Video Games

[Blicero]

Also, a reason many people play Paradox games is map-painting. For these people, it is dissatisfying to end up with a messy-looking map after spending so much work cleaning up territories.

[Iduno]

Yeah, there's a "particular mental state" you have to be in to enjoy Paradox games.

[Stahlseele]

In stellaris, there are now more than one incentives to make people keeping their borders clean and their external connections as few as possible.
Empire Cohesion is one. Piracy Risk is another. Choke-Points can actually be very viable up untill the late mid game, by simply putting fuck off huge space stations into them. Even better if you can find yourself such a chokepoint that has the effect of basically destroying ALL SHIELDS EVER in that System by its mere presence. And then you outfit that Station with as much armor and anti armor and hull firepower as you can and you laugh and laugh even at some of the mid and endgame crysis if you keep upgrading it.

Cities Skylines and now Battletech are actually Paradox games too.

[Whipstitch]

Also, a reason many people play Paradox games is map-painting. For these people, it is dissatisfying to end up with a messy-looking map after spending so much work cleaning up territories.

These people can eat shit if they think mandating continuous borders in a fucking space empire game w/ a lanes mechanic is a good idea. As far as I can tell for all the kvetching about "snaking" it appears to me that practically everything that supports doing it constitutes interesting game mechanics whereas blobbing seems like it's supported by stuff that's pretty dull (namely, all territory being good territory). I mean, what's the point of exploration and shit if not to cherry pick and invest in good territories at the expense of poor ones?


But anyway, yeah, I have a general rule I keep in mind when dealing with things like empire cohesion: if the devs penalize you for something, it's probably because it was OP enough that it needed penalizing and more often than not it's worth it to keep eating the penalty. So I'm still cherry picking quite a bit, but I wouldn't call Empire Cohesion an abject failure since it's counterbalanced by my lower empire sprawl plus I already think blobbing isn't a great mechanic to begin with. Most importantly, I'd probably be snowballing even harder without cohesion given that the AI doesn't seem smart enough to cherry pick or snake when warranted.

[Whipstitch]

also, the paradox website is apparently ground zero for dipshits who use "boni"

[K]

I forgot how vaguely annoying I find the Paradox forums and their "Respectfully Disagree" bullshit. I'm a Denner, god dammit. I don't respectfully do anything.


Anyway, I'm giving Stellaris a shot and haven't formed a particularly strong opinion yet other than noticing it plays pretty damn slow if you're not smashing that Fastest time passage option. Also, what's with Paradox players and their "bordergore" angst? You can't throw a rock around that neighborhood without people bitching about "snaking" and "inorganic expansion." Which, near as I can tell, means that they're pissy that people like me won't put a space station in the middle of a featureless void without first being given a good reason.

Some games get heavily colonized by "builders" and then nothing matters any more. Few 4X's hit all the corners in a truly satisfying way that allows for multiple philosophies to thrive, but a builder infestation also ruins all feedback the devs receive and so the game gets pushed further toward the builders.

Stellaris in particular has boring-as-shit-combat and wars that mostly don't work. (Honestly, the usual result of any war is that a bunch of production was lost on blown-up ships and no territory changes hands.) Research has all the fun of a roulette wheel, and exploration is just OK.

The only thing it does well is let you build things, and they have changed that system a few times already.

[Whipstitch]

About the only thing I'm 100% sure I like is the bit where my absurdly advanced military is ostensibly made up of pacifists despite the fact that I handle all diplomacy by swinging my dick around.

[Stahlseele]

yyeeaah . . pacifists need a good hard looking at in stellaris, no argument there . . it is just too easy to play the victim and goad/bait enemies into attacking your poor, pacifist empire with a military larger than their entire population . . .

[Whipstitch]

My only regret is that I didn't make my species look more like the Tim Burton Martians.

[Zaranthan]

Stellaris in particular has boring-as-shit-combat and wars that mostly don't work. (Honestly, the usual result of any war is that a bunch of production was lost on blown-up ships and no territory changes hands.) Research has all the fun of a roulette wheel, and exploration is just OK.

First off, I totally agree that it's way easy for a 4x game to put all its eggs into the eXploit bits and leave the other three as unsatisfying window dressing that exists just to pace out the exploitation.

But, a youtuber I follow recently put up a bunch of playthroughs of Stellaris, and military conquest seems to be key to his strategy. Lay some claims during peacetime (when it's cheaper), declare war, blow up their fleet, capture the systems you claimed, blow up their reinforcements, demand status quo, repeat until they capitulate or run out of planets.

[K]

But, a youtuber I follow recently put up a bunch of playthroughs of Stellaris, and military conquest seems to be key to his strategy. Lay some claims during peacetime (when it's cheaper), declare war, blow up their fleet, capture the systems you claimed, blow up their reinforcements, demand status quo, repeat until they capitulate or run out of planets.

My guess is that he's cherry picking his runs or running a mod where he gets the hull techs in a timely manner. I'd found that even playing a Sciencey race with extra picks, there was a good chance that I wouldn't have the hull techs I needed to have the military assets required to be assured of a victory.

Even then, a weaker neighbor who did badly on the tech roulette might ally up so that you can't win wars against them even with a tech advantage.

I'm not saying that it can't be done, but that you'd literally be better off just spending production on building.

