Stellaris

I started Stellaris with a hefty dose of curiosity after following the developer diary and their livestreams.. I took the helm of an empire of mustached birds, making sure that the homeworld had the population working where it was needed and that exploration and research were going on well. Expansion came naturally and the size of my empire was on the same level as that of my neighbors. After a couple of years, I had seeded a colony which sprouted beautifully, found myself on good terms with one neighbor and the (quite) bitter rival of another. I started building my fleet a bit too late, when war drew near my borders.

Combat in Stellaris is fairly simple, in theory at least. You build up fleets in your starports then direct them towards a target. After it is initiated, the sole thing you can do is call for an emergency retreat which can destroy damaged ships. The combat plays out in front of you, should you want to zoom in, however, it’s nothing too visually spectacular. Your fleets’ military power is an indicator of approximate strength (calculated off the various stats the ships out of which the fleet is composed have) Believing winning is just a matter of numerical advantage or military power, however, is the wrong way to go about it. You have full control over building your ships. As you research more advanced technology you can outfit your ships with different types of weaponry and armor. These have strengths and weaknesses and they play the major role in combat. Focusing your fleet on just shields, for example, means an enemy using mainly torpedoes will easily crush you, as torpedoes ignore shields. I learned this the hard way. Speaking about combat, my first war was carried, alongside an ally, against one nation whose army was about as strong as ours combined. The first time we did battle, my ally chose to not participate (although, thinking about it, he might have been unable or late due to wormhole travel). Afterwards, he simply attached his fleet to mine, leaving it there for the remainder of the war. Not even when the enemy had sent a small fleet into his territory did he break off from me. In this respect, the AI seems to be a bit single-minded. An option of suggesting a course of action for allied fleets may provide some extra depth to the combat without completely overwhelming anybody.  On top of that, any other tactical additions would also be a plus.

Technology is handled in a slightly different fashion that other 4x or grand strategy titles. Instead of the classic tech tree, Stellaris offers three (four if you choose Scientific Directorate as governing form) potential technologies in every of the three branches. These, as far as I noticed, are selected randomly. The one exception are the technologies you gain points in from researching debris or anomalies. Those remain valid choices until researching them is actually finished. Every branch can have a scientist attached to it (which may modify the research time) and has its own resource which, if improved, decreases the time it takes to research. While this system is slightly more dynamic and newbie-friendly, it is understandable if some players find it to be less desirable than a regular tech tree, since it reduces the quantity of planning one can make. Scientists can be added to science vessels which are an important part of the game. They are your main way of exploring the galaxy, as they are the only ships with the ability to survey star systems, which, incidentally, also unveils the habitability and resources present on a planet. They can also analyze debris from battles, which is very beneficial to scientific progress or various anomalies. These anomalies always have a risk of failure, which may result in gaining nothing from the effort or gaining nothing and losing the ship. If the effort succeeds, there’s a chance of adding passive modifiers to your empire or starting quest chains.

Scientists are one of the four leader types present. The others are Governors (which can be attached to planets), Admirals and Generals. While all these, like most things belonging to you, can be renamed, that is the furthest their customization goes. When you hire them, they’ll come with a trait. Overtime they’ll gain “skill” (represented by stars) which adds further traits to them, randomly, and that is all. There is a distinct lack of customization options here which ultimately makes these leaders, who should be the faces of your space empire, feel less like actual individuals and more like numbers in a menu. This lack of personality extends, in a way, to the races themselves. While visually and mechanically there are few things to complain about, the fluff behind them falls short of satisfying, especially having the experience of a game such as Endless Space in mind. The races there were absolutely stunning and every time a text box was popping up alongside a nice art asset, I felt genuinely interested to read about the events described.

