Did that once. Started as a fanatic pacifist and through an event that modified my pops they became militaristic. Soon enough my tech superior ships were blasting my neighbours from the skies and asking them kindly to open their planets, stop having them be closed.
That's my strategy on any 4X. Get as much territory as you can get freely without any friction and make sure you can defend what you have while focusing on economy so that, if some hotshot wants to try and take you out, he will have less resilience than you do so long as you have enough defenses to drag out any conflict long enough.
On HOI4 you can become unstoppable as the Nazi's extremely soon. Instantly put wargoal on Poland you can conquer them before they get help from the Brittish ( thus preventing the start of ww2 ) And if you time it right you have plenty of time left to prepare a assault on the Union attack when they purge they have a vast army but their extreme leadership penalities makes their armies melt. If done right you have conquered the Sovjet Union around 1939 GG you're now unbeatable and fat as fuck.
+Dave Vd, thats why in multiplayer it is a dick move to justify war goal if there is a national focus for it. You can also take France before UK or anyone else can help in 1936-1937. Sadly in Paradox games you need some house rules for mp. Then again I mostly only play with friends so its fine.
My first game was tall but it went surprisingly well, I got to year 2350 or something and was the most technologically advanced empire aside from the fallen civs, I only lost because I triggered the L-gate event before I was ready to handle it. The reason that was possible was because I got really lucky with my neighbors, they were all fallen empires, pacifists and/or xenophiles, I was invited in a federation early and we killed the biggest troublemaker early In the next few games I tried the same strategy and realised how easy the first game had been when I lost the game before 2300 twice in a row
I got lucky and had both exits from my cluster blocked by fallen empires. Forced me to manage my small amount of resources carefully and allowed me to take my sweet old time on tech as I was literally untouchable if I stayed on the two FE's good sides.
Mine was definitely wide. I didn't know what administrative cap was so I just kept on expanding my territory and eating all my neighbors not realizing that my science was taking the brunt of my reckless need to aggressively conquer. Well, I won anyways and beat the crisis just before it got to my home planet so it was really fun. I also didn't realize you could custom craft your ships for a very long time as well.
My argument for wide empires; I had a friend who was very good at tall. I was good at wide. He had researched everything when I was on lvl3 lasers. He invaded with two hundred thousand power fleets I had thirty thousand. He decimated me. I turned around and told all of my 100+ planets to produce three corvettes, quick and easy, and they all met at my capitol. By the time he reached me his fleet was twice my power but I had ten times his numbers. He literally couldn’t shoot fast enough and with only a few planets he couldn’t replace his fleet fast enough and I just swarmed his whole empire in one war. He doesn’t like playing with me anymore.
That sounds like a fun time, had a buddy of mine completely swarm me with 100k units but I didn't tell him I was hide and storing 250k+ fleets in the back woods of my empire, long story short, he got half way through my empire before I wiped him out quicker than he realized my fleet was about to surround 80% of his fleets
I was playing a tall empire and reaearched everything by 2320, upgraded my ships to have good weapons, as well as a few point-defense systems and a good amount of starfighters. My friend was playing wide and decided he would try and decimate me with a 150k fleet by attacking my 100k fleet in an outer system . . . little did he know, I had a 120k fleet waiting in the next system and warped them in right as he got there and annihilated his entire navy and made him my vassal not 3 months later. Needless to say, he never fought against me in any campaign again.
FanOf Dueling shit, totally forgot about this. I’m in the middle of hurricane Dorian prep now man, but I’ve met like three Xbox players including you so I’m gonna look you up.
Servitors trumps all the tall builds, all unity/research/resource builds. Their ridiculous 10% biotrophy population for 10% resource output is. Dumb. You can play wide and still get all the benefits a bloody tall build gets from being small.
I recently did a "tall" Let's Play, where I beat back Awakened Empire (after being under their rule), and the crisis that spawned. Habitats, Ringworlds and galactic wonders are your friends.
3Dkillerman ThatOneKid not really... If you watch the video he says that playing tall requires A LOT of space, since you are going to need to get your resources from something other than your planets and a low number of planets, since you need to get tech advantage and the cost increase per number of planets is high
Habitats counts as planets, so does Ringworlds. Dyson Sphere, Science Nexus and Sensor Array does not. Do not do Habitats as Tall. You stop playing Tall and if you do it while still going for Traditions or non-repeatable techs you screw over your Tall build. You may do Ringworlds, because at the point in the game when you _can_ build these, you won't have anything else to do - Science will be on repeatables, unity will most likely be well on it's way to reaching max amount possible (because you're done with Traditions).
I'm gonna be honest. I don't even know what this game is, I'm just really high and youtube just keeps playing and I didn't know what to do so I just sat here eating frenchfries watching a guy talk about space aliens and shit.
