Ketzerei's Whateverly(tm) Ethos Playthrough #1

[Adrik Thorsen]

Let me start by saying that the only playthrough I've ever finished was my Independent/Militarist/Spiritualist Theocratic Republic. It was ridiculously easy to blob myself a Conquest Victory in 250 years. So here we are, I'll be starting a new Ethos playthrough every 'whatever' and posting a sort of journal here.

I will also try to pick my government and traits to fit what I think matches the 'lore' of my chosen ethos the best, instead of going with what my natural preference is(I generally prefer to have enduring+quick learners and a theocratic government) this is helped somewhat by the game locking out government choices based on ethos, but the traits help to explain things as well.

My Victory Playthrough Empire was this:

First up: The XiFI confederacy! Err, I mean the Avarrian Confederacy - who happen to be (X)enoph(i)le and (F)anataic (I)ndividualist.

XiFI Empire:

Now Indirect Democracy was the only government type available for this ethos choice, and the talented trait to me fits FIs the best(and happily synergizes quite well with the Indirect Democracy Government type as well).

Game Settings are:
600 Stars/Elliptical
23 AI/0 Advanced/4 FE
Ironman
All Others Default

I'll get back here and post random screenshots of the empire's wellbeing and a blurb update every so often!

EDIT: Decided to add a little acronym key here for reference, although it's pretty self-explanatory imo.

Ethos:
F: (F)anatic - always directly preceding the trait it refers to,
C: (C)ollectivist // I: (I)ndividualist
Xi: (X)enoph(i)le // Xo: (X)enoph(o)be
Mi: (Mi)litarist // P: (Pacifist)
Ma: (Materialist) // S: (S)piritualist

Resources:
#+ whatever below:
e(nergy), (m)ineral, (p)hysics, (s)ociety, (eng)ineering

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

As mentioned before my only finished playthrough was an IMiS empire, but my normal built is a CMiS or CMiMa, so I'm used to a fairly vigorous military campaign from day 1 playstyle. This build is not that type of build.

Early lessons learned(first 30 years):
A Xenophile without Militarist might just as well have been a Pacifist.
A Xenophile is primarily a diplomat.
For some reason the AI won't fight each other if you get them to assist with a wardec, 20 years of war and not one battle the entire time. I eventually white peaced it, will try again later.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

My usual militarist method of diplomacy during the 'Balkan Simulator' mid/mid-late game is "hit them with a huge stick, occupy all of their worlds, and those of all their allies, until I get to 100 warscore and force them to accede to my demand that they liberate that one planet" - which works, but it is extremely crude and brute force - if there's a way to refine my diplomacy game, I think it's gonna be found in this XiFI empire playthrough.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

Here you can see the political map around 2238, I've only discovered perhaps 20% of the galaxy at this point. I also lost a huge fleet going toe to toe with the tzynn in my earlier war, and am currently rebuilding for the current war in which I've sat back and let my neighbouring XiFS ally do all the fighting, while all I've done is land two troops on the tzynn colony and keep them there for occupation.

Continuing onwards for a while!

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

Of course the process of rebuilding my fleet meant that I'd neglected my colonies for too long, so in 2239 I went ahead and let the tzynn have peace in exchange for liberating their colony. But this apparently didn't work as planned since he still thinks I'm too weaksauce to accept a vassalization demand, and to boot they allowed their direct neighbor(my XiFS ally) to vassalize them even with me having the liberator bonus. Apparently having a bordering frontier outpost doesn't negate the distance negative modifier anymore. I took this screenshot right before the vassalization notice popped up saying my neighbour had scooped him up:

So I'm off to a swimming start getting beat down by the AI.... And I decide to ask to become their vassals.....

Oh Yes, my homeworld and 2 of my 3 colonies have more of his population than of mine due to rapid breeders on his part and a migration treaty on mine - which is nice for having all my tiles filled, but since Im Xi I have to enable xeno leadership to keep my pops happy, especially without spiritualist to help out with hapiness. Can we just call this one an early loss take our licks and get out of here?

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

Obviously I'm not matching my playstyle to the ethos properly, also having a XiFS neighbour, and seeing how powerful that combination is, I'm going to have to try some gambles out, see if they work the way I think they will....

