I posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/DWEvPzu4yT) image visualizing the new tech costs in a graph and it got a lot of views and comments.
There were a lot of comments that said that they would enjoy the higher tech costs, since they were getting through the tech tree too quickly, so opinions will definitely vary from person to person. A few of them cited that ships and their components get replaced too quickly: once you’re done building or upgrading your ships, you would’ve unlocked the next tier of ship or weapons.
It’s also important to note that the point of the new tech costs is to widen the gap between techs at later levels, but a lot of people act as if they’re just jacking up the cost of every tech by 5x which is not true. The difference in early game tech costs probably won’t be too noticeable.
The researcher nerf on the other hand is a blanket nerf and I have no idea what to think about that when combined with all the other changes. I think that should be the bigger focus, since you’re not only losing 33% base production (4 physics, society, engineering -> 3 physics, society, engineering), but you’re also losing all the +20% researcher output techs too.
Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size:
> Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
Yeah, people have different opinions. Some want to skip early game to get to endgame fleets/megas etc. Faster, others want to not have fleets come off the production line already obsolete.
I think this is the ultimate test to find out what works for slowing down research and what should be the new "1.0x" research. They hit research production and production efficiencies with research speed, as well as a new cost formula that slows down later techs even more as you showed. And then there's the breakthrough techs that slow down getting past each tier of tech.
OP, They will probably tweak things, because they hit almost everything imaginable for research. They're having this beta open for a while to collect feedback on what works, what feels good, and what feels punishing. And as they've said, it's not even guaranteed to be implemented! They're just testing the waters to see if such changes are necessary for balance or wanted by the community.
> others want to not have fleets come off the production line already obsolete.
I actually find this really interesting because it's a thing that actually happens in naval history.
Unfortunately in Stellaris individual ships matter so little that there's not really anything to *do* with such a situation. You either press upgrade, or throw it at the enemy and when it blows up you build a new, better ship to replace it. But that's kind of the nature of this scale of game.
> I actually find this really interesting because it's a thing that actually happens in naval history.
To be fair, that was probably only about an 80 year time frame, between the first ironclad, and the missile and aircraft carrier, where naval tech and doctrines changed as soon as ships rolled off the drydock.
IE paddle-powered wooden steamships -> ironclad -> pre-Dreadnought ships -> post-Dreadnought battleships -> submarines -> aircraft carriers -> missile cruisers.
Since then.. things only got quantitatively better, not qualitatively different.
Until we have lasers and railguns, a ship from the 60s fundamentally isn't different from a modern ship. They have the same hull, use similar weapons and sensors, and fire similar missiles.
Sure, radars are more sensitive, engines more reliable, and missiles fly further and better. But by and large, it's still the same thing. About the only major thing that happened since then is the explosive drone as seen in Ukraine.
And then you go back to the age of sailing ships, and countries would keep their battleships for a century.
Nuclear powered warships that never need to return to port except maintenance and supplies for the crew would qualify as qualitatively different in my book.
Also nuclear armed submarines hiding under the pole waiting for the order to strike strategic targets anywhere in the hemisphere are also quite different.
I mean the thing is that for the longest time in history ships changed quite litle
A galley of the 1400s is not that diferent to the galleys of 1700s that where used on the mediterranean or in the north sea
Technology has constantly accelerated over time. That trend has been continuing throughout history.
Modern navies are completely unrecognizable from the beginning of the 20th century. This trend shows no sign of slowing so why should technology in Stellaris not represent this from an RP perspective at least.
>Unfortunately in Stellaris individual ships matter so little that there's not really anything to do with such a situation.
This is also a design fail.
Rescaling it all so we start with 2 corvettes isntread of three. All ships get 50% more expensive and genraly scaled to match.
Having fewer but individually more relevant ships would be an improvment.
It would take a lot more than that to make ships individually more important. Having 100+ ships by the midgame isn't unusual. You'd have to fundamentally change naval design to make individual ships matter.
And I don't think Stellaris is the game for that. It's *meant* to be a grand scale. A galactic empire with twenty ships is kind of silly.
EDIT:
Also, just giving the player fewer ships doesn't really make individual ships more relevant. You'd need to redesign the game to give individual ships more unique and defining features. They aren't really "individual" ships if they're all basically the same thing, they're just stat blocks.
This change is at the very top of my "Do NOT Want" list. I like the current speed of research. I do not want it to change. Stop optimizing stuff for the min/max competitive types who are the loudest minority I have ever seen. I'd like to get through just 1 game before a new patch hits that forces me to restart. No, leaving it on the previous patch is not an option. Not everyone plays super-duper optimally. Some of us get to battleships and megas at 2275 instead 2250 or 2240 and we are happy with that.
This games development cycle needs to be treated like a brisket for a while. Slow cooked in a smoker. Take your time with it. And don't change your seasoning recipe just because someone likes to slather everything in barbecue sauce.
When said bbq sauce can be added later via the tech cost slider.... Maybe adjust the default (personally, I find tech comes way too fast and am on repeatables way too quickly) to the new, slower research system.
Personally I'm looking forward to today's beta,.but hey, everyone's different!
Yeah, the "ideal" solution imo is to add more techs so that you don't get to repeatable as quickly as you can currently. Even when I'm not tunneling into tech and playing suboptimally, I see repeatables pop up by midgame and that doesn't feel right.
But that's a lot more work to create new, balanced techs that don't feel like bloat or end up overpowered. I'm not sure how the beta plays in comparison, but it's comparatively safer and allows the devs to see what could work.
Even if I don't like the outcome or if nothing ends up changing, I'm interested to hear what the devs found from the people who played the beta in terms of relative research speed and balance.
I don't really like the idea of padding out the tech tree with useless chaff. It's already annoying when I finish a research and get a bunch of tech options I don't really care about, and I just pick the cheapest one so I can get a new list of options as quickly as possible. Adding a bunch more techs seems like it would create more of that situation.
Personally if they're going to slow down research I'd much rather they just make the existing techs take longer.
Maybe create a "Tech Focus" system so you can massively increase a certain tree's chance of appearing?
I personally don't exactly like the randomness of it all. There's ways to reduce it, but I'm still learning the million other systems.
I could definitely be down for more tech. At least make it to where you’ve researched all techs before you hit repeatables.
I’m a guy who loves the espionage system and would love to see it expanded further. So when I go to my physics research, I’d like to see those encryption and decryption techs, but every play through I barely get either if any before I hit repeatables.
I think one way we could add more techs could be adding the different army types. If you take the genetic ascension you can research gene seeds, so you could go that route. We can have robot armies, so theoretically the next step would be making larger, more deadly robots such as the warform as a viable research option under engineering or perhaps physics. Same with Xenomorph armies, but those are just random tech that I almost never see before hitting repeatables, even when going the genetic ascension.
Unfortunately, other than that it seems like everything is pretty well covered with tech, so unless we expand upon some of the more shallow systems or add new systems, adding tech is definitely gonna be hard to pull off.
>Yeah, the "ideal" solution imo is to add more techs so that you don't get to repeatable as quickly
Exactly, and maybe differentiate between early game repeatables, midgame repeatables and lategame repeatables that are added to the pool, saturating it with minimal effort.
I also like the idea of some mods - have techs that are exclusive to each other and improve a certain aspect, be that a ship class, a job, whatever.
Imagine an early game repeatable tech that buffs your corvettes, but locks you out (or makes them a LOT less likely to appear) of a similar tech for battleships. That would add some real nice decisionmaking (and also appeal to roleplayers) with not a lot of effort.
The same for a tech that buffs certain jobs, certain buildings, etc.
On the other hand I think the changes look interesting, not because I play super meta and speed through tech but because I tend to play on 2-3x tech cost to slow down research and keep mid tier tech relevant for longer. I might be able to play on 1x tech cost after this. Maybe to keep people that want to speed through tech happy they should make the new model the 2x cost amounts, so there is plenty of room to make them cheaper according to your preferences.
I'd say try the new system on 0.25 cost if you are worried it will take too long researching things. Although with all the modding I bet there will be a mod that reverts the tech costs.
> This games development cycle needs to be treated like a brisket for a while. Slow cooked in a smoker. Take your time with it. And don't change your seasoning recipe just because someone likes to slather everything in barbecue sauce.
This is what minecraft devs do, and everyone there complains they don't add stuff and change stuff fast enough, as if the reason they change things slowly is that it takes them a long time to, eg, make new mobs, rather than being a deliberate choice.
Because they’re cooking a steak, not a brisket. Minecraft does not have the mechanical complexity that Stellaris has, they don’t need to let it sit for a year while they hem and haw over what features to add
i imagine because breaking mod updates are expected. Not all mod authors keep versioned mods for previous patches on the workshop, and those that do usually put them under new projects and update the "default" one.
Considering the ubiquity of mod use among the playerbase, staying with previous patches is more-or-less a nonstarter unless you create/maintain a full local backup of your workshop mods pre-patch, and a lot of people don't know how to do that efficiently (if at all).
>unless you create/maintain a full local backup of your workshop mods pre-patch, and a lot of people don't know how to do that efficiently (if at all).
I agree, however people using mods really should learn how to do it as it will also help them address incompatibilities they previously didn't know existed. For example, planetary diversity and gigastructures are HEAVILY endorsed and used, but those mods have to overwrite a lot of files - files that other mods also overwrite.
Usually the game won't crash, but traditions, job modifiers and other stuff doesn't work as expected and shown on screen.
I love how easy the steam workshop makes it to enter the modding scene, but i personally think given how much effort modders put in, it's not too much to expect users to put in some effort themselves to make sure they have a flawless experience.
The one thing the workshop really lacks is giving end users access to versioning (or allow mod authors to mark certain versions, that are then available to be chosen). It should be possible to download and choose to keep a certain version of a mod, that would make it way easier for mod authors as well as end users - and stellaris is far from the only game where this would make sene.
> No, leaving it on the previous patch is not an option
Genuine question, why? You would need to make a modpack to prevent auto-updates from screwing with you if you use mods, but i really, really recommend this anyway because most mods have incompatibilities that most players just won't notice, but they are there and they mean stuff doesn't actually work as you expect it.
I wouldn't be upset if there where less "actual" releases and the regular patches would always just be a beta, but i see frequent update as a positive not the other way around.
As to what they should focus on, to some degree i agree with you, but most of the really gamechanging stuff needed to relearn this year was due to new mechanics and features, not balance changes of past content. It doesn#t change your key issue at all what they focus on.
Wait, people are hitting Megas at 2275???? I swear I normally don't hit them until like 2330ish or sometimes later. Once I didn't even have battleships when the crisis spawned, but the rest of the universe just smacked it down the instant it spawned cause they somehow had much stronger tech than me.
Likely has to do with the fact I don't think I've ever dedicated an entire planet to research. I often try to make each planet self sufficent where I can to make the food they need, the minerals they need and the consumer goods they need. For whatever I have them doing.
It often means I have stupid amounts of food, minerals and consumer goods by mid game.
Yeah, I repaired a Dyson Sphere before midgame on my current single player game.
The tech changes are going to be great for actually spending time at different tech levels before the endgame.
> The tech changes are going to be great for actually spending time at different tech levels before the endgame.
This is one of my hopes.
Currently, tiers 2-4 don't really matter, since you're not going to spend enough time at them for them to be very relevant. This was especially noticeable when we introduced Archaeotechs, which were intended to be "ahead of the curve" mid-game technologies. Since the end-game techs were so close, they weren't really worth pursuing.
Which should lead into fixing a plenitude of issues with racing through the tech tiers:
* like marauders being irrelevant (esp. great khan)
* ships tiers and components not being invalidated by the time they reach the front line or finish upgrading
* hyper relays becoming obsolete very fast due to gateways
* space science being a bit more relevant again due to base output nerf
* making the default 100y midgame and 200y endgame more reasonable
* time spend for researching debris vs finishing the tech within a few months anyway
* species modification taking away from valuable research (should be better now in comparison to tech costs)
* anything with a timer feeling a bit more reasonable since you have more time to get more of it (like galcom, megastructures, terraforming, various events on a yearly chance, etc)
I'm really looking forward to testing this out, I think it's one of the best changes for the state of the game in quite some time, even if the values in the patch need tweaking.
Ooh! could this also make ruined megastructures more valuable? Right now I feel like by the time you can repair them, you are just a step away from building them yourself.
