Stellaris 2356-2375: Several muddled sessions

I had several sessions which ended up a bit muddled.

Session 1: Reavers

The first was the end of the war against the reavers. In a war with no claims, just "if you take over a system, it's just immediately transferred to you", I wasn't quite sure how that worked with allies. It turns out (I think), that if there's only on adjacent allied empire, they get the system whoever conquered it. And if one of us conquers a system not adjacent to any allied empire, the one who conquered it gets it. I'm not quite sure what happens in edge cases like multiple adjacent empires (the one who conquers the new system? the earliest adjacency?) or in planetary systems if it matters who takes the planet.

I'd meant to test those things out and then run the war for real but I ended up building a bunch of other infrastructure along the way, and then didn't want to restart. So my allies ended up getting most of the planets. Although I got one large planet, and I claimed almost half of the systems, including the border to several dead-ends with planets in, and a border to one the friendly empires affiliated with but not a member of the federation.

I did replay the second half of the war twice to get my priorities right, the first time the war ended without the last planet and most of the systems being conquered because I'd tried to rush the planet but ended up moving my ships and armies around inefficiently.

I'd recently unlocked "chemical bliss" living standards, which seems to mean "free cocaine". OK, actually it's more sinister than that, but my version is going to be the less sinister version. It gives lots of plus happiness, at the expense of lots of minus productivity. I was like, "when am I going to use that"? Since the mid-game I've jacked everyone's living standards up to utopian (go egalitarianism!) which takes more minerals, but gives a big boost to... everything due to happiness.

But I realised, I could give the free cocaine to the recently conquered ex-genocidists, which means they stop running around smashing stuff in frustration and instead sit around grinning. Which on average means they produce slightly more output, mostly because they don't produce lots of unrest. That lasted ten years, then I switched them back to normal well-balanced happiness along with everyone else. (Can you specify living conditions per-planet or only per-species?)

Session 2: Cold War

Then I spent quite a long time building up my economy and military. It was a bit of a mess because I started off with a fairly nice mineral income, and a military far short of my fleet cap. Indeed, I kept building resource silos because I wasn't sure what best to invest my minerals in.

But then in preparation of a likely war, I built up my military, but overdid it -- I hadn't expected to reach my fleet cap so quickly. Then the overhead penalty for exceeding the cap tanked my income, and I spent ages building up anchorages and anchorage boosting buildings to increase my fleet cap up to where it needed to be, and frantically rebuilding energy and mineral income.

If I'd done things in the right order it would have been a lot easier, but I wasn't interested in replaying it.

I ended up with a fleet cap of 300 (iirc 300 small ships, half as many medium ships, etc) full up, and still getting a mineral income of 100-300 depending on circumstances. If I'd built more economy *first* then built fleets that would have been better. But I feel ok-ly placed for the next war.

Session 3: pointless war

My theocratic Foxbsters allies wanted to declare war on one of the weaker non-federation empires, the ones I called klingons because they were stand-offish but honourable.

All my allies seem very happy to go to war -- the internet warned me that if you got into a federation that didn't like going to war, you could just be stuck unable to do anything. I guess that's because the other empires are all quite unpleasant, and often have rivalries against one or more federation members.

And I thought, "oh, why not", which may not have been the best decision. I was intending to just let my allies get on with it. It would have been better if I'd declared war myself, because then I could have insisted on a vassalisation or liberation war, which would have given us all the systems we took, not only the ones my allies claimed.

But I hadn't realised or forgotten there were a bunch of diplomatic options I couldn't have while at war, or I wouldn't have been so cavalier. So I ended up basically just waiting the war out which was very tedious, as the defensive war exhaustion shot up to 100% fairly quickly, but then there was a long time when my ally was neither taking systems very effectively, nor willing to give up and just take a status quo for what they already had. And I didn't want to fly my ships all round the galaxy to do it for them -- and I wasn't even sure how to tell which systems they'd claimed.