Definitely "Tall" after my most recent experience: I had a game over this past weekend where I was playing a fanatic pacifist xenophile, and got pinned in a corner early on with only 3 colonies after my nearest neighbor claimed a choke point and closed borders on me. I ended up filling the entry system with defense stations, maxing out all my planets, focusing on research speed and unity income, and forming a Federation with 2 of my other nearest neighbors by playing "Electric Company" and shelling out power and minerals / month in exchange for research and vision. About... 200-ish years in I still had yet to be successfully invaded, I had literally nothing better to do than build up a fleet while I watched everyone else play the game. I was raking in ~75 unity per month, had 4 full Traditions filled out, and had Galatic Force Projection with the biggest fleet in the galaxy just waiting there at the entry system. (My nearest competitor controlled about 1/3 of the galaxy and was considered "Equivalent") Anyway, so once the inevitable conflict happened where my federation-mates decided to destroy the guy who had me blocked in, I exploded all over the map in a matter of 3-4 years. It was incredibly boring but surprisingly effective.
I dunno know but i always play tall cuz its just feel so cozy in well developed and little empire + every fucking time i get very little size worlds and very little of them while others get 20+ size planets
redholm i’m always fanatically grabbing systems early game even if i’m playing tall. Ideally, i don’t want a whole lot of systems, but practically, i want to make sure i expand out to take advantage of natural chokepoints and secure a system with Living Metal if i can. With all the megastructures i intend to build in my tall empires, Living Metal is a godsend.
I am wide, but also tall. It's strange to say that, however, It's because I literally manage every colony to the minimal details, but I also expand like bugs. Yeah, I have energy problems, but I solve it with minerals and commercial covennants.
@@KillerBot5100 Do you wanna know my hyper autistic naming schema for stellaris? It's how I order my systems and planets, since I tend to get a little wacky with habitat printing once midgame hits.
Arc Emitter + Cloud Lightning + Disruptor battleships for fighting AE. Have a fleet power ratio of at least 2:3. Rush their territory with multiple fleets (Rapid Deployment or No Retreat-it doesn’t matter that much) and ignore your own territory losses. And above all else, keep your fleets together. You’ll destroy their fleets and stations much easier that way.
I conquered half the galaxy as a Driven Assimilator before a War In Heaven started, and I didn't feel confident at all in my ability to go it alone, so I became a signatory of a Benevolent Interventionist. They didn't do shit all to help me when the other AE invaded. I managed to rebuild after losing 75% of my fleet and lured the enemy fleet into a trap at a heavily fortified station, wiping them out, then steamrolled their empire and invaded all their holy worlds, turning their people into cyborgs. Later I rebelled against my overlord and won easily. I went to war with them again 10 years later and assimilated most of their planets, but now I have to deal with the Scourge.
I accidentally pressed the “Release station” button on a Fortress thinking it would allow me to use it, as it wouldn’t let me do anything on it, but then it gave it to the enemy. Of course all of my fleets had already moved on. What idiot designed that feature?
Many of my games have ended up being a hybrid of these two. I stop around 10-15 planets tops, then develop them as well as I can and just conquer or make vassals from that point out. I find 15 planets get you a decent fleet, especially with force projection, and the vassals help with the rest. Then, once you have balanced food to the point where it feeds all your pops and barely anything more than that, balanced power to reach just above the maintenance of your fleet, and enough minerals to pay for at least 1 battleship per cycle, all the rest is science or unity. Once you hit the tech for megastructures and start putting down things like a science nexus and/or a dyson sphere, your science and power needs are history. At that point it's often habitats and possibly ring-worlds from that point on, as many as possible to pile on the minerals, research and whatever food production is needed to prevent starvation. With enough vassals - or a powerful enough Federation - this is a very solid basis for taking on fallen Empires or holding out against the end-game cluster-fuck. Honestly I think you can start building tall whenever you feel you are ready, you just have to decide WHEN you stop going for more territory and simply improving what you already have.
personally i play Everest, wide empire that focuses all resources into the center outward, as planets are fully developed I move outward, one system at a time. personally this works well for me since I have a growing number of tall planets, I also expand and develop usually in 10 year phases, since it allows better focusing of resources. however this only works military because i use I use a combined arms approach with my fleets, I have 2-3 corvette classes, 2 destroyer types, 2 cruisers and everything else is specifically designed for a specific job. I also bum rush towards megastructures and even in vanilla those things can be a huge boon to your empire if you manage them properly.
self-sustain factory is a good method too if you're trying to out territory a rival, especially the xenophobes, they tend to view smaller as weaker despite having a fleet that can glass all their planets and an army that can straight up murder their people XD.
I do the same. I expand like a mad man. But only go for the good planets. If I can 20+. Then I develop them myself until it's only upgrades left and trow them into a sector.
I used to play Everest, but now i play tall. While Everest is probably a superior strategy, tall is just more fun because there’s far less micromanaging.
My first play-through of Stellaris was a wide empire and *wow* was tech growth slow. Eventually, that's what led to my near devastation when the end-game crisis decided to crawl out of an alternate dimension right in the middle of my empire and nearly wipe me out. If I hadn't voluntarily asked the recently awakened empire for help by becoming their vassal, I'd've been completely destroyed. My second full play-through featured a tall empire. Not even 100 years into the game I'd completed all non-repeatable research and was the most powerful force in the galaxy. Not seen the endgame crisis because I finished before it even spawned.
I want to play tall but always have that 1 AI empire that declares war on me in the first 100 years (varies per game). I always lose since I cant fight back with my close to nonexistent military.
