Rise and fall of the Imperium of Nova Terra, a story of war, triumph, decadence and collapse - a Stellaris AAR

[Falhxer]

This chapter was shorter than my usual ones. I decided to focus on one border and then another and I shall dedicate an entire chapter to each part of the war instead of splitting it around. The reason is to avoid confusion. The next chapter will focus on the Azanti until the end of the conflict and the successive chapters will focus on the League.

Also many thanks again to MichaelMakesGames for creating that amazing map maker tool. It really helps speeding up the whole process.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...mizable-maps-for-your-stellaris-aars.1600042/

 

[Macavity116]

I love that mapmaker tool. The way you've used is here is very effective. Makes it very easy to follow along with the action, and breaking up the war into parts across multiple chapters is definitely a good call.

 

[HistoryDude]

Demanding territory is a reasonable request now? Would any of these neighboring powers have been willing to give up their territory in exchange for peace?

Who were these Velutarians? Did humanity have a space empire that they don't remember or something?

I'm sure that giving the military total control over the state won't come back to bite the Imperium at all...

 

[Falhxer]

Demanding territory is a reasonable request now? Would any of these neighboring powers have been willing to give up their territory in exchange for peace?

Who were these Velutarians? Did humanity have a space empire that they don't remember or something?

I'm sure that giving the military total control over the state won't come back to bite the Imperium at all...

As long as the enemy is weaker than you... you can call them savages and demand systems in exchange for peace, like the good generous invading force you are. The League will be a torn in the Imperium's side for a very long time... (When I was writting the next chapter, I was left astonished by how much of a baboon I was. I played like a bumbling fool. I don't remember if I did it for rp reasons or I was tired or drunk or god knows what else. I made some pretty terrible choices and those choices let to ugly borders. So I decided to replay from the earliest date after the last chapter and see if I can play properly. I had a test run in another game where I was left with one system after losing war after war after but in the end thanks to spy networks, diplomacy and some intense micro, I managed to become a feared superpower. I learned a thing or two in the process. Needless to say... yes, I managed to drag the war waaaay longer than it was worth it. Casualties on both sides or any sides, were getting out of control. I won't spoiler much, but I think, I created two monsters. All I can say is that I had a massive strategic defeat and a pyrrhic victory and that's putting nicely. To my own surprise, I did not manage to defeat both my enemies, in the end as in the previous run, I had to lose a war in order to win another one and... it wasn't worth it, no matter how you look at it. I lost in both cases.
At the same time I dropped a lot of hints about the UNE invading me and they will invade me, that's the only thing in the AAR that simply cannot be avoided it will simply happen a bit later, despite of my very early hints. And honestly, seeing how much more powerful my enemies have become, I wonder if I can end those wars before the UNE comes and then... then another era in the existence of the Imperium will come and those will be dark times with a lot of dead pops and endless war once things spiral down for a lot of states and not just the Imperium.
This AAR so far is war, war and nothing else but war. I wonder, will the Imperium ever experience a golden age, maybe a half century of peace instead of war... One war lasted more than a half century. The next chapters will be purely war focused. Peace... is something I can only dream of...

As for the Velutarians, well, it's a mystery, nobody knows why Humans, Khell'Zen and Velutarians are alike... truly a mistery. To make things even more hilarious, take a look at this map, notice a silly pattern?

We have the holy trinity: humans, dwarfs and elves and then cyclops as a FE (the Imperium still doesn't know they exist), also space demons too. All in the same region of the space sector, what a silly coincidence. (Lore intesifies.)
For some weird reason, the Humans of CoM (now long dead) are seen as same species as the humans inside the Imperium, while the humans in UNE are seen as another species. (I might want to do some console command and merge them or maybe just replace them all, have to see. It doesn't make sense for them to be another species.)

Well, the God-Emperor did a great mistake, same as the Belmacosa emperor, fortunately they both changed their mind later, wink wink, after a few defeats. So the military dictatorship was ended, for time being of course, you never know when it might return again.

edit: change decade to century, the war was more than 50 years not 5.

