You know what this game needs? Espionage. Sabotage. Spies. Hacking. Assasinations. All this that you could do while not at war and pray to god you dont get caught. Getting caught could reduce other empires trust and the empire you were infiltrating wojld declare war.
yeah, as of right now, the bigger stack of doom always wins which is kinda shame. you can't really play dipomatic empires.. also, would be interesting is opposing leader death would partly mean change in opinion score, maybe also in ethics in some cases, it would remove some staleness later in the game. not to mention if we had some ability to spread our influence and ethics to other empires too, supporting rebel factions within our enemies' empire. I'm not really saying I want to make things as complicated as in CK2 for example as those are two very different games but some options would be certainly nice.
I've actually been having a lot of fun with federations, if you follow the Federation fleet instead of pursuing your own goals it's incredibly effective at eliminating the enemy if your federation is large enough. Star wars stellaris employs this to great effect but the notification spam in the beginning is kind of annoying.
you seem to forget that we are for the most part dealing with completely different spacial empires and therefore, species right? the ONLY way spies and espionage could even possible be viable is if the enemy has pops of your species, otherwise it would fail laughably and from what ive seen and played other empires for the most part DONT have pops of your species ever unless you have lost a war to them, and then they for the most part would not let your species have leadership positions and such
My take on early offensive warfare: Most efficient ship is the non-upgraded corvett, build swarms of them to crush enemy fleets, conquer planets, avoid enemy shipyards Step by Step 1 Require more Minerals -mines on all astroids? -founded first/second colony? (rush with only your home planet may be possible too) -positive energy income is quite important too 2 Starports with corvett shipyards -corvett, is cheap but most cost effective ship, the idea is to win by numbers -only one upgrade for a station, allows all planets to contribute -worst come worst: allows for quick rebuild 3 Max fleet limit with corvetts -BASIC corvett, NO technology -price, cheapest design wins, each 'upgrade' rises the costs for little gain to the point you can have 2 basic for 1 upraded - and the upgraded would loose against the two -can safely ignore nearly all ship technology at the beginning, except corvett shipyards -specelised fleets can be more effective, consider if you've reached at least cruiser and have the appropriate tech for your ships, else: swarms of corvetts are most cost effective 4 Build some energy/mineral reserves -be generous, ships away cost more and you want to keep your fleet firing -reserves can be vital to rebuild if worst comes worst 5 check your target -should be equal in strength, at least fleet/fleet capacity -don't forget the diplomacy - defensive pact/alliances/federation can ruin your day 6 double your fleet limit with corvetts -numbers win the war, make sure you have them -cheap ships, cheap maintenance, rather a few too many than a few too few -time to build a few armies for invasions 7 check your target again - should be weak in fleet level to you -check for alliances... yep, they're now allied with 2 other empires but you've a fleet, would be a shame not to use it on someone... 8 Attack -Should have bigger fleet, have reserves and can rebuild fast -best thing would be a confrontation between main fleets -next best thing is conquering planets -conquered planets may lure the enemy to them, same for any space traveling army -keeping a few ships to intercept such ships may be a good idea -avoiding space stations may be a good idea at the beginning of the war - or for the whole first war 9 Profit Congratulation, you've conquered a bunch of rebellious aliens, are hated by more neighbours and are way over colony limit - how you deal with that isn't part of this guide
Silent T No need. The moment they have one colony you can take it, wipe their fleet, and have enough war score to take their capital and their colony. Super easy. If you meet your neighbor right away you might as well conquer them instead of colonizing a new planet.
I love how it tells you that you can only have a warscore of 100 literally nowhere in the UI. It's almost like they are trying to confuse the shit out of their players.
At the present time it is only possible to bash death stacks against each other because retreating is not viable. Allowing for retreat and disengagement would open up interesting hit and run tactics essentially removing the all or nothing nature of combat as it stands.
Raj Kapadia pacifist+xenophobe with civics:1)unity output on farm 2)20%unity output. And use food and resources to bribe others so they wont declare war on you. Then put all your resource on research and colonies, for ultimate outcome you could get5-6 traditions closed at 100years and could build 100k fleet in then years
+Khajonian You're probably not aware that you can't build fortresses close to eachother. So you'd have a fleet, and one military station against the fallen empire. It's not enough unless your fleet is really strong.
