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Stellaris is the brand new space strategy game from Paradox that will launch today with day 1 Linux support. I was able to play it and livestream it before release, so here are some thoughts.

Disclosure: Review key provided by Paradox.

These are my thoughts while playing as the Human race, I have yet to even try the other races as it has been so engrossing.

I haven’t been this excited about a strategy game in a long, long time. I have a lot of history with such games since I played Master of Orion 2 for endless hours in my youth. I am also a massive space sci-fi fan (Star Trek, Star Wars etc.) so space strategy games really appeal to me. It is, however, a vastly different breed of game to both the old and new Master of Orion. It's also wildly different to previous Paradox titles.

It’s a real-time with pause game, so you can play it as quick or as slowly as you fancy. I didn't get my first Colony Ship until I was about two hours into the game—that’s how much there was to check out when I first got into a game.

There's a lot of different options available to you right away, including different races with unique statistics. Races even have different styles of space travel like Wormholes, Warp Travel and Hyperspace. Each will change how you play the game and they have their own advantages and disadvantages of course.
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I suggest a race with Warp Travel to begin with.

The game is utterly massive, seriously. I have been playing in a galaxy of 600 stars and I am finding it insane. After two hours of play I had barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer, and this isn't even the biggest galaxy you can do.

What I am especially loving about Stellaris is not just how big and deep it is, but just how accessible I have found it to be. The first time I tried it was in an impromptu livestream Thursday last week and even though I was knackered and it was getting late I played through two hours without getting confused. I am easily confused by games, especially Paradox strategy games, but this is completely different. They really have done some great work on making it fun to play for people like me.

I would say it's more complex than the Civilization titles, but no way near as hard to get into as Crusader Kings. It seems they have hit a sweet spot between complexity and fun with Stellaris!

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The research system is awesome, as there’s a vast amount of fun things to discover. It gives you a randomized set of research in each field based on what you have discovered and researched previously. Instead of a single research path, you have three different fields of research. On top of the main research, you will also come across anomalies on planets that will require time, a research ship and a scientist of a high enough level to go and check it out. The only issue I have with the research system is that using a science ship to research the remains of something will stall your current main research in that field.

There are a lot of aliens to discover wandering around the galaxy, and I made it my mission to obliterate and study them all. The design of the wandering alien species is constantly surprising and exciting me, especially seeing their different weapons in action. What’s really great is once you destroy them, you get to research their remains with a science vessel which will help towards specific research going on, or even unlock new research possibilities. One such research item I came across when I annihilated some green crystal entities was Regenerative Hull Tissue, which sounded pretty useful.
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Usually when you pick a research option in a specific field, you might not get to research the other options you didn’t pick, but gaining special research options from obliterated alien remains, or other discoveries will keep the gained research available for whenever you decide to do it.

The combat is the part that surprised me the most. Instead of switching to a new scene or moving to some sort of turn based affair, the combat takes place in real-time directly in the game. It doesn’t interrupt the actual flow of the gameplay like it does in other games that are similar, so you can continue doing other things while space battles are going on.

Lots of little things keep surprising me, like my fleet doing so many battles that Earth decided the captain of one of my ships deserved a promotion to Admiral and command the whole fleet. She was a great commander, and gave me fire rate and hull regeneration bonuses. I had no idea a promotion system existed until I discovered it, how awesome!

There’s many things to go to war over, research and resources in different star systems being pretty important. A museum on Earth requested that I research different alien animals across the galaxy, but one particular planet I needed access to was inside the space of the Ymacera Star Sovereignty. The problem here was that I previously declared them as my Rival as it gave me certain advantages, but at the cost of making them really not like me too much and so—to WAR! Luckily the last one I needed to complete this task was inside the space of an alien race I had an alliance with, so at least that one went smoothly.

The planetary building system mixes things up a bit from other titles I have played. You have the ability to place down buildings in specific tiles, but you need a fully grown “pop” (population) to man the building before it can be used. Not only that, but you will need to clear certain tiles of wreckage, slums and anything else you come across on a planet.

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You’re not just dealing with alien flotillas chasing off your ships, you will also come across hostile aliens on a planet's surface. You could chose to deal with them removing any negative effects they have, or keep them for certain benefits. I discovered a little planet I named bob, which had hostile alien wildlife on it. It made my citizens more productive, but it also reduced happiness. Tough choice, but I decided to keep them for a while for the production bonus considering planet bob was just getting on its feet.