Usually 100 years is enough to stack up a good fleet and a good federation, you need to start getting tributaries much earlier than 2300. The way I play it is before 2260-2280, I build no military whatsoever, but the second I got galactic force projection and all space ports are ready with battleship assembly yards and fleet academy, I pump out as much battleships as possible, then use my federation allies (which I will be building up before the time) as the main force until I gain 2-3 tributaries, at that time i will be able to rival other wide empires in the galaxy alone, not to mention my federation members
yeah i said first 100 years since there is no exact year when the ai declares war on me since it varies from game to game but i still get squashed very quickly. main problem is the no military bit.
The trick in not building military early game is that AIs that you have good relation with will guarantee your independence (a one way defensive pact) if you have a tiny or even no military, with no ships I can get at least 1-2 decent sized empire to have independence guarantee on me, combine with some defensive pact, it is good enough to scare off any early game AI warmonger, this work for me on hard difficulty, however defensive pact is best to be avoided on insane difficulty with high AI aggression as you will get easily pull into a war
And for building good relation with the neighbors, have xenophiles and egalitarian ethic, throw research agreement in all your potential friends' face, and have the charismatic trait if you do not feel it is enough
i have tried that still got declared on and lost so.... i gave up tall playstyle, hardly works for me even in other games example civ 5 with 1 city science rush
Thank you SO MUCH for making this video, I'm very new to Stellaris and I have been wanting to know the difference and I couldn't find any really solid facts on what these two play styles were and this video helped so much
I understand that but my 4 last try was all surrunded by star empires...all just overhelm my fleet with nav capacity and no fed possible...unless i tweet starting peacefull race.
Put heavy defenses in all your inhabited systems and use your fleet as a pure offensive strike force while your stations take the brunt of the battles. I do it all the time when going tall. It's tough to maintain but a dyson sphere fixes that issue
Interesting, other definition for tall I've seen uses Habitats to pack into systems that can take a lot of them (8-10 slots), so less territory but way more packed into it making it tall since all those are focused on things like energy and science, while the few worlds are focused on minerals.
dude thanks allot i always choose the tall side even on my first gameplay was very hard too now thanks to you it cleared my path for the right gameplay for tall
Would an empire that grows to its system cap as that cap keeps rising count as tall or wide? So no sectors, but with pacifism, Expansion traditions, the four technologies and the "Efficient Bureaucracy"?
I'm generally a tall empire player in these sorts of games. One time in Stellaris, I integrated another major empire, effectively going from tall to wide in an instant. My energy credit production went from +200 or so to -3k. That was fun.
Tall is not viable in multiplayer. Tall is weaker than wide, due to a weaker fleet and players being very aggressive. You really should mention these differences don't want to make anyone think tall is not trash in multiplayer.
Talk empires use every other much of territory terraform everything mine everything make everything’s my worth something so no tall empires are not empires
Often overlooked is that a wide empire only needs about 1/3 of it's planets to be science based to overcome the science penalty from extra planets. Sure, nothing beats a one planet empire with a science nexus, but by the time a tall empire has a science nexus a wide empire has all the useful techs AND a massive fleet.
@@outlawstar15a2 no thats because the AI is terrible at managing it's economy even with massive boosts. so eventually planets just rebel an create even more AI knit wits.
once i let them released then they attack me because of different politics they so xenophobic and out of control that become 2nd horrible enemy of mine. my race become cybernetic and full of robots.
I usually like to set habitable planets to .25. Not only does it feel more realistic, it forces habitat play and makes terraforming worth it later in the game.
I would say not just Expansion and Supremacy is for wide, but also Prosperity, as this will make you able to spam more colonies quicker if you just get the starting bonus to then transfer to Expansion and max that one out, later going to Supremacy and then back to Prosperity. Also handy is the amount of reductions in it effective on the larger levels, being able to get -20% consumer goods, -10% maintenance for practicly everything and some buildspeed is quite handy. With the starter it will also make you able to make a more effective use out of your gigantic fleetcap most of the time in the far thousands to ten thousands, and the ability to maintain it with it's reductions and buildspeed for replenishment. So if you go Prosperity, to immediatly adopt Expansion with the next tradition it allows you to just expand very fast, for the lower costs with both. Ofcourse Harmony is a mix for both Empires.
I cannot stand to play this game as it has shitty maintenance requirements. You cannot hope to even coming close to maximum cap limit. Yeah, very realistic for a militaristic society.
Except that I was unable to maintain it despite having every available resource and tech in the galaxy. If max cap in mid to late game before battleships do not start to seriously tax your economy into a death spiral. I do not know the game you are playing. I'm really frustrated by this game though. I give it try after try, but it seems so badly designed. So much pointless micromanagement. Bad AI. Uninteresting combat. No choices early game. Just mineral build up. It is so bad that super early military rush with first ships reaching 1k strength and bloodless capture of two enemy planets are nothing, but a massive net minus in your progression.
Grammar Nazi AUS You might notice nobody actually said "best" It's all subjective anyway; I don't see any particular reason to keep our hands off the word "best".
