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[MorleyDev]

I do know that if the species you're playing does not have the exact same traits -and potentially in the same order- and the exact portrait used, the game will not recognize the species is the same.

Same portrait and same name is enough to make them be treated as subspecies of the same species, at least with Human it works like that. I've generated a Human Empire-only galaxy before that way.

[Grim Portent]

Played a Terravore swarm a couple of days ago, forgot how fast you can turn the Galaxy into a mineral smoothie when things go right. Played tall, shipping my new pops to my core worlds and letting the other empires get overrun with refugees. Normal terravore fare, my main interest was destroying worlds quickly so they couldn't be retaken by the others, letting me focus on bouncing through them with speed.

Killed everyone who wasn't a Fallen Empire by the mid 2300s (800 stars, rolled low on random number of empires,) but shortly before I finished the last few races off the Xenophile FE woke up, in response to me being declared the crisis by the Galactic Community I think. They didn't do anything until after I had finished eating the young races, but I was completely powerless to stop them from rolling over me afterwards. The Unbidden showed up shortly before my final worlds fell, but the FE was able to crush them with no difficulty.

[Robsoie]

I noticed my Stellaris games (no DLC) always go this way :

- the expansion phase, discovering new systems, new anomalies, new escavation site, new stuff, new events happening, colonizing worlds, etc.. most interesting and player involved phase of the game
- the empire consolidation phase, every empires are now mostly made, you're starting to build up your frontiers, your first war is usually starting (from your doing or from an AI neighbour) , as at that phase most empires are roughly equals that first war is rather interesting as things can go both way rather fast. Events are happening very rarely now
- the "we're just waiting for the crisis" phase, probably the most boring phase of the game, and unfortunately a rather long phase, events are nearly never happening anymore, empires wars are now a joke as when it comes to AI vs AI it's mostly stalemate after stalemate, and on you vs AI either you did badly in the consolidation phase and you can't do much other than waiting, or you've be doing great and you are basically steamrolling your previous enemies without an interesting challenge.
- the crisis phase , finally after so many time something good happens, usually you defeat it by yourself if you did good so far as the AI is rather bad at big wars and the game end score happens after some time. The crisis is usually an interesting part of the game with some sense of urgency, depending on where the crisis start of course (as when it happens on the other side of the galaxy , well...)

So far to try to improve the boring time, i'm using specifically those :

More Event Mod (of course for more possible events)
Dynamic Political Event Mod (so at least sometime unexpected revolts or other things can happen with your systems)
Guilli's Planet Modifiers and Feature (there are more events in it)

But that does not help much for the "we're just waiting for the crisis" very long part of the game, is there a mod that may make this phase of the game more interesting ?
edit : maybe i'll have to play with the mid game and end game sliders when i'll start a new game, maybe this will reduce a lot the boring phase duration

[Loud Whispers]

The stellaris gameplay loop is kinda boring, because the differences between species and governments are hardly noticeable and everything always just boils down to maximising science output. Events are interesting but don't lend to good replayability, and I think one of the problems is that even with mods, managing your stellar empire in times of peace is uninteresting because there are no interesting choices to be made

[Grim Portent]

Yeah, the space in between the major events of the game is pretty hands off. Been sitting for a few decades in my current game doing very little. My worlds are all built up, my megastructures take ages to build, my vassals are busy doing vassal things and I chuck the odd gaia seeder down for them. Just waiting for the crisis.

Really after the early game when I got boxed in by a Fanatical Purifier I haven't had much to do. Even then there wasn't much except waiting until my fleets surpassed theirs and then rolling through their territory.

I think CK has a better passive game, there's always people to schmooze, kids to teach, pilgrimages, feasts and hunts. Not all of it is interesting, but there is at least something to do that actually matters. The only routine event in Stellaris is the caravaneers, and I actually resent them for slowing down the game in it's mindless periods with their popup.

EDIT: Also, does anyone else find it weird that being Galactic Emperor doesn't have a bit more oomph to it? Like making all empires psuedo-vassal states or something. It doesn't even boost your victory score IIRC. The bonus fleet is nice, but it's not actually all that interesting in itself.

[pisskop]

Wait, how many empires do you guys have set to what sized map?

I think I found a number I like - 6-13 with 1-3 FE.  And while I like the games more random placement of empires because it adds character to starts I worry that I'm smothering the ai

[Telgin]

I usually go with 8-9 on huge maps, with 4 FEs and with random placement.  That gives me space to expand since I always play pacifists and otherwise you run up against AI empires in your backyard.

I rarely play smaller maps so I don't have preferences on them.  My last experience with a game that ran until 2700 until I was able to defeat all 3 crises is making me reconsider using smaller maps for performance reasons though...

[Grim Portent]

Varies, I used to go max for size/number of empires/time limit most of the time, but it started to get really tedious so lately I've been playing mostly 800 stars with random AI numbers.

Smaller Galaxies tend to wind up either being really hard or really easy, but the main difference is just that it takes so much longer to do anything in a big Galaxy and everyone starts ganging up on you if you want to play an evil run, which gets more tedious to the point of being unfun.

[Robsoie]

I usually play on smaller galaxy as i do on every 4x i ever played, just a matter of taste and it plays faster.
Got the contigency crisis on my current game while playing the stock diplomacy-oriented United Nations of Earth.

