I find it very boring as your income streams across all playstyles rarely change. You can very easily set up systems that will give you all the resources you'd ever need. You basically only get taken out by bad RNG event chains and your core gameplay loop feels identical no matter how off the wall your species is. CK3 on the other hand, each ruler can be wildly different. You can have rulers who entire income is made in bring an information broker. You can blackmail and kidnap. You can raid and pillage. You can fight in tournaments and sell your rewards, which are often seen on enemy leaders in later battles if you did sell them, or you can become so renowned at chess that people assume you're a master tactician and will join you as a vassal just for your chess rep. I don't mean to hate on Stellaris but it needs soooooo much work before it'll be as engaging as CK3, the game places all it's bets on the event chains and it leads to the gameplay between events being... Letting things run themselves
@therealgrayfox I wonder, when did you last play Stellaris. I'm not saying your wrong, your viewpoint is completely valid, it's just that with the updates the game gets many parts of the gameplay change quite consistently
@@JakeTalksGamesYT To me the most fun is playing with self-imposed restrictions which can provide a lot of variety. I once did a playthrough where I built no buildings that produced any tradeable resources (only trade value), and immediately destroyed any I got. Very fun with the new traditions and vassal mechanics.
Stellaris is one of those games that you needed to buy early and adjust to every change as it got released. Jumping back in after an extended break (or completely fresh) is like jumping into the deep end of the pool ... with a lead belt. Plus to get the full package you probably need to get a new mortgage.
@@JakeTalksGamesYT Honestly I respect the opinion but I think you're in the minority on that one, CK3 is regularly lambasted as being the most flavorless and boring paradox title, especially when you contrast it with Ck2, which is kinda insane by comparison. I also just think the point about being taken out only by bad RNG is literally any Paradox game, I mean I started Ck3 as a OPM and conquered and entire empire title out in one character lifetime and was completely set, all paradox games are super easy once you actually learn the mechanics.
Fun fact Jon. With this ethic regardless of if you declare yourself emperor or not, if you do a good job you can build a machine that makes your leader immortal at the cost of strategic resources.
@@LadyBlackmoor The trick is to have your ascenscion path completed *before* the event triggers, as they each give a unique thematic version of that event. Synth ascenscion for instance says "okay, you're already immortal but obviously the Ruler needs the turbo mega-snazziest robot body money can buy" which gives some nice empire buffs at the cost of a small Alloy upkeep
Jon, happy to see you playing Stellaris again! Hope we can have a new series in the future. =) About the science ship that was behind enemy lines: if you use the "Return" button on the ships and they have no non-hostile path they just go MIA and appear back on you home. It's less dangerous that skirting on the enemies and it also works if you are in a system with a FTL inhibitttors;
I think Paradox still makes you put scientists in each ship is because the old competitive meta was to pump out as many science ships as possible, as early as possible to help claim as much space as possible. Placing harder soft caps on leaders slows down this early game race, which I appreciate because there's not as much pressure on micromanagement in my big slow strategy game anymore.
Except you put out 2 sci ships per scientist and reassign them to the ship that moved into position. You don't want your expensive limited leader options to be undertaking long journeys. Overall I'd say the game has got faster not slower, you can build up to middle game power in the early game. Other times you can be screwed cut off from sufficient resources. That is despite nerfing the absolutely game breaking exploits available initially with Paragons by stacking of resource or ship build cost benefits. This is one of the things Jon got wrong, he's not a Stellaris expert, but has made some cracking far more entertaining runs, precisely because his play isn't disciplined optimal decisions the whole time.
I'm surprised to see someone else do what I tried to do a few months ago in Stellaris, make the longest-lived species I possibly could who have stupidly high level caps and experience gain. It's a very interesting concept to me.
That was literally my very first species I ever made in Stellaris way back when it first released. Leaders back in 1.0 were actually pretty useful before they got nerfed early on. I'm glad they're back and even better now!
This has always been my favorite way to play, so this DLC was practically made for me. Might have to find a mod to do away with the silly vestigial requirement for science leaders on exploration ships, though.
It's a shame you didn't get to the 'ending' of this origin. You eventually get an event that gives your ruler a unique trait and makes them immortal, with the specifics depending on your ascension path.
@@Pchlster It's actually better to avoid making them the Chosen One, since the event doesn't happen if your ruler is already immortal (unless they're synthetic, I think). But if you time things so that you get to pick a Chosen One after this event, you can stack both traits on your ruler. Then make them chosen of your patron Shroud entity too, because you can never have too much immortality! Just make sure you finish an ascension path before your ruler dies. Otherwise the event will make them immortal, but gives them no other bonuses and hugely increases their upkeep cost.
Oh you magnificent bastard! I literally finished ‘The Impossible Run’-series the other day, and now you bless us with this! Much love and all the best wishes ❤
Jon, please, take the time to read your tool tips. You had the option (and the funds) to spend some extra money on the statue of your leader on your new colony world for a better result.