 

[Falhxer]

small announcement:
For the upcoming chapters I will have to refrain myself from describing every single battle and engagement my fleets and ally's fleets had against hostile fleets. Having to describe something like the action of more or less ten fleets (twenty or more if we add the ally) that became even more as the war progressed during a period of 50+ years can be a bit... too much even for me. I will condense them in periods over a few maps. It will keep my sanity intact. On a more positive side, I had a lot of good lore ideas, so should things go very wrong for the Imperium, exciting things are to come. And if not, that would be even more surprising honestly. I'm also working on the visuals of the AAR so it will take a bit longer for the next chapters to come. I plan to extend my AAR beyond this forum but that's a topic for another time.
Thank you all for your patience.

 

[MichaelMakesGames]

Also many thanks again to @MichaelMakesGames for creating that amazing map maker tool. It really helps speeding up the whole process.

I'm a few months late; for some reason I just saw this. I love how you've used StellarMaps for a minimalist base layer, then added your own annotations on top of it. It really clean and readable -- great work!

Just curious, are you using PNG or SVG exports? Also, don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything I could add to improve your workflow

 

[Falhxer]

I'm a few months late; for some reason I just saw this. I love how you've used StellarMaps for a minimalist base layer, then added your own annotations on top of it. It really clean and readable -- great work!

Just curious, are you using PNG or SVG exports? Also, don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything I could add to improve your workflow

Thanks, making maps is quite challenging, at least for me. Sometimes they feel too empty, sometimes can feel too full, balance is a difficult thing to achieve.
I use the png format, I upload them on an image host website, not sure they support svg.

 

[Falhxer]

Small update:

tldr: soon* new chapter with pretty images.

The new chapter is coming soon*, technically it has been written out for a while now. After I wrote it, I encountered a few problems with how I set up my playthrough. I had to replay a couple of scenarios until I got the one that resembled the closest ideal situation I wanted to achieve. For starters I had to re-enable status quo, unfortunately the AI doesn't really know when to quit wars and fighting an AI on grand admiral that's super aggressive it's less than ideal. When I was fighting the Khell'Zen League, spoiler alert but not that much of a spoiler in the end, the third war, it was like fighting the Soviet Union. The longer I was fighting, the worse it got. I started with a ratio of 2 to 1, then to end up with a ratio of 3 to 1, after all my defences has been breached, still not defeated, I had to give up out of desperation after the Azanti Regime, declared in turn their own war. You can only imagine the pain of fighting for almost a century to preserve my empire with an AI with basically infinite resources and the aggressiveness of the Starnet mod, if not even more aggressive (while starnet focuses too on the economy, mine just on how reactive and aggressive the AI and only a couple of tweaks to the economy to make the planets harder to take and force the AI to build stuff to help it grow faster).

That was one problem, the endless wars, the AI just didn't knew where to quit. The new status quo will maintain the negative modifiers, before it fires, my mod adds and it will last ten years instead of the vanilla two. Otherwise I simply cannot hold on against such insane enemies. The game is already hard as it is now with their insane fleets and indutrial powerhouses and if the AI can wage war indefinetly then it's a bit too much for me too, no matter what tacticts or strategies I use to keep them at bay.

Since I already opened the mod files, I decided to outright reduce the upkeep of the ships by a flat -50% and with a couple tech some -5% along the way. However the most important change was to reduce in half the cost of the defence platforms and the double their build speed. It's a double edged sword and let me explain why. On one hand I can create my own maginot lines and hold against the AI. But the AI is playing on grand admiral... and now you get it? With half reduced upkeep and cost, well, the AI then fortifies as well and a lot. It both harms and helps me and I think that's a fair change. In my opinion, the AI benefits the most from it since now it tends to really create fortified systems and taking them can lead to heavy losses. In fact such cases happened (not on my side, yet, but that of my ally) and I will write about in the future chapters.