What does help, as I’ve mentioned earlier is the visual and mechanical variety. There are five types of races which have a large number of available portraits. I played a mustached blue bird while one of the more powerful empires in my first run was a three-eyed pink bird. Humans, molluscoids and other weird-looking aliens are also potential choices. Mechanically, there’s a lot of possible combinations you can do. First, you need to choose a homeworld type. The homeworld planet’s type will be the best for colonizing. As you go further away on the circle in the menu the habitability decreases. You need to choose a couple of traits that give your empire modifiers. Then it’s on to your ethics which can be chosen from a pool of 16 variants. These include choices like Pacifist, Militarist, Spiritualist and so on. The ethics picked will determine available government forms, which, in turn will shape a couple of things such as, how often your leaders change (democracies hold elections regularly, while despotic forms of government change overlords upon death, plutocracies wait 40 to 50 years before changing their leader), what your view on slavery is, etc. . In-game, this translates to having more or less options in running your empire but also frictions between you and empires that hold opposing ethics.

A peaceful fanatic materialist will have a harder time convincing a fanatic spiritualist that all they want to do is research all the possible ways of making space cookies. This automatically influences the building of alliances as neighbors with similar ethics may end up allying quicker. However, empire with opposing ethics can still work together or trade. Last, but not least, you need to choose the starting weapon type for your ships alongside an FTL method. While other weapons can be researched as the game goes on, the FTL method you choose will be decided for the entirety of the game. Warp Travel allows for free but slow movement between stars; Wormhole Travel requires you to build wormhole stations while Hyperspace Travel is limited to existing lanes. This determines the way in which you’ll have to go about exploring and plays a major role in wars, where depending on travel types, areas can be denied or synchronizing attacks with your allies becomes more difficult.

 In that regard, especially in the mid-game, once you get your economy going a bit, alliances will start to show their strength. As an example, my biggest rival was neighboring me. I was slowly building a fleet, but was lagging behind because I mainly chose a more pacifistic route. I wasn’t planning on declaring war when I did, but I took advantage of the fact that a third empire which was vastly superior to me and my neighboring rival declared war on him firsthand. I jumped in and 40 years later my neighbor was regretting ever having called me a “despicable dodo”. With that being done, however, I was significantly closer to this empire that was superior to me in all senses which caused border friction, this leading to a drop in approval and an increase in the tension between our empires. Developments like this one really suck you into Stellaris’ world and as you go on, they keep getting bigger and bigger. The game does come forth with a bunch of victory conditions, which involve either colonizing a set amount of the galaxy or conquering/subjugating the other empires. Both of these require you to go to war quite extensively and I ended up wishing there had been other options which encouraged a research-oriented playstyle, or, at any rate, something that could have you on the defensive for the most part.

Stellaris is a good title that, unfortunately, has slip-ups that become quite evident after spending some time with the game. Apart from the lack of coordination with AI allies and the lackluster victory conditions, there are other issues. Not being able to power down buildings means you’ll have to destroy them if you don’t want to lose energy credits. While it’s true that the point of the resource is to keep a balance rather than have tons of it at all times, having to destroy buildings instead of simply powering them down is definitely an odd choice. The diplomacy system has a decent amount of options but it could also use some expanding, especially as, once locked into an alliance, the parties have to mainly resort to trading power and minerals. Perhaps adding influence in there as a tradeable resource would be a good starting idea due to how difficult to obtain in tends to be at times. Keeping this in mind, for the majority of the time, Stellaris made me feel like I was on my personal space odyssey and the soundtrack played a very large part in this. The tutorial, this time around, explains things slightly better than in previous Paradox titles; however, a lot of the learning will still be left to you. That being said, Stellaris is the perfect point of entry for new players who want to give Paradox Grand Strategies a shot but feel overwhelmed by the many mechanics of their other titles, and, for the most part, such a title was desperately needed.

Certainly there are flaws and things that could, and perhaps should, have been in the game. That’s why Stellaris isn’t a stellar (heh, heh) title right now, instead, being just a good 4x/grand strategy hybrid. If past games are to be any example, a few DLCs down the line, Stellaris will be a much better and more complex game. That is why, should you be looking for the complexity of Crusader Kings II or Europa Universalis IV, you won’t find it. Not right now, at least. You will, however, still find a good grand strategy that, while far from being simplistic, does stutter in certain moments. Players who’ve felt intimidated by Paradox games in the past should especially consider giving this one a shot. Stellaris does things a bit differently while successfully incorporating the space theme and, in that, it is a good, competent strategy game that, while lacking certain features right now, is far from deserving to be overlooked.

Bogdan Robert, NoobFeed
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