But the war did end and my ally got two or three planets, which reduced that empire's strength to "pathetic" relative to me, so hopefully we can mop them up in due course. And for some reason that made them xenophilic and they immediately formed defensive pacts with the other two empires. The extra allies is mildly inconvenient but hopefully ok. Hopefully being xenophilic will make diplomacy easier at some point in the future.

During this time I was building up my economy a bit more -- I've lost count of my planets, 20+, mostly built up by me and then handed off to a sector for upgrading.

And gearing up for a war with one of the other two empires. I kept spending my influence to expand throughout a long dead-end in the north west, which had half a dozen promising planets at the end. I'd hoped that would be all for me, but the other empire figured out wormholes and snuck in there! So I hoped to capture that little bit of territory from them.

But even after all that, I wasn't strong enough to demand vassalisation, so I went for a liberation war (which will make a friendly empire, which is convenient, but doesn't help my empire directly as much). But I probably could have done that earlier anyway, whoops.

Midgame

I take back what I said about the mid-game. I'd thought there'd be more building-up and fewer wars, but I'd discounted the fact that empires would get far enough ahead of each other, they could sensibly wage decisive wars against long-standing empires, so the galactic territory has been reasonably shaken up after all, the number of empires being simplified, and empires still expanding one way or another.

Everything took longer than I thought though, probably because I hadn't always made the best decisions (hi! welcome to humanity! and apparently duckbuilledplatypusanity too). So ideally I'd absorb as much of the other empires as possible *quickly* before the end game hits.

SteStellaris 2356-2375: Misc

More multicultural and less multicultural

A couple of aliens from one of my allies did immigrate to one of my planets, although it took me ages to actually find them! But I love having a multi-species empire. Currently I have: my original Duckbills; Funguses and Dangerous Smug Reptiles from conquests; Morlocks from a mysterious underground civilisation; Ex-Slaver Birds from refugees; Lobster-Plate-Faces from immigration.

And my allies have been accepting immigrants too -- my larger ally apparently has a bird refugee as leader now!

The reaver war finished off the reavers. About the same time, the neighbouring empires conquered the rest of the Birds (hence my refugees). That leaves a federation of me and three other empires, one federation affiliate, and three other empires. Ones who originally seemed very much "older siblings" when I was starting out, but now I'm wondering if I can conquer quickly before an end-game crisis hits.

Sadly, my theocratic ally only had one planet -- I think that may have been a religious thing with them, they were quite non-expansionist. And they conquered so many reaver planets, their whole empire became xenophobic. I'm not sure how that's going to play out.

Minor skirmishes

One of the systems my ally took from the reaver rebelled. I hoped that might mean I might be able to take it, but it didn't. What's funny is that they acted just like the reavers. The break-away empire had one planet, one system, and no military or civilian ships of any sort -- but they still issued claims on several of my neighbouring systems and sent me formal insults. The original reavers did the same, insulting me repeatedly despite being on the other side of the galaxy.

My piracy risk is way back down at 13% because most of my borders are with other empires, and maybe because I have lots of ginormous starbases now, and most of the spawns have stayed at a more reasonable size. I was needed to have some ships, but I could easily divert a 2.5k fleet without losing much from my main strength which was enough to handle them.

During the pointless war, the enemy randomly attacked one of my planets. But pretty futile-ly. I needed to quickly divert some fleet to handle it, but was able to do so. Some of it was a depressingly reduced federation fleet that happened to be handy. My allies helped by sending... armies. Which REALLY wasn't needed. But it all turned out ok, and I rampaged through their inner systems (they invaded through wormhole) for a bit just because I could, apparently researching some of their tech I somehow didn't have yet through the medium of "that looks like an interesting ship! KABOOM! that looks like an interesting insides-of-your-ship. Scientists, go build something like that, stat."

New science!

What interesting science turned up? I can't remember a lot of it.