6:00 The one really good thing about the old scientist system was that there was a civic you could take that made a Scientist's specialty research appear 2x as likely, so if you wanted to bum rush like materials engineering or guarantee you get archeotech more often that's how you'd do it.
You really should have picked a half human half worm race for the leader. That would have led you for The Golden Path *space desert music starts playing *
I’ve played lots of Stellaris, I’ve uninstalled it so many times (simply to free up space on my pc) but every time Jon makes a Stellaris video he makes me download it again with out fail.
Jon... That big speech at the 1:00:00 mark about 'encasing our bodies in steel to preserve our minds' sounds a whole lot like the origin story of the Necrons in Warhammer 40K, and that didn't turn out so well...
Oh Jon one more thing if you didn't know, cloaking tech exists now, your science ships can be cloaked and then you never have to worry about random deaths again lol. And during that one moment you had where you had a ship behind enemy lines, as long as you aren't actively engaged in combat.... you could just pull the scientist out of the ship at any point.
I kind of think the point of the whole science ship to science counselor system was to work your scientists up giving them experience and then putting the best ones on the council having the best one right at the start kind of throughs that Dynamic for a loop. Just makes sense though as scientists are scientists first whereas politicians are always politicians but scientists that go into government basically have to Master 2 careers so it wouldn't make sense that every scientist would make a good counselor and some should just be in the field doing what they do best.
Okay I know this isn't directly related to Stellaris but I REALLY can't wait for your videos on Starfield. I love all of your scifi game content to be honest
I've been deep into Stellaris recently, playing a race built on the Gorn from Star Trek. Xenophobic militaristic people eaters so I only accept the robotic special leaders for RP reasons.
Yes, full series again 2024! One of my favorite things about Jon is that he readily shares when things go wrong in all his content. It's boring, and unrepresentative of the usual gaming experience to win 100% of the time.
I want to see this run again. As good as it was to see how catastrophically wrong things can go so quickly, seeing another run with a possible better starmap would be really cool also.
Jon's stated goal: Turn Solus the Great into our eternal God-King. Jon's actual playthrough: Solus the Incompetent is running our empire like a third-rate banana-republic. Somebody, please shoot Solus before he makes everything even worse.
John they kept scientists in science ships both 1. To reduce rate of exploration and expansion (limited leader slots reduces the early game meta of scienceship spam), and 2. So they don't have to rework the *entire* anomalies and dig site system to be decoupled from science ships.
Edit: also decoupling scientists from science ships means they have a shitload of perks that need to be reworked or removed. Additionally I'd argue that removing scientists from science ships, without then having to introduce more things to recruit scientists for, means you will only ever have 1 scientist for the council or whatever
By my assessment, there are some pretty clear reasons to still require scientists manning Science Ships (and to still have secondary leaders not on the council in general, really) - it means there is still some strategic depth to the leader system for the players who actually enjoy micromanaging who is in charge to min-max the various bonuses, and it's a good way to ensure players, particularly new ones, will likely have replacements available when a councilor dies and they don't need to start over with a fresh recruit. There are probably more justifications, that's just what comes to mind off the top of my head.
You know, I was going to make a Final Fantasy XIV joke about an Emperor Solus who turned his empire into a technological powerhouse, but he was actually relatively successful so the parallels just aren't there.
THANK YOU for this! I love seeing your take on games I've never played, but I play this one a lot and I love your take on it! I'd love to see you do a whole Stellaris series like you're doing XCOM. That or CK3. I can dream, can't I?
@3:23 "Less and less negative traits are going to be showing up." It's "fewer and fewer", Jon. This is what happens when you don't watch Game of Thrones.
if you make science ships able to survey without a scientist, then you run into an issue where people will spam out science ships to explore as much as possible (because surveying allows you to get control of systems before other empire) and I think it wouldn't be a great system. And I wouldn't call surveying, researching anomalies, and finding events and precursors 'nothing of note' those are some of the big moments of the early game
@14:39 Is that a typo on screen or did they nerf Private Mines? it says Private Mines lvl 2 but only giving +8 Minerals.. that's what lvl 1 does. lvl 2 is +32.. @17:10 You know you've played this game too long when you breath a sigh of relief on the '18 mineral in a single system' when he clicks on it and it's not the Asteroid belt.. *EDIT: Nearing the end... THAT WENT SOUTH SO FAST!!!
only thing I can think of around your comments about scientists, in science ships is it allows them to level up, so that should your head of research die, you can have a levelled replacement to pop on the council
Love these videos, I have played about 500 hours of this game and I always learn something from watching your videos. Would love another series or live streams on stellaris
The scientists in science ships don't pootle around doing nothing. They research anomalies, the speed of which is a function of the scientist doing it, so you can tailor a scientist specifically for anomalies. And the same with archaeology digs, the speed and what not of them are also tied to the scientist doing that dig, so you can get scientist tailored specifically for that.
