![]() ![]() Ideologies would seem to be a great way to keep internal politics fresh, but they have such a minor effect at the macro level that they’re easy to ignore. Most importantly, they don’t create compelling internal politics to an empire – at worst, a discontented sector might threaten to rebel, but that’s easily stopped with a tiny payment. They don’t do anything except contribute resources. Sectors take the best part of Stellaris – planet management – and turn into.nothing. Unfortunately, these sectors are black holes where fun gets sucked into an event horizon, never to return. You’re forced to create sectors: clumps of your empire given over to an AI governor in order to give you resources without hassle. Once you expand past five star systems, you’re penalized with a mechanic designed to prevent micromanagement. “Not only is Stellaris externally inert, its internal empire management turns dull as well. With dozens of empires in any given galaxy (24 in a normal-sized startup) the randomization is flexible and strong enough to make the early empire-building fascinating. These decisions are meaningful enough to offer slight buffs or debuffs to most aspects of a campaign, from population happiness to diplomatic buffs or penalties with other races. So you could create the Vulcans from Star Trek with Fanatic Materialism and Pacifism, or an angry swarming hive of Fanatic Collectivist Xenophobes to mimic Master of Orion’s Klackons. By far the most interesting twist is a set of ideology scales, with four ranges of Xenophobe-Xenophile, Spiritual-Materialist, Collectivist-Individualist, and Militarist-Pacifist determining how they behave. The empires in each game are randomly generated to have their own species traits, backgrounds, and government types. But it does miss, turning great early-game potential into a slow, dull grind.Stellaris makes a great first impression. With the experts at Paradox putting their own spin on a classic genre, it seems like a can’t-miss proposition. The promising new space strategy game Stellaris has the pedigree to be great.
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