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[Rolan7]

I used to do that!  Mods kinda got in the way eventually.  I wish the "sets" of mods in the launcher could handle that better- or maybe an option in the empire list that just hides incompatible ones.  It's not reaaaaally a problem though, just clutters the list.

A copy-pastable code would be swell, even if only for vanilla empires (seems like it'd be easy to support custom traits/etc though).  I used to play coop fairly often and I'd like to some of the silly or interesting empires my friends & bro made.  In fact... Oh!  I'm able to load up those MP save games!  I'd have to transcribe the empires by hand I guess, but it's nice I have them.

The creations I've held on to are:
Precursor Antique Shop: spiritualist Xenophile relic-world rocks (coop mp game where we all went lithoid, I played support)
Panaxala Trade Coalition: egalitarian Xenophile voidborn plants, frens with fronds (yay egalitarian and coop mp)

And non-MP:
Craftworld Eldar: militant Spiritualist voidborn elves with Reanimators, a force-spawn for funsies
Chozo Mandate: egalitarian Materialist mechanists.  obviously use the spacesuit-bird portrait and beeline synthetic ascension
Clan Snek Cobra: auth Militarist lost-colony.  Maybe my most indulgent joke.  Only auth in order to take Nihilistic Acquisition in order to dodge the empire pop scaling- runs social welfare, species equality, and loooots of duelists.  Also an excuse to take gene-modding ascension rather than synthetic.

I flubbed that Chozo run by taking the Flesh Is Weak perk which now locks you *out* of synthetic ascension   I should set some of these can-spawns to force-spawns though and see what the AI does with them.
And maybe rebuild an old empire I lost... egalitarian xenophobe butterflies, one of the only times I seriously used slavery.  Quite awful, rather effective, they made interesting NPCs.

[forsaken1111]

Some day I should try creating enough empires that I can force spawn so that I get galaxies made up of empires of my design.  I gather that a lot of players do this, and it's a cool idea.  Right now I only have 3 set up that way, but I usually play on less crowded maps of about 10 empires so I wouldn't have to make too many.

I did something like that. I made a 'human diaspora' custom setting using mods and force-spawned empires where 99% of the empires in the galaxy were human, post-human, or human origin. By that I mean some were robot gestalt assimilators with human cyborgs, some were robot gestalts pampering humans, one was a hive mind made of humans, etc. One was an alien race that had enslaved a human subpopulation. It was fun enacting a sort of human reunification war to reconnect all of humanity.

[MorleyDev]

Another fun one on a similar theme:
Use the Fatherland mod and Planetary Diversities habitats.
Make an empty galaxy (no other Empires but yourself)
Play as humans with the Doomsday Origin
Not leave the Sol sector until the Earth explodes.

You have until Earth explodes to research and colonise the various planetary bodies of the Sol System, and then have to then spread out and reuinite humanity.

[pisskop]

My experience with a galaxy of all the same species is that you tend to start near the same people all the time, and thus some of the mystery of the early game gets taken away.

For my current batch of critters when playing the space mer-elves I get the rogue servitors with a ringworld start and the democratic federation turtles and the bandit elephant necromancers and one of either the pacificist psychic buddhist monks or the xenophobic technocrat squids.



Adding in a few randomly generated empires helps a little, and adds in either a few civics I dont care much for/seem to stereotyped or are generic hedemonistic species which helps flavor the galaxy.  Both I dont much want to make a civ for and have a niche.  Like necrophages, are there really more than one kind of cthulu/animorph brain eaters?

[forsaken1111]

Another fun one on a similar theme:
Use the Fatherland mod and Planetary Diversities habitats.
Make an empty galaxy (no other Empires but yourself)
Play as humans with the Doomsday Origin
Not leave the Sol sector until the Earth explodes.

You have until Earth explodes to research and colonise the various planetary bodies of the Sol System, and then have to then spread out and reuinite humanity.

How do you make an empty galaxy with no other empires? I though a certain minimum number would spawn regardless?

[Telgin]

You can turn the number of AI empires down to 0 and you'll get none.  I've done it a few times to do peaceful precursor style games, where I'm the only empire who gets jumped by the crisis at the end.  You can turn the crisis off too if you want, as well as marauders, caravaneers and fallen empires.

