Stellaris 237x-238x
A very short, somewhat farcical war
So late last night I ran a little experiment. There are two relevant empires. One that used to be quite friendly, but every time I stopped buttering them up they immediately turned hostile and I eventually got fed up of babying them, who are now inferior to me (in military strength. And ethically. But I mean, not, like, as people.) I sometimes call them the Romulizards.
The other is the strongest unfederated empire, Seban Star Commonwealth, run by some kind of arthrobugs. Although I think they both have birds in their empires now, since they were conquered. Both empires are to the NE of me, but this one controls, via a wormhole, the middle two of a cluster of half a dozen planets down a long dead-end down the western side of the galaxy. I'd previously controlled the only way into these and relied on expanding into them later when I had enough spare influence to take the systems on the way there.
What I really wanted was to control the planets. But I'm a pacifist so I can't just claim them for myself. Second best was to demand their vassalisation. Apparently I *can* do that. But not from this empire -- I can only demand it if the empire is "weaker" officially, and this one isn't. If not, my best choice was liberation: carve out some planets as a new, friendly, empire, and keep them as an ally (either vassalising them later or pulling them into the federation as an ally).
Now they had two planets, and blocked my expansion to the bottom two. However they didn't have much military here. And the two empires I mentioned had a defensive pact, which is supposed to make things harder for the attacker, but can also work in your favour if you want to bait someone into a war.
What I wasn't sure of, if I demanded the weaker empire submit as my vassal (which almost everyone automatically refuses unless they're really weak AND they really like you, but the interface requires you to ask before declaring war), and the stronger empire entered the war on their behalf and I defeated both... would the stronger one also submit as a vassal? Or to be more precise, probably not ALL of their empire, but whatever I managed to conquer?
I decided to test it. I pulled off a perfect feint (after spending lots of time in the previous session setting my stronger fleets up in good staging areas on the relevant borders). My stronger fleet tore into their little-defended territory from my one natural border with them. Their fleet was drawn off. My other fleet, and armies, swept into the planets I actually wanted and conquered them easily.
Bam. Now I checked the status quo information on the war screen, and no, a status quo doesn't give those systems up at all. (IIRC, if I'd claimed them and then occupied them, I'd get them whoever the war was notionally actually against, but otherwise, you can only gain what you officially went to war for, in this case vassalisation of the *other* empire, or part thereof.)
I was actually incredibly relieved because I'd just spend several real-life hours and in-game years doing the same thing a harder way...
A somewhat short, very farcical war
OK, discounting the other experiment, I did much the same thing, except that I was figuring it out as I went along, so the carefully crafted feint was a lot more "blunder about until they started attacking where I was happy for them to attack".
Apparently "carefully crafted" was a bit unnecessary because they were really easy to bait -- I was able to keep both empires occupied bouncing between one end and the other by conquering another minor system at the opposite end, waiting until they'd nearly got there, then doing the same thing at the other end. They did show a prudent tendency to attack the strongest fleet I had that was weaker than their fleet, but by the time I'd figured that out, it was fairly easy to bait them into a position to trap them with my largest fleet.
I wanted to carve off enough territory that I might be closer to vassal-ising the larger empire next war, but not so much that the spin-off territory would be too independent (because the crisis is coming, and fleets I can control directly are a lot more valuable than allies who promptly rush to the wrong place and do the wrong thing). And I hadn't quite figured out everything I explained above so I wasted a bit of time conquering some territory then dancing back and forth. And trying to build up my armies even more -- I had some, but not enough, and not in the right place. Now I have at least some at most of the major borders, enough to conquer at least some planets in future wars.
Misc War Thoughts
There was a lot of interesting military science in the debris. I had my science ships cautiously following my main fleets picking it all up :) It feels like "beating people up and taking their military tech" shouldn't work out, but apparently it does.
I'd also like to commend my science ship who snuck into the wormhole system and figured out how to navigate it while I was bringing my military ships up.
And my construction ship which followed hot on their heels to grab the other planets they'd not colonised yet but I'd previously been blocked from.
