Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[GloatingSwine]

That's actually quite amusing.

By the way, any advice on getting other nations to attack you so you are in a defensive war? I've wanted other nations to attack me at certain times when we are on equal footing, so I could counter swing and annex them, but I can't seem to do it unless they have some kind of advantage over me, even with insulting them constantly. So the only strategy I have been able to use to trick them into attacking me is to set up massive amounts of production every where, lower my fleet power bit by bit until they attack, then rapidly amass a huge fleet before they can cause too much damage. But there has got to be a better way into provoking. If there is, playing passive races, especially fanatic passives, would be a lot easier.

Yeah.

Turn AI aggressiveness to High, build your fleet out of the ships I keep telling everyone to build (these have low fleet power but extremely high effectiveness in actual combat), and then make sure your fleet power isn't much more than any local AI. Now just be sufficiently hated.

Chances are two or three of them will gang up on you and declare war. Especially if you declare war on someone yourself (the AI counts the fleets of people you are already at war with in its own decision whether to declare war).

[Silverraptor]

Yeah.

Turn AI aggressiveness to High, build your fleet out of the ships I keep telling everyone to build (these have low fleet power but extremely high effectiveness in actual combat), and then make sure your fleet power isn't much more than any local AI. Now just be sufficiently hated.

Chances are two or three of them will gang up on you and declare war. Especially if you declare war on someone yourself (the AI counts the fleets of people you are already at war with in its own decision whether to declare war).

Okay. But no other kind of mechanics to make the AI want to attack you in a fair fight on equal footing. The AI will never attack you if your fleet power and theirs is relatively the same? Because the fact the AI can cheat and see every single fleet strength and make a comparison war based on statistics you don't have easy access to doesn't seem quite right. I would think that Fanatical Purifiers that hate you enough would just dive in and try to purify if they hate you enough alone, even if the fleet strength is relatively the same.

I guess I'm annoyed over the fact the AI never declares war on you, unless it can instantly win straight up in the first 5 minutes, and no variation or accidental miscalculation wars of aggression purely out of spite for you.

[Kaptin Keen]

For me, making an empire a rival, insulting them and building a colony or outpost right on their border has yet to fail. I wonder if having warships close to their borders helps too? I haven't tested that.

Keep in mind though that I'm usually sort of on par with the AI empires =)

[GloatingSwine]

Okay. But no other kind of mechanics to make the AI want to attack you in a fair fight on equal footing. The AI will never attack you if your fleet power and theirs is relatively the same? Because the fact the AI can cheat and see every single fleet strength and make a comparison war based on statistics you don't have easy access to doesn't seem quite right. I would think that Fanatical Purifiers that hate you enough would just dive in and try to purify if they hate you enough alone, even if the fleet strength is relatively the same.

I guess I'm annoyed over the fact the AI never declares war on you, unless it can instantly win straight up in the first 5 minutes, and no variation or accidental miscalculation wars of aggression purely out of spite for you.

It'll try and have an advantage when it attacks, rather than attacking on even terms.

Which is basically the only sensible thing it does.

Fair fights are for chumps.

[Drasius]

That's actually quite amusing.

By the way, any advice on getting other nations to attack you so you are in a defensive war? I've wanted other nations to attack me at certain times when we are on equal footing, so I could counter swing and annex them, but I can't seem to do it unless they have some kind of advantage over me, even with insulting them constantly. So the only strategy I have been able to use to trick them into attacking me is to set up massive amounts of production every where, lower my fleet power bit by bit until they attack, then rapidly amass a huge fleet before they can cause too much damage. But there has got to be a better way into provoking. If there is, playing passive races, especially fanatic passives, would be a lot easier.

It's almost like being pacifist is meant to discourage you from being a warmonger or something...

[Sian]

Something I've had reasonable success with is to start out as FPacifist/Xenophobe and start out with a Strong race ... and then when I'm ready for war I embrace Militarist (possible since I have Strong), and since Pacifist is invalid i become FXenophobe/Militarist and can swap into Purifier from a position of strength, stacking modifiers

[Sian]

Squeeze is real :D



can really only be done as FPacifist/Xenophobe (with Agrarian Idyll and Inward Perfection) as you need early (as in 2203 early) Private Colony Ships ... Settled towards my closest opponent, built a Frontier outpost on his border (by this point having gotten Reach for the Stars is certainly possible), threw down another FO for giggles and managed to sneak my second colony ship on a planet right up his face, so now he only have access to one star system, beyond his homeworld, which doesn't have any planets ...

