Paradox Interactive Games

Hi there! I thought of starting some kind of discussion .

I have had this secret fetish dream of meeting space game where person can make actual own countries, where you can explore space, make it your own and have nice quests while doing that. When Stellaris came out and I decided to give it a try, I found it to be closest ever to what I actually wanted and dreamed of.

However after playing for nice 15 hours or so, I started notice that while concept was amazing and potential was huge, it was really stale and got boring really fast. Every game felt pretty same and there wasn't anything new in there when you played it. If we take for example other most known Paradox game Europa Universalis IV, then while map starts usually always same, how the game usually goes is different and every country has its own way how to play. Even alliances at the start of the game can be different ones and can decide a lot in the first few minutes. So what might be the problem?

After thinking I noticed that game is in the end same. There aren't anything that unique to the planets. You mostly only search similar planets to you to colonize it. Even if there are technologies to make others planets colonize-able, it still is simply 'discovering technology' and that is. War also looks pretty dull and the strategy is pretty much:

Step 1: Make huge army of ships.
Step 2: Move them together and win battles
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Profit

As I have heard from a lot of review: While the start is actually fun, mid games becomes extremely boring technology waiting game, till you reach really-really late game and then start wars. While Paradox has gotten it a lot better, it still is a lot way off. Also, last time I played, some systems were a bit bugged (Sectors).

So, what is your opinion about this game and if you agree with me, what could be done to make it better? If you disagree, what could be done, to make it more enjoyable for players like me ...

What I am certain now is that it is another Paradox-like game, where they release base game and then release bunch of free updates with DLCs, what make the game actual nice enjoyable game. However those DLC-s gonna cost again tons of $$$$$$$... I already know that I am going to buy these too.

My personal opinion: I would like some empire management system, where you can manage trade between systems or planets, sectors and so on. It can put into automatic for those who do not want to, but I however think if it is cleverly thought fun part of game, it can add a lot mid-game entertainment. However I right now have no idea what it should be exactly .

Do agree with you definitely on that.

I found that around the mid game once you have colonised to a certain degree it becomes quite hard to take other empires out so you have to wait for tech really. Which is okay I guess but it does get quite boring quite quickly unfortunately.

They have a lot of potential for new ideas and DLC but as you've already said the DLC will cost money. I thought what happened with EUIV was quite interesting though in that you could buy the base game and a few of the DLC's all for £15 where originally it would be more like £75.

Stellaris is also the most simplest game they've ever produced and for me, it doesn't have that complexity. I enjoy playing it with mates though.

One thing I had noticed was that the Crysis events seem to differ hugely in terms of strength. The Alien one seems to be a minor inconvinience but quite easy to defeat, the unbinden on the other hand is significantly harder and actually quite deadly if left for even a short period of time. Haven't witnessed the AI one yet. Though I do kind of wish you could get all 3 in a game.

Oh crap, this is actually challenge for someone to do, but you must be really lucky with technology for that. I would call it really bad humanity decisions .

I also like the part that Stellaris is quite simple and compared to other Paradox games (EUIV & Hears of Iron IV), learning curve is also really simple. It took barely one game to understand the game. I remember that EUIV learning curve was really-really hard and first time I played, I understood nothing at all. I haven't played HoI4, but I heard that it has even harder learning curve than eu4...

It's not actually possible. You can only have 1 crisis in a game sadly. Which is a little bit upsetting because of the difficulty of some of them being very hugely different to others.

I enjoy that it's quite simple but I also love the complexity of EUIV. I think that's part of what makes these sort of games interesting.

Need to try HOIV, Looking forward to it tbh. Got a few games I need to play first though before I can do all that though.

Same

It's not a grand strategy game, which is what they promised me. I won the game in a bet and I regret that the person spent money on it for me.

There does rather seem to a lack of content. It is the easiest game of the lot of them by someway. There is no real managing of minerals and incomes. And I mean besides assigning a govener for sectors it does seem a little lax.

The armies are mainly the same 6 ships all the way through. It would be decent to see dedicated carriers rather than just as an added extra and perhaps research thst is only available to certain types of species, such as the plants could say revitalise ravaged planets or the fungi could infect planets to convert their species.

I really dislike space battles, thatthere are no srategies involved. It is pretty much: get one huge stack of battleships together, move them together preferably with other armies if there are any (other player/ai), kill everything. Even if you plan doing some strategy what is involved behind attack, warping makes it so easy to get from one point to another that they arrive there too quick (They don't even need to go through whole sector, but border is enough). Basically, battling is poor.

Yes and no. There are some strats to it. For example I have managed to defeat the entire Precursor civilization with 1 stack of 50K. Despite the fact that they would throw 80k stacks at me at a time or sometimes even all at once.

There are some tactics, and generals do make a huge difference, as do what weapon types you have. But I have found that it is far too easy to get to the other weapon types. Granted I have also found that corvettes are insanely hilarious at being a damage dampener. To the point of you will lose maybe 20 corvettes but wont lose any other ship in the fleet in the largest scale battles.

I have found that some of the basic types of travel such as warp are too fast. You cannot catch up with someone if you are using wormholes unless they make a mistake.

Another thing as well being that instead of allowing you to use someone elses wormholes you have to build your own in their land. On top of if you have a wormhole station you can actually lose access to some areas if it then gets absorbed into another players nation. This has happened on more than one occasion where I was building them on the outer reaches of my area and another nation pinches the land and pushes my borders back marginally meaning that all of my structures in that area get instantly destroyed.

You do have a good points there. I personally wait for more dlcs and then give a better new go and see how it is going then.

i have the game but did not play it much yet. i like how it looks and the artwork in it. also that you can create your own race is fun,still it could have some more options on that part.
hope ill find some time time to look into it.

the only other full paradox game i tried was crusader kings and i am horrible at that EU was always on my list but never made a start with it.and i have mount n blade but i think its not rly from paradox.

Did you ever get a chance to look into it more?

The Paradox games are notoriously complicated. Part of the charm about them for me. EU is definitely worthwhile but a step-up from Stellaris in difficulty. That said, I've heard Crusader Kings is more complicated than EU but having never played it couldn't comment.