Isnt Stellaris just a shiny fancier version of Distant Worlds?

Sorry I am answering my own thread. But this is the replies I got off Steam... So why ...why are we still writing 4x games in 32 bit? A lot of folks are all happy happy joy joy about Stellaris but seriously it will hit the proverbial wall in about 9 months. Lots of replies saying 'Maps can be modded larger' ....after Civ 5 and seeing how 4x games work when you do that my reaction is...uh no I will never buy this product. ...EVER. 

So yea I am a GCIII fanboi but the reality is GCIII will not be capped by maps and objects by memory for a long time. Why would I buy a product that will ulitmately start crashing on me if I have a couple thousand objects on screen? ...

Showing 1-5 of 5 comments

 

  19 hours ago 

The current Clausewitz engine is just 32 bit. No idea about anything else.

  #1

ijiero  19 hours ago 

Nope, unfortunately people like me with 16Gb Ram will see most of that go to waste. People with 8Gb Ram even...

  #2

Thanatos  19 hours ago 

32 bit

1000 stars is the limit on stars but that can be modded

Dunno but i guess DX 9 or 11

no idea about multi threading

No DX 12 likely is not gonna happen

  #3

Fleshhunter 19 hours ago 

32 bit
Largest map is 1000 but you can mod it

  #4

nurseryguy33 Just now 

Ok thanks that answers my question. Thank you very much!

Stellaris would be a shiny version of all the other Paradox games made with the Clauswitz engine before it's a knockoff of Distant Worlds.  They're all this way, and, naturally, they're all 32 bit as well.

Aside from being a space 4X, they probably don't have much in common.  Watch some of the gameplay videos, PDX has put out quite a lot of content.

Thank you Psychoak.

What matters is how good the game is and not 64bit.GC3 is not scaled for large galaxies like Stellaris is.GC3 is micro hell at that scale.

RTS games are not my cup of tea. For every click of the mouse I make, the AI makes 1,000. How can you even begin to compete?

Well micro hell just means that you got a lot to do. What ends up happening and will end up is the fact that after so many objects on the screen the performance drops to nothing or you outright crash. Ill hold off on getting it till I hear some of the rants/raves from those <really informed and unbiased> steam users!

I was a fucking retard and pre-ordered it, so I'll let you know what it's like.

I agree, I don't care for RTS games.  Regarding Distant Worlds (universe), its listed as RTS, but the pause at will feathure makes it ok for me. 

Most of the stuff built in the Clauswitz engine isn't really real time.  In Stellaris, it appears to actually be a real time implementation, but their previous games are basically turn based, with the turns being timed.  There isn't a lot going on, turns are individual days, in a game played over centuries.  CK2 plays more like a TBS than anything.

The gameplay videos I've watched show actual movement in real time by ships, so it's different from the last few games they put out, but the pacing is still pretty mild looking.  It's not going to be a frantic struggle to keep up with AI action counts.

64-bit it is just one of many features.

GC3 didn't have the luxury to tap into a 10+ year old game engine. 

Obviously, we could have taken the GalCiv II engine and continued to enhance that until we hit the memory limit.  We made the choice to go to 64-bit and take our lumps in 2015.

Eventually, everyone else will have to move to 64-bit and they'll go through the same process.

Also, in what way, specifically, is GC3 "micro hell" on large maps?

Well, compared to Distant Worlds, which basically plays itself if you let it...  In GC3 you actually have to move all those ships around, build stuff.  Getting the new terraforming tile on fifty planets is a bit of a grind.

Well i think global and planet settings for governors. Queing up research could help. An easier way to not use ships you build. Being able to right click on shipyards starbases and planet to control governance and building sortof like they did in two. These would help.without changing gameplay. A list of of explored unclaimed planets. 

Quoting psychoak, reply 11

Well, compared to Distant Worlds, which basically plays itself if you let it...  In GC3 you actually have to move all those ships around, build stuff.  Getting the new terraforming tile on fifty planets is a bit of a grind.

This is the main reason I generally play on smaller maps.  I like the feel of tactics rather than strategic ...

To be blunt, I don't give a damn whether Stellaris is 64-bit.  What matters most is game design.  64-bit vs 32-bit doesn't even register in my consideration of a game.

Obviously I haven't played Stellaris yet, but a couple comments:

• It brings a lot of Paradox's strengths from its grand strategy games to the space 4x genre, like a more complex approach to war goals, more complex diplomatic relations, etc.  I love Distant Worlds, and it's my favourite 4X of all time (space or otherwise), but it was severely lacking in that department.
• I prefer to think of Distant Worlds and Paradox games (including Stellaris) as 'continuous' time rather than real-time.  They don't play at all like traditional RTS games (which I despise).  They tick along at a very stately pace (to quote Tom Chick), and the player is never rushed.  Hell, Distant Worlds pauses when you open *any* screen, and there's no option not to.  I've always hated RTS games, but Paradox games and Distant Worlds have ruined turn-based games for me.  I consider them to be an indication of where the 4X and grand strategy genres should move.  Distant Worlds gives a feeling of space that no turn-based grid-based game can do.  Those games now just feel like land-based games with different graphics.

