Stellaris - continued minor update
Jun. 29th, 2018 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWar
Still slogging through the end of this *second* war. I screwed up a bunch of stuff, they took some of my inhabited systems :( I thought I'd destroyed their ground troop transport but I wasn't quite close enough.
But they haven't officially claimed them. Are they likely to do that at the last minute? If they don't I get them back, but if they do, I'll lose my home planet right in the middle of a bunch of bottlenecks.
Fortunately, they don't seem to really guard their transports full of ground troops. So I was able to stop them taking any MORE by parking an army on their supply route and destroying any reinforcements that came through. After a few false starts...
Fortuitously, some of the pirates ran straight into some of the invaders and they mostly wiped each other out, that helped a lot.
Still trying to build my fleet up enough to be able to take one of their fleets and recapture my territory.
But I also flew the other half of my fleet into their empire the back way, and took the choke points and mineral rich systems that I wanted to take from them. We'll see if they have a THIRD giant fleet in reserve, or if they divert one of their existing fleets to fly back and recapture their systems, which would be good because I'm probably better at "clearing out, then retaking the systems while they fly about to the wrong spot" than the AI is.
If they don't react soon I can capture and claim something more. It's probably over-reaching to take a planet, but hopefully I can cut them off from the majority of their hinterlands, and leave them free to move with only their planets and a little bit of territory around that. (Well, ideally I'd kill any construction ship they have on that side of the firebreak too, but I don't know if I can and it doesn't seem very honorable.)
Real life comparison
It's obviously not VERY simulationist, but it's interesting that conquering territory isn't just "fly in with guns and take it", you need to do that AND not get attacked in the rear by a weaker fleet when you were distracted AND have sufficient political influence to permanently claim what you took AND suppress unrest on inhabited planets if you want to keep them.
Other politics
I think I need a defensive pact, both to allow me to get into more wars, and to allow me to NOT get into more wars...
One of the other empires I don't like, the Ick-Ick-Icky confederation declared war on one of the OTHER empires I don't like, the Eagle Supremacists. Although I might have one of those muddled up, not sur.e
Exploration
I successfully snuck a science and construction ship through the back of their empire, so I can claim territory there if I can afford it, which would help bottle them in, and give me a closer jumping-off point to negotiate with friendly empires.
Several friendly and neutral empires still have open borders to me, so I was able to do surprisingly much with my science ship:
* I completed several "go to this planet, acquire this xenoological specimen for science" steps
* I wandered through the friendly fallen empire and took a look-see at their planets of enclaves of extinct species.
* I found some free-floating crystalline entities, which like the space whales and space amoeba are less threatening at this point in the game. But I can research them for... crystalline stuff when I have some spare science bandwidth.
* I found an abandoned ringworld ALSO protected by absolute piles of (automated) hardcore military fleets and ALSO full of (originally non-sentient but since abandoned, evolved) species.
Still slogging through the end of this *second* war. I screwed up a bunch of stuff, they took some of my inhabited systems :( I thought I'd destroyed their ground troop transport but I wasn't quite close enough.
But they haven't officially claimed them. Are they likely to do that at the last minute? If they don't I get them back, but if they do, I'll lose my home planet right in the middle of a bunch of bottlenecks.
Fortunately, they don't seem to really guard their transports full of ground troops. So I was able to stop them taking any MORE by parking an army on their supply route and destroying any reinforcements that came through. After a few false starts...
Fortuitously, some of the pirates ran straight into some of the invaders and they mostly wiped each other out, that helped a lot.
Still trying to build my fleet up enough to be able to take one of their fleets and recapture my territory.
But I also flew the other half of my fleet into their empire the back way, and took the choke points and mineral rich systems that I wanted to take from them. We'll see if they have a THIRD giant fleet in reserve, or if they divert one of their existing fleets to fly back and recapture their systems, which would be good because I'm probably better at "clearing out, then retaking the systems while they fly about to the wrong spot" than the AI is.
If they don't react soon I can capture and claim something more. It's probably over-reaching to take a planet, but hopefully I can cut them off from the majority of their hinterlands, and leave them free to move with only their planets and a little bit of territory around that. (Well, ideally I'd kill any construction ship they have on that side of the firebreak too, but I don't know if I can and it doesn't seem very honorable.)
Real life comparison
It's obviously not VERY simulationist, but it's interesting that conquering territory isn't just "fly in with guns and take it", you need to do that AND not get attacked in the rear by a weaker fleet when you were distracted AND have sufficient political influence to permanently claim what you took AND suppress unrest on inhabited planets if you want to keep them.
Other politics
I think I need a defensive pact, both to allow me to get into more wars, and to allow me to NOT get into more wars...
One of the other empires I don't like, the Ick-Ick-Icky confederation declared war on one of the OTHER empires I don't like, the Eagle Supremacists. Although I might have one of those muddled up, not sur.e
Exploration
I successfully snuck a science and construction ship through the back of their empire, so I can claim territory there if I can afford it, which would help bottle them in, and give me a closer jumping-off point to negotiate with friendly empires.
Several friendly and neutral empires still have open borders to me, so I was able to do surprisingly much with my science ship:
* I completed several "go to this planet, acquire this xenoological specimen for science" steps
* I wandered through the friendly fallen empire and took a look-see at their planets of enclaves of extinct species.
* I found some free-floating crystalline entities, which like the space whales and space amoeba are less threatening at this point in the game. But I can research them for... crystalline stuff when I have some spare science bandwidth.
* I found an abandoned ringworld ALSO protected by absolute piles of (automated) hardcore military fleets and ALSO full of (originally non-sentient but since abandoned, evolved) species.