Paradox Games

Welp, looks like my massive cupcake empire is about to go down: The Prethoryn are here, and they chose their entry point as such that I'm the only target within light-centuries. I don't think I'm quite strong enough to contain the onslaught, especially as my other enemies will pounce on me at the first sign of weakness... I had it easier in my first game, where they dropped on some redshirt empire...

I think if I ever play Fanatic Purifiers again, I'll do so in Easy mode.

edited 28th Jul '17 4:43:49 PM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

So, restarted my game, now with shiny new weapon technologies (eg. PPCs as extremely high-energy, high-damage weapons), new system types (such as binary stars, brown dwarfs (both light/heat producing and not), giants supergiants and hypergiants (in both orange and red), and rogue planets (with a rogue planet as my homeworld)), as well as more exotic stellar bodies.

And it's really satisfying sniping someone's "prescripted ideal" world (one of the two guaranteed nearby ideal-type worlds every empire has) before making first contact, like I just did to these supercapitalist space cats. Also, it's a fair bit more reliable than using frontier outposts for the same thing.

My neighbors (or almost-neighbors) are the Union of Soviet Socialist Planets, Tumbator Enterprises (aforementioned capitalist cats), the Bangaa Brotherhood - a likely source of conflict due to their spiritualist ethos in an otherwise materialist or M/S-axis-neutral neck of the woods, and the Galactic Dabulan Confederation. Slightly further away is the most insidious of my neighbors, the Lathrepian Accord, who are Federation Builders. They're gonna be sanctimonious assholes and form obnoxious alliances, likely with the Democratic Crusaders next door and the Harmonious Collective to the galactic north of those two.

edited 29th Jul '17 3:11:34 PM by Balmung

Ugh, Feds. They have to wreck the galaxy with their peace and brotherhood bullshit, don't they?

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

Yes we do. Only reason I don't is because current Federations are underwhelming, plus they make the game too easy to beat.

So in HOI 4, engineers help to break forts, yeah?

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Only after some upgrades, IIRC.

Damn, I was doing pretty good against the Prethoryn, but now I'm running out of money... Worse still, my two tributaries were eradicated by the bugs, so not only is my money running very fast, but I no longer have a safety net if that damned federation decides to attack me...

Edit: And the bullshit part is, endgame crises somehow don't count as being in a defensive war.

edited 30th Jul '17 9:48:25 PM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Starting over because I want these neat stellar catalysts (mini-dyson spheres that kick off fusion in brown dwarves) I found in a mod and, while More Star Classes has various brown dwarves, it's not compatible, as it has its brown dwarves coded differently from Real Space (Real Space treats them as planets, while More Star Classes treats them as stars and uses a slightly different internal name, as well as having three grades of brown dwarf instead of two).

Back to regular CK2 dev diaries. Rally points are going to be added to the game.

Also, my new favorite patch note: Taught the Pope that lifting his own excommunication when he becomes the Pope makes him a better role model for other Catholics

Going back to wormholes after hypdrive and warp drive is so nice. I mean, sure, you need to build more than one station to really get going, especially for rapid exploration and colonization (at any given time, I have a small exploration fleet, multiple science ships, and several constructors popping through my home system (which had a neat giant + white dwarf nova thing going on)) but wormhole stations are dirt cheap.l and normal FTL also has maintenance costs.

edited 31st Jul '17 9:37:40 AM by Balmung

Machine Empires

Hopefully they get better flavor than Hive Minds did at launch.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Looks like I'll be an assimilator, because those are the only ones that look appealing to me. I don't want to obliterate other species, and I don't want those other species to be near-useless.

Geez the new story pack trailer

Well now, that was an interesting end to a Stellaris game. I had a whole Federation of like six different factions declare war on me at once, so that's a wash.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

It's not the end unless they're taking all your planets.

---

I'm actually not that stoked about this - I don't care for hive mindy stuff and it doesn't have the degree of dickery of forcibly uploading spiritualists into robot bodies with their awareness intact.

They pretty much are XD

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Personally I'm stoked about it, even if I don't use them (and I likely won't, or at-least not at first) the AI will and that deepens the game and makes it more interesting.

They almost certainly will, I know that normal hive minds are getting improved flavor so I would be surprised if the same is not true for the machine empires.

edited 3rd Aug '17 10:36:16 AM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

When I was watching the stream, they had largely the normal flavor text. I tried to ask if that's final, but I never got an answer on that. Hopefully they're still working on it.

Probably not final yet.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

I presume it's not a finished product so the streams are IMO poor evidence that they aren't going to have the necessary flavor.

Ha,

edited 3rd Aug '17 10:39:33 AM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Cue Toonami Advanced Robotics trailer...

It's another cool option, with a slightly different flavor from regular hives. Cautiously waiting to see how it all plays out.

edited 3rd Aug '17 11:23:27 AM by Ramidel

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

Well, I managed to get rid of the Prethoryn in my game, but it completely drained my energy reserves, and as I expected, that thrice-damned big federation pounced on me. And since my tributaries were nommed by the bugs, now they're demanding I liberate planets. Good ones too. I hope I'll be able to cause enough damage to limit the loss (and hopefully someday they'll stop guaranteeing the independence of the liberated planets), but given the listed Navy strength, it's a long shot.

Edit: And to add more injury to injury, the scourge caused one of the fallen empires to awaken, which then proceeded to do fuck-all except join the other federation, meaning I can no longer attack anyone without getting my ass thoroughly kicked (assuming they don't attack me first and kick my ass still).

edited 4th Aug '17 1:30:32 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

I forget, can you rebuild various Megastructures you find, or is that something that can only be done with a mod? In the game I played today I found a Sentry Array that I discovered I could rebuild with enough minerals and the proper Ascension Perk, and I can't remember if I had any mods that could do that.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Yeah, I'm still playing vanilla and I was able to rebuild a Dyson Sphere near a Fallen Empire I conquered. Catch was that it didn't count as building one as far as cheevos were concerned, so I ended up building my own from scratch later.

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"