I thought distant worlds was fine, but galactic civilizations 2 and 3 were better.

I'm actually quite excited about what I'm seeing Stellaris do (based on the dev and let's play vids) with the 4x space genre.  I see myself putting in lots of hours playing it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it impacts other 4x games in the future, including GCIII.

Because, someone or some people in this thread seem to assume that the step to go into 64bit was mostly to be able to introduce even larger maps, more planets, more <everything> w/o the game handing out OoM errors.

Which is ofc ironic if micro is perceived to be 

when in GC DA you already could manage +700 planets

BTW comparing a RTS against TBS isn't right IMO. The RTS will be designed with alot of automation because there's a real need for the player to be able to make up in speed with a game that can make thousands of decisions within a single second, whereas a TBS is 100% fair in that regard.

I am really looking for Stellaris being out for so many reasons.  For one, I enjoy the EU games a lot.  Secondly, every time there's a space strategy game we have people who say "game X will have all these things I wanted" and then game X comes out and it's not a magic bullet.

Every time I see someone talk about how we should have tactical battles I can just say "Hey, there's a new MOO. Did they implement MOO tactical combat the way you demanded we should? No? Well talk to them."

N/A

I actually want to shiv the people at Paradox personally for all the DLC they fuck their games up with.  CK2 has been an unmitigated train wreck for over a year now.  They add more "free" broken shit to the main game than it can handle, which means not buying the stuff still gives you the shaft even if you don't get to play with it.

Interesting feedback so far, >90% positive steam reviews.  Metacritic almost all positive except the IGN reviewer hated it:

So there’s a strong beginning, but once you get five planets or so into a decent-sized empire….then it all goes wrong. In the transition from the early game to the mid-game, Stellaris grinds to a halt. The vast majority of my time playing was spent staring at the screen, waiting for something, anything interesting to happen. It usually didn’t. And campaigns can last for dozens of hours.

Funny how different people see things.  I've no time to play it anyway, so I'll wait for a sale.

First impressions.

Glacial pacing, and I do mean glacial.  If you like other PDX games like CK2, this isn't a problem, it's pretty similar pacing wise.

As an example, it's 350 minerals to get a colony ship, 90 minerals to build a research station that will bring in 2-4 minerals per tick, 60 minerals to build the starting corvette.  I got myself up to 12 income playing for two hours at normal speed.

Combat's okay, exploration is okay.  I got bushwacked by pirates while I was building my second colony ship and they took down a research station before I could build some more corvettes and take them down.  Customization is pretty substantial, but also fairly shallow.  Very big picture.

About 5 hours in, I'm starting to feel a lack of things happening. Research unlocks every few years, other empires never talk to me, the Ai takes care of building up my planets. Just about the only thing I can do is declare war on someone, although other empires are suspiciously close to my own fleet power.

I like that you can set goals for your war. You fight until X damage is done, and then you achieve Y goals. Although I can't quite figure out how much "war score" I can make on the Y goals, and if I can increase it etc.

I'd like to see some more smallish events triggered from within my own empire in the early game (which I obviously still am in). Planets massively changing ethics, diverging genetics, race war against immigrating species etc. Already I am not looking forward to playing another game from the start.

haven't played too much stellaris, but the pacing is definitely atrocious

if i play it at the intended speed it's too slow

if i play it without pausing, the UI becomes frustrating

if i play it by using the speed accelration controls and pausing for commands, i spend more time playing with the time controls than i spend playing the actual game

i'm maybe 5% of the way through a 1v1 on the smallest map.

in that much time i would be 50% of the way through a 6-player galciv2 or civ4 game (which is about the point where i'll quit)

in that much time i could have finished 5 large games of rise of nations

and the saddest part of it all is that there's nothing interesting to look at while the game crawls along. the brid's eye view in RTS games is at least mildly interesting when you see workers harvest resources or armies moving to their destinations because monitoring those things has some relevance to the actual strategy. everything important in stellaris is hidden in multiple layers of menus - almost nothing relevant is visible from the map screen

it's like a game of solitaire. i haven't even encountered my rival yet, and i'm playing on the smallest possible map.

Okay, I played some more.  Stellaris is great, if you need a nap.

There's really not much to do.  The occasional event fires, I was spreading some sort of gas beings across my empire, getting bonuses to social research on gas giants I couldn't otherwise use, and I collected animals for a zoo, but mostly it just made me sleepy.  The one war I got into today, a fleet twice the size of the one I had took down a station, bombed a planets defences off, and then left.  I slowly built up an equivalent fleet, took out one of it's stations, bombed a planet down, and never saw the enemy fleet.

It's the pacing close to CK2, years between wars, etc, but it's not an event driven experience, so basically you're just sitting there looking stupid unless you're at war, and even those aren't particularly interesting.

I'll probably read up on it in a year or two, see if it's gotten more interesting.