Now that the Tzynn were weakened by the loss of their colony, which will soon be integrated by the Ymorz just like the primitives nearby that happened to gain spaceflight in 2210. I decided to make peace with them. I ended my rivalry with them, and offered them a research treaty on my end only to get a better opinion from them, hopefully they can put up enough of a fight to beat the ymorz back in our next war, which I will declare specifically to try and lose so that I can offer a partial surrender and hopefully break some ymorz territories off to the tzynn to slow their expansion down, if not perhaps the colony i'm putting next door the tzynn home system will get me close enough to vassalize him after the next war.

I can see now that this ethos would require a less agressive start to be successful - without proper preperation and placement its easy to make yourself lose. For example if I had colonized near the tzynn before making peace, I would've vassalized their liberated planet - I hadn't realized how much of a difference it would make to have a low fleet strength score combined with distance.from my other playthroughs. Live and learn eh? I'll tell you now that Militarist ethos fits my preferred playstyle more.

So I start building a colony ship and just focus on improving my existing turf: building all the available stations within my borders, surveying nearby clusters for new FO spots, upgrading all my buildings, building crap on the tiles full of these Ymorz immigrants - there's so many of them!!!

This time I minimize the chances I'm taking in my gambit - I put a frontier outpost up in the system I'm planning to colonize near the tzynn until I can get my colony established there. As luck would have it, the riggan commerce exchange is immediately adjacent to this system, and i get the +100 opinion modifer off the bat. So I trad ethem all of my energy credits and blow the whole wad of minerals on mass queing all available upgrades on all of my planets. And settle in to wait and see....

Then I settle in to solidify my holdings. I establish my colony, then build a line of frontier outposts to block the ymorz and the nearby Avabbiians(the XiFMi empire that i tried the first tzynn war with) from expanding. I'm near the galactic edge as it is so I need to block them before they can block me in, the way I see it is I'll be settling in for a long slow slog game soon - building frontier outpost chains to extend out and find habitable worlds to colonize then using my size to block other empires in until they are so small that they become my vassals without even needing a war. And since the tzynn still haven't backed off their rivalry with me, I went ahead and re-declared rivalry with them.

My planets grow faster than I keep up with, even trading all my energy in for minerals with the Ryggans, as soon as I establish a new olony I get so many Ymorz immigrants that almost every open tile is full within a few months. I'm actually starting to enjoy having them around, as they help me get my infrastructure built rather quickly with my planets filling up so fast.

By 2250 the Maginot Line is complete, I can declare war on the tzynn again, but I decide to wait and build up my forces first. I continue to upgrade infrastructure, ending up with Planetary Capitals on every colony and level 2 resource buildings as well, and I'm starting to queue level 3 building upgrades between shipyard upgrades.

Screenshot of the Political Map 2257: You can see my Maginot Line extending northward and blocking the Tzynn in, I also have a single colony on the other side of the Ymorz - mouse hovered over it.

Of course i took my time and got everything 'perfect' for the next war, I sectored two of my planets so I only had to micromanage my homeworld and 2 colonies, I maxxed out my infrastructure, and I built and upgraded to my full fleet strength. As a result, I wasn't ready for war for quite some time....

And then this crazy glitch(?) occured, and I received communications(and 40 influence each) from 15 different species from around the galaxy on 2258.01.27..... Before I realized it was because I'd joined the local federation - which promptly accepted my wargoal to liberate the tzynn homeworld, so I started building troops right away, figuring I could let my alliance take care of the Tzynn defenses for me. Which went rather well, with my fleet arriving jsut in time to be backup for the main battle against the Tzynn's defenses: a 1.6k starbase and a 1.9k fleet with my alliance fleet at 3.8k and my own at 2090. Letting my alliance take the brunt turned out to be a brilliant play as they lost most of their fleet(emergency jumping with only one ship left) while I retained msot of my fleet and carried through for the victory over the tzynn forces and the invasion of their homeworld to follow.

Of course, even after the Liberation they still wouldn't become my vassals, so I had to take some time and try to build up a bigger fleet to intimidate them more..... which worked out fine, as he requested vassalization in 2262.

