Cat Empire Conquers The Insane Galaxy

[EvcRo]

Cat Empire is taking over the galaxy

- only hyperlane travel
- 1000 systems
- 9 AI , all on advanced start AI
- insane AI difficulty

Meet the kittens :

For this game i took +10% hab instead of +10% sci output (previous game), i don't know if it's good or bad, will see.

 

[EvcRo]

Game Settings

now i will try some starts until i get one with good starting position.

 

[EvcRo]

Few tries and a promising game appears. It's settled now, full purr ahead!

2 years built nothing to have the 1st colony ship fast.

I split the fleet to cover as much exploration as possible to see where are the good prospect planets.

On the bad side my researchers are bad, only 1 genius and bad expertise fields. research speeds 2% - 12% - 2%. pretty awful.

On the good side my ruler, Catte Supreme, has +10% happy trait and -10% ship build cost trait. pretty awesome i may say.

 

[EvcRo]

Well 1.1.0 hit and decided to restart to a new game with some additional settings (bold - added)

- only hyperlane travel
- 1000 systems
- 9 AI , all on advanced start AI
- insane AI difficulty
- modified planet core cap , i will micro manage all planets. the reason for this is because all AI's start with ridiculous stuff like 3 planets (instead of 1) , 22-24 pop (instead of 8 or how much it is) and on top of that they have +100% bonus to everything. basically each AI outproduces me 6-8x times at start.

This call for a change in government , instead of + 1 planet core and +10% ethic divergence i will take +5% mineral and energy production.

So new race set, now trying some starts to get a good one.

 

[EvcRo]

I dropped government with +1 core planets (as i will play with default core planets = 900) took +5% minerals and energy.

I don't play with migration so sedentary it's ok. Also no slavery.

Tried several starts till i got one with good minerals. No restarts from now on.

 

[EvcRo]

Despite 9 AI's and 1000 stars i encounter first AI at 5 jumps distance .... lucky me they are xenophile and federation builders so i guess i'm safe first 50 years with them near by.

I heard about a mod that spreads starting positions instead of clustering them but i'm bored of restarts.

 

[EvcRo]

Few months later found a fallen empire that seems friendly. I still have only 1 path for expanding but i have to rush an outpost to block the path to an arm so my xenophile neighbor doesn't expand to the right bellow me (where i am) but to the left.

 

[EvcRo]

First science discovered : the 1st stept to robots. Without slavery and migration robots are very important to me.

 

[EvcRo]

Saldar system is the location where i will put the outpost so AI doesn't expand in the cluster south of me. I kinda don't like this position, only 1 narrow path to grow.

 

[EvcRo]

Researched colony ships, outpost is in place, time to spam colony ships. My research will be in shambles but that's they way it is, can't beat them (while AI anyway has tech superiority) without outnumbering them.

 

[EvcRo]

On the bright side my neighbors are not xenophobes and other ugly traits.

 

[EvcRo]

3rd research was upgrades to mineral mines. Till now i got good first starting techs with 1 exception , didn't had anything decent to research in 1st field so i discovered +15% survey speed.

As a general rule , at begining it is for me:
1. upgrades to buildings
2. stuff that grows your mineral production
3. other stuff.

For example i took this game forward because my ruler is: +10% minerals and +10% happy people. IMO you can't get a better ruler for a starting game phase (later for example -20% fleet upkeep is godly). So i rather pick this game instead of one with slightly better planets near by but a worse ruler. I can go for good planets a further away.

 

[EvcRo]

Administrative AI is always a good pick, i always take it as soon it appears.

 

[EvcRo]

This pirate event is extremely annoying , always at the same date every game.

Now i have to build some ships.

 

[EvcRo]

AI Advanced Start is so lolz

I built 4 ships to kill the pirates. But they didn't went for my capitol. When i catched them guess what ... my AI friend has 660 fleet strength and is killing them.

Now imagine this AI at 5 jumps from me is not xenophile but xenophobe, declares me rival and walks all over me. What can i do ? nothing.

Seriously Paradox i don't think this is intelligent game design.

Anyway, i wasted minerals on 4 corvettes, almost a colony ship thrown down the drain.

 

[EvcRo]

Year 2210 : slowly expanding

 

[EvcRo]

A nice surprise The quest targets were close

 

[CatKnight]

Um...if it bothers you that the AI has an advantage over you at game start, then maybe you shouldn't play with AI Advanced Start and Insane difficulty?

 

[EvcRo]

Um...if it bothers you that the AI has an advantage over you at game start, then maybe you shouldn't play with AI Advanced Start and Insane difficulty?

it doesn't bother me

what it bothers is no option choice, in certain situation you simply lose no matter your choices. it's like when starting a game, after galaxy creation, 50% of the time a pop up shows : "You Lost". same thing.