Stellaris Dev Diary #159 - Galactic Community

[methegrate]

Another way we could think about it: What do we need to play the game? Literally, from a mechanical perspective, what must I have to play? What are the things that, if I lose them, I cannot keep playing?

With Stellaris, as is common with strategy games, the only three things I can think of are:

• Resources,
• Board position,
• Building options

In other words, to play the game you need something to build, a physical space on the map in which to build it and the resources with which to pay its cost.

Without all of those three, you could not play the game. Without board position you have nowhere in which do to anything. Without resources you have nothing you can afford to do. Without building options you have nothing you can choose to do. In all cases, you are reduced to an observer.

I think this matters because while external play is about interfering with another player's options, the goal of external play is to interfere with and take away the things that the other player needs in order to keep playing the game. And I think part of the reason we keep struggling to solve this problem is because we often confuse mechanics that we use to play the game with mechanics that we need to play it.

For example, we struggle to make diplomacy and research viable alternatives to warfare even though we think of them as fundamental aspects of the game. But ultimately you don't actually need either one of them to keep playing. If I take another player's diplomatic or research options altogether, they can keep playing the game. They will have fewer options going forward, and therefore likely inferior ones when I confront them in another capacity, but I do need to confront them in that other capacity to beat them.

So I think this is why everything always keeps coming back to warfare. It is the only mechanic in Stellaris right now that allows you to interfere with the things that the other player needs in order to keep playing the game. They need board position and resources to play the game, and by attacking I can take those things away.

I think that has to be the test for any new system. A new mechanic needs to be able to interfere with and take away one of the things that a player needs in order to continue playing the game. If it can eliminate their access to resources, board position or building options then it is a viable alternative to warfare. If not, then it can only supplement warfare. It can help make another player easier to beat, but you will always still need to invade in order to push them out of the game or prevent them from doing so to you.

 

[01d55]

To really offer options other than war, we would need crises that can't be solved with war.

Plagues are an obvious example. You can shoot your way out of WW1. You can't shoot your way out of the Spanish Flu.

What is the nature of the current crises? Ships with weapons.

How do you defeat them? You shoot your way out of it.

Another major factor that leads to strategic dominance of war is that it doesn't cost a whole lot to win a war. The loser doesn't inflict damage beyond destroyed ships & armies - alloys & minerals. (And significant time, if they chew through a lot of your armies. Precursors!) Many other Paradox games use some variation of "manpower" to exact a stiff price from conquerors and put a real brake on map painting. In Stellaris once you have fleet advantage you can wage a continuous series of conquests with the subjugation CB. (Using Total War, if available, means conquest demands planet management. On higher difficulty AIs will, relying on their boni, underbuild maintenance resources, which makes conquering a lot of worlds quickly economically dangerous.)

Historically, the expense of war for the victor has gotten worse over time. Shortly before WW1, an economist predicted an end to wars because he calculated that plunder simply could not cover the expense. The same events which proved him wrong about peace also proved him right about the plunder.

Perhaps part of the story of Stellaris is that Space reverses that trend decisively: Put the fighting in vacuum and no one need worry about making a mess of the neighborhood.

Or perhaps war exhaustion should be expanded.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

Another way we could think about it: What do we need to play the game? Literally, from a mechanical perspective, what must I have to play? What are the things that, if I lose them, I cannot keep playing?

With Stellaris, as is common with strategy games, the only three things I can think of are:

• Resources,
• Board position,
• Building options

In other words, to play the game you need something to build, a physical space on the map in which to build it and the resources with which to pay its cost.

Without all of those three, you could not play the game. Without board position you have nowhere in which do to anything. Without resources you have nothing you can afford to do. Without building options you have nothing you can choose to do. In all cases, you are reduced to an observer.

I think this matters because while external play is about interfering with another player's options, the goal of external play is to interfere with and take away the things that the other player needs in order to keep playing the game. And I think part of the reason we keep struggling to solve this problem is because we often confuse mechanics that we use to play the game with mechanics that we need to play it.

