The Prikki Endeavour

[CBR JGWRR]

2332 - The Prikki Plan:

In order for the Prikki to get to the Unbidden, they had to go through Lokken and Jehetma territory. (as can be seen above, the Lokken are subjects of the Jehetma)

Another factor was that the Jehetma had Defensive Alliances with Orbis and the offshoot Humans; in effect, the Prikki would have to fight a one against five (remembering the Unbidden) war, and that assumes no one trying to attack the Prikki while they were over-extended waging war across a fifth of the galaxy, including a totally new enemy that was making rapid progress in carving it's own empire.

It wasn't like the Prikki didn't have other enemies either:

And these enemies were right on the border:

So, the Prikki had a choice of three options:

1. Attack the Pasharti and XT-489, destroy them and the marauders beside them and pre-empt being attacked while the navy is away charging for the Unbidden.
2. Attack the Jehtma alliance/Unbidden and rely on their southern enemies not risking war.
3. Stay cautiously building up and wait for the Unbidden to come to them.

Further, the Jehetma and Orbis announced a trade federation agreement while the Prikki deliberated what to do.

They couldn't just ignore the Unbidden - they were a threat to the galaxy, and based on what intercepts the Prikki could hack of Galactic Community meetings, not much was actually being put together to stop them.

But, they also couldn't accept the risk of being invaded by the other two factions devoted to the destruction of all sapient life.

Solution?

Purge them first.

2333 - War In Heaven:

While the Prikki navy was in drydock for armour retrofitting, two envoys came, one from each Awakened Empire; sure, neither of them particularly wanted to deal with the Prikki, but, the Prikki did have the biggest navy of any younger race.

For the Prikki, they wanted to stay neutral and kill the winner while they recovered. They wanted to focus on the Unbidden.

But equally, one of the Awakened Empires - in fact, the stronger of the two - was within jump drive range of the Prikki.

And the other was not. Further, that other one only had allies who were next to Prikki space; it didn't take long before Grand Arbiter Zaha-Ni had a decision; the Prikki would side with (and ultimately usurp, or at least try to) the Repeucid Restorers.

There was a problem however:

The enemy Awakened Empire has really good Attack Moons. The ally Awakened Empire does not.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Out of character...

The Prikki can beat the two normal races who joined the enemy Awakened Empire. The only reason it would take two fleets is because they are too far apart for just one fleet.

But, those two Attack Moons are simply too strong; at the Prikki's technology level, they'd need six to comfortably take those two down. And the ally Awakened Empire's fleet isn't sufficient; on numbers yes, but I know how to fight using Attack Moons thanks to the Iriphubliki run, and those two Attack Moons will wipe the floor with the allies' fleets. (but the ally has Colossi)

And this time, I am not in command of the Iriphubliki, who wielded Attack Moons the way the Prikki handle squads of battleships. Instead, the Prikki have not got as far as repeatables yet; I am so far behind on tech compared to where I want to be, it's just sad.

So, how can the Prikki win this?

Well, the AI is in charge of how to design those Attack Moons. So, it won't be smart enough to go all in on afterburners, and therefore the Prikki might be able to evade. Against Iriphubliki Attack Moons it would be game over because the Iriphubliki had so many and the speeds were so high thanks to stacking afterburners.

But equally, I don't know how fast Attack Moons are on Dark Matter Thrusters... And if they are fast enough to catch the battleships, the Prikki just cannot afford a front-on engagement because they will lose.

My battleships are hitting for estimated 628.81 damage per day each. It therefore doesn't matter that I have a hundred and forty of the things - they will be lucky to fire a single shot, and even if all 140+ fired at once for maximum damage, we'd maybe knock out half the armour on one Attack Moon.

Realistically, it would take the entire Prikki navy and the Repeucid navy combined just to have half a chance to down them.

On the upside, thanks to Gene-Warrior Assault-Prikki, the ground war will be much more winnable if the Prikki can punch through the defence fleets.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

2334 - The League of Non-Aligned Powers forms:

This was a much better option.

The Prikki had given in too quickly to the pressure to side with one of the Awakened Empires. They should have waited for such a league to form, and now their overlord was making demands of resources - 1.2k energy each month for example - that the Prikki hated.

An alliance with the Jehetma would have been perfect - the Prikki could have gone after the priority target of the Unbidden.

But, sadly the Prikki were too hasty. They didn't research, they didn't understand - and they had picked the losing side to back.

