The galaxy is a crowded place, and so both require military action. The two victory conditions are owning 40% of the galaxy's colonisable worlds or subjugating all of its empires. Maybe it's my own lack of imagination, but I can't see a route to victory that doesn't involve force. That unrelenting sequence of moment-to-moment choice and consequence instead becomes languid and restrictive. Unfortunately, this point signals a major shift in Stellaris's pace. The basic shape of galactic politics begins to reveal itself, and exploration gives way to diplomacy and conquest. Eventually there's a tipping point, as your knowledge of the galaxy expands to include its major players. And sometimes you're jumped up the tech tree-offered special, rare research opportunities that can give you a significant advantage.Īs you continue to expand and explore, you stumble across rival empires. At times it can feel arbitrary, but it's an effective way of forcing you improvisation. Develop an early laser weapon, and your next set of options may present the next tier, or may offer three entirely different options. ![]() The tech tree is there, but it's not fixed. ![]() Rather than a visible tech tree, each research branch-biology, physics and engineering-offers three potential research options. And you'd have way more fun doing so.Scientific research also has a random element. You could finish a infamously lengthy RPG game like The Witcher 3 or watch all 11 seasons of Modern Family in the time at this rate it takes to finish a single game of Stellaris. I did not finish my game, I abandoned it in what I believe was early mid-game, to which point I got after spending maybe 15 hours. It doesn't help that planets suitable for colonisation are fairly rare and a great majority of systems are empty points on the map which you can't do anything interesting with, other than mine them for resources. In Europa Universalis or its spin-offs like Crusader Kings you don't really discover anything but you play on the real world map, which adds meaning to your conquests: it's more fun to say "I conquered France" than "I won 6 star systems, all identical and randomly generated". It is different from other comparable games: in Civilization, for instance, discovering edges of the continent, strategic resources, natural wonders, city-states all matters and makes exploration interesting. The systems are all pretty much identical except for their resource output and the colour of the star, so I explore them only because I have to, not because I'm genuinely interested to find out what's round the corner (first encounter events were fun though). Which makes interaction with AI opponents a dull affair, in which you only care about their strength relative to yours. ![]() We know nothing about the species that are available to play, there is no story, they are completely random (in fact, I believe they *can* be randomised). I already knew what the game would be like: a "rinse and repeat" cycle of optimising resource output, upgrading fleets, waiting for the truce to expire before winning a couple more meaningless systems in another meaningless war.Ī major problem with this game is its theme: there is none. But after working this out and winning a few systems in my first ever war, I did not see a reason why I should keep on playing. It was fun figuring the game out, peeling off more and more layers of the game mechanics, then managing planets, assigning planets' "pops" to jobs in order optimise various outputs. An interesting game to play on the Xbox Game Pass for a few afternoons, but not much longer than that.
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