Next few weeks are bad for me, but I might try to get in on the next one

 

I can't remember exactly what issues we had when we tried the DLP mp game, but except for one unexpected crashed from the host (took about 10-15 minutes to rehost) everything went pretty well. One of the player was a bit angsty when he got almost destroyed early game, and got himself two warnings for abusing voice chat and not respecting the RP rules but otherwise everything went fine. The biggest issue was game time was a bit slow due to people lagging behind. Ideally, I will not pick these people for run #2 to reduce that problem.

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Awesome. Hop onto discord, PM me Hawkin#3250 and I'll get you on the proper discord server so you can get a warning when the sign-up goes up.

 

Been trying a lot of different things the past few days. Some of my initial impressions have changed, but some have stayed the same.

Mega Structures
Everything but the Habs are still mostly shit. I think the main issue is actually the Master Builders perk. The build times have to be balanced around having it, so the base build time is high. My recommendation? Remove it and reduce build times to compensate. Three perks dedicated to building Ring Worlds is way too much.

Hive Minds

Kind of awkward to use in some ways. You can't have Xeno pops, so you can't enslave them, which means no farm planets full of delicious Xeno scum. The lack of Migration and no reduced Resettling also hurts, as those drastically increase the speed at which you can colonize.

Synths

Probably the strongest Ascension, and also probably the easiest. If you take the Civic that grants you Robots, you have an increased weighting for the techs you need. On top of that, Share the Burden works on all Synth yields, which makes them better at literally everything due to unique leader traits and happiness stacking. The fact that you don't need food also helps immensely for Sector Management. The fact that you essentially have doubled growth early game due to Robot construction is a big plus too.

Gene Modding

Fun, but super clunky. I'd really love to see an overhaul for the UI, and something to help with the fact that you need like nine different species to cover all the planet types. Maybe Advanced Gene Traits could have a Tomb World preference? A flat 60% habitability option could help a lot here.

Still haven't tried Psionic.

Traditions

So I've had to rescind my statement that you should go Expansion first every game. It's still quite good, and you're still gonna want it for most games, and almost always eventually, but there's other options to go first.

The big one for me is Discovery. Basically, Planetary Survey Corp is insanely busted. Long story short, with 3-4 science vessels on Auto Explore, you double your Research output. That's pretty bonkers. I managed to get Synth Leaders and Voidborn within 50 years. You'll have to do things like negotiate open borders at times, but the payoff is totally worth it.

Another one is Supremacy, specifically with Fanatical Purifiers. I did the math, and it is possible to get about 100% increased weapon fire rate by the time you finish the tree. That is absolutely insane and should let you dominate a few neighbours and purge them for huge Unity yields in the early game. You can also stack Border Range to an absurd degree, which is amusing and powerful.

 

Sadly, Purifier Unity is busted atm. You don't get anything from purging Xeno pops. Except food if you Purge them that way.

Also, fuck the Dimensional Horror. That thing is terrifyingly powerful.

 

Key to beating the horror seems to be to send in a fleet of corvettes built for max evasion with afterburners first, wait until the horror has engaged them then send in your main fleet.

 

The horror is so cool honestly. Zoom in on it and turn the map to check it out. Wasn't even mad when my first fleet of 1k was obliterated in a second. Felt very appropriate.

 

And this is why I should just say 'fuck it' and don't do Defensive Pacts. Started sort of next door to the Xenophobic FE, managed to keep the butterflies at bay, got started on a Dyson Sphere (because achievement) while also delving into the Shroud...

Then I'm at war with them because my DP triggered off of my neighbours digging a proverbial hole in the backyard. :') No Fortress set-up and a generalist fleet composition, and... Yeah, I lost my fleet in one battle. All 40k.

 

I started a 20ish players multiplayer campaign two weeks ago. We're about to get into our second session this sunday. It'll run for another 2 weeks following that, but we've already decided on the concept for campaign #2 which will start on May 14th. We aiming for 32 players this time around, and I thought I'd invite you bunch of scrubs along. Maybe I'll see some of you along, we already have TSN and Aekiel with us, and I think they'll both agree in saying that the community is nice and engaging (exceptions do exist of course!)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vkThGnid6CY6kQTicTbVuEbKmoKpfb41cIueMUvw9KE/edit?usp=sharing

 

The Unbidden came to call because I, being a Spiritualist empire, had been mucking around with Psi Jump Drives. (Or, well, Jump Drives - I fished the Psi drives out of the Shroud two years before they were around, and I'm not that quick on the research.) They spawned about 8 systems away at a pretty bad time because I was only just starting to upgrade about 30% of my fleet. (Integrated a Xeno Purifier empire.) One Unbidden fleet defended, one started to hoover up some minor stuff in my neighbour's empire...

And the third hopped into the Beacon of Infinity. Four times. Oops. (And I helped with the last one.) Then my upgrade finished, and I obliterated the other two armies with a 90k stack.

Unbidden defeated in about 6 years - the Materialists awakened but are also in my Federation, which also includes two others. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing...

 

Warning: Incoming Wall of Text Game Report

I've been trying to work out an optimal Tall Science strat lately, and it's been working out pretty well so far. Basically, I went Discovery into Harmony with Synth Ascension. First three planets were pretty bog standard stuff. Upgrade what tiles you need and respect decent tile resources until you can get higher tier buildings.

The main difference was that I decided to delay the second Synth perk and stick with Cyborgs for a while. Currently, Synth pops don't Migrate at all, and I wanted to take advantage of this due to Resettling being so expensive for non Authoritarians.