+Raj Kapadia The best way to actually beat a FE is with the ascension perk, Galactic Contender, and fighting with a 100k fleet, well, depending on how strong the FE is. The strongest fleet I've seen is 70k. Don't even count on allies, the AI are idiots. As for Awakened Empires.... Good luck with that. They can reach upward to 200k.
I would love to see a rework of the ground warfare in Stellaris, instead of just rolling ground armies into another module on starships. To me, that change would trivialize a staple of science fiction. Granted, I would definitely like to see boarding actions to take over enemy ships and habitats. Planetary invasions, on the other hand, should definitely play a larger part in an interstellar war. First, I think a +100% damage buff to attackers for reducing the fortifications to 0% is a bit too powerful. Instead, orbital bombardment should level the playing field by reducing, but *not* *nullifying* the defender's advantage. This is, after all, the defender's territory. This change keeps the necessity of orbital bombardment, while giving the defenders a chance to do some damage, as well as hold out for reinforcements. Also, intervals between damage should be increased, allowing reinforcements time to respond. Potentially, we could introduce different armies that counter each other a la Rock-Paper-Scissors (Armor vs. Infantry vs. Aircraft), as well as different stances that the combatants could take, similar to the orbital bombardment system. This could also be another Rock-Paper-Scissors style counter system. There could also be additional effects based on an empire's ethics. For example, attackers could potentially take the following stances (a plus (+) sign denotes a buff, a minus (--) a debuff): Shock and Awe (+morale damage, --health damage, Pop deaths?) Relentless Advance (+attacker morale, --attacker health) Sabotage (+heath damage, increased chance of ruined buildings on planet) On the other hand, defenders could take the following stances: "Hold the Line!" (+morale, --health (or +attacker damage)) Hit and Run (+morale damage, (50?)% chance to kill enemy general, potential chance of Pop death? (due to attackers trying to flush the defenders out of heavily populated areas) Scorched Earth (+health damage, potential chance to ruin buildings on planet) These are simply preliminary ideas. Any suggestions?
Let's see here. -boarding ships -defenders favored in ground combat -different army type, you wanted aircraft, but how about armor, ie tanks? You can have those and more. Just play Master of Orion 2 :P Seriously though, 235 hours in Stellaris and Master of Orion 2 is still the best 4x space strategy game. I don't understand why so many games come so close yet make stupid mistakes here and there. I just want MoO2 with better graphics and updated game mechanics :(
I've never played Master of Orion 2, so I unfortunately don't have a basis for comparison. I just want ground combat to be something more than shelling the hell out of an enemy planet from high orbit, clicking a button, and watching the flashing icons tick down to nothing. I mean, you can have Giga Cannons or Tachyon Lances for a battleship, but no one thought about basing one of those on a planet just in case some empire gets funny ideas. I mean, how is every ship in your fleet (especially the corvettes) able to carry enough explosives to shell a planet into submission, yet still able to fight a fleet battle. Hell, I'll take building ships specifically designed to bombard a planet (other uses for missile weapons and XL slot weapons, maybe) and deploy troops, maybe integrating an air superiority element with ship-based fighter squadrons. It's all well and good if you can dominate the space around a planet, but eventually somebody has to go down there and tell those damn xenos who's boss. And those xenos are probably going to put up one hell of a fight.
The Stellaris dev teams have repeatedly said that they plan on reworking the ground warfare. As of now, It isn't even worth building defensive armies, You have to be expecting that they'll have a invasion force, half the size of the garrison armies in your planet, and still take it over because of that stupid 100% damage buff, and the fact that the defending armies can't regen health because of the orbital bombardment. So you can basically attack, retreat, then heal your invasion force, and attack again. The defending armies can't regen, so you can basically kite them.
I think the biggest changes needed would be to 1) make defense viable (take away the buff to the invaders, etc.), and 2) make orbital bombardment dangerous (orbital defense batteries tied into the research for XL weapons, surface to orbit missiles, etc.). So many ideas, literally zero experience with making mods.
NewSheo I don't want a rebalancing of ground combat, but an almost complete rework. Considering how space combat is somewhat RTS in nature, it'd be cool for ground combat to do that as well. Something like fighting over and landing armies on different tiles of planets.