I'll let them sit and stew in their native reserve, till I get around swapping out of Pacifist :)

[Silverraptor]

It's almost like being pacifist is meant to discourage you from being a warmonger or something...

Yeah, but I mean those games where the RNG puts all the other contestants as militarist and Fanatic Xenophobe that box you in. I want them to get it over with and attack me, not loom over me threatening me while I can't expand any further and I'm unable to get any more allies.

[Drasius]

Yeah, but I mean those games where the RNG puts all the other contestants as militarist and Fanatic Xenophobe that box you in. I want them to get it over with and attack me, not loom over me threatening me while I can't expand any further and I'm unable to get any more allies.

Expand wildly to get them to see you as weak - problem solved?

Or you can't expand because they've boxed you in and there's no way to go anywhere else in the galaxy and they won't talk to you to negotiate for open borders?

[Silverraptor]

Expand wildly to get them to see you as weak - problem solved?

Or you can't expand because they've boxed you in and there's no way to go anywhere else in the galaxy and they won't talk to you to negotiate for open borders?

Yeah, the second one. What do you do in that situation?

[GloatingSwine]

Don't be Fanatic Pacifist?

If you are build a weak looking but actually deadly fleet that can beat them all put together.

[boomwolf]

Weak-looked yet powerful fleets is an abomination of the game not handling some things correctly though, and quite possibly won't work with 1.8 combat rebalance.

Abusing the AI stupidity though, that would ALWAYS work.


See, you need to make sure you have the production ability that would make rabbit blush, and then you gut your own fleets.
The AI, being AI, would assume you are weak now and decide the time is ripe to attack you.

But then YOU ATTACK IT.
But you don't fight, or try to conquer.
You just have tiny fleets (possibly single corvettes) fly around in his space, preferably right next to his homeworld system-and just continuously run around in circles, the AI, being AI would make them out as a threat to his homeworld and chase them with his entire fleet.
And as his fleets are busy chasing your target dummies, you build up your actual fleet that can munch him-and finish him off. (or just steal border systems while your dummies keep his fleets occupied elsewhere)

The AI seems to prioroties things by how close they are to the home system, rather than how much of an actual threat are they,

[GloatingSwine]

Weak-looked yet powerful fleets is an abomination of the game not handling some things correctly though, and quite possibly won't work with 1.8 combat rebalance.

Abusing the AI stupidity though, that would ALWAYS work.

1.8 won't fix it because there are no changes to armour. Unless the AI suddenly starts mounting mass plasma it will still be trivially monstered by allegedly inferior fleets that stack it. (For instance I just won the last war I fought in my current game with ships that were still equipped with tier 1 railguns 70 years into the game, and lost three cruisers in the entire war against three AI nations, because I have 70% armour and almost all their weapons were disruptors for some unholy reason)

1.8 isn't the big combat rebalance, that's still to come. 1.8 is just fixing missiles and shield targeting stupidity.

[boomwolf]

1.8 won't fix it because there are no changes to armour. Unless the AI suddenly starts mounting mass plasma it will still be trivially monstered by allegedly inferior fleets that stack it. (For instance I just won the last war I fought in my current game with ships that were still equipped with tier 1 railguns 70 years into the game, and lost three cruisers in the entire war against three AI nations, because I have 70% armour and almost all their weapons were disruptors for some unholy reason)

1.8 isn't the big combat rebalance, that's still to come. 1.8 is just fixing missiles and shield targeting stupidity.

Missiles, shields, ship and component costs and scaling that make current tier 1 components actually superior to higher tiers and move some components around (flakk turns from medium to PD for example), destroyer AI changes with new stems, and quite possibly more we don't know yet.


Also-the new synthetic dawn options seems interesting. Geth empire, here I come!

[GloatingSwine]

Missiles, shields, ship and component costs and scaling that make current tier 1 components actually superior to higher tiers and move some components around (flakk turns from medium to PD for example), destroyer AI changes with new stems, and quite possibly more we don't know yet.

This isn't the big combat patch though, that's still to come.

Nothing has made me believe that the singleplayer meta of 90% armour or go home will change.

[Corvus]

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but the next story pack/expansion has been announced - Synthetic Dawn.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...verse.1038083/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...pires.1038072/

Basically you can play robots from the start of the game, as a sort of hive mind, with its own traits, civics, story lines etc. There are also new portraits for each of the current species (such as fungoid, avian etc)

They come in three varieties - basically reapers (ie kill all organics) who can actually ally with other synthetics, unlike fanatical purifies, the Borg (ie assimilate all organics) and the Culture. In the last organics are reduced to near useless pops that inhabit the worlds and are cared for by the robots.