Then the third reason why I'm still holding myself from posting the chapter since it's already on paper, or in this case on open office. It's because I'm holding on for the weights release of the new stable diffusion 3 and I want to see what can I make with it. I wanted to use AI generated images since the first chapters. It proved to be much more difficult than I imagined to generate proper images. I decided to put on hold for quite a while to let both the technology itself to improbe and yield better results and, to learn myself how to use it properly, as it is often said, practice makes perfection. While I'm still far away from perfection I'm more or less reaching satisfactory results and a bit more of waiting for the new models won't hurt, in fact, I might get the results I exactly wanted.


*= disclaimer, the word soon it's strictly subjective, viewer discretion is advised, thank you in advance.

 

[Falhxer]

Small update:

tldr: soon* new chapter with pretty images.

The new chapter is coming soon*, technically it has been written out for a while now. After I wrote it, I encountered a few problems with how I set up my playthrough. I had to replay a couple of scenarios until I got the one that resembled the closest ideal situation I wanted to achieve. For starters I had to re-enable status quo, unfortunately the AI doesn't really know when to quit wars and fighting an AI on grand admiral that's super aggressive it's less than ideal. When I was fighting the Khell'Zen League, spoiler alert but not that much of a spoiler in the end, the third war, it was like fighting the Soviet Union. The longer I was fighting, the worse it got. I started with a ratio of 2 to 1, then to end up with a ratio of 3 to 1, after all my defences has been breached, still not defeated, I had to give up out of desperation after the Azanti Regime, declared in turn their own war. You can only imagine the pain of fighting for almost a century to preserve my empire with an AI with basically infinite resources and the aggressiveness of the Starnet mod, if not even more aggressive (while starnet focuses too on the economy, mine just on how reactive and aggressive the AI and only a couple of tweaks to the economy to make the planets harder to take and force the AI to build stuff to help it grow faster).

That was one problem, the endless wars, the AI just didn't knew where to quit. The new status quo will maintain the negative modifiers, before it fires, my mod adds and it will last ten years instead of the vanilla two. Otherwise I simply cannot hold on against such insane enemies. The game is already hard as it is now with their insane fleets and indutrial powerhouses and if the AI can wage war indefinetly then it's a bit too much for me too, no matter what tacticts or strategies I use to keep them at bay.

Since I already opened the mod files, I decided to outright reduce the upkeep of the ships by a flat -50% and with a couple tech some -5% along the way. However the most important change was to reduce in half the cost of the defence platforms and the double their build speed. It's a double edged sword and let me explain why. On one hand I can create my own maginot lines and hold against the AI. But the AI is playing on grand admiral... and now you get it? With half reduced upkeep and cost, well, the AI then fortifies as well and a lot. It both harms and helps me and I think that's a fair change. In my opinion, the AI benefits the most from it since now it tends to really create fortified systems and taking them can lead to heavy losses. In fact such cases happened (not on my side, yet, but that of my ally) and I will write about in the future chapters.

Then the third reason why I'm still holding myself from posting the chapter since it's already on paper, or in this case on open office. It's because I'm holding on for the weights release of the new stable diffusion 3 and I want to see what can I make with it. I wanted to use AI generated images since the first chapters. It proved to be much more difficult than I imagined to generate proper images. I decided to put on hold for quite a while to let both the technology itself to improbe and yield better results and, to learn myself how to use it properly, as it is often said, practice makes perfection. While I'm still far away from perfection I'm more or less reaching satisfactory results and a bit more of waiting for the new models won't hurt, in fact, I might get the results I exactly wanted.


*= disclaimer, the word soon it's strictly subjective, viewer discretion is advised, thank you in advance.

Needless to say it was quite a disappointment. Sometimes open source is well... open source. My post didn't age well, at least other models are coming out and as much as I want to have my epic space battles, they might have to wait. Meanwhile I was been looking into how to make better military maps so at least on that side I should improve a bit. At least those are more or less homemade, hahah, sometimes slowly and with tedium but I like them.
Time to post chapter IX after yet another useless time wasting post, it's been a while since my last serious post and not some nonsensical commentary that none really cares about, XD.

