Paradox Games

I'm pretty sure they don't attack even for building robots, since again that would restrict gameplaystyle completely. Huge maps seem to always have one of each type of fallen empires and ai is building robots without care.

Well anyway, I lost this game again due to my stupidity Noticed overlord was integrating me but figured out I'd have bit more time to build my forces before trying to go for independence(which would have ended badly anyway) but messed that up. Oh well this was pretty unsalvagable game at the point where I ended up leaving federation by submitting to overwhelming power empire that had wormholes on other side of galaxy :P To be fair, if I had realized they had wormholes, I wouldn't have submitted but yeah stupid loss xD

I'm actually pretty sad about screwing this playthrough since I spawned in homesystem with tons of minerals so I was really well set out :'D

edited 23rd Oct '16 12:33:11 AM by SpookyMask

Well, I think I've more or less found the measure of my foe - the Ether Drake just slightly overmatches my ~20K fleet (so, given that I bought the 25% damage boost vs the Ether Drake, I assume it's a bit over 25K fleet power) and has a hateboner for cruisers, so I'm gonna come back with a bigger, better fleet and a heavy emphasis on cruisers to tank fire for as long as possible. It might also help if I get around to getting torpedoes, but as it stands, there's already a lot of demand for my physics research, which is easily my weakest branch (social is far and away my strongest due to two worlds with tile blockers with adjacency boosts to it).

I ran into The Wraith last night and hoooo boy. Thankfully all the damage it caused is easily fixable since he only destroys a few things at a time.

So, I met the Galactic Nomads. They seemed nice, right up until they took 3000 of my minerals and 1500 of my energy credits and didn't give the 15 cruisers they promised in exchange. Neither save scumming nor accepting the offer to play 1000 more energy for 15 more cruisers results in me actually receiving the goods I paid for, though the latter gets me an incomplete failure-ish message. Regardless, the nomads are either bugged or scammers and I assumed it was the former and consoled myself a refund.

So is the Influence cost for colonizing planets more depending on how far away from your empire's borders you are?

I am pretty sure that is the case, yes. Same for fronter outposts.

Alright then.

I once again restarted a Brazil game, and I did it. I finally conquered every non-fascist country in South America and have made a faction, and have included Haiti and Cuba in that. Now, I just need to find out how to get the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Argentina to join the faction as well, but I can't just invade them and puppet them to do it because the US has taken its stand against Fascism.

So I've been playing some Stellaris lately, and have come to the conclusion that pops are fucking idiots.

Having recently developed Synths, I decided to put them to work and colonise a pair of Tomb worlds. It was supposed to be hugely profitable because of the ridonkulous amounts of science to be found there with very little trouble since Synths require no food or habitability, and whatever energy they consume they can produce themselves.

Some time later I got an alert stating that both these planets were suffering from starvation. About two dozen of my main species (continental mammals with the "adaptable" trait) had decided that a radioactive wasteland would be a perfect place to raise their kids and migrated.

"No biggie", I thought. "Labour is labour, and I got ways to raise habitability to acceptable levels". So I built some buildings to that end, but before those were finished about a third of those pops on one Tomb decided to take matters into their own paws and genetically altered themselves to adopt to the harsh environment. Apparently they believed that, instead of continental mammals, they needed to be tropical molluscs in order to deal with a nuclear winter. Eyebrows were raised.

"Okay then," I said, "a weird but ultimately inconsequential mutation. Keep going as planned and all will work out". But, a few years later, racial tensions start to mount, resulting in the molluscs killing a mammal pop. Because of this incident, all pops on the Tomb gained Xenophobe and Militant ethos, which was a bit of a problem since my empire runs on Xenophile/Fanatic Pacifist. And now there's an all-out race war going on with mammals and molluscs taking turns in killing a pop of the other, in addition to an independence faction constantly damaging valuable buildings, including the ones designed to raise happiness and habitability.

"Fuck these clowns", I said. Since then, every time on of those pops dies because of their own stupidity, I respond by building a Synth pop in their place. And they all non-lived happily ever after.

edited 25th Oct '16 8:47:08 AM by Kayeka

I also made an unpleasant Stellaris discovery last night: Federations are useless. I got invited into a Federation, which then declared war on an empire that neighbored me. "Okay," I thought, "this shouldn't be too hard, since they're right next to me and with three empires against them they'll fall pretty easily, and the one empire that supports them is weak too."