All hope wasn't lost however; an ancient Human philosopher once said the sinews of war were infinite money, and what could be a better supply of it than harnessing the largest of stars?

The problem was, the Prikki might not have the time. Forgotten at the start of the war, the wormhole in the centre of Prikki space led directly to the south of the enemy Awakened Empire, a fact that was as horrifyingly dangerous - almost three million Awakened Empire fleet power was two jump drive activations from the Prikki Core worlds.

And that was only the conventional ships of the enemy; their Attack Moons were out there somewhere.

Still, the war had to be fought. The Prikki may have been on the wrong side to start with, but hopefully that would change. In the moment however, the second Hazbuzi state was about to fall:

This was soon joined by seeing the first Unbidden fleets:

The Prikki were almost relieved that they only had to face down similar power levels to the Awakened Empires.

2335 - the Kilik Campaign:

A Kilik Battleship takes fire from a Prikki Tachyon Lance during the Battle of Xir:

The Kilik Campaign was the second offensive of the war for the Prikki.

The bulk of the fleet guarded the wormhole to ward off aggression from the Awakened Empire, but roughly 100k fleet power was assigned to the elimination of the Hazbuzi remnants and the Kilik. The biggest ship battle of the Prikki-Kilik engagement was the 2335 Battle of Xir, where a Kilik counter-attack was intercepted by Prikki battleships.

The Kilik fought bravely, but the Battle of Xir marked the end of the Kilik as an effective fighting force.

It was just as well; the Repeucid idiotically decided to declare war on the League of Non-Aligned Powers.

In a most surprising chain of events only the Pastari Absorbers and XT-489 Eliminators - other fanatic purifiers/determined exterminators - were now the only members of the younger races of the galaxy not at war.

2335 - Considering Options:

With the galaxy collapsing to war, some Prikki realised that in order to survive the Prikki would have to depart the galaxy.

Schnook-Schnook Tropp was chosen to lead the first expedition.

For now, a barren world, a molten world and a hothouse world. But they could all be stabilised as safe planets.

Soon after, the Penrose Sphere had the first stage finished:

Likewise, the Mega-Shipyard would soon be finished too:

This would enable more than thirty ships to be produced in the same system.

2335 - Mopping up the Kilik Front:

The final ground invasion of the war saw Cybrex Warforms deployed against the last Kilik ground defenders.


Soon the Kilik were no more:

2335 - Next campaigns:

The second Campaign was against the Maweer Caretakers.

The Prikki had already seized one fortress starbase by the beginning of the campaign seriously as part of contracting Maweer avenues to attack through. It was expected to be a simple campaign, with only one Gateway on the front.

The third campaign however, was far more complex to plan:

The four outlying Lokken systems would fall easily. But straightaway the forces would have to be divided to deal with the Humans and the Orbis.

While beyond them lay the collapsing Jehetma Dominion:

 

[Nikolai]

Departing the galaxy? Is that an option in this mod?

 

[CBR JGWRR]

Sort of - the EHOF adds new stars to the outside of the galaxy. They aren't connected by hyperlanes, but you can jump to and from them.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

2336 - XT-489 Dark Matter:

Note the little Prikkiki Ti star system in the lower left - that's the Plan B refuge system, once it gets developed.

How likely are we to need it?

The Prikki can't beat this - there's another fleet thats 620k one system behind.

On the other side of the wormhole are Prikki Core territories. The vast majority of the fleet is stationed in the wormhole system, but it can't beat 611k Fallen Empire fleets. No point leaving them when they aren't the put-off I was hoping for.

The good news is Gene-Warrior Assault Prikki backed by Cybrex Warforms are a match for Fallen Empire armies, so it's only the Starbases they can actually take.

I'm hoping that these 611k/620k fleets are actually heading down to engage the splitted Repeucid fleets travelling across to the south, rather than to attack the Prikki:

2236 - Further Developments of the Prikki Specialisation Board:
In addition, Super-Prikki and Assault-Prikki were joined by Ore-Prikki and Tek-Prikki:

Ore-Prikki expanded on their natural industriousness with instinctive understanding of getting the most out of Alloys and enhanced biological strength, while Tek-Prikki were optimised for operating the vast numbers of generators needed to pay the vassal fees demanded by the Repeucid. (who are the reason why I'm losing 1k Energy a month; 1.3k subject taxes monthly! And it's only getting worse as I increase Energy income...)

