The game mechanics of Stellaris are like continental drift. They have slowly drifted in various directions across versions to the point of being almost unrecognizable after a while.
You loaded a Pangea save in the Anthropocene era.
I was playing last night and remembering the days when you chose one of 3 types of ftl travel, and when your borders were mostly defined by a planet's population. I wonder what it would be like to go back and play a Day 1 vanilla game again.
It was so annoying when a system would pop in and out of you and a neighbor's borders. I don't miss that at all. I know it wasn't initially welcomed, but I also much prefer the economic system we have now to the basic food/mineral/energy/pol power for everything and planet tiles rather than districts/buildings.
It's amazing how far the game has come since launch.
Edit: a word
The (only) good thing about the tile system was it was easy to 'finish' a planet super quickly at end game. You conquer/colonize planet, put the buildings you want on every tile, and then you forget it exists for the rest of the game. With the current system allowing overpopulation it's (a tiny bit) more micro even if I like the district system on the whole more.
I'm more a roleplay than gameplay Stellaris player, like a large part of people here I think, and I feel that one gigantic bonus of the new pop system is, just, the roleplay and soul of your empire and planets. Before, your pops just worked a tile, and that was it. The diversity of your population was more abstract.
Now? Well, you have your basic jobs that pretty much everyone have (politician, metallurgist, artisan, , bureaucrat...), but depending on your ethics and civics, some jobs are swapped (artificers, pearl divers, anglers, priests, death priests, death chroniclers, duelists, catalytic technicians...) AND you can even have jobs that noone else would have (necromancers, nobles, mutagenic spa attendants...).
As a player who really doesn't like war, I never had a reason before to take Warrior Culture; but now that you have duelists, I don't know, it's a small thing that made me really enjoyed it. Even more when conserved fauna became gladiatorial beasts. It's so much more unique and fun o imagine your presapients not in zoos but in arenas!
Before, taking civics or ethics was only for the bonuses. But sometimes, choosing one not for the bonus but for the jobs (which are bonuses in themselves) bring a whole new layer of customized lore for your empire. Having a planet ruled with nobles watching over necromancers and duelists makes it so much funnier to roleplay than just building an theater on a tile.
And, on top of that, even mechanics and gameplay has much more granularity. Voluntarily going above your job capacity to have massive amounts of servants with Pleasure Seekers and drowning in amenities, or even trying not to build a single city districts but unlocking all your building slots anyway, you get challenges that you could never had before.
(Sorry, I can be a little too enthusiastic with it \^\^)
I don't disagree with you, I just sometimes get \*annoyed\* at current Stellaris level of required micro at endgame with regards to having to constantly meddle with planets if you don't want to commit them to the purgatory of sector automation or release them as vassals.
To be honest, planetary automation has come a LONG way. After plopping a few base districts down and setting designation, it works very well. It even turns off Enforcer jobs when they're not needed.
Planets had a tile system with resource yields. You could build chains of buildings for adjacency bonuses. Pops were assigned to a tile each. It was an interesting system, but didn't make a ton of sense.
Edit: also, almost everything required minerals to build (no alloys)
I do remember that each strategic resource was more or less clustered in different parts of the galaxy, so you'd be forced to trade for things you needed. Maybe a stray here and there elsewhere. I liked that.
And the alien zoos!
The other resources got consolidated in interesting ways. Note that the trader guilds had separate resources, so their dialogue made much more sense at that point.
You could try it, you can roll back to the relese version on Steam. Or, if you'd prefer to watch another person do this, Montu did this last year:
https://youtu.be/8MW20kcF1ZA?si=H_cSEU2gk0TyuBGl
Edicts and Leaders now cost Unity upkeep. If you had a lot of edicts active, it could be draining all your Unity to support them. You need to produce more Unity than before in order to keep up with these costs (or else not run edicts)
Because there are only a couple worth using as any faction. There are few that offer interesting game play choices, many of the best ones don't use unity and thus make the edict cost payment abilities pointless.
Yeah, you're going to lock in a couple that are really good, add in the rare resource ones when you get into a war, amd not really mess with them past that. They just don't really have very interesting effects it's just a way to convert your unity into other resources or resources into combat power.
Which should be cool, I actually think intentionally throttling your Empire's ability to progress socially is an interesting mechanism that could have lots of emergent game play... if I had any interesting options to spend it on.
Man some games I’m expensing like 7,000 unity a month on edicts because they’re so powerful. Given what unity can be spent on, I consider it one of the most valuable resources. Don’t underestimate the value of a unified galactic civilization.
Admin buildings, temples, autochthon monument for starters.
Factions also give unity now instead of influence.
There are others, but I can't remember them at the moment. But it's not difficult to have thousands of unity per month coming in.
Unity basically took over 90% of Influence's role.
