Stellaris - further continued minor update
So now I'm less talking about every new experience I have and more talking about the SECOND dragged out war against the fungus people, this is less entertaining :)
War
My God, this isn't good from my planets' populations point of view though. First war, they declared war out of idealism, and I screwed up the economy and got food shortages, and pirates ravaged most of the outer systems, including a pre-spaceflight world in my territory. Second war, the funguses saw I hadn't rebuilt fast enough out of the first war, made claims on a few of my border systems -- and then instead flew a giant fleet straight to my home worlds and bombarded them from orbit.
Even the Centauri baulked at that!
They occupied my homeworld for about ten years. Imagine that in a novel. Earth has multiple successful colonies -- but earth itself is occupied by an alien race.
But fortunately they suck at tactics. If they'd used their two giant fleets smartly they could have easily brought a lot more armies through to actually occupy my planets. But actually they just flew them there in a straight line, and as long as I attacked them -- even if they were in the middle of a convoy -- they couldn't take any planets.
If they'd used their fleet more proactively to protect their supply lines I'd have been screwed.
And they dramatically occupied my homeworld -- but never actually staked a political claim to it, so after the war, it just reverted to me. Whereas I claimed the systems from the rear of their empire I actually managed to take over, while their massive fleets were busy elsewhere.
Indeed, when I took the territory from their rear, they reversed one of their big fleets to fly all the way home to deal with it, so I could have snuck in to liberate my homeworld then if I'd wanted to.
Which teaches me some things about tactics I should have been more on top of. Decide whether to concentrate your force enough it's worth attacking an enemy fleet head on. If so, do. If not, avoid them. Defeat their ships in smaller packets if you can. Conquer territory you want, ideally while their ships are elsewhere.
But I'm still pretty vague about military stuff -- probably I should be tooling my ships with rock-guns to counter their scissor-beams or similar, but I haven't got that worked out.
Science
My scientists asked me to collect seven or eight specimens of particular species -- usually dangerous ones -- from planets all across the galaxy. Fortuitously, once I got my ships past the fungus mass, enough empires had open borders I was able to fly one science ship all round the galaxy, collecting the angry dangerous macguffins and cataloguing various other space creatures like crystalline entities at the same time. I mean, the fauna ate some of the science crew, but too few to have a mechanical effect.
Even some of the conquer-everyone empires were sufficiently friendly to me to have open borders, so I'm wary of them, but grateful for their cooperation.
I also found a "make all the planets glow orange and you can't see where to turn it off again" button :) I figured it out eventually.
Diplomacy
As my fleet builds up, or gets lost in space, the other empires' military strength bobs up and down between "equivalent" and "superior". Once one non-fallen empire was "overwhelming" and almost everyone was superior which was dispiriting. But apparently the Racist Space Parrots got such a kicking in the last war they're back down to equivalent, when they were almost always superior before. I should pick a fight with them quick to endear me to their neighbours while I still can.
The Reavers, who I was worried about because they looked super-expansionist, have actually lost ground, and maybe some territory to neighbouring empires. The names are cool. I don't know how it works, but fleet names, planet names, etc usually sound vaguely appropriate to the different empires. Banthurian Reavers is their actual name they call themself, not my gloss :)
Alas, I built up diplomacy as much as I could, but didn't have the timing right, because several of the most friendly empires already made defensive pacts with other empires and aren't that interested in another one. And I can't grow their trust further without a more intimate deal of some sort. I'm not sure if there's a path to improve relations I'm missing, or if I need more of the diplomacy path to increase the max trust cap, or if I need to be closer to them, or all of the above.
I screwed up slightly with the Anteater Napoleons. I was guaranteeing their independence, partly to increase their opinion of me, partly so I could join in a war against the Racist Space Parrots if it happened. But during the other war, I wasn't sure if I could turn that off without penalty, and got confused, and ended up breaking it, and they closed borders against me. But I re-guaranteed, and then they liked me again.
Meta
I started playing ironman, partly because I wasn't sure if I'd care about achievements or not, partly because I wanted an excuse to keep playing, not to keep reverting until I do everything perfectly. But in the war, I was much more worried about screwing things up from not quite understanding how various mechanics worked, and I discovered I could copy the save file if I wanted to (at least in non-cloud mode). And I *think* I can replace the current version with those if I want to, although I haven't actually done it yet.
