Just coming out of my cave to say I'm playing on a 17-empire, 2 fallen empire, 600 star 4-spiral galaxy (default settings except for the galaxy type, I think) for my first game.. and I'm having a blast.
I made a point to hunt and troll the hell out of any Zealots, and the game is getting to a point where 'good folks' are getting into alliances together, and 'bad folks' who where gaining territory are now desperate, and I'm slowly conquering and liberating their planets. Already integrated 2 species, one atomic-era species I was passively observing since the started killed themselves in a nuclear war, and my 215+ human pop for years elected an alien Separatist President from a conquered 15 pop Xenophobic Evangelist for no reason, which made me go brainwash left and right and support human presidents since I can't just purge, resettle or enslave people,
unfortunately.
My alliance has 7 members of varying sizes. I was aiming for more members but empires decided to band together out of desperation, I think.
I've been playing for 3 days and I still don't know what my goal is, but I guess I'll try to make my inter-species federation rule the whole galaxy by any means necessary.
This game is also a threat to my life, it seems. I forgot what Grand Strategy does to me. bwhaha
Only complaints about the game I have at the moment (which seems like bugs), are:
- If you create sectors, you can't control Observation Posts in that sector for some reason. Which means you can't XCOM younger races, and the base is always set as Passive Observation..which takes ages for anything to happen.
- Going to war when on an Alliance really should bump up the warscore limit. 4x4 fights only allowing you to take 3-4 planets every 10 years? Pretty meh.
And..
boy I miss the distant world universe interface, where you can say build this here and ai makes it happen
This. Being able to queue construction would really lower micromanagement.