For example, we struggle to make diplomacy and research viable alternatives to warfare even though we think of them as fundamental aspects of the game. But ultimately you don't actually need either one of them to keep playing. If I take another player's diplomatic or research options altogether, they can keep playing the game. They will have fewer options going forward, and therefore likely inferior ones when I confront them in another capacity, but I do need to confront them in that other capacity to beat them.

So I think this is why everything always keeps coming back to warfare. It is the only mechanic in Stellaris right now that allows you to interfere with the things that the other player needs in order to keep playing the game. They need board position and resources to play the game, and by attacking I can take those things away.

I think that has to be the test for any new system. A new mechanic needs to be able to interfere with and take away one of the things that a player needs in order to continue playing the game. If it can eliminate their access to resources, board position or building options then it is a viable alternative to warfare. If not, then it can only supplement warfare. It can help make another player easier to beat, but you will always still need to invade in order to push them out of the game or prevent them from doing so to you.

Consumer Goods trade should net you diplomatic favors. This could work even against a stratified society, used to sucker bureaucrats and politicians with BMW's and jewelry. Favors could thden be called to force map-painting demands. Defense could require the other side to through their own Favors into the negotiation, creating a diplomatic social combat with other elements coming into play (envoys, diplomatic stance). Loss of favors are like losing ships. If you want this ability, you would need to produce above maintenance.

Favors could be used to force control of resources, take control of board position (diplo-annexing) or build options (taking control of enemy fleets).

Trade would do the economic entanglement idea you've mentioned.

Unity should have more early game uses, including new edicts but also to gain influence of another empire's resources (take loyalty over their pops) and stimulate revolts to deny them the board space.

Not sure about food, other than using it to produce lots more of it for faster pop growth. That way a breadbasket empire could really factor in allowing other empires to depend on your economy, They go to war with your, and the maluses cost them that war.

Research could be used to solve mini-crises (plagues), which would gain favor from the target. They could also be used to make bio or nano weapons to drop surreptitiously on planets. It doesn't take much to sneak in a suitcase nuke, or a vial of bioplague or nanovirus to deny them resources (dead pops), and and eventually dead buildings and planet (board space and building options)

 

[grekulf]

Is there going to be another dev battle like last time?

We want to, but we cannot make any promises right now. We've recently moved offices and I believe the streaming studio isn't quite set up yet. Early next year would be the earliest.

 

[Verx90]

We want to, but we cannot make any promises right now. We've recently moved offices and I believe the streaming studio isn't quite set up yet. Early next year would be the earliest.

a good occasion to let a game of only AI go and see how they do ... right?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

And, repeat after me: Stellaris already has arbitrarily-acquirable CBs on demand, so providing another one doesn't actually do anything

I mean.

Different CBs do different things. Different CBs can change how willing other empires are to join a war.

If there's a "enforce demands" CB, then it presumably does something very different from a "conquer claims" or "vassalize" CB or the like. I'd also bet, quite handily, that doing a war to "enforce demands" or "contain threat" would bypass Threat (at least for Galactic Community members), so you can wage those wars without pissing everyone else off.

 

[House Centipede]

a good occasion to let a game of only AI go and see how they do ... right?

Huge economic crashes, no one has enough resources to even go to war, huge debt, every pop is starving, and 30% happiness on all planets. If the Fanatic Purifiers haven't won by mid-game, the Khan wipes out everyone left by 2350.

 

[House Centipede]

Wow, I come back to find some of the most insightful conversations I've ever seen about the game here. There's a lot of good ideas. I've always thought there needed to be more kinds of crisis. Right now, it all boils down to how good your military is. Endgame crisis can only be beat with a good military. Leviathans? Military. Khan? Military. Gray Tempest? Military. Purifiers/Exterminators? Military.

So I think this is why everything always keeps coming back to warfare. It is the only mechanic in Stellaris right now that allows you to interfere with the things that the other player needs in order to keep playing the game. They need board position and resources to play the game, and by attacking I can take those things away.