[Axebird]

But, a youtuber I follow recently put up a bunch of playthroughs of Stellaris, and military conquest seems to be key to his strategy. Lay some claims during peacetime (when it's cheaper), declare war, blow up their fleet, capture the systems you claimed, blow up their reinforcements, demand status quo, repeat until they capitulate or run out of planets.

My guess is that he's cherry picking his runs or running a mod where he gets the hull techs in a timely manner. I'd found that even playing a Sciencey race with extra picks, there was a good chance that I wouldn't have the hull techs I needed to have the military assets required to be assured of a victory.

Even then, a weaker neighbor who did badly on the tech roulette might ally up so that you can't win wars against them even with a tech advantage.

I'm not saying that it can't be done, but that you'd literally be better off just spending production on building.

I have no idea what's causing your experience to be so completely different from mine. I play an online game every few weeks, and warfare against both bots and other players is a consistently effective means of expansion.

[Stahlseele]

That is one of my main gripes with stellaris actually.
The fucking weighted wonky deck of science cards <.<
Not a logical tree or set of trees you can follow at all.
If you do not draw a certain tech that you need to advance, you are simply shit out of luck . . .

[Iduno]

I had one run that lasted most of a night. I tried the diplomatic approach. My first ally demanded I change my policies so I couldn't start wars (which I did, because that was my plan anyway), then immediately started wars with everyone else in space.

Edit: I assume that's why they made pacifists such good combatants. There's very little to the game other than slapping down some population/buildings to gain resources, then going out and wasting those resources shooting at each other.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, that diplomacy is even worse than the one in Civilization somehow <.<
You'd think if they can steal things like the traditions stuff wholesale from Civ5 basically, that they would take a look at the actually pretty damn decent spy/dimplomacy system Civ5 had as well . .

[K]

But, a youtuber I follow recently put up a bunch of playthroughs of Stellaris, and military conquest seems to be key to his strategy. Lay some claims during peacetime (when it's cheaper), declare war, blow up their fleet, capture the systems you claimed, blow up their reinforcements, demand status quo, repeat until they capitulate or run out of planets.

My guess is that he's cherry picking his runs or running a mod where he gets the hull techs in a timely manner. I'd found that even playing a Sciencey race with extra picks, there was a good chance that I wouldn't have the hull techs I needed to have the military assets required to be assured of a victory.

Even then, a weaker neighbor who did badly on the tech roulette might ally up so that you can't win wars against them even with a tech advantage.

I'm not saying that it can't be done, but that you'd literally be better off just spending production on building.

I have no idea what's causing your experience to be so completely different from mine. I play an online game every few weeks, and warfare against both bots and other players is a consistently effective means of expansion.

My guess is that the choices I make in empire types and civics are weighing the tech roulette against the war techs. Since the game obscures the things that affect the roulette, I can't tell you for sure.

That being said, taking systems is not the most reliable means of gaining power in Stellaris. Its often most efficient to invest in better buildings for your existing planets rather than take the research hit from owning a lot of systems and having a giant total population. "Building tall" has been a stable of the game since the beginning.

[Whipstitch]

My suspicion is that a lot of this flailing about is probably contingent on patch level. I get the impression that this game has changed a lot. My new playthrough is definitely pretty tall; we're a a bunch of Fanatic Egalitarians and Materialists so we're running a Technocracy organized via Parliamentary system so that when the robuts briefly put people out of jobs I get a nice li'l extra dribble of research and unity until I can get around to addressing the situation. I don't think Egalitarian is remotely top tier from what I've seen of the other factions but I don't think it's as bad as some other people think, either. Pissing off your Progressives every few decades by changing policy to order some resettlements is annoying but very manageable* and 10% to specialist output goes a long way to killing the alloy bottleneck dead. And obviously my researchers are hot shit.


*there's also a bug where you can resettle while it's technically prohibited but I'm trying to play honest.

[Chamomile]

I dimly recall building tall to have been not a very viable strategy very early into the game's release, with constant expansion being practically necessary, and this is back when the game was even more reliant on "build one of your optimal ship, make a giant doomstack, defeat enemy fleet" than it is now. But practically every expansion has had more options for building tall and building wide became more difficult but not especially more interesting. You do at least have any reason to care at all about ground armies now, rather than just making fifty of the basic soldiers and relying on sheer numbers to overwhelm the enemy.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, in classic Paradox fashion I've noticed people half-joking that the new hotness will always be whatever was most recently released in DLC, and right now an ecumenopolis supported by a few agricultural and mining satellite worlds is apparently the breakout star of the Megacorp DLC.

[Stahlseele]

To be completely honest, i do not like the new no tiles system for the planet building <.<

[Korwin]

Pillar of Eternity 2, got an Patch with round based combat

[Stahlseele]

Pathfinder Kingmaker got an up to 18 gigs tall patch . . changed basically nothing, aside from a bit of how the game works in terms of performance with save games it seems.

[OgreBattle]

Yay Yoshida Brazilian bunny girls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8JE4-T-i0s

[Iduno]

I've been playing Hitman 2. It's a weird puzzle/exploration game involving killing people (generally terrible people) in hilarious ways.

This is one of the easier ways to kill this person in this level, but the things Agent 47 says are great. https://youtu.be/yn-nkUZHHyQ?t=323

[Whipstitch]

Brazilian bunny girls

you set my butt expectations too high, tbh