As you said, it's subjective. My opinion is is that "best" suggests conclusive results. You cannot have this without playing everything relevant to the list with a significant amount of time invested in each, to fully understand the mechanics. So I suggested instead to talk about "constructive" mods, meaning mods that add a lot to the base game. It also doesn't talk about the "best" constructive mods, thus avoiding the issue. Although I do admit saying "Most" kinda defeats the purpose.
With the coming federations expansion the mega shipyard seems geared towards making the tall empire play style more effective, I.e that it will allow tall empires to pump out large numbers of ships quickly
In all my games I play as a tall science and comerce focus empire until half of the game, then I convert myself into a militaristic machine of conquering and subjugating.
in 1.9 you can afford to go wide after conquering fallen homeworlds for their massive production (don't forget to purge those filthy beasts and replace with own race). the tech loss per system was low enough that the population penalty means nothing. however on insane, you will need to make sure that every planet you colonize is above 20 slots because the AI boost on that difficulty is dumb and they seem to run off of a year based ship spawning program. fallens do not follow the same rate of fleet rebuilding as regular empires, and awaken seem to be just a tad bit ahead of standard AI empires on ship spawning. hence you'll never be able to build a 'wide' empire simply because you'll be surrounded by 400k fleets by the time you begin researching tachyon lance while sitting on nothing more than maybe 100k yourself. by the way don't you agree that kinetic is absolutely useless? i think so too. the chances of beating insane is increased by using the horizon explosion. which requires modifying the game files so that the DLC you paid for actually gets triggered. way to go game devs. in 2.0 however, you're forced to vassalize yourself (actually, we could've done this in 1.9, but that would cause more lag) after roughly 150 years and feed him all of your systems that you deem unworthy. then use your vassal's fleets to defend while you go on a galactic crusade. and the change to penalty modifier means that you probably don't need to explode the worm anymore for an extra physics stack.
Use weapons that bypass shield and armor against AE. I also like having a destroyer fleet with PD in passive near my battleships so that they destroy incoming missiles. And giga cannons can be really useful. I use them to soften up things that have shields and have neutron launchers in my large slots so that they can melt away the armor without worrying about shields.
I always try to go as wide as possible. I started playing last month, so my inexperience probably has a lot to do with it. I go wide because I always try to cut off the other empire territory choke points, and build up fortresses at every warp hole and choke point. Then, I have plenty of time and resources to slowly take over the territory throughout the decades. The other empires remain landlocked and I get half the galaxy to move around without having to worry about wars reaching anywhere near my real territory. Of course, fast transportation anywhere is a real problem.. I'm usually in the mid-late game before I get to research warp gates.
i don't agree with you assessment of tall vs wide. A wide empire is a huge empire that ha a large population spread out far across the galaxy. A wide empire chooes only planets that are 100% habitalbe and gets most of it's resources from star systems that don't or cant support colonies. Wide empires must expand quickly to stay competitve and must keep expanding, pushing their borders outward A Wide empire will always be at war with someone, if not due to border friction, then due to their unending need to expand. A Tall Empire is an empire that has a huge amount of population is a small amount of space. Tall empires utilize every inch of space with in a small region. Tall empires grow slowly and usually reach their maximum expansion limits quite early in the game. They terraform every world with in their space for colonization, and after they get mega engineering they start building Habitats and other galactic wonders where ever they can. Due to this Tall empires can be just as productive and helpful again awakened ascended empires and end game crises as wide empires can. Being Tall does not mean being weaker.
There are multiple ways of defining tall vs wide. If you just go by territory controlled, then America, China, & Russia are both wide IRL. However, they are very different economically. China focuses on large amounts of densely packed urban manufacturing. Russia focuses on resource extraction, while America has a highly diverse economy, ranging from dense urban centers focused on non-physical exports like arts & schematics, suburban areas emphasizing service-sector employment, & rural areas producing massive amounts of food & highly varied raw materials. America is also different in that there is a much greater emphasis on highly productive citizens over more citizens producing goods compared to other areas. These three kinds of "wide" economies are possible in stellaris. Russian style economics focuses on extracting rare resources for trade, large amounts of space mining, & very few settled planets. Chinese style involves getting as many pops as possible and putting them to work, even if they don't have a building some resources are better than not having them. American style focuses on getting large amounts of territory, but colonizing planets slowly & ensuring they are highly developed to maximize each citizen's yields.
When you say 'America' do you mean the United States? Very interesting, although the three countries size is radically different. the USA is 2/3 the size of china, and you can fit 3 and 1/10 united states into Russia. Also, all three countries have large tracts of empty land, and have different levels of urban density. Of the three, China's big urban areas which are in the eastern part of the country, are the highest in density. That is followed by the USA which has a smidge sprinkling of density on the west coast but most of it is highly focused in the northeast, and Russia's urban areas which spread out far apart in the west is least dense. If that's so, then what are the different methods of going Tall?
OpenWorldAddict, I think you are using just the lower 48 states in your USA size comparisons. In reality China is slightly smaller in land area than USA and Russia is only slightly less than twice the size of both China and USA.