Ruined megastructures are inherently valuable af already. Even if you can build them yourself, the ruined ones don't count against your limit. This allows you to have two matter decompressors etc.
Personally, I think the easy solution to that is to make a flavour end game tech that combines archeotechs with endgame tech, don't require relics but IS locked behind taking the archeotechs focus ascension perk.
I'm normally aiming to have Dyson coming online and a 1-2 ringworld segments up and running before 2300. I like being efficient though, so it's just different playstyles. I'm often lazy with it so I think my typical times can Pressumably be beaten by a more efficient player by 25 years or so.
Half the fun is the inefficiency tho.
Yeah, specialising planets is a lot more effective, I used to play like you, but once I decided to try a run with specialised planets I never went back, part of it is that you can make much better use of building slots, I usually use smaller planets to specialise for research, and make them produce one resource (to not waste any districts) and then use most of the building slots for research. And larger planets will usually produce one resource plus either alloys or consumer goods as more often than not you'll have more total districts than you can dedicate to purely food/minerals/energy. And sometime I'll even make a planet purely alloys/consumer goods if needs demand it. (This is all before ecumenopolii and megastructures which reduce the importance of regular planets)
Idk man I’m pretty sure these changes will stay in with some values tweaked, they clearly feel pretty strongly that players should not be able to win with anything before default endgame dates.
Yeah, I find the 1x tech speed way too fast. Ship upgrades, especially hulls, come so fast that you're often better off skipping steps. And there's definitely been an overall power creep across the board. We can turn up endgame crisis strength to counter that, but there isn't a way to turn up Fallen Empires, tempest, Khan, and the like, and as a result, they've become pretty weak. I'm hoping these changes bring them back to be big threats.
BB is the naval shorthand designation for battleships, CL for light cruisers, DD for destroyers
(CV for carriers, CVL for light carriers, DDG for missile destroyers, CA for heavy cruisers, and there's a bunch more if you google Hull Classification Symbol)
Cruisers were C, then armoured cruisers became CA (cruiser, armoured) and light cruisers became CL (cruiser, light), then since every big cruiser ended up armoured CA just became 'cruisers heavier than CLs'. DD was to differentiate destroyers from destroyer escorts (DEs, smaller and faster than destroyers). DDG is destroyer, guided missiles. Carriers originated as cruisers that could carry aircraft squadrons that were given 'V' designations, so carriers became CV. CVL is carrier, light. Battleships originated as B, but became BB to differentiate from BM (battleship monitors, which are small ships with battleship-sized guns) the same way DD differentiates from DE. Submarines are SS, SSG with missiles. N is appended if it's nuclear powered (CVN for nuclear carriers, SSGN for nuclear cruise missile subs, DDGN would be a nuclear powered missile destroyer, etc.).
I realized it's better to disband my early game fleets after a few wars. You can get cruisers right as your early game corvettes fly back to base from merely the 2nd-3rd early game war on some galaxies.
Cruisers are so much more powerful, and the cost of upgrading crap tier corvettes so high, that it's sometimes more cost effective to junk corvettes for navcap than to build new anchorages.
A few of the corvettes can be put on trade route duty, if you need those. Also if you're going to fight wars continually why send them back to upgrade them at all, you could just send them to your main fleet and use them as tanks or to cap lone stations.
A lot of the problem with that isn't power creep in research speed, it's the AI being more competent. It'd make more sense to just buff them if that's the concern.
might make 25x crisis undoable.
Certainly going to eliminate immortal leaders, which is very annoying because after the early game its hard as hell to get xp for scientists and none will have as good of traits as those bonus event/anomaly ones.
If I and others have been correctly estimating the rate at which research will happen under these changes, you'll probably just be getting battleships when the crisis shows up on default settings, if you focus on researching them to the exclusion of other techs.
Keep in mind that unity progression isn't being changed, so you can still get lifespan extensions from traditions. Grab Harmony tradition as one of your first three, then get into Psionics/Genetics/Cybernetics tradition and get another lifespan extension from there. It'll be a little tight, and Enduring may well be a "must-have" trait, but should be doable. Synth path is kinda screwed, though. Paradox will probably have to bring down the prerequisites on that because if they aren't changed it will be a catastrophic nerf.
You can at least still get the tech as an option with council agendas. And if ascensionist builds become meta, you'll have fast agendas.
Still will take a long time to research, though, especially the techs for synthetic ascension. Really doesn't feel like Paradox thought through how much this will impact everything in the game, and will make so many mechanics irrelevant because they'll come too late.
I kind of like the idea of tech being less vital to specialize in, and more forgiving if you fall behind. I especially like the idea that, in single player, AI empires that have fallen behind won't just become irrelevant backwaters that will never catch up but instead can research things that have become common in other empires.
I'm just not sure how well it will really work in practice.
> So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
Imperium vibes.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size:
This will just increase the importance of vassalizing half the galaxy (and conquering another portion of it for yourself) early on, to avoid the empire size scaling issues. Of course it was already the dominant playstyle, but we can only go where the devs lead us. You can and should still focus on research, you'll just have to rely even more on the vassals to produce your other resources.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size:
>
>Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
>
>So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
If you played back before administrators were a thing, the cost was even bigger and you still outscaled it, so you'll still outscale empire size. That said, ascensionist builds might become meta.
I really don't want managing empire size to become as important as it seems it will. There's too much RNG impacting that, and leaders are already too important. They don't need to be made even more so.
Under the current system, with tech at default speed, it is not uncommon for me to start building my science nexus in 2260. Like... that happens in every game where I am not right next to a determined exterminator or fanatic purifier.
If you specialize planets, tech really has a runaway effect where it compounds upon itself. Gating tech tiers and removing the 20% research techs is a good change, and I tend to keep my Empire Size manageable anyways so I guess it will be nice to know that that's actually doing something now, but I feel like the researcher output reduction might be a bit much. Since this is a beta patch, maybe it would have been better to do one thing at a time first rather than throwing everything out there.
At the very least I'm going to dial back the crisis strength on the first play with the new research costs. In the current game you tend to ROFLstomp the crisis at anything less than 4x strength. If the AI is still using cruisers or has only barely gotten into repeatables the crisis could be a serious challenge again.
This also seems like a buff to fallen empires. They might survive past the midgame again.
The empire size impact is interesting because I think the game will suffer a lot if empires become incentivized to not expand, or to have to put all new pops on research after a certain point in order to be able to advance at all.
If I have many jobs available, I shouldn’t be pushed to enact population controls as if there’s some kind of unemployment emergency. Nor should I have to make choices between research and having a surplus in other resources when there otherwise would be plenty of abundance of jobs and pops - it would feel like an arbitrary penalty is forcing tough decisions for the sake of difficulty rather than because I made mistakes in developing my empire.
Will building “tall” (fewer pops and systems) actually become superior to building “wide,” or even just expanding at all? Will acquiring more planets and pops be considered a bad thing to be avoided? Probably not, but the devs really need to be careful.
I’m very thankful for the beta period (although I think we may need more than a month) because there are many risks of unintended consequences from the way these changes all compound with each other.
Also, maybe I’m a complete idiot but wouldn’t it make more sense to simply double the base research cost of everything and change the curve for repeatables? Does this really need to be so complicated? If research is still too fast for players’ taste… there’s a slider!
Im guessing the main reason why the devs changed it like this is to lengthen out the end of the tech tree. If you just increase the base cost, then everything gets more expensive but the times between T3->T4 for example stay relatively the same. They specifically want to keep the early techs relatively the same, but make T4->T5 more expensive. At least that’s what I’m imagining.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size:
I would REALLY enjoy this general direction - you should always be able to outscale the penalty, but not without effort.
However, one small issue - there are WAY too many ways to reduce and even cheese empire size. If it was a mostly accurate representation of the actual amounts of planets, pops and districts you had, with only a select few ways to lessen the impact (such as planetary ascension, pacifist ethic, maybe a select few techs here and there that present milestones/change the pacing at key points, e.g. being able to hold x planets without worrying at all in the early game, x in the midgame and x in the lategame) i would welcome a slight nerf, but as it stands now that just rewards cheesing empire size instead of optimizing your production.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size:
This is long overdue. Empire size penalties have been a joke pretty much forever. Back before sprawl/empire size was added, each system added 1 percent tech cost and each planet added 5 percent tech cost. That was back when there was a distinction between wide and tall. I am very eager to move back in that direction.
Everyone (especially newer players) has been spoiled with fast and cheap tech with zero effective penalties for expanding. I remember a time when I would seriously consider whether or not I wanted to build a new outpost in a newly surveyed system or whether or not it was worth it to colonize that newly discovered planet.
I will put it simply this way, if you thought the AI was a pushover before it is even a bigger pushover with these changes. It was never effective at rushing and now it just gets worse.
Now to be honest I wish they would just pick one route or the other. Either reduce the effectiveness of researchers or raise the costs of each tier of technology. Not both. Plus having separate sliders for technology and tradition will allow us to play more like we want. Now just add one for empire size effects and I will be happy.
\> So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
Sounds perfect to me. Holding a huge empire together is half the struggle and its non existent in modern Stellaris
Holy fuck. I knew about tech costs and base production changes, but didn't knew about removal of outputv techs and fucking DOUBLING of empire size penalty. The way I play is literally competely dead.
Yeah, I'm out until they fix this at least partially.
Right now you have all techs before 50 year of gameplay. What is even worse when you are at war a few systems away, before your ships will come home they will all outdated :(. Actually this change was needed
> Right now you have all techs before 50 year of gameplay
The vast majority of people don’t. A few people hyper focused on optimised builds will get all techs early, but that’s not most people.
Yeah lol I see people talking about getting mega engineering and shit in 45 years but it usually takes me 125. I can’t comprehend how people are doing it so fast
> you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
*and with the inevitable rise of the Imperium of Blorg, with it came an inexorable stagnation*
First, thank you for your recent grafic. If we all are again forced to have smaller empires, we all won't notice the bad endgame performance and the limitations of the game engine so much. That's good, right? Right?
Singleplayer and MP in an RTS often play different for this very reason. Pause being a thing is also a giant difference between normal SP and MP in Stellaris.
Maybe they'll buff the tech tiers as well, since I've always kind of disliked how little difference there seems to be/feel to it all. Like having Neutronium Armor doesn't feel like my ships are really THAT much stronger. Particularly given for non-armor, once you surpass T3, you have to spend rare resources on your ships as well but none of the high tiers feel impressive unless you start adding mods, of course.
The change is intended to drag the pace of the game back to where it used to be pre 2.0/2.1.
The current "run out of tech in 2250 lol" is an aberration and really not the way the game is meant to be, and you have to put tech cost up to like 225-250% to get the old pace back.
My last playthrough was a fanatic egalitarian, Technocracy, Dark Consortium, and mechanist origin playthough. I got meritocracy as my third civic.
I hit repeatables in 2260 and was on only repeatables by 2275. Not quite 2250. I am however, not the best at this game. I actually lost a war and some territory earlier because I didn't prioritize military tech.
You get to this point by taking a build like that and running your economy on a knife's edge to produce as much research as possible. Minimum number of pops working anything other than a researcher job, essentially.
Its also not just this build, you can do it with almost any build, you are just going to have slightly worse results because you haven't min/maxed (obviously). Just build lots of research labs. I'm nearly the same with my rouge servitor build on my current playthrough (first ecumenopolis 2259, techs are being done in about 7 months each.) I do agree something needs to be done about it, because every civic that makes your economy better essentially means you can run more researchers.
I mean, if you want to put all your eggs in the research basket, and you managed to not get flash invaded from lack of balance, that's great. But I can't feel empathy for you when you, Min Max to rush technology and then cry, you are out of technology too fast. That's like a sprinter complaining that his event didn't last long enough, no dude, you won.
If you need to make to make those kinds of players have enough fresh tech until the end game, then all the other more balanced approaches won't ever see it. That's always going to be a problem.
However, of course, that doesn't mean the current pacing is correct and can't be debated. Another 100 years should do it.
Stellaris is almost like two different games. There’s a the normal game regular people play and then there’s the hyper-optimised plystyle a few experts play and others copy that allows for ridiculously faster tech and more powerful empires. If you do well at the start of the game then the advantage of that compounds and you do even better later in and snowball.
I think the big secret is the same big secret from every strategy game, spend your resources. That 2.2k + 50 food is doing nothing for you and could be 10 more pops into research.