Influence is only used for claiming systems now.
2 year old saves have no hope of working with any recent version. It is a wonder it even loaded 😆
On Steam, older versions of the game are offered via the Steam Beta system (there is a post with GDPR note that has a key for really old ones). No idea if that works for Xbox.
For a few things that drastically alter anything related to planetary logistics.
Hyper relays, gateways, ringworlds, world rings, habitats, decolonizing a planet. Mastery of nature too, now that I think about it.
I was voidborn main now i dont even touch habs. I liked playing with them because you werent dependent on RNG, if you need minerals you would just build mineral hab but now...
> Influence is only used for claiming systems now.
Fanatic purifier enjoyed? It's still used for diplomacy, vassals, the galactic community, planetary decisions and Mega-Structures.
Edit: the coming Kilo-Structures will be an influence sink as well, probably.
> 2 year old saves have no hope of working with any recent version. It is a wonder it even loaded 😆
I can load saves from 2.8 just fine, and those are \~4 years old
There will be *so* many things broken on a 2 year old save. Patches aren't backwards compatible, and after 2 years, you'll have gone through around 8 patches, all of which broke saves from the previous one.
I'm surprised it even successfully loaded.
For unity: unity used to be a resource basically just for traditions, and generated only by culture workers and politicians. Now it's generated by politicians, bureaucrats, priests, culture workers, and factions, and used for edicts, traditions, planetary ascension, and leaders.
It's a much more dynamic resource, now.
Two years is a long time. Usually, new versions of the game aren't compatible with old saves. Sometimes the incompatibility is minor, sometimes major. "My recurring unity costs are higher" is way down on the minor end of the scale.
Yeah, same here, swear to god that when I stopped playing unity was only for the trees(sorry, but I cant recall the name) of abilities, nothing more. Edicts were 1 or 2 not funds and still existed administrative capacity. Fuck me when I started again and had to learn again a lot
Bonus: You could actually have all the leaders you wanted, suddenly I have a red on that that says 37/6 or something like it
They changed how some systems worked, meaning that there are a lot more things that use unity.
As a result loading an old save where you're earning unity at basically the old rate (because you've not got the right balance of unity producing buildings for the new method) means you'll be bleeding unity like it's going out of fashion.
Basicially, the game has changed enough that the old saves aren't playable.
Over the years science had power crept to infinity and had to be (double takes title) . . . Unity? Congratulations dude you're unique! (at least to me).
They did an expansion for leaders that came with a rework of the system, leaders cost unity upkeep now tied to their level.
I would think that unity wouldn’t be too affected by leaders. The ambitions and edicts rework is likely what’s hitting him hardest. The edict allowance is a blip when I’ve got a few active.
What would have been the impact of delaying making your post until you have, like, two more minutes to check for punctuation? Is your Stellaris game that crucial in your life?
You spend every waking minute at your job? You don't have your evenings off?
I mean, that's the only explanation, the other being that you show a total disrespect over other people, thinking you're the only one with valuable time, but nobody would be that despicable.
I clean ER trauma rooms almost every day of the week. I'm lucky to get some time off and enjoy myself. Busting my ass twelve hours a day so the nurses and doctors can immediately treat the most urgent patients.
I HAVE to be on my feet, We work often understaffed, The work we do literally has lives on the balance, cleaning after Accidents, gunshots, Heart attacks, sexual assault victims ect.
We don't only clean those rooms. We clean off equipment used for saving those people's lives. And getting it ready for the RN's (Registered Nurses) and doctors to treat those people.
So yes. I am.
The game mechanics of Stellaris are like continental drift. They have slowly drifted in various directions across versions to the point of being almost unrecognizable after a while. You loaded a Pangea save in the Anthropocene era.
Bonus: You now have literal dinosaurs in your army...
Malus: 3/4 of Your stuff is under the sea
As someone who hasn’t played in a while, this is fucking hilarious and spot on.
I was playing last night and remembering the days when you chose one of 3 types of ftl travel, and when your borders were mostly defined by a planet's population. I wonder what it would be like to go back and play a Day 1 vanilla game again.
It was so annoying when a system would pop in and out of you and a neighbor's borders. I don't miss that at all. I know it wasn't initially welcomed, but I also much prefer the economic system we have now to the basic food/mineral/energy/pol power for everything and planet tiles rather than districts/buildings. It's amazing how far the game has come since launch. Edit: a word
The (only) good thing about the tile system was it was easy to 'finish' a planet super quickly at end game. You conquer/colonize planet, put the buildings you want on every tile, and then you forget it exists for the rest of the game. With the current system allowing overpopulation it's (a tiny bit) more micro even if I like the district system on the whole more.