You also have to deal with cultist groups splitting off from your population, pirates, other empires and probably far more I have yet to discover. I have a feeling that even after a couple of weeks I will still be discovering what the game has to offer.

I like the presidency system that the game has too. You will have elections every so often, and each new president has a mandate you can try to fulfill for extra rewards. Things like colonizing more planets, building more research stations and so on. It adds extra challenges, without forcing you to do it. When it comes to election time, you might even get a chance to put your support behind a particular candidate you like the statistics of to help them get elected. Like everything in Stellaris, it adds depth to the game, but doesn’t really add complexity and that’s great.

The first night after playing Stellaris I ended up dreaming about it, and all I wanted to do when I awoke was play it. That’s really something as it’s very rare for any game to engross me in such a way!

The game is utterly gorgeous too, just look at my lovely home system:
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Due to how long games go on for (literally hundreds of hours can be put into a single game), I am not covering the end-game due to how long I had to cover it before release. Once I reach that point, you can bet I will have many more thoughts.

The download is quite small too weighing in at around the 4GB mark, so it won't take too long to download and it won't take up a ton of hard drive space. That is something to also be cheery about for all of you downloading today. I am excited to hear your thoughts on this pretty epic space strategy game.

There is so much to the game, that trying to condense my feelings about it down into words on the internet is proving difficult. If you’re a strategy fan, or a general sci-fi fan you need to own this. To sound cheesy, this really is the space game I've been looking for. Overall, if you want a score, I will give it 9/10. Loses a single point due to the issues below.

Honestly, I can't imagine playing another game for a while.

Performance
I haven’t had a single issue with the performance across my entire playtime. Paradox seem to have really tweaked their engine to make it load quickly and play smoothly. On my 980ti I’ve seen a constant and solid 60FPS without a single dip down.

Issues
The game isn’t perfect though, it does have one super annoying issue with the normal fullscreen mode. On my 4K monitor using 1080p resolution will not revert my resolution back to 4K when I quit the game. The developers confirmed they have my bug report on this, so hopefully they will get around to fixing it.

There are also no scaling options that I have found, so I found it impossible to play at a higher resolution than 1080p due to the text and icons being far too small. I think all games that deal with a lot of text need scaling options. I am always surprised when games don’t have them.

Key giveaway and livestream
I will be livestreaming it on our official GOL Twitch channel, so be sure to follow us for notifications of when I go live tonight. I will also be giving away a Stellaris key to a viewer I personally pick at random! This giveaway key was not given to us by Paradox, but purchased using our Games Republic credit, so I want to give back to the community with it.

About the game
Explore a vast galaxy full of wonder! Paradox Development Studio, makers of the Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis series presents Stellaris, an evolution of the grand strategy genre with space exploration at its core.

Featuring deep strategic gameplay, a rich and enormously diverse selection of alien races and emergent storytelling, Stellaris has engaging challenging gameplay that rewards interstellar exploration as you traverse, discover, interact and learn more about the multitude of species you will encounter during your travels.

You can grab it from our Games Republic store, which nets us a few pennies. Alternatively you can grab it from Steam, Humble Store or the official Paradox store.

The game will release in a few hours. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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30 comments
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Maquis196 May 9, 2016
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I preordered this (since they love Linux and I love them) and I have the same worry you do... I've barely played anything else but CK2 and EU4 since Steam on Linux became a thing. This just makes it worse plus HOI4 coming out next month.

Luckily (or unluckily depending on your views), Uncharted 4 is out tomorrow, so I get to slum it in a world of turn brain off and enjoy the game kind of thing, shame I've got to buy a PS4 just for the experience!
pete910 May 9, 2016
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You can grab it from our Games Republic store

When they release the keys when you've bought a game?

I bought Stellaris but no key is shown/sent
Liam Dawe May 9, 2016
You can grab it from our Games Republic store

When they release the keys when you've bought a game?

I bought Stellaris but no key is shown/sent
They told me they will show up at release.

https://twitter.com/GamesRep/status/727798357675085824


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 9 May 2016 at 2:42 pm UTC
chrisq May 9, 2016
You can grab it from our Games Republic store

When they release the keys when you've bought a game?