[ChairmanPoo]

Some day I should try creating enough empires that I can force spawn so that I get galaxies made up of empires of my design.  I gather that a lot of players do this, and it's a cool idea.  Right now I only have 3 set up that way, but I usually play on less crowded maps of about 10 empires so I wouldn't have to make too many.

I did something like that. I made a 'human diaspora' custom setting using mods and force-spawned empires where 99% of the empires in the galaxy were human, post-human, or human origin. By that I mean some were robot gestalt assimilators with human cyborgs, some were robot gestalts pampering humans, one was a hive mind made of humans, etc. One was an alien race that had enslaved a human subpopulation. It was fun enacting a sort of human reunification war to reconnect all of humanity.

The problem isbthat despite claims to the contrary first contaxts still fail to acknowledge belonging to the same species

[forsaken1111]

Another fun one on a similar theme:
Use the Fatherland mod and Planetary Diversities habitats.
Make an empty galaxy (no other Empires but yourself)
Play as humans with the Doomsday Origin
Not leave the Sol sector until the Earth explodes.

You have until Earth explodes to research and colonise the various planetary bodies of the Sol System, and then have to then spread out and reuinite humanity.

I'm combining this idea with the A Cradle at the End of Time mod to replicate a pocket of humanity that survived the Become The Crisis ending and is now rebuilding the galaxy. No idea if it will work.

[Rolan7]

Oh right I forgot my current run: The Maweer Caretakers Project, militarist Egalitarians and scions of a Materialist FE.  The project is to bring egalitarian values to the entire galaxy!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And immortal mechanical bodies, the better to serve the Keepers of Knowledge!  We are all equal in the Great Archive!

I guess if they roll the spiritualist FE they'd have some other motivation like psionic fusion or creating Slaanesh or whatever

Current status:  As if to spite me, about half the galaxy vassaled-up under an auth kingdom.  Reasonably friendly, but several bulwarks.  It was basically them, a friendly hivemind, and a friendly megacorp (xenophobe but willing to do business).

Patience was rewarded: The hivemind launched an invasion and I struck while the kingdom was distracted, expanding my borders and striking deep to steal the overlord's home system.  Whether that made a huge difference, their strength is essentially broken.  I wish I could federate or pact with the hive or corp, but the downside of Scion origin is that I'm technically a vassal heh.  My tech and pop lead are so great, plus Politics tradition, that I'm dominating the galactic community despite the -50% for being a vassal.

Naturally I'm forcing workers-rights legislation~  Great Project aside, I would not invade a state complying with social welfare requirements.

[Telgin]

A dev diary today seemed to confirm that the next DLC is going to focus some on primitives, which... could be interesting since that's a pretty barebones mechanic right now, but I'm not sure what exactly they can add to make it worth a full DLC release.  It may end up being something like the vassals changes in Overlord, but I can't think of how they'd add much to that.

Also a little frustrating we still aren't getting internal politics, but at this point I don't think Stellaris ever will.  They'd have to rework so much that that may have to wait until Stellaris 2, when / if that happens.

Also also, yet another mechanic that isolationists won't interact with, but oh well.  I guess it's not as bad as playing hive minds, where like 1/3 of the game doesn't apply.

[Mephansteras]

I'm still annoyed that if you take Machine portraits you have to take Machine Intelligence. Why? Why can't I have robots with independent thoughts?

I get limiting Machine Intelligence to the machine portraits, fine, but why the reverse?

[Telgin]

That bugs me too.  I've wanted to play as robots that survived their creators, but weren't linked together in some gestalt super intelligence.  Can't do it with out mods.  There are probably balance concerns they'd have to work out, but it can't be that hard.

On that note, it also bugs me that there's no way to change the portrait of robots to look like organic species.  I get that it's a minor thing and you can RP it however you want, but I kind of hate how the mammalian robots look and especially once I research synthetics I'd like to be able to make them look like my other species.  Even if there was some indication on the portrait that they're robots, like a symbol or colored background or aura or something, that would be fine.

[pisskop]

I agree,  Sentient robots should be creatable, but at least from a lore/meta standpoint you dont start with that level of tech.  I'd rather see an origin or civic that allows for playable sentient robots but thats just me.  Synthetics should 100% be a thing though, when we get the tech to make robots artificial skin is a stones throw away at most.