When you brought up the point that most wars are won with one battle I began to think how they could balance doom stacks. I immediately thought of hearts of iron 3 with the naval leadership system. consider this. instead of just using admirals to lead three massive fleets we use them as doom stack leaders and have a system of minor leaders (captains) that have a fleet size cap on how many ships they can command and have bonuses accordingly. They could cost 10 influence and have a limit of 5 or 6. You could have captains that specialize in raiding with a small ship cap but with leader bonuses to fire rate or sub light speed. Another type of captain could be a mid sized convoy leader with bonuses to hull strength or combat speed. This could lead to an increase in tactical decisions and have more players invested in fleet composition. Maybe they could also add customizable ship behaviors like in the older versions where you can have corvettes charge straight in or have them sit back with missiles. Just a thought.
Thank you. I have never understood Stellaris war and so typically would lose. It was especially helpful to learn how to actually seize a planet through use of armies/ground forces.
On the triviality of ground warfare, the way it currently works completely beats any point of building fortifications enhancing structures like planetary shields, etc. The enemy, once your fleet takes their main fleet out will not be able to counter anything you do. You bomb the planet into rubble, then land a superior in numbers force, and voila, done and done. Then you move on and rinse and repeat. In the same respect in a defensive war, if you lose your fleet, you're boned. It's a matter of time before they occupy/kill all your worlds. They need to make a mechanic in the game that makes fortifications not get completely annihilated by orbital bombardment. Make it to where orbital bombardment causes more damage to buildings and civs, and less to actual defenses. Add a stance that does surgical strike bombing, that damages defenses but takes incredibly long to do, and never does more than 50% damage to planetary fortifications without boots on the ground marking the targets. Think USMC fighting over tiny islands in Pacific. They would bomb them to rubble with naval and air power, and still the enemy would be dug in in defensive fortifications untouched and or rebuilt the minute strikes ended. The whole ground war system could be so much more robust.
Guerilla warfare in Stellaris exists (especially with bigger empires) they don't split up fleet stacks, so you make a few fast attack groups and take worlds that way. I did that with an empire that was overwhelming to me, and I was able to cede planets from them that way. Thing is, my army was ungodly strong early game, so it was really hard for them to take the worlds via transport ships. Multiplayer its a bit harder, but its still doable, I somewhat agree that once your fleet is done, that its pretty much game over, but if you see that an empire is hostile to you, and your not catching up in fleet power anytime soon, thats when you look out for things like planetary shield generators, and build more defensive armies.
Hey, ASpec, have you seen "Endless space 2"? Will you compare it to Stellaris or make vids about it? The most compelling thing about this new game is a lot less micromanagement you need to go through mid-game.
can the ai handle the different ways of playstyle of the faction? because that was a huge problem in their other games, half of the faction were useless because the ai just didnt use them properly
As a RU-vidr, making videos about games published by SEGA is quite dangerous. I'm sure he'd like Endless Space 2, but nobody likes being in danger of having his / her RU-vid Channel taken down randomly for copyright issues. While they make magnificent games, that's what SEGA is known for on RU-vid.
Playing stellaris on console. Every time I initiate a war the civilization in questions forms defensive pacts and shows up in a fleet thats 14k compared to my 8.4k.
Easiest way to tackle the ''One Grand Battle'' would be a ship cap per fleet, and some Admirals can have a trait which increase that and also tech to increase it as time progresses.
It is possible to go to war mutch earlier and get an early game advantage. Go to war once your neighbar colonized 2-3 planetes very soon. The AI tends colonize around 4 planets bevor starting to build space ports (or if they do not have colony targets). The colonies are easy targets and capturing them grants mutch war score because the overall small number of planets. With some luck you get enough war score to seize the home world and if not you get the colonies.
I just took over a one planet FE, and I'm so proud of myself. Now I'm in the process of purging all those Killik bugs and replacing them with my species and droids. To be fair, the FE was pretty weak, since it is in a Star Wars total conversion mod and had one automated dreadnought as its entire fleet.
Tom Simpkins It's a Star Wars total conversion. It's probably not perfectly balanced, but that's fine. It's the only proper star wars mod out there, so you gotta take what you can get. It's decent enough.