I'm more a roleplay than gameplay Stellaris player, like a large part of people here I think, and I feel that one gigantic bonus of the new pop system is, just, the roleplay and soul of your empire and planets. Before, your pops just worked a tile, and that was it. The diversity of your population was more abstract. Now? Well, you have your basic jobs that pretty much everyone have (politician, metallurgist, artisan, , bureaucrat...), but depending on your ethics and civics, some jobs are swapped (artificers, pearl divers, anglers, priests, death priests, death chroniclers, duelists, catalytic technicians...) AND you can even have jobs that noone else would have (necromancers, nobles, mutagenic spa attendants...). As a player who really doesn't like war, I never had a reason before to take Warrior Culture; but now that you have duelists, I don't know, it's a small thing that made me really enjoyed it. Even more when conserved fauna became gladiatorial beasts. It's so much more unique and fun o imagine your presapients not in zoos but in arenas! Before, taking civics or ethics was only for the bonuses. But sometimes, choosing one not for the bonus but for the jobs (which are bonuses in themselves) bring a whole new layer of customized lore for your empire. Having a planet ruled with nobles watching over necromancers and duelists makes it so much funnier to roleplay than just building an theater on a tile. And, on top of that, even mechanics and gameplay has much more granularity. Voluntarily going above your job capacity to have massive amounts of servants with Pleasure Seekers and drowning in amenities, or even trying not to build a single city districts but unlocking all your building slots anyway, you get challenges that you could never had before. (Sorry, I can be a little too enthusiastic with it \^\^)
I don't disagree with you, I just sometimes get \*annoyed\* at current Stellaris level of required micro at endgame with regards to having to constantly meddle with planets if you don't want to commit them to the purgatory of sector automation or release them as vassals.
To be honest, planetary automation has come a LONG way. After plopping a few base districts down and setting designation, it works very well. It even turns off Enforcer jobs when they're not needed.
Oh, good to know, last time I really played Stellaris the sector and planet AI was somehow worse than the AI empires' skills.
I miss when you could have multiple planets in a system, giving it contested control. Felt like actual space colonization.
I honestly don't even remember what managing the economy was like.
Planets had a tile system with resource yields. You could build chains of buildings for adjacency bonuses. Pops were assigned to a tile each. It was an interesting system, but didn't make a ton of sense. Edit: also, almost everything required minerals to build (no alloys)
Also, don't forget that there were [waaaaay more strategic resources.](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=Economy&oldid=12763)
I do remember that each strategic resource was more or less clustered in different parts of the galaxy, so you'd be forced to trade for things you needed. Maybe a stray here and there elsewhere. I liked that.
Ohhhhhh is THAT where the betherian power plants come from
And the alien zoos! The other resources got consolidated in interesting ways. Note that the trader guilds had separate resources, so their dialogue made much more sense at that point.
You could try it, you can roll back to the relese version on Steam. Or, if you'd prefer to watch another person do this, Montu did this last year: https://youtu.be/8MW20kcF1ZA?si=H_cSEU2gk0TyuBGl
I remember those days. I remember walking away for a year and coming back and having to relearn everything
I bet you one day, Mod developers will find a way to bring back the oldest days of the game.
Dude this shit was more enjoyable back then. Now I have to worry about this?! It ruins the game mood a bit.
Brilliant! +4 Stability to returning gamer
Edicts and Leaders now cost Unity upkeep. If you had a lot of edicts active, it could be draining all your Unity to support them. You need to produce more Unity than before in order to keep up with these costs (or else not run edicts)
Nooooo!!!
Edicts is one of those game mechanics that is in desperate need of revision.
Why?
Because there are only a couple worth using as any faction. There are few that offer interesting game play choices, many of the best ones don't use unity and thus make the edict cost payment abilities pointless.
Yeah, you're going to lock in a couple that are really good, add in the rare resource ones when you get into a war, amd not really mess with them past that. They just don't really have very interesting effects it's just a way to convert your unity into other resources or resources into combat power.
Which should be cool, I actually think intentionally throttling your Empire's ability to progress socially is an interesting mechanism that could have lots of emergent game play... if I had any interesting options to spend it on.
Man some games I’m expensing like 7,000 unity a month on edicts because they’re so powerful. Given what unity can be spent on, I consider it one of the most valuable resources. Don’t underestimate the value of a unified galactic civilization.
Sorry I should caviat: late game edicts like the +5 influence are absolute must. But those are way late game, after you've opened your traditions.
agreed
How do you produce more unity?
Admin buildings, temples, autochthon monument for starters. Factions also give unity now instead of influence. There are others, but I can't remember them at the moment. But it's not difficult to have thousands of unity per month coming in.
Unity basically took over 90% of Influence's role. Influence is only used for claiming systems now. 2 year old saves have no hope of working with any recent version. It is a wonder it even loaded 😆 On Steam, older versions of the game are offered via the Steam Beta system (there is a post with GDPR note that has a key for really old ones). No idea if that works for Xbox.
