Can I learn to love Stellaris?
May 19, 2022 1:25 PM Subscribe
I want to love Stellaris! I bought it on Steam ages ago, and have tried a few games, but it's just got a level of complexity that I find a bit confounding, and the various tiers of management / currency / politics a touch exhausting. Can Stellaris be for me?
It's a beautiful game, and I see people raving about it and believe it when they do. But I just can't quite get past a kind of opacity in the game... it frankly makes me feel a bit stupid; I get 3-4 star systems under my belt and then the Frebulons are revolting in the Niknar system because they don't have enough Gooblers*, and then a bunch of spaceships swoop in from somewhere and blow me to hell.
Is there a broad trick I'm missing? Some sort of Zen approach where I'm too anxious about doing well in the game to enjoy it? An expansion that makes it easier and/or less busy to manage?
Previous 4x experience is Civ games up to III and Alpha Centaurai; I haven't really played a lot of contemporary games in this vein. Maybe I just need to accept that post-2000 strategy games are too big for my brain.
*I'm not at home right now so I'm kind of making up the names, but you see what I mean
It's a beautiful game, and I see people raving about it and believe it when they do. But I just can't quite get past a kind of opacity in the game... it frankly makes me feel a bit stupid; I get 3-4 star systems under my belt and then the Frebulons are revolting in the Niknar system because they don't have enough Gooblers*, and then a bunch of spaceships swoop in from somewhere and blow me to hell.
Is there a broad trick I'm missing? Some sort of Zen approach where I'm too anxious about doing well in the game to enjoy it? An expansion that makes it easier and/or less busy to manage?
Previous 4x experience is Civ games up to III and Alpha Centaurai; I haven't really played a lot of contemporary games in this vein. Maybe I just need to accept that post-2000 strategy games are too big for my brain.
*I'm not at home right now so I'm kind of making up the names, but you see what I mean
Have you tried watching someone else play it on stream? For example, I found that watching CK3 streamers (even just as background noise) helped give me enough familiarity with the game mechanics that it much was less overwhelming to try and play myself.
posted by scorbet at 2:21 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by scorbet at 2:21 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: A lack of Gooblers of several sorts (Consumer Goods, Food, and Amenities mainly) will make your Frebulons chronically miserable in ways that make them less productive, which makes your whole empire not work right. My first guess is that it's Amenities at first. Here's a screenshot (imgur link) of a game I just started, showing my home planet without any changes. That red "-2" in the top right is Amenities; if I left it like that, my empire would crumble to dust.
Under "Workers," there are 4 different buttons representing the sorts of jobs people might work. The first one, Clerk, makes Amenities, and I need one additional guy working that job to get out of the negative. I can see at the top I'm making a surplus of Food, so I want to repurpose a Farmer to be a Clerk instead. I clicked the downward-pointing triangle by Workers to get this next screenshot. Now I have these [+] and [-] buttons to control how many people work these jobs. I hit the [-] next to Farmer, now I have one more Clerk, and my Amenities go from -2 to 0, saving the nation. (0 is the best number for Amenities to be; positive Amenities are essentially wasted, except as "growing room.")
This is the broad trick you're missing: Direct control over what jobs get worked. It's the secret to this kind of "surplus management," but also to making it so people actually work in the building I just built. I cycle through the Population tab of each planet pretty regularly, making sure that there's not a ton of wasted Amenities, and especially that people are working jobs that give me the things I need, like Alloys and Research.
posted by 4th number at 2:48 PM on May 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Under "Workers," there are 4 different buttons representing the sorts of jobs people might work. The first one, Clerk, makes Amenities, and I need one additional guy working that job to get out of the negative. I can see at the top I'm making a surplus of Food, so I want to repurpose a Farmer to be a Clerk instead. I clicked the downward-pointing triangle by Workers to get this next screenshot. Now I have these [+] and [-] buttons to control how many people work these jobs. I hit the [-] next to Farmer, now I have one more Clerk, and my Amenities go from -2 to 0, saving the nation. (0 is the best number for Amenities to be; positive Amenities are essentially wasted, except as "growing room.")