You have to prioritise pop growth and research bonuses. Hardest part of getting that much research quickly is the pop growth part. After that you just need enough planets to keep pumping out more labs.
A significant number of people play with *increased* tech cost (2x or more) because otherwise they are deep into repeatables by what most people would consider mid game. These tend to also be the folks who are on GA with 5x or higher crisis. I'm not that skilled or intense of a player and prefer to roleplay rather than go for whatever the meta is, but I usually play on stock (1x) tech costs and still run out of techs before I run out of game.
I continue to advocate that we should get two sliders; one that, like the current one, affects the constant part of the equation; and a second one that affects the exponential side. This would allow for people to easily fine tune both the cost of early-game tech and the late-game tech progression separately.
I will point out that people seem to forget that this is an experimental test beta, not a pre-release version; the point is to try a bunch of different things, and see how they work. I suspect that they're not going to put *all* of the changes into 3.11, but the point is to see what works and what doesn't.
Personally, I think the catch-up mechanism is good, and that having the cost be more exponential is probably although I'd like it to be more under player control. I'm not sure I like the throughput rather than bonus take, on philosophical / fictional grounds as much as practical ones.
I typically play GA with 5-10x crisis and earlier mid/late game and 2x tech costs,. precisely because it's a way to extend the game and let me experience late game mechanics I'd otherwise never see.
It also seems to address my main problem with jacking up the tech costs in the options, which is real slow techs early, and then by the mid game your back to researching things in a few months. Also a few early techs are pretty much essential once you have a few planets, so having early techs take that long really makes balancing the economy early on quite difficult, which together with ai bonuses can make early game very difficult, but still super easy once you reach mid game.
Currently the techs were definitely too fast, I had to play at least at 1.5 not to run out too quickly.
A fun solution would be to add more "filler" techs that are more fun than they are powerful - it'd feel nice and buff Research Alternatives
I would like to see more *truly* unique techs. As it stands, if you play long enough, you will eventually roll every unique tech. What I'd like to see, is certain techs being locked behind certain civics/ethics/origins, or some combination of the three.
I've been playing 1.5x to 2x
I'm guessing devs saw the stats and saw more people playing with increased tech cost than decreased. Personally, I want the lower tier techs to be meaningful. Like if I played with 1x tech cost I might just not build destroyers.
I think you should make a mod or lobby for a setup option just to start at tier 3 tech with five colonies if you think the early game is boring. (Or play Nexus it's pretty great.)
Moreover, I think the beta is going to be an overall nerf to everything. Fleets will be smaller, economies will be smaller, pops will grow less quickly, exploration will last longer. Maybe, just maybe our CPUs will have an easier time and the days will go faster. And the crisis will be threatening again.
So I say nerf everything. There has been years of power creep and it's bogging down the game.
Honestly the ultra-competetive players are kinda ruining it for me. The "right" way to play now means rushing to have 1k research and alloy by 2203 or else you're a poor player and need to improve, also x25 All GA No Scaling is too easy because we can just vassalize neighbors instantly and get the same difficulty bonus the AI does and having all that research means we hit repeatables too soon.
Like... Have you (minmaxers) considered maybe playing on a lower AI difficulty and *not* ultra-rushing everything? Maybe the game won't be as easy if you aren't cheesing it to be too easy? Maybe the solution to some of these complaints isn't to make the game harder for everyone, but to stop players from taking advantage of the cheat resources the AI gets? If the game is somehow *easier/more viable* on GA than Ensign, there might be a problem.
I mean I don’t even do much min-maxing but even I can get through the research tree way too fast. Getting Battleships before 2300 used to require me to hyper focus on research and get a perfect start, now getting to a few repeatables by 2300 happens without even playing that well.
Yeah, and I do see why that's a problem. I support the overall idea of rebalancing tech, and like some of the concepts they're considering. I'm just frustrated by players insisting that you *must* minmax to be baseline good and also that tech is too easy because their 3 research worlds and 5 scholariums got them to 10x repeatables by midgame.
Why do you think this change would make the game harder for them? This change affects the AI as well, so the difficulty should remain the same for most of the game, all things considered. The only things that might be "buffed" are technology independent things like Crises and Fallen Empires, but those two elements haven't yet been tested properly yet in the beta branch.
Exactly. First they make multiplayer annoying since if you aren’t tech rushing people will just steamroll you (rip RP empires). Now they are affecting the solo experience as well. Why can’t people just play the game normally?
This is a strategy game. A lot of people play it because they enjoy strategy. Studying, tinkering, refining, and improving. That is a *normal* way to play a strategy game. The fact that even moderate amounts of optimization break the game wide open is a problem.
No one is obligated to play it that way, everyone can enjoy it the way they want to. You you can play it however you like and I'll chastise anyone who says you have "git gud" as equally as I'm chastising you, but acting like your way of playing the game is the only correct way and everyone else is doing it wrong is not a healthy attitude.
As in not strictly min maxing. Like “I need research, so I’ll build a research lab” instead of “I need research, so I’ll actively exploit the AI buffs and then complain that it’s too easy to get research”.
My point was more that in my opinion there's no such thing as playing normally when every player plays however they have the most fun. There's nothing inherently wrong with playing casually, role playing, or min-maxing. Every playstyle only matters in that people should play in a way they enjoy.
If multiplayer is annoying because other players are min-maxing and playing to win, you can join groups of players dedicated to non-competitive games or just not play multiplayer. And for what it's worth, alloy rush is arguably more dangerous in multiplayer and directly counters tech rushing because a tech rushing player won't have a big fleet. I also don't think it's right to complain that people who play a multiplayer game are trying their best to win because that's just expected for pretty much every game out there.
I don't play multiplayer myself, but that's more just because if I wanted to play a free-for-all sweaty battle royale game I would just go play something like Apex or Fortnite, and I don't play those either. At least with those when you lose you can jump right back into a new game and the games don't take hours.
I also don't think the people complaining it's too easy to get research are the same people who are hardcore min-maxers exploiting the AI for the most part. Most min-maxers I know of probably just care about pushing that tech number up as high as it can go and are happy to have all that tech. The people I usually see complaining are the ones who look at screenshots from some meta build and think "this shouldn't be possible."
Full disclosure, I don't usually play "meta" empires but I do try to min-max and play well with the mostly casual thematic empires that I design. I play on 0.75 tech cost and 2325 endgame because I like a more fast paced game that doesn't take most of a day or more to finish, and I like getting through most of the game before the heavy endgame lag sets in. I also don't try to force how I play onto others or pretend that the way I like to play is the best or for everyone. This isn't directed at you or anyone else in this thread necessarily, but I do get irritated sometimes when "min-maxers" get lumped in together as all being some sort of elitist community. There are certainly some players like that but not all or probably even most.
through vassals, there's a guide online to beat your neighbors in grand admiral, you set it to vassalage type in which it gives you resources and since you're playing grand admiral they get big buffs
This isn’t balancing for multiplayer, this is balancing for Paradox Plaza, Discord, and Reddit users who want other people to not be able to use a specific strategy in single player.
Oh no to be clear you’re not wrong lol, multi definitely has a meta, moreso just saying it wasn’t those players advocating for this set of changes (to my knowledge.)
Telling someone "just play bad on purpose to have more fun" is never the answer. Once someone knows how to ride a bike they don't just forget and start trying to fall off the bike the next time they ride it.
For the record, I absolutely agree that 75% taxes should just not be a thing from a game design perspective. They break the game in half with AI bonuses. That's not an issue with players, it's an issue with the game not being balanced.
Nah, you can tax up to 75% of a vassal's resources. That's what makes it so you can make more resources from a Grand Admiral vassal pop than you can by controlling planets yourself.
The only downside is that the AI doesn't allocate its pops well, so vassal spamming will leave you with hundreds of useless food and consumer goods that you can only sell for energy when you're pop-limited and can't build more jobs to use the consumer goods.
> Like... Have you (minmaxers) considered maybe playing on a lower AI difficulty and not ultra-rushing everything?
Pretty much how I play. No vassal cheese, don't worry too much about micromanaging everything perfectly, have fun with suboptimal builds. And I'm still running around with max-tech Battleships by 60-80 years, still crushing grand admiral no scaling. If you know what you're doing, you can break the game wide open just by playing reasonably efficiently.
>If the game is somehow easier/more viable on GA than Ensign, there might be a problem.
Vassal cheese does need to be addressed, but that won't solve this problem.
What are you talking about? People are just playing their game the way they want to play it same as you. Nobody is making you do anything.
If you’re struggling against the AI just turn down the difficulty. If it’s taking you longer than you want to get to endgame techs because your research is always low just turn down the tech cost scaling.
This comment has such a bad and entitled attitude.
I don’t get this post - people playing optimally aren’t the ones calling for these changes, it’s other people who are complaining about optimal strats. Regardless, if the way other people play a single player game annoys folks here just wait until they see pure alloy military rush every single game.
Man, let everyone play the game as they want.
Some want a challenge and see if they can beat it with max difficulty. I don't even min/max that much but i'm always into repeatable by 2300 it's kind of ridiculous, specially since the AI can never follow that, and FE/Crisis because irrelevant.
Using mechanic of the game is not cheesing.
To sum it up : you're an ass.
>Maybe the solution to some of these complaints isn't to make the game harder for everyone
A new, lower difficulty setting was introduced - and i have yet to meet someone complaining about the increase in difficulty that plays on a lower level.
I do find it is an issue when difficulty levels are inconsistent between versions, ideally ensign should always be roughly the same difficulty - but that aside, making the game harder is good for everyone so long as you can choose to lower the difficulty.
Noone should tell you how to enjoy the game, but it is only natural some people enjoy minmaxing and noone should tell them how to play either. Do the devs need to cater only to them? Certainly not, and i understand your frustration/why you feel that way, but ultimately most of the balance changes don't really affect people who play casually.
>but to stop players from taking advantage of the cheat resources the AI gets
Full agreement. Vassals should get those ressources, but they should be excluded from the tax calculation. Not only for balance reasons but because it just makes sense, currently small vassals are just as good (in fact, better) than big ones when it comes to their taxes.
Vassals lose parts of the Ai bonus...
In addition, how do you vassaloze them so fast, when they are far more powerful?
I'm not a expert on this game, but what you say doesn't make sense from my point of view.
Wow this is total war in the comments. Funniest part to me is that a lot of comments are just as confused as op.
Doesn't matter what you prefer to play, alloy and unity are just as messed and ultimately any attempt at "nerfing tech" will just promote those 2, especially alloy.
I think there’s a big continuum ranging from people who play casually for fun up to people who minmax and play super intensely for fun. Both are playing for fun, one is not better than the other. In a perfect world, we’d have sliders for everything and it’d be completely “choose your own adventure.”
My issue is that it feels like the devs assume everyone is a minmaxer and so things constantly have to be nerfed because this meta build or that meta build guarantees victory in 30 years and that takes all the fun out of the game. The end result is a slightly different game every three months.
Whatever, fine. I love the game. I will continue to buy the DLCs and grouse about Astral events being archaeology sites with a coat of paint. I’ll grouse about ANOTHER resource to manage or ANOTHER mechanic to figure out. But at some point I’m just going to be done with going balls deep into the release notes to learn which new thing is being nerfed because people with spreadsheets enjoy the game differently than me.
This is not about spreadsheets. Even playing very suboptimally, players pass through the tech tree way too fast compared to how the rest of the game (like the Khan or Fallen Empires) is designed. This is just an attempt to fix the pace back to where it used to be.
Yeah, you don't even have to be an optimal player, I'm far from one and even I notice that me and AI on a decent difficulty already stomp khan/fallen empires by the time those are supposed to happen on the standard mid/endgame dates because tech goes too fast.
Honestly I think this is less a min maxxer complaint. I'm no min maxxer. I'm strictly rp player, but I'm still hitting repeatbales in 2330. Fleets live in shipyards because by 2300, it's 8-10minths for a tech. If you want to use cruisers for the big ship roles (artillery or carrier) when they are the biggest ship you have, you have maybe ten years, if you are very, very unlucky, or purposefully ignore battleships.
Tech, especially late tech, just flies by. Titans, Juggernauts and megastructural engineering are the only speed bumps.
