Mare Nostrum is now out.

So, Paradox Games releases Stellaris tomorrow. It looks like Europa Universalis based in space. I just pre-ordered through Steam. Anyone else picking it up?

Is this gonna be more than a rehash of sins of a solar empire? One thing about eu and ck etc is that for those paradox has actual history too kind of hone the game into an interesting simulation.

can anyone walk me through eu4? I just started playing and good lord it seems impossible.

I'm playing rise of the Ottomans as the Portuguese, and I never have any money, I'm at a immediate negative and none of the trade nodes give enough gold to push me positive. I take out loans to build barques and hammer the Seville trade node, but for some reason those barely seem to eke out a positive gold over their maintenance. I want to throw down vs Morocco but I've no money to build up my initial 13k army, and while I can normally gain a foothold in Tangiers, a mixed Moroccan and Tlemcan army shows up and pounds them whIle my Castilian allies refuse to join. Any advice for a new player?

As Portugal, you basically need to sit tight max admin monarch points mothball your cogs lower army maintenance, and rush to your first idea, exploration. Portugal is a colonizing nation, very difficult if you're gonna try and fight in Africa right away. Portugal may start with an explorer at start as well, but it's been a few patches since I've played them.

You'll only really start making money when you have colonies pushing trade into Seville.

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As Portugal, you basically need to sit tight max admin monarch points mothball your cogs lower army maintenance, and rush to your first idea, exploration. Portugal is a colonizing nation, very difficult if you're gonna try and fight in Africa right away. Portugal may start with an explorer at start as well, but it's been a few patches since I've played them.

You'll only really start making money when you have colonies pushing trade into Seville.

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that's good advice, I didn't even think about deleting the cogs and didn't know you could lower maintenance. How do you research ideas? I wish there was a primer or a tutorial on how to play

You accumulate monarch points. ADM (scroll icon) DIP (dove) and MIL (crossed swords).

When you have about 400 in a category (western nation) you can advance your tech (a notice will pop up with the tech logo to tell you when you can do It)

You running any dlc?

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You accumulate monarch points. ADM (scroll icon) DIP (dove) and MIL (crossed swords).

When you have about 400 in a category (western nation) you can advance your tech (a notice will pop up with the tech logo to tell you when you can do It)

You running any dlc?

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Okay cool, I think my issue is I'm expecting this game to move like civilization or any of the other standard games I'very played. this is a very long fairly epic slow moving game, isn't it? My monarch points are only growing by like 5-7 per turn and I believe I need like 600 for the first tech.

I don't think I'm running any dLC as of yet, wanting to figure out what the hell I'm doing first.

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Is this gonna be more than a rehash of sins of a solar empire? One thing about eu and ck etc is that for those paradox has actual history too kind of hone the game into an interesting simulation.

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True... I haven't played sins of a solar empire much. Got it during a deployment and never had time to play and then never went back to it... Here's to hoping its as good as EU.

Yeah as Portugal you're going to need to wait 10 or so years to accrue enough favors to drag Castille into any wars with you.

You might have been assigned advisors at the game start, firing them will save you cash. If you haven't already, assign your fleet of Barques to protect trade at Sevilla (should help increase your income a bit).

Like has been mentioned, you want to rush colonization. If you rush getting the Cape, you can completely cut off other empires from colonizing India/SE Asia and keep that reserved for yourself. You can also get to the new world and set up large colonial nations there.

It will be expensive though so you might invest in some development to raise your base tax.

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Okay cool, I think my issue is I'm expecting this game to move like civilization or any of the other standard games I'very played. this is a very long fairly epic slow moving game, isn't it? My monarch points are only growing by like 5-7 per turn and I believe I need like 600 for the first tech.

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Definitely. You need to take the long view with the game. Have both short term and long term goals. You have nearly 400 years to work with, so you don't need to conquer the world overnight. When you're micromanaging (usually during wars), I run the game on 2-3x speed. During peace, you should be at 4-5x speed (with occasional pauses to tinker around). Otherwise the game will just drag on and seem like nothing ever happens.


