war goal cede planet and they happily agreed then.

But alliances also lead to what is probably my least favorite thing about this game, and that's the behavior of the AI fleets during war. The way it works now is that if you go to war with AI nations in an alliance, they will attached all of their fleets to your main fleet. It's terrible. So if your fleet is doing nothing, then all of the members of your alliance are doing nothing. Doesn't matter if it's their war or yours. So you end up with this one huge doomstack. No spreading out the attacks and going for different war goals simultaneously. You want to go knock out a few mining stations? Well 50k worth of alliance members will tag along for support.

Now I understand if the developers want to be sure the player participates in their alliance wars. I get it, you shouldn't be able to abuse the situation and use the alliance only when it suits you. But there has to be a better way. Some sort of war contribution system that penalizes a turtling player ala EU IV is fine. But the way it works now is bad. It's so bad and I hate it so much that I just dissolved my alliance to get away from it. I'd rather go it alone than deal with that.

I met a second Fallen Empire. And while I got lucky with the first, this one is a Militant Isolationist and are blocking my planned expansion. They are smack dab in the worst spot. Completely ruined my plans. I love it.

A research tip that may not be immediately evident... Science Ships can be assigned to assist research at one of your planets. Right click on the planet for the option while you have the ship selected. This grants a 25% boost to research output. Do that on a planet that you are developing as a tech planet and it's a serious boost.

That 'research tip' I listed above isn't exactly accurate, because I believe this is a function of acquiring 'research assistance' tech. I noticed it's now up to 50% so I think you'll need to research at least one tier of that tech to see any benefit (or maybe have the option in the first place).

I am starting to feel the effect of a large population. I'm up to about 25 planets (in 4 sectors) and I have the galaxy's largest population. The slowdown on tech research is significant and I'm glad I concentrated so heavily on it early on. The only upshot to it is my protectorate needs to reach 40% of my tech to upgrade to a vassal and maybe this will help them catch up. This is an example of where I think we really need more info in this game. Why can I not see where their tech stands now aside from the generic 'inferior'?

AI behaviour during alliance warfare is indeed poor (although I'm sure it'll be changed/overhauled, mods are already out to fix it on the workshop). Playing on hard last night I had war declared on me and a buddy, and my 2K + allied 4K fleet couldn't hold a candle to the 8K strong invasion fleet that plopped on my doorstep.

Easy it ain't.

I'm sure they will have a look at warfare and combat. I'd like to see tactics, formations, patrol routes, auto-interception options, a re-work of the alliance AI and more. For me, this is the weakest aspect of the game, aside from maybe diplomacy. But warfare is far more interesting and arguably, important. There is so much potential there, but will it be realized?

What are the specific bonuses the AI get in hard difficulty?

To be frank, all 4x games have crappy combat. Its usually just rock, paper, scissors and mobs of gunk. You can never use something I would call an actual tactic. Like hide behind a moon to ambush a greater force with short ranged insanity. But this genre of games are never intended as something for the tactically minded. More micro management simulator with basic game like combat. And that is fine. Its still fun. But I dream of something more....

Got in a little more play time last night.



After researching the right tech, I was able to expand my jump range and open up a bunch of new systems to survey. I had gotten all the systems in range surveyed before that. I've managed to upgrade a bunch of facilities as well and colonize a new planet in Salluria. I also dropped an outpost in Neshmet as an experiment in the sov/border system. I wanted to see if it would backfill the sov claimed in Neshmet to my current sovereignty border. As you can see, it didn't do so. Neither did dropping a colony in Salluria, somewhat to my surprise.

I have a couple of research projects available that need a level 5 scientist. Of course my level 4 scientist died right after dropping the outpost in Neshment, so now one of my science ships is pretty much useless until I can get the influence to hire a new one AND I'm still a ways away from being able to do those events. I was thinking about dropping the Sabik outpost to get back that one influence per turn, but it's right up against the border of another race and I am concerned that it might cost me some territory. In any event, lesson learned: don't drop an outpost unless you have a bit of an influence buffer just in case.

So a couple of questions have come to mind-

- The "habitable planet" icon comes in 3 flavors - green, red, and yellow. Green is ready to colonize - what do red and yellow mean?

- Food. Is it empire-wide or local to the planet? If I'm low on food in one planet and producing surplus in another, does it even out, or does
one suffer while the inhabitants of the other gorge themselves?

