So I know this technically doesn't have anything to do with Stellaris but it fits the theme of space exploration. It's just a short animated video about space exploration and it looks gorgeous! I thought it would be somewhat fitting to post it here. I'm not sure or not if I will be around for the game tomorrow but I probably will be.

https://vimeo.com/108650530

 

Retracted.

 

So, last night was rather fun.

I picked a fight with a bigger kid, and I managed to come out on top, after a really god-damn long slog of a war.

My start wasn't great. It was a four-arm spiral, and I was sandwiched between a Fallen Empire (the Gaia world protecty one) on one side and a couple of fairly weak empires on the other (a xenophile closest, then beyond them, some xenophobes). More importantly, though, on the arm next door was an advanced start democratic crusader (I was a Science Directorate) who spent the early game absolutely steam-rolling all of the civs in the area.

Then he started a war to expand into my arm. He declared war with the xenophobes, and promptly began crushing their armies. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold them off if I let them gradually roll their way to my door, so I took a big gamble.

I allied with the small nation separating me from the xenophobes, then declared war on the crusaders. I wasn't looking to get much from the war, I simply put in a few 'liberate planets' demands, to slow them down.

The first problem cropped up pretty quickly. My allies couldn't actually join the fight. They used hyperlanes, and the only hyperlanes ran through the (technically neutral) Xenophobes' space. Also, the crusaders clocked in as 'overwhelming' on the diplomacy screen.

Oh well, into the breach. I jumped my entire fleet (about 1k in strength) into one of their systems (the only one I could actually reach with my warp technology) and set about destroying their infrastructure. Within days a fleet of more than 2k had turned up, and I quickly warped out, deeper into their empire.

I didn't realise just how fast hyperlanes are compared to warp. Before my fleet had finished winding down, their fleet landed on top of me, and the battle went south, quickly. I performed an emergency retreat, and they followed me back. This time, though, their hyperlane came in on the other side of the system to me, and so I was able to warp out without getting schooled again.

So began a game of cat and mouse. With me very definitely in the role of the mouse. My fleet jumped as far as they could, and always aimed to arrive in system at a place on the perimeter that wasn't on any of the incoming hyperlanes; so that they would have enough time to escape when the enemy fleet appeared.

I thought I was well and truly fucked. But I fought on. I started building a second fleet, all while micro-managing the fuck out of my first. Eventually (by this point the crusader's fleet was up to 3.5k) I built a fleet large enough to start doing damage. And so I did.

I would warp around, and lead the crusaders' fleet on a merry dance, then warp my secondary fleet into one of their core systems, and destroy everything I could, before booking it out of there like it was on fire. And the plan worked. Depending on the value of the systems, they would sometimes abandon the chase to attack my attack fleet, but that would just lead to roles being switched, the hunted would become the hunters.

After years (and five hours) of this, I'd managed to take out all their stations, and most of their mining stations. I had turned the war-score positive. Their planets were almost entirely given over the power generators to fund their fleets, but even with this, my fleet still wasn't big enough to take theirs on. I just didn't have the fleet capacity to reach the numbers they had in their legacy fleet.

So I split my fleets up further, and blockaded as many planets as I could, and managed to reach the war score I'd needed for my demands. They surrendered. As soon as the war came to an end, they had to mothball most of their ships. I'd won.

That shit was intense. I was sure I was fucked after the first disastrous battle.

 

Myrrdin Emrys

I can't tell if you are joking or not. It says in the video it's narrated by Carl Sagan, they are using old things he said and then put it with animation but it was done very nicely. I do have a deep voice actually but that isn't me!

 

Yeagen. I was joking.

Sigh I guess I should leave the humor to others.

 

Hey! I heard last week was a bit of a flop - but I'm super up for playing tomorrow.

Here's my race:


(The emblem is meant to look like a Pokeball. Pretty good ehhhh?)

What lovable space blobs are you lot planning to play as?

 

Are you planning to blast off again?

 

I'm down for some Stellaris on Saturday. Got a race all prepped up and ready to go for it too.

 

Post pics! That way we can avoid too many of us sharing the same border colours and alien types.

 

Presenting the Conglomerate of Yihim.

​

Gonna try out the Venerable trait for these guys. Kinda just want to see how it works out and if it's even worth it in the end.

 

If we're interested in ensuring people don't share the same border colours, I'd recommend we all install the Complete Colors mod. Lets you choose from 2048+ different colours and lets the AI choose from them as well.

 

Sent a PM to everyone who might be interested in the DLP Stellaris game today. Didn't get a PM? Message me and I'll add you to my list.

 

Apparently with the coming Asimov update, the number of Core Worlds is no longer planets but the number of colonized systems.

Source: https://twitter.com/RikardAslund/status/739024721442922496

 

While I'm unavailable for this game (today), I had planned on playing the Mighty Smurf Community:

Save​

 

In this week's game, played with Aekiel, Belra, Fenraelis, Palindrome, and myself:

• A surprising lack of backstabbing, frontstabbing, or stabbing of any kind. Except for Fen, who's doing the stabby stabby with AIs.
• Cramped living conditions for Belra and Palindrome. Spacious living for Aekiel, who's taking more of a 'let me piss against this tree so it's my territory' approach, distances fairly irrelevant.
• Probing. Of many kinds.
• Three (?) known FEs in the game - the anti-slaver one, the tech one, and the isolationists. The latter ticked Aekiel off, as he found a perfectly good size 25 world right on their borders.
• Stone Age Primitive purging.

And more. Someone else do the whole map thing and stuff.

 

I'm not stabbing the AIs. I'm welcoming them into my community.

As irony of ironies, though, while the AIs didn't make a faction, randomly one of my 95% happiness citizens made a "Loyalist Insider" faction. 0.2% chance to gain support per month... I guess I have a use for my energy, at least, if they do gain any support before fading away?

 

I started a solo game with a new civ using hyperlanes and I never expected just how stressful it is to make sure you can move around. I made sure I could get two planets that would allow me to move around on the map but all the empires near me were just blocking off entire areas and I could barely move around. Gonna try a hyperlane only map soon, has to be pretty fun.

 

I've been debating between starting a new game as materialist-spiritualist, because I like having psionics, but love being able to use robot pops. But here's the annoying part:


Materialist has the advantage. Technically materialist can research psionics tech, but only if they have a psionics researcher, which is incredibly rare for them.


On the other hand, Spiritualist doesn't really get nearly as many advantages. Other than the psionics tech, afaik spiritualist's don't event get a unique building. But they still get the happiness penalties for using robots/leader gene-modding with no way to cheat-mode of bypassing the unhappiness.


Paradox needs to add some sort of unique building that gives an empire wide 5-10% happiness boost to the spiritualist ethos to make it even slightly worth picking.

As it is it's only useful if you don't like robot pops, and don't care about extending your leader's lifespans.

 

Spiritualists can still use the first +Lifespan/reduced-recruitment-cost policy without penalty. It's just the second tier of it that they don't like.

 

Are you kidding? Spiritualist is one of the most useful ethics available. It's arguably better than materialism too, because you get weighted access to PSI Jump Drives and various psi-related techs. On top of that, maximising Happiness is a fantastic way to increase your everything because being Happy/Joyful gives you +10/20% bonus to everything.

If you maximise Happiness through Fanatic Spiritualism + Moral/Irenic Democracy + Third Ethic Building you can achieve maximum Happiness in all but your newest colonies, which is even better once you get a few habitability buildings up and running.

Giving them robot pops in addition to all that is just asking for a broken combination, especially when you consider the fact that robots/droids/synths get 100% habitability. Everywhere.