It's been a fair few years since I last played Stellaris, but all of this looks really great. I like the new character focus. I might have to buy a couple of DLCs when they next come on sale. Haven't gotten any of 'em since Federations.
"If I come to them and say, 'So, the first aliens we ran into, we're going to surrender!' I feel like in some ways, it would like, undermine my imperial majesty a bit." Now I want to see a wacky comedy about High King Solus the Incompetent having to hide the fact that they've become vassals to his subject in that classic "Uh oh, this character has something he can't let his family/girlfriend/etc. know about and needs to do some wacky stuff to keep them from finding out!" style.
Just had a thought for similar game's civic/ethics or even potentially perks system: through pop-up decisions, and the player's play-style, the game gives and takes away perks based on some kind of algorithm, ie: calculates how long between decisions, how long the pause timer is on ("careful" trait), what kind of tech you choose or what your choices are in decision-making (similar to EU4 pop-ups, but built for the specific game), and that provides civic or ethic information. Similarly, for ethics, something like counting how long between starting new wars and how much fleet/army/military superiority your nation/empire maintains, it determines whether the species is militaristic vs pacifist. Essentially, although one might be able to start out with certain ethics or civics, through the play-style, the game changes along with your play, functioning as an even more effective learning/fun tool. Moreover, rather than creating a nation from scratch, the nation forms around how you play the game, requiring you to be all the more in-tune with how and when and what decisions you're making.
I love how Jon went ful jolo mode in this game. When i have such bad start with hostile neighbor i would start again in heart beat till i get safe enough good starting position. And Yet Jon stayed with that mess to the end.
Jon, at the start: "What we want more than anything is some nice chill neighbours where we can just live and let live." Me: "Errrrrr... Jon...?" Jon shortly afterwards: "Well as it turns out we're at war!" Me: "You've played videogames professionally for how long, and didn't see this coming?!"
I like the idea of specialized scientists and wouldn't mind if you could expand into specialized seats, but it also felt weird you needed 3 scientists to handle research while head of state is always 1 guy. Council is a great direction where you still have the big head but also one super admiral for your first fleet and a head of science to handle all of it. Scientists are still very prominent to keep sci vessels running but governors are also important. Maybe if you play right you could have a line of military leaders? Next free expansion, allow military ethics to scout with fewer science ships. I don't know if you could have governors as scouts in pacifist or maybe have spiritualists have priest leaders that can do anything but only at a fraction the intended bonus (ex. Priests research well enough but only at 70% capacity while boosting unity gain. They can lead armies and fleets but give fewer bonuses, BUT retreat is less likely and recover 15%-25% quicker. They don't know a thing about running a planet wide economy but people like them, and of course you can cycle them around to other roles on the fly)
Last time I played this, I got a Galactic Paragon who was basically the Borg Queen if she was concerned only with being an admiral and fighting for anyone (I was a fanatic materialist/mechanist race.) Awesome admiral.
I think what we've learned here is 1) Making a peaceful empire is a poor choice in a game that's all about how much territory you can capture and defend. Even if you plan to play tall, you still need to be able to defend what you have. Otherwise 2) Becoming the vassal of an aggressive nation is just kicking the can down the road, because the AI seems to place no importance on helping or protecting its allies whatsoever, only on its own immediate self interest. Even when the arrangement should have worked out in Jon's favor, when he taunted another civ to attack, it turned out not to because the liege said "Hey I don't directly get anything out of this, even though it would make my vassal stronger (and therefore me stronger since I'm taxing him) so I'm just going to end the war and basically screw Jon." Which is pretty funny - the AI used Jon the way Jon usually uses his AI allies, as a disposable meat shield.
A peaceful empire does need to be able to defend itself. Recent Stellaris IS NOT "all about .. territory", it's about vassal spam. If you can pick up a vassal early on then the boom that follows leads usually to another. The AI also tends to vassal up and it had made Stellaris boring, because things like Federations that permitted many strategies have become superfluous. On higher difficulty levels, vassals retain resource boosts, which your territory strategy simply burns, never mind empire size and growth penalties for wide empires.
You need to be able to have scientists running ships so they can level up so when a council position opens (or when your old researcher dies) that position can be filled by someone who isn't a level 1 scrub. The bigger problem is that generals still exist, taking up space and being worthless except for that one paragon who is amazing.