OK, now my federation controls the systems of over 40% of potentially habitable worlds. I need 60% to 'win'. I'll gain about five from this operation. I have one ally, who used to be stronger than me, but now weaker, who's allied to the federation but still refusing to join as they have a grudge against my other allies. And having fought a war against the stronger two unallied empires, I think I can take a lot more of their territory if I only have time to do it. So that looks fairly good, although I don't know if we'll control the whole galaxy by the time the crisis hits.
It feels very like an epic fantasy novel, knowing some unspecified apocalypse is coming and we need to prepare to fight, but not being sure what or when.
The war was over quickly enough my allies barely got there. But they did turn up, so I need to remember that in a longer war, I will have *some* help. And I had the federation fleet for some of it which was useful, although it was sadly reduced: if I have enough minerals I need to build it up a lot more next time. And a couple of the allied fleet FINALLY did what I'd previously hoped and followed my ship which was set to encourage them to do that. That really wasn't that helpful here, but it was good to know.
Weird stuff
In the Romulizard territory, I found a toxic world, which usually means a planetary body handled like asteroids, entirely separate to habitable planets that have a surface grid layout etc. But somehow it listed it as having minerals on the surface, and an FTL inhibitor? How on earth? A glitch?
In the Arthobug territory, I found ANOTHER form of space life. Seemingly neutral to me? Looked like starships with glowy purple drives, about 10k strength. Labelled "nun aliens" (as-yet unidentified aliens get labelled my a greek, hebrew, or other letter codename). I was cautious about driving my ships near them but apparently that was ok. But didn't tell me anything about them. I was supposed to be able to initiate a research project to investigate them, but one didn't appear. I'm not sure if they're actually something I discovered before and forgot.
Misc
Apparently withdrawing chemical bliss living standards DOES give withdrawal symptoms for a time. But I managed to integrate the reaver planet, over some time, but without any rebellions or anything.
I wish "exit to menu" didn't say "resign and exit to menu". That's not resignation!
Some of my factions are finally happy! My xenophile faction, despite not officially being part of my government, is very very happy and very big, due to all the different races in my empire, which is probably what I'm happiest about. And my egalitarians are almost as big and almost as happy[1].
My spiritualists are STILL not happy. Messing around with tomb worlds made things worse. And not much made it better. My militarists ARE now happy, since I took one of the supremacy traditions, and keep rivalling people, and they're fourth biggest. The rest are fairly small now, including the fascists and the other fascists (um, authoritarians and xenophobes, I think)?
My scientists aren't happy -- they want more AI, and I want to keep playing my empire without it -- I don't even really need robots as my populace are so happy and fast breeding they staff most of my buildings quite quickly. And my pacifists who I love and want to bring back into the fold, aren't happy -- everything is good, except I KEEP getting in wars. But I don't have a lot of room to improve things OTHER than by wars -- fairly limited wars, but still wars.
Now I look at the expansion planner, showing planets I'm aware of but haven't colonised yet, and see it's getting empty again -- there's not a lot left uncolonised now after my last push.
[1] Like me! :)
Biology!
I got lots of biology options! Hopefully that makes Liv happy :)
I modded several of my population to gain some beneficial traits (less upkeep, more strength).
I gained the ability to change their planetary preference, although that doesn't make that much difference as I have so many different races and planets available, they've reasonable opportunity to live somewhere they like. But I can easily make some desert-platypuses or tropical-funguses or whatever, if it would help. I *can't* mod my Morlocks to live anywhere but Gaia worlds, though, sadly.
Some of my population couldn't wait and genetically modified themselves. That seems fair enough although I suspect it may get out of hand in future.
I have various sorts of terraforming available, although unfortunately not the ones I want the most. I can't quite remember the various different combinations (I think it's slightly different if you have Utopia DLC too). I can change the atmosphere of habitable worlds, now including ones already inhabited. But I don't need to that much, as I already have a lot of perks to habitability. What I WANT is to terraform uninhabitable but candidate worlds, and to transform worlds to Gaia worlds (which gives a bonus on top of 100% habitability). I think I need uninhabitable-to-habitable tech first, to unlock the ascension perk which grants the Gaia terraforming.
I'm not sure all of this is the *most* efficient way, but it's very appropriate to my empire.
