The Shrine

Once the expansions get rolling, this will probably be the best strategy game in existence. It's looking incredibly strong so far, and Henrik brings up a good point about how Paradox strategy games always seem to stay interesting in the late game; because while you can be winning, there's always new challenges to overcome... In Crusader Kings II, it's also fun if things look hopeless, because there is always a chance that favour could swing your way: an enemy empire may collapse giving you the opportunity to carve out a new Empire in its ashes; you might get conquered, but get into good favour with the right people of the conquerors, and have an heir with standing high enough that he might be able to seize the reigns of the empire; or quite simply, you might gain power and standing among the leaders in a coalition that gangs up and takes on the powerful empire.

It's not like Civ or Total War where you are either winning or losing, and everything is highly predictable, because the obstacles are always the same.

I always thought that was what made their games stupid because if you're supposed to have a strategy game that's remotely modeled after reality the guy that is winning the most doesn't suddenly collapse just for winning big and it's very artificial that the biggest guy doesn't just roll over everyone else if your game doesn't have mechanism to guard against that. A game like ROTK 11 is actually hard for the biggest guy to roll over everyone by design because if you're fighting everyone you can have all your best generals bogged down in some fronts and then you'd have a very hard time having your inexperienced guys fighting anybody decent even if you've an overwhelmingly troop advantage, and that the economic dimension becomes a lot like USA vs the World, as in the biggest guy's economy is so big that any collateral damage to the economy is huge in absolute terms and that forces that guy to fight a very extended perimeter. It'd be like if Mexico sacked Los Angeles that'd probably be trillions of damage to the USA economy even if nobody would expect Mexico to be able to hold Los Angeles for longer than a day if they went to war with USA, so even someone has twice the resources of all the rest of the players put together can't afford to have the equivalent of Los Angeles sacked or you'd definitely fall behind in a war of attrition.

Off topic: Thread made me load up my last CK2 save (still haven't installed the latest expansion - heard mixed reviews). My ruler died and left me as the six year old heir. Sure enough, my reagent ended up being my favourite uncle...and of course, he had the voice of satan. Managed to make it out alive and come to age...barely...but I had to blind and release my uncle from prison...because every kingdom needs an antichrist.

On topic: I am cautiously optimistic about Stellaris. I just hope it doesn't prove too ambitious for paradox.

I was negative on the recent CK2 patch at first because it closed the ways I exploited the game; but then I was positive because I began focusing more on internal growth and political organization, and had a lot of fun with it.

Specifically, it fixed the Tribal army exploit where players could maintain a large tribal army that they could maintain perpetually, just as long as they stayed at war. Keeping an army that large requires lots of plunder, so moving forward, plundering and conquering makes a sustainable strategy; now the targets will band together as your notoriety rises, so if it hits 50% neighbours of similar culture and religion will band, than at 75% similar culture or religion, and at 95% to 100% they'll sign defensive pacts against you regardless of their culture/religion - that means from time to time the player has to stop their perpetual conquest, at least to allow notoriety to drop below 95%.

As a bit of a response to Don: how are internal pressures and wars of succession not realistic? They happened all the time through European history, and were the largest obstacle for every powerful Empire. If it was realistic for someone to come through and conquer and maintain everything for all time, by the Renaissance you would expect Europe to be one gigantic arm of the Roman Empire, and not hundreds of smaller states. The Romans weren't the first Empire to collapse to internal forces (and they did so to varying degrees multiple times, too), and weren't the last. Paradox's games aren't straight up, get a big stick and beat everyone games, you can play it like that, but unlike civ, not everyone in your own borders is your friend - and you can't just exploit people constantly so you can have huge armies to smack others with, and expect everyone in your empire to remain friendly to you.

With the way they work, you might not actually be the Emperor, the Khan, or the Caliph, you might be the one leading the revolt, or a vassal of the Emperor fighting the revolt, or the vassal of one of the revolutionary leader's vassals. You can play many roles, and so can the cpus. Everyone has the opportunity to expand their power and influence, or defend it.

If anything, Paradox makes the most detailed and realistic feeling long term strategy games of any dev that have existed so far.