[tonberrian]

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but the next story pack/expansion has been announced - Synthetic Dawn.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...verse.1038083/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...pires.1038072/

Basically you can play robots from the start of the game, as a sort of hive mind, with its own traits, civics, story lines etc. There are also new portraits for each of the current species (such as fungoid, avian etc)

They come in three varieties - basically reapers (ie kill all organics) who can actually ally with other synthetics, unlike fanatical purifies, the Borg (ie assimilate all organics) and the Culture. In the last organics are reduced to near useless pops that inhabit the worlds and are cared for by the robots.

They also come in generic - you don't have to pick reaper, borg, or culture on your robots. They're options, but choosing none of them is also valid.

[Silverraptor]

The first option I would more call Skynet then Reapers.

[Silverraptor]

Okay, I need help and advise. Mainly factions. I finished the game of slaving elves, and decided to go a bit more standard and played the militarist/F. Xenophobic wormhole using human faction they give you by default, and I definitely want to play this all the way through. Especially since in my borders at the start is a ruined Dyson Sphere and I want to move towards that achievement this game. I already conquered the people of earth and now all of humanity is unified!

...Except that they're not. I already have 5 factions, and 3 of those are exact opposites to the 2 main factions I normally have. I've suppressed all 3, but there is unrest everywhere and those ethics are still highly attractable. How do I stop these factions and/or make them go away! I've never had factions inhibiting me this much in any previous games. Normally I could suppress and ignore them, but there are too many for me to ignore! (And yes, I've been deploying troops among all my planets effected with unrest. Now I just want people to stop having 10-20% happiness and go back to the normal 65% happiness.)

[factotum]

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but the next story pack/expansion has been announced - Synthetic Dawn.

He may not have linked to it, but GloatingSwine's comment on the last page implied he was talking about it:

"I for one welcome our new Roblorg overlords."

[Sian]

Okay, I need help and advise. Mainly factions. I finished the game of slaving elves, and decided to go a bit more standard and played the militarist/F. Xenophobic wormhole using human faction they give you by default, and I definitely want to play this all the way through. Especially since in my borders at the start is a ruined Dyson Sphere and I want to move towards that achievement this game. I already conquered the people of earth and now all of humanity is unified!

...Except that they're not. I already have 5 factions, and 3 of those are exact opposites to the 2 main factions I normally have. I've suppressed all 3, but there is unrest everywhere and those ethics are still highly attractable. How do I stop these factions and/or make them go away! I've never had factions inhibiting me this much in any previous games. Normally I could suppress and ignore them, but there are too many for me to ignore! (And yes, I've been deploying troops among all my planets effected with unrest. Now I just want people to stop having 10-20% happiness and go back to the normal 65% happiness.)

Which factions are they? ... Ideally you should be able to only have 3 active factions given that setup ... Xenophobic, Militarist and Pacifist (you can't really avoid Pacifist unless you avoid being in peace for 20+years (which means that if nothing else it'll usually spawn in 222x), and even then they might spawn fast if you don't have any hostile/domineering/rivaled neighbours) ... the common unwanted factions are:
Xenophile, which is spawned by being in a Defensive pact/Federation/Migration pact with anyone, or nonenslaved/purged xenos
Egalitarianism spawns from either being in a Defensive pact with an Egalitarian, having your race on Social Welfare or being Democratic
Authoritarianism is a distant third by being Imperial or having Slaves
Materialist is also worthy of note since it spawns if you have any robots or have one of the Natural Research traits (or be in a research agreement with a materialist)

[GloatingSwine]

Which factions are they? ... Ideally you should be able to only have 3 active factions given that setup ... Xenophobic, Militarist and Pacifist (you can't really avoid Pacifist unless you avoid being in peace for 20+years (which means that if nothing else it'll usually spawn in 222x), and even then they might spawn fast if you don't have any hostile/domineering/rivaled neighbours)

He'll have gotten the others through conquest. Conquering differently aligned empires will mean you have enough pops to spawn those factions.

If you expand enough you just have to deal with the fact that you'll have unhappy factions.

It's better to look at your policies to see if there's anything you can do that will make them a bit happier rather than trying to suppress all unwanted factions, which will just drain your influence and not even really make the faction go away because ethic shift takes ages.