Spoiler: the crazy machines cut in a short amount of time my half-of-the-galaxy sized empire in half (click to show/hide)

What followed were some interesting desesperate battles to try to limit their fast expansion inside of my territory (as their fleets were stronger than mine or any AI fleet), with trying to replace lost ships as quickly as i could.
Fortunately once i could focus every guns at the other side of a wormhole that was entrance to the heart of my empire, and just getting the "Defender of the Galaxy" perk the Space Skynet wanabees were stopped right in their tracks.

Then it was a good time that the Cybrex spawned right near my empire on the bottom and that helped in major way as i could get then on the offensive while the Cybrex were fighting the biggest of the Contigency fleets inside my space.
That along finally getting a very lot of Battleships online achieved to give my empire the upper hand on my side of the galaxy and we kicked some toaster sorry bottoms rather hard after that.

Spoiler: It took 11 years to take back my systems while the AI allied empires elsewhere were trashed (click to show/hide)

The most hilarious was that in the middle of the early Contingency progression through everyone's empires, the 2 other guys that were part of the Federation i joined decided it was a good time to vote for declaring war on an enemy empire (that was slightly less trashed by the Contingency as the time).  Priorities guys, priorities...

[Telgin]

The Contingency is particularly hard on small galaxies, so that's not a small accomplishment.  The fact that they focus on the strongest empire too usually means that the player finds themselves immediately under attack from at least one Contingency fleet and sometimes all four within short order.

I still remember that the first time I got the crisis it was the Contingency, and I was totally unprepared.  I think I had about 30k of fleet power at the time and saw I was up against 80k fleets... and it was time to get good, fast.  I managed to win but it was a real struggle at first.

[Robsoie]

I only play with the normal Crisis, no x2 or x3 or anythign silly so they're very manageable on a small galaxy (though maybe if it's your first time running into them, that may be uch harder especially if you still use Sapient AI computer on your ships) , of course out of their initial spawn in which they have a couple of super strong fleet tearing apart the surrounding systems without any possible counter.

But once they are done with their initial attack, they will expand a bit and to do so they will stretch their fleets out.
And starting from then you can then destroy those weaker assault fleets one by one (even more easier after the Cybrex helpers are spawning, as after their spawn all the Cybrex super strong fleets are at the same location and will then carve a path for you until their fleets will start to separate).

As you should have researched enough to meet their firepower anyways (as Stellaris like in all 4X research is super important to get ahead of everything), and by the time you reach their various nests (the "Sterilization Hubs") you can focus all your ships on one to take out the super strong defender of each hub world without that much problem, especially if you have arc emitters weapons that absolutely murder Contingency ships.

After taking out a Sterilization Hub, all you have to do is heal/replace losses then go focus all your ships to the next nest, repeat until all the nests are dead and the Contingency is finally dead after you destroy their homewolrd.

But it also shows something that is still very bad in Stellaris : orbital bombardment.
Because to take out a Sterilization Hub, there is only one way : orbital bombardment, and in Stellaris orbital bombing simply takes forever to achieve anything, and even worse, regardless of sending a couple of ships or a thousand to bomb a planet from orbit it will take the same ridiculously long amount of time.

In fact i think it took me more time to wait for a Sterilization Hub to be fully bombed (at least it is considered dead at "only" 50% of devastation, but it takes insane amount of time to reach that number) than to fight back and capture systems during the whole crisis.
This is made worse by the terribly bad AI that does not even try to send his remnant ship to come to the rescue of its own currently bombed world, it's basically a very boring wait unfortunately totally uneventfull.

Spoiler: 39 years since taking back my worlds, reaching enemy nests and waiting for planetary bombing to complete (click to show/hide)

[Telgin]

I hate the bombardment being the same speed for 10 battleships as 400, which is a situation I frequently find myself in on higher crisis multipliers.  You can't risk leaving 10 battleships at a hub to bombard it when a 2.7 million power fleet might spawn on top of it.  So you have to park your whole navy there and wait 5 years for it to destroy the hub.

Some people use colossi on them, and it's probably faster.  I've never taken the perk so I've never used one, and thus don't know if it's faster and practical to do.  I do know that every other major patch breaks something with the Contingency where using a colossus on their hubs leads to a destroyed world that the game doesn't realize is destroyed and thus won't let the crisis end.  I've seen fixes for that in the patch notes multiple times.

[Eric Blank]

I got trashed by a fanatic purifying advanced empire. Back to my homeworld and one neighboring system from a hundred or so. I had no fleets, huge enemy fleet hovering over my homeworld, and then they invaded. I had been preparing a big army to resist any invasion, and after a long battle repelled them. They promptly sued for peace, but my empire was pretty much doomed. They didn't want me as a subject, neither did anybody else as I had been a violent xenophobic slavedriving dick. 12 years later they finished me off. There was no standing up to fleets three times the power of mine when I actually had fleets, much less when I had nothing.

Advanced civs can make or break the game for you. Especially if you don't have any friends.

[LoSboccacc]

how did you get to a hundred systems without a fleet?

[pisskop]

He means to say they destroyed them all.  Advanced starts ai neighbors are rough, its only a matter of time before they come knocking.

I've never had to face total annihilation though