If political/people issue is that big of a barrier then they'd apply equally to a fledgling power and if it's enough to take down an empire the most likely result is that you'd never be able to get anywhere in the game. Genghis Khan 2 on the SNES was like that where your provinces randomly rebelled for no reason and even though the computer AI is trivial to beat, you're never going to come close to conquering the map because people are rebelling all the time. Historically places like Europe stay pretty fragmented for a long time and if a game spans long enough that you can rule out the possibility of one brilliant guy able to unify everything due to old age then the result you get is a game that you'd never be able to win unless you're really lucky.

I mean, gameplay is gameplay, so if people like having to do more stuff after you built a seemingly insurmountable lead that's okay too, but it's no more or less justified than the a game where the strongest power can just roll over everyone. The Mongol Empire pretty much just conquered everyone and it lasted for a nontrivial amount of time. It's probably not the best kind of foundation you want to build your empire on but it should be more sufficient for winning a game.

In CK2, the Mongol Empire CAN roll over everyone.

They have nomadic organization. Their main resource is man power, it grows slowly, but in time, and if history goes in their favour, then a single character could hypothetically conquer most of Europe and the Arabs within a lifetime. They're interesting because they really only have one buildable city per leader, everything else that contributes to this type of organization are just plains and extracting from other settlement types (cities, temples, castles) through plunder.

I heard the new dlc (and patch) basically just limits your options due to the council and forces you to deal with rebellions and shit non-stop.

Neither sounded very appealing. When I feel a bit more motivated, I will try it (and mod out what I don't like).

I haven't found that to be the case. If anything, my latest game has been more peaceful than any since the introduction of tribal organization. What it does do is adds the option for defensive pacts against heavy aggressors based on their level of infamy. Infamy decays over time. So if you go above 95%, then everyone has the option to join the pact. Fighting constantly above 95% is not very productive, so the best option is to have short periods of peace... What this means is players can no longer abuse tribal armies through perpetual warfare; it did make Tribal organization insanely overpowered for anyone exploiting perpetual warfare.

I am sure it fixes other sorts of abuses too, but my abuse was the tribal armies, and that's the one I took note of. I suppose, there's still opportunity for the abuse, but it's much more costly now; in my opinion, more of a hassle than it's worth.

May 9th is the release date!!!

This is even before Hearts of Iron 4. A lot earlier than expected.

Havent had the chance to play, but a reminder that this is now out.

It seems to be in "Good but no great" territory. Looking forward to future patches and possibly looking forward to DLC before I buy it.

Eurogamer - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016- ... ris-review Recommended


Destructoid - http://www.destructoid.com/review-stell ... 8688.phtml 9/10


Gamewatcher - http://www.gamewatcher.com/reviews/stel ... view/12559 9/10


TheSixthAxis - http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2016/05/09/stellaris-review 8/10


PCGamer - http://www.pcgamer.com/stellaris-review 7/10


IGN - http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-review 6.3/10


RockPaperShotgun - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... -review-pc "...incredibly assured and confident, if perhaps a little too tidy and streamlined"


Paste - http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2 ... galac.html

I spent like six hours with it....I am not sure how I feel about it yet. Diplomacy feels pretty weak, characters are not that memorable (I don't really care if my leader(s) dies) and the game so far is a little boring. Now...that said, I am playing a pacifist race, so maybe that's why it feels a little boring. I am also still early in the game.

Withholding judgement, but not raving about it so far.

I'm on my second game. My first one was more of a stab so I could understand what to do and what not to do, and what sort of play style I want to go with; without trying to deduce it from a bunch of articles written by other people.

So far my experiences are considerably different, my first game had me shoved in a large pack of other civilizations, and I was involved in an alliance. My second game had me at the centre of the Galaxy on an arm, and no one was around, I thought I might have made a mistake in the settings until I sent a military fleet out to explore further up the arm - sure enough, there were 5 or 6 Empires not too far out, and then I ended up in Fallen Empire space; a Fallen Empire is an extremely powerful old empire which has since stopped expanding, and remained focus on living in their part of space and making sure the younger races Don't do something disastrous - they're like the Nox from Stargate, or the Vorlon from Babylon 5. I accidentally flew deep into their space, and they vanished, lost at sea. They appeared back in my own borders years later.