At 10:54 where you're talking about scientists still needing to be in ships, I think it's because they still want you to have to pay a tax on your leader pool to limit your expansion speed. Because otherwise you'd just spam science ships and explore everything for a low cost to your energy. That, or Paradox just enjoys having your scientists die when they go into a system you didn't realize was hostile. I don't like either option tbh. My personal issue with the way things work now is that I don't get a choice of negative traits the leaders get and even with all the stuff to make them NOT get negative traits they still somehow wind up with the most annoying ones like '-5% unity'
I'm laughing at the spiel about how weird it is for science ships to have to need scientists while planets now can have a governor each. Also the most likely culprit about the scientist thing is with both how integral science ships our and how much ground they cover (scanning, Archeology, Anomalies) and with how much of that had different outcomes depending on the scientist's skills that ripping it out wholesale would mean removing at least 50% of the fluff established when it's just easier and cooler to have multiple scientist whose beliefs and skills can be incorporated into the system with more and new fluff and they can overhaul the old stuff over time.
A ruler who promised greatness for their people and cause, blessed by the heavens, their life extended to ensure their reign lasts forever, but who turns out to be incompetent, out of their league, and jealously guarding their power? Jon just accidentally created Queen Galfrey of Mendev.
"Commander, as thanks for your exemplary service against the demons, reclaiming Drezen and being our first ray of hope in this conflict in decades, I'm firing you and taking over as leader of the crusade effective immediately. Now go do a suicide mission in the demon realm and let me reap all the benefits of your hard work."
To be fair, it was really more Jon's fault for making an empire that couldn't defend itself. Which led to him getting shackled to an aggressive civilization dumb enough to shoot itself in the foot, basically sacrificing Jon's territory so that it could capture new territory for itself, ending up with less value in the process.
It seems particularly strange that the guys slinging xenogeological surveys 9 to 5 in the science ships still have to be full character-level scientists but for Envoy work apparently any interchangeable nobody is equally suitable for first contact, diplomacy ranging from insults to deep relationship cultivation to complex trade deals to scientific collaboration; as well as espionage. If anything it seems like you could get away with the reverse much more plausibly; especially when a lot of the 'scientist' positions are fairly high level administration within an empire scale research apparatus rather than individual researchers.
All hail High King Solus, the Enlightened Monarch, the Everliving, the Destined Ruler of All. Bow to his Luminous Presence, and be given life eternal*. * The Lonely Kingdom and High King Solus do not guarantee quality of life and cannot be held responsible if expectations do not meet up with reality. All hail the High King. Al hail the Lonely Kingdom.
The stupid high level cap undying leader build is actually pretty powerful.I’ve done it a couple times. Ps. You can 100% tech up lifespan faster than your leaders would die.
I guess the reason why they kept scientists in science ships is because there'd be very little reason to get more of them otherwise if the ship could scan without one. I know scientists can be put in charge of planets aswell but that shouldn't be their intended use-case in the event that science ships stop requiring them.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I've tried to play stellaris a few times and could never get into it but I love watching any video Jon makes of it.
I find it very boring as your income streams across all playstyles rarely change. You can very easily set up systems that will give you all the resources you'd ever need. You basically only get taken out by bad RNG event chains and your core gameplay loop feels identical no matter how off the wall your species is.
CK3 on the other hand, each ruler can be wildly different. You can have rulers who entire income is made in bring an information broker.
You can blackmail and kidnap. You can raid and pillage. You can fight in tournaments and sell your rewards, which are often seen on enemy leaders in later battles if you did sell them, or you can become so renowned at chess that people assume you're a master tactician and will join you as a vassal just for your chess rep.
I don't mean to hate on Stellaris but it needs soooooo much work before it'll be as engaging as CK3, the game places all it's bets on the event chains and it leads to the gameplay between events being... Letting things run themselves
@therealgrayfox I wonder, when did you last play Stellaris. I'm not saying your wrong, your viewpoint is completely valid, it's just that with the updates the game gets many parts of the gameplay change quite consistently
@@JakeTalksGamesYT To me the most fun is playing with self-imposed restrictions which can provide a lot of variety. I once did a playthrough where I built no buildings that produced any tradeable resources (only trade value), and immediately destroyed any I got. Very fun with the new traditions and vassal mechanics.
Stellaris is one of those games that you needed to buy early and adjust to every change as it got released. Jumping back in after an extended break (or completely fresh) is like jumping into the deep end of the pool ... with a lead belt. Plus to get the full package you probably need to get a new mortgage.
@@JakeTalksGamesYT Honestly I respect the opinion but I think you're in the minority on that one, CK3 is regularly lambasted as being the most flavorless and boring paradox title, especially when you contrast it with Ck2, which is kinda insane by comparison.
I also just think the point about being taken out only by bad RNG is literally any Paradox game, I mean I started Ck3 as a OPM and conquered and entire empire title out in one character lifetime and was completely set, all paradox games are super easy once you actually learn the mechanics.
Fun fact Jon. With this ethic regardless of if you declare yourself emperor or not, if you do a good job you can build a machine that makes your leader immortal at the cost of strategic resources.
There should definitely be an option to sacrifice population to run the machine if you are a psychic species.