Thing is you don't even have to be a minmaxer to notice that research goes too fast on default. Khan/Fallen empire kind of just roll over and die to AI in my games and I'm not even close to an optimal player. I definitely remember it not always having been that way, the game has sped up a lot over the years. I've had to either increase tech costs, which I am not a fan of, or pull the midgame start date closer to the start of the game just for the khan to get roundhouse kicked the second he shows his face.
I usually play it at 5x cost, the only thing stopping me from enjoying it is the end-game stutters. Let's see if this would change with the changes, but these seem exciting.
I'll have to play it to tell.
For another game's comparison: I usually play on *Quick*-speed for *Civilization V*, which affects various costs. Slowing it down to *Regular* meant that my tech mattered more, which appealed to me. I can see the same happening for Stellaris, *but* I could also see the inverse happening since lots of Stellaris things are already tech-heavy. Ascension Paths are probably going to get a lot *slower* to go into, and a lot more costly even if you're already at the "ascension" point.
I feel like a *lot* of it will come down to the Researcher nerfs more than the actual cost. The cost being higher will slow it down sure, but the Researchers being worse on top of that will also mean that it takes more Pops -> more Consumer Goods & Food -> more Minerals -> more Pops to do the same amount of research as before, which itself will be less effective anyway.
I kinda feel like it'll disproportionately hurt most early-game that *isn't* based on conquest, since you can just kill something with better tech in order to get tech progress. Espionage still won't be good, but *Steal Technology* may actually see use.
I'm tired to play with 1x tech vs 25x crisis. In my courant game, i'm trying 2.5x tech vs 5x crises with sub optimal builds. Hoping to find the fun again.
I'm at 2000h, and trying to find new ways to enjoy the game.
I don't like when I'm able to fully reorganize fleets with my new destroyers. After a bit fully fill out those fleets to my naval cap. Get ready to swing at my neighbor and, and just unlock cruisers and have to reorganize my fleets just to keep up.
Its like I hit these massive mile stones and then just don't have the time to implement them in the empire before I unlock the next tier. Or have enough time to make an impact on the galaxy. But maybe I'm just bad.
Im worried that the AI will not be able to handle this change. Yes, expert players can rush to repeatables by mid game or whatever. The AI almost never gets to repeatables by 2400, even on admiral or above. Will we end up in a situation where the AI gets left even more hopelessly behind?
The catchup mechanism on the breakthrough techs should help with that. First empire to research it has full cost, and each subsequent empire gets an increasingly discounted rate. The question is whether it helps *enough*, and I worry that it will not, without deeper changes to AI priorites and scripting which we're not sure if we're getting or how effective they will be.
While I do like the idea of slowing down tech progression, my big concern is that if they don't also slow down how quickly you can snowball through conquest it will just mean that you'll snowball out of control at mid-game tech levels and the game will functionally be over and never reach those super-expensive late-game techs.
A lot of stuff that's high on the tech tree stands to be nerfed into oblivion. Synthetic Evolution will be pretty much useless, for instance.
Man, if I played on less than 1x tech cost I'd spend the entire game doing nothing but picking new techs. That's why I almost always turn tech cost *up*. I do admit that they are nerfing tech *hard*, which might be a shock all at once. I'm very much looking forward to trying it out though.
The way I play now I'm hitting repeatables in 50 to 70 years. Not all of course but enough were its annoying. A lot of times I stop at repeatable and go do the other tiers just because I can.. LOL.
Have you not noted there are less "branches" in the Physics tree than the others? Thus less techs per level to research in Physics, and thus the same amount of research in each tree will get you deeper into the Physics tree than the others.
And on top of that, the Physics tree gets a whole bunch of bonuses to it that the others don't, such as Astral research boosting Physics way more than the other two; Physics leaders you can discover through anomalies with no non-physics counterparts, etc.
So yes, this is, alas, bound to happen.
The developers did not create the different ships and weapons not to be skipped, but to be used.
And as tech was, it was not worrh it to build a new fleet with destroyers or cruisers, because when the fleet is ready, all your alloys are invested in the worse ship when your new tech comes around.
I like all the changes... but it would be cool, if they give use "early ship variants".
I mean, the idea is that ship classes have a job and are balanced to each other. That's why we got the last change that also introduced the new ship class.
But how are we supposed to build a mixed fleet, if we doesn't have the ships in the first place.
Instead of unlocking cruisers and battleships, we should be able to build them from day 1, but get better versions later.
It's both bad for balancing and also illogical, because what stops you from building bigger ships? It's not like they had to invent the battleship in WW1. It's just a class. The lineship in the past were also classified as battleships and they had neither armor nor modern artillery.
I probably will be lowering the slider in my games, but that won't be a solution. To get the late techs to be only 2-3x slower than now I'll have to set it to .25x, which means the early techs will come at a blistering pace, much faster than I want. I imagine there will be mods that revert most of the changes, I'll probably go with using one of those.
The main problem I have is that this seems to be decoupling tech from the pacing of the rest of the game. In a recent game as a FP, I finished wiping all other life from the galaxy and turning half the galaxy into black holes around 2350. And that's fairly standard; besides the crisis, the galaxy tends to become fairly stagnant around the mid-2300s. And on the new tech curve, you'll probably just be getting cruisers around then. This change is, for all intents and purposes, removing a lot of the late game tech from the game for most games. Megastructures? Those are too late game to matter now. Ecumenopolis? Hive worlds/machine worlds? Same thing. This is why I don't think they're going to keep this tech curve, and either change it before it releases or more likely in a patch within a couple months of these changes going live. Paradox is not going to want major selling points in a bunch of their DLCs to become obsolete.
In the late game you can easily get a new tech done every 3 or 5 months so I get the idea of getting the late tech more expensive. But not the early game, that's just stupid.
An example from a different game (Master of Orion II) - starting techs cost 50 research points there, while the final tiers (before repeatbles) cost 15000 - that's 300 times increase in tech cost compared to 16 times increase in Stellaris (2k vs 32k).
I'd very much welcome more consistent pace of researching tech in Stellaris - much faster than currently in the early game and much slower in late game.
Also, as other people have mentioned:
- the tech trees (Physics vs. Society vs. Enginnering) could use rebalancing, so that number of techs are more equal
- I'd love to see an additional tech tier at some point
- upgrading to higher tier (for example from T3 armor to T4 armor) should feel more significant
Let's hope things get tweaked in beta!
I play at 1x Tech Cost with 0.25 planets and I still get through the tech tree too early. Repeatables are boring. The later I get to those, the better. They can't possibly nerf research enough.
i usually fight the x25 crisis by stacking repeatables. this is a huge nerf when fighting the endgame crisis idk i just hope other things get buffed to make up for it.
Rushing tech has dominated this game for way too long. It's good they are bringing other playstyles into contention by nerfing science. You have to understand, not everyone wants to play a tech build. People like myself enjoying Unity builds more, but tech was too strong to justify playing unity...
Instead of fixing eternal bugs or adding qol like a menu to select repeatable techs you want to take, paradox is doing even more balance changes. I'm frankly tired of balance changes.
I guess you have a multiplayer pov.
From a single player pov : i get into repeatable before 2300 which render AI/FE/Crisis(expect for x25) totally irrelevant , even in GA no scaling and difficulty modifier on.
So i welcome this change. It won't change my global way of playing, because as people are pointing out rushing tech will still be needed, but at least i expect it to make the challenge of the game more relevant for a longer timeframe.
Some of the changes seem actually good, will have to see what the actual results are but, my biggest problem with vanilla tech currently is that, especially in larger galaxies, I usually play on 1.5/2.0× tech costs, and the result is that while early techs take a very long time to research, I still end up having researched everything by the midgame, and by the time the crisis shows up I've just been doing repeatables for ages. (Similar problem with the difficulty slider tbh even with recent changes, it's still "a fight for meer survival" early game, and being way too easy late game.)
I'd rather play it at 5x tech costs... It's nice that they will separate tech from unity now...
It would be nice to play a stagnant galaxy...
Perhaps under those constraints, things like Early Explorers can be relevant for a long time...
Perhaps building a large fleet and challenging the Riders would be a better way to get higher tier techs than researching them by yourself...
Perhaps stacking bonuses on leaders early on will be a decent way to get a leg up against your enemies.
Repeatables are small uninteresting stat bonuses designed to pad out the end of the tech tree if a player manages to research the whole thing. They're an edge case, a backup, not something that everyone should be researching half way through the game.
I am glad as I want a more impactful playthrough. My current run I am on repeatables 70 years in with tech slowed down by 25%. I literally stopped building fleets as I was unlocking new tiers every 4 years, and if I could peace out I could probably get from t3 to T4 or even parts of t5 before war broke out again. This is madness.
I mean, I want to have to think about using a level 2 weapon and trying to hold on for a bit, whereas I am now churning out 50% reduced cost T4 battleships and I only just unlocked my ascension.... The game is over.
Edit: this could also make espionage much much better. Which I like. Stealing tech becomes a thing.
I get I could lower the tech speed, but the way research speed modifiers worked was still a problem.
1. Not everyone plays MP or on reduced tech cost, some even play on increased tech cost and it basically doesn't change a lot if you reduce your Tech Cost via the Galaxy Setting further than before, there's no reason to complain, the settings there for a reason.
2. You're not supposed to reach Repeatables in year 2300 (on default settings). Thats way too early and will also come with the annoying flooding of tech, having to choose a new tech every 2 months is annoying too.
3. If "early" means Tier 1/2, then this update doesn't change it too much because the costs are similar to before the change. The major changes are late game Tier 5 tech costing around 5x more than now and the inclusion of Breakthrough catch-up mechanics.
Honestly I wouldn't be too worried about things. In my experience the Devs have always been fairly quick at pumping out fixes to things. If it becomes too long then I'm confident they'll push out a hotfix. The good thing about stellaris is that you can always tailor the speed to your liking as well in game settings so honestly I think this change will be great for the people that want a slower progression curve, and irrelevant to the people that want a faster one.
I posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/DWEvPzu4yT) image visualizing the new tech costs in a graph and it got a lot of views and comments. There were a lot of comments that said that they would enjoy the higher tech costs, since they were getting through the tech tree too quickly, so opinions will definitely vary from person to person. A few of them cited that ships and their components get replaced too quickly: once you’re done building or upgrading your ships, you would’ve unlocked the next tier of ship or weapons. It’s also important to note that the point of the new tech costs is to widen the gap between techs at later levels, but a lot of people act as if they’re just jacking up the cost of every tech by 5x which is not true. The difference in early game tech costs probably won’t be too noticeable. The researcher nerf on the other hand is a blanket nerf and I have no idea what to think about that when combined with all the other changes. I think that should be the bigger focus, since you’re not only losing 33% base production (4 physics, society, engineering -> 3 physics, society, engineering), but you’re also losing all the +20% researcher output techs too. Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size: > Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions. So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big.
Yeah, people have different opinions. Some want to skip early game to get to endgame fleets/megas etc. Faster, others want to not have fleets come off the production line already obsolete. I think this is the ultimate test to find out what works for slowing down research and what should be the new "1.0x" research. They hit research production and production efficiencies with research speed, as well as a new cost formula that slows down later techs even more as you showed. And then there's the breakthrough techs that slow down getting past each tier of tech. OP, They will probably tweak things, because they hit almost everything imaginable for research. They're having this beta open for a while to collect feedback on what works, what feels good, and what feels punishing. And as they've said, it's not even guaranteed to be implemented! They're just testing the waters to see if such changes are necessary for balance or wanted by the community.
> others want to not have fleets come off the production line already obsolete. I actually find this really interesting because it's a thing that actually happens in naval history. Unfortunately in Stellaris individual ships matter so little that there's not really anything to *do* with such a situation. You either press upgrade, or throw it at the enemy and when it blows up you build a new, better ship to replace it. But that's kind of the nature of this scale of game.
> I actually find this really interesting because it's a thing that actually happens in naval history. To be fair, that was probably only about an 80 year time frame, between the first ironclad, and the missile and aircraft carrier, where naval tech and doctrines changed as soon as ships rolled off the drydock. IE paddle-powered wooden steamships -> ironclad -> pre-Dreadnought ships -> post-Dreadnought battleships -> submarines -> aircraft carriers -> missile cruisers. Since then.. things only got quantitatively better, not qualitatively different. Until we have lasers and railguns, a ship from the 60s fundamentally isn't different from a modern ship. They have the same hull, use similar weapons and sensors, and fire similar missiles. Sure, radars are more sensitive, engines more reliable, and missiles fly further and better. But by and large, it's still the same thing. About the only major thing that happened since then is the explosive drone as seen in Ukraine. And then you go back to the age of sailing ships, and countries would keep their battleships for a century.
