Something I sometimes do for a more relaxed game is lower the number of empires from default for map size, and bump up the number of pre-FTL so some of them will later turn into empires. I usually also turn up the number of advanced empires.
You end up with a few superpowers, a few insignificant empires who are pawns in their games, and a little more early-game breathing room.
To be honest, I also generally peak at the map in observe mode to ensure I have a fun/interesting start position. I play with like 200 mods, usually create several of my own rival empires, and generally play it as a story generator rather than a game to “win.”
What do you do when a new update comes out and breaks all your mods? I think thats the biggest thing keeping me from jumping back into stellaris. I’ve been playing off and on for years. 3+ times I’ve decided to boot up stellaris, find my mod list super outdated. Spent 30 to 90 minutes fixing stuff. Then like a week later a new update comes out and a bunch of mods break. I stop playing cuz I need to wait for the mods to be updated. Love the game but the constant mods breaking makes playing a game a chore
I absolutely know how you feel. I’ll typically go 6 to 12 months at a time without playing because of that. I then strategically find a window between patches where most of my favorite mods are all up to date. It typically takes a solid 4 hours of work to fix up my modlist, and I then play obsessively for several weeks. Despite these huge breaks, I’m at almost 3500 hours in the game, though I’ve been playing since release.
My second fave game is Rimworld, and I follow a similar pattern there, though modding for that game seems much more resilient in the face of certain updates. Plus, Ludeon isn’t DLC-crazy like Paradox.
Something I sometimes do for a more relaxed game is lower the number of empires from default for map size, and bump up the number of pre-FTL so some of them will later turn into empires. I usually also turn up the number of advanced empires.
You end up with a few superpowers, a few insignificant empires who are pawns in their games, and a little more early-game breathing room.
To be honest, I also generally peak at the map in observe mode to ensure I have a fun/interesting start position. I play with like 200 mods, usually create several of my own rival empires, and generally play it as a story generator rather than a game to “win.”
What do you do when a new update comes out and breaks all your mods? I think thats the biggest thing keeping me from jumping back into stellaris. I’ve been playing off and on for years. 3+ times I’ve decided to boot up stellaris, find my mod list super outdated. Spent 30 to 90 minutes fixing stuff. Then like a week later a new update comes out and a bunch of mods break. I stop playing cuz I need to wait for the mods to be updated. Love the game but the constant mods breaking makes playing a game a chore
I absolutely know how you feel. I’ll typically go 6 to 12 months at a time without playing because of that. I then strategically find a window between patches where most of my favorite mods are all up to date. It typically takes a solid 4 hours of work to fix up my modlist, and I then play obsessively for several weeks. Despite these huge breaks, I’m at almost 3500 hours in the game, though I’ve been playing since release.
My second fave game is Rimworld, and I follow a similar pattern there, though modding for that game seems much more resilient in the face of certain updates. Plus, Ludeon isn’t DLC-crazy like Paradox.