Paradox Games

I'd imagine because they don't have any sort of restraint and just butcher and loot their way across the countryside and that gives them enough supplies to keep going without attrition, but eh.

In the mountains of Afghanistan? On horseback? Against a foe who knows the land far much better than them?

I find that a bit silly, personally.

Oh, I was talking about the Aztecs XD

Then again they're able to survive in the steppes where there's pretty much just as much resources so that likely translates into no attrition? *shrug*

edited 19th Oct '16 7:33:16 AM by theLibrarian

Another example would be Mongols against you playing a nomad horde. They don't get attrition in your provinces. You, on the other hand, do. So apparently the Mongols are just able to suck nutrition from the ground or something.

Though that example opens up another can of worms entirely - why is there stil a Mongol Empire when there's already a massive sprawling empire that even controls half of Mongolia?

At least they could overhaul the Great Khan decision so that any powerful steppe (at least in player hands) can do that. That's what the game has culture-based localisation for..

So, this afternoon I started a new Brazil game. I've taken nearly every non-fascist country possible before 1941, I just have Argentina (who I'm justifying on right now), Ecuador, and Chile left. I'm really scared about the possibility of any of the three joining the Allies and ruining everything.

So two amusing things from new patch

1) They added new preset for Savannah(one of previous ones got changed for alpine) and added Blorg to preset civilizations.

2) Blorgs, unlike all other presets(nowadays both humans are also enabled for random spawn in generation) aren't set on spawn. However... Noticed from files that they are set to possibly spawn as Fallen Empire

I'm really enjoying the new game so far. I am somewhat concerned though because I have a huge fleet of pirate bases pretty much on my doorstep (thankfully aside from stationing lookouts in a few other systems they don't seem to enjoy raiding), and I've already enlightened one primitive civilization that were in their early space age when I came across them (I really enjoyed the detail of them having a space station with a rotating central section for gravity's sake), and come across another that's in the Early Atomic Age that I'm now observing (and may enlighten, if they manage to resist blowing the whole planet away). I've also got a Fallen Empire next to me that's thankfully the "observer" kind. I find their unintentionally condescending conversations with me endearing xD

I also really enjoy that we now have the opportunity to automatically explore the galaxy when you get the proper tech.

edited 21st Oct '16 8:14:22 AM by theLibrarian

I started on the border between pirate and mining drone space. So far, neither I nor my neighbors (all 24 normal AI empires are advanced starts) can liberate their systems, or at least not without unreasonable cost.

For some reason, all or almost all of my neighbors except for my vassal that I enlightened (rushing enlightenment early on so that I get them as vassals instead of protectorates) use wormholes like I do (my vassal uses hyperlanes).

Broke bread with some filthy federation builders so that I could get a migration treaty, then dropped land of opportunity all over the place to steal their POPs (we both have continental preference) for faster growth and the xenophile bonus.

Also, I need to get the tech that allows uplifting because I found nonsapient roachoids on a tomb world in my space and there are at least 4 size 20+ tomb worlds that I've discovered in my space and neutral space, two of them in one system.

Also, got a terraforming robot event that turned a toxic world into a large continental world and gave it society research boosting tile blockers, which should help me pay for enlightening all the primitives I find while I can still get vassals out of them. And events gave me Kinetic Batteries and Ion Thrusters for free, as well as a cruiser, so all that's nice.

Oh, and I encountered the Ether Drake and lost an exploration fleet in two seconds from across the system. I cannot wait to return with battleships and harvest it.

edited 21st Oct '16 10:28:32 AM by Balmung

Yeah, last night I saw a little skull icon that came up as "Spectre" when I hovered over it, so I'm wondering what it was XD

Anyway tried Brazil again. Went very well until I ran into Colombia, which for some reason despite collapsing fairly quickly the last time I invaded them in a previous game, had a buttload of infantry divisions.

Haiti also proved a tough nut to crack, so when I try again I may go after Colombia, Paraguay, and Uruguay first all at once, then Bolivia, while using two separate naval invasion forces to smash Haiti, or invade Haiti and Cuba and hit Colombia from North and South at the same time once I'm done with Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia.

Once all that's done I'll go for Cuba as well, then maybe launch like five separate naval invasions to hit all the Central America countries, then head up through Mexico to border the US.

edited 21st Oct '16 11:18:37 AM by theLibrarian

I couldn't see the Ether Drake before I entered the system, and my poor corvettes never even had a chance to run, as the Ether Drake puts out something like 6k DPS.

In better news, I have a strong energy economy and two trader stations that love me, giving me +5% habitability and -10% ethics divergence, which will stack beautifully with the Ministry of Benevolence and my other collectivist boosts (though I mostly run it for the ability to resettle POPs), and the former gets me closer to being able to use tropical and ocean worlds as exactly equal to continental worlds, and eventually even wrong-group worlds at 60-ish percent.

edited 21st Oct '16 1:13:35 PM by Balmung

I find purging to be a significant boon to collectivists. Useless POPs with divergent ethics can be enslaved to help get to a Planetary Capital, and then Dalekked.