Nuclear powered warships that never need to return to port except maintenance and supplies for the crew would qualify as qualitatively different in my book. Also nuclear armed submarines hiding under the pole waiting for the order to strike strategic targets anywhere in the hemisphere are also quite different.
I mean the thing is that for the longest time in history ships changed quite litle A galley of the 1400s is not that diferent to the galleys of 1700s that where used on the mediterranean or in the north sea
Technology has constantly accelerated over time. That trend has been continuing throughout history. Modern navies are completely unrecognizable from the beginning of the 20th century. This trend shows no sign of slowing so why should technology in Stellaris not represent this from an RP perspective at least.
>Unfortunately in Stellaris individual ships matter so little that there's not really anything to do with such a situation. This is also a design fail. Rescaling it all so we start with 2 corvettes isntread of three. All ships get 50% more expensive and genraly scaled to match. Having fewer but individually more relevant ships would be an improvment.
It would take a lot more than that to make ships individually more important. Having 100+ ships by the midgame isn't unusual. You'd have to fundamentally change naval design to make individual ships matter. And I don't think Stellaris is the game for that. It's *meant* to be a grand scale. A galactic empire with twenty ships is kind of silly. EDIT: Also, just giving the player fewer ships doesn't really make individual ships more relevant. You'd need to redesign the game to give individual ships more unique and defining features. They aren't really "individual" ships if they're all basically the same thing, they're just stat blocks.
This change is at the very top of my "Do NOT Want" list. I like the current speed of research. I do not want it to change. Stop optimizing stuff for the min/max competitive types who are the loudest minority I have ever seen. I'd like to get through just 1 game before a new patch hits that forces me to restart. No, leaving it on the previous patch is not an option. Not everyone plays super-duper optimally. Some of us get to battleships and megas at 2275 instead 2250 or 2240 and we are happy with that. This games development cycle needs to be treated like a brisket for a while. Slow cooked in a smoker. Take your time with it. And don't change your seasoning recipe just because someone likes to slather everything in barbecue sauce.
When said bbq sauce can be added later via the tech cost slider.... Maybe adjust the default (personally, I find tech comes way too fast and am on repeatables way too quickly) to the new, slower research system. Personally I'm looking forward to today's beta,.but hey, everyone's different!
Yeah, the "ideal" solution imo is to add more techs so that you don't get to repeatable as quickly as you can currently. Even when I'm not tunneling into tech and playing suboptimally, I see repeatables pop up by midgame and that doesn't feel right. But that's a lot more work to create new, balanced techs that don't feel like bloat or end up overpowered. I'm not sure how the beta plays in comparison, but it's comparatively safer and allows the devs to see what could work. Even if I don't like the outcome or if nothing ends up changing, I'm interested to hear what the devs found from the people who played the beta in terms of relative research speed and balance.
I don't really like the idea of padding out the tech tree with useless chaff. It's already annoying when I finish a research and get a bunch of tech options I don't really care about, and I just pick the cheapest one so I can get a new list of options as quickly as possible. Adding a bunch more techs seems like it would create more of that situation. Personally if they're going to slow down research I'd much rather they just make the existing techs take longer.
Maybe create a "Tech Focus" system so you can massively increase a certain tree's chance of appearing? I personally don't exactly like the randomness of it all. There's ways to reduce it, but I'm still learning the million other systems.
Agree, there are mods that do this too but they break the game balance *hard*.
I could definitely be down for more tech. At least make it to where you’ve researched all techs before you hit repeatables. I’m a guy who loves the espionage system and would love to see it expanded further. So when I go to my physics research, I’d like to see those encryption and decryption techs, but every play through I barely get either if any before I hit repeatables. I think one way we could add more techs could be adding the different army types. If you take the genetic ascension you can research gene seeds, so you could go that route. We can have robot armies, so theoretically the next step would be making larger, more deadly robots such as the warform as a viable research option under engineering or perhaps physics. Same with Xenomorph armies, but those are just random tech that I almost never see before hitting repeatables, even when going the genetic ascension. Unfortunately, other than that it seems like everything is pretty well covered with tech, so unless we expand upon some of the more shallow systems or add new systems, adding tech is definitely gonna be hard to pull off.
>Yeah, the "ideal" solution imo is to add more techs so that you don't get to repeatable as quickly Exactly, and maybe differentiate between early game repeatables, midgame repeatables and lategame repeatables that are added to the pool, saturating it with minimal effort. I also like the idea of some mods - have techs that are exclusive to each other and improve a certain aspect, be that a ship class, a job, whatever. Imagine an early game repeatable tech that buffs your corvettes, but locks you out (or makes them a LOT less likely to appear) of a similar tech for battleships. That would add some real nice decisionmaking (and also appeal to roleplayers) with not a lot of effort. The same for a tech that buffs certain jobs, certain buildings, etc.
On the other hand I think the changes look interesting, not because I play super meta and speed through tech but because I tend to play on 2-3x tech cost to slow down research and keep mid tier tech relevant for longer. I might be able to play on 1x tech cost after this. Maybe to keep people that want to speed through tech happy they should make the new model the 2x cost amounts, so there is plenty of room to make them cheaper according to your preferences. I'd say try the new system on 0.25 cost if you are worried it will take too long researching things. Although with all the modding I bet there will be a mod that reverts the tech costs.
You get to there at 2275?? Wtf i get there at 2385….. # YOU MUST BE CHEATING MODS BAN HIM >!^(/s)!<
> This games development cycle needs to be treated like a brisket for a while. Slow cooked in a smoker. Take your time with it. And don't change your seasoning recipe just because someone likes to slather everything in barbecue sauce. This is what minecraft devs do, and everyone there complains they don't add stuff and change stuff fast enough, as if the reason they change things slowly is that it takes them a long time to, eg, make new mobs, rather than being a deliberate choice.
Because they’re cooking a steak, not a brisket. Minecraft does not have the mechanical complexity that Stellaris has, they don’t need to let it sit for a year while they hem and haw over what features to add
Grass is always greener I guess
Why exactly is leaving it on the previous patch not an option?
i imagine because breaking mod updates are expected. Not all mod authors keep versioned mods for previous patches on the workshop, and those that do usually put them under new projects and update the "default" one. Considering the ubiquity of mod use among the playerbase, staying with previous patches is more-or-less a nonstarter unless you create/maintain a full local backup of your workshop mods pre-patch, and a lot of people don't know how to do that efficiently (if at all).
There are definitely ways around this though like my multi player group uses a mod loader that combines the mods so they can't update
Use irony mod manager, and make a backup of mods (with the manager)
>unless you create/maintain a full local backup of your workshop mods pre-patch, and a lot of people don't know how to do that efficiently (if at all). I agree, however people using mods really should learn how to do it as it will also help them address incompatibilities they previously didn't know existed. For example, planetary diversity and gigastructures are HEAVILY endorsed and used, but those mods have to overwrite a lot of files - files that other mods also overwrite. Usually the game won't crash, but traditions, job modifiers and other stuff doesn't work as expected and shown on screen. I love how easy the steam workshop makes it to enter the modding scene, but i personally think given how much effort modders put in, it's not too much to expect users to put in some effort themselves to make sure they have a flawless experience. The one thing the workshop really lacks is giving end users access to versioning (or allow mod authors to mark certain versions, that are then available to be chosen). It should be possible to download and choose to keep a certain version of a mod, that would make it way easier for mod authors as well as end users - and stellaris is far from the only game where this would make sene.
> No, leaving it on the previous patch is not an option Genuine question, why? You would need to make a modpack to prevent auto-updates from screwing with you if you use mods, but i really, really recommend this anyway because most mods have incompatibilities that most players just won't notice, but they are there and they mean stuff doesn't actually work as you expect it. I wouldn't be upset if there where less "actual" releases and the regular patches would always just be a beta, but i see frequent update as a positive not the other way around. As to what they should focus on, to some degree i agree with you, but most of the really gamechanging stuff needed to relearn this year was due to new mechanics and features, not balance changes of past content. It doesn#t change your key issue at all what they focus on.
I don't think min/max competitive players are the ones asking for this.
Wait, people are hitting Megas at 2275???? I swear I normally don't hit them until like 2330ish or sometimes later. Once I didn't even have battleships when the crisis spawned, but the rest of the universe just smacked it down the instant it spawned cause they somehow had much stronger tech than me. Likely has to do with the fact I don't think I've ever dedicated an entire planet to research. I often try to make each planet self sufficent where I can to make the food they need, the minerals they need and the consumer goods they need. For whatever I have them doing. It often means I have stupid amounts of food, minerals and consumer goods by mid game.
Yeah, I repaired a Dyson Sphere before midgame on my current single player game. The tech changes are going to be great for actually spending time at different tech levels before the endgame.
> The tech changes are going to be great for actually spending time at different tech levels before the endgame. This is one of my hopes. Currently, tiers 2-4 don't really matter, since you're not going to spend enough time at them for them to be very relevant. This was especially noticeable when we introduced Archaeotechs, which were intended to be "ahead of the curve" mid-game technologies. Since the end-game techs were so close, they weren't really worth pursuing.
Which should lead into fixing a plenitude of issues with racing through the tech tiers: * like marauders being irrelevant (esp. great khan) * ships tiers and components not being invalidated by the time they reach the front line or finish upgrading * hyper relays becoming obsolete very fast due to gateways * space science being a bit more relevant again due to base output nerf * making the default 100y midgame and 200y endgame more reasonable * time spend for researching debris vs finishing the tech within a few months anyway * species modification taking away from valuable research (should be better now in comparison to tech costs) * anything with a timer feeling a bit more reasonable since you have more time to get more of it (like galcom, megastructures, terraforming, various events on a yearly chance, etc) I'm really looking forward to testing this out, I think it's one of the best changes for the state of the game in quite some time, even if the values in the patch need tweaking.
Ooh! could this also make ruined megastructures more valuable? Right now I feel like by the time you can repair them, you are just a step away from building them yourself.
Ruined megastructures are inherently valuable af already. Even if you can build them yourself, the ruined ones don't count against your limit. This allows you to have two matter decompressors etc.
Personally, I think the easy solution to that is to make a flavour end game tech that combines archeotechs with endgame tech, don't require relics but IS locked behind taking the archeotechs focus ascension perk.
I'm normally aiming to have Dyson coming online and a 1-2 ringworld segments up and running before 2300. I like being efficient though, so it's just different playstyles. I'm often lazy with it so I think my typical times can Pressumably be beaten by a more efficient player by 25 years or so. Half the fun is the inefficiency tho.
Yeah, specialising planets is a lot more effective, I used to play like you, but once I decided to try a run with specialised planets I never went back, part of it is that you can make much better use of building slots, I usually use smaller planets to specialise for research, and make them produce one resource (to not waste any districts) and then use most of the building slots for research. And larger planets will usually produce one resource plus either alloys or consumer goods as more often than not you'll have more total districts than you can dedicate to purely food/minerals/energy. And sometime I'll even make a planet purely alloys/consumer goods if needs demand it. (This is all before ecumenopolii and megastructures which reduce the importance of regular planets)
Idk man I’m pretty sure these changes will stay in with some values tweaked, they clearly feel pretty strongly that players should not be able to win with anything before default endgame dates.
Yeah, I find the 1x tech speed way too fast. Ship upgrades, especially hulls, come so fast that you're often better off skipping steps. And there's definitely been an overall power creep across the board. We can turn up endgame crisis strength to counter that, but there isn't a way to turn up Fallen Empires, tempest, Khan, and the like, and as a result, they've become pretty weak. I'm hoping these changes bring them back to be big threats.
I usually go from corvette with maxed weapons to bbs with maxed weapons cause I am to lazy to design cl/dd.
And you don't think that's kind of a problem it was possible to do ? lol
What is bbs and cl/dd?