Pacifist attraction is getting nerfed next patch so that it takes 50 years before the attraction starts building (because nobody has enough forces to overcome a spaceport in the first 20 years so the only way to do war is to cheese it attacking new colonies so everyone gets pacifists)

[Sian]

He'll have gotten the others through conquest. Conquering differently aligned empires will mean you have enough pops to spawn those factions.

Purge them all, even if its 'only' displacement, they'll be unable to influence your factions, and it is a strategy thats well aligned with FXenophobe

[boomwolf]

Well, spreading your empire too thin could cause ethic divergence to crop up, and eventually lead to people running into other factions, even if you don't have any xenos around.

Its pretty hard to expand without having idiot factions pop up and ruin your day. adn unlike the days of pop-specific purges, you can't just kill political annoyances.

[GloatingSwine]

Purge them all, even if its 'only' displacement, they'll be unable to influence your factions, and it is a strategy thats well aligned with FXenophobe

Doesn't work if they're the same species. (IIRC if the Commonwealth of Man are in your game, the United Nations of Earth will be as well and that's who he's conquered).

So chances are he's picked up the Xenoist and Progressive factions, which are hard to keep happy if you're a Xenophobe and play like one.

My guess is that OP has the Militarist and Supremacist factions as his main ones, the Economic one from long peace, and the Progressive and Xenoist from conquering the UNE.

Now, the Progressives and Xenoists are going to be unhappy if you play like a proper Militarist Xenophobe because you'll be either purging or enslaving filthy aliens and they hate that. Boosting the attraction of other factions will help reduce their numbers over time, suppressing them may speed the process up, but they're gonna be grumpy.

The Economic faction, however, although they really like peace they tend to get over wars pretty quickly and aggressive expansion makes you rich which they do like, so don't suppress them and save the influence. Genemod some strong pops to boost militarist attraction.

[GungHo]

In the last organics are reduced to near useless pops that inhabit the worlds and are cared for by the robots.

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" - WALL-E

[Silverraptor]

Doesn't work if they're the same species. (IIRC if the Commonwealth of Man are in your game, the United Nations of Earth will be as well and that's who he's conquered).

So chances are he's picked up the Xenoist and Progressive factions, which are hard to keep happy if you're a Xenophobe and play like one.

My guess is that OP has the Militarist and Supremacist factions as his main ones, the Economic one from long peace, and the Progressive and Xenoist from conquering the UNE.

Now, the Progressives and Xenoists are going to be unhappy if you play like a proper Militarist Xenophobe because you'll be either purging or enslaving filthy aliens and they hate that. Boosting the attraction of other factions will help reduce their numbers over time, suppressing them may speed the process up, but they're gonna be grumpy.

The Economic faction, however, although they really like peace they tend to get over wars pretty quickly and aggressive expansion makes you rich which they do like, so don't suppress them and save the influence. Genemod some strong pops to boost militarist attraction.

Wow. You have predicted my exact scenario and which factions popped up perfectly!

Okay, so stop suppressing the economic faction. I wasn't suppressing it for the longest time, but something like 6 years had passed since the war with the UNE and they were still 35% happy. Didn't know what to do with them. How do I boost the attraction to other factions? I promoted my xenophobic faction. Couldn't Promote my militarist faction because I'm not F. Militarist. And just to be clear, when you mean genemod some strong pops, you're talking about adding the trait "Strong" to some of the human race, is that right?

Also, I normally don't start wars until I have cruisers, so trying to attack the UNE with destroyers was really different. I could only get a max fleet strength of about 1.4k and was pushing my credits to the limit with the small pool I had. Even my food had trespassed into negative income and I had to ignore it to spend my resources on the war. And I couldn't attack the UNE directly. I had to attack the stations that bypassed where their fleets were stationed at. And then when both our fleets collided twice, both our fleets were nearly destroyed before they retreated with a couple corvettes left and me 1 destroyer that was almost dead. It was a really intense fight until the end. I managed to lure the fleet away by feinting sending troop transports to the other world they had before turning off at the last second and avoid my transports being caught by their fleet (And wormholes really pay off when you can jump 2-3 star systems farther then the warp ships in the blink of an eye!) and then sending my main fleet to take out their main station on earth. Then my fleet and their's collided with one massive showdown and it was a non-contest that their entire fleet was destroyed and they surrendered. I will have to say, the first battle didn't go so well because I "metagamed" the UNE. KNowing they started with missiles, I was thinking "Hur-Dur! They have to have missiles, because that's what they start with. So let me research Point defense, have 6 destroyers with 3 point defense on them each, and then go charge into them. Hur-Dur!" And they ended up having Blue lasers while I still have only red ones and my destroyers having a fraction of the firepower they normally would have. Thank god plasma weapons was an option on my very next physics research! Because that even the tide. That and redesigning all my ships, mainly my destroyers to M/S/S and S/S weapon slots during the first battle.