Which is sort of cool, but the annoying part is that this is a forced event of leader death even if you had plans of making your leader immortal
@@LadyBlackmoor The trick is to have your ascenscion path completed *before* the event triggers, as they each give a unique thematic version of that event. Synth ascenscion for instance says "okay, you're already immortal but obviously the Ruler needs the turbo mega-snazziest robot body money can buy" which gives some nice empire buffs at the cost of a small Alloy upkeep
I just take the cloning one. -100 food/month is very little by this point.
I chose the Psychic path and it's literally the God Emperor from 40k.
Jon, happy to see you playing Stellaris again! Hope we can have a new series in the future. =)
About the science ship that was behind enemy lines: if you use the "Return" button on the ships and they have no non-hostile path they just go MIA and appear back on you home. It's less dangerous that skirting on the enemies and it also works if you are in a system with a FTL inhibitttors;
We really need a full new Stellaris series from you, It's one of my favourite games to watch you play!
Every time I see a Stellaris video on the channel, I hope it is the start of a new series.
Sometimes it's also the end.
I think Paradox still makes you put scientists in each ship is because the old competitive meta was to pump out as many science ships as possible, as early as possible to help claim as much space as possible. Placing harder soft caps on leaders slows down this early game race, which I appreciate because there's not as much pressure on micromanagement in my big slow strategy game anymore.
Slowing down the early game is absolutely a good decision
Except you put out 2 sci ships per scientist and reassign them to the ship that moved into position.
You don't want your expensive limited leader options to be undertaking long journeys.
Overall I'd say the game has got faster not slower, you can build up to middle game power in the early game. Other times you can be screwed cut off from sufficient resources. That is despite nerfing the absolutely game breaking exploits available initially with Paragons by stacking of resource or ship build cost benefits.
This is one of the things Jon got wrong, he's not a Stellaris expert, but has made some cracking far more entertaining runs, precisely because his play isn't disciplined optimal decisions the whole time.
I'm surprised to see someone else do what I tried to do a few months ago in Stellaris, make the longest-lived species I possibly could who have stupidly high level caps and experience gain. It's a very interesting concept to me.
That was literally my very first species I ever made in Stellaris way back when it first released.
Leaders back in 1.0 were actually pretty useful before they got nerfed early on. I'm glad they're back and even better now!
This has always been my favorite way to play, so this DLC was practically made for me. Might have to find a mod to do away with the silly vestigial requirement for science leaders on exploration ships, though.
It's a shame you didn't get to the 'ending' of this origin. You eventually get an event that gives your ruler a unique trait and makes them immortal, with the specifics depending on your ascension path.
Huh, might try it then. I always figured it more or less "locked" you into Psionic Ascension to make them the Chosen One.
@@Pchlster It's actually better to avoid making them the Chosen One, since the event doesn't happen if your ruler is already immortal (unless they're synthetic, I think). But if you time things so that you get to pick a Chosen One after this event, you can stack both traits on your ruler. Then make them chosen of your patron Shroud entity too, because you can never have too much immortality!
Just make sure you finish an ascension path before your ruler dies. Otherwise the event will make them immortal, but gives them no other bonuses and hugely increases their upkeep cost.
Oh you magnificent bastard! I literally finished ‘The Impossible Run’-series the other day, and now you bless us with this!
Much love and all the best wishes ❤
Love the commitment to roleplaying this through to the bitter end. A terrible playthrough, but a fantastically entertaining story and video!
Jon, please, take the time to read your tool tips. You had the option (and the funds) to spend some extra money on the statue of your leader on your new colony world for a better result.
6:00 The one really good thing about the old scientist system was that there was a civic you could take that made a Scientist's specialty research appear 2x as likely, so if you wanted to bum rush like materials engineering or guarantee you get archeotech more often that's how you'd do it.
You really should have picked a half human half worm race for the leader. That would have led you for The Golden Path *space desert music starts playing *
I'm guessing there are so many events that rely on a science ship having a scientist character on board, so there was no way to get rid of them.
I’ve played lots of Stellaris, I’ve uninstalled it so many times (simply to free up space on my pc) but every time Jon makes a Stellaris video he makes me download it again with out fail.
Jon... That big speech at the 1:00:00 mark about 'encasing our bodies in steel to preserve our minds' sounds a whole lot like the origin story of the Necrons in Warhammer 40K, and that didn't turn out so well...
Oh Jon one more thing if you didn't know, cloaking tech exists now, your science ships can be cloaked and then you never have to worry about random deaths again lol. And during that one moment you had where you had a ship behind enemy lines, as long as you aren't actively engaged in combat.... you could just pull the scientist out of the ship at any point.
Go to war with a Fallen Empire, surrender, laugh as Solas gets executed by them.