I think that has to be the test for any new system. A new mechanic needs to be able to interfere with and take away one of the things that a player needs in order to continue playing the game. If it can eliminate their access to resources, board position or building options then it is a viable alternative to warfare. If not, then it can only supplement warfare. It can help make another player easier to beat, but you will always still need to invade in order to push them out of the game or prevent them from doing so to you.

Yes to all of this. Even if there are other avenues of approach to a situation, its easier to solve problems with a big stick and some can only be solved with a big stick. Meaning those without a big stick are up a creek when those situations arrive. You've got a better economy? I have a better military, so I'll just take that from you. You have better science? Doesn't matter as long as I've got more missile corvettes than you. You don't like that I'm going around the galaxy starting wars and conquering everyone? Gonna start an alliance? Fine, my military is better so I'll take a 3 for one. Endgame crisis shows up, and I'm the only one that even remotely stands a chance.

 

[House Centipede]

And hell, maybe that's right. I mean, Stellaris is openly a map painting game. The victory condition is to control enough of the board, so maybe this is an Occam's Razor situation. The correct answer is to say that we want four asymmetric, viable ways to get more ships. So you can:

• Build ships (primary resource: alloys)
• Ally with ships (primary resource: CG's and external trade)
• Buy/hire ships (primary resource: energy and internal trade)
• Improve ships (primary resource: research)

There's other options as well. In Spore (great example I know) you were able to buyout a star system with enough money. Right now, you can TRADE a star system for credits (except not really because the AI won't give those up, but in theory you could) but what if it wasn't optional? What if a star system had a set number of credits based on the value of that system and species traits that you could convince planetary leaders and citizens to join your empire for the promise of great wealth; Everyone has a price and all that. It would give mercentile empires a way to remove other players ability to play the game.

In Civilization, if your empire's cultural influence is encroaching on a nearby rival empire's city and it's great enough. Those people will say, "Hey, we want to be like that!" and will switch over to your side. What if that happened in Stellaris? That would give Religious/Peaceful empires a way to work better. Playing Stellaris as a peaceful race is nearly impossible, because you have no avenue to win. War is the only option to remove your opponents ability to play the game as you said.

"But just having your systems switch sides with no way to stop it isn't fun!"

Neither is being steamrolled by someone with a better military, because you also have no way to stop them. Why should taking systems though military might be the only way to "have fun"?

Other ideas include the ability to bribe mining station admins to skim off the top of their stations and send the surplus to you, or arrange for a few shipments of someones strategic resources to go missing and end up with your empire. Maybe send some of your most devout religious zealots to go incite rebellions on a rival's planets to destabilize production. Someone mentioned the engineering of bio weapons for the more scientifically inclined. There's so many options that I think the current system would need a huge overhaul to make work. Which is why I can't see any of this happening.

 

[Maethendias]

i hope you will rebalance empires (isolationists, purgers and just gestalts ) that cant join the community, or federations, and thus wont be able to get those boni, which again, ramp up already EXISTING boni (mainly trade value and tech sharing/ignoring (building fed ships with tech you dont have))

because fighting feds ALREADY is a MASSIVE pain as it is.... this whole stick feels like its only going to make it much, MUCH worse

 

[Janx14]

i hope you will rebalance empires (isolationists, purgers and just gestalts ) that cant join the community, or federations, and thus wont be able to get those boni, which again, ramp up already EXISTING boni (mainly trade value and tech sharing/ignoring (building fed ships with tech you dont have))

because fighting feds ALREADY is a MASSIVE pain as it is.... this whole stick feels like its only going to make it much, MUCH worse

They'll prob just give a bonus to solo machine empires.

Because machine empires.

 

[Foefaller]

i hope you will rebalance empires (isolationists, purgers and just gestalts ) that cant join the community, or federations, and thus wont be able to get those boni, which again, ramp up already EXISTING boni (mainly trade value and tech sharing/ignoring (building fed ships with tech you dont have))

because fighting feds ALREADY is a MASSIVE pain as it is.... this whole stick feels like its only going to make it much, MUCH worse

I think they mentioned in a dev post that only genocidals will be unable to join, non-genocidal Gestalts should be able to. Even Inward Perfection will be able to join for the boni, though they will have a Diplomatic Weight penalty.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Huge economic crashes, no one has enough resources to even go to war, huge debt, every pop is starving, and 30% happiness on all planets. If the Fanatic Purifiers haven't won by mid-game, the Khan wipes out everyone left by 2350.