 

[Falhxer]

Chapter IX​

The Khell'Zen Front, 2277-2279, enemy repelled

In June, 2277, four Khell'Zen fleets arrived in the Spalatum system, ready to capture the starbase and siege the colonies inside. Two more remained to keep the supply lines in Ampal Dir.

In late September, the Imperium launched its own counteroffensive towards Ampal Dir, hoping to cut off the invading fleets.

The League anticipated this offensive and moved the two fleets towards Spalatum, the colony was already under siege. At the same time, the League started to quickly capture the neighboring systems that were lightly garrisoned.

Things moved slowly, as only in late March, 2278, the Imperium managed to recapture Ampal Dir and the League was still busy capturing lightly defended systems and was slow to send further reinforcements to continue the momentum.

In July, two imperial fleet inside Ampal Dir tried to intercept a massive convoy of invading troops, around seventeen transport ships were spotted. Unfortunately the League sent a fleet to delay the Imperium and so the target managed to slip away.

An emergency order was issued, the remaining fleets in Beta Ursae Majoris would move to intercept the transport troops into the Spalatum system.

While the Imperium was busy attempting to stop an incoming ground invasion, three fleets were on their way to conquer Agrippa's Wall system. The system, was heavily fortified, but unlike Beta Ursae Majoris, a lesser fortress, had no imperial fleets defending it. Capturing the system would mean that the road to the Imperium's capital would be free. It would force the Imperium's fleets to withdraw or risk being encircled and easily destroyed.
For the time being the momentum was on the League's side or so seemed. While the Chancellor desired a grand victory over the Imperium, a lighting fast campaign, take Ampal Dir with the resource rich world, not to speak of the strategical importance of that system.
Those on the more cautious side advised to wait and send a much bigger force to take Agrippa's Wall as three fleets were barely enough to take such a fortified system and they wouldn't even arrive at the same time, meaning the initial assault would have even less firepower, leading to even higher casualties in the best case or a complete disaster in the worst case.
The more aggressive side in the League prevailed and a full on assault was ordered, more fleets were on their way from controlled systems and a few casualties here and there would be acceptable, the Chancellor agreed with his political party, sympathizing clans and admirals. So far it looked that the League was on the verge of a breakthrough.
Four more fleets were preparing to retake Ampal Dir again and distract the defence forces while the other forces would flank and attempt to capture the last remaining fortress.

Imperial draft of possible League offensive plans. Surprisingly accurate to the real Khell'Zen plans, it proved to be a failure and the League would change their military doctrine.

In November, the Imperium fully engaged a single Khell'Zen fleet in the Spalatum fleet, outnumbered four to one, the system was fated to fall, while the League focused the majority of their forces in the flanking maneuver.
The assault on Agrippa's Wall commenced in October and the Khell'Zen commanders quickly realised how much they underestimated the starbase. As heavily fortified as once was the fortress of Ampal Dir, Agrippa's Wall was meant to delay and even stop the full might of the Hegemonic Powers. By November, the fleets were already at around 50% to 60% of their full operational integrity and it was quickly dropping by the day.

The orders were clear, continue the assault no matter the casualties, Agrippa's Wall had to fall. The arrogance of the League was finally punished in February of 2279. The attack had to be recalled after the 4th Armada had been completely destroyed. The other two fleets had lost respectively around 15% and 30%. The offensive was rushed in the hope to quickly overwhelm imperial forces, surround and destroy them.

In March a skirmish between an imperial fleet and a League's fleet started in the Spalatum system while the main force was engaging three more fleets in the Ampal Dir system. The engagement was won later in July with heavy losses on both sides and the fleet was ordered to assault the system of Favonius, the League's ground forces were still present in imperial systems and despite concrete lack of military superiority, soldiers could initiate an attack on their own, potentially crippling the industrial capabilities of the Imperium.

In August the engagement in Ampal Dir was won as well but there was no time for celebration as the League sent another four fleets to intercept the defending imperial forces.

