New Paradox game: Stellaris

[Bacchus]

I actually always found it supremely annoying that computer strategies have developed this conception in which the command chain is something that "doesn't have to do with running the empire" and should be abstracted away. Started as an obvious AI limitation, evolved into a unique world view where a marshal must also be not only the colonel, but frequently even the lieutenant, if not the sergeant.

Paradox has traditionally been good at limiting this, actually. If you played Victoria, then banging your head against the wall while local capitalists don't build the industry you want them to is totally a part of the game. Because you aren't playing a capitalist. And if you were, you wouldn't be taking mobilization decisions.

A fun opposite approach is taken by serious wargames, where the scale encompasses entire fronts, on one hand, but the units that have to move and act are at batallion level. There, yeah, you have the mechanical ability to solely manage the entire enterprise, but what you realize immediately is that actually you can't.

[Sirian]

If you played Victoria, then banging your head against the wall while local capitalists don't build the industry you want them to is totally a part of the game. Because you aren't playing a capitalist. And if you were, you wouldn't be taking mobilization decisions.

Designing a game to play as if you assume the role of a single person and live out their life (or some professional portion thereof) is a valid game design. (This goes without saying?) But it is clearly not the ONLY valid game design. (Which also goes without saying?)

Games are in no way obligated to honor the limitations of being a human being. They don't have to be roleplay experiences. They can open a window on to making choices one cannot make in real life. These include breaking the laws of physics, reading other peoples' minds, or controlling the actions of more than one person, scaled to whatever scale the designer believes will please his or her intended audience.

I respect your sensibilities -- I love roleplaying, too. But in my strategy games, I want control, not roleplay frustration. I want to be the actor not the audience. I agree that games that let you be emperor and sergeant in the same game are probably trying to do too much and are likely to be overcomplicated and unfun, or to have one scale trample the other, making it a bad idea to have mixed the two. But Stellaris has you micromanaging asteroid mining and exploration more than actually playing civ leader (based on time spent on the various activities) so I am not sure it meets your standards, either.


- Sirian

[Bacchus]

I think the disagreement here is whether the command chain is a "character" thing or whether it lies at the very essence of management. I am of the former persuasion, but I doubt this topic can be productively discussed, if you say that management is what sergeants do -- OK. Certainly there is nothing wrong with games that have the players take sergeant-level decisions. I would argue, though, that if that's your cup of tea, there's more than enough choice on the market. On the opposite end -- not so much.

Stellaris to me, in the current state, is 90% exploration and narrative game, a massive SF fan joy ride, and that's also fine.

[Mr. Cairo]

Is that a photo of Squad Leader I see?

To make this post relevant to the thread topic, I'll just say that I am loving Stellaris, which came as a surprise as I had just about given up on space 4X games. I do wish that the AI would be more aggressive, in war and in settling, and I still have yet to see the tech that'll let me build troop transports, so I have no idea what invading another empire is actually like. My only experience with war so far was attacking a neighbor with a vastly inferior fleet than me and vassalising him after 2 space battles.

[Dp101]

I found a list of dev diaries for the game, where the devs talk about their design choices. If anyone is wondering why they did something, you can probably find out why they did it here.

[Gavagai]

Troop transports are built automatically together with "assault armies".

[Mr. Cairo]

Troop transports are built automatically together with "assault armies".

That makes a lot of sense. I was just going off of what I had heard being said in a Let's Play before the game was released, that it was a ways down the tech tree before troop transports turned up. Thanks

Edit: Does that mean that only the generic assault armies can be used to invade? I looked on the wiki but it doesn't have anything useful.

[picklepikkl]

All of them can move from planet to planet except "Defense Armies."

[picklepikkl]

The first post-release development diary was released today, outlining their plans for the short-to-medium-term future. It remains to be seen how successful they are in improving what they claim they will, but I like their sense of priorities, at least.

[pindicator]

If Stellaris gets the same kind of attention that CK2 and EU4 got then expect lots of DLC and the game a few years from now to be very different than the original and much expanded upon.