Cue the war going on, going swimmingly, but then we come across the third belligerent against us, this GIANT FUCKING BLOB that takes up like a quarter of the galaxy and is way stronger than anything we can throw against them, and then I learn that joining a Federation cripples you. You lose 20% of your naval capacity to make the "Federation fleet", which you CAN'T CONTROL (seriously, I tried to bring my fleet and the Federation fleet together for a united offensive only for them to fuck off and go somewhere else whenever I tried to direct them somewhere), I couldn't boost my fleet without tanking my economy, and, this is the stupidest part, even when I was president of the Federation I couldn't make peace with anyone, because "Only the primary attacker can make peace", which they wouldn't do even when we had the advantage!

So that game was junked and I've made up my mind to never join a federation ever again. Association? Fine. Actually joining one? No. Piss off.

edited 25th Oct '16 9:02:03 AM by theLibrarian

A pleasant discovery, however, is that when the War of Heavens begins and you refuse to take a side, if you have war philosophy set to "defensive" you won't get dragged into wars. Oh, sure, you'll constantly get pestered by a pop-up saying you do, but the game interprets this event as you declaring war on them, which you can't.

So my pacifists are enjoying some tea while the war rages on. At least until the other party in the federation of unaligned nations becomes president. Then we'll get fucked.

...I wonder if I can kick them out and prevent myself from getting dragged into the war a bit longer. Because holy heck, I do NOT want to get dragged into a war that the game deems "offensive". My pops would be defecting left and right.

So, the dumbass Sprirtualist FE woke up... and did nothing except build a few frontier outposts (seriously, nobody even listens when they demand vassalage, not even other Fanatic Spiritualists, and it's not even 100 years in), making my panicked hulk out in ordering up a 100k strength fleet to augment my existing 60k fleet seem almos wasteful. Furtunately, someone made it worthwhile, the non-awakened Human Vestige got super mad that I decided to settle some super-sweet size 25 wet climate worlds right on the edge of their stupid borders (okay, so rivalling them and insulting then after that probably didn't help) and declared war on me. One decisive battle (and a few obligatory planetary invasions) later, most of the humans live under the misrule of a sector governor, though I kept the size 25 gaia world capital for myself. Now to brainwash them to accept my ethics and use them to colonize further arctic worlds.

Kinda hoping that watching the Human Vestige get walked over wakes up the remaining Fallen Empires because I want that War In Heaven, but if not, I'm just gonna antagonize the others until they fight me or recklessly research jump drives and wait for the Unbidden to stir up some shit.

Was the option to allow more then one ultimate event ever added? or do I need a mod for it?

I want to see robots, pretorians, and unbidden all in the same game. >.>

Anyone playing EU4 with the Rights of Man? I am running a successful Prussia campaign and it have been quite fun. The new Great Power system is interesting. It doesn't do much most of the time, but the intervene in wars option is game changer. I haven't intervened in any myself, but the Ottomans did to me once, which is quite scary. It made a previously one sided war^note Me, France and Russia against Sweden and Great Britain much more dicey. I still won thanks to Prussian Space marines, but I was expecting a walk in the park but instead I found myself fighting 100k angry Turks in the Balkans. It was quite fun. I am fighting Spain and Austria, now, and I wonder if the Ottomans will try again. Spain is very strong this game, so it might be quite a challenge.

You need a mod to have more than one crisis.

Have any recomended mods for causing more then one?

Also is a war in heaven a crysis? Or can they start beating the shit out of eachother while the unbidden eat every thing?

Have been playing Rights of Man thing.

Been playing as Vijiyanagar. Was able to crush Bahmanis kinda early by allying with Orissa, and expansion was sorta smooth. Had Great power status in early game, though tech costs made that go away. Had to go through several wars with Gujarat (which got kinda big). For most of early wars, Gujarat (and Delhi soldiers I think) were able to outclass mine, though I was able to snag provinces bit by bit. Orissa randomly got land right in the middle of India and I think I'm gonna need to betray them at some point to form Bharat or something. Basically most of game was spent fighting Gujarat and Delhi. Then Orissa started declaring wars on Gujarat on their own because there was this one province that was right adjacent to their Deccan territories. We were mostly able to take on Gujarat and Delhi by ourselves (I had larger army (partly from quantity ideas), but Orissa had better military tech), but then Bengal (which got really huge and also was allied to Assam, which was also kinda big), declared on Orissa and I basically had to keep swinging my troops back and forth to take advantage of new fort mechanics. Somehow Orissa was able to peace out Gujarat/Delhi, and then we basically managed to beat Bengal. Sometime later, I was able to declare on Gujarat without Delhi coming in, so now they're basically one province due to everyone dog-piling them, but now Multan is kinda big. Also they are allied to Jaunpur (smallish but also a recently acquired ally) and Bengal (still kinda big).