I kind of think the point of the whole science ship to science counselor system was to work your scientists up giving them experience and then putting the best ones on the council having the best one right at the start kind of throughs that Dynamic for a loop. Just makes sense though as scientists are scientists first whereas politicians are always politicians but scientists that go into government basically have to Master 2 careers so it wouldn't make sense that every scientist would make a good counselor and some should just be in the field doing what they do best.
I would love it if you continued this playthrough, just to see how things will turn out.
Okay I know this isn't directly related to Stellaris but I REALLY can't wait for your videos on Starfield. I love all of your scifi game content to be honest
I feel like there is something to be learned from this.
Dictator bad
I've been deep into Stellaris recently, playing a race built on the Gorn from Star Trek. Xenophobic militaristic people eaters so I only accept the robotic special leaders for RP reasons.
Yes, full series again 2024!
One of my favorite things about Jon is that he readily shares when things go wrong in all his content. It's boring, and unrepresentative of the usual gaming experience to win 100% of the time.
I want to see this run again. As good as it was to see how catastrophically wrong things can go so quickly, seeing another run with a possible better starmap would be really cool also.
This is how Jon expected the Impossible Run to go lol
enjoyed lathrix's attempt at this but jon has that entertaining bumblingness that is always entertaining :3
Jon's stated goal: Turn Solus the Great into our eternal God-King.
Jon's actual playthrough: Solus the Incompetent is running our empire like a third-rate banana-republic. Somebody, please shoot Solus before he makes everything even worse.
I love Stellaris. I hope you play more of this in the future. Great vid.
Been waiting 4 u 2 do this dlc keep up the awesome content
This was a Shakespearean tragedy I loved it
YEsss FULL series :D DO IT
So Jon decided to play as North Korea this episode
Next bloody year for a new series, he says, casually crushing hopes and dreams.
John they kept scientists in science ships both 1. To reduce rate of exploration and expansion (limited leader slots reduces the early game meta of scienceship spam), and 2. So they don't have to rework the *entire* anomalies and dig site system to be decoupled from science ships.
Edit: also decoupling scientists from science ships means they have a shitload of perks that need to be reworked or removed. Additionally I'd argue that removing scientists from science ships, without then having to introduce more things to recruit scientists for, means you will only ever have 1 scientist for the council or whatever
This MUST be continued in a livestream. 🙏🙏🙏
"Why are we purging them, thats too zenophobic" the panic in jons voice got me dying.
By my assessment, there are some pretty clear reasons to still require scientists manning Science Ships (and to still have secondary leaders not on the council in general, really) - it means there is still some strategic depth to the leader system for the players who actually enjoy micromanaging who is in charge to min-max the various bonuses, and it's a good way to ensure players, particularly new ones, will likely have replacements available when a councilor dies and they don't need to start over with a fresh recruit. There are probably more justifications, that's just what comes to mind off the top of my head.
You know, I was going to make a Final Fantasy XIV joke about an Emperor Solus who turned his empire into a technological powerhouse, but he was actually relatively successful so the parallels just aren't there.
Today, Jon roleplays as Solomon-David from Kill Six Billion Demons.
I didn't know Jon was doing a Liz Truss run...
More like Neville Chamberlain
THANK YOU for this! I love seeing your take on games I've never played, but I play this one a lot and I love your take on it! I'd love to see you do a whole Stellaris series like you're doing XCOM. That or CK3. I can dream, can't I?
@3:23 "Less and less negative traits are going to be showing up."
It's "fewer and fewer", Jon. This is what happens when you don't watch Game of Thrones.
if you make science ships able to survey without a scientist, then you run into an issue where people will spam out science ships to explore as much as possible (because surveying allows you to get control of systems before other empire) and I think it wouldn't be a great system. And I wouldn't call surveying, researching anomalies, and finding events and precursors 'nothing of note' those are some of the big moments of the early game
@14:39 Is that a typo on screen or did they nerf Private Mines? it says Private Mines lvl 2 but only giving +8 Minerals.. that's what lvl 1 does. lvl 2 is +32..
@17:10 You know you've played this game too long when you breath a sigh of relief on the '18 mineral in a single system' when he clicks on it and it's not the Asteroid belt..
*EDIT: Nearing the end... THAT WENT SOUTH SO FAST!!!
time for my Dune, Warhammer 40k, or possibly Foundation RP playthrough
1:01:00 I'm guessing Jon hasn't heard of, or doesn't remember the Necrons from Warhammer 40k. Basically the same thing.
I like this early access of Starfield! Do more Jon!
only thing I can think of around your comments about scientists, in science ships is it allows them to level up, so that should your head of research die, you can have a levelled replacement to pop on the council
Is it just me or did john go from being the chancellor to the evil passivist sith lord
I love Jon's Stellaris videos!
Love these videos, I have played about 500 hours of this game and I always learn something from watching your videos. Would love another series or live streams on stellaris
At first glance I thought the name of your starting system was "Eugene's Bacon".
Can’t wait for the let’s play!
