Post by Krall on May 31, 2016 3:52:27 GMT
Hello and welcome, to AltHistoria Plays Stellaris! This is going to be a heavily interactive AAR of Stellaris where you all can vote on the specfics of our alien species and empire, and the general (and possibly specific) direction of our government's policies.
For those of you unfamiliar with Stellaris it's a recent grand strategy game made by Paradox Interactive, who are known for their historical grand strategy game series like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Hearts of Iron. Unlike those games, Stellaris takes place IIIIN SPAAAACE! and instead of you choosing from a number of existing countries in a variety of different situations, you create your own alien empire and start out with nothing but your homeworld and a few spacecraft. Over time you'll come into contact with other alien races, colonise other worlds, research incredible technologies, and a lot more.
So, before we begin we need to go through the process of making our alien race and its empire. EDIT: We've finished the process of making our empire, the results and some details on this AAR and how it's going to work can be seen below!
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Our Empire
We've finished going through the process of choosing our empire's appearance, genetic traits, ethics, government type, background, and favourite type of tea, resulting in what you see below. We'll be playing as the Absolute Jurisdiction of Sraanik; a despotic hegemony lead by an Intendant Superior, who has absolute power to improve the efficiency of the state and society. Note that we're using a custom name list I wrote myself based on feedback from within the thread.
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AAR Structure
I intend for this to be a somewhat narrative driven AAR, but most of it will have a history textbook style with plenty of screenshots and occasional notes to provide gameplay information. I'll try to update once a week, with each update covering a few years of gameplay - though this will probably vary wildly depending on what's going on, and I'll end updates early if we come to a major decision-making point.
As for the interactive element, I'll ask one or more questions at the end of each update and will look through people's responses to see what the consensus is on each issue. You may also, at any time, post proposals for plans or objectives and depending on other users' feedback I'll try to adopt those proposals as best I can. When giving feedback on questions and proposals feel free to give as extensive or short of a response as you like - I'll consider all posts equally, regardless of whether one is a full essay and the other is just an "AYE" or "NAY".
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Mods
As with all Paradox Interactive games Stellaris is very easy to mod, and as with all Paradox Interactive games the vanilla game isn't quite what I wanted - there are some oversights, bugs, and occasional poor design decisions that I'd like to correct. As a result I'll be playing with a few mods. Most of these won't affect the gameplay, those that do will only change things a little to cover some clear oversights. Here's a full list of the mods I'll be using:
Our Empire
We've finished going through the process of choosing our empire's appearance, genetic traits, ethics, government type, background, and favourite type of tea, resulting in what you see below. We'll be playing as the Absolute Jurisdiction of Sraanik; a despotic hegemony lead by an Intendant Superior, who has absolute power to improve the efficiency of the state and society. Note that we're using a custom name list I wrote myself based on feedback from within the thread.
***
AAR Structure
I intend for this to be a somewhat narrative driven AAR, but most of it will have a history textbook style with plenty of screenshots and occasional notes to provide gameplay information. I'll try to update once a week, with each update covering a few years of gameplay - though this will probably vary wildly depending on what's going on, and I'll end updates early if we come to a major decision-making point.
As for the interactive element, I'll ask one or more questions at the end of each update and will look through people's responses to see what the consensus is on each issue. You may also, at any time, post proposals for plans or objectives and depending on other users' feedback I'll try to adopt those proposals as best I can. When giving feedback on questions and proposals feel free to give as extensive or short of a response as you like - I'll consider all posts equally, regardless of whether one is a full essay and the other is just an "AYE" or "NAY".
***
Mods
As with all Paradox Interactive games Stellaris is very easy to mod, and as with all Paradox Interactive games the vanilla game isn't quite what I wanted - there are some oversights, bugs, and occasional poor design decisions that I'd like to correct. As a result I'll be playing with a few mods. Most of these won't affect the gameplay, those that do will only change things a little to cover some clear oversights. Here's a full list of the mods I'll be using:
Purely cosmetic mods:
Cat Name Lists - The mod where I put my custom name lists, originally made for a list of ridiculous cat names for ridiculous cat aliens.
Complete Colors - Allows you to pick from over 1000 different colours when making flags instead of the normal 16. Randomly generated AI empires will also make use of this, which makes for a surprising mix of abhorrent and beautiful flags.
Flags: Emblems & Backgrounds - Adds a number of background patterns and extra emblems to the game. I don't use the extra emblems but the backgrounds are nice, and the AI empires only seem to make use of the added background patterns.
Nights on Planets - Just makes the glowing cities on the night side of inhabited planets look nicer.
Color Coded Pop Status Icons - Makes the icons that appear on pops different colours to indicate different things, so you can tell at a glance whether a pop is migrating to another planet or being systematically murdered by the state.
Downscaled Ships - Makes all spaceships noticably smaller. This is mainly because when military ships are in formation they don't space themselves out differently depending on ship classes, so late game battleship-heavy fleets normally look like a tangled mess, whereas with this mod they're noticeably separate ships.
Totalitarian Humans - A mod that alters the human portraits to have modern military uniforms. Some of them look awesome, and there's a chance one of my pre-made empires - a human Military Junta - will appear in our game, so I'm keeping this mod in so they look appropriately militaristic.
Unique Resources - Makes the strategic resources different colours so they're easier to discern. Before some of the strategic resources were very similar/identical shades, and thus difficult to pick out. They're still not easy to find with this mod, but it's easier than in vanilla!
Minor Gameplay Mods:
Economy & Technology Mapmodes - Adds three new mapmodes that let you see roughly how much energy and minerals each empire is making per month, and a rough comparison of your technology levels.
Federation Leader Notification Mod - Pops up a message to tell you when you become the President of a Federation you're in. It's unlikely we'll get into a Federation (indeed I advise against it - they're buggy and awful at the moment), but useful just in case.
Remove Stranded Foreign Stations - Pops up an event at the end of a war that lets you destroy all foreign space stations in your territory. Normally if you go to war with a wormhole-using empire they'd build wormhole stations in your territory, and if you didn't destroy them before the end of the war they'd just stay there.
Xeno Integration Workaround - A quick mod I made to workaround a bug that prevented a certain, very important tech from coming up in the game. The Xeno Integration tech lets aliens in your empire become leaders, and without that option all aliens in your empire will forever be angry that they can't become leaders.
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Updates
Segment I: 2200.01.01 - 2204.08.04
Segment II: 2204.08.05 - 2207.10.22
Resource & Capacity Evaluation: 2207
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Updates
Segment I: 2200.01.01 - 2204.08.04
Segment II: 2204.08.05 - 2207.10.22
Resource & Capacity Evaluation: 2207
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Feel free to ask any questions you have about how this is going to work or about Stellaris itself. You don't have to own Stellaris or know how it works to participate in this AAR, and I'm willing to explain anything to the best of my ability!