- More food. This ties into the previous one - if I've maxed out the pops on a planet, is there any point to having surplus food? Should I tear down farms and put up power plants, mines, etc?

- Sectors. I've gotten my 4th planet, I know the limit is 5 and then you need to start using sectors. As I understand it, when you put a planet (or group of planets) in a sector, you set general parameters on how the planets are to be administered and the AI does the rest (rather poorly judging from the forums).

My assumption is that when I have 5 colonies I can still manage them all, but when I get to 6 I have to put at least one in a sector. Is that correct? Can I put systems that are not geographically close to each other in the same sector (ie is it an administrative thing or a geographical thing?) such as Deneb, Sabik, and Neshmet (the last two in a sector to eliminate the influence upkeep of the outposts)?

Once a planet is in a sector and out of my direct control, is it locked in there? If I feel the need to take administrative control of a planet in a sector can I remove it from that sector and replace it with another planet?

Not sure that they get any resource bonuses, but they might. About 75% of the races I've encountered in my large game are anywhere from equivalent to far superior in military capability, with the rest being weaker. I also noticed that my diplomacy gets a -50 point "hard mode" modifier, which IMO makes it a little more realistic if anything. When my alliance was finally possible with my neighbor it was a loooong process of increasing their public opinion of me. Alliances and federations don't just come willy nilly.

Some of these are just guesses and assumptions based on my playing but:

- Green is habitable, yellow is (I assume) either habitable by some species you control or it's half-assed habitable (AKA miserable but doable). Red can't be colonized just yet, at least until you get the right research done.

- I believe food is local to the planet. Whenever you colonize a new planet they always seem to just make what the colony ship makes. I tend to drop it on food squares to boost it a little.

- I'm not aware of any benefit to surplus food, once you're maxed on population as long as you have enough to feed the planet you're good.

- You're correct on sectors, although like the fleets you can go over capacity with a penalty. You can control what they focus on, whether they respect tile resources, etc. They will give you a modifiable percentage of their resources to your empire pool. You still control their defenses and space construction, basically all you lose is the ability to manually place surface buildings.

- Sectors can't be split areas, but as long as you have systems within your "influence zone"/territory blob they can be added. Neshmet would be a no-go until the red touches the rest of your empire. You can also add non-colonized systems within your control as well, it's not tied to ONLY your planets. You can add and remove and tweak and modify sectors at will but it will cost a little bit of influence (25 I think) to remove colonized systems. It tells you on the bottom of the screen in sector doodle mode.

Save your game and just play with it, it's really simple after you do.

Surplus food has no advantage, it's a planet source, not empire. What you'll find is that you'll be able to reduce over time the number of tiles on each planet that are dedicated to producing it, so eventually you will indeed be replacing some of these farms. Plus you will get some techs that increase output. So I just try to keep it at least +1 at all times. It's not a bad idea to keep it slightly above that while you're growing as pops can migrate away (if migration is allowed) and leave your farm with no one to plow it. But strictly speaking there is no benefit, such as increased growth rate, for keeping surplus stocks over +1.

As Peally said you can go over the core planet limit. Just being one planet over is a -10% to Influence and Energy Credits which is easily bearable. Being 3 over though is much more, I think 40 %, which is harder to bear. I tend to try and keep a colony under my control as long as I can bear the burden, because I want to upgrade the planet admin line if I can. I feel much better handing the planet off to a sector with a planetary capital than I do with a ship shelter. I try to develop the planet as much as I can before handing it over, but I'm not sure the AI follows the directive not to replace buildings.

At first I was rather critical of the sector system, but I've come to feel it isn't that bad. I'm up to about 45 planets with about 6 sectors and they do fine. They repair buildings that are sabotaged, and they build what I tell them for the most part. I know it will be tweaked, but I've come to accept the system, if not outright like it.

The sector needs to be contiguous as Peally mentioned. Border range tech and time might see your current situation result in a joining of the sector to your borders. There seems to be a certain slow 'creep' to those borders. As he said for a small Influence cost you can remove sector components at any time, but be careful that you aren't breaking contiguation (I made that up).

There is a tech to increase core planets, but I've only seen it once and I can control 6. Is this a repeatable tech? I've only had it come up the one time. Hoping to see it again! I've had the sector one come up several times, but not the core planets one.

