So I played my first machine empire. It seemed to be ridiculously easy. I was expecting some AI empires to be a bit hesitant about having killbots on their borders. I murdered the marauders next to me with a few suicide rushes of 10k fleets (because I didn't want any Khans next to me). Found out the avians next to me were decidedly underpowered (my 15k fleet rolled in against their 0.8k fleet). So then I basically started up wars anytime an empire did anything involving me, including send insults or declare rivalries.
The rampant steamroll of destruction prompted me to write up the game up to where I had it played. The machines wouldn't write history books, so I opted for a perspective from a planet that had slipped through the cracks, forced to observe from within as the machines swept across the galaxy.
Machine empires have insane starts and snowballing potential, but they have pops that are way weaker than organics in lategame when you can stack all the possible % bonuses.
Not that it matters much when you crush them midgame with your unstoppable warmachine fed by mining every world you see.
That's why my preferred machine run is with assimilators. All the machine empire strengths combined with organic pops you can let reproduce and eventually genetically modify.
I found, for speed building at least, I could just grab one pop from each planet and fill a new colony overnight using resettlement. It's a bit tedious to cycle through all the planets though.
In that game I've had (apparent) parity with the fallen empire for nearly a century. I've never actually played long enough for the actual crises. I only really continued that game because I wanted to see how quickly I could steamroll the biggest empire. Turns out my human inefficiency was my weakness because I'd send fleets to systems and then forget to siege planets (they'd just sit around the star for a few months before I'd notice).
I also wonder if it's possible to 'win' before the crisis. I probably could have owned 100% of the galaxy by 2400 if I had been aggressive. You know, instead of owning 3/4 of the galaxy.
Apparently I don't own 60% of the planets though. Maybe all the ones that have been glassed into tomb worlds don't count. I was happy to destroy one marauder civ 70 yeaars in and absolutely demolish the Khan later on though. With 1/6th of my fleet.
Yeah the tomb worlds absolutely count. Anything that a colony ship can land on counts for the % controlled.
Though you could just wipe out or vassalize the remaining empires and go for a domination victory.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
I hit awesome on it yesterday, but for added emphasis I wanted to mention in a comment that imgur write-up was pretty great.
Thanks for reading! (And putting up with imgur probably butchering all the formatting even more.)
I should probably play it to the actual crisis just to see how much contingency I'm dealing with. Or maybe I can game the system by building jump drives and tearing a bunch of holes through the fabric of space-time. I think my sentinels made up about 1/4 of the galactic population when I stopped.
Started a new game and got the bug where there's no habitable planets nearby. Except for a big Tomb World, but this was one of those rare times I didn't go Post-Apocalyptic.
So I close the game again, mildly frustrated because I wasn't intending to do a One Planet challenge. Then I notice there's a new patch live.
It fixes the bug where sometimes no habitable planets spawn nearby.
Should've waited an hour before starting a new game.
Started a new game and got the bug where there's no habitable planets nearby. Except for a big Tomb World, but this was one of those rare times I didn't go Post-Apocalyptic.
So I close the game again, mildly frustrated because I wasn't intending to do a One Planet challenge. Then I notice there's a new patch live.
It fixes the bug where sometimes no habitable planets spawn nearby.
Should've waited an hour before starting a new game.
Think of it this way, they noticed your problem and responded in less than an hour!
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
So, I've been playing a good bit of this lately after taking a rather long hiatus. First game back, I played as a Assimilators, and ... actually finished a game! First time ever! Though, it felt a little hollow since I expanded and conquered so fast, I didn't run into an end game scenario, and I didn't even open the L-gate.
End game spoiler type stuff:
So, I figured I start a new game as a "normal" race, been having a blast. The fleet manager (after I got around to figuring a few things out) has been a real game-changer. I still can't quite get a handle on battle reports about damage output, but I guess I do well enough. Got through some big events that were difficult, but not overwhelming. Opened the L-Gate, and handled the Grey-goo (with significant retooling of my ships). War in heaven started, though I could probably have taken one of them on (I was by far the most powerful single non-fallen empire), but decided to side with the Xenophilic guys. They seemed nice enough. In the middle of the War in Heaven, the Contingency attack and all hell brakes loose. Particularly a problem since I essentially have to park a fleet to keep the L-gate hub locked down, and even that doesn't help because the Contingency can just jump in and out of the L-gate. Got one planet down relatively quickly, since it is closest to my territory, the others took ... considerably longer. But in the end, organic life survived.