Then the AI should stop aspiring to be an IRL human run empire and instead opt to imitate a GSG player?

 

[Verx90]

i hope you will rebalance empires (isolationists, purgers and just gestalts ) that cant join the community, or federations, and thus wont be able to get those boni, which again, ramp up already EXISTING boni (mainly trade value and tech sharing/ignoring (building fed ships with tech you dont have))

because fighting feds ALREADY is a MASSIVE pain as it is.... this whole stick feels like its only going to make it much, MUCH worse

actualy, as stated , the only empires that will not join the GC are the exterminator( i mean, those guys that just want to see the galaxy burn) , they mentioned that ... crime syndicate and isolazionist will be able to join the GC .... not sure about federation, but some type at least should be able to have them in .

 

[Monturiol]

Different CBs do different things.

Technically true but not practically true, because none of those different things are actually things anyone would ever want to do.
"Humiliate" is just "Conquer" plus some influence, and then we have 15 different flavors of vasselisation. It's another example of Stellaris containing lots of different buttons to create the appearence of complexity but play the game more than once and you realise that none of them are actually connected to anything strategically useful.

If there's a "enforce demands" CB, then it presumably does something very different from a "conquer claims" or "vassalize" CB or the like.

Given that - as mentioned above - the majority of the CBs we have now do exactly the same thing as each other for all practical purposes, I do not think this presumption of yours is a very good one.

I'd also bet, quite handily, that doing a war to "enforce demands" or "contain threat" would bypass Threat (at least for Galactic Community members), so you can wage those wars without pissing everyone else off.

I won't take that bet, because you're probably right, I bet it does bypass threat.
However, the point you're very conveniently leaving out is that normal Stellaris play accrues infinity threat whatever you do, and infinity minus X is still infinity. You have to map-paint in Stellaris to stave off the crushing boredom of No Internal Politics, and if you're map-painting, every other empire hates your guts forever. Being the Galactic UN's Bulldog so you can nullify threat half the time ain't gonna do any good when the other half of the time still accrues you a foreign-relations reputation somewhere between the Ilkhanate and ISIS.

Inb4 "This is a diplo expansion, don't you think they'll maybe rebalance threat to stop this regular complaint?" - No, no I don't think they'll rebalance threat in response to this regular complaint, and the reason I don't think that is because they haven't rebalanced the Swarm in response to regular complaints for 3 years.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

However, the point you're very conveniently leaving out is that normal Stellaris play accrues infinity threat whatever you do, and infinity minus X is still infinity.

I don't. Players that play solely to paint the map and win as fast as possible do, sure, but its a poor assumption to claim that that describes "normal" Stellaris play.

 

[Foefaller]

I won't take that bet, because you're probably right, I bet it does bypass threat.
However, the point you're very conveniently leaving out is that normal Stellaris play accrues infinity threat whatever you do, and infinity minus X is still infinity. You have to map-paint in Stellaris to stave off the crushing boredom of No Internal Politics, and if you're map-painting, every other empire hates your guts forever. Being the Galactic UN's Bulldog so you can nullify threat half the time ain't gonna do any good when the other half of the time still accrues you a foreign-relations reputation somewhere between the Ilkhanate and ISIS.

Maybe for you, but for me the Internal game is what staves off the crushing boredom. If it was map painting, I might be able to actually play a Gestalt past a century.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

There's other options as well. In Spore (great example I know) you were able to buyout a star system with enough money. Right now, you can TRADE a star system for credits (except not really because the AI won't give those up, but in theory you could) but what if it wasn't optional? What if a star system had a set number of credits based on the value of that system and species traits that you could convince planetary leaders and citizens to join your empire for the promise of great wealth; Everyone has a price and all that. It would give mercentile empires a way to remove other players ability to play the game.