1. Allying is much more fun than other 4X games as you vote on bringing people into a pack; when it gets big enough you can form a Federation - which is an alliance with a single leader, rather than governance by all.
2. There're multiple stories to uncover, similar to other Paradox games.
3. They clearly developed this game with LOTS of space for additions. It is already one of the biggest, if not the biggest, space strategy game I have ever come across, and if it's anything like EU4 or CK2, it's going to dwarf the competition by the end of year 1. And make them seem like Brownies by year 3.
4. Unlike other 4X games, Empires are multi-racial, beginning with one race, but others can move in or be incorporated. Plus members of your race can emigrate out into other Empires, or form factions of their own. I have come across conflicts against people from my own race who have gone off to do their own thing.
5. You can raise up other species into spacefaring races, if you do so, they can become your vassals - I currently have two vassals in my second game, lately because no one else was around to bother me.
6. Democracies at least, give quests based on promises from the democratic leader; these are currently just build quests from what I see, but there's big room for expansion.
7. There are lots of remnants of more ancient civilizations that are long gone, kind of like the Ancients from Stargate, and these trigger stories.
8. Unlike other recent 4X games I have played since the 90s, it's fun to study and settle new regions.
9. Tech system is more like a tiered card game than a tree, and there's LOTS of tech. Also, you assign scientists to learn the tech, and unlike other 4X games, you study multiple techs at once, not just one. You have a biologist, and physicist, and an engineer, and they all are learning different techs in their field simultaneously, you also have biology, physics, and industrial research points that you acquire from facilities and quests. In other words: imagine Civ, but instead of just the beakers, you had other sorts of research currencies; let's say a accuses and DNA helixes, and you would gain all three, and they would go towards researching different tech trees. Also, you could assign characters from your Empire to help things along.
10. Not really a point, but the B5 and Star Trek inspiration is very apparent.

Right now, the game plays like a 4X with grand strategy elements (such as having the characters in your empire that assign to things, like as a governor of a planet or sector, a scientist, president of your empire, etc...), but I haven't been far enough to see how that is going to evolve. My current goal is mostly expansion and raising pre-space aged races up into becoming vassals of mine. I am doing quite . Some valuable strategies I have found for this is to study as much tech in regards to other planetary biomes to live on, this will expand the number of planet types you can colonize.

More to come, I am just getting started. And yeah, like CK2 and EU4, this is a long long game.

If you like strategy, this is definitely a game to get now. It is half the price of the upcoming Sid Meier's Civilization 6, and very likely much better than Civ6 will be until at least the second expansion. Also, assuming they run with the CK2/EU4 strategy, there will be lots of expansions, I usually wait on these until I am ready to play them - since they are MUCH cheaper on Steam sales, and because my games usually last a half a year or more, I can afford to wait. My current CK2 game started in October.

And yes, I highly recommend this game. It's cheap enough that you can't really go wrong.

Plus, there will definitely be awesome B5, 40K, and Star Trek mods. Those universes are perfect for the framework set up in Stellaris; and there are a lot of scripts for modders to work with.

Sounds like you are enjoying it more than me.

The only "fun" I've really had was pissing off a Fallen Empire that was nearby (they declared on me, but my federation eventually overwhelmed them. The liberated portion of their empire joined our federation). Other than that, I don't find it nearly as engaging as CKII -- and I think it's that time passes too quickly to ever really care about your "leaders".

Mods might make it better, but for now, I am rating it a solid "meh".

It's much more like an EU game meets 4X than CK2. It is beneficial to make your lifespans longer, that way you can play around more with your characters. But statistics are much more simplistic than CK2; I expect they'll expand on the stats at some point if it makes sense to do so; there's no components to the game yet where that would be a useful addition other than just being bells and whistles for no other purpose. There's an obvious slot for non-government affiliated characters, so I am guessing updates for that will come eventually. So far, to me, the game seems very 4X focused, but Paradox has spoken about transitioning it into a Grand strategy after the 4X phase; I haven't played enough yet to see how it will work. Or even if the updates are out that do that. Right now, CK2 is definitely the more fun game, but I prefer to play this one right now because it is new and it is going to be what Paradox is updating the most over the next 4 years.