Now, my question is how to end this war in heaven? We've destroyed all the civs that sided with the other awakened empire, but I can't win while being under the overlord of the awakened empire, and they won't let me go peacefully either. Do I need to declare war on them to get my release?
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
the game decides to drop 3 massive doomstacks of genocidal murder robots 10 times the size of anything I can even hope to field right next to my homeworld. As if the 2 fallen empires on my borders weren't scary enough.
What the hell am I supposed to do against this shit? Did I miss some tutorial message warning me that I was supposed to prepare against a galactic apocalypse?
+1
Options
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
the game decides to drop 3 massive doomstacks of genocidal murder robots 10 times the size of anything I can even hope to field right next to my homeworld. As if the 2 fallen empires on my borders weren't scary enough.
What the hell am I supposed to do against this shit? Did I miss some tutorial message warning me that I was supposed to prepare against a galactic apocalypse?
This is the end game crisis. You turn them on/off/what year they come in when you start your game. Then as you play there’s an anomaly chain that leads up to finding out about them.
the game decides to drop 3 massive doomstacks of genocidal murder robots 10 times the size of anything I can even hope to field right next to my homeworld. As if the 2 fallen empires on my borders weren't scary enough.
What the hell am I supposed to do against this shit? Did I miss some tutorial message warning me that I was supposed to prepare against a galactic apocalypse?
Well, now I'm flat broke, my core worlds are gone and I haven't even managed to make a dent in the killbot swarm, even with my scary fallen empire neighbors' help.
I don't think I've ever been this mad at a video game. Holy shit.
Anyone else think the new rivalry/war cause system sucks?
Needing a laundry list of reasons to declare war sort of felt meaningful in Europa Universalis or even Crusader Kings, but it's really easily to get into a situation where an asshole empire has something your asshole empire wants, closes their borders, and you can't even declare war on them anyway. I'm not sure if it's a bug (claiming systems was supposed to enable this?) or a feature at this point.
The solution is basically what it is to all of the game's glitches: use the console to swap to their empire, have them declare war on you, then switch back and fix all the boneheaded decisions the AI made in a few seconds of ruling your empire in your place.
I've fallen down the Mod Abyss. Don't send help; I'm already sure there's no hope.
I'm a few decades into a campaign with Potent Rebellions and Dynamic Political Events installed and can already tell these are going to be interesting. Actual domestic politics? In my Stellaris? Well just twist my arm!
Well, now I'm flat broke, my core worlds are gone and I haven't even managed to make a dent in the killbot swarm, even with my scary fallen empire neighbors' help.
I don't think I've ever been this mad at a video game. Holy shit.
EDIT: THEY KEEP MAKING MORE DOOMSTACKS
Yeah, honestly I think I'd turn off endgame and fallen empires on my first game or two. Depending on how they go they can range from 'challenging' to 'you never even had a prayer of a chance', and they're especially tough when you're still learning the game.
I've gotten Contingencied a few times; I was lucky enough both times that (1) I had my jumpgate network built and (2) I was large enough that two of the machine worlds spawned in/near my territory, which is usually a good sign that I'm powerful enough to bring them down without too-too much issue.
Seeing 200K fleet stacks for the first time is kind of alarming, though...
Well, now I'm flat broke, my core worlds are gone and I haven't even managed to make a dent in the killbot swarm, even with my scary fallen empire neighbors' help.
I don't think I've ever been this mad at a video game. Holy shit.
EDIT: THEY KEEP MAKING MORE DOOMSTACKS
Yeah, honestly I think I'd turn off endgame and fallen empires on my first game or two. Depending on how they go they can range from 'challenging' to 'you never even had a prayer of a chance', and they're especially tough when you're still learning the game.
I started a new game and dropped their difficulty down to 0.5 from 1.2
Completely avoiding robits this time around, in case I get the skynet ending again.
I've fallen down the Mod Abyss. Don't send help; I'm already sure there's no hope.
I'm a few decades into a campaign with Potent Rebellions and Dynamic Political Events installed and can already tell these are going to be interesting. Actual domestic politics? In my Stellaris? Well just twist my arm!