The scientists in science ships don't pootle around doing nothing. They research anomalies, the speed of which is a function of the scientist doing it, so you can tailor a scientist specifically for anomalies. And the same with archaeology digs, the speed and what not of them are also tied to the scientist doing that dig, so you can get scientist tailored specifically for that.
It's been a fair few years since I last played Stellaris, but all of this looks really great.
I like the new character focus.
I might have to buy a couple of DLCs when they next come on sale. Haven't gotten any of 'em since Federations.
The other weird decision is now that Leaders have a cap, it seems like in addition to sector Governor you can also have planet governors???
"If I come to them and say, 'So, the first aliens we ran into, we're going to surrender!' I feel like in some ways, it would like, undermine my imperial majesty a bit."
Now I want to see a wacky comedy about High King Solus the Incompetent having to hide the fact that they've become vassals to his subject in that classic "Uh oh, this character has something he can't let his family/girlfriend/etc. know about and needs to do some wacky stuff to keep them from finding out!" style.
Man, that went EXTREMELY well!!!
…
Right up until that part when in didn’t…
Happy Zarqlan Day, everyone. All Glory to Zarqlan!
I never knew the absolute most dumpsterfire playthrough could be so entertaining. Series soon please
This is one of those games I still need to sit down with and learn to play. It looks fantastic.
Slowly Stellaris is reaching Galimulator levels
Just had a thought for similar game's civic/ethics or even potentially perks system: through pop-up decisions, and the player's play-style, the game gives and takes away perks based on some kind of algorithm, ie: calculates how long between decisions, how long the pause timer is on ("careful" trait), what kind of tech you choose or what your choices are in decision-making (similar to EU4 pop-ups, but built for the specific game), and that provides civic or ethic information. Similarly, for ethics, something like counting how long between starting new wars and how much fleet/army/military superiority your nation/empire maintains, it determines whether the species is militaristic vs pacifist. Essentially, although one might be able to start out with certain ethics or civics, through the play-style, the game changes along with your play, functioning as an even more effective learning/fun tool. Moreover, rather than creating a nation from scratch, the nation forms around how you play the game, requiring you to be all the more in-tune with how and when and what decisions you're making.
"There is no shame in deterrence. Having a weapon is different from using it."
- Ghandi from Civilization 6.
Damn I love this channel!
The Tragedy of High King Solus was a magnificent ride!
Long live God King Solus, whether you like it or not
I love how Jon went ful jolo mode in this game. When i have such bad start with hostile neighbor i would start again in heart beat till i get safe enough good starting position. And Yet Jon stayed with that mess to the end.
we need a new full playthrough of Stellaris John
come on gives us what we want
Im leaving a comment for the algorithm, because any stellaris content is good content
Jon, at the start: "What we want more than anything is some nice chill neighbours where we can just live and let live."
Me: "Errrrrr... Jon...?"
Jon shortly afterwards: "Well as it turns out we're at war!"
Me: "You've played videogames professionally for how long, and didn't see this coming?!"
Emperor Solus went full Winston Duarte from Laconia
I am a simple creature I see stellaris I click like
Jon, Mr Wellon was actually a Ms Wellon.
I like the idea of specialized scientists and wouldn't mind if you could expand into specialized seats, but it also felt weird you needed 3 scientists to handle research while head of state is always 1 guy. Council is a great direction where you still have the big head but also one super admiral for your first fleet and a head of science to handle all of it. Scientists are still very prominent to keep sci vessels running but governors are also important. Maybe if you play right you could have a line of military leaders? Next free expansion, allow military ethics to scout with fewer science ships. I don't know if you could have governors as scouts in pacifist or maybe have spiritualists have priest leaders that can do anything but only at a fraction the intended bonus (ex. Priests research well enough but only at 70% capacity while boosting unity gain. They can lead armies and fleets but give fewer bonuses, BUT retreat is less likely and recover 15%-25% quicker. They don't know a thing about running a planet wide economy but people like them, and of course you can cycle them around to other roles on the fly)
Sooooooo Jon, how much longer until we get the inevitable “stelaris: Kill everything” 0_o
the spiffing jons new video is out!!!
Great
Well…. Yes things didn’t go as planned.
But when better than spiffing brits imperator livestream
I assume you need scientists in ships to stop people from just spamming the hell out of the ships to rush explore. That kinda makes sense to me.
Yes! Jon and Paradox are back together!!!
Last time I played this, I got a Galactic Paragon who was basically the Borg Queen if she was concerned only with being an admiral and fighting for anyone (I was a fanatic materialist/mechanist race.) Awesome admiral.
So ends the reign of Solus the incompetent. An interesting plot twist in that making him live forever ruined the empire.