I've been going mostly Asimov universe in theme, naming my planets after planets in Asimov's Galactic Empire, and from among the Spacer worlds from thousands of years earlier (Spacers were pretty much Asimov's Numenorians, except germaphobes).


I now have a 4 species Empire. Myself, and three others I raised up from more primitive planets, and later integrated. There's a 5th on the way. Because I had the room to do so, I have been extremely expansionistic around the core. I was on the Northern side of it, and am bending around the Western side. I bumped into two fanatic purifiers on the Southern side of the core, but they're no threat. I colonized two Gaia world's right on their border; one I named Trantor - which is my defacto capital, and the other Mira - since it was filled with giant wildlife.

Around the two Gaia worlds, there's a bunch of planets I have the tech to colonize, and am dumping huge amounts of energy into doing that. Since I am a Xenophile individualist, there is no way my people will ever get along with my neighbours to the south; in fact, we have -1000+ relationship with both; and this is a game where the soft cap is +200 to -200 relationship points. I've declared them rivals, and get two extra influence points per turn - it's a currency that can be spent on things such as Outposts (don't use those unless absolutely necessary), alliances, and hiring new leaders.

I have a lot of space to myself in the middle, my borders look like this:
Northward: a tight cluster of 6 small Empires, mostly capitalists.
Eastward: Dark space, too much to cross, and the stars beyond are unknown, the whole Eastern half of the Galaxy is still a mystery.
Westward: a long arm, one religious republic, but beyond are 7 medium to large Empires, and at the end (or as far as we can see) is an ancient Empire, vastly more powerful than everyone else I know combined - no one goes there.
Southward - this is on a whole different arm of the Galaxy, not connected to the rest, there are two militant Fantatical purists, large, but pathetically weak compared to me; they look like free planets to me.

For those who aren't familiar with how Paradox does things. Their games, especially the last two (CK2 and EU4), follow a schedule of release > free updates > Massive updates + paid expansions - that is, they will update the game with free stuff, and then have a paid portion that IMO is always worth the money, but if you can wait, they usually bundle it at a discount, and then further discount it during Steam Sales.

First three updates: Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein are scheduled for release over the next 6 weeks, starting with Clarke at the end of next week - Hmmm, two week cycles for releases, that's some good Sprint planning!

Clarke Beefs up general diplomacy, and adds some more UI elements.
Here's a mockup of the new End of Compat summary:



Asimov Beefs up war goals and adds diplomatic map.
Heinlein Beefs up mid game and diplomatic options among allies. Also XL battleship weapon slot.
Here's a link to the full post:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/in ... ge.932668/

Okay I've bought this and every time I've come here to start typing about it I've thought "Wait.. I could be using this time to play Stellaris" So what I'm saying here is that I like it lol.

I do 100% get what people seem to say is lacking from the mid game though. I'm looking forward to the future updates.

Also this game seems to have a rather... dour outlook on the atomic/space age. I've come across six planets at this stage and four of them have destroyed themselves in nuclear/biological weapon war lol.

Also the current game I'm in our solar system happened to be close to my spawn point and Earth was a tomb world populated by cockroaches. And, yes, that planet is now mine and I've uplifted the cockroaches :D

Wow, 4 of your planets are tomb worlds? I have explored a few hundred systems and have only found 3. It took me a while to even find the first one, and it shared a system with the second one. It was a little interesting because one of the Fallen Empires halfway across the galaxy seemed to be angry that I "desecrated" one of them. It makes me excited for the future and some of the scenarios that deal with tomb worlds and perhaps remnants of ancient Empires.

What if one of the ancient civilizations are debating where their planet of origin is? Then they employ you to help them discover where it is. This is a scenario right out of Isaac Asimov's Foundation; effectively, by the late Galactic Empire, humanity had forgotten which planet was their origin. The actual debate of human origins began only a few thousand years after, humans on other planets were unwilling to agree that their origins were on a disgusting bumpkin planet like Earth. Twenty thousand years later, there were many hypothetical origins, but the closest to correct was Alpha Centauri.