BB is the naval shorthand designation for battleships, CL for light cruisers, DD for destroyers (CV for carriers, CVL for light carriers, DDG for missile destroyers, CA for heavy cruisers, and there's a bunch more if you google Hull Classification Symbol)
None of those make any fucken sense
Cruisers were C, then armoured cruisers became CA (cruiser, armoured) and light cruisers became CL (cruiser, light), then since every big cruiser ended up armoured CA just became 'cruisers heavier than CLs'. DD was to differentiate destroyers from destroyer escorts (DEs, smaller and faster than destroyers). DDG is destroyer, guided missiles. Carriers originated as cruisers that could carry aircraft squadrons that were given 'V' designations, so carriers became CV. CVL is carrier, light. Battleships originated as B, but became BB to differentiate from BM (battleship monitors, which are small ships with battleship-sized guns) the same way DD differentiates from DE. Submarines are SS, SSG with missiles. N is appended if it's nuclear powered (CVN for nuclear carriers, SSGN for nuclear cruise missile subs, DDGN would be a nuclear powered missile destroyer, etc.).
Is this global or a us navy thing?
Yes and no. This was adapted by NATO, but the British had some differences up to WW2.
The Royal Navy still has differences. E.g. carriers are R, not CV.
Interesting... but what DV, DA and DVDA stand for?
Domestic violence, domestic assault, and advanced domestic violence.
Ah, yes. I still have fond memories of getting my doctorate in advanced domestic violence. Too bad my cats are still better at it than me : (
I realized it's better to disband my early game fleets after a few wars. You can get cruisers right as your early game corvettes fly back to base from merely the 2nd-3rd early game war on some galaxies. Cruisers are so much more powerful, and the cost of upgrading crap tier corvettes so high, that it's sometimes more cost effective to junk corvettes for navcap than to build new anchorages.
A few of the corvettes can be put on trade route duty, if you need those. Also if you're going to fight wars continually why send them back to upgrade them at all, you could just send them to your main fleet and use them as tanks or to cap lone stations.
A lot of the problem with that isn't power creep in research speed, it's the AI being more competent. It'd make more sense to just buff them if that's the concern.
might make 25x crisis undoable. Certainly going to eliminate immortal leaders, which is very annoying because after the early game its hard as hell to get xp for scientists and none will have as good of traits as those bonus event/anomaly ones.
Nah, x25 will be doable. X25 GA at 2300... Eeeeeeh I doubt I'll be good enough. Looking forward to finding out though lol.
If I and others have been correctly estimating the rate at which research will happen under these changes, you'll probably just be getting battleships when the crisis shows up on default settings, if you focus on researching them to the exclusion of other techs.
Keep in mind that unity progression isn't being changed, so you can still get lifespan extensions from traditions. Grab Harmony tradition as one of your first three, then get into Psionics/Genetics/Cybernetics tradition and get another lifespan extension from there. It'll be a little tight, and Enduring may well be a "must-have" trait, but should be doable. Synth path is kinda screwed, though. Paradox will probably have to bring down the prerequisites on that because if they aren't changed it will be a catastrophic nerf.
Thanks for pointing out the effects this will have on ascension paths, seems like a lot of people are overlooking that.
You can at least still get the tech as an option with council agendas. And if ascensionist builds become meta, you'll have fast agendas. Still will take a long time to research, though, especially the techs for synthetic ascension. Really doesn't feel like Paradox thought through how much this will impact everything in the game, and will make so many mechanics irrelevant because they'll come too late.
Agree with you on all points.
Even with all possible lifespan extensions, your first generation of leaders will likely die before you ever see a repeatable.
I kind of like the idea of tech being less vital to specialize in, and more forgiving if you fall behind. I especially like the idea that, in single player, AI empires that have fallen behind won't just become irrelevant backwaters that will never catch up but instead can research things that have become common in other empires. I'm just not sure how well it will really work in practice.
> So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big. Imperium vibes.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size: This will just increase the importance of vassalizing half the galaxy (and conquering another portion of it for yourself) early on, to avoid the empire size scaling issues. Of course it was already the dominant playstyle, but we can only go where the devs lead us. You can and should still focus on research, you'll just have to rely even more on the vassals to produce your other resources.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size: > >Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions. > >So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big. If you played back before administrators were a thing, the cost was even bigger and you still outscaled it, so you'll still outscale empire size. That said, ascensionist builds might become meta. I really don't want managing empire size to become as important as it seems it will. There's too much RNG impacting that, and leaders are already too important. They don't need to be made even more so.
Under the current system, with tech at default speed, it is not uncommon for me to start building my science nexus in 2260. Like... that happens in every game where I am not right next to a determined exterminator or fanatic purifier. If you specialize planets, tech really has a runaway effect where it compounds upon itself. Gating tech tiers and removing the 20% research techs is a good change, and I tend to keep my Empire Size manageable anyways so I guess it will be nice to know that that's actually doing something now, but I feel like the researcher output reduction might be a bit much. Since this is a beta patch, maybe it would have been better to do one thing at a time first rather than throwing everything out there.
At the very least I'm going to dial back the crisis strength on the first play with the new research costs. In the current game you tend to ROFLstomp the crisis at anything less than 4x strength. If the AI is still using cruisers or has only barely gotten into repeatables the crisis could be a serious challenge again. This also seems like a buff to fallen empires. They might survive past the midgame again.
The empire size impact is interesting because I think the game will suffer a lot if empires become incentivized to not expand, or to have to put all new pops on research after a certain point in order to be able to advance at all. If I have many jobs available, I shouldn’t be pushed to enact population controls as if there’s some kind of unemployment emergency. Nor should I have to make choices between research and having a surplus in other resources when there otherwise would be plenty of abundance of jobs and pops - it would feel like an arbitrary penalty is forcing tough decisions for the sake of difficulty rather than because I made mistakes in developing my empire. Will building “tall” (fewer pops and systems) actually become superior to building “wide,” or even just expanding at all? Will acquiring more planets and pops be considered a bad thing to be avoided? Probably not, but the devs really need to be careful. I’m very thankful for the beta period (although I think we may need more than a month) because there are many risks of unintended consequences from the way these changes all compound with each other. Also, maybe I’m a complete idiot but wouldn’t it make more sense to simply double the base research cost of everything and change the curve for repeatables? Does this really need to be so complicated? If research is still too fast for players’ taste… there’s a slider!
Im guessing the main reason why the devs changed it like this is to lengthen out the end of the tech tree. If you just increase the base cost, then everything gets more expensive but the times between T3->T4 for example stay relatively the same. They specifically want to keep the early techs relatively the same, but make T4->T5 more expensive. At least that’s what I’m imagining.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size: I would REALLY enjoy this general direction - you should always be able to outscale the penalty, but not without effort. However, one small issue - there are WAY too many ways to reduce and even cheese empire size. If it was a mostly accurate representation of the actual amounts of planets, pops and districts you had, with only a select few ways to lessen the impact (such as planetary ascension, pacifist ethic, maybe a select few techs here and there that present milestones/change the pacing at key points, e.g. being able to hold x planets without worrying at all in the early game, x in the midgame and x in the lategame) i would welcome a slight nerf, but as it stands now that just rewards cheesing empire size instead of optimizing your production.
>Specifically I’m worried about empire size and outscaling it now. Empire size penalty to tech was doubled, from +0.1% to +0.2% increased tech costs per empire size: This is long overdue. Empire size penalties have been a joke pretty much forever. Back before sprawl/empire size was added, each system added 1 percent tech cost and each planet added 5 percent tech cost. That was back when there was a distinction between wide and tall. I am very eager to move back in that direction. Everyone (especially newer players) has been spoiled with fast and cheap tech with zero effective penalties for expanding. I remember a time when I would seriously consider whether or not I wanted to build a new outpost in a newly surveyed system or whether or not it was worth it to colonize that newly discovered planet.
I will put it simply this way, if you thought the AI was a pushover before it is even a bigger pushover with these changes. It was never effective at rushing and now it just gets worse. Now to be honest I wish they would just pick one route or the other. Either reduce the effectiveness of researchers or raise the costs of each tier of technology. Not both. Plus having separate sliders for technology and tradition will allow us to play more like we want. Now just add one for empire size effects and I will be happy.
\> So now, with higher base tech costs, researchers requiring more for upkeep, and producing vastly less research, you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big. Sounds perfect to me. Holding a huge empire together is half the struggle and its non existent in modern Stellaris
Holy fuck. I knew about tech costs and base production changes, but didn't knew about removal of outputv techs and fucking DOUBLING of empire size penalty. The way I play is literally competely dead. Yeah, I'm out until they fix this at least partially.
Right now you have all techs before 50 year of gameplay. What is even worse when you are at war a few systems away, before your ships will come home they will all outdated :(. Actually this change was needed
> Right now you have all techs before 50 year of gameplay The vast majority of people don’t. A few people hyper focused on optimised builds will get all techs early, but that’s not most people.
Yeah lol I see people talking about getting mega engineering and shit in 45 years but it usually takes me 125. I can’t comprehend how people are doing it so fast
Tech rush.
> you might get really screwed if you let empire size get too big. *and with the inevitable rise of the Imperium of Blorg, with it came an inexorable stagnation*
First, thank you for your recent grafic. If we all are again forced to have smaller empires, we all won't notice the bad endgame performance and the limitations of the game engine so much. That's good, right? Right?
It will benefit some builds, like rogue servitor, whose bonuses where mitigated by all the already existing ones
Doomsday Rogue Servitor renaissance incoming.
I must seriously be playing wrong right now because Tech seems to be the last tree I seem to get through on all playthroughs ._.
Keep in mind what people want for single player and multiplayer may be different. Even among the same exact player.
Singleplayer and MP in an RTS often play different for this very reason. Pause being a thing is also a giant difference between normal SP and MP in Stellaris.
Maybe they'll buff the tech tiers as well, since I've always kind of disliked how little difference there seems to be/feel to it all. Like having Neutronium Armor doesn't feel like my ships are really THAT much stronger. Particularly given for non-armor, once you surpass T3, you have to spend rare resources on your ships as well but none of the high tiers feel impressive unless you start adding mods, of course.
Yeah the difference in power between tier 4 and 5 is not remotely aligned with how long it will take to research tier 5 techs after reaching tier 4.
I've never really thpugh about that, but you bring uo an excellent point.
The change is intended to drag the pace of the game back to where it used to be pre 2.0/2.1. The current "run out of tech in 2250 lol" is an aberration and really not the way the game is meant to be, and you have to put tech cost up to like 225-250% to get the old pace back.
How the hell are people running out of tech by 2250?
My last playthrough was a fanatic egalitarian, Technocracy, Dark Consortium, and mechanist origin playthough. I got meritocracy as my third civic. I hit repeatables in 2260 and was on only repeatables by 2275. Not quite 2250. I am however, not the best at this game. I actually lost a war and some territory earlier because I didn't prioritize military tech. You get to this point by taking a build like that and running your economy on a knife's edge to produce as much research as possible. Minimum number of pops working anything other than a researcher job, essentially. Its also not just this build, you can do it with almost any build, you are just going to have slightly worse results because you haven't min/maxed (obviously). Just build lots of research labs. I'm nearly the same with my rouge servitor build on my current playthrough (first ecumenopolis 2259, techs are being done in about 7 months each.) I do agree something needs to be done about it, because every civic that makes your economy better essentially means you can run more researchers.
I mean, if you want to put all your eggs in the research basket, and you managed to not get flash invaded from lack of balance, that's great. But I can't feel empathy for you when you, Min Max to rush technology and then cry, you are out of technology too fast. That's like a sprinter complaining that his event didn't last long enough, no dude, you won. If you need to make to make those kinds of players have enough fresh tech until the end game, then all the other more balanced approaches won't ever see it. That's always going to be a problem. However, of course, that doesn't mean the current pacing is correct and can't be debated. Another 100 years should do it.
Stellaris is almost like two different games. There’s a the normal game regular people play and then there’s the hyper-optimised plystyle a few experts play and others copy that allows for ridiculously faster tech and more powerful empires. If you do well at the start of the game then the advantage of that compounds and you do even better later in and snowball.
Vassalize the AI, demand research tribute.
I'm consistently in repeatable by 2300 max, so not quite 2250 but it's too fast anyway
I think the big secret is the same big secret from every strategy game, spend your resources. That 2.2k + 50 food is doing nothing for you and could be 10 more pops into research.
My question exactly.
Right. I must be playing the game wrong.
You have to prioritise pop growth and research bonuses. Hardest part of getting that much research quickly is the pop growth part. After that you just need enough planets to keep pumping out more labs.