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comments so far.
So late last night I ran a little experiment. There are two relevant empires. One that used to be quite friendly, but every time I stopped buttering them up they immediately turned hostile and I eventually got fed up of babying them, who are now inferior to me (in military strength. And ethically. But I mean, not, like, as people.) I sometimes call them the Romulizards.
The other is the strongest unfederated empire, Seban Star Commonwealth, run by some kind of arthrobugs. Although I think they both have birds in their empires now, since they were conquered. Both empires are to the NE of me, but this one controls, via a wormhole, the middle two of a cluster of half a dozen planets down a long dead-end down the western side of the galaxy. I'd previously controlled the only way into these and relied on expanding into them later when I had enough spare influence to take the systems on the way there.
What I really wanted was to control the planets. But I'm a pacifist so I can't just claim them for myself. Second best was to demand their vassalisation. Apparently I *can* do that. But not from this empire -- I can only demand it if the empire is "weaker" officially, and this one isn't. If not, my best choice was liberation: carve out some planets as a new, friendly, empire, and keep them as an ally (either vassalising them later or pulling them into the federation as an ally).
Now they had two planets, and blocked my expansion to the bottom two. However they didn't have much military here. And the two empires I mentioned had a defensive pact, which is supposed to make things harder for the attacker, but can also work in your favour if you want to bait someone into a war.
What I wasn't sure of, if I demanded the weaker empire submit as my vassal (which almost everyone automatically refuses unless they're really weak AND they really like you, but the interface requires you to ask before declaring war), and the stronger empire entered the war on their behalf and I defeated both... would the stronger one also submit as a vassal? Or to be more precise, probably not ALL of their empire, but whatever I managed to conquer?
I decided to test it. I pulled off a perfect feint (after spending lots of time in the previous session setting my stronger fleets up in good staging areas on the relevant borders). My stronger fleet tore into their little-defended territory from my one natural border with them. Their fleet was drawn off. My other fleet, and armies, swept into the planets I actually wanted and conquered them easily.
Bam. Now I checked the status quo information on the war screen, and no, a status quo doesn't give those systems up at all. (IIRC, if I'd claimed them and then occupied them, I'd get them whoever the war was notionally actually against, but otherwise, you can only gain what you officially went to war for, in this case vassalisation of the *other* empire, or part thereof.)
I was actually incredibly relieved because I'd just spend several real-life hours and in-game years doing the same thing a harder way...
A somewhat short, very farcical war
OK, discounting the other experiment, I did much the same thing, except that I was figuring it out as I went along, so the carefully crafted feint was a lot more "blunder about until they started attacking where I was happy for them to attack".
Apparently "carefully crafted" was a bit unnecessary because they were really easy to bait -- I was able to keep both empires occupied bouncing between one end and the other by conquering another minor system at the opposite end, waiting until they'd nearly got there, then doing the same thing at the other end. They did show a prudent tendency to attack the strongest fleet I had that was weaker than their fleet, but by the time I'd figured that out, it was fairly easy to bait them into a position to trap them with my largest fleet.
I wanted to carve off enough territory that I might be closer to vassal-ising the larger empire next war, but not so much that the spin-off territory would be too independent (because the crisis is coming, and fleets I can control directly are a lot more valuable than allies who promptly rush to the wrong place and do the wrong thing). And I hadn't quite figured out everything I explained above so I wasted a bit of time conquering some territory then dancing back and forth. And trying to build up my armies even more -- I had some, but not enough, and not in the right place. Now I have at least some at most of the major borders, enough to conquer at least some planets in future wars.
Misc War Thoughts
There was a lot of interesting military science in the debris. I had my science ships cautiously following my main fleets picking it all up :) It feels like "beating people up and taking their military tech" shouldn't work out, but apparently it does.
I'd also like to commend my science ship who snuck into the wormhole system and figured out how to navigate it while I was bringing my military ships up.
And my construction ship which followed hot on their heels to grab the other planets they'd not colonised yet but I'd previously been blocked from.