Yeah, yeah, MiniBev, massively negative ethics divergence...mass murder just works better on most worlds.

Apparently, this is possible and intentional, same traits and all

Ugh *headdesk* What happened? I did so well that first time and got screwed by Argentina, and now I can't do anything because suddenly sometimes when I declare war on a country that I'm supposed to have a very good advantage against they suddenly get like twenty units at once!

So I've got a question about CK 2, I was playing the Go T mod recently and the Aztecs invaded. I ended up capturing their leader in the first battle of the war and immediately won. But the event pop up for their defeat isn't showing up, did I need to wipe out their event troops completely or something to get rid of them?

Eh, I don't care for slavery or purges unless I really have to. I normally run xenophile and want to bring in aliens as much as possible. Even if they're repugnant, I'll just genemod that out, and ideally also add the conformist trait. Even when I am xenophobe, I tend to skip straight to purges.

In good news, I found all the Fallen Empires on my map, and the count is one xenophobe (humans), one spiritualist, and two xenophile. This means that I can start using mechanical life en masse without some random assholes dropping the hammer on me. Since I want to kick off the War in Heaven and they're actually very useful to me as-is (I have several wormhole stations for deep explorarion around them, and my continued access to them is largely assured by the fact that they'll skullfuck any chump who brings their borders too close), I will not take down the Human Vestige first. Odds are, it will be either the xenophiles who haven't been giving me missions (and hopefully eventually some phat loot) or the spiritualists (the most likely target, as my plans with tomb worlds will piss them off to no end, and since open borders are the default, I have no buffer against them).

Yeah, I've got three in my game too. I also fought my first war like a hundred years into the game. No War in Heaven yet, no indications of a late-game crisis, and I've run into no Leviathans. No space dragons, no Traveler-like black sphere, no space monsters period. I'm rather disappointed.

On the upside I wiped out the huge pirate base that was basically next door to me. I've actually gotten far enough into the research that I've become able to research Tachyon Lances too. Very nice, though I think I'll be sticking with my three different variants of battleship XD

I've gotten three different vassals, with two of them being protectorates I enlightened, and one that I got from a war against a neighboring power.

I hate always having energy crises though >.> I can't really build my fleet up much because I have too many stations and crap and that takes up a bunch of energy.

Update, turns out I miscounted, and the Materialists just showed up for a full four. This complicates things somewhat, and now I have to decide who I would prefer to play against each other. Both opposing pairs are near-ish each other and on the ass end of the galaxy from me and close enough to each other that very little of the damage will be merely collateral damage, rather than the empires going out of their way to drag other races into their war. I'm leaning towards playing the Materialists and Spiritualists against each other (the only Fallen Empire whose demise I have little immediate interest in bringing about is the Xenophiles), but as a ringworld empire, unless something has changed, the Materialists are at a disadvantage against a planet-residing FE/AE.

I go all-in for decadence, slavery and purges myself. The Xiptotac aren't Space Friends, they're an all-devouring Hive Mind.

Besides, I just conquered a Fallen Empire. How can I not purge these guys?

Because there's a worse fate: subjected to the active misrule of a sector governor.

What does the "A" slot on the ship designer mean now?

Something like auxiliary or augment. It's where things like crystal-forged plating go now.

Ah, okay.

@Balmung: Ha. Sadly, no way am I giving a functional ringworld to Sector.

@Balmung: Umm, wait, I thought that after the patch Materialists FE don't anymore attack you for researching robots before they awaken? I'd remember that not even xenophile empire attacks you for atrocities before awakening as well... Since developers thought it was kinda dumb that two of F Es restrict specific playstyles completely if they spawn

Anyhoo, my leviathan count: Run into dimensional horror, it blew up science ship rather fast, curator enclave got killed by wraith when I wasn't looking but I haven't seen the wraith myself. Also found a system with tons of 2k power crystals entities and some type of crystal entity station.

Also I currently suck in this game(playing with random empire, though chose to do old gods "change primary ethos" choice since at that point I was like "screw xenophobe invidualist militarists") :D Messed up trying to conquer my neighborhoods and messed up by letting absurdly powerful empire vassalize me(since that turned all my vassals and tributaries their tributaries) but on otherhand I've had peaceful time after that so if I get lucky maybe I can build enough forces to take on that overwhelming empire or at least free myself if they get hit by crisis when that triggers.

edited 22nd Oct '16 11:13:39 PM by SpookyMask

I was under the impression that they don't attack for researching them, but that they might for actually building them.

Anyway, I now have the mighty Giga Cannon and Zero Point Reactors. If not for my woeful lack of shielding technology past level 1 deflectors, I'd be riding off to take another crack at the Ether Drake and building up for war with the humans.

edited 22nd Oct '16 11:29:17 PM by Balmung