Speaking of Foundation, some of the stories take place on tomb worlds which died of various disasters. Largely the earliest worlds colonized by humanity; and some had some very dangerous remnants left behind. I am extremely excited for the science fiction stories that will pour into future versions of this game.

Oh no I just meant in all my games. I only have two tomb worlds in my borders in this game and only one is actually colonized. The other one is 'only' 17 pops so I dunno.. maybe at some point.

I get this one event a lot where a gaseous alien race with no technology of their own wants to be transported to a new home planet. When they get there they planet'll get a +3 social science boost. They'll ask to get relocated again to the same effect. After that all I've gotten is a message that they have all this useless shit lying around, "Please take it off our hands" or some such and it's +500 minerals lol

I tried -- I am still pretty "meh" with this game. I'll revisit in a few patches/mods.

While I never actually completed a game I really did like this game in general. The Asimov update has kind of ruined that for me. I hate how relationships with other empires works now. I played a 7-10 hour game to try Asimov out and in that time the relationships were so screwed up that there was literally only one Alliance between two empires in the entire galaxy... This game needs more updates to really get where it needs to go.

Still worth my time and money but I'm kind of in kali's camp now.

I finished my first game with relative ease. I am going to wait for the first real expansion to play a second game though.

I f'nished pre-Asimov though. Before patch #1 when 80 victory points allowed you too vassalize ANY empire you were at war with, I built a powerful Empre. Then when patch 1 dropped the amount of victory points required to annex a planet, I just ate the galaxy. Starting wth the Fallen Empires. The end of my game was one big colonization push over the remains of the half a galaxy the Unbidden destroyed. Otherwise, I was virtually untouchable. It reminded me very much of a 4X game at that point

CK2 remains much more interesting a game, you could own most of the world and still be faced with some large internal issues that could cause some issues. I am hoping the first real expansion takes it much more in the way of a grand strategy.

So did they "fix" the game yet? I heard CK2 got a new DLC that sounded pretty cool (havent tried it yet), and that made Stellaris jump back in my brain.

Short answer: no.

They're about to put out another wave of stuff (free and paid), but I'm not sure it addresses my problems with the game (mid-game, diplomacy). It looks like another good step. On the bright side here - from skimming the dev diaries they seem to have an accurate picture of what needs to be addressed. There's a chance the October patch could actually make things a lot better than the last patch.

Unfortunately this is the kind of thing that could be worth checking out again in a year or two rather than a month or five.

I am probably going to do another CK2 game before Stellaris, and my CK2 games last months. I have good faith in Paradox as a team, and Stellaris has a lot of potential built into it that will get used.

I'll let Stellaris sit on the back burner then -- I read the latest patch notes and it wasn't all that interesting (War in Heaven and some other stuff).

I think I will start a new game of CK2 as well -- I loaded up my main save (where my empire is basically 1/4 of Europe) with the new DLCs and everyone was suddenly pissed at me about...something about the not being on council, which I assume is the conclave DLC. Rather than work through that mess, I will start a new game.

It's usually a good idea from a versioning standpoint. The older the save, the longer it has been played, the greater the likelihood of edge-case bugs that will mess up the experience, or break it completely.


I've had a couple of games break, both of them were saves that were a few hundred years old and across many different versions. One was a repeatable crash on some event that happened on the exact same day, probably some trigger that no longer existed in the much later version of the game. The other was much more interesting: towns were earning thousands of times more than they otherwise should. It was fun for about 20 or 30 minutes, but it broke diplomacy and warfare, and there were all sorts of events firing.

I restarted and it was a pretty weird game. I picked a Breton independent and married off one of my daughters...that husband somehow became Charlemagne's heir. So they are off breeding like rabbits, and I am picking off the other independents around me until I can finally create a petty kingdom. I am not positive how, but now I am part of the Francia Empire and no longer independent. The Empire is elective and I see I am the king with the most votes... My daughter and her husband, the former heir, rebel and become West Francia. Charlemegne succumbs to wounds and I become emperor of 90% of Europe. In my family's first generation...

How the fuck did that happen? I am not even sure I want to keep playing that game - I think I might restart again.

