Stellaris - a bunch of middle stuff

OK, after my last update, I tried to do what I said I'd do, I spent about 5-10 years of game time building up resources, surveying everything around, improving my reputation with other potentially friendly empires and setting up trade deals where I could, and getting a sense of the state of the galaxy.

Apparently I'd been at 2235, about 35 years in -- I was worried it had been longer, but apparently I'd been playing fairly slowly. OK, so I'm not doing *great* but I'm not doing terribly either. I think it was mostly chance I spawned not very near other empires, which means I may be able to grab more territory if I'm smart about it, but meant there was quite a time when I'd not met any of them.

There were some domestic politic activities. There was an election, and the previous governor was ousted in favour of one of the other candidates (one of my scientists) who had different bonuses. Then of course she stopped doing science and I needed to replace her. I'd previously favoured one of the *other* candidates, an admiral who was proposing bonuses I found slightly more attractive, but I was happy with the result.

I toyed with adopting the main egalitarian faction officially, shifting my empire's politics to "fanatical egalitarian" but I hadn't realised that would remove one of my other ethos. That might have been ok if it had been spiritualist (the main benefit is unity gain which I need more of, but I'm not currently taking enough advantage of anyway), but apparently because of preparing to fight the space shiitake pacifism lost ground, and when I tried it, I lost pacifism. Which was REALLY inconvenient, because one of the benefits of pacifism is being able to control an extra two planets without spinning them off into a devolved sector run by an AI governer -- I didn't object to that in principle, even if it's less efficient, but having my screen suddenly covered in warnings that I was over capacity when I wasn't expecting it wasn't good. I restarted the game without unpausing and fortunately it hadn't autosaved.

I claimed one or two more significant choke points, but didn't feel completely in control.

When I moved my military fleet around and zoomed in on it, there was a lovely visual of ten corvettes all flying in formation.

The shiitake still hadn't declared war on me despite me insulting them several times, so I decided to try out a war against them on egalitarian grounds (a war of liberation, but hopefully for real) mostly out of curiosity to see how I fared against them. They were not very bright -- you'd think they might reinforce the system right next to my ones! But their military outclassed me, I managed to take a couple of systems while their armies were elsewhere, but my attempt to take one of their lightly populated planets failed (which means I won't be able to keep the other systems unless I *can* take a planet), and they took out one of my starbases, leaving me with no outpost on one side of their space.

I'm not sure if I can do more during this war or if it's best to just withdraw and build up more strength before trying again. Or go for plan "sneak a science and construction ship through their lightly defended systems so I can expand on the other side".

Oh, and the Legion Eagles have managed to spread across the whole radius of the galaxy, so even if I can go through or round the cautiously friendly Napoleopes, I'd need to fight them to get into the empty space between them and the south side of the galaxy (which is filling up fast with ANOTHER hegemonic military race).

Getting temporarily obsessed by something

Every so often I get temporarily obsessed by something. This month it's stellaris -- the first bit when I'm still learning all the game I'm always like "must learn more, learn faster, impatient to try things out, must micromanage everything perfectly". Maybe someone else would have ran the game a bit faster :)

A few months ago it was factorio. Sometimes it's a project of my own instead of something I'm only consuming, a programming project or planning a roleplaying game.

It's good to have something I'm really excited about. Even if it's not always something productive, it's good to have experienced the things.

It's a bit of a balancing act, because overall it makes me feel fairly good, but it does mean I lose some attention for keeping on top of things I need to do. But that also happens when I feel a bit meh and undermotivated, so I think I need to accept my enthusiasm naturally comes in spurts, but I need to manage the pendulum and take advantage of the highs, lows, and middles according to what they help most with.

But I'm always really cautious, I feel like the right kind of addictive thing I could get into and suck up ALL my time playing something or whatever it was. And I probably shouldn't be *that* worried, because it usually runs its course in less than a month, and I can notice if it starts to be a problem.

But partly, I don't like losing control of my decisions, when I think "ok, I'll go to bed early" and then, oops... I feel nervous about not being in control. And partly my head is full of stereotypes about men who play computer games 24 hours a day and neglect relationships with people outside the game. And I don't think that's *likely* to be me, but I'm always embarrassed to admit I'm super into something, in case it's something that looks ridiculous -- even though in general I think being enthusiastic about things is good and I avoid judging hobbies unless there's something actually bad about them.

I'm also aware that it sort of complements my usually being *insufficiently* into something.

And also always wondering, can I get things to align better so I can sometimes get that excited about something which is actually achieving something.