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[Robsoie]

In Europa Universalis 2 too , huge army were far from unbeatable as it is not uncommon to lose a battle by morale because morale damage isn't related to the army size.
And making a reinforcement system instead of sending all your army at once to face troops of superior number, you could beat an unbeatable massive army by routing it, the system was explained there :
https://eu2.paradoxwikis.com/How_to_Win_Battles

Of course, the main difficulty was to time your reinforcement arrival, as getting a bit too late could mean your previous army was already obliterated and the arriving one would not be numerous enough to resist the serious beating coming its way , also there's an element of randomisation to the combat dice rolls, meaning that you could still be trashed even if you try to make a reinforcement system.
The importance of the "probing" described in the wiki can make all the difference.

[pisskop]

I know that in some games they make experience change the way the ai handles.

for instance, in the old Star Trek 4x you selected a manuver, and the ai carried it out each phase.  You could tell it to advance, retreat, hold, hail, whatever.

But, for instance, the ai would fire use predictive ballistic firing arcs instead of firing on the current location of the enemy, and other small improvements.

Perhaps the stellaris experience system for ships could be augmented by giving individual fleets tactical improvements based on skill; perhaps you could even set a 'stance' for them that dictated what kind of ai they try to use.  Much like the aggressive policy perk where you can set a 'fleet policy', maybe you could ask you fleets to try to do guerilla warfare where the aim is to cripple fleets and warp out, spending minimal time out of action.

[Great Order]

You can sort of do that, but you have to set it as a full empire with the war doctrine.

I like to keep it at rapid deployment until my first major engagement, then swap to hit-and-run. Reduces casualties, win or lose.

[Telgin]

I always wondered how much the maneuvers actually meant in Birth of the Federation.  It felt somewhat like rock, paper, scissors, where sometimes you'd get super lucky but it was never really obvious to me why I should pick one maneuver over another.  I think it did actually matter depending on the enemy's maneuver and ship classes, but it was very opaque.  And like Stellaris, by the late game you could just overwhelm the enemy with any maneuver.  Nothing the AI could build could stand up to a fleet of 10 defiant class and 10 sovereign class ships blasting at it, no matter the maneuvers.

On the subject of Stellaris, I found myself facing the Unbidden with their lovely early spawn mechanic again, and since they spawned 50 years early I wasn't prepared to fight them.  I had to turtle for a while and that led to the Aberrant and Vehement spawning, which is rare for me to see.  I've finally built up enough of a navy to consistently win battles with little losses, but I found that all three factions have over 10 dimensional anchors.  That's despite the Aberrant appearing to not even own that many systems.  I'm not sure if it's bugged yet or if I just can't count, but I've only seen 2 anchors that I haven't destroyed.  The crises tend to break every major patch so I won't be surprised if it's just a bug, but I really wish that there was a way to track their locations from the situation log.

[Radsoc]

I remember playing the game on release, which was crap. Now, however it's pretty good, and can be a challenge. For new games I try to find some interesting achievements to work toward. Right now "Unshackled" which gives you a specific starting scenario, a defined antagonist, and a general goal to abolish slavery in the galaxy. The conditions are quite strict and expose some limitations in the diplomacy mechanics that requires some gamey tactics, but I guess it wouldn't be a challenge without that.

[pisskop]

unshackled is the new dlc start?

Something like a collective of slaves from multiple races throwing over their oppressors; plus a guaranteed slaver empire spawns?  How are the mechanics of that?  They implied youd face tech and economic troubles, and possibly diplo issues

[Radsoc]

Yes, basically. One strength is that you have diverse population and a good chance of good habitability for early game expansion. You're behind from the start while economy and stability are main problems. There are some projects that mitigate that. The devs seem to have invested some time into integrating that start into the flow of the rest of the game. E.g. details from the viewpoint how the population/empire would react to various game events (i.e. not agnostic to a slaver empire joining your federation etc, laws and outcomes of wars.) giving bonuses or maluses.

One problem I have encountered is that liberation wars that imposes your ideology on other empires in some cases tend to revert back to slaver ethics (even if repeated, and you can't integrate empires requiring more than 1000 influence in one go, so basically I have 20 years left to old school annex the last slavery-enabled empire apart from 2 stray pre-FTL that don't fulfill abolitionst conditions where I gamble on them changing ethics - outright invading my allies and taking the planets is too late since I'm not allowed to invade pre-FTL due to xenophilia (which can be changed over a longer time though )  ).

[pisskop]

Looking through some of the changes brought on by the new 3.8 stuff.

Traits in particular...  The idea of the new traits sounds nice, but doesnt 'produce 32 food' seem like it completely throws off the need for farms at all; if some scientist can just produce a planets worth of food?

[AlStar]

Generally speaking, I've found that the traits that give raw resources are pretty minor. They can provide a much-needed boost early game, but overall the numbers are roughly equivalent to one pop's output of the resource - you're not going to be able to completely ignore farming by buying a bunch of farmer scientists.

[Haspen]

Plus, by having farmer scientists means you're foregoing all other, nicer traits that you can fish out.

That said, in a cooperative game I have with Solymr, our chief of scientist, Bao Lee, became immortal (can't die of old age) thanks to an shiny-orb-related event from random anomaly, then got +32 energy credits/month trait, and acrued I think 2? Society expertise traits and then some more traits by level 6.

She's basically an Immortal Chinese Alchemiss; she just needs Psionics expertise from an event or something and she will become a Wizard at that point

Galactic Paragons is best DLC.

[Kanil]

... you're not going to be able to completely ignore farming by buying a bunch of farmer scientists.

This is actually a totally viable strategy in current patch, thanks to the "leader doesn't count towards leader cap until level 4" trait. You can hire just a ton of those dudes and have each one churn out 32 food for you, without affecting your 8-or-so highly trained council leaders. Then have your farmers do something else more productive.

This expansion is so overwhelmingly busted.

[Rolan7]

Those still cost unity upkeep, though.  ~8 IIRC.  Might be an okay trade, but not one I'd bother to set up.

[Kanil]

It takes less pops to get 8 unity than 32 food, so it's pretty much worth it. Of course, it's more work than I'm willing to bother with, but it's very much a thing you can do.

[AlStar]

You keep using the number 32, but that's way higher than the trait gives - it's 4 or 8 food, depending on level of the trait.

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Common_leader_traits

[Haspen]

It's one level up to make that starting +8 food into +32 food.

Same for minerals and energy credits; alloys and congoods are +4 at start.

Still bonkers