Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix - Paradox, Please Remove This! Worst update ever! I'm going back to the superior Circinus 3.14.159!

[Kris von Braun]

Phoenix is gutted, broken, and unplayable! Circinus was the best version, and I'm going back to the superior 3.14.159!

Paradox removed one of the best features: trade routes and piracy! How could you strip the game of piracy and trade routes? They were genuinely good.

Secondly, the old population system was fine.

Third, the idea of choosing a development path with rewards is completely misguided! I don't want to be led by the hand. Before, players set their own development direction, and the AI did the same – it operated on multiple fronts and was smart. Now, the AI stubbornly focuses on one thing, neglecting development, exploration, or war! It fixates on just one of these, ignoring the other two. This is a self-inflicted wound!

Phoenix is stripped of good content and is unplayable. This update should never have been released or published – it prunes and oversimplifies Stellaris!

Regards!

 

[Zaacplot300]

I honestly cannot tell if this is satire or an actual complaint

 

[snowy801]

I honestly cannot tell if this is satire or an actual complaint

Either way it's very obnoxious.

 

[Calvax]

On the off chance that this isn’t satire…

Agreed that at points and with certain builds it’s unplayable due to the state it was released in. It’s getting regular patches and has improved which is the best of a bad situation.

Paradox removed one of the best features: trade routes and piracy! How could you strip the game of piracy and trade routes? They were genuinely good.

They were performance heavy and annoying for most players. There was a survey last year on piracy and while I don’t think the results are public I’d be surprised if more than a small minority enjoyed the whack-a-mole gameplay they introduced. Removing them was a good return on investment

Secondly, the old population system was fine.

The new system allows for greater performance by not calculating every single pop. Optimisations for that have been steadily coming in and the early game is much faster now. Other sources of lag are still getting addressed, but it won’t fully go away. Especially given fleets are still a problem.

Third, the idea of choosing a development path with rewards is completely misguided! I don't want to be led by the hand. Before, players set their own development direction, and the AI did the same – it operated on multiple fronts and was smart. Now, the AI stubbornly focuses on one thing, neglecting development, exploration, or war! It fixates on just one of these, ignoring the other two. This is a self-inflicted wound!

The focus system does feel vestigial. It often throws out random things that don’t fit what actually makes sense and I think it was a bad idea. That said you can completely ignore it and be fine. The AI ignores it too, I’m not even sure it’s active for the AI, so don’t worry about AI behaviour changing due to the focus system.

Instead worry about how the AI handles 4.0’s economy changed because it’s still pretty poor and only had one significant and update.

Phoenix is stripped of good content and is unplayable. This update should never have been released or published – it prunes and oversimplifies Stellaris!

Not really sure where 4.0 simplified anything. In fact the new planet system offers up more diversity in how you build worlds with all the combinations of specialisations and buildings.

 

[BrokenSky]

They were performance heavy and annoying for most players. There was a survey last year on piracy and while I don’t think the results are public I’d be surprised if more than a small minority enjoyed the whack-a-mole gameplay they introduced. Removing them was a good return on investment

'Warfare in 1.0 was unengaging, a long slog, unnessesarily micro-intensive and bad for performace. Therefore, the Stellaris Devs should have removed Wars back in 2.0, or at least simplified them to a highly abstract system.'

You see why this is a bad argument, right?
I think most people would agree that reworking wars to make them engaging is far better than removing/highly abstracting them to focus more on the other three main pillars of the game, Exploration, Diplomacy and Economics. In the same vein, removing the trade logistics system feels like it missed a major opportunity to turn the system into a more integral part of economic gameplay, with trade routes moving resources between planets (similar to a cross between Civ trade routes and Millennia resource movement), which could then also feed back into better warfare with raiding trade lanes or blockading key planets acting as a way to do asymentric warfare and actually fight stronger enemies.

Not really sure where 4.0 simplified anything. In fact the new planet system offers up more diversity in how you build worlds with all the combinations of specialisations and buildings.

Planet management was made more detailed, resource management was made more simple. Probably a net win over all for the Economic Gameplay, but definitely a case of three steps forward, two steps back (especially with how the system hurts you for having non-specialised planets by tieing Consumer Goods jobs to the jobs which use those goods early on).

 

[Nabil ad Dajjal]

[Trade routes and piracy] were performance heavy and annoying for most players. There was a survey last year on piracy and while I don’t think the results are public I’d be surprised if more than a small minority enjoyed the whack-a-mole gameplay they introduced. Removing them was a good return on investment

[...]

The new system allows for greater performance by not calculating every single pop. Optimisations for that have been steadily coming in and the early game is much faster now. Other sources of lag are still getting addressed, but it won’t fully go away. Especially given fleets are still a problem.

Trade and pop reworks were certainly sold as performance improvements but as no such improvements have actually materialized (in fact performance is still measurably worse than in 3.14) they need to stand on their own.

While it's subjective, I actually really like the pop rework. The new planet interface is bad but 1,000 new pops feels more 'right' than 10 old pops. The only awkwardness is having to mentally shift between small integers for resource values and pop numbers in the 100s: it would make more sense to up resources proportionally so 1 pop still produces some integer number of resources.

The trade rework however is just not great. Losing trade routes seemingly hasn't helped performance a whit, and the new system is very confused about what trade even represents. I personally feel cheated as I was happy to give up trade routes for performance but performance is worse than ever with the less interesting new system.

 

[grommile]

actually fight stronger enemies.

If your enemy is materially stronger than you, they can probably spare some mobile assets for patrol work.

If your enemy isn't materially stronger than you, why are they declaring war on you in the first place?

 

[Anzaman]

Trade and pop reworks were certainly sold as performance improvements but as no such improvements have actually materialized (in fact performance is still measurably worse than in 3.14) they need to stand on their own.