No prodigy thats not what wide vs tall means in the gaming context wide vs tall is literally many cities/planets vs a few very big cities/planets. Tall focuses on tech and wide focus on production. He says 4 planets because that is what is defined by civ to be tall. Stellaris as of mid 2016 has got some very tech cost increases from pop which why the one planet challenge is so possible against AI. But there is no way that tall in stellaris is viable on 4 planets against people, someone can just come along and destroy every frontier outpost and mine and all you got then is tech that you can't use.
he said that wide = takes planets for yourself, tall = create vassal and tributary (don't take planets). That is pretty much it. Other things are just guidelines you can opt for.
i used to do tall on EU 4 a lot after i worked out all the mechanics for it .. was really good fun most of the time .. its a must to try this at least once
Ive been forced into Tall by either friends or AI. With great fun challenge and raging sadness to them later on when my tech and energy production have snowballed out of reach.
My first ever Stellaris gameplay was tall, I was naturally inclined to it. I've always tried playing wide but I can't (I'm relatively new to the game, anyways).
Post 2.0 > Rip tall playstyle Now expansion influences for some reason tech research, and if you try to play tall you won't have enough minerals / energy to defend yourself
i wish there werent such harsh penalties towards tech, I took over about 1/4 of the galaxy and had to focus nearly all my tiles towards research just to maintain my technological edge, and maintain a relatively small fleet for my size to make up for the loss in minerals and energy. turning 3 empires into tributaries and 2 into vassals barely made a dent.
you should really focus on building megastructures. Dyson sphere will supply you with energy for matter processors, and science nexus will negate tech cost penalties. With like 300-400 systems there should be no probleme maintaining fleet of 1-1.5k
I've only just started playing, and I've watched most of your videos. They're really helpful, so thank you for making them. Where do you get the graphics of everything in the background (especially this video)? I've tried zooming in, but it doesn't really look the same... is it in the game?
So I tried playing "Tall" Let me give you my impression of playing "Tall" and why i'm never doing it again. first off, its boring asf until like year 350, Your constantly praying that you dont get wiped (To get around this I played as a pacifist with charismatic traits to make friends). Wards the end when the real fun starts to begin by making tributaries of other nations, I managed to stack so tall with something like 35 habitats over 400+ Research of each type and energy and minerals for days! BUT guess what playing tall sucks at? apparently Endgame crisis, because the unbidden spawned right ontop of my 7 world empire and had an orgy all over my 7 planets and 35 habitats within the matter of 5 mins, thats right! 6-8 hour playthough all over within 5 mins because Rng and playing tall, I guess you can say I got "tripped" or that "It all came tumbling down" but I cant manage to smile right now... oh and forget trying to play multiplayer tall, You would get eaten alive early game.
building habitats counts as planets and pop reduction on your science and unity production, so while you were playing tallesque, you were suffering much of the burden of expansionist play style while not benefiting immensely in any way. I take fanatic materialist and xenophile to make friends. I have been able to federate inside of 60 years and even without that, defensive pacts will get you through early. I prefer venerable and charismatic traits and sacrifice migration growth and another that escapes me. Slow start that snowballs into tech bliss. take discovery tree first and the 10% research ascension. Then with your second tree get the projected naval capacity for the +200 and with your superb ships you can quite handily manage beginning to subjugate
@Ghastrix you are not playing tall nor wide. you have a clusterfucc of an empire by your own description. habitats count as planets for all intents and purposes, but smaller and incapable of building ships. although there are positive aspects in habitats to consider, it seems like you are not properly managing them. 400'ish research for a "tall" empire by the year 350 is laughable. - I'm not trying to insult you or make fun of your comment. I'm just trying to point out the fact 7 planets and 35 habitats with research in the 400's in the year 350 should not be considered a "tall" approach. Tall empires struggle mostly in the beginning. Done right, mid to late game they are simply unstoppable.
Well way farther down the line now i'm actually fairly solid at the game now and I personally feel a better definition for a tall play style would be to just make everyone your tributary by like year 20(Call it tall? I kinda call it domineering style more so but by mid to late game i still would only have like 6 planets and a massive amount of income from other factions). tends to work every time for me as tributaries are kinda like sectors that you don't need to manage, just kinda defend if you feel like it, giving you a massive advantage early game that will carry you on even into late game without any real problems. start falling behind? just make someone else pay for your war efforts! This is a highly effective method I use very commonly in multiplayer, as long as you win your first 3 wars you're honestly set for awhile. @Irving Teran Now the reason why this is a reply to you, is the fact that I don't really understand why you didn't give me an example of what you considered tall. ya just kinda told me what I was doing was wrong and it wasn't really any help :(.
Awwww yesss. I'm so glad I watched this. Been an avid stellaris fan for ages, and pretty much only played wide (without knowing there was another way to play). This is going to breathe new life into the game for me, as I wait for Apocalypse!!