That is a crazy amount of luck! And you did it without mass bribery?

Or did everyone else in Francia piss everyone off that much?

Personally speaking, I find games are most fun playing in a non-Arab/Frankish/Roman culture. The simple reason is the hill to climb is a lot steeper with more steps, and it feels much more satisfying when you get an Empire going. I have yet to play a nomadic tribe, but I always have lots of fun starting as a small Norse county:

1. Spend your first generation getting claims on all the counties in your Petty Kingdom and building up honour.
2. Claim more from a the next Petty Kingdom over if you manage to claim everything in your own Duchy before hitting 500 honor.
3. When you get to 500 honor, start declaring and use your 500 honor to raise 2500 troops.
4. Start conquering lands, try to get all of them in your Petty Kingdom.
5. Raise money required to get a Jarl title, and if your character has enough years left on him.
*If in Sweden, chances are Sigurd or his son Ragnar have conquered you. But you can still conquer lands within the confines of their Kingdom, unless they hold the title. If they hold the title, be nice to them and they'll possibly give it to you.
6. Generation 1/2 - The Viking age... Send raiders off to plunder England and Francia, gain honor and gold.
7. Pagans have a CB to vassalize all the lands of another, they can use it once per lifetime. Watch the movements of the big Kingdoms: Sweden and Denmark, if they declare war on each other or the Franks, that is the time to use that CB.
8. Become King of whichever country you've conquered.
*Always keep just one of your highest ranking titles due to Pagan Gavelkind. That way your heir will always be the liege of all your lands, there may be a few dissenters, but they're generally much weaker and easy to crush early on... Especially at the Kingdom size.


After that, having seafaring Kingdom in the North with raiding abilities can be a lot of fun. There are lots of options:
A. Send fleets of raiders throughout Europe and become very wealthy Kingdom. This is probably the easiest path to Pagan Feudalism if you want to get there early.
B. Conquer the Pagan world and form an Empire.
C. Conquer England.
D. Conquer Northern Francia.
E. Sail into the Medditerranean and go after Italy.
F. If you can manage it, conquering the Spain would be the most rewarding, they are crazy rich. But with enough honor troops, it's doable.
G. Become a wealthy Merchant Republic. Make the North of Europe the wealthiest lands.

No, there was no bribery involved. Francia was tearing itself apart with the rebellion and I was minding my own business. So bug or luck - but totally not what I wanted for that game.

I have played Greeks and Nords previously. I think I will restart and try some sort of tribal country.

I did restart....as a hindu vassal with the lunatic trait. First time playing a lunatic. After making a miracle baby with a garden nymph in a rose bush, I opted to make my horse the new court chancellor. I was extremely disappointed to learn I could not marry my daughter off to my new chancellor. Undaunted, I directed my new chancellor to begin fabricating claims in a neighbouring country. My loyal horse did as directed, but I am sad to say my despicable neighbours exploited my chancellors inexperience and had him assassinated. From this day forward, July 8th shall be "Glitterhoof Remembrance Day" and the world will be made to suffer as I suffered....I love you Glitterhoof....

I am enjoying this new game far more.

Hahaha. That one of the things I love about Crusader Kings 2, the traits that may be most negative from a gameplay standpoint often make for the most entertaining play. You inspired me to create a Possessed Lunatic Dwarf who suffers all 7 sins: lustful, gluttonous, proud, envious, slothful, wroth, and greedy. I'll make him ugly too, and seek out a dwarf woman to be his wife. It won't be beneficial from a gameplay standpoint, but there will be an interesting story told.

This game got a HQ update to the soundtrack this week that is just fucking fantastic.

Tessian eventually bought this and his enthusiasm for this game has gotten me to revisit it to the point where I've probably played four times as much time as I expected to get out of this game (~200 hours). I think he has even more time than me in the game lol

In any case, in a month or two they're doing a rework of a ton of key aspects of the game (FTL, borders, war) so if you've not revisited the game then the update will probably pique your interest.



That said if you're curious now Synthetic Dawn was a fantastic DLC. Utopia was decent, too. Leviathon was.... okay.