2337 - Celestial Body Weaponisation:

At last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now the Prikki can beat Awakened Empires!!

And in current Prikki territory, there are one hundred and sixty nine Attack Moon Candidates.

It didn't take long for the Prikki to start work on turning theory into a shiny new weapon system by restoring a broken Attack Moon:

But 5 years and 4 months is a long time to wait...

2337 - Unbidden Attack the Galactic South:

Because the galaxy decided to have a massive three way war, the Unbidden are expanding basically without resistance, and thanks to a wormhole they have opened up a second front in the south. These two 400k fleets are what has come through so far, and I'm hoping they will be stopped by the Awakened Empire.

They weren't.

2238 - Cracking of Scion:

The Maweer Caretakers had suffered the misfortune of being next to the Prikki, and with the war Prikki ships, including armies, were running rampant. And where the Prikki went, the Prikki purged.

So, it wasn't like the Prikki were morally upright.

But when the Repeucid cracked one of the Maweer's worlds - one within visual range of a Prikki army transport group - it drew horror from all over the galaxy. Prikki in particular - who had been looking forward to the hundreds of units of Food and Minerals per month that would be obtained in the eventual purge - were heavily opposed to the sheer waste. The Prikki hated that they were demanded subject taxes, yet the Repeucid were so flagrantly wasteful to just obliterate billions of the renewable resources.

Among the rest of the galaxy, the outrage was immense, with trillions deciding that the Repeucid were absolutely a menace to galactic peace.

2238 - Shipyard overhauls:

The decision had been taken to convert some of the shipyard starbases into energy production facilities, and concentrate future ship construction projects in the Blablon system. If the Prikki had the Alloy, they could now produce sixty four battleships in a year.

Additionally, Consumer Goods shortages were hoped to be a thing of the past thanks to new Asteroid Manufactories. These were mainly for commercial resale; the unfortunate choice of host system, being the one with the wormhole, means it's realistically likely to be lost.

2239 - State of the Galaxy:

In the current four way war, the only clear loser is the League of Non-Aligned Powers; the Unbidden are roaming freely in the galactic northwest, the triplet of two Fanatic Purifiers and a Determined Exterminator control a third of the galaxy together, while one of the Awakened Empires has gone on a rampage subjugating younger races.

It's a messed up galaxy out there.

 

[Macavity116]

In the current four way war, the only clear loser is the League of Non-Aligned Powers; the Unbidden are roaming freely in the galactic northwest, the triplet of two Fanatic Purifiers and a Determined Exterminator control a third of the galaxy together, while one of the Awakened Empires has gone on a rampage subjugating younger races.

It's a messed up galaxy out there.

The Galaxy is burning hot and bright. Of course that means it'll burn out quickly. Who knows what, if anything, will be left over when the smoke clears?

 

[CBR JGWRR]

The Galaxy is burning hot and bright. Of course that means it'll burn out quickly. Who knows what, if anything, will be left over when the smoke clears?

Quadrillions of Prikki and very little else.

 

[Nikolai]

Quadrillions of Prikki and very little else.

Hopefully for the Prikki.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

2340 - The Three Rings:

The Prikki understood how to do ringworlds; they had restored the Cybrex Alpha ring of course. But a triple-ring was immensely special.

2340 - Lizards Invade Earth, Part 1:

The brief occupation of Earth began in 2240, although the Humans would retake Earth in 2342 after Sh'Aash foolishly was defeated by the Humans in space and his armies forced to retreat. They returned to a world that had been pillaged however; the Prikki had left only Generator Districts, everything else had been destroyed or looted.

2340 - End of the Years of Zaha-Ni:

Lip-Lap Zaha-Ni's Arbitership was most memorable for the rise of the Prikki Development Board, the genetic engineering taskforce that optimised what being Prikki meant.

The Selection Committee was not pleased with the options brought to the discussion, fearing the risk of taking an Admiral from the fleet. Ultimately, they were left with no choice but to do so. Luppi Sh'Aash was selected.


2341 - Humans Retake Spring:

The Humans had the major advantage that they were fighting an extremely divided Prikki - only one fleet and one army group could be assigned to the Human front. And therefore, they were able to retake ground when the forces moved to the next battleground.