I'd be curious as what would happen to game performance in 3.14 if you had near 1 million pops in your Empire alone, ignoring all other players in the galaxy.

 

[Trigaea]

The old trade route system was the worst system in the game.

It was clunky, unintuitive, and the best thing you could do with it was ignore it entirely.

I'm happy it's gone, even if the new trade system still needs work.

 

[balmung60]

I'd be curious as what would happen to game performance in 3.14 if you had near 1 million pops in your Empire alone, ignoring all other players in the galaxy.

I can say I've had a million pops in 4.X and I didn't have any substantial slowdown. Various space assets seem to be a much worse performance drain than population.

 

[passeris]

Now that there are no trade routes to patrol, what do you guys do with all those free ships from anomalies that can't be merged into other fleets?

 

[Anzaman]

Now that there are no trade routes to patrol, what do you guys do with all those free ships from anomalies that can't be merged into other fleets?

As the Advisor likes to say "Good day to die!"

I scrap them, unless it's Bubbles, then every single resource gets spent protecting said creature.

 

[balmung60]

Now that there are no trade routes to patrol, what do you guys do with all those free ships from anomalies that can't be merged into other fleets?

Park them over the capital as trophies

 

[grommile]

Now that there are no trade routes to patrol, what do you guys do with all those free ships from anomalies that can't be merged into other fleets?

Burn them on battles here and there.

 

[BrokenSky]

If your enemy is materially stronger than you, they can probably spare some mobile assets for patrol work.

If your enemy isn't materially stronger than you, why are they declaring war on you in the first place?

I have beaten materially stronger forces in Stellaris before because they split their fleets up trying to catch me.

Defeat in detail is real, and forcing the enemy to spend resources on defence is both part of a defeat in detail strategy and a loss limitation strategy.

 

[Calvax]

'Warfare in 1.0 was unengaging, a long slog, unnessesarily micro-intensive and bad for performace. Therefore, the Stellaris Devs should have removed Wars back in 2.0, or at least simplified them to a highly abstract system.'

You see why this is a bad argument, right?

This is a false equivalence. War is a major mechanic in stellaris that touches multiple systems and is well liked by the community (even if there are many concerns about the implementation). Piracy and trade routes were always a minor mechanic that the majority didn’t give a fuss about.

I covered this in my post. Removing it is a good ROI since most people won’t be bothered, it barely changes the game given it was an minor mechanic with no real strategy, and it had undue impacts on performance.

 

[Critical Ethics]

This is a false equivalence. War is a major mechanic in stellaris that touches multiple systems and is well liked by the community (even if there are many concerns about the implementation). Piracy and trade routes were always a minor mechanic that the majority didn’t give a fuss about.

I covered this in my post. Removing it is a good ROI since most people won’t be bothered, it barely changes the game given it was an minor mechanic with no real strategy, and it had undue impacts on performance.

In addition if pirates are re-introduced they're much more likely to be something fun and engaging from being given enough dev time to cook. I've been through enough disappointing iterations of "OK let's find a use for pirates in THIS system" that taking a step back has to be the better way.

 

[Zaacplot300]

I think pirates are still technically in the game in that there’s an event that spawns them in empty systems, but I’m not sure

 

[Kris von Braun]

Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix: The Problem with Stripped-Down Gameplay​

Removing trade routes is a bad idea because, previously, trade was significant for producing all resources on planets and in systems. Its absence oversimplifies Stellaris.

Another issue is that the AI now doesn't make claims because it has nothing to claim—for example, no trade, because there are no trade routes. This makes the AI passive. I'm 100 years into my current game, and my AI neighbor has entrenched itself in four systems and has no intention of exploring new ones because those four are "enough." On its planet, it just spammed buildings and called it a day! I, at my leisure, took over systems adjacent to it, and the AI didn't even send a single science ship to scan them! This is precisely what the lack of trade routes causes! What the AI is doing now is absolute nonsense.

Zero wars. It's passive. It does nothing! Thanks to this shallowing of the gameplay, we have a passive AI, and the game isn't challenging at all! So, thanks, Paradox, for what I consider to be hopeless solutions. Easy gameplay and a passive AI are a dead end! It pushes away players who want even a shred of a challenge.

The current problem with the new Phoenix update is the complete lack of challenge! There's none at all; you can just dispassionately watch the game unfold. Zero challenge! That's not what this game was supposed to be about!

 

[Critical Ethics]

Stellaris 4.0 Phoenix: The Problem with Stripped-Down Gameplay​

Removing trade routes is a bad idea because, previously, trade was significant for producing all resources on planets and in systems. Its absence oversimplifies Stellaris.

Another issue is that the AI now doesn't make claims because it has nothing to claim—for example, no trade, because there are no trade routes. This makes the AI passive. I'm 100 years into my current game, and my AI neighbor has entrenched itself in four systems and has no intention of exploring new ones because those four are "enough." On its planet, it just spammed buildings and called it a day! I, at my leisure, took over systems adjacent to it, and the AI didn't even send a single science ship to scan them! This is precisely what the lack of trade routes causes! What the AI is doing now is absolute nonsense.

Zero wars. It's passive. It does nothing! Thanks to this shallowing of the gameplay, we have a passive AI, and the game isn't challenging at all! So, thanks, Paradox, for what I consider to be hopeless solutions. Easy gameplay and a passive AI are a dead end! It pushes away players who want even a shred of a challenge.

The current problem with the new Phoenix update is the complete lack of challenge! There's none at all; you can just dispassionately watch the game unfold. Zero challenge! That's not what this game was supposed to be about!

I think you're vastly overestimating how much trade routes impacted AI behaviour.