![I hit the [-] next to Farmer, now I have one more Clerk, and my Amenities go from -2 to 0, saving the nation.](https://i.imgur.com/wi6faS5.png){kind=link}
This is the broad trick you're missing: Direct control over what jobs get worked. It's the secret to this kind of "surplus management," but also to making it so people actually work in the building I just built. I cycle through the Population tab of each planet pretty regularly, making sure that there's not a ton of wasted Amenities, and especially that people are working jobs that give me the things I need, like Alloys and Research.
posted by 4th number at 2:48 PM on May 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Besides the tips above.... a slight explanation might be helpful - Stellaris is a "Grand Strategy" game more along the lines of Crusader Kings or Europe Universalis... which are, you guessed, also made by Paradox Studios, just like Stellaris.
4X games like Civilization or Alpha Centauri are more like board games, where complexity is abstracted into simpler mechanics with easy to understand win conditions.
Grand Strategy games are best known for the unpredictable series of events that seem to arise organically through the realistic simulation of the interplay between different geopolitical forces and the impact individual actors can bring upon on the system. Winning is not always the main objective - after all, how do we judge whether or not the Roman Empire or British Empire "won" or lost? All empires, no matter how great, come to an end. You can't "win" history, but a great empire is remembered long after they are gone.
So it's not you, it's not post-2000 strategy games being too big for your brain, Paradox Games are just their own complex beast....
If you want "Civ in Space" then Endless Space 2 is what you want to play. (Just the vanilla game, the expansions add an unnecessary level of complexity and weren't very good imo).
posted by xdvesper at 10:27 PM on May 19, 2022
4X games like Civilization or Alpha Centauri are more like board games, where complexity is abstracted into simpler mechanics with easy to understand win conditions.
Grand Strategy games are best known for the unpredictable series of events that seem to arise organically through the realistic simulation of the interplay between different geopolitical forces and the impact individual actors can bring upon on the system. Winning is not always the main objective - after all, how do we judge whether or not the Roman Empire or British Empire "won" or lost? All empires, no matter how great, come to an end. You can't "win" history, but a great empire is remembered long after they are gone.
So it's not you, it's not post-2000 strategy games being too big for your brain, Paradox Games are just their own complex beast....
If you want "Civ in Space" then Endless Space 2 is what you want to play. (Just the vanilla game, the expansions add an unnecessary level of complexity and weren't very good imo).
posted by xdvesper at 10:27 PM on May 19, 2022
Best answer: I just picked up Stellaris again and had the same experience. There's a lot of systems going on just in the base game. And then all the DLC expansions have added a lot of extra mechanics. Many of them are in the free game patches whether you bought the DLC or not. The accumulation is really complicated. Watching videos definitely helps but takes hours.
The other way I enjoy this kind of game is to just not worry about understanding it all at the start. It's OK to completely ignore some game mechanics like megastructures when you're learning the game. You'll figure it out later. It's so hard for me to do that, I definitely want to understand all of a game's mechanics right up front but it's just not possible with a game this complex.
One Stellaris-specific bit of advice I've seen is to play a game with 0 AI opponents. It's just you and your empire. That lets you focus on empire management without worrying about diplomacy and wars against competing empires.
posted by Nelson at 6:25 AM on May 20, 2022
The other way I enjoy this kind of game is to just not worry about understanding it all at the start. It's OK to completely ignore some game mechanics like megastructures when you're learning the game. You'll figure it out later. It's so hard for me to do that, I definitely want to understand all of a game's mechanics right up front but it's just not possible with a game this complex.
One Stellaris-specific bit of advice I've seen is to play a game with 0 AI opponents. It's just you and your empire. That lets you focus on empire management without worrying about diplomacy and wars against competing empires.
posted by Nelson at 6:25 AM on May 20, 2022
Echoing what xdvesper said above - it's a Paradox game and all of their games are highly complex with crazy high learning curves. Much much higher than average games. But the rewards (to me) are worth it.
When I first got Crusader Kings 2 (Paradox game), I abandoned it for a while due to complexity and a tired brain. However it appealed to me so I tried it again and just kept playing it even though I didn't really understand it. Eventually I caught on and now it is my absolute favorite game of all time. I have almost 1000 hrs on that sucker.