Also institutions take a really long-ass time to spread. Just managed to get renaissance, and Global Trade and Printing Press have been around for a while.

War in Heaven is not a crisis. So yes, the war for galactic supremacy can be interrupted by a robot rebellion.

In other news: setting your war philosophy to "defensive wars" does, in fact, keep you from getting dragged into the War in Heaven, assuming you refused to take sides. Which is kind of bullshit, considering it is very much the Awakened Empires declaring war on you as opposed to the other way around.

Just go to the Steam Workshop and look for "Multiple Crises", which should produce at least one mod that does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

And the War in Heaven is not a crisis, but a crisis can trigger a Fallen Empire to awaken. Additionally, no more than one empire may be awakened simply by the new kids on the block catching up too closely, so even if you're super advanced, you can't accidentally wake up all the empires just by doing that.

Furthermore, come on Materialists and Xenophiles, wake the fuck up. I mean, I know you're complacent and all, but I'm all over this galaxy, being advanced, conquering your equals, and breaking your rules (well, the Materialists' rules, at any rate).

edited 25th Oct '16 2:43:32 PM by Balmung

I need to buy the rest of the expansions for EU 4 and CK 2. For CK I think I only need Horse Lords but for EU 4 I need I think Common Sense, Rights of Man, Mare Nostrum...and I think that's all?

Yeah. The ones that relies on physical spreading are the worst. Even as Brandenburg/Prussia I was pressing the development buttom to accelerate things. I imagine in India it is way more annoying. The later ones are much easier, though. Manufactories and universities make Manufactories and Englightment spread quite quickly. Just be sure to build them ahead of time to have legs up. Global Trade can also be sped up with trade buildings, but not quite as much.

So I've decided to try and do a game of Stellaris just sticking to kinetic weapons and missiles. Been going fairly well so far; haven't fought any wars but I've been steadily building up my military.

I also had my first run-in with an Ether Drake and WOW.

@Kayeka The whole "PO Ps transforming into a completely different species" thing is a bug and has been around since the patch before Heinlein.

I've seen it happen to other people who had PO Ps transform into robots, pre-sentients etc. In one of my games I settled a tomb world with my primary species just to see if the modification event works with tomb worlds.

The guys transformed from plantoids into turtles. It's annoying as heck because that's not supposed to happen.

@Librarian: Meanwhile in my game, the federation I'm in is the largest one and basically dominated the game Sure I can't control the buggy federation fleet, I leave ai to do that, but 20% loss doesn't really matter when you are most powerful nation in federation anyway and when rest of federation members are capable enough to win wars without me bothering to do anything.

Anyhoo, screwed up enigmatic fortress event chain so sad about that :( Also realized how Materialist FE and robot research works nowadays:

Now FE only do "DO THIS OR DIE" thing when they are at -90 opinion. Each step on AI research gives something like -5 or more penalty (maxing at -40 after researching synthetics), so yeah you don't really have to worry about materialist FE before awakening especially if you are materialist and get opinon boost for that

Anyhoo, ai in this game is weird I have to say .-. In this playthrough it has actually been pretty active(though still waiting for fe to awaken or crisis to arrive). Like it seems to be pretty random of whether ai breaks and does nothing or if they are suddenly trying to make this "Hey let's get everyone join this federation and conquer the jerks" thing

On a different note: Was it always this easy to kick the Europeans out of Africa? I'm playing Mali and after uniting most of West Africa I declared war on Portugal for their West African colonies. On one occasion I actually managed to annex their Brazil into mine.

And this when they were still at their height. Now it's 1622 and the Iberian kingdoms have been ground to dust between Morocco and France while I kept sniping their colonies in Africa.

It can't be because of my tech because I'm very much limping behind. Having to invest tech to keep up with institutions will do that to you. :/

I can only speak for South America (specifically, the Inca), but yes. Powerful native nations, even ones a few tech levels behind the enemy (this is pre-Institutions), will absolutely faceroll European colonies once they get themselves together, and the mother country will mostly just go :(.

Mexico nearly always goes to Portugal in large part because the Aztecs are designed not to get their shit together unless they're in player hands.

edited 26th Oct '16 10:15:52 AM by Ramidel