I bought Stellaris but no key is shown/sent

Same.
slaapliedje May 9, 2016
I pre-ordered mine on the humble store (yay 10% off everything) and the key hasn't shown up yet either.

I also bought 60 dollars worth of DLC I hadn't gotten for CK2 yet... and I haven't even figured out how to play the thing! half way through the tutorial series I found, I gave up and played some other game ha. I need to learn how to play their games!
Leerdeck May 9, 2016
Also you get a extra species if you log in with you Paradox account while you play the game ;)

Can't wait... a whole hour before I can play....
pete910 May 9, 2016
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Cheers liam
zimano May 9, 2016
I wonder why scaling options are so hard to implement on this type of game? I know dropping your resolution is one way of getting around it but that gives you a blurry screen that does my eyes in aswell :)
Mal May 9, 2016
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I got it from imperial games some days ago and they released the keys today around midday. Maybe the other stores have released them too?
pete910 May 9, 2016
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Yay!!!


Installed and ready to go, mmm think I'll have tea first I may be a while ^_^
Kithop May 9, 2016
I've got mine downloaded and ready to go, but I should be good and actually do my work first.

That doesn't mean I can't listen to the soundtrack while I work instead, though, and oh my gosh what a soundtrack. Just that alone has me all excited. It's this lovely blend of orchestra and synth, you get lovely ambient pads for a while, and then it swells into this triumphant, epic blend of 80s future themes.

Major, major kudos to Andreas Waldetoft on this.
Mountain Man May 9, 2016
It's my understanding that lack of scaling is a limitation of the Clausewitz engine which is several years old and wasn't designed for ultra-high resolution displays. Rumor is that Hearts of Iron IV will be the last Paradox game to use at least this version of Clausewitz.

I love Crusader Kings II and Europa Univversalis IV, so I'm definitely looking forward to Stellaris.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 9 May 2016 at 6:01 pm UTC
pete910 May 9, 2016
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Holy hell it's a time sink..... I've barely done nowt and 2+ hours gone.

It does make you think a bit, The Music is second to none for mood setting.

Perf is spot on on a 290x @ 1440p on high hovers in the 200's though I admit not graphically demanding compared to other games.

Overall, GG Paradox. Just need to learn to play it better


Last edited by pete910 on 9 May 2016 at 8:56 pm UTC
lvlark May 9, 2016
The first night after playing Stellaris I ended up dreaming about it, and all I wanted to do when I awoke was play it. That’s really something as it’s very rare for any game to engross me in such a way!

...

literally hundreds of hours can be put into a single game

Hmm, sounds like I shouldn't buy this for a while then. At least until the summer holidays.
Schattenspiegel May 9, 2016
The german game magazine 'PC GAMES' is writing that the performance gets massively worse in midgame (several hours in) on Windows systems even with only mid sized galaxys on a high end PC.
Would be interesting to hear if you guys are expiriencing the same.
neowiz73 May 9, 2016
congrats to the winner, thanks Liam
iniudan May 9, 2016
The german game magazine 'PC GAMES' is writing that the performance gets massively worse in midgame (several hours in) on Windows systems even with only mid sized galaxys on a high end PC.
Would be interesting to hear if you guys are expiriencing the same.

All paradox games do that, their game are heavily cpu bound, it simply due to the nature of their game that make them that the longer the game go on the more script and calculation are going on at the same time, thus more and more cpu cycles are required for each in-game day, slowing down the game.

Hi all btw, first message after lurking for like two years.


Last edited by iniudan on 9 May 2016 at 11:59 pm UTC
TheRiddick May 10, 2016
No 4k UI support? yikes, I haven't had the chance to try the game but that needs to be fixed.
Zappor May 10, 2016
GUI scaling for high dpi screens
For everyone who needs to scale the GUI here's a little trick.

1. Goto "C:\Users\YourUsername\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris" and open the settings.txt

2. Now change the line "gui_scale" to anything you want. Got it at 1.400000 right now on a 2560x1440 resolution.

The only thing that bothers me is that the main menu background has shifted outside the screen.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/281990/discussions/0/357285562492128604/
neowiz73 May 10, 2016
just picked up Stellaris Nova Edition from the Games Republic store, plus I got the Anomoly Warzone Earth for free as well. that's a pretty good deal :)


Last edited by neowiz73 on 10 May 2016 at 2:16 am UTC
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