Stop slacking, I wanna hear your opinion on Stellaris. I don't trust the general internets because Paradox psychofans can be unbearable.
Tbf mate I am officially a paradox fanboi after purchasing field marshall edition of HOI 4 ( although in my defence I would have bought the expansions anyway and had money on my steam wallet.) Although aside from when Vicky 3 releases HOI will be the only game that has a chance of ever matching my 1k in hours in EU4 over my 2 steam accounts.
Anyway Stellaris, I really like it you can see the potential,you can see how mods are going to put this on a whole other level. But it has issues which Paradox to their credit have been pretty open about and the dev diary this week put a road map down on when they hope to sort these things anyway to the game.
The early game is absolutely amazing, they nailed it imo it is the best early game in any 4x. Everything is paced so well, there so much to do and see and explore. Race creation is pretty neat too and you can get pretty immersed in it. Combat is oddly satisfying even though it turns into doomstack vs doomstack but I think that comes from years of watching two little men shoot each other or two nato counters with an arrow and numbers more than anything. But I like it. Ship design is pretty cool although needs some balancing and you need more information on why things do what they do but this is something coming in next patch. The amount of anamolies and early game event chains is pretty high and the early game doesnt feel to repetitive which is good.
Mid game as in a fair few 4x games is when things start to slow down. Sectors are not working as intended, slavery is kinda broken as in pops can end up happy being slaves which should be an option but hard to attain but right now from what I have seen on the forums is the norm. Exploration can be restrictive as diplomacy surprisingly is not that great, AI can be passive but then I think it is based on ethics because if you have opposing ethics war is inevitable. Theres no trade which is dissapointing given the trade systems in other games I mean Vicky has the best economy in any game even Distant Worlds. All these issues paradox have said will get fixed and are on them, they said they had a lot of mid game content already done but due to balancing witheld whilst they made the early game and late game crisis'.
Late game things improve though with the crisis mechanic I just mentioned is totally random could be your robot workers rising up, a fallen empire deciding they want to take over or beings from another dimension turning (ala reapers mass effect).
The game has massive massive potential couple of patches and a DLC or 2 and this game will be an absolute monster. Also mods are going to be mental, 3 big mods already in the works 40K, Star wars and star trek all look well on the way and paradox has released a 3d maya exporter so modders can now put all the ships etc in.
The best way to describe it is vanilla EU4, when it released was great but lacked content mid and late game and trade etc was pretty one dimensional. When you look at EU4 now its a totally different beast and for grand strat/4x vets like myself its one of the best out there. Right now Stellaris is on par with whats already out there given its faults, but it'll get sorted so just depends if you want to be there for the beginning or not.