Yeah I guess that's a fair point, even some of the best mods aren't that balanced... NSC is fun and makes the game better, until you notice the AI never produces a flagship or uses the adv zero points, meaning that's two massive things you have over them.
I'm no expert but I would just recommend that you don't and if they start against you, give them their demands as soon as possible without sacrificing your fleet (hopefully) and try to improve it as much as possible during the 10 year minimum truce.
Have you seen what it looks like now? I've played both, and with all the features you may as well not treat them the same. Hopefully that'll be at least partially fixed with the upcoming update.
One thing to note about the humiliate option; it also kills off their current leader and has a chance to change their government. I was playing coop with a friend and he accidentally got too close to a fallen empire who declared war on him with the humiliation. His Emperor was assassinated and his empire became a democracy.
i hope future versions introduce a wider array of weapons and special modules for ships. i really miss the good ol' days of MoO2, that rewarded a diverse, carefully designed fleet, and made ships with roles other than "shoot 'em" quite handy - tractor ships, borders, etc. you could even make a ship designed expressly to dive into the middle and self destruct.
It was designed better than you might think. You would have a core of warships (generally all with the same setups) and two or three utility ships, which would usually be defensive in nature, but you DID have other options (spinning your opponents ship the wrong way when they have all forward facing weapons was fun). Wasn't exactly "meta" but I fucking LOVED wormhole ships armed with Mauler Devices (essentially an energy based shotgun). Battle starts, port right on top of their critical ships and blow them away before they have a chance to do anything. Your opponent could counter it hard if they knew how, but it could give you an early war advantage if you caught them by surprise.
You know I only have 30 hours into Stellaris and I have grown to love wormhole travel I don't know why I find it fun to use even though it is recommended for advanced players :p
this is very helpful as a beginning player who is struggling to navigate much of the density of the game. I would love to see a follow up about what you can do with captured planets and their populations. benefits and disadvantages of enslaving them or converting them etc...
Also if you are liberating planets with a view to vassilise, try to end the war towards the end of the month so the newly liberated empire stacks your reputation and friendliness a little. This can turn a 'no' to a 'yes' when it comes to vassilisation. You don't want them building up too much because the relative power of your empires will be at its greatest, thus maximizing your chances.
I like the option of the different FTL methods, for a tactical game, lock everyone on hyper lanes, for a defensive play through, wormholes are best And for an offensive play through do Warp travel
just use auto design if you can't figure out a good build. The auto designs always tend to build a powerful ship with the strongest weapons with the best shields and armor. But to make a good ship of any class here are a few tips. 1. *Slots*: Large ships slots tend to give more to the ships so if I have a large slot L[ ] and a small red laser that red laser goes in there and the damage increases 3x more (look at the numbers). if I have it at medium it goes 2x more and small 1x, this applies to both shields and armor 2. *weapons*: here's the bare basics of all weapons lasers are good for shields but average on armor, missiles are best for armor but bad for shields, and kinetic weapons are best for shields but do get better for armor damage if you upgrade them. Point defense is only useful if your enemy uses a ton of miles or you get attacked with strike crafts or bombers.Plasma weapons are bet used for armor as they can't be shot down by point defenses. 3.*ship class*: if an enemy has nothing but missiles on their ship build a ship with more point defenses on it. if the enemy has more shields build a ship with lasers, kinetic guns, or high energy weapons. if you want your ships to be safe and out of a fight without taking too much damage equip that ship with the hanger slot and add in strike crafts or bomber crafts
Ships should be built to counter enemy ships. For the most part though, Plasma is the offensive weapon of choice, due to how the game calculates armor and damage reduction. Especially since the AI loves their big ships, which Plasma weapons eat for breakfast.
Another thing of note. Small shields provide more efficient recharge rate. This means 2 small shields are better than a medium of the same class. This in tun means you want power and armor in the largest slots.