I'm looking forward to playing it some time. It probably won't be until next year, as I am in the middle of a CK2 thing - playing the game as a vassal, I like the extra challenge because AI decision making is more chaotic and less unpredictable. I do this because I know how to exploit the gameplay mechanics enough that even the smallest and most remote starting position ends up in easy world conquest.

The rules are you can only hold a rank that is one below the rank of your liege, so if your liege is a Duke, you can only be a Count, if your liege is a King then you can be a Duke...

I began as a vassal Count to the Munso family (The family of Ragnar Lothbrok), and made great gains in helping to conquer all the independent rulers of the lands in Sweden. The Munso Jarl (Ducal level) kept running out of money, and didn't upgrade to King-level. To the south house of Skjöldung (The descendants of Hrothgar of the House Scylding) had subjugated Saxony, and took their crown, so they ruled the Kingdom of Saxony covering Northern Germany and Denmark. I betrayed my liege and immediately swore fealty to the Kingdom of Saxony, then Saxony covered a fair portion of Sweden too. I made myself a Duke, and began gaining Count-level vassals, and expanded across Scandinavia. The Kingdom broke apart several times as more Crowns were made (in Germanic Gavelkind succession, the titles are distributed to the sons, so if someone has multiple Monarchies, then the sons each gain crowns, and splits the Kingdom). I continuously worked to battle and reunify the Kingdoms by starting factions to raise one of the other Kings to the throne.

When the Viking Age began, I became rich by plundering England, France, and the Umayyad Caliphate. I kept dumping my coffers to my liege in hopes he would found the Empire of Scandinavia. It eventually happened. Then I took the Crown of Norway, so I could have Dukes as vassals, reformed the religion... The most interesting thing happened. My former liege dynasty, who had fallen into relative obscurity, only owning a bit of land in Finland, had a powerful descendant who raised a huge raiding force, and they conquered the city of Rome! This triggered the Crusading era early. A few years later the Christians took back Rome, and crusaded for Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the new Knight orders had been successfully beating down Germanics in Saxony, and the Kingdom collapsed. The Germanic Holy War era began, and I retaliated by declaring a great holy war against the most powerful Catholic Kingdom of France; it was the largest war that had taken place in the game to that point. We won. I took the French crown and gave it to a landed relative who owned obscure lands way over in Russia, and am currently engaging in campaigns against Catholic Germany and Poland. Currently, the Vikings own all of Scandinavia, Western Russia, the Baltic nations, all of the British Isles, France, and we're making a push into modern day Germany (the Northern portion we once owned in the earlier days when the Kingdom of Saxony was subjugated). I am not touching the De Jure Kingdom of Germany yet, I hope to make that my target in the next great Holy War; after that: Italy. Then maybe I'll have the guts to try to move against the Umayyad Empire (currently owns portions of France, all of the Iberian peninsula, and all of North Western Africa - they are far more powerful than any Christian Kingdom currently, including the Byzantine Empire).

Lol...you still havent even tried stellaris?

Haha, I have, but not since Vanilla. It seemed a little too basic at that point. Now might be a good time to get back into it.

The game has advanced a fair amount. You'd be able to milk a fair amount of time out of the current system before the reworks early next year (and presumably there's DLC, too).

They found it impossible to balance war around the three FTL types so their war rework requires some kind of version of hyperlanes. Getting to choose from three FTL types was really neat but I'm interested to see all the changes they have coming

Well the patch notes are in and the DLC/patch is coming on Feb 22nd. The changes look interesting and (as is the danger with changes this big) don't look like they have ruined the game.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/in ... s.1069794/

In November I thought it was "a month or two" away.. lol

Game is a lot different between 1.9 and 2.0, but it's still the best 4X game out there.

There was a weekend sale on Steam with a really good deal. They tend to have sales at every major Steam event.

I am really digging the current version of the game.

Part of the issues with the earlier version I played back in 2016 was how easy it was to totally snowball over the galaxy with vassalization. I got an interesting surprise attempting it this time around. First of all, it is MUCH more difficult to vassalize Kingdoms; I have fought 3 vassalization wars and came nowhere near the victory goal before the war weariness timer ranout, BUT - Status quo gives the portion of occupied systems. So now I have split off empires as vassals; and I find this a lot more fun - it's a slower crawl to galactic dominance, and I personally prefer this; it's closer to the sort of gameplay of a grand strategy as well.

