GB Feature: Stellaris First Impressions
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Paradox Interactive hooked us up with an early copy of Stellaris, and while we were relatively skeptical about whether it would feature the promised dose of RPG elements, it's pretty difficult to turn down an expansive strategy title that at least attempts to incorporate them. After spending a few days with it, WUE has cranked out an initial set of impressions:
Finally, there's influence. That's a tricky one, because it feeds in many of the game's political systems and essentially governs the rate of your empire's expansion. You begin the game with around 150 points of influence, with a monthly gain of 3. Influence is used for things such as implementing edicts, recruiting a new leader (such as scientists for researches or science ships or governor for your empire's various planets), and setting up frontier stations. Frontier stations are needed to expand the borders of the empire, but they aren't cheap. Each of them costs 200 influence points and also permanently drains one influence point from your empire monthly. Assuming no other sources of influence, as little as three frontier stations will effectively kill any monthly influence gain.
There are, of course, ways to gain more influence. For example, some society technology will give a monthly boost to influence once researched. Similarly, declaring another empire a rival will offer a monthly boost to influence, though one that comes at the cost of their overall opinion. Declaring a vastly superior empire a rival might seem like a good move in the short term, but it might eventually push them over the edge and convince them to declare war.
I mentioned research earlier, which is another important element of the game throughout the entire duration of a playthrough. Research is divided into physics, engineering and social. Every category draws a number of new technologies to potentially research once the current research is completed, from which a player can choose. How much time it will take to complete a research is determined by a variety of factors, chiefly the technology resources acquired via research stations, and the scientist leaders' own abilities.