And that's it for now, I may save this and continue on later, or I may save it and start another playthrough with a 'non-optimal' ethos and run 2-3 of them switching back and forth, stay tuned for my next whateverly(tm) update!

 

[Blackplant]

I think you're in the wrong place here. Look for the AAFs (After Action Reports). This is where you post this stuff. Otherwise, good job.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

I think you're in the wrong place here. Look for the AAFs (After Action Reports). This is where you post this stuff. Otherwise, good job.

Ah, good point, hopefully a mod can move this over at some point, and I'll make my next ones there. That said...

In 2262 I got my alliance to declare another war, and quickly learned(after the loss of an entire fleet) to keep my fleet size maxxed out, let my alliance forces do the brunt of the fighting, and only move in for a quick surgical strike bombardment and planetary invasion before retreating to my nearby rally point and letting my federation allies keep the enemy busy while I regrouped. It took until 2275 to win the war and liberate two planets, which wouldn't vassalize themselves - next time we'll try to liberate a single planet to turn into a vassal. I also learned that inviting them to one's federation to increase their trust makes them unvassalizable - a lesson learned. I should probably note that this is the first time I've used a federation to achieve my goals in a playthrough - it's.... different.

I was also forced to start dismantling my maginot line, as I was starting to run in the negative on influence, and it hurt rather badly when I started integrating the tzynn at 5 influence per month, but I started replacing the frontier outposts with new colonies once the tzynn were integrated and dry climate worlds opened up for me to colonize. I then convinced my alliance to go to war with the ymorz in order to liberate their tzynn vassal before he was integrated, as well as the primitives which they had annexxed earlier on, occupying the tzynn vassal's world, i just ahd to park my fleet at home and wait for the warscore to tick up as my federation allies went on a rampage through the ymorz systems. Also, I was fortuante enough to be federation president, so I used the 2k federation fleet to strike at wormhole and mining stations throught the ymorz territories. Unfortunately the +1 warscore per month of occupation seems to be broken, as 2 years of occupation didn't garner me a single extra point of warscore.

It took some time, with a lot of back and forth, but my alliance had 6 members, 5 of which were sizable empires, and we never went into a negative warscore, after a final push for victory on the part of my alliance brethren and a full rebuild of my fleet(which I had sacrificed in order to chop down the Ymorz main fleet for 5.8k to 1.1k while my allies ran away from the battle with a 3.8k fleet :/ ), but we finally won the war and were able to force demand the liberation of the tzynn who immediately asked to become my vassals.

During the war I continued my colonization efforts(of note: the private colony ship research option still hasn't shown up for me, I'm not sure if its ultra-rare, or if they've removed it with 1.4) and added many new colonies to my sectors from the tzynn homeworld.

2285 was the end of the war, and I immediately embroiled my alliance in another liberation war, this time I plan to sit back and rebuild my forces while they fight.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

The immediate future seems to be more repeat of this: I use my alliance to liberate chunks of nearby empires - small pieces of my northern neighbors for expansion, larger pieces of the Avabbian and Ymorz to solidify my hold on the interior of my empire. I moved my capitol to the tzynn homeworld, and sectored my homeworld both to ethically integrate the tzynn more quickly and because they make better troops than my Avarrians.

Vassalization seems harder than it was for my IMiS empire, many of the newly liberated worlds seem to hover at the negative mid-20s and never progress beyond that point, even the obviously overwhelmed single planet liberated empires. Warfare is more of a simple matter of pushing my alliance to liberate somebody I want to take over, and letting them do the grunt work while maintaining a large fleet that I use for intimidation purposes during diplomacy, mainly what I do during wars is hit frontier outposts and establish my own in their place.

A few notes: association status granted to a newly liberated empire appears to make vassalization impossible and the AI will only fight in systems targeted for liberation - so when you want a particular planet from an empire set wargoals far away from it clustered together and solo the one planet then force demand the single planet you wanted while the ai gets warscore and keeps the enemy busy in the cluster of systems further away.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

So this happened, not sure how or why:

No mods enabled, was playing in 1.4 from the beginning of this Whateverly. Resstarted the client, revalidated files through steam - nothing. So that's Whateverly #1 - stay tuned for Whateverly #2 in AAR!