Instead, what I did was take Master Builders for my fourth perk (already had the Ascension Perk rare tech.) I went pretty crazy with research and energy Habs, probably tripling my research and permanently solving my energy issues.

I made fifteen in the end, and this was actually for a specific reason: instant mass migration. The changes to food means growth stacking has been pretty gutted, so it's really useful to spread your growth to every planet, rather than have every planet grow all the way to max.

While I was making my Habs, I was terraforming four size 20+ planets to 100% habitability. This cost me almost nothing due to cost reduction stacking, and I didn't need them immediately anyway, so this was basically as good as a bunch of free nearly max size Gaia worlds. I colonized them one at at a time, and each was filled almost immediately with migrants. Took about five years to take each to a fully functioning, max upgrade planet. Three of these were made mineral producers, and the last had some disgustingly good research tiles, so I set up a size 25 research planet for good measure.

During this, I eventually got the Ring World perk and started working on a new capitol system. Took for freaking ever, but it was basically just a backburner project while I set up the planets and Habs. I had more than enough minerals by that point, so I barely noticed the cost. Two section for research, two for minerals. The fact that you build each section one after the other worked very well for my instant migration strat.

If I'm to be honest though, I think terraforming is much stronger. You can terraform as many planets as you can afford, and you can get the cost reduced by 98%, so it's practically free. I'll probably try a terraforming/psionic game next, taking the Terraforming Speed perk first. Seems like it could be good.

In the end, I had 1000+ minerals per month and 2000+ total research. I decided to go all in on Physics Labs because Physics has the best repeatable techs. By 2400, I had Energy Weapon Fire Rate XVIII (90% increased fire rate) Energy Damage VI, Energy Production XI and a bunch of other repeatable techs in the other fields.

After I finished settling my Ring Worlds, I decided to finally upgrade to full Synths. After conversion, I had about 100% increased research yields on my research planets and like 160% increased energy yields on my Habs. This honestly may have been a mistake though, because it basically ended my expansion for the rest of the game. Fully settling a size 25 planet went from like five years to about sixty due to no migration. I probably could have just taken the +200 fleet size and been better off. The yields were pretty nutty though.


All in all, I'd say Tall is actually doing pretty well these days. My biggest concern was late game fleet size, as I only had like 800 late game. This could have been remedied with the fleet size perk though. I'd say give it a shot if you're looking for something other than Colonize ALL the Things!

 

I had a fun singleplayer game last week in a small galaxy. I decided to try a build based around vassals/tributaries instead of annexation. The early war goal reduction on vassalization is huge and helped me secure two early vassals and from there I just snowballed. I integrated the first vassal at some point, and let the second expand one way while I took the other way. It was a pretty interesting way to do it.

 

I think I'd appreciate endgame crises more if they picked better spawn locations. This time they didn't spawn close to an FE, but instead in my outer heartland. Cost me a planet and ~1/6th of my fleet - one of the two fleets was literally lounging there and well, reinforcements.), but then 100k moved to my starting system.

And said 100k got summarily owned by a fortress flower and about 130k worth of fleet firepower because I've been running away with the game tech-wise. (I was waiting for an Awakened Empire to test my mettle.) The mop-up was surprisingly easy after.

Do FEs still awaken if you kick the Unbidden out before they have a chance to awaken as Guardians?

 

They can. Most justify it as them being slow to respond to anything.

I just wish I could fight something other then the Unbidden. I haven't even seen the Prethoryn or AI Uprising crisis.


My current game as a Hive Mind had the Unbidden spawn in my neighbour's empire, eliminating them.

I had to go around and close 3 anchors before getting to the portal, and naturally some other empire got the credit for the kill because they just had their fleet shooting the portal.

Joke's on them though, there's two Awakened Empires now, and I'm on the far side of the galaxy, with a fleet capable of taking them on.

And there's a looooot of empty space where my neighbour used to be.

 

Yeah, an empire awakened soon after I posted that (in-game timewise about 3 years). Naturally, it was the one right fucking next to me instead of the three at the other end of the galaxy.

In unrelated news, I have a bunch of Fallen Empire planets now and there is no more Awakened Empire.

 

It's actually better imo if they awaken right next to you. As long as you have the fleet power to take on a fallen empire, that is.

If you can take the AE's out before they snowball, you're golden.

 

I wanted to see how I fared versus a full Awakened Empire though. Maybe experience the War in Heaven too.

 

There is something immensely satisfying about beating an Awakened Empire like a drum, over and over...

In other news, the only FE/AE planets that I don't have belong to an Enigmatic Observer who'd done the smart thing and remained undiscovered until just now somehow.

 

So I have a new favorite game on Stellaris.

I remade the Vord, Aleran Empire, and Canim empire in Stellaris.

Not sure if I'm quite satisfied with the civics/traits yet, but it was pretty amusing.

The Canim ballooned massively at the start, while I (as the Aleran's) played a little more conservatively thanks to the FE nearby, but I got pretty far tech-wise, even made it into the Shroud before the Vord were discovered...

Apparently the Vord had spawned as an Advanced Start AI, but they spawned in-between two other FE's... The rest of the galaxy only learned about them after they'd eaten those two FE's.

Needless to say, Alera and the Canim are now in a Federation, with the Canim having shrunk a fair bit.

The Vord are massive, but also have the Unbidden spawned between us and them.

Edit: And I've just realized the Codex Alera theme could make for a really interesting multiplayer game.

 

I had an idea of doing something similar. What civics and ethics did you choose for each empire?