Some of the best ways to learn are by reading the various guides or by watching others play. Arumba and DDRJake are probably two of the most known streamers but I think Quill18 is more beginner friendly.

As far as Stellaris goes: I am incredibly hyped for this game. Releases today at 11am central. Will be playing after work.

There has been a supposed focus on MP games so hopefully it won't be as l**** as EU4 MP.

Game just looks phenomenal though.

If we could get a regular MP game going with folks of the Nerdery that'd be quite enjoyable.

how long did it take for you to start building? I'm barely making +2 gold a month or so; and it seems like a huge waste to go out and spend 100 years of gold earning on a church or something along those lines. I played an earlier game where I took out loans; and that's all I did was continuously take out loans to where I had 30 of them or so and no hope of paying them off with inflation out the ying yang.

What i recommend you try is is to go to the wiki site for a particular country, scroll to the stretegy section (be careful some obscure ones are out of date on versions) and try to do what it says in the early game. Do this for multiple countries, try being portugal, the ottomans, austria, france, etc and let the wiki guide your opening moves and play for about the first century or so before moving on to the next country (unless you're having fun then keep going). Doing this will introduce you to most of the concepts and tricks because there are a ****ton of little things you need to know.

Example page...

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Portugal#Strategy

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how long did it take for you to start building? I'm barely making +2 gold a month or so; and it seems like a huge waste to go out and spend 100 years of gold earning on a church or something along those lines. I played an earlier game where I took out loans; and that's all I did was continuously take out loans to where I had 30 of them or so and no hope of paying them off with inflation out the ying yang.

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You really shouldn't be building a whole lot, especially in the early game. It'll take a long time for those investments to pay off so you have to spend wisely.

If you look at the provinces, some of them will have naturally higher base tax. That's where you would want to build your churches. If a province just has 3 BT, it isn't worth the 100 ducats to build a church. It's a % based modifier, so the higher the BT, the more effect the church will have.

Similarly, I usually only build marketplaces in places that are inland centers of trade or estuaries (because they have a natural bonus to trade power).

I said it last time, but lets play's will be your best resource in terms of figuring everything out. And don't be afraid to save and try again should you fail. It'll take a while before you're competent. At that point you might try ironman (forced monthly saves so you can't undo mistakes). In the end, there will always be something new to learn. I've poured in around 400 hours and still learn new things. Add on to that, you can do literally everything right and then roll a 0/0/2 king who lives for 70 years and absolutely tanks your playthrough. RNG is a *****.

So you'll never probably feel like an expert. But that's ok! If building an empire was easy, everyone would do it.

Did they get rid of the blanket overseas modifiers? I assume the state vs territory mechanic replaced that? My only recent games have been as Japan and Malaya, so I havent gone too far afield but it seems like I can eventually make any province a state core that can go to 0% autonomy no matter how far away.

Just spent an hour playing Stellaris. So far, I'm impressed.

Details?

I started as one of the 2 human races. I didn't look hard but there seemed to be 5+ races to choose from. each race had multiple factions. Game starts similar to sins of solar empire where you have science vessels, construction vessels and military units. Your home world starts with 16 "fields" that you can build things like food, research, mining, etc. you send your science vessel to explore your solar system and can then build different stations on non hospitable worlds. These range from gems, energy, and one other resource. You then explore other systems looking for more planets to colonize. I haven't colonized anything else yet. gameplay is similar to EU4 with controls and such. Kampfers was playing as well and he got a little farther than I did. He can probably give more info. Hoping tomorrow is a slow day at work and I will take my computer in to try more...

So I am a huge EU4 nerd and have logged WAY to much into it over the years (no regrets). MoO2 got me into 4x and strategy games in general, so this game is my sweet spot. However, I am currently using an early 2013 MBP, which according to a couple of sites (Can I Run this, etc.), says it will not run Stellaris due to my GPU. The game calls for 1GB and I thought mine met this. I currently have a Nvidia Geforce GT 650M, which has 1GB of GDDR5. Is there something I'm missing or misunderstanding that will limit/prevent me from playing on my machine?