One was experimental subspace navigation, i.e. lets science vessels (only) warp directly to a target system ignoring the route between. It's not faster, except that it can "jump" between nearby systems with no hyperlanes, and jump past enemy empires. I hadn't needed it yet as most places are either enemy territory, or open to me. But now I used it to survey the tip of the western backwater so I could build starbases there after I conquer the intervening territory.

I researched genetic modification! Apparently there's a bunch of related tech, some of which is only in the utopia expansion as an ascension perk. I can modify each species by one point, so I modified my most populous species, one to be stronger, one to be less resource intensive (that was either decadent or abstemious, I can't remember which).

I can now build battleships, the biggest ship type (without expansions). One by itself is 1k fleet power although it costs similarly to build and time to complete. I've still not delved in to how the military ships work, I'm not sure which technologies are worth researching and which are irrelevant given the ones I already have, and not sure which combination of ships are most worth using.

Misc interesting things

I found a system *full* of crystalline entities. Early on that would have been a real deterrent. Now I'm glad I went ahead with the research project to make them passive -- I didn't want to kill them all to take the system, even though they're not that much of a threat to me any more.

I wasn't sure if there was something specific about the system but there didn't seem to be.

I also took a system with void clouds in. They're some kind of semi-sapient particle field left over from the beginning of the universe. When I first discovered them, investigating them gave me a planet-wide permanent bonus to physics research! And my populace kind of worshipped them. I felt sort of sad to blow them up, but my ecological roleplay didn't extend to giving up a habitable planet when I expect a galaxy devouring threat to appear after 30 years.

Wait, now I'm making excuses. Damn it, Jack, be nice.

The empire who colonised the planets I wanted had robots working the factories! It was cool to see them. I've avoided building robots although they might be useful. I finally have enough migration my new worlds don't languish too long without population. And my spiritualist faction doesn't like robots at all -- they don't want them to have any rights, and object to any sort of AI, and I don't want to go a little bit down that path and then try to stop there.

Tomb worlds

I started colonising tomb worlds -- worlds destroyed in some cataclysm, presumably inflicted by the civilisation previously there. My spiritualists did NOT like that. I didn't want to start of doing that, but now I had enough planets I was sufficiently curious to risk it.

So far I found, one world that was more irradiated than we'd recognised in advance (a penalty to happiness). One world had surprisingly much surviving infrastructure (bonus to building speed/resources needed). I found an abandoned particle accelerator which gave +8 physics (rather than usually 0-4). I'm rather sceptical of that but I played along. And a fallout shelter which housed the remnants of the civilisation (presumably like in doctor strangelove), until they ran out of resources and all died tragically, but provided me with a trove of cultural records (i.e. +8 society research).

How well am I doing?

I already talked about my minerals and energy. My science is about +300/month each. Physics is ahead by a lot for various reasons. Unity +500/month. Influence +5 (from several rivalries, a protectorate, and whatever squabbling factions temporarily approve of me). I've so many planets I'm not thinking about the penalties I'm incurring in science and unity cost.

My military is getting to the point I've some home of absorbing the remaining non-allied empires if I have time to do it. It's still short of the fallen empires but getting there.

If things go on at this rate, I feel I'm on track to grab most of the galaxy (and win by federation victory or controlling-40%-planets victory).

But I probably need to more-than-septuple it to stand up to a crisis. And I don't have that long to do it. I guess when the crisis hits I can abandon long-term investments and replace everything with mineral buildings. Maybe?

Meta

I keep expecting these write ups to involve more hilarious tongue-in-cheek description of my discoveries. But then I end up writing them fairly straightforwardly.

I notice, I'm always much more fascinated when I'm *learning* how to deal with this stuff. I keep saying, "when I've figured it out, then I'll know how to play optimally and have everything just go smoothly". It really drives me onward. But then, I don't actually have that much interest in doing stuff again, even though doing something meditatively (the way many people play sudoko for instance) seems quite good for my relaxation.