All FTL is hyperdrive, so there are definitive choke-points that can be defended with heavily armed starbases - I have Babylon 5 located on system bordering 3 other Empires, and Deep Space 9 defending a wormhole (no planet Bajor). Essentially, with the Megastructures (that got added a long time ago, but I hadn't played them yet) the game is easy to play a tall strategy, and I find it more fun that way.



Did anyone else call their first two Ringworlds Solaris and Shevat?

Anyway, when building tall, it's best to disregard bonus tiles (for the most part) and instead focus on modifiers.
* Every Habitat/Planet/Ringworld has all planet-unique Unity buildings placed, as well as the appropriate modifier buildings.
* All science and energy comes from Habitats which I label Xname Science Station or Xname Power Station: i.e. Saturn Science Station, or Centauri Power Station.
* All planets are converted to food farms since they cannot hope to compete with the productivity of ringworlds; although I have been terraforming them into Gaia planets (even Mars is Gaia planet, though I plan to leave Earth as is).
* Future Ringworlds will be pure production. I am aiming to have at least two more by the time the game is done: Shevat and Mahanon.
* My Solaris Ring World is unique due to the theme. Section 1: Etrenank and Section 2: Third Class Block both generate minerals; Krelian's Lab generates science, and the Soylent System generates food. Its orbital defense citadel is called Jugend.

Since each of the four sections act as a 25 pop-max Gaia planet, Solaris generates A TON of resources.

Perhaps I am having way too much fun with this game =)
These last couple of years have been some great times to be a gamer.

I really like this game but my biggest problem with it these days is that the game slows to a crawl in the late game depending on the size of the galaxy. I only really find the game playable in 200 star galaxies, with my patience wearing thin at 400. Unfortunately I think the game only really shines at sizes 600/800.

In any case by hours this is one of my most played games ever so, my problems with it aside I clearly like it quite it a bit.

Shrinweck wrote:I really like this game but my biggest problem with it these days is that the game slows to a crawl in the late game depending on the size of the galaxy. I only really find the game playable in 200 star galaxies, with my patience wearing thin at 400. Unfortunately I think the game only really shines at sizes 600/800.

In any case by hours this is one of my most played games ever so, my problems with it aside I clearly like it quite it a bit.

That's pretty much it. I'm thinking if I play again, it'll be a 200 star system and I'll go tall.

Also, I didn't mention it in my last post, but DO NOT load up the map with as many factions as possible or you won't get Fallen Empires to spawn.

I'm excited with my current game, I got a Dreadnought!!!

So Stellaris (v 1.7) is out on consoles today. I'll probably buy it for the PS4 tonight, just to support the developer and genre, but paradox appears to be fairly non-committal and hesitant about consoles (ie. "We will see how it sells before we commit to patches, expansion support, etc). That's a rather shitty approach and I hear it is digital only -- which seems like self sabotage.

But in any case, I am very curious to try it out to see how they tackled KBM to controller. And if you didn't play this on PC, it's a good game to take a chance on. I hear the Xbox will support mods.

Of all their strategy games (that I've played at least), Stellaris is definitely the best suited for console and a good gateway into Paradox grand strategies. Especially considering it has a lot of 4X elements.

I am interested to see what sort of expansion policy they use. Given on PC it's their bread and butter.

All things considered, the controller controls work about as well as could be hoped. Aside from a few minor annoyances in precision, I'm impressed.

I've been struggling to get used to the latest DLC/patch. I still love this game but it's on the back burner until I feel like spending 10+ hours getting used to it. This is quite possibly the most hours I've put into a single player game.

Well, I havent played on the PC recently. Apparently it is pretty far beyond the console version...I hear the PC latest version made it a much better game though.

My issues with the game (1.7) remain the same as when it launched. Mainly Im not invested in my leaders / diplomacy and combat isnt very engaging or deep.

If they could solve those two issues, Stellaris could be as good as CK2.

That said, Stellaris is still a good game on any platform and worth trying.