EDIT: Honestly, I think the fact that discussion in this thread dried up so quickly is evident that it is lacking somehow. Is anyone here still playing this regularly? I remember when CKII came out that thread was rapidfire for months, it's still very active. In the first few months there was all sorts of cool stories and playthroughs. Here there's been just over 20 posts on this thread since the start of June for a game that came out less than a months ago, and most of those were related to DLC or the argument about how the tech penalties for having a large empire don't make sense by comparing it to real countries.
Lots and lots of modding and experimentation is required before a full gaming session can be completed, and the killing detail is that besides the Crisis species, the nomads and spacefaring xenos, the species of Stellaris are by virtue of totally random RNG usually less different from one another than CKII individuals are from one another. It is also particularly noticeable that religious ethos governments don't have religions represented, just some vague notion of spiritualness, so you get that funny situation where fanatical purifiers absolutely hate each other for being heretics but once one conquers the other becomes one massive fanatical family without issue ;
P
I think it's definitely worth taking the time to filling out loads of species of your own creation (OC species donut steal e.t.c.) and giving them character so in addition to RNG elements, you have rich narrative species to interact with them and vastly increase playability.
Tales of Enigmatic Miroslavs:
The Ubaric Hearthstate: Species of friendly elder Tortoises, amenable to dry worlds. They don't like expanding quickly or waging wars of conquest (or wars at all) and multiply slowly, but slow and steady wins the race.
Currently they have managed to
amass the largest Empire, the largest Navy and formed a federation with which they have dedicated themself to making the galaxy a more liberal and multispecial galaxy through diplomacy and trade - with their leaders and their immense lifespans having helped them considerably. Four Miroslav Emperors and Empresses have died of old age and the first Ubaric Admiral still lives. Usually they only end up as a middling power or get gobbled up by a more warlike species, but as time goes on, age shows its benefits over its weaknesses.
The Scyllan Habitated Space is a danger to anyone who shares its borders. They are extremely capable when it comes to settling other worlds - and they have no qualms with exterminating any other species that once lived on those planets. This renders their repugnance rather redundant. Weak, slow-learning, the Scyllan embody the notion of the quality of quantity - it is usually not worth approaching their Habitated Space.
Fortunately for the Galaxy, when their species was rising in power their Habitated Space was caught between the Hegemonic crossfire of three greater Imperial Species - thus resulting in the Scyllan Balkan Wars, in which greater Empires fought to carve up their species into many protectorates.
The Zaxxoid Territory - aggressive democratic liberators, unwilling to share the stars with a single collectivist regime (but otherwise quite friendly to democracies). They continually assaulted the Miroslav Sol System without respite, always keeping the Miroslav species on the brink of liberation. After 150 years of defending against Zaxxoid invasions, the Zaxxoid managed to assemble a massive federation to finally crack the Terran Fortress. Unfortunately after 150 years, the Terrans had amassed a hefty technological superiority.
After 3 years of Interstellar combat, the Miroslav Clone Army assaulted the Capital of the Zaxxoid Territory. Technology had at last bridged the gap of innate Zaxxoid superiority; all of their planets were abandoned apart from their Capital, the Capital itself becoming a client state of the newly arisen Miroslav Empire. From the ashes of this 150 year old war, a new Interstellar Hegemony would emerge
Thembolon Infestation. Other species find their method of saprosexual reproduction to be horrifying, multiplying in their sapient form when their spores take over the corpses of recently perished sentient species. These Thembolon hosts grow agitated when in the presence of other Thembolon hosts, driving them to seek out other planets (and new sources of hosts). The Thembolon fungoid is actually rather friendly and respectful of other species, and do not like taking hosts by force - thus they reproduce slowly, and seek migration access with large federations. Despite their hideous nature and some species finding it traumatizing that a fungus may be wearing their dead family member's body, federation members appreciate that the immense resilience of the average Thembolon host makes them valuable soldiers and miners, lacking many of the organs needed to make such activities perilous.
The Thembolon have since become the military arm of the Just League; whilst the Miroslav Empire has agreed to live peacefully besides their Infested Space, every Emperor and Empress to date has refused them migration access to the Miroslav Star Systems.
The Kroll Empire are a species of useless cat people that are by the design of some cruel god fated to perish, after said cruel god gave them supremacy in their planet and interstellar travel.
The Kroll do not learn quickly, they hate the company of other Kroll and are weak and incapable of supporting great industry or war. They value scientific pursuit, individualism and federation - and that is where their true value lies, in the value of friendship. Other species like fluffy tail and planets benefit greatly from their joyous presence. With that said, I have never seen them ever form a federation before some Imperial Power conquered them and used their fluffiness as adorable mascots for the Imperial Species. The only thing of note is that this time the Kroll were
conquered by Reptilian Cat people.Of course, a lot of modding goes a long way to helping make a narrative. For 150 years the Miroslav Stars were more accurately described as the Miroslav Star - being entirely limited to one star system. After the Great Zaxxoid Crusades were finally defeated however, the Miroslav were ready to take to the stars in the first phase of expansion. Terraforming had allowed the Miroslav to maximize output in one star system, and with one small part of the galactic horizon under their control, the potential was near-limitless. The galactic community at large was initially quite concerned, but after signing trade treaties exchanging Miroslav minerals for their energy, the galaxy was friendly enough to begin giving multilateral sensor link cooperation. The M-Stars were one with the Galactic Community!
I think now Espionage is not needed, if you can get Sensor Link information which details you all of the defences of potential target planets, fleet sizes, compositions
AND you can check the individual specifications of rival ships to develop the hard counter to them. All the same, the Miroslavs were not looking to invade them - rather, looking to see what they were up to. Being a spiritual Empire of utmost ethical concern, it was intriguing to see how their galactic peers managed with terraforming and settling of extreme worlds.
Some followed the example of the Miroslav Stars, terraforming barren worlds into life-giving gems.
In two cases I found two separate Empires had colonized a molten planet with second class species. Most unethical - fortunately, an incredibly rare occurrence.
The vast majority of hostile planets were however settled by robots (in fact, the only gaseous planet settled by biological species were a long-lost Miroslav outpost that had formed a planetary league of their own).
I began to grow incredibly concerned at the sheer volume of robot colonies the materialist Empires were founding. This galaxy had an unusual abundance of spiritualist Empires (none of which had summoned the unbidden) and I believe that they had been holding the materialist Empires from researching synths. In lieu of synths, those Empires had been vastly increasing their power by sending droid colonies everywhere - hostile, rich planets crewed entirely by droids. In the year of 2284, the Miroslav Observatory noticed something incredibly disheartening - the first synth colonies were being produced.
The Miroslav feared that something very, very bad was on the horizon...
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Topic: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE (Read 1746329 times)