I'm only using two AI mods but holy crap they're game-changing. And kind of shines a great big glaring spotlight on how broken the vanilla AI is, now that they're competent even on Captain difficulty. It's refreshing to conquer an enemy world to find it actually sensibly built up rather than a fully populated planet with half the tiles empty and the other half with the wrong buildings on them.
If you like mods that throw a wrench into the experience in terms of making the game more interesting/challenging you'll probably love the two I named. It's kind of amazing how quickly individual planets start developing personalities with them.
There's one that's just called "Enhanced AI" which mostly just makes the AI less dumb on a micro level, and jGlavius's AI mod which is more to do with macro planning. I originally installed enhanced AI because it makes the sector AI less dumb, then some nerds on the official forum started talking about how this Glavius mod was the new hotness so I tried that out too... and they're kind of not wrong. Glavius is designed to work as an add-on to EAI and combined they give the AI a nice kick in the backside.
There's one that's just called "Enhanced AI" which mostly just makes the AI less dumb on a micro level, and jGlavius's AI mod which is more to do with macro planning. I originally installed enhanced AI because it makes the sector AI less dumb, then some nerds on the official forum started talking about how this Glavius mod was the new hotness so I tried that out too... and they're kind of not wrong. Glavius is designed to work as an add-on to EAI and combined they give the AI a nice kick in the backside.
Wiping the Prethoryn before they even leave their starting systems feels good.
Had just enough time to refit my fleets with all-energy weapons by using the 180K Federation fleet as a blocker to make them too scared to move. Then I sent in my 4 90k fleets to wipe them out.
I need to see how close I am to the victory screen and just get it done. Then gonna play BATTLETECH for a while.
Districts are how the tiles are being used, Martin in a follow-up tweets says they aren't going away. 11 out of 16 are in use, and I'm guess each of the squares is how many of each tile can be used for that type of district (with some overlap, as the squares add up to over 16.
Below that are the tiles being used; 9 types of land + and extra for 2 of them = 11.
Below that, the numbers are (total guesswork here) some type of growth value, total pops, total employed pops (with the mouseover showing the breakdown in jobs), some kind of culture value, number of buildings, and unemployed pops.
With buildings, looks like its unlocked with pops (which are no longer 1-1 based on planet tiles it seems) Wonder if buildings are the first category for districts, as that's the only one you can't seem to tinker (might also be residential, and grows with pops too)
For the resource production/upkeep. I'm going to give a wild guess that the first new icon that looks a lot like EC is EC that can only be used to pay for EC upkeeps on that planet/system, then all other EC, minerals, foods, the sciences, Unity, new resource (refined minerals?) luxuries.
Posts
The rampant steamroll of destruction prompted me to write up the game up to where I had it played. The machines wouldn't write history books, so I opted for a perspective from a planet that had slipped through the cracks, forced to observe from within as the machines swept across the galaxy.
It ended up longer than I expected. Imgur is also terrible at handling Text, so I also threw it all in a word doc. And that is where I learned it's 4.5k words.
From what I can tell, Machine Empires are predisposed to get utterly ruined by the end-game crisis.
Not that it matters much when you crush them midgame with your unstoppable warmachine fed by mining every world you see.
In that game I've had (apparent) parity with the fallen empire for nearly a century. I've never actually played long enough for the actual crises. I only really continued that game because I wanted to see how quickly I could steamroll the biggest empire. Turns out my human inefficiency was my weakness because I'd send fleets to systems and then forget to siege planets (they'd just sit around the star for a few months before I'd notice).
I also wonder if it's possible to 'win' before the crisis. I probably could have owned 100% of the galaxy by 2400 if I had been aggressive. You know, instead of owning 3/4 of the galaxy.
Apparently I don't own 60% of the planets though. Maybe all the ones that have been glassed into tomb worlds don't count. I was happy to destroy one marauder civ 70 yeaars in and absolutely demolish the Khan later on though. With 1/6th of my fleet.
Though you could just wipe out or vassalize the remaining empires and go for a domination victory.
Thanks for reading! (And putting up with imgur probably butchering all the formatting even more.)
I should probably play it to the actual crisis just to see how much contingency I'm dealing with. Or maybe I can game the system by building jump drives and tearing a bunch of holes through the fabric of space-time. I think my sentinels made up about 1/4 of the galactic population when I stopped.