So I fell down the rabbit hole last night and stayed up wayyyyyy past my bedtime... it was too good to put down.


Yes, there are 5 starter species or so but the real money is in creating your own species. You can even create multiple species and they will sometimes show up in your games, even when you aren't playing them. I wasn't able to figure out how to make them be forced to show up, although that is an option.

Both of the lets play videos I watched were set in ring galaxies so I decided to change it up and went with a huge (1000+ stars) 4-legged spiral galaxy. My created race were Xenophiles, Individualists, and Materialists and used hyperlanes to access FTL (much faster but less flexibility in unit-pathing because you have to follow the established lanes). Our climate preference was for arid worlds - a mistake I began to regret quickly (there were virtually none around).

As I scanned the stars, I began exploring by proceeding in a Southward direction on the galaxy map. I quickly found 2 arid worlds and began construction on a colony ship as soon as the tech unlocked it. As my colony ship neared completion, all of a sudden some random alien population was discovered and it turns out that the planets I wanted to colonize were within the boundaries of their home system. Fantastic.

So I re-oriented north. I finally found a suitable world and colonized it. Little did I know that would be the only suitable world anywhere near me. As I progressed farther north, searching for new homes, I stumbled across a different empire. Only these weren't random aliens - this was a successor state to a massive Fallen Empire. Fuuuuuuuuuck. Only some 200+ techs ahead of me, these bad boys more than completely cut me off from further expansion north. Luckily, it wouldn't be all bad news. As a FE they would shield me from other alien pops expanding from that direction and they weren't one of the evil FE's looking to eradicate me, they more or less just expected me to die off of my own accord. I'll have to revisit them when the tech disadvantage isn't quite as drastic to see if I can create a coalition to take them down.

I then set my sites on the next leg of the galaxy (directly to my East) and luckily my northward expansion had locked down a hyperlane that allowed me to traverse between the two legs. Moving on, I was able to establish a new colony in this part of the galaxy - and will soon be establishing another new colony in the resource-rich nebula that happens to occupy that area.

While I was little, it was ridiculously hard to expand and keep my mining stations intact. I had FE pirate raiders terrorizing my outposts and random alien life forms killing any science ships that dared pop into the wrong systems. Now I'm bringing in resources at an alarming rate. I can hardly keep up and spend them all. I'm blobbing as fast as I can because I know that territorial expansion is probably the most important part right now - I can go back and fill in the holes of my empire (uncolonized worlds I already controlled the space around) at a later time when there is no more empty space to exploit.

Now that I've strengthened my hand substantially, I'm planning to strike my Southern neighbors with my next move. While they are peaceful (xenophiles and fanatic pacifists, at that), they will make a fantastic vassal. They sit at an incredibly important crossroad in the galaxy and would provide me with access to the hyperlane that allows travel to the next leg of the galaxy that ends just to my West. There is another nebula there I'm ready to exploit, and I know for a fact that there is an arid colonizable world directly on the opposite side of the hyperlane. Plus, I need to strike before they are able to find a lot of allies (which they will seek to do, as federation builders).

I'll take some screenshots tonight if anyone is interested. May even do some livestreaming if I can figure it out on my PC.

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So I am a huge EU4 nerd and have logged WAY to much into it over the years (no regrets). MoO2 got me into 4x and strategy games in general, so this game is my sweet spot. However, I am currently using an early 2013 MBP, which according to a couple of sites (Can I Run this, etc.), says it will not run Stellaris due to my GPU. The game calls for 1GB and I thought mine met this. I currently have a Nvidia Geforce GT 650M, which has 1GB of GDDR5. Is there something I'm missing or misunderstanding that will limit/prevent me from playing on my machine?