If we're complaining, I'd like to complain about how influence is the eternal bottleneck for everything.  I can't use the subterfuge mechanic at all, not only because it's at best mechanically weak, but because it costs influence to do anything.  I use it passively with envoys, but even that is worthless unless you have some good codebreaking going.  I suspect smaller empires can use it more because they spend less time building megastructures or expanding or claiming.  It's not that I dislike there being a bottleneck, it's that it prohibits gameplay.

I'd like to see something where perhaps you have a new passive mana.  In civilization IV the spying mechanic was not perfect, but it worked well enough to have some use, and it stayed out of your hair if you didnt want to engage with it.  Spying is super abstract in Stellaris, so I wont get into specifics, but in general more contact through borders and diplomacy, more chances to spy.  Some technologies lend themselves to spying more than others.  One benefit of a xenophobe or closed society should be spy protection but not necessarily lowered offensive spying applicability.  Just some system that incentivizes engaging with established mechanics.  Most of the operations are nuisance stuff, so make it more accessible.

Perhaps using other kinds of mana in conjunction with influence instead of straight up influence.  Hell, knowledge is a really abstract science thing, maybe some biology research can go into an operation.  Larger empires generate more points, and it isnt unfair that each individual point is worth less to them than smaller ones....

I like the idea of influence in general, but the struggle is real.  It costs me hundreds of influence to change a subject to integrate them, and hundreds more to actually integrate them.  It's wild to think that in 2300 I still have a couple dozen unsettled stars in my back field from when I murderkilled and/or outexpanded my competition to chokepoint that stuff off.


P:  and ethics!  We have random leaders heading factions now.  Just make some system where leaders espouse ethics based on where they are stationed or if nothing else their home planet.  Let spys interact with leaders and push ethics.   adding ethics attraction modifiers from spys would give us more use for spys, let peaceful builders do more, and could help us destabilize the blobs more.  It also lets you have a 'defensive counterspy' job maybe, and lets you do thing anonymously.

[MorleyDev]

The way I'd do an internal politics system for Stellaris is probably too sweeping a rework even for Stellaris' famously sweeping reworks. But I'd like to see Sectors be made into a kind of Vassal-lite, where you have more direct influence over them but they still have some required autonomy that you have to work with and appease.

So you control your core sector, and Sectors less, and Vassals even less so. But at each level they also get boosts in other aspects that make them desirable, so it becomes a matter of trade-offs. An unruly sector may want to push for independence but making it a Vassal placates it without losing the resource production. The further away from your core system, the greater it's desire for political autonomy.

Basically my ideal is an empty galaxy should be a political experience of managing an expanding empire that is otherwise trying to tear itself apart. And in a populated galaxy it'd be an extra challenge or aspect to going wide that needs attention that Tall doesn't need to deal with.

[Telgin]

Basically my ideal is an empty galaxy should be a political experience of managing an expanding empire that is otherwise trying to tear itself apart. And in a populated galaxy it'd be an extra challenge or aspect to going wide that needs attention that Tall doesn't need to deal with.

This is what I'd like to see too.  I understand it's not the game everyone wants and it adds a level of tedium and frustration, particularly for people who don't want it, but I'd like for a 4X game to support interesting play if you are the only empire in the galaxy.

I've thought about it a fair bit while trying to build my own space 4X and I came to the conclusion that this is pretty tough to pull off in a meaningful, satisfying and not extremely frustrating manner.  It's similar to the problems Dwarf Fortress has in adventure mode when Toady added the new emotional states: at some point you have to decide what the player is in control of and what they aren't, and it's not always clear cut where this should begin and end.

An example of that in an internal politics rewrite would be leaders who have their own agendas.  It's realistic to have a governor aspire to lead a rebellion and leave your empire, and even interesting.  But it's annoying, especially if you have other problems in your empire to deal with.

A more direct example might be if the empire's leader had a personality separate from the player's.  That starts to break down the meaning of who you are as the player and what you're doing, even if it's again realistic and could help to bring things like dictatorships more into line with reality where sometimes you get an idiot who inherits the throne for 100 years and derails an empire.  Or you elect an idiot in a democracy who ruins it for their political term.  It's realistic but nobody is going to want to deal with that as a player.

Simply turning sectors into pseudo vassals with no special core sector is probably what I'd vote for.  They could have different levels of contribution to the empire, could potential revolt, and may have political conflict over ethics even.  It would be interesting if sectors could be treated as mini empires like vassals in that regard, where ethics drift was a thing you had to actually manage.