Uh fleet cap is determined mostly by pop btw. More pop you have the more fleet cap you have then spaceports then percent bonuses from traditions,ethics and other modifiers
I’m still new and didn’t realize you can skirt around starbases to avoid combat if the system is big enough... all those heavily fortified bases at the chokes just sat there and looked tough while the enemy gunned it straight to my colonies. Smh
I got incredibly lucky in my current game. The only reason I chose it is because my Homeworld is Earth, and roughly located where Earth actually is in the real galaxy. Turns out, I had tons of minerals and energy near me, two continental worlds within my borders of size 24 and 25 with relatively few tile blockers, ALL of my neighboring empires except one had Hyperdrive (the one exception had warp), while I had wormhole, and I managed to absorb an entire empire before the galaxy really became diplomatically connected (and therefore consider me a threat for annexing people). But the reason I thought of it was to point out that because I had wormholes and the vast majority of empires in my area of the galaxy have Hyperdrives, I had a HUGE advantage; I won three wars in a row, all three of which I was outnumbered and outflanked, because my wormholes allowed me to watch where the enemy was going, wormhole to a system they had to go through, and get my fleet into a position where they would open fire as soon as the enemy jumped in, forcing the fight where and when I wanted it. Doing this, I crushed the enemy fleets again and again, and took huge amounts of territory relatively quickly. In about 120 years I had become the biggest and among the most powerful empires in the galaxy (this is in a Huge size galaxy, with the maximum amount of AI empires). I don't know how much of it actually came down to that initial advantage, and how much was just the AI being dumb, but I would wager that a huge reason for my success was that first war where I was able to annihilate the fleets of the 3 defensive-pacted empires I was fighting because of my wormhole-ambush technique. TL;DR: All other things being equal, wormholes beat hyperdrives every time, especially once you can see the hyperlanes.
I find myself often stuck between empires and unable to expand. This would not be problem however empires in every direcetion usually have at least 1 defensive ally (usually around 2-3). What is the recommended course of action? They are most often equivalent in power and later stronger due their expansion.
I gave up on Stellaris because I could never figure out how to attack somebody without another empire coming to their aid. It seemed everybody had more than one defensive treaty that made attacking a bad idea. Now, obviously if you know what you're doing, you can indeed have successful wars. Unfortunately, I never figured that part out.
I am here because I agreed to a defensive Pact with a Theocratic Empire. Then a War broke out and the bordering Hegemonic Imperialist Empire that had an opinion of -160 on me was the onliest enemy with overwhelming fleet power. It could have been worse, but I lost a few Star Systems including a Colony World that was crucial for the resource supply of my Empire. I will soon reclaim what was rightfully mine, and Conquer the Empire of those Lizards. If everything fails, then there is still Exterminatus.
The warfare needs more strategy, i feel its just entirely based on how you micro your planets and how lucky you are with events.... i love this game, but it'd be great if there was some sort of flanking maneouvers you could make.
Yeah, the Relative Power needs tweaking, since I had a 1.5k fleet that was 'equivalent' to a 2.3k fleet that mopped the floor with me and rekt all of my worlds
ASpec well if i am a warfaring species, eg with hivemind swarm, then my main advantage at the game is going for the kill and going fast. Sitting in a spaceport is not really what i expect of an aggressive war minded race
Really want the ftl change, hyperlanes, then warp around hyperlane two, then wormhole once you have lvl 3 in both ftl types. unlocking all the ftl types in the tech tree.
I wish PI would improve the army combat system. Feels like there is so much potential. Like combat on the orbital level, building support craft to reinforce ground troops etc.
Aspec, you didn't mention anything about how the retreat mechanics work in battle, was that intentional? I think an interesting idea for how to make defensive stations useful in the game is if the wormhole traps don't just affect ships entering the system where the station (with the trap) is located, but an area around that system and if the enemy ships' jump path goes through that area(radius), they get pulled out of hyperspace/warp/etc... into that system near the station. With a mechanic like this you could build a reasonable defensive wall at the boarder of an enemy's space even if they don't use hyperspace lanes. The enemy or you could also in an attempt to avoid these stations, enter the empire's territory from a different direction(as long as that is possible for them).
I find cruiser/destroyers with shield alpha large shield disrupters or artillery followed by corvettes and battleships with heavy armor penetration works best all around.