By late 2279 slowly by steadily the production of alloys in the Imperium was increasing allowing less reliance on foreign markets. Since the League declared war on the Imperium, the later was forced to buy alloys from neighboring powers in order to continue the war. The fleet of the Imperium was not as powerful and modern as it once was and the League took full advantage of it, the previous humiliation would be fully vindicated, those were the words of the Chancellor and many Khell'Zen followed him, itching for a rematch with the Imperium.

In October, engagement in the Favonius system started, if the starbase were to fall, the ground forces would have to evacuate or risk being entirely destroyed.

In mid December of 2279 reports of allied and enemy losses came in, so far the Imperium had lost 28 ships, officially, the real numbers would never be disclosed. The Khell'Zen League lost, allegedly, 35 ships. The League could easily replenish their losses and they already outnumbered the defending forces two to one, if not three to one, while the Imperium could not, every ship lost was a tragedy and so far the Imperium was losing heavily against the Khell'Zen.


The Azanti Front, 2277-2279, total evacuation

The situation on the Azanti Front was dire, the Regime launched parallel offensives on their own with the goal to capture key strategic points. It would buy time to the Azanti and would distract the Imperium trying to defend to many places at once.

One on one engagements were most of time in the favour of the Azanti, the outdated imperial fleets were almost worse in everything, from firepower to maneuverability to armor. The only advantage that the imperial navy had was the home advantage. They were notorious for their ability to ambush and cause massive losses.

The Great Belmacosa Imperium proved to be too much of a corrupt and inefficient polity to be able to support the Imperium in any meaningful way. Their offensive took too much time and the Azanti simply counter attacked destroying their fleets and inflicting catastrophic losses. This quickly spiraled in a loss of competent personnel causing even more losses as the inept regime only sent more and more fleets to their doom. To make matters worse, the Azanti Regime was a hyper militaristic regime and was very good at waging war to the point that even the Hegemonic Powers started to fear the Regime and wanted it completely destroyed or at least pacified, for now they fought other wars and quitely watched how the situation with the Imperium would unfold.

In November estimates of the losses on both sides came in, while the Azanti-Velutarian alliance lost a total of 55 ships, the Imperium-Belmacosa pact lost a total of 126. The majority of lost ships were on the Belmacosa side. Things were not looking good, even with vast resources of the Belmacosa Imperium, losses at such a rate could only be sustained for half a decade at most, imperial analysts calculated. They suggested, that this war, had to end by then, otherwise the Imperium would have to fight truly alone this time and even more worrying reports suggested that the Azanti Regime was slowly but steadily increasing the military force while the Imperium was struggling to keep its modest fleet intact.

The Imperium-Azanti front in 2277, the Regime was able to counterattack in force and the Imperium found itself unable to contain it.

In 2278, the admiralty decided to change strategy, no longer the Imperium was able to go on the offensive in any way whatsoever. A general evacuation was planned, all the fleets would move towards a few more defensible key systems. Even in the case of a major Azanti offensive, it could be absorbed and weakened over time and ultimately defeating such an offensive.
At the same time, the God-Emperor signed various decrees that would enable unrestricted colonisation of the untamed worlds, even tomb worlds, considered unholy grounds. Massive projects of starbase construction would start all over the Imperium. At the same time, strongholds would be built on every imperial colony, they would act as logistic hubs and recruitment centers. While a costly endeavor, it would allow the Imperium to slowly cut down the costs of the navy and at the same time build new entire fleets. Such planning would take years and for the moment the Imperium would have to fight with what it had at its disposal. Nevertheless, these were radical reforms implemented to keep the Imperium alive and it left many powerful factions unhappy, unable to see the imminent dangers ahead.

The evacuation operation lasted over an year and the Azanti Regime kept pushing, capturing more and more systems. One fleet managed to push far inside the Imperium, just one jump away from the capital. Classis II under the command of admiral Proculus Lartius engaged the enemy fleet in the Felis system and won a great victory, losing just three of his twenty ships, he managed to destroy the enemy, only one ship was able to escape.

In the same month of April, the Gatria and Trunt systems were renamed to Brigantium and Antiochia. More skirmishes followed but the Azanti Regime managed to force back the imperial fleets. The Azanti were still very much in control and their offensive was still ongoing despite the loss of an entire fleet.