I recently tried tall with a slight difference - instead of going for science nexus first, I went for the dyson sphere. Yes this took a bit longer to achieve, but as soon as it started churning out energy I was able to trade the excess for minerals. I was then able to build the other megastructures in rapid succession and have a gigantic fleet - which actually got demolished once but thanks to the dyson sphere energy trade, I rebuilt it entirely before the enemy fleet managed to get to my homeworld... where I was waiting for them with and ftl snare fortress and a fresh 150k power fleet.
nikola feschiev i usually just tech up till i have the best weapons army and military stations possible, then just slowly murder everyone and everything around me till bored or win, have big borders and not that many plants until you get ringworlds and then dedicate bits to different resources and just exponentially get more densely populated until you have a stupid level of resources and naval cap, design a fleet composition from your available ships dedicate a few space ports to build these fleet compositions, have few worlds building armies, then steamroller it all, long wait but goes well, synthetics are quicker for this since less resource types but still usually takes aged
'Tall includes few planets and a lot of space' .. How does this work? I am only a VERY casual Stellaris player and don't think I've even managed to make it to what you would call mid-game.. Each time I think I'm progressing well I find that every other empire out there is far more advanced and is covering a larger amount of owned space. I always felt, probably due to an old fashioned Civ2/Civ3 mindset, that the only way to advance quickly enough means more, more and more planets in order to give a larger zone of control and more overall income of all game resources. And in doing so I seem to hamstring myself, with all other empires having more advanced tech, stronger fleets and, somehow, gaining larger zones of control. So if I was to go with the idea of fewer planets, how do you then control a larger amount of space? I know one could use frontier outposts, but they cost influence as upkeep, so I can't see having too may of them being a viable option. ...What am I not seeing here?
A further thought, though on a tangent... As said I only play casually and have never been very successful in the game, only once managing to properly defeat an enemy empire. In a recent go at it I thought to try a switch up and go with a murderous bunch of robots, hell bent on wiping out all organic life as we know it. I tried to get a small number of upgrade techs and whip up a small, yet what I thought might be viable, fleet and tear into my closest neighbour, hoping that I might get an early leg-up in the game. It turned out that he was already at equal fleet power, and though I defeated his fleet mine was rather thinned out. ...Fine.. If the two fleets are so closely matched then one shouldn't have an overwhelming advantage.. I had already queued up a number of ships and was in the early process of rebuilding my fleet in order to continue the assault on his small empire when all of a sudden he sends a new fleet at me.. At the same size fleet strength as the one I had only very not long ago fought. And in that same amount of time I'd only built up a couple of replacement ships. It was super early in the game, so there was no way for him to have a huge number of resources to be able to draw on, so I kept wondering what was the go? Kept trying to struggle with it but to no avail.. In the end I thought to go to the dark side and, dare I admit it, cheat for once to just get past this troublesome adversary. In short moment I had a fleet at 10 times the strength of his fleet, hammered through it and cracked myself a fresh beer in celebration of scamming the game. Two minutes later he has another new fleet coming at me... Somehow at the strength of the fleet I cheated to build. So I cheat up another fleet, larger than my previous.. Beat that opponent and decide to take on someone else.. Who somehow magically have a fleet at the size of my cheated in fleets. And this continued each time.. Is it just me, or is there some weird mechanic going on behind the scenes that AI empires ignore the game mechanics and will always be able to pump out fleets equal to what the player can ( ..or better.. )?
Richard Docksey sounds odd. Im a casual player too so I can't help you out there. However I am curious about that. In my game I'm in the middle of 2 enemies, one above and below, who are defensive allies and are both my rivals. Lol can't wait to see where that goes. And I hope my somewhat modest fleet is strong enough.
Best of luck with any conflicts you enter. Perhaps for me it's nothing more than some poor choices in buildings on my planets and various mining stations in the galaxies that don't give as good an overall ratio of various incoming numbers, which adds up to slower progression. But I cannot help in finding my games odd in that I play on easy, I don't think I play like a total muppet in my choices, and yet all other empires seem to progress faster. In my most recent game, after watching several of ASpec's vids, I began trying a tall empire. Tech progress seemed to go at a semi viable pace, even considering local systems having almost no resources to offer. But all of a sudden a nearby empire begins expanding his borders at a ridiculous rate and I get a feeling of being as inept as a pair of T-rex arms in a pro boxing match. ..Still.. I shall never give up! Never surrender!
Richard Docksey well I try not to compare my border or military strength to other players and I try to keep high surplus of resources. I actually have a few inferior opponents so that's nice (contradicting myself a little there haha). Influence is a recurring problem for me but I can often work it out. Either way just trial and error. I play on normal fyi. But yes fight on! Cheers
I made an empire with the theme of an unstoppable plague (I call it an Omnidemic) that kills all life in the galaxy and conquers all planets. It's a pretty fun playstyle, but is rough getting started in the early game on hard difficulty. I don't have to worry about all those negative factions and I can modify my species to be able to effectively colonize any planet type. I typically prefer to vassalize and then integrate that way I get their fleet and I can reap the benefits of the Domination tradition which can easily counteract the negative impact on research.
In one of my save files i have 9 citadels with 67k power packed together in a hex shape, with the capital in center. 3 fleets guard the middle and dispatch to the outer systems if needed, i have access to everything in the galaxy as every system has a gate, and all systems are ringworlds apart from the capital and the dyson system, for the sphere, so that i can have both the nexus, the sphere, and a ton of worlds. Every ring has a full fortress section, with the rest of the sections being for matter converters, energy production, research and unity. The only empires alive are those from my coalition, any other empire that spawns is quickly destroyed.
