Paradox Games

Bit annoying that you can't really keep Frankish culture alive. While other cultures - like Norse and Visigothic - can block melting pot/culture split events by being under a powerful empire, Frankish is doomed to disappear. :/

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

In more Vanilla Stellaris ethos/faction shenanigans, a Materialist empire going down Synthetic Evolution can rapidly eat several Spiritualist empire and eliminate the main source of dissent, especially if they bank a few ascension perks.

At the core of this is that Synths cannot be in the Spiritualist faction and regardless of ethics, have huge weight for joining the Materialist faction.

Finally played a game of Stellaris long enough to get an end game crisis. I got the Contingency, and goddamn man that was tough. Even though basically the whole galaxy save for the fallen empire and the marauders were in my federation, it was the Von Lewis Commissariat that did like 75% of the heavy lifting saving the galaxy. But that was pretty epic, though. Eventually all my allies got their shit together and sent fleets following my main one to finish off the Contingency.

Also I was using my massive energy credits stockpile from a partial dyson sphere to buy marauder mercenaries and use em as cannon fodder, lol.

Still waiting on my crises. My FP subject ticked off the Keepers of Knowledge about a year before integration and my fleet swatted theirs. Got new shields and they hella thirsty (450 power for a large) to the point that I only do slightly better than break-even with my prior shields for shield HP before maxing out my reactors. However, they save two slots to do that, allowing for more armor (though my fleet is kinda weak to armor+shield penetration) and my smaller ships have no such power problem.

edited 12th Apr '18 7:47:28 AM by Balmung

There's another CK 2 sale going on, Paradox store only, until the 16th.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I was playing as the Raj, and I found that the best strategy for the People's Republic of India is to have a single motorized division when you kick off the civil war. Sadly, that's kind of cheating; oh well.

In other news, am I missing anything by having my armies composed entirely of mechanized infantry? They seem to be completely rolling Italy, Portugal^note I declared war on Portugal and forced them into the Axis - for some reason, Britain doesn't seem to be objecting and Vichy France in Africa, but then...it's Italy, Portugal and Vichy France. Am I gonna need a new template for when I've cleared away the bit players and have to fight the Reich?

Mechanized infantry is pretty great. Mostly it's just that the AI is bad at creating and distributing dedicated AT units, so generally speaking any unit with enough hardness is going to hit like a ton of bricks.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Yeah. That, and mechanized units have automatic hard attack for some reason in case I need to deal with enemy tanks.

Seriously, that part makes no sense. The Bren doesn't have dedicated AT capabilities, just infantry AT.

Mech is very good if you can afford to field it. The thing is, that is a BIG if, as mechanized equipment is very expensive and has a large supply demand.

I think mech gets some hard attack (beyond what the infantry themselves provide with their infantry anti-tank weapons) because IFVs carry cannons and mech can be APC or IFV.

Hell, for Universal Carriers, wasn't there a 2-pdr version?

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Not just that, but hard attack costs more IC and resources than soft attack to achieve the same value.

edited 17th Apr '18 2:42:45 AM by Balmung

I don't know about a 2-pdr version, but there was a version with a mounted Boys rifle.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Surviving Mars announced their first major content update "Oppertunity"^note there was a smaller patch, named "Spirt", a little while ago that fixed some bugs, made some balance tweaks, and allowed you to set birth control policies to keep overpopulation in check.

This one will be free to everyone with the base game (no season pass or DLC required), which is a very good thing because in my opinion some of these are features the base game needs.

Passages - Motorized walkways that allow you to connect two domes together. So people who live in one dome can work or use services in the connected dome. These also carry power and life support.

Game Rules - Allow you to enable new difficulty options like "The Last Ark" that restricts you to a single passenger rocker from earth or "Armageddon" which turns up meteor showers to 11 regardless of start location.

Storages - Basically supersized depots that are actual buildings (so they can't be placed for free and require power) that have a maximum storage capacity of 4,000 units. A new large water tank that stores 1,000 (1,500) units of water is also added.