Players generally have a problem with this despite it being entirely probable. Why shouldn't a corrupt sector governor be able to make that deal?

A more advanced international trade system with comparative advantage would facilitate this kind of economic leverage: "Give us the system or the Consumer Goods get it!" Unfortunately strategy games all have a tendency toward autarky.

I appreciate that the Galactic Market streamlined a lot of routine purchases, but it eliminates the ability for empires to pull OPEC type stunts to get their way. It's unlikely the devs will reverse that course, but similarly players were a bit underwhelmed by the idea of a single Galactic Market owner with a flat 10% discount.

Imagine if instead the Galactic Market gave everybody a "control level" based on their total economic power, and then additional actions they could take to increase it (influence expenditures, calling in favors etc). You could then "spend" this control to take economic actions, such as raising a particular empire's market fee. Trade Leagues could act as a single unit, under the president's control.

Then you could take economic actions available in the Galactic Market, put them on the table in a negotiation, and use them as leverage: "Give us the system or you'll be paying a +100% market fee for the next 10 years."

In Civilization, if your empire's cultural influence is encroaching on a nearby rival empire's city and it's great enough. Those people will say, "Hey, we want to be like that!" and will switch over to your side. What if that happened in Stellaris? That would give Religious/Peaceful empires a way to work better. Playing Stellaris as a peaceful race is nearly impossible, because you have no avenue to win. War is the only option to remove your opponents ability to play the game as you said.

"But just having your systems switch sides with no way to stop it isn't fun!"

Neither is being steamrolled by someone with a better military, because you also have no way to stop them. Why should taking systems though military might be the only way to "have fun"?

I think it comes down to human psychology. People that disliked the Civ cultural influence mechanic did so for two reasons.

The first is because it was passive. Although they could do things to increase their influence, it didn't particularly feel like they were doing things. The connection between building a temple and influence growth was too dissociated. They felt like they needed to click a button at some point, just to confirm that they had control.

The second was because it lacked finesse. The culture balance was always going to swing one way or the other from the outset and there was little you could do to stop that. There were no costly measures you could take, no sacrifices or sense of meaningful choice.

If you applied this to the war system, you wouldn't be building or directing armies. Instead you would build a barracks, which would give a passive "military power" growth over time and eventually "conquer" the nearest city at some undecided date.

In Stellaris, you have to consciously build and direct fleets and armies. For cultural conquest to feel satisfying, you have to consciously build and direct "influence units". Focusing on one front should mean neglecting others. Focusing on offense should mean sacrificing defense. Fighting a costly influence war should drain your resources. It needs to take time, so defenders have a chance to react to it.

Basically, it needs to feel like cultural combat rather than an "I win button" or a toothless accessory to the war system. Diplomacy needs to be the same. You can fight it, but you can't just ignore it anymore than you can ignore an incoming fleet.

The addition of the favor system to the Galactic UN is definitely a step in the right direction. We have the makings of diplomatic combat. The problem is that it looks like it still comes down to war to enforce the UN's demands.

We have the federation system with integrity, and the need for empires to cooperate. How do we enforce compliance with the federation's demands? We haven't been told how, but I imagine it's going to come down to war.

 

[Monturiol]

Maybe for you, but for me the Internal game is what staves off the crushing boredom. If it was map painting, I might be able to actually play a Gestalt past a century.

Hey, don't get me wrong, map painting is pretty tedious too when none of the star systems feel particularly special and each war is just adding another sesquillion tonnes of burning hydrogen to your pile of stars.
But at least map-painting scratches the itch that CKII and EUIV classically-conditioned into me.
I'm a rat in a Skinner Box, fair enough. But you don't even get that satisfaction, wtf r u doin guy?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

The problem is that it looks like it still comes down to war to enforce the UN's demands.

Well, thats the worst-case scenario solution. We know "sanctions" exist, so... there are steps that can be taken to try to influence an uncooperative empire before it comes to war.