2345-2355 Total War

Jul 23, 2018 10:39

War

One of my allies declared war against the ominous, but now not as threatening, Banthurian Reavers (who look like meek mild-mannered reptile geeks, except genocidal). Apparently they're a rogue state and the usual war rules don't apply, they just attack people any old how, and you can attack them any-how in return.

If I'd realised that, I probably would have declared war myself. I don't *think* you need a border but I'm not sure.

So I was a bit far away when the war started. And further, I didn't quite know how the war worked. In the total war against a rogue state, if you conquer a system, you just gain it immediately. Except apparently, as an alliance, if you border a conquered system, *you* get it, not the ally who conquered it.

I guessed it was a bit like that, but by the time I figured it out, I didn't want to revert to a save and try and do it over a bit more effectively.

In convenient news, I'd just become president of the federation, and the federation fleet was stronger than the minimal anti-pirate fleet I'd been supporting, and a lot closer to reaver territory as well. So I split it into three parts that could each take on an enemy starbase and rushed to conquer as many systems as possible.

I *did* manage to conquer systems that were the only gate deeper into reaver territory, to ensure me a majority of the further territory whoever conquered it. But if I'd been cannier about conquering in the right order I might have got some of the planets, whereas my allies ended up getting almost all of them.

Oh well, it's still more of the galaxy for the good guys. We're controlling a lot more of the galaxy between us now. The worst empires, the reavers and parrocists are nearly done for. That leaves four more, the Romulizards, the Klingobsters (who I've been both been trading or feuding with for ages), and two other empires I haven't interacted with much. But now I'm slowly drawing equal or ahead on tech. And two of them rivalled me, but I'm happy to take the influence bonus. I don't know what I'll do if it comes to war, I don't yet have the influence to claim many more systems from them. But we can play "turn them into pacifist egalitarian spiritualists" or possibly "turn them into vassals".

With the territory I've already taken and some other power-ups, I'm up to about 550 mineral income. And higher, except some of it is being drawn down by ship income. And when I stopped paying attention, my saved minerals soared up to nearly 30k.

More planets

Got another habitability perk! All together that brings tomb worlds up from 0% to 20% and I decided that now it was worth the risk of venturing onto one... :)

I forgot that would make the spiritualists just never happy. Well, we'll see if I can muddle through. We'll see what horrors bubble up.

And I nearly qualified for the super-terraforming ascension perk, except I need a few more sorts of terraforming technology. I hope those come through shortly, I haven't actually been able to terraform anything yet.

I thought I had both terraforming liquids and gases, but now I can't find one of them. I don't know if I just didn't notice it and it's waiting for me to harvest it, or if I got confused and I had two copies of one of them.

I've got enough new planets I'm losing track. I start by building a visitor centre (from one of the diplomacy traditions) to draw migration, then load up with all the individual unity buildings and planet uniques. Then I wait to move and upgrade the ship centre and build any buildings I couldn't before. Then fill in with research buildings and energy/mineral sources, although at that point I'm happy if the sector AI handles it.

And I found another primitive civilisation, these are really ostentatious avians. I'm repeating the uplift trick.

Wormholes

I finally unlocked wormholes! I was so busy with the war I almost forgot to explore them. One goes into the heart of the Klingobsters territory, which isn't perfect, I'd been avoiding border with them. But I guess it doesn't hurt now. I need to remember to take the system before they do.

The other hilariously connects my core worlds to the little output I managed to build on the other side of the Romulizards when they were friendly (to have territory closer to other empires, and claim a habitable planet). Which is sort of handy as otherwise I need to drive 10 years all round the galaxy to get there. But OTOH isn't super useful as I already have territory in both places.

But it was *very* handy when I was a year late claiming a dead-end and pirates spawned there and I needed to quickly send the bits and pieces of fleet I had left at home there to sort it out.

Now pirates are much less of a problem, when I can afford to lose the mining from a few systems.

Misc

I think a few Theocratic Star Lobster Foxes did immigrate to one of my planets! Somewhere! But I've no idea where, I can't remember if there's a search.

No-one ever proactively traded with me at all. Now they all want my strategic resources. Except for some reason they always offer a lump some not a per-month income in trade, instead?

I didn't trust the AI much, but I realised it was filling in mining and research stations I'd missed when that was possible. Not in the most sensible order. But I'm grateful it is helping, not just sitting on a resource cache it's not using.

You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1079743.html using OpenID.
comments so far.

computer game, stellaris

Previous post Next post
Up