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I agree. As a person who has not played Stellaris but is aware of its excellent reputation, I got to the part of the article where it said Stellaris breaks up i

I agree. As a person who has not played Stellaris but is aware of its excellent reputation, I got to the part of the article where it said Stellaris breaks up it's late game bloat, and was expecting the second half of that sentence to be very different. I thought it would be something about abstracting away the tedious low level details, and shifting toward supermassive macro scale problems, maybe going up a higher level like Spore, but in some salient strategic sense that fits the feel of Stellaris. I was disappointed to learn but the actual solution was just random punishments.

breischl 9y ago
It's not really random punishment, it's challenges. eg, if you use certain dangerous technologies extensively (eg, strong AI, subspace drives) then a strong late-game enemy may appear at an unpredictable time (eg, rampaging AI bent on killing all races, rampaging fleets from another dimension). I think this actually works well for Stellaris, because of the vassalization dynamics. In most 4X games, if you get defeated then you're dead and may as well quit. In Stellaris you can get defeated, become a vassal of another nation, and later break out to defeat your former masters. Having a powerful late-game enemy appear makes that sort of shakeup much more likely, as the smaller/vassalized empires may be able to pick off systems from the more powerful, but weakened or distracted, empires.
dtech 9y ago
They're not really punishments, but difficult crisises that the player must overcome. For example, two ancient powerful but inactive empires might become active and start a war. This allows the player to align with either one of the powers, or form an independent coalition with a chance to become the new "leader" of the galaxy. These events throw existing borders up relations up in the air, thus effectively making the game interesting again right as its becoming stale.

breischl 9y ago

It's not really random punishment, it's challenges. eg, if you use certain dangerous technologies extensively (eg, strong AI, subspace drives) then a strong late-game enemy may appear at an unpredictable time (eg, rampaging AI bent on killing all races, rampaging fleets from another dimension). I think this actually works well for Stellaris, because of the vassalization dynamics. In most 4X games, if you get defeated then you're dead and may as well quit. In Stellaris you can get defeated, become a vassal of another nation, and later break out to defeat your former masters. Having a powerful late-game enemy appear makes that sort of shakeup much more likely, as the smaller/vassalized empires may be able to pick off systems from the more powerful, but weakened or distracted, empires.

dtech 9y ago

They're not really punishments, but difficult crisises that the player must overcome. For example, two ancient powerful but inactive empires might become active and start a war. This allows the player to align with either one of the powers, or form an independent coalition with a chance to become the new "leader" of the galaxy. These events throw existing borders up relations up in the air, thus effectively making the game interesting again right as its becoming stale.