Another questions I have. Is displacement of pops effective? Would you recommend Authoritarian-Spiritualist-Militarist empire and if yes what traits and governing ethics?
in my experience displacement takes a long ass time but if you keep them as slaves in the meantime it does not fuck over the planets where they are too much.
this reminds me of my first game, where I foolishly declared war on a empire that was more technology advanced than me, and had equivalent fleet power... it didn't end well
spaceports and military stations need to be reworked, personally, i don't like that you'll lose your spaceports before your fleets even arive, which in the lategame will set you back by years in terms of build time on the spaceport. i'd fix this by having spaceports either be permanent planetary upgrades, or having htme have no guns but really large healthpools, so that they'll hold of a fleet for a decent amount of time so you can reinforce, and if early game aggression is the problem, put the spaceport on the ground and grant every empire a free military station at game start of basically the same strength as current spaceports are. then, i'd say about the same for military stations, currently they get blown up WAY too fast to be worth it, 2 ways of countering this could be enabling you to build more in a smaller area of just giving them far more health. possibly also make maintenance cheaper, i currently only build military stations on hyperlane only maps and only in chokepoints
Glad I found this. I kinda accidentally'd a war at some point and now even the fallen empires are pissed at me. All of them. Including the xenophiles that had my back for most of the game. Guessing a full purge scorched earth policy on my first campaign was a bad plan...now I know... Now I know to hit the weak ones first, get them out of the way so they can't complain at me when I do real work against the rest of the pitiful galaxy. Ah, I love putting on my Sidious robes and cutting loose :D
I didn't think "minusing" your economy had any effect on fleet power until reserves reached zero i.e. 1000 (of both) -10 per month does not devalue fleet power whereas 0 -1 does devalue fleet power.
if only you covered this last week I wouldn't have been stuck in a 15 year war of attrition with snails I won but I would have liked this a little sooner
Currently in the middle of a war, my federation mates decided to die to the unbidden, awaken fallen empire eyeing my 2nd most important world... ...I can still win this. *Corvettes proceed to jump between systems making the enemy fleet have no idea to go*
If only the devs had listened to this video before apsec gave them a ass whipping in the Dev clash. Lol. The ass whipping was classic. The most clasdic moment in 2019 where he sent corvette swarm to jump deep in their empire forcing over 300k fleet power of battleship fleets to retreat from the front Lines to fight off his small fleet and the result is their battleship fleets end up getting destroyed due to he outclassed by a couple of corvettes.he should totally make a new tutorial video using that footage. Lol classic simply classic
Hey man love the good in-depth videos, I'm new to Stellaris and loving it. Do you have any video guides that breaks down the research tree's? I.E. if you want to go heavy tech mode then this is what you should be aiming for, or if you want to build up slowly you should focus on this etc etc. Thanks,
How I sorta defeat a large federation. I swarm them with a lot of low cost fleets, and around five large fleets. Then avoid the federation fleet. Destroy a large amount of infrastructure.
War in this game is incredibly boring. The AI always pools it's whole fleet in one group. Destroy that, and you just go around conquering planets. Pretty much war in this game is usually decided by one battle.
yeah, and a big AI flaw is: - EVERY time you take a planet, AI wan´t to take it back.... instead of bashing your systems.. so first planet = insta win against AI.
I feel like fleet size should be limited by the admiral, that is, each admiral should have a personal maximum naval capacity, OR just a total ship cap (ignoring naval capacity). Separate fleets would need to avoid engaging the same enemy to prevent friendly fire. The more friendly fleets involved in the battle, the greater the friendly fire would be. This still allows for tactical flanking (you could even have specific admiral traits designed for flanking), but would add an additional layer of depth for combat and maneuvering.
I have been told there is a game of rock-paper-scissors in effect when choosing the layout of your ship, versus enemy weaponry. Can someone explain to me what types of armor are useful against different types of weaponry, and explain how this game of rock-paper-scissors works?
basically you have armor (all ships have base armor), armor has reduced effectiveness against energy weapons (lasers, phasers....) which get limited damage against shields, projectile weapons (mass driver and it's evolutions) and the energy siphon have a damage bonus against shields then you have the missiles, they come in 2 flavors unique missiles, they have bonus against armor and shields but get defeated by point defense swarms which are more effective countering point defense and get more armor bonus at the cost of a reduced shield bonus last you have the torpedoes which come also in two flavors space torpedoes ignore shields and half of the armor but only some ship sections can mount them, dunno the effectiveness of point defense against them neutron torpedoes have double damage against shields but cost a huge amount of energy
I took over half there system including there home plant I destroyed a couple fleets they didn’t even touch my system but some how I still lost idek how I was so mad