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I was able to play it a little on my 2014 MB Air. It's really more of a processor hog than a GPU hog. That being said, it ran way slower on my Air than on my gaming PC and that was using a Medium sized galaxy on the Air vs a Huge galaxy on the PC. I'd be wary of really playing it seriously on the MB but you could probably make it work.

Cool. Planning on building a setup here in the next few months but couldn't resist picking this one up. The processor actually isn't a problem (3rd gen i7 with 2.7GH). The GPU is really the only issue on my current MPB. Think I'll pick it up either way but thought I'd soundboard it here since I couldn't quite put my finger on what the issue was with my GPU.

Based on what I'm reading it sounds like the core concept is great and right up my alley, but gameplay is dull after the early game and the ai and diplomatic systems need work.

Probably will be a fantastic game a few years from now and a few dlc's and patches from paradox from now.

Side note, there's a 25% off code, SPACE25, for Stellaris on GMG that's valid for all three packages.

can anyone tell me why I get my ass absolutely handed to me whenever attacking or defending? There will be a dude about my size come and attack me; and I'll lose 6,000 to his 900. How the hell does that happen?

Different mix of troop types, technology difference, other random bonuses, might be to blame, but Im guessing the main reason is that they have a really good commander leading their stack and you dont.

I had a pretty good commander but was going on 80% infantry and 20% cavalry very early on. I tweaked it to 60/40 and had better results

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I had a pretty good commander but was going on 80% infantry and 20% cavalry very early on. I tweaked it to 60/40 and had better results

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Early on cav is fairly important (due to the shock damage) but as time moves on that lessens and you want to revert back towards more of an 80/20 mixture because cav are only really worthwhile in the flanking positions. You'll also want plenty of artillery stacks because they will sit behind the front line and really help you kick up the damage.

Tech difference is a big factor throughout (1 level difference = bad; 2 levels+ = suicide), national ideas are also a huge impact (some countries like france and Brandenburg/prussia get massive combat modifiers), plus then there are the lucky nations who get absurd manpower regeneration and whatnot.

if anyone wants to catch some of the game

http://www.pcgamer.com/stellaris-warhammer-mod/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

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can anyone tell me why I get my ass absolutely handed to me whenever attacking or defending? There will be a dude about my size come and attack me; and I'll lose 6,000 to his 900. How the hell does that happen?

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Slow down the game and look at the dice rolls. Are there any terrain moddifiers? Are you attacking over a river? Are they defending on a mountain?

Generals/Admirals also can provide dice roll bonuses, which you will see as well. You should always try to have at least your max free amount of commanders.

As amazingly indepth as this game is, there have been some moments that have left me scratching my head. I'm playing as portugal; and my badass ally Castille as drawn me into a defensive war vs Aragon and like 5 other powers, I've got about 17,000 troops; and Castille has about 35,000. My badass general has died like after 10 minute of play; but I rolled a pretty decent 1 star so we're kicking some ass. I fought off an attack by a 25,000 man army and as knocked down to about 10k, but morale high as a kite and knocked down the walls of Valencia on my way to capturing a pretty nice plum.

Castille is down to about 20,000 and they decide to go marching across France to attack Provence leaving me and my 10k sieging Valenica (and it's 23% war score) while the remains of the 25,000 strong army I fought off are taking on reinforcements.

Long story short; Aragon attacks Valencia with about 20,000 vs my 10,000 while I'm about to take Valencia and my Castilian buddies are slowly trekking across France trying to come to my aid. Why the hell would they go attack Provence when Valencia is about to fall and I'm grossly outnumbered?

Because the AI isn't exactly the smartest cookie in the jar.

That goes for both your allies and the enemies.

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Ghana get drunk and give EU4 a shot tonight - never played anything more complicated than Civ V. Should be a good time.

Start with Castille? Vanilla/no mods? Ironman or easy?

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Start easy but ironman is totally worth it once you learn the mechanics. I'd run vanilla until you understand it. Castille, France, Ottomans are good starter nations. Poland as well.

Getting drunk might make it a bit difficult though, it's not exactly a simple game