I think what we've learned here is
1) Making a peaceful empire is a poor choice in a game that's all about how much territory you can capture and defend. Even if you plan to play tall, you still need to be able to defend what you have. Otherwise
2) Becoming the vassal of an aggressive nation is just kicking the can down the road, because the AI seems to place no importance on helping or protecting its allies whatsoever, only on its own immediate self interest.
Even when the arrangement should have worked out in Jon's favor, when he taunted another civ to attack, it turned out not to because the liege said "Hey I don't directly get anything out of this, even though it would make my vassal stronger (and therefore me stronger since I'm taxing him) so I'm just going to end the war and basically screw Jon."
Which is pretty funny - the AI used Jon the way Jon usually uses his AI allies, as a disposable meat shield.
A peaceful empire does need to be able to defend itself. Recent Stellaris IS NOT "all about .. territory", it's about vassal spam. If you can pick up a vassal early on then the boom that follows leads usually to another. The AI also tends to vassal up and it had made Stellaris boring, because things like Federations that permitted many strategies have become superfluous.
On higher difficulty levels, vassals retain resource boosts, which your territory strategy simply burns, never mind empire size and growth penalties for wide empires.
I wish I could justify keeping up with Paradox games DLC costs myself, still love to see the new stuff!
Cloaking might offset the propensity of scientist death, though I haven't tried it myself.
Good to see Jon still can’t make a decent build in Stellaris 😂
You need to be able to have scientists running ships so they can level up so when a council position opens (or when your old researcher dies) that position can be filled by someone who isn't a level 1 scrub. The bigger problem is that generals still exist, taking up space and being worthless except for that one paragon who is amazing.
finally, a country run by Jon goes the way it should
The parallels to this and a lot of dictators blaming aliens and giving orders that don’t matter as the empire collapses around him was amazing.
At 10:54 where you're talking about scientists still needing to be in ships, I think it's because they still want you to have to pay a tax on your leader pool to limit your expansion speed. Because otherwise you'd just spam science ships and explore everything for a low cost to your energy. That, or Paradox just enjoys having your scientists die when they go into a system you didn't realize was hostile. I don't like either option tbh. My personal issue with the way things work now is that I don't get a choice of negative traits the leaders get and even with all the stuff to make them NOT get negative traits they still somehow wind up with the most annoying ones like '-5% unity'
I'm laughing at the spiel about how weird it is for science ships to have to need scientists while planets now can have a governor each.
Also the most likely culprit about the scientist thing is with both how integral science ships our and how much ground they cover (scanning, Archeology, Anomalies) and with how much of that had different outcomes depending on the scientist's skills that ripping it out wholesale would mean removing at least 50% of the fluff established when it's just easier and cooler to have multiple scientist whose beliefs and skills can be incorporated into the system with more and new fluff and they can overhaul the old stuff over time.
Jon if you really want to see how silly a leader based build can be, you need to do a run with Progenitor Hive, it's glorious.
OMG IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
This would be a great setting for a new roman empire AVE ASTRAUGUSTUS
A ruler who promised greatness for their people and cause, blessed by the heavens, their life extended to ensure their reign lasts forever, but who turns out to be incompetent, out of their league, and jealously guarding their power? Jon just accidentally created Queen Galfrey of Mendev.
"Commander, as thanks for your exemplary service against the demons, reclaiming Drezen and being our first ray of hope in this conflict in decades, I'm firing you and taking over as leader of the crusade effective immediately. Now go do a suicide mission in the demon realm and let me reap all the benefits of your hard work."
To be fair, it was really more Jon's fault for making an empire that couldn't defend itself.
Which led to him getting shackled to an aggressive civilization dumb enough to shoot itself in the foot, basically sacrificing Jon's territory so that it could capture new territory for itself, ending up with less value in the process.
I also didnt know about Galactic Paragons...
It seems particularly strange that the guys slinging xenogeological surveys 9 to 5 in the science ships still have to be full character-level scientists but for Envoy work apparently any interchangeable nobody is equally suitable for first contact, diplomacy ranging from insults to deep relationship cultivation to complex trade deals to scientific collaboration; as well as espionage.
If anything it seems like you could get away with the reverse much more plausibly; especially when a lot of the 'scientist' positions are fairly high level administration within an empire scale research apparatus rather than individual researchers.
All hail High King Solus, the Enlightened Monarch, the Everliving, the Destined Ruler of All.
Bow to his Luminous Presence, and be given life eternal*.
* The Lonely Kingdom and High King Solus do not guarantee quality of life and cannot be held responsible if expectations do not meet up with reality. All hail the High King. Al hail the Lonely Kingdom.
The stupid high level cap undying leader build is actually pretty powerful.I’ve done it a couple times. Ps. You can 100% tech up lifespan faster than your leaders would die.
I guess the reason why they kept scientists in science ships is because there'd be very little reason to get more of them otherwise if the ship could scan without one. I know scientists can be put in charge of planets aswell but that shouldn't be their intended use-case in the event that science ships stop requiring them.