I really wish Stellaris had some sort of Custom AI Manager capability where you can sort of design how you want planets to be governed. Like for instance: If food per month drops below 10% of total net food income, build agriculture district or hydroponics farm. If Energy drops below +100 per month, build an energy district. If Mineral income drops below 50 per month, build mining districts. If exotic resource income drops below +1, build another whatever. Otherwise, make more alloy foundries baby! Anyway, a customizable AI you could setup to build certain things in a certain priority based on conditions you set would be fantastic. Planet has a bonus to mining? Great! Max out mining districts. Planet has a bonus to agriculture? Great! Max out agriculture districts. Planet sucks at agriculture? Don't build that shit here, shut up, go home you're drunk. Micromanaging each little planet can be kind of fun when you have like 3-5 planets, but once you start building a galactic empire that spans the stars, it gets reallllly tedious to keep up with the constant colonization and development of all the planets. Having a system to automatically build colony ships, colonize every world you encounter, then have them automatically build to suit the current state of your economy would be so fucking nice. As would having a way to stop growth and dedicate it 100% to emigration and shit like that. Being able to automagically have your planet pops STOP growing beyond your housing or job availability would be great. Having them automagically turn growth back on, but channeling it (through emigration) into making a new planet grow instead, would be wonderful. I enjoy Stellaris, but sometimes the tediousness of it all gets to me. I really enjoyed Sins of Solar Empire because each time you colonized a new planet, you can simply queue up everything you want to build. All resource collection buildings, all exploitable resources, maximize the habitation, etc, then you could just move on to the next planet. Even though it takes time for that planet to fully develop, you already told it everything you need it to do, so you can set-it-and-forget-it. I loved that. It made taking over new worlds fun because they had an initial investment cost that you'd see a return on eventually without need of constant babysitting. And maybe some folks wouldn't like turning over that much control to an AI, but you don't "have" to do it. I personally love automating things and setting up autonomous functions. It's why games like Factorio are so fun for me, and again, SOASE did a great job with just instantly queueing up everything you want done as soon as you get a planet and then not worrying about it anymore. Stellaris tries way too hard to be deep with all these different jobs and things, but it's not actually deep enough to justify it because you cant prioritize certain jobs over others. best you can do is reduce max workers for a specific type of job PER PLANET, and that's all the control you have over it. It's just not good enough. I enjoy Stellaris pretty well, but it'll never be a top tier game for me when it leaves so much out of your control and has no systems in place to reasonably manage your empire. I remember playing a game once, I forget what it was called, but the makers of the game recognized that different players had different playstyles and enjoyed different aspects of the game, so you could choose to fully automate entire sections of the game and leave others under manual control so you only had to deal with the stuff you wanted to deal with and the AI took care of the rest. So maybe you just want to build a trade empire and not deal with making a navy? You could automate your navy and defenses and the AI would build ships and handle that on its own. And the better you did at building strong economies, the more ships they'd have to defend you with, so even though the AI was handling that aspect of the game, its success was still based on your own performance. Likewise if all you wanted to do was take over the universe, you could just automate planetary management and even colonizing new planets so the ONLY thing you had to worry about was controlling your navy and taking over the universe. I really, really love that as a concept and giving you that kind of freedom. But I digress. Stellaris is a good game, but it has amazing potential to be substantially better with a little developer love.
Post this in the forums as a suggestion. You make some really good points especially regarding the AI. If we could fine tune the AI anywhere near what you've described, things would be monumentally better.
I jus rewatched this and can I say as a wide player I generally out classed most the xenos in my galaxy based on tech because I usually had atleast 2-3 research planets
The way I play tall involves the shattered ring world start. Dare not underestimate the power of 24 researchers in the early game (first 30 years). It's little known that the Arcane Generator on your first section will cover the upkeep of any districts you repair, and the blockers in the ringworld, once cleared, provide the initial resource requirement for 1 of each section type. I find that using rapid breeding habitable species will proliferate throughout the galaxy quickly even if you only have 1 migration treaty. Within a hundred years your starter pops will start appearing on the slave market which even democracies can liberate (and send to new ringworld sections to rapidly populate them). It's a strategy I discovered by accident when I noticed my pet "pupper" race was in my game and I wanted a pupper reserve planet to become my empire's pets (and secondary species). Eagalitarians (an eagle avian race pun for this democracy playthrough) found themselves proliferating by the hundreds of pops outside of my systems, and after any given war, 10 or so ended up on the slave market for me to buy up and liberate to my ringworld sections.
I really like the mid-size empire strategy with inward perfection with 8-12 planets, no sectors, and eventually transition into habitat spam. Having pop resource bonuses from pacifism and inward perfection, along with the extra resources from agrarian idyll and adaptivity finisher I can speed through the tradition trees and build habitats even sooner while still having the ability to afford a decent fleet and a decent defense station/fortress to deter attackers and fend off attackers when they do come. habitats give decent naval capacity, which makes late-game fleet building more doable, and the resource bonuses allow your eco-boom to far out-pace all other empires
I have been basically fucked by rng because my admin cap is trapped at 60 and I don’t want to go over it. So I have almost no where to expand because I’m trapped in East and west by two empires bigger than me. I’m trapped in the south side by a shit load of hostile fleets and the north is the edge of the galaxy.