So I close the game again, mildly frustrated because I wasn't intending to do a One Planet challenge. Then I notice there's a new patch live.
It fixes the bug where sometimes no habitable planets spawn nearby.
Should've waited an hour before starting a new game.
Think of it this way, they noticed your problem and responded in less than an hour!
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
End game spoiler type stuff:
Now, my question is how to end this war in heaven? We've destroyed all the civs that sided with the other awakened empire, but I can't win while being under the overlord of the awakened empire, and they won't let me go peacefully either. Do I need to declare war on them to get my release?
20 hours into my first campaign and
What the hell am I supposed to do against this shit? Did I miss some tutorial message warning me that I was supposed to prepare against a galactic apocalypse?
This is the end game crisis. You turn them on/off/what year they come in when you start your game. Then as you play there’s an anomaly chain that leads up to finding out about them.
Did you open an l-gate?
I don't think I've ever been this mad at a video game. Holy shit.
EDIT: THEY KEEP MAKING MORE DOOMSTACKS
Needing a laundry list of reasons to declare war sort of felt meaningful in Europa Universalis or even Crusader Kings, but it's really easily to get into a situation where an asshole empire has something your asshole empire wants, closes their borders, and you can't even declare war on them anyway. I'm not sure if it's a bug (claiming systems was supposed to enable this?) or a feature at this point.
The solution is basically what it is to all of the game's glitches: use the console to swap to their empire, have them declare war on you, then switch back and fix all the boneheaded decisions the AI made in a few seconds of ruling your empire in your place.
I'm a few decades into a campaign with Potent Rebellions and Dynamic Political Events installed and can already tell these are going to be interesting. Actual domestic politics? In my Stellaris? Well just twist my arm!
Yeah, honestly I think I'd turn off endgame and fallen empires on my first game or two. Depending on how they go they can range from 'challenging' to 'you never even had a prayer of a chance', and they're especially tough when you're still learning the game.
Seeing 200K fleet stacks for the first time is kind of alarming, though...
I started a new game and dropped their difficulty down to 0.5 from 1.2
Completely avoiding robits this time around, in case I get the skynet ending again.
"I'll give you 3512 energy credits and 917 minerals in exchange for 25 years' worth of a strategic resource. That's fair right?"
I'm only using two AI mods but holy crap they're game-changing. And kind of shines a great big glaring spotlight on how broken the vanilla AI is, now that they're competent even on Captain difficulty. It's refreshing to conquer an enemy world to find it actually sensibly built up rather than a fully populated planet with half the tiles empty and the other half with the wrong buildings on them.
If you like mods that throw a wrench into the experience in terms of making the game more interesting/challenging you'll probably love the two I named. It's kind of amazing how quickly individual planets start developing personalities with them.
Thanks for that!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Had just enough time to refit my fleets with all-energy weapons by using the 180K Federation fleet as a blocker to make them too scared to move. Then I sent in my 4 90k fleets to wipe them out.
I need to see how close I am to the victory screen and just get it done. Then gonna play BATTLETECH for a while.
EDIT: Now with a link that embeds!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Some educated guesses.
Districts are how the tiles are being used, Martin in a follow-up tweets says they aren't going away. 11 out of 16 are in use, and I'm guess each of the squares is how many of each tile can be used for that type of district (with some overlap, as the squares add up to over 16.
Below that are the tiles being used; 9 types of land + and extra for 2 of them = 11.
Below that, the numbers are (total guesswork here) some type of growth value, total pops, total employed pops (with the mouseover showing the breakdown in jobs), some kind of culture value, number of buildings, and unemployed pops.
With buildings, looks like its unlocked with pops (which are no longer 1-1 based on planet tiles it seems) Wonder if buildings are the first category for districts, as that's the only one you can't seem to tinker (might also be residential, and grows with pops too)
For the resource production/upkeep. I'm going to give a wild guess that the first new icon that looks a lot like EC is EC that can only be used to pay for EC upkeeps on that planet/system, then all other EC, minerals, foods, the sciences, Unity, new resource (refined minerals?) luxuries.
Population screen, which is apparently giving a lot of Vicky vibes.
...and the Machine Empire version of both:
It looks very much like a spread sheet