Paradox Games

Some benefits for separated church and state might be a good idea, though I think that granting claims would be a wash. If you're a reformed pagan, you probably don't have a lot of pagans outside your territory (at least not before your first meltdown) to grant claims on. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that largely, pagans and Zoroastrians don't play the claim game.

The priest mechanics will need a substantial buff to make anything other than secular religious heads a viable choice for Pagans.

So, Hearts of Iron IV Old World Blues mod. I'm House, and my armies have secured a decent sized little empire. I'm up against the Eighties, and my manpower is down in the two thousand range. Theirs is bigger, but I inflict at least 6 to one casualties at all times, so their numbers dwindle before mine. Twice, I'm seeing breakthroughs and huge areas of my land that are unguarded. First time I get pissed at the Front Line mechanic, and turn it off. Second time I ragequit because I don't understand what's happening. I'm careful. I never move troops unless it's from a territory only facing one enemy territory, and that's only into the one enemy territory. I turtle them. I'm pretty sure I didn't ignore any losing battles. I can only imagine I forgot to pause after sending reinforcements to a battle, and those folks completed their movement into enemy territory, abandoning a couple of mine to be attacked.

Times like these I wish HOI IV had a secondary attack option that let you automatically tell your troops to stay in their own province after the fighting is done. It would make reinforcing a losing fight so much easier.

It does, at least in theory, but I can never make it work.

So I opened a L-Gate.

It was a grave mistake.

I've managed to out-tech the galaxy (save the Fallen Empire) so hard that I got to the point where I unleashed a mid-late crisis upon an early-mid galaxy. This crisis in particular are weird gray goo nanites.

I knew about the possible consequences of opening the L gate in advance, so when I opened it, I made sure to have around 100k worth of fleet power in the system. Then the L-cluster turned out to be completely uinhabited.

So, tried out the Old World Blues mod for Hearts of Iron 4. It's certainly interesting; terrain is a big part of it, and not just in terms of stuff like mountains, also in ways like "Hey, the route from the main NCR to places like Nipton is a narrow corridor" and "the one way across the Colorado River anywhere is at Hoover Dam", stuff like that.

Yup, it's choke-point laden like the latest incarnation of Stellaris. I'm loving that. I took probably a quarter of my galactic arm without a struggle, then dipped down into the next arm over. And I've only got four actual entrances to block up in my country. It coincidentally looks like a cock and balls but that's just hilarious because it happened on accident. For those not looking at spoilers, don't worry about it. It's that shape immature guys make at least once in their lifetime whenever they're given creative liberty.

The new clusters are definitively a massive improvement over how hyperlanes were previously calculated.

I know, I love starting in my own constellation with choke points protecting it.

You don't honestly need 100k fleets if you want to open l cluster, its enough to have really high good starbase in systems with l-gates and they avoid attacking those systems since they know they can't win by themselves AI in this game is bit wonky after all. Plus if you do it like that, you can enjoy them cleaning out other systems with L-Gates outside your empire's borders.

Speaking of AI though, yaaaaay crisises finally feel like they actually work! I got my playthrough(that I can't win anymore because I can't match 100k contingency fleets. I play on huge maps and didn't fiddle with settings) the crisis finally reach the 20% galaxy point where another event triggers. This is first time for me ever actually.

Anyway, yeah, this has been good run: I've completed all techs, all systems, all leviathans/guardians and even L-Cluster. Only thing left would be holy guardian's region and contingency, but I give up on this run since beating 100k fleet on single player just ain't likely with my skills at least :P I got good screenshot of galactic map from this playthrough so thats nice too(As example of cool thing that happened: marauder empires after death of khan become the big single state khanate, then contingency spawned two of the machine worlds in their borders..)

On side note, need to figure out right amount of starting empires so that fallen empires still have chance to spawn. Only 2 out of 5 spawned on this map.

edited 24th May '18 9:42:17 PM by SpookyMask

If you play weaknesses you can beat out bigger, stronger fleets. Just gotta tech up enough to play that game right.

Thats the thing though, the thing I hate most about all 4x space games is ship design And auto design isn't good enough it seems

No one design is. If you generalize you wind up with an average middle of the road ship that gets its ass handed to it. If you specialize and keep jumping depending on the enemy's gear, you'll do a heck of a lot better. My general layout is maximizing those parts on the side, slapping down the strongest defense penetration weapons I can (disruptors and arc emitters in this case) and specializing my defenses based on the enemy's weapons. Just make sure you do that last. it really fucks you over if you don't pack the right defenses. I've been fighting energy wielders, and tried going against the Fortress the same way. Got my ass handed to me because the Enigmatic Fortresses uses all kinetic weaponry. Shields gone, ships gone. Have to rebuild most of my fleet.

This. There is no "one setup to rule them all", though currently popular are either pure corvette swarms with maximum evasion and Torpedo + Auto-cannons for good coverage with evasion tanking or Mass Arc-emiters for a devastating Alpha Strike .

In other news: since I couldn't find a proper mod that just adds a 1:1 copy of Driven Assimilator for organic Hiveminds I just decided to mod one myself. I am making good progress, the biggest hurdle will be recreating that unity on pop assimilation bonus, also I can't set the second species to full citizenship by default yet, for whatever reason.

edited 25th May '18 6:37:43 AM by Kiefen

Thats the problem though, I dislike micromanaging army composition hence why I don't like ship design Nothing is more annoying that upgrading several different types of ships and then making sure you have right composition of them in your fleets.

I'm running ten battleships with arc emitters, 40 missile corvettes with devastators, and ten destroyers with point defense and disruptors. Everything that wasn't stated is a disruptor. I'll probably throw devastator cruisers into the mix at some point, but not there yet. Just defended a neighbor against a bigger threat for the second time, and wiped out their main fleet's real power in an ambush in one go. They kept coming back but by the second or third battle I was clearly stronger.

Mhh interesting, seems like I underestimated disruptors.

The auto-design isn't just "not good enough", it's outright horrible.

Really?I use it all the time

Maybe that's why my fleets keep getting destroyed

Okay excuse me stellaris WHAT

I was doing fine. Somehow befriended an empire of driven assimilators, took down early rivals, befriended almost all of my half of the galaxy save for two empires, started taking down one... and suddenly there's mercenaries unifying and going against the whole galaxy and they have three fleets that are twice or thrice my maximum firepower in a single stack. that I can see, at least, dunno for their homeworlds. And I'm more or less the top dog of this half of the galaxy.

Oh god this is gonna suck. What's supposed to be the plan ? let yourself be vassalized, gather up an army and rebel ? Cause I don't see myself winning unless every single neighbor decides to put the wars we're all in on different sides aside and go for them, and even then it's a bit late for that.

edited 25th May '18 11:57:23 AM by Yumil

Join a federation!

There's none. I'd be in it the second it formed otherwise.

Submit to them, and wait for the Khan to die (either in battle, or by event, it will happen eventually). Ideally the Khanate will splinter, or become more benevolent.

"Mhh interesting, seems like I underestimated disruptors."

While their damage is random, it's all to hull. None gets blunted by the other defenses. The only hard counter to them is a hard counter to everything: range. If you slap disruptors on high speed ships that close to knife fighting range fast, or even park your ships within range of the hyperdrive entry point the enemy is using and lie in wait, there's a good chance you're coming out on top as long as your defenses are set to weaken the enemy's fire. I've got the arc emitters to damage the enemies while my corvettes and destroyers close to range, and the destroyers keep any missiles or strike craft from doing as much as they otherwise might.