Usually I get around 20 Planets and then vasalling all others I defeat in combat, playing somehow Tall. But when a big empire awakes I start to integrate the vassals one by one, which can be madness ou an believe me.
Meanwhile my playstyle is "Fallen Empire". I pick a cluster of stars around my capital with as few exits as possible (optimally 4 or less), build bastions at the frontiers, develop EVERYTHING inside those borders, focusing on planet production. No planets? Build habitats. Once had like 20 habitats. Can get you an insane level of everything especially when using the planet types and focusing on everything that increases efficiency. Federations also helps that since the new stuff really allows you to have an ultra tall empire.
I once played as a determined exterminator (obviously super wide) and still somehow unlocked jump drives before the end of the first century with tech and tradition costs at x1.
I typically do a balance, try to get about 5 planets then do research focus while expanding as much as I can usually only being in defensive wars and trying to get into a federation
My most successful playthrough (base game) was an expansionist wide empire that made several enemies throughout its history. Despite being a galactic superpower with technology rivalling even the precursors, my fleets were stretched thin, resources were almost insufficient to sustain the empire and I was forced to stop my expansions. Managing resources grew tedious while defending my borders became difficult even as my fleets routinely patrol my territory, so I said "meh" and started over. I did enjoy genociding xenophobic aliens though so it was worth it.
My playstyle is a mix of tall and wide empires. Just consume the entire galaxy and lay exterminatus upon every single rebelling planet. Things generally calm down once the entire galaxy’s only populated by mankind.
I play a mixture of both... I have the entire galaxy subjugated as vassals/tributaries. But I also have a lot of my own land, a bunch of planets, and an overly technical military/society.
I think that you should also go for prosperity on both really early especially for the wide empire players because one you got those private colony ships and less costs for ships and planets your on a roll and can expand with ease.
I started a game as the imperium of man, but I got really really lucky and chanced upon terraforming as my 3rd tech, and had both terraforming resources in my starting borders. I ended up having a medium size empire, but said empire had around 20 colonies spread around about 12 systems (on a large map). Then i Built habitats anywhere that i couldnt terraform, and ringworlds in systems with less than 4 planets, and by the first 100 years I had OVER 60 colonies total, still restrained to about 15-20 systems. (a dyson sphere helped). After that, I just expanded relentlessly over the entire galaxy
This video made me realise i always play tall, well somewhat. I never have tributaries and when i di they're just some uplifted races i found on random planets wich means they have about 1 or 2 systems per avarege cuz im not giving them mine
Or just do tallwide - get feudal empire and efficient administration, then you can expand a bit further without penalty and feudal empire means that you can expand by just having loads of vassals/tributaries (who don't impact on the empire sprawl, meaning that you are still tall). this way you suffer none of the penalties of being wide, while still having your colour, if not you name, stretched across the galaxy.
See now, I’ve never been able to be wide early on. It just feels too messy and...inefficient. What’s the point in owning a whole world and all this planetary-building tech, only to have a world with next to nothing on it but some pops? I guess I play a mix, tall early on, but once I climb up the galactic power rating, and have a stable economy, I know that I can finally begin open conquest. Obviously I’ll colonize if I can afford it, but only if I CAN afford it. >creating tributaries and vassals HA! no. The Codex Astartes does not support such actions.
Did a one planet challenge where I basically expand through the usage of frontier outposts, habitats, and ring world's (alongside other megastructures). Had overwhelming technology compared to everyone else, borderline happiness, maximum influence, all Ascension perks by 2500, and all weapons by the Endgame crisis. I didn't have a large naval capacity, yet I was still somehow able to beat the Scourge as they consumed half of the galaxy with only 58 colonies (Habitats) and a max naval capacity of 1,069. Having four ring worlds and crap ton of Habitats, a single Dyson sphere and three science nexus's by 2600. My fleet might have been small, but my technology exceeded that of a fallen Empire. In most respects I WAS the Fallen Empire of the game. I will say that if you do build mega structures, focus on ring world's as fast and as quick as you can. They boost your Naval capacity, produce between 100-200 minerals per habitat (400-800 minerals per ringworld.) AND have pretty good bonuses for research purposes. Dyson spheres aren't really worth it, since it takes FOREVER to build them. I think 23-24 years for it? 23 for Ringworld. That's with the master builders AND living metal bonuses.
I played a machine race with about 12 planets by the end and I was doing a better job of decimating the end game event then the awakened empire. taking out one of the contingency's machine worlds all by myself. 12 under my direct control, another dozen or so in 2 sectors, one tributary, and a vassal all in all small but massively industrialized to the point I had to give away resources as to not wastes them, and could rebuild all 3 fleets to Max strength in half a year.
Just do both. Quickly expand with outposts and make sure to aim towards choke points by ignoring non-stragetically important systems. You can take them once you're safe. Your fleet and admiral can level up fight the pirates.
