Solar Nations 2

This game is awsome

I decided to play as Iceland in the 2092 start date with the challenge of not being able to expand past my starting borders and staying completely neutral. Normally the game stops you from building too many "projects" (buildings) in the same region with the project count cost modifier but there are ways to lower it with technologies, privileges (modifiers that you can give to factions) and culture traits. None of those things can easily be acquired in the early game though so i spent ~100 first years developing very slowly trying to not collapse my nation with bankruptcy. After ~150 years from the game start the European Economic Zone (far future totalitarian and technocratic version of European Union) has succumbed to the Technological Singularity Crisis, a crisis can spawn if you have too little stability and necessary technologies, there are 3 of them: "Eugenarchy" (country based around genetic engineering and assimilating all humans in to a new species), "Imaginarium" (country based around uploading the entire human population in to a "reality 2.0") and the one which spawned out of the EU this game: "MOLOCH" (an artificial super intelligence that i am pretty sure got possessed by a demon). This was really bad cause a crisis has extremely low relations with everyone else which results in it declaring war on everyone, but thankfully a coalition made of Russia, Poland, Italy and England (the U.K. collapsed) has managed to defeat it in a war, England got annexed in the war and Italy was later conquered by Greece (somehow) but the loss of Czechia, Ukraine and the Balkans along with it losing it's army weakened it enough to not be a threat for some time. I spent the next 200 years getting more technologies and lowering the project cost until using gravity manipulation and advanced construction technologies i could build projects for basically free, eventually becoming the 5th strongest country and getting FTL travel allowing me to colonize nearby stars, which i didn't because of the challenge. Because of me building everything in the same region (in this game countries are divided in to regions, small nations like Iceland and Belgium have only one but Russia and India have multiple) all the region-wide modifiers provided by projects were practically nation-wide which was EXTREMELY powerful. Throughout the entire 200 year process of Iceland becoming the most technologically advanced country in existence and turning in to a post-scarcity utopia there were many different wars, like Russia and India fighting over Central Asia, many different conflicts on other planets including a Christian sect conquering a 4th of Mars and the conquest of Jupiter's moons by a megacorporation, and American-Russian war resulting in Russia losing Karelia and Siberia to the USA. The world was endlessly bombarded by nuclear missiles which while it did not de-terraform Earth (a possible thing in this game if you use strong enough weapons like antimatter) was devastating to all other nations on Earth with South America having it the worst going from a unified continent to a nuclear wasteland partitioned between the "American Empire" (USA became a conservative autocracy) and it's allies. Eventually i was building so many projects and my economy was growing so fast the game just gave up and crashed. 10/10 game would turn Iceland in to the 5th strongest country again.

10/10 Indie Hearts of Stellaris

good ♥♥♥♥ yeah

Amazing already, even greater potential.

oh my god bruh

Only played 13 hours at this point but here goes: Love it. Little rough around the edges but it has all the complicated nuances you want from a 4X, including some of the best parts of the various AAA titles out there. The timescale seems a bit short though, I'm on my first playthrough and in that time I've already reached the 2100's, which is a little jarring considering I reduced the passage of time to the slowest possible setting. Would like to see options to slow things down a little further but judging from the way it's playing out so far, it seems as though everything was built around a fairly quick progression of time. Eager to see what the end-game years look like in terms of gameplay! All in all, it has some awesome potential coming from an indie studio (I think a solo dev? If so, props) and I'm excited to see how it progresses on the road to 1.0. Side note: The only thing I will say about the controversy regarding the game is that it is absolutely ludicrous, baseless nonsense from a bunch of people who are just looking for something to complain about. If that's what's keeping you on the fence about buying, just play the game and it will speak for itself.