The Imperium kept buying alloys, while the industrial sector was still in its infancy, the economy was strong, the credits were flowing in a great quantity and commercial pacts with other powers allowed the Imperium to continue the war. Two front wars barely managed to put a dent in the imperial economy, as long as the core colonies remained under control, the Imperium could wage war an indefinite period of time, the same could not be said of the Belmacosa. Even with their disastrous tactics they were still holding a big part of the Azanti navy away from imperial systems and their total collapse would allow the Azanti Regime to focus their full might on the Imperium.

In mid December reports of losses came in, the allied forces lost around 180 ships and the enemy side 85 ships. It was a loss of two to one, the Imperium-Belmacosa pact was still bleeding heavily. While the Imperium managed to secure an impressive victory, the Great Belmacosa Imperium launched a massive offensive against the fortified systems of the Azanti Regime and lost around 90% of their offensive forces, a disaster that even the inept regime could not ignore and the Belmacosa emperor ordered various admirals and governors to be executed for high treason and incompetence. The loss of somewhat competent figures would prove to be disastrous for the Belmacosa and the war would only go worse and worse for them.

 

[HistoryDude]

Agrippa's Wall held, which is good. Outside of that, though, the war seems to be going poorly.

The alliance with the Belmacosa has probably outlived its purpose. Will you break it and maybe opportunistically attack them once this war is over?

 

[Falhxer]

Agrippa's Wall held, which is good. Outside of that, though, the war seems to be going poorly.

The alliance with the Belmacosa has probably outlived its purpose. Will you break it and maybe opportunistically attack them once this war is over?

If you think that now is bad, the next chapter is gonna be even worse or better, depending on the point of view. It's like the Steiner's counterattack meme but it actually succeded and boy oh boy, I did a big favour to my enemies, the Hegemonic Powers, by an insane war of attrition. But enough spoilers, summary won't do justice to the war of attrition I waged against the Azanti and miracle counter offensive against the League.
And at least I survived, somehow... Completely unexpected turn of events.
Attacking them is a bad idea, cough intervention of the Hegemonic Powers against the Azanti cough, what I was saying again? Oh yes, unfortunately the Imperium needs an ally, keeping a big navy is extremely expensive.

 

[Falhxer]

Small update:
I did nerf a bit the AI regarding fleet capacity, from their usual 60% more to 0%. The AI is still very dangerous and aggressive and I will leave them their insane resource and stability bonuses to keep things interesting.
I would like to have my fleets scattered along my whole Imperium and fight on various fronts but when your enemies have simply so many fleets it becomes impossible and you are forced to always play a guerilla war which is not very fun and it even goes against the lore of my aar somehow.
And honestly I would rather avoid buffing the FE the usual 1000% if not more just so they don't get obliterated too fast.
It was a problem exacerbated by the fact that the campaign takes a very long time, it's much, so much longer than usual playthroughs and even myself I sometimes, oftentimes understimate how badly can things can snowball, like forcing the AI to built a fortress on every world (so their worlds are not defenceless and weak) and then they start building it on every habitat and they start having 150+ habitats... and with their massive resource bonuses...
That's just one nation, what if they are in federation? And they keep building and building and building.
Things can get pretty wild even with massive pop growth slowdown and massive migration nerfs. I even made habitats extremely expensive to build in this small update and take many decades of building to avoid such a ridiculous habitat spam and playing on 1000 stars map doesn't help either.
Hopefully even my chapters will get better following this small change. I'm already working on the next chapter and before writting it I wanted to test as usual.
Needless to say but this AAR is always changing, I probably discarded by now dozens of potential outcomes and started over and over until I would find the most entertaining path.

P.s. Somehow my foreshadowing becomes always true, even if I replay the events somehow always lead that that happening. I started over several times and this "definitive" version of the AAR I no longer intent to change or replay since I'm very happy with the results, the things I foreshadowed are... actually happening? Well, that's some serious space politik here, XD.