Workshops - These are endgame buildings that allow colonists to pursue purely creative pursuits (like painting). While there is a milestone associated with them, the idea is that they provide a way to show that your colony is so prosperous that it no longer needs to be concerned with every working age colonist contributing in a practical manner.

I'm having fun blobbing in Stellaris as a Blood Court right now. I've destroyed three races so far and just got my first defensive war a little bit ago as I was sweeping up the remains of my third enemy. I was going to ask if the Ideological destroyers made any sense, but then I remembered that humans started off side by side with at least one intelligent race close by that didn't make it to the modern day. I figure maybe Blood Courts and the like grew up on worlds that had more than one thinking race, and they came out on top.

What ethics do you use to make a Blood Court?

Fanatic Xenophobe+either militarist or spiritualist with the Fanatic Purifier unique civic, blood court is their government type.

edited 17th Apr '18 9:34:25 AM by Fourthspartan56

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

Specifically, Blood Court is the flavor name for Purifiers with Imperial Authority, as opposed to Democratic (Purification Assembly), Oligarchic (Purity Committee) and Dictatorship (Purity Order).

As for Purifiers making logical sense....they really don't. The idea of a society evolving towards an end point where they completely obsess and focus on destroying everything that isn't them, to the exclusion of all other priorities and to the point that they are totally inflexible about it, is rather ridiculous.

edited 17th Apr '18 10:17:36 AM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I'm not sure how they don't, we have people in Human history who were dedicated towards exterminating groups within their species who were fairly similar to them. I think the idea of an alien polity that is dedicated towards exterminating other intelligent life is one that is not hard to believe, after-all reducing the competition is a legitimate survival strategy and FP just do that writ large.

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

For instance, a Tomb World society probably ended up with that ethos after their planet was nearly destroyed by invading aliens. Better safe than sorry.

Oh, I wasn't saying that genocidal societies aren't realistic. But given that we only have one example of sapience to go by, there are no parallels in human history that suggest a society could make genocide of anything that isn't them their primary purpose, to Planet of Hats levels. Some level of pragmatism, and focuses on other external and internal concerns, make that kind of society next to impossible to form, let alone survive. The conditions would have to be specific, the kind that only exist in fiction.

Blatantly declaring hostility and a policy of annihilation towards every other peer (or strong) polity around you is not a recipe for national success, look what happens to most of the genocidal empires in the hands of the AI. They get crushed once their neighbors team up to take out the local lunatics.

edited 17th Apr '18 10:35:35 AM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Hell, look at what happened to our own history's best example of a genocidal empire.

Eh, There really isn't much to the Daleks when you come right down to it. They're a species of doofy-looking alien cyborgs who exist to EX-TER-MIN-ATE! everything that is not them.

It's a space opera trope, not something that has to make sense.

@Balmung: There might have been. The Universal had a lot of little variants before they standardized one version of the APC.

Nazis' aren't the best example, There have been empires who have both genocided more people, and completed there genocides sucessfully..... the nazis are notable because they industrialized it.

Regardless, nations that conduct themselves like that often end up with far more enemies than allies and quickly collapse. The Nazis, the Mahdists, ISIS, the Khmer Rouge, there's a ton of human nations and governments that have conducted themselves as Fanatical Purifiers and have very rapidly been dealt with by someone else.

edited 17th Apr '18 1:15:30 PM by theLibrarian

Indeed, it is never a smart idea to surround yourself with enemies.

AFIAK they have said they want to make it so that the Purifiers are always at war with every one at some point, but the game just doesn't support it right now.

That actually seems pretty consistent with how Fanatic Purifiers often fare in-game. They hit one or two other empires, then get ganged up on and wiped out.

And none of the factions (well, maybe the KR and ISIS, to an extent) were so blatant about it. They made allies and used collaborators, so by Stellaris standards they don't fit the bill.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.