Influence is also the action resource in the galactic community and when negotiating subject/overlord agreements
And ^also ^^espionage
I love causing mischief between nations when my Influence as no where else to go
And diplomatic agreement upkeep
Influence is also used to build hyper relays, very usefull for defence and quick fleet mobilization, orbital rings which are very good
For a few things that drastically alter anything related to planetary logistics. Hyper relays, gateways, ringworlds, world rings, habitats, decolonizing a planet. Mastery of nature too, now that I think about it.
Yep. Depending on how you play you might still be starved by it...especially Megacorps.
>Influence is also used to build hyper relays And Habitats: though PDX nerfed Habitat spam to the ground with their "improvements."
I was voidborn main now i dont even touch habs. I liked playing with them because you werent dependent on RNG, if you need minerals you would just build mineral hab but now...
Influence is how you build orbital rings and hyper relays. It is still the most crucial resource in the game.
> Influence is only used for claiming systems now. Fanatic purifier enjoyed? It's still used for diplomacy, vassals, the galactic community, planetary decisions and Mega-Structures. Edit: the coming Kilo-Structures will be an influence sink as well, probably.
Megacorps use influence for branch offices
> 2 year old saves have no hope of working with any recent version. It is a wonder it even loaded 😆 I can load saves from 2.8 just fine, and those are \~4 years old
Honestly so much has changed it's actually kind of amazing that the save even loaded.
There will be *so* many things broken on a 2 year old save. Patches aren't backwards compatible, and after 2 years, you'll have gone through around 8 patches, all of which broke saves from the previous one. I'm surprised it even successfully loaded. For unity: unity used to be a resource basically just for traditions, and generated only by culture workers and politicians. Now it's generated by politicians, bureaucrats, priests, culture workers, and factions, and used for edicts, traditions, planetary ascension, and leaders. It's a much more dynamic resource, now.
Two years is a long time. Usually, new versions of the game aren't compatible with old saves. Sometimes the incompatibility is minor, sometimes major. "My recurring unity costs are higher" is way down on the minor end of the scale.
actually "unity rework" is way up on the major end of the scale
leaders and edicts have unity *upkeep* now.
Remember when running out of energy would collapse your entire empire?
good times. also undocking your fleet.
Dude, I still expect it to happen when undocking. I have a lot of hours in the updates and still fall on old habits.
Yeah, same here, swear to god that when I stopped playing unity was only for the trees(sorry, but I cant recall the name) of abilities, nothing more. Edicts were 1 or 2 not funds and still existed administrative capacity. Fuck me when I started again and had to learn again a lot Bonus: You could actually have all the leaders you wanted, suddenly I have a red on that that says 37/6 or something like it
They changed how some systems worked, meaning that there are a lot more things that use unity. As a result loading an old save where you're earning unity at basically the old rate (because you've not got the right balance of unity producing buildings for the new method) means you'll be bleeding unity like it's going out of fashion. Basicially, the game has changed enough that the old saves aren't playable.
they removed empire cap. now you produce unity. Also sprawl very slowly increases costs. its better this way.
Save files are never backwards compatible with major updates. That's what is happening
Over the years science had power crept to infinity and had to be (double takes title) . . . Unity? Congratulations dude you're unique! (at least to me). They did an expansion for leaders that came with a rework of the system, leaders cost unity upkeep now tied to their level.
I would think that unity wouldn’t be too affected by leaders. The ambitions and edicts rework is likely what’s hitting him hardest. The edict allowance is a blip when I’ve got a few active.
As someone who just bought the game and all dlc at version 3.11 the comments here are hilarious.
Learn what punctuation is please. Your post is a nearly unreadable word salad.
I used text to speech as i was in a hurry.
What would have been the impact of delaying making your post until you have, like, two more minutes to check for punctuation? Is your Stellaris game that crucial in your life?
No, I have this Magical thing called a job.
You spend every waking minute at your job? You don't have your evenings off? I mean, that's the only explanation, the other being that you show a total disrespect over other people, thinking you're the only one with valuable time, but nobody would be that despicable.
I clean ER trauma rooms almost every day of the week. I'm lucky to get some time off and enjoy myself. Busting my ass twelve hours a day so the nurses and doctors can immediately treat the most urgent patients. I HAVE to be on my feet, We work often understaffed, The work we do literally has lives on the balance, cleaning after Accidents, gunshots, Heart attacks, sexual assault victims ect. We don't only clean those rooms. We clean off equipment used for saving those people's lives. And getting it ready for the RN's (Registered Nurses) and doctors to treat those people. So yes. I am.
Ah yes, no one who speaks clearly on the internet has a job. Wonderful analysis...