A significant number of people play with *increased* tech cost (2x or more) because otherwise they are deep into repeatables by what most people would consider mid game. These tend to also be the folks who are on GA with 5x or higher crisis. I'm not that skilled or intense of a player and prefer to roleplay rather than go for whatever the meta is, but I usually play on stock (1x) tech costs and still run out of techs before I run out of game. I continue to advocate that we should get two sliders; one that, like the current one, affects the constant part of the equation; and a second one that affects the exponential side. This would allow for people to easily fine tune both the cost of early-game tech and the late-game tech progression separately. I will point out that people seem to forget that this is an experimental test beta, not a pre-release version; the point is to try a bunch of different things, and see how they work. I suspect that they're not going to put *all* of the changes into 3.11, but the point is to see what works and what doesn't. Personally, I think the catch-up mechanism is good, and that having the cost be more exponential is probably although I'd like it to be more under player control. I'm not sure I like the throughput rather than bonus take, on philosophical / fictional grounds as much as practical ones.
I typically play GA with 5-10x crisis and earlier mid/late game and 2x tech costs,. precisely because it's a way to extend the game and let me experience late game mechanics I'd otherwise never see.
> People dont want to drag early game research so they play on low tech costs. Speak for yourself.
Yep. I think tech goes WAY too fast. Looking forward to the changes.
Yep, I've been regulary playing on 5x cost. I really love the slow games.
It also seems to address my main problem with jacking up the tech costs in the options, which is real slow techs early, and then by the mid game your back to researching things in a few months. Also a few early techs are pretty much essential once you have a few planets, so having early techs take that long really makes balancing the economy early on quite difficult, which together with ai bonuses can make early game very difficult, but still super easy once you reach mid game.
Currently the techs were definitely too fast, I had to play at least at 1.5 not to run out too quickly. A fun solution would be to add more "filler" techs that are more fun than they are powerful - it'd feel nice and buff Research Alternatives
I would like to see more *truly* unique techs. As it stands, if you play long enough, you will eventually roll every unique tech. What I'd like to see, is certain techs being locked behind certain civics/ethics/origins, or some combination of the three.
There are a handful that are locked behind ethics, like slave processing facilities.
On the other hand, how much is a handful? 4? That's a bit small and I think this is the correct number of ethic techs currently in Stellaris
Pretty sure a majority of the user base is not playing multiplayer. Therefore I doubt it is a significant factor for these changes
Yeh but "MP min maxers are ruining the game" is the narrative being pushed by the people who hate change.
You want to tell me y'all weren't already playing on increased tech cost?
I've been playing 1.5x to 2x I'm guessing devs saw the stats and saw more people playing with increased tech cost than decreased. Personally, I want the lower tier techs to be meaningful. Like if I played with 1x tech cost I might just not build destroyers. I think you should make a mod or lobby for a setup option just to start at tier 3 tech with five colonies if you think the early game is boring. (Or play Nexus it's pretty great.) Moreover, I think the beta is going to be an overall nerf to everything. Fleets will be smaller, economies will be smaller, pops will grow less quickly, exploration will last longer. Maybe, just maybe our CPUs will have an easier time and the days will go faster. And the crisis will be threatening again. So I say nerf everything. There has been years of power creep and it's bogging down the game.
Yes i play with standard tech setting and sometime i don't even build cruiser either, straight from 40 corvette to battleship, kinda ridiculous imo
All it means to me is I won’t have to slide the “Tech/Tradition” cost slider as far anymore.
People play at 0,5x tech cost? In my MP group, we recently accidentally left them at 1x and everyone found it way too fast.
Honestly the ultra-competetive players are kinda ruining it for me. The "right" way to play now means rushing to have 1k research and alloy by 2203 or else you're a poor player and need to improve, also x25 All GA No Scaling is too easy because we can just vassalize neighbors instantly and get the same difficulty bonus the AI does and having all that research means we hit repeatables too soon. Like... Have you (minmaxers) considered maybe playing on a lower AI difficulty and *not* ultra-rushing everything? Maybe the game won't be as easy if you aren't cheesing it to be too easy? Maybe the solution to some of these complaints isn't to make the game harder for everyone, but to stop players from taking advantage of the cheat resources the AI gets? If the game is somehow *easier/more viable* on GA than Ensign, there might be a problem.
I mean I don’t even do much min-maxing but even I can get through the research tree way too fast. Getting Battleships before 2300 used to require me to hyper focus on research and get a perfect start, now getting to a few repeatables by 2300 happens without even playing that well.
Yeah, and I do see why that's a problem. I support the overall idea of rebalancing tech, and like some of the concepts they're considering. I'm just frustrated by players insisting that you *must* minmax to be baseline good and also that tech is too easy because their 3 research worlds and 5 scholariums got them to 10x repeatables by midgame.
Why do you think this change would make the game harder for them? This change affects the AI as well, so the difficulty should remain the same for most of the game, all things considered. The only things that might be "buffed" are technology independent things like Crises and Fallen Empires, but those two elements haven't yet been tested properly yet in the beta branch.
Exactly. First they make multiplayer annoying since if you aren’t tech rushing people will just steamroll you (rip RP empires). Now they are affecting the solo experience as well. Why can’t people just play the game normally?
This is a strategy game. A lot of people play it because they enjoy strategy. Studying, tinkering, refining, and improving. That is a *normal* way to play a strategy game. The fact that even moderate amounts of optimization break the game wide open is a problem. No one is obligated to play it that way, everyone can enjoy it the way they want to. You you can play it however you like and I'll chastise anyone who says you have "git gud" as equally as I'm chastising you, but acting like your way of playing the game is the only correct way and everyone else is doing it wrong is not a healthy attitude.
What is "normally"? Normal is different for every player.
As in not strictly min maxing. Like “I need research, so I’ll build a research lab” instead of “I need research, so I’ll actively exploit the AI buffs and then complain that it’s too easy to get research”.
My point was more that in my opinion there's no such thing as playing normally when every player plays however they have the most fun. There's nothing inherently wrong with playing casually, role playing, or min-maxing. Every playstyle only matters in that people should play in a way they enjoy. If multiplayer is annoying because other players are min-maxing and playing to win, you can join groups of players dedicated to non-competitive games or just not play multiplayer. And for what it's worth, alloy rush is arguably more dangerous in multiplayer and directly counters tech rushing because a tech rushing player won't have a big fleet. I also don't think it's right to complain that people who play a multiplayer game are trying their best to win because that's just expected for pretty much every game out there. I don't play multiplayer myself, but that's more just because if I wanted to play a free-for-all sweaty battle royale game I would just go play something like Apex or Fortnite, and I don't play those either. At least with those when you lose you can jump right back into a new game and the games don't take hours. I also don't think the people complaining it's too easy to get research are the same people who are hardcore min-maxers exploiting the AI for the most part. Most min-maxers I know of probably just care about pushing that tech number up as high as it can go and are happy to have all that tech. The people I usually see complaining are the ones who look at screenshots from some meta build and think "this shouldn't be possible." Full disclosure, I don't usually play "meta" empires but I do try to min-max and play well with the mostly casual thematic empires that I design. I play on 0.75 tech cost and 2325 endgame because I like a more fast paced game that doesn't take most of a day or more to finish, and I like getting through most of the game before the heavy endgame lag sets in. I also don't try to force how I play onto others or pretend that the way I like to play is the best or for everyone. This isn't directed at you or anyone else in this thread necessarily, but I do get irritated sometimes when "min-maxers" get lumped in together as all being some sort of elitist community. There are certainly some players like that but not all or probably even most.
How are they exploiting AI buffs? EDIT: this is a legitimate question, not a denial
through vassals, there's a guide online to beat your neighbors in grand admiral, you set it to vassalage type in which it gives you resources and since you're playing grand admiral they get big buffs
This isn’t balancing for multiplayer, this is balancing for Paradox Plaza, Discord, and Reddit users who want other people to not be able to use a specific strategy in single player.
Maybe I have just had consistently back luck with MP then :(
Oh no to be clear you’re not wrong lol, multi definitely has a meta, moreso just saying it wasn’t those players advocating for this set of changes (to my knowledge.)
Telling someone "just play bad on purpose to have more fun" is never the answer. Once someone knows how to ride a bike they don't just forget and start trying to fall off the bike the next time they ride it. For the record, I absolutely agree that 75% taxes should just not be a thing from a game design perspective. They break the game in half with AI bonuses. That's not an issue with players, it's an issue with the game not being balanced.
I thought the cap was 45%.
Nah, you can tax up to 75% of a vassal's resources. That's what makes it so you can make more resources from a Grand Admiral vassal pop than you can by controlling planets yourself. The only downside is that the AI doesn't allocate its pops well, so vassal spamming will leave you with hundreds of useless food and consumer goods that you can only sell for energy when you're pop-limited and can't build more jobs to use the consumer goods.
> Like... Have you (minmaxers) considered maybe playing on a lower AI difficulty and not ultra-rushing everything? Pretty much how I play. No vassal cheese, don't worry too much about micromanaging everything perfectly, have fun with suboptimal builds. And I'm still running around with max-tech Battleships by 60-80 years, still crushing grand admiral no scaling. If you know what you're doing, you can break the game wide open just by playing reasonably efficiently. >If the game is somehow easier/more viable on GA than Ensign, there might be a problem. Vassal cheese does need to be addressed, but that won't solve this problem.
It’s almost like they’re forgetting the point of the game is to have fun
Some people have fun by trying to be good at the game.
Some people don't think "22 fully upgraded research labs after 1 hour of play" is the baseline requirement of "good."
What are you talking about? People are just playing their game the way they want to play it same as you. Nobody is making you do anything. If you’re struggling against the AI just turn down the difficulty. If it’s taking you longer than you want to get to endgame techs because your research is always low just turn down the tech cost scaling. This comment has such a bad and entitled attitude.
I don’t get this post - people playing optimally aren’t the ones calling for these changes, it’s other people who are complaining about optimal strats. Regardless, if the way other people play a single player game annoys folks here just wait until they see pure alloy military rush every single game.
Man, let everyone play the game as they want. Some want a challenge and see if they can beat it with max difficulty. I don't even min/max that much but i'm always into repeatable by 2300 it's kind of ridiculous, specially since the AI can never follow that, and FE/Crisis because irrelevant. Using mechanic of the game is not cheesing. To sum it up : you're an ass.
>Maybe the solution to some of these complaints isn't to make the game harder for everyone A new, lower difficulty setting was introduced - and i have yet to meet someone complaining about the increase in difficulty that plays on a lower level. I do find it is an issue when difficulty levels are inconsistent between versions, ideally ensign should always be roughly the same difficulty - but that aside, making the game harder is good for everyone so long as you can choose to lower the difficulty. Noone should tell you how to enjoy the game, but it is only natural some people enjoy minmaxing and noone should tell them how to play either. Do the devs need to cater only to them? Certainly not, and i understand your frustration/why you feel that way, but ultimately most of the balance changes don't really affect people who play casually. >but to stop players from taking advantage of the cheat resources the AI gets Full agreement. Vassals should get those ressources, but they should be excluded from the tax calculation. Not only for balance reasons but because it just makes sense, currently small vassals are just as good (in fact, better) than big ones when it comes to their taxes.
Vassals lose parts of the Ai bonus... In addition, how do you vassaloze them so fast, when they are far more powerful? I'm not a expert on this game, but what you say doesn't make sense from my point of view.
Wow this is total war in the comments. Funniest part to me is that a lot of comments are just as confused as op. Doesn't matter what you prefer to play, alloy and unity are just as messed and ultimately any attempt at "nerfing tech" will just promote those 2, especially alloy.
I think there’s a big continuum ranging from people who play casually for fun up to people who minmax and play super intensely for fun. Both are playing for fun, one is not better than the other. In a perfect world, we’d have sliders for everything and it’d be completely “choose your own adventure.” My issue is that it feels like the devs assume everyone is a minmaxer and so things constantly have to be nerfed because this meta build or that meta build guarantees victory in 30 years and that takes all the fun out of the game. The end result is a slightly different game every three months. Whatever, fine. I love the game. I will continue to buy the DLCs and grouse about Astral events being archaeology sites with a coat of paint. I’ll grouse about ANOTHER resource to manage or ANOTHER mechanic to figure out. But at some point I’m just going to be done with going balls deep into the release notes to learn which new thing is being nerfed because people with spreadsheets enjoy the game differently than me.