You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1074185.html using OpenID.
comments so far.
War
My God, this isn't good from my planets' populations point of view though. First war, they declared war out of idealism, and I screwed up the economy and got food shortages, and pirates ravaged most of the outer systems, including a pre-spaceflight world in my territory. Second war, the funguses saw I hadn't rebuilt fast enough out of the first war, made claims on a few of my border systems -- and then instead flew a giant fleet straight to my home worlds and bombarded them from orbit.
Even the Centauri baulked at that!
They occupied my homeworld for about ten years. Imagine that in a novel. Earth has multiple successful colonies -- but earth itself is occupied by an alien race.
But fortunately they suck at tactics. If they'd used their two giant fleets smartly they could have easily brought a lot more armies through to actually occupy my planets. But actually they just flew them there in a straight line, and as long as I attacked them -- even if they were in the middle of a convoy -- they couldn't take any planets.
If they'd used their fleet more proactively to protect their supply lines I'd have been screwed.
And they dramatically occupied my homeworld -- but never actually staked a political claim to it, so after the war, it just reverted to me. Whereas I claimed the systems from the rear of their empire I actually managed to take over, while their massive fleets were busy elsewhere.
Indeed, when I took the territory from their rear, they reversed one of their big fleets to fly all the way home to deal with it, so I could have snuck in to liberate my homeworld then if I'd wanted to.
Which teaches me some things about tactics I should have been more on top of. Decide whether to concentrate your force enough it's worth attacking an enemy fleet head on. If so, do. If not, avoid them. Defeat their ships in smaller packets if you can. Conquer territory you want, ideally while their ships are elsewhere.
But I'm still pretty vague about military stuff -- probably I should be tooling my ships with rock-guns to counter their scissor-beams or similar, but I haven't got that worked out.
Science
My scientists asked me to collect seven or eight specimens of particular species -- usually dangerous ones -- from planets all across the galaxy. Fortuitously, once I got my ships past the fungus mass, enough empires had open borders I was able to fly one science ship all round the galaxy, collecting the angry dangerous macguffins and cataloguing various other space creatures like crystalline entities at the same time. I mean, the fauna ate some of the science crew, but too few to have a mechanical effect.
Even some of the conquer-everyone empires were sufficiently friendly to me to have open borders, so I'm wary of them, but grateful for their cooperation.
I also found a "make all the planets glow orange and you can't see where to turn it off again" button :) I figured it out eventually.
Diplomacy
As my fleet builds up, or gets lost in space, the other empires' military strength bobs up and down between "equivalent" and "superior". Once one non-fallen empire was "overwhelming" and almost everyone was superior which was dispiriting. But apparently the Racist Space Parrots got such a kicking in the last war they're back down to equivalent, when they were almost always superior before. I should pick a fight with them quick to endear me to their neighbours while I still can.
The Reavers, who I was worried about because they looked super-expansionist, have actually lost ground, and maybe some territory to neighbouring empires. The names are cool. I don't know how it works, but fleet names, planet names, etc usually sound vaguely appropriate to the different empires. Banthurian Reavers is their actual name they call themself, not my gloss :)
Alas, I built up diplomacy as much as I could, but didn't have the timing right, because several of the most friendly empires already made defensive pacts with other empires and aren't that interested in another one. And I can't grow their trust further without a more intimate deal of some sort. I'm not sure if there's a path to improve relations I'm missing, or if I need more of the diplomacy path to increase the max trust cap, or if I need to be closer to them, or all of the above.
I screwed up slightly with the Anteater Napoleons. I was guaranteeing their independence, partly to increase their opinion of me, partly so I could join in a war against the Racist Space Parrots if it happened. But during the other war, I wasn't sure if I could turn that off without penalty, and got confused, and ended up breaking it, and they closed borders against me. But I re-guaranteed, and then they liked me again.
Meta
I started playing ironman, partly because I wasn't sure if I'd care about achievements or not, partly because I wanted an excuse to keep playing, not to keep reverting until I do everything perfectly. But in the war, I was much more worried about screwing things up from not quite understanding how various mechanics worked, and I discovered I could copy the save file if I wanted to (at least in non-cloud mode). And I *think* I can replace the current version with those if I want to, although I haven't actually done it yet.
You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1074185.html using OpenID.
comments so far.