I find Paradox games are absolutely worth the steep learning curve. They take a bit of learning, it's not just you. I am someone who loves details and spreadsheets though. If you like it, just keep messing with it.
posted by Saucywench at 9:43 AM on May 20, 2022
When I first got Crusader Kings 2 (Paradox game), I abandoned it for a while due to complexity and a tired brain. However it appealed to me so I tried it again and just kept playing it even though I didn't really understand it. Eventually I caught on and now it is my absolute favorite game of all time. I have almost 1000 hrs on that sucker.
I find Paradox games are absolutely worth the steep learning curve. They take a bit of learning, it's not just you. I am someone who loves details and spreadsheets though. If you like it, just keep messing with it.
posted by Saucywench at 9:43 AM on May 20, 2022
Best answer: As has been said before, yes, Stellaris is much more complex than something like Civ or Alpha Centauri. It's a very different beast, with more in common with Crusader Kings 3, as it's a Grand Strategy In Space game.
I definitely think you can learn to love Stellaris, but it'll take a fair bit of commitment to learning it. It's not, as mentioned above, a board game, and it doesn't play very well if you try to play it like a board game.
I'd definitely play the tutorial a few times over, pick one of the starting species that seems like your vibe, and probably play without any AI opponents for a few times while you get the hang of building an empire that doesn't fall apart at the seams. Don't pick a Hive or a Robot empire, for instance - pick the messy individual organics. :)
I've played over 700 hours of Stellaris, and I love it to bits. It's probably my favourite of the Paradox grand strategy games, and yeah there's *a lot* in there.
I think a crucial part here is that there isn't a "win" state, in Stellaris. You play until you're done. Don't feel like you have to commit to the long haul of the "game over" screen at 2600, just play until you've gotten the mechanic you're trying to figure out down, then start again. Keep restarting. This is a huge divergence from Civ/AC where there *is* a game-over point and a game-over goal. Stellaris doesn't really have that.
Anyway, I guess you can MeMail me if you have specific questions? I play a lot so I may even have answers :)
posted by aurynn at 1:37 PM on May 20, 2022
I definitely think you can learn to love Stellaris, but it'll take a fair bit of commitment to learning it. It's not, as mentioned above, a board game, and it doesn't play very well if you try to play it like a board game.
I'd definitely play the tutorial a few times over, pick one of the starting species that seems like your vibe, and probably play without any AI opponents for a few times while you get the hang of building an empire that doesn't fall apart at the seams. Don't pick a Hive or a Robot empire, for instance - pick the messy individual organics. :)
I've played over 700 hours of Stellaris, and I love it to bits. It's probably my favourite of the Paradox grand strategy games, and yeah there's *a lot* in there.
I think a crucial part here is that there isn't a "win" state, in Stellaris. You play until you're done. Don't feel like you have to commit to the long haul of the "game over" screen at 2600, just play until you've gotten the mechanic you're trying to figure out down, then start again. Keep restarting. This is a huge divergence from Civ/AC where there *is* a game-over point and a game-over goal. Stellaris doesn't really have that.
Anyway, I guess you can MeMail me if you have specific questions? I play a lot so I may even have answers :)
posted by aurynn at 1:37 PM on May 20, 2022
Response by poster: I will answer my own question: yes! Yes, I can learn to love Stellaris! 4thnumber generously hopped online with me for about 90 minutes last night on a shared game and walked me through a lot of early game stuff that I'd been not quite able to wrap my head around.
I think my next step will be to try some 0-opponent games as suggested by a few people above. It's a lot of game to wrap my head around (one of my issues is just a low attention span / lots of competing projects, interests and obligations that keep me from really settling into anything for hours at a time), but I feel like the live session got me into it in a way that trying to watch the videos couldn't quite do.
posted by Shepherd at 8:39 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think my next step will be to try some 0-opponent games as suggested by a few people above. It's a lot of game to wrap my head around (one of my issues is just a low attention span / lots of competing projects, interests and obligations that keep me from really settling into anything for hours at a time), but I feel like the live session got me into it in a way that trying to watch the videos couldn't quite do.
posted by Shepherd at 8:39 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:34 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]