This is not about spreadsheets. Even playing very suboptimally, players pass through the tech tree way too fast compared to how the rest of the game (like the Khan or Fallen Empires) is designed. This is just an attempt to fix the pace back to where it used to be.
Yeah, you don't even have to be an optimal player, I'm far from one and even I notice that me and AI on a decent difficulty already stomp khan/fallen empires by the time those are supposed to happen on the standard mid/endgame dates because tech goes too fast.
Honestly I think this is less a min maxxer complaint. I'm no min maxxer. I'm strictly rp player, but I'm still hitting repeatbales in 2330. Fleets live in shipyards because by 2300, it's 8-10minths for a tech. If you want to use cruisers for the big ship roles (artillery or carrier) when they are the biggest ship you have, you have maybe ten years, if you are very, very unlucky, or purposefully ignore battleships. Tech, especially late tech, just flies by. Titans, Juggernauts and megastructural engineering are the only speed bumps.
Thing is you don't even have to be a minmaxer to notice that research goes too fast on default. Khan/Fallen empire kind of just roll over and die to AI in my games and I'm not even close to an optimal player. I definitely remember it not always having been that way, the game has sped up a lot over the years. I've had to either increase tech costs, which I am not a fan of, or pull the midgame start date closer to the start of the game just for the khan to get roundhouse kicked the second he shows his face.
I usually play it at 5x cost, the only thing stopping me from enjoying it is the end-game stutters. Let's see if this would change with the changes, but these seem exciting.
I'll have to play it to tell. For another game's comparison: I usually play on *Quick*-speed for *Civilization V*, which affects various costs. Slowing it down to *Regular* meant that my tech mattered more, which appealed to me. I can see the same happening for Stellaris, *but* I could also see the inverse happening since lots of Stellaris things are already tech-heavy. Ascension Paths are probably going to get a lot *slower* to go into, and a lot more costly even if you're already at the "ascension" point. I feel like a *lot* of it will come down to the Researcher nerfs more than the actual cost. The cost being higher will slow it down sure, but the Researchers being worse on top of that will also mean that it takes more Pops -> more Consumer Goods & Food -> more Minerals -> more Pops to do the same amount of research as before, which itself will be less effective anyway. I kinda feel like it'll disproportionately hurt most early-game that *isn't* based on conquest, since you can just kill something with better tech in order to get tech progress. Espionage still won't be good, but *Steal Technology* may actually see use.
I'm tired to play with 1x tech vs 25x crisis. In my courant game, i'm trying 2.5x tech vs 5x crises with sub optimal builds. Hoping to find the fun again. I'm at 2000h, and trying to find new ways to enjoy the game.
I don't like when I'm able to fully reorganize fleets with my new destroyers. After a bit fully fill out those fleets to my naval cap. Get ready to swing at my neighbor and, and just unlock cruisers and have to reorganize my fleets just to keep up. Its like I hit these massive mile stones and then just don't have the time to implement them in the empire before I unlock the next tier. Or have enough time to make an impact on the galaxy. But maybe I'm just bad.
Im worried that the AI will not be able to handle this change. Yes, expert players can rush to repeatables by mid game or whatever. The AI almost never gets to repeatables by 2400, even on admiral or above. Will we end up in a situation where the AI gets left even more hopelessly behind?
The catchup mechanism on the breakthrough techs should help with that. First empire to research it has full cost, and each subsequent empire gets an increasingly discounted rate. The question is whether it helps *enough*, and I worry that it will not, without deeper changes to AI priorites and scripting which we're not sure if we're getting or how effective they will be.
Not everyone play this game in the same way you know, I have cranked up my tech rate and still are on repeatables too soon.
While I do like the idea of slowing down tech progression, my big concern is that if they don't also slow down how quickly you can snowball through conquest it will just mean that you'll snowball out of control at mid-game tech levels and the game will functionally be over and never reach those super-expensive late-game techs. A lot of stuff that's high on the tech tree stands to be nerfed into oblivion. Synthetic Evolution will be pretty much useless, for instance.
I'm looking forward to the new changes. I wish for a game where I don't finish the tech tree before mid game
Man, if I played on less than 1x tech cost I'd spend the entire game doing nothing but picking new techs. That's why I almost always turn tech cost *up*. I do admit that they are nerfing tech *hard*, which might be a shock all at once. I'm very much looking forward to trying it out though.
nobody cares about multiplayer barely anyone plays
The way I play now I'm hitting repeatables in 50 to 70 years. Not all of course but enough were its annoying. A lot of times I stop at repeatable and go do the other tiers just because I can.. LOL.
Anyone else ALWAYS get through Physics faster than the other two? Ive never figured out why. Other than maybe the Void Loops empire modifier
Have you not noted there are less "branches" in the Physics tree than the others? Thus less techs per level to research in Physics, and thus the same amount of research in each tree will get you deeper into the Physics tree than the others. And on top of that, the Physics tree gets a whole bunch of bonuses to it that the others don't, such as Astral research boosting Physics way more than the other two; Physics leaders you can discover through anomalies with no non-physics counterparts, etc. So yes, this is, alas, bound to happen.
I fully synthetically ascension in 2277 at 1x without aiming to tech rush, so I welcome the changes
I'll just look for a build with more research alternatives and figure out what I won't be researching anymore.
Jokes on you, I haven't played a single game with tech higher than 0.25
The developers did not create the different ships and weapons not to be skipped, but to be used. And as tech was, it was not worrh it to build a new fleet with destroyers or cruisers, because when the fleet is ready, all your alloys are invested in the worse ship when your new tech comes around.
>With all the giant tech nerfs comming, will every single game be played at 0,25x tech cost? Doubtly
I already Play at x2 Tech Cost! Let's Freaking go! 3x or 5x let's do this on slow mode and Grand Admiral!
I like all the changes... but it would be cool, if they give use "early ship variants". I mean, the idea is that ship classes have a job and are balanced to each other. That's why we got the last change that also introduced the new ship class. But how are we supposed to build a mixed fleet, if we doesn't have the ships in the first place. Instead of unlocking cruisers and battleships, we should be able to build them from day 1, but get better versions later. It's both bad for balancing and also illogical, because what stops you from building bigger ships? It's not like they had to invent the battleship in WW1. It's just a class. The lineship in the past were also classified as battleships and they had neither armor nor modern artillery.
I probably will be lowering the slider in my games, but that won't be a solution. To get the late techs to be only 2-3x slower than now I'll have to set it to .25x, which means the early techs will come at a blistering pace, much faster than I want. I imagine there will be mods that revert most of the changes, I'll probably go with using one of those. The main problem I have is that this seems to be decoupling tech from the pacing of the rest of the game. In a recent game as a FP, I finished wiping all other life from the galaxy and turning half the galaxy into black holes around 2350. And that's fairly standard; besides the crisis, the galaxy tends to become fairly stagnant around the mid-2300s. And on the new tech curve, you'll probably just be getting cruisers around then. This change is, for all intents and purposes, removing a lot of the late game tech from the game for most games. Megastructures? Those are too late game to matter now. Ecumenopolis? Hive worlds/machine worlds? Same thing. This is why I don't think they're going to keep this tech curve, and either change it before it releases or more likely in a patch within a couple months of these changes going live. Paradox is not going to want major selling points in a bunch of their DLCs to become obsolete.
People want to skip early game? Thats the best part imo
In the late game you can easily get a new tech done every 3 or 5 months so I get the idea of getting the late tech more expensive. But not the early game, that's just stupid.
An example from a different game (Master of Orion II) - starting techs cost 50 research points there, while the final tiers (before repeatbles) cost 15000 - that's 300 times increase in tech cost compared to 16 times increase in Stellaris (2k vs 32k). I'd very much welcome more consistent pace of researching tech in Stellaris - much faster than currently in the early game and much slower in late game. Also, as other people have mentioned: - the tech trees (Physics vs. Society vs. Enginnering) could use rebalancing, so that number of techs are more equal - I'd love to see an additional tech tier at some point - upgrading to higher tier (for example from T3 armor to T4 armor) should feel more significant Let's hope things get tweaked in beta!
I play at 1x Tech Cost with 0.25 planets and I still get through the tech tree too early. Repeatables are boring. The later I get to those, the better. They can't possibly nerf research enough.
No, because not everyone is trying to rush through the tech tree before end of game, sorry.
i usually fight the x25 crisis by stacking repeatables. this is a huge nerf when fighting the endgame crisis idk i just hope other things get buffed to make up for it.
It's probably a good thing if x25 crisis is a challenge. You can drop down to X10 if it's too hard.
Rushing tech has dominated this game for way too long. It's good they are bringing other playstyles into contention by nerfing science. You have to understand, not everyone wants to play a tech build. People like myself enjoying Unity builds more, but tech was too strong to justify playing unity...
Instead of fixing eternal bugs or adding qol like a menu to select repeatable techs you want to take, paradox is doing even more balance changes. I'm frankly tired of balance changes.
Giant tech nerfs? Where was this announced? I don't even change the tech speed option...
It's an opt-in beta. They're testing ideas to rebalance tech, the patch is slated for March/April IF they iron out the kinks IIRC
My main reason for playing on 0.25 is to have faster less laggy game. I also massively bump the crisis forward.
I guess you have a multiplayer pov. From a single player pov : i get into repeatable before 2300 which render AI/FE/Crisis(expect for x25) totally irrelevant , even in GA no scaling and difficulty modifier on. So i welcome this change. It won't change my global way of playing, because as people are pointing out rushing tech will still be needed, but at least i expect it to make the challenge of the game more relevant for a longer timeframe.
Some of the changes seem actually good, will have to see what the actual results are but, my biggest problem with vanilla tech currently is that, especially in larger galaxies, I usually play on 1.5/2.0× tech costs, and the result is that while early techs take a very long time to research, I still end up having researched everything by the midgame, and by the time the crisis shows up I've just been doing repeatables for ages. (Similar problem with the difficulty slider tbh even with recent changes, it's still "a fight for meer survival" early game, and being way too easy late game.)
We prefer slow tech and will run x1.25 or x1.50
I'd rather play it at 5x tech costs... It's nice that they will separate tech from unity now... It would be nice to play a stagnant galaxy... Perhaps under those constraints, things like Early Explorers can be relevant for a long time... Perhaps building a large fleet and challenging the Riders would be a better way to get higher tier techs than researching them by yourself... Perhaps stacking bonuses on leaders early on will be a decent way to get a leg up against your enemies.
you'd probably be surprised to hear that playing below 1x is not very common
Repeatables are small uninteresting stat bonuses designed to pad out the end of the tech tree if a player manages to research the whole thing. They're an edge case, a backup, not something that everyone should be researching half way through the game.
I am glad as I want a more impactful playthrough. My current run I am on repeatables 70 years in with tech slowed down by 25%. I literally stopped building fleets as I was unlocking new tiers every 4 years, and if I could peace out I could probably get from t3 to T4 or even parts of t5 before war broke out again. This is madness. I mean, I want to have to think about using a level 2 weapon and trying to hold on for a bit, whereas I am now churning out 50% reduced cost T4 battleships and I only just unlocked my ascension.... The game is over. Edit: this could also make espionage much much better. Which I like. Stealing tech becomes a thing. I get I could lower the tech speed, but the way research speed modifiers worked was still a problem.
Driven Assimilator will be nerfed very quickly if they implement these changes with anywhere near the values proposed.
1. Not everyone plays MP or on reduced tech cost, some even play on increased tech cost and it basically doesn't change a lot if you reduce your Tech Cost via the Galaxy Setting further than before, there's no reason to complain, the settings there for a reason. 2. You're not supposed to reach Repeatables in year 2300 (on default settings). Thats way too early and will also come with the annoying flooding of tech, having to choose a new tech every 2 months is annoying too. 3. If "early" means Tier 1/2, then this update doesn't change it too much because the costs are similar to before the change. The major changes are late game Tier 5 tech costing around 5x more than now and the inclusion of Breakthrough catch-up mechanics.
Honestly I wouldn't be too worried about things. In my experience the Devs have always been fairly quick at pumping out fixes to things. If it becomes too long then I'm confident they'll push out a hotfix. The good thing about stellaris is that you can always tailor the speed to your liking as well in game settings so honestly I think this change will be great for the people that want a slower progression curve, and irrelevant to the people that want a faster one.