Has anyone been to war with a Fallen Empire yet? I have a damn Militant Isolationist FE nearby. We aren't that close to them really, maybe 3 or 4 systems between us, but we are already at -21 border friction, and of course they are xenophobes. I just had to have another Gaia world and it was a little too close I guess. I can no longer take border range tech or the friction will only increase. I have an Embassy with them for now and things seem fine. But if they at any point cancel that then we would plunge to negative opinion and risk war.

So I'm gearing up for it. We have been able to reduce their advantage in naval power, capacity and tech from overwhelming to superior so that indicates the gap is closing and perhaps we would stand a chance. But perhaps I am fooling myself and maybe an equivalent FE would still crush me. So I was curious if anyone had any experience fighting one. If I could eliminate them, while reverse engineering some of their tech, the path would be open for expansion in that direction.

I never pay attention to victory conditions in Paradox games, if they even have them? In this game with a 600 star galaxy the lesser of the two VCs is to have 206 planets. Good grief. I have less than 50, and many of them are vassals or protectorates. But I think I will go for it. And to do so I need the FE to be gone.

I was just reading a thread at the paradox forums. Usually I see people post about how FE's had crushed them and game over.

But this thread was about the opposite. Seems FE's are stagnant tech wise, which I knew, and cannot rebuild their fleets, which I did not know. That is important to know. So the player has a real chance of winning a war of attrition. Evidently they can get additional ships through event. But placing some shipbuilding spaceports near their borders could see a punter's chance by continually building fleets to replace losses. Encouraging.

FWIW I noticed in a random YouTube video at the end game phase that the guy had an 8 planet limit for his core worlds. I know someone asked if it ever went past 6 somewhere earlier.

So how about leaders?

What is your strategy for using them. I can only have 10 - can that number change by research or something?

I have 2 in my science ships, as they are utterly useless without them, 3 for research, and 4 for colonies and 1 fleet admiral.

It seems the science guys are a must, or am I wrong? How do you split yours between fleets and colonies?

It can change, my limit IIRC is 12 or 14 or something like that. I have 6 scientists (3 vessels and 3 researchers, as required), two admirals, and a bunch of governors to fill it out. I haven't had any generals yet, the very little warring I've done involved me bringing more than enough troops to win through brute force.

Yes, leader limit is a repeatable tech card. I think I'm up to 18 or 20 now. I fill all of the science slots of course and run two science ships. I have about 6 admirals and one general. The rest are governors. Because I have more planets and sectors than I have governors, I tend to put them in my two 'main' core planets, in each sector and spread any left over on my most promising developing planets, with an eye toward traits. For example I don't want to put an Army Veteran or Fleet Officer on a tech-focused planet for example if it can be avoided.

One thing I hope they fix is the chance of a governor appearing whose traits contradict ethos. For example in my current game slavery is prohibited, yet there have been times that I have 3 Iron Fist candidates to choose from.

I've had it happen too, but eventually it changes. My first election I had a big pool of slavery happy candidates. No wonder they got 0% of the votes

Yes, but how long does it take? I waited for what seemed like a long time and lost patience, and now I just burn the Influence to buy then dismiss the unwanted leader. And it seems the replacement has about a 50% chance of being another with Iron Fist

I tried it out and didn't like it.

I might be the only who cares about such things here, but the choice of human faction leaders in the default game is downright Marxist, politically correct, and in one case almost more unbelievable than the alien factions are.

I thought the game was ok when you first start out, exploring and collecting resources from your home system and neighboring ones. But then it just gets dull.

Civilization meets Europa Universalis is probably accurate. Just without any of the interesting historical, real world things, and set in the blandest of bland sci-fi settings.

For blue-pilled sci-fi nerds only, is my take on it.

HogDriver I have to say I've come to agree with you in part. While I do find a lot to like in Stellaris, after a while I began to notice where it's lacking more and more. This game needs some DLC and patches, and I'll let other players argue about whether we should need to purchase DLC to get 'missing' features.

The things that need the most work, in my opinion, include combat, AI (especially warfare AI), diplomacy, espionage and just general flavor. I think Stellaris is a good starting point, and I'm confident that Paradox will make it better. It took me about 100 hours before I was starting to get a little bored with it.

And then I got smoked by the Alliance I had left because of the terrible AI. Figures.

So I bought Civ V. Yep, somehow I had never played it.

Stellaris is a good game, it just needs more depth, and width if that's a thing.