[GloatingSwine]

Wow. You have predicted my exact scenario and which factions popped up perfectly!

I have played nearly 900 hours of Stellaris. (at least according to Steam, some of that will be it on whilst I go for a shower or to the shops or whatever)....

Okay, so stop suppressing the economic faction. I wasn't suppressing it for the longest time, but something like 6 years had passed since the war with the UNE and they were still 35% happy. Didn't know what to do with them. How do I boost the attraction to other factions? I promoted my xenophobic faction. Couldn't Promote my militarist faction because I'm not F. Militarist. And just to be clear, when you mean genemod some strong pops, you're talking about adding the trait "Strong" to some of the human race, is that right?

Or grab some aliens, enslave them and mod them to be strong (coincidentally solving all your mineral problems forever and letting you build cheap effective slave armies). Having Strong pops somewhere in your empire increases the attraction for Militarist. Make 'em ugly too, that increases Xenophobia so those bleeding heart UNE libruls will learn the truth about xenos sooner. Since you're Xenophobe you want to keep your primary race all the same, so if you mod humans mod all the humans the same (the Supremacist faction won't like subspecies).

(Admittedly it sounds like you're pretty early game so this is going to be a later game option)

The Economic faction will get happiness from owning strategic resources, Prosperity traditions (which are great anyway) and having more than 3000 energy in the bank. They also get stacking happiness the longer you're at peace. They get over the "being at war" malus pretty quickly when you win, so keep your wars short and brutal, get rich, and all the time in between wars they'll be sitting on ~60%.

They'll get super grumpy during wars, but they get over it.

Also, I normally don't start wars until I have cruisers, so trying to attack the UNE with destroyers was really different.

I never build destroyers. In principle you could use them to siege down spaceports but I just build moar corvettes given that you can have three corvettes per destroyer and a destroyer's only worth about one and a half corvettes, until 1.8 just hold your nose and join the naked corvette master race until cruisers, then switch to all armour cruisers.

[Silverraptor]

I have played nearly 900 hours of Stellaris. (at least according to Steam, some of that will be it on whilst I go for a shower or to the shops or whatever)....



Or grab some aliens, enslave them and mod them to be strong (coincidentally solving all your mineral problems forever and letting you build cheap effective slave armies). Having Strong pops somewhere in your empire increases the attraction for Militarist. Make 'em ugly too, that increases Xenophobia so those bleeding heart UNE libruls will learn the truth about xenos sooner. Since you're Xenophobe you want to keep your primary race all the same, so if you mod humans mod all the humans the same (the Supremacist faction won't like subspecies).

(Admittedly it sounds like you're pretty early game so this is going to be a later game option)

The Economic faction will get happiness from owning strategic resources, Prosperity traditions (which are great anyway) and having more than 3000 energy in the bank. They also get stacking happiness the longer you're at peace. They get over the "being at war" malus pretty quickly when you win, so keep your wars short and brutal, get rich, and all the time in between wars they'll be sitting on ~60%.

They'll get super grumpy during wars, but they get over it.



I never build destroyers. In principle you could use them to siege down spaceports but I just build moar corvettes given that you can have three corvettes per destroyer and a destroyer's only worth about one and a half corvettes, until 1.8 just hold your nose and join the naked corvette master race until cruisers, then switch to all armour cruisers.

Okay. Mod all humans strong. I can do that. Was planning to get around to that eventually. (Don't remember what the traits of humans were before they became adaptable/Nomadic/wasteful). I already have a number of strategic resources. I even have the strategic resource that boosts energy weapons. I imagine that worked well in the battle with the UNE. And the economic faction was pissed for like 6 years! How quick is quick for them getting over the war?!

[Kaptin Keen]

So ... Mr. GloatingSwine,

You seem to have strong opinions on ship design. Well reasoned ones, too. If I were to try to summarize those opinions from what I remember, I'd say:

- Build cruisers
- With much armor
- And weapons (and it doesn't matter too much which ones - except not missiles)

Would that be borderline correct?

(anyone else with designs on proper ship design are welcome to chip in too, of course)