OK, now my federation controls the systems of over 40% of potentially habitable worlds. I need 60% to 'win'. I'll gain about five from this operation. I have one ally, who used to be stronger than me, but now weaker, who's allied to the federation but still refusing to join as they have a grudge against my other allies. And having fought a war against the stronger two unallied empires, I think I can take a lot more of their territory if I only have time to do it. So that looks fairly good, although I don't know if we'll control the whole galaxy by the time the crisis hits.
It feels very like an epic fantasy novel, knowing some unspecified apocalypse is coming and we need to prepare to fight, but not being sure what or when.
The war was over quickly enough my allies barely got there. But they did turn up, so I need to remember that in a longer war, I will have *some* help. And I had the federation fleet for some of it which was useful, although it was sadly reduced: if I have enough minerals I need to build it up a lot more next time. And a couple of the allied fleet FINALLY did what I'd previously hoped and followed my ship which was set to encourage them to do that. That really wasn't that helpful here, but it was good to know.
Weird stuff
In the Romulizard territory, I found a toxic world, which usually means a planetary body handled like asteroids, entirely separate to habitable planets that have a surface grid layout etc. But somehow it listed it as having minerals on the surface, and an FTL inhibitor? How on earth? A glitch?
In the Arthobug territory, I found ANOTHER form of space life. Seemingly neutral to me? Looked like starships with glowy purple drives, about 10k strength. Labelled "nun aliens" (as-yet unidentified aliens get labelled my a greek, hebrew, or other letter codename). I was cautious about driving my ships near them but apparently that was ok. But didn't tell me anything about them. I was supposed to be able to initiate a research project to investigate them, but one didn't appear. I'm not sure if they're actually something I discovered before and forgot.
Misc
Apparently withdrawing chemical bliss living standards DOES give withdrawal symptoms for a time. But I managed to integrate the reaver planet, over some time, but without any rebellions or anything.
I wish "exit to menu" didn't say "resign and exit to menu". That's not resignation!
Some of my factions are finally happy! My xenophile faction, despite not officially being part of my government, is very very happy and very big, due to all the different races in my empire, which is probably what I'm happiest about. And my egalitarians are almost as big and almost as happy[1].
My spiritualists are STILL not happy. Messing around with tomb worlds made things worse. And not much made it better. My militarists ARE now happy, since I took one of the supremacy traditions, and keep rivalling people, and they're fourth biggest. The rest are fairly small now, including the fascists and the other fascists (um, authoritarians and xenophobes, I think)?
My scientists aren't happy -- they want more AI, and I want to keep playing my empire without it -- I don't even really need robots as my populace are so happy and fast breeding they staff most of my buildings quite quickly. And my pacifists who I love and want to bring back into the fold, aren't happy -- everything is good, except I KEEP getting in wars. But I don't have a lot of room to improve things OTHER than by wars -- fairly limited wars, but still wars.
Now I look at the expansion planner, showing planets I'm aware of but haven't colonised yet, and see it's getting empty again -- there's not a lot left uncolonised now after my last push.
[1] Like me! :)
Biology!
I got lots of biology options! Hopefully that makes Liv happy :)
I modded several of my population to gain some beneficial traits (less upkeep, more strength).
I gained the ability to change their planetary preference, although that doesn't make that much difference as I have so many different races and planets available, they've reasonable opportunity to live somewhere they like. But I can easily make some desert-platypuses or tropical-funguses or whatever, if it would help. I *can't* mod my Morlocks to live anywhere but Gaia worlds, though, sadly.
Some of my population couldn't wait and genetically modified themselves. That seems fair enough although I suspect it may get out of hand in future.
I have various sorts of terraforming available, although unfortunately not the ones I want the most. I can't quite remember the various different combinations (I think it's slightly different if you have Utopia DLC too). I can change the atmosphere of habitable worlds, now including ones already inhabited. But I don't need to that much, as I already have a lot of perks to habitability. What I WANT is to terraform uninhabitable but candidate worlds, and to transform worlds to Gaia worlds (which gives a bonus on top of 100% habitability). I think I need uninhabitable-to-habitable tech first, to unlock the ascension perk which grants the Gaia terraforming.
I'm not sure all of this is the *most* efficient way, but it's very appropriate to my empire.
You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1081567.html using OpenID.
comments so far.