2341 - Starborn-Prikki:

Starborn-Prikki were actually an early development of the Prikki Development Board, with many members of the board being test subjects for the immense life-extension and memory enhancement upgrades that would enable Prikki leaders of the future to live for theoretically indefinitely. They would never be numerous of course - the extreme expense of the medical treatments they needed ruled out mass deployment, perhaps only a few full Pops worth - but soon Prikki leaders would only be a matter of time from being as masterful as the leaders of the Awakened Empires.


2341 - Humans return to Earth:

With the Prikki unable to reinforce the planet following General Sh'Aash's defeat, plans were made to loot Earth of any useful resources; whole cities were torched.


2342 - Purifier vs Exterminator:

The Prikki had been content to focus on the east of the galaxy, leaving the cold war of the west to stay cold.

The XT-489 mistook that for weakness.

The Prikki would not forgive.

The Prikki would not forget.

The rabbles the Prikki had slaughtered before were irrelevant, and the war in the east was more opportunistic hunting than actual war, with the Prikki delibrately evading tangling in the Awakened Empire spat even if they officially were supposed to.

But to attack the Prikki?

Vengeance would come. And it would come down hard.

There could only be one purifier of sentient life - the XT-489 would be rendered a footnote.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

2342 - Vengeance One:

After years of repairs, Vengeance One was recommissioned and ready for battle, possessing more firepower in a single vessel than fleets of battleships. It would be assigned to the XT-489 front immediately.

2342 - Robotic Tensions:

The prospect of a Synthetic Rebellion was not what the Prikki needed, and it was decided by the Grand Arbiter to allow them Citizen Rights rather than Servitude.

2342 - Pasharti Attack:

Following the declaration of war by the XT-489, the Pasharti followed suit, thinking the Prikki would be grinded down by their enemies. Two battleship fleets were assigned to the Pasharti front; the Prikki were stretched thin, but there was no giving up; they Prikki knew things would get better:

Soon after beginning the repair of Vengeance One, Kohoma and two other moons in the Eridani system began construction into Attack Moons. Soon the Prikki would wield four of them.

2343 - The XT-489 Advance:

With the Prikki divided, and two XT-489 58k fleets on the southern border, it wasn't long before they made advances into systems conquered previously, capturing three systems with planets in, fortunately without army support.

The Prikki however, were on their way:

An XT-489 Battleship one-shotted by a Titan lance.

The first battle of the XT-489 war saw the losses of one battleship and some obsolete Destroyers. Enemy casualties were high, but not fleet-breaking. (why the battleship casualty isn't listed, I don't know)

2343 - Blorg Psionic Ascension Begins:

The Blorg, facing desperation as they were attacked on all sides, began efforts to Psionically ascend.

2344 - The Gigastructures Collapse:

So, get up this morning to have a quick session with everyone's favourite omnicidal geckos. One of the downsides of running mods is that the game does sometimes forget to load them. Fortunately, Gigastructures has loading screens, so I normally check to see those. But, I didn't this time - tabbed out and read forums while waiting for the game to load.

So, I load up the save, and this is what confronts me - it hasn't loaded any mods.

Immediately obvious is the extra Empire colours mod is gone and reset to base game colours. Also, you can immediately see that Vengance One has disappeared from the XT-489 front. And there's a enemy fleet come through the wormhole into Prikki territory.

Starbase economic mods gone, so I now have 40 or so starbases doing nothing except adding maintenance costs. They were the heart of my Alloy production, as the modules take 20 Minerals and give 10 Alloy base figures, but with various bonuses they become vastly more efficient and outcompete Alloys jobs, which means Alloy production is a third of what it was.

Most significantly, Gigastructures is gone, meaning no Asteroid Manufactories, no Attack Moons and no Planetary Drive Yards to boost Naval Capacity, which means that Naval capacity has dropped to a third of what it was, so the Prikki navy is now using 5093 Energy a month. And best part of 50k Alloy on megastructures has been completely wasted.

Traits have been reset to base game traits, which is a huge loss... Gene-Warrior Assault-Prikki have lost more than half their damage.

The Prikki might have been able t0 achieve the 2375 conquering the galaxy target before. They certainly can't now, I'll lose decades fixing this mess, and it's almost certain that I will have to sacrifice the gains made in conquests in order to condense the navy down.

And that will be really damaging, because the minerals and food supplies were coming in from conquests and purges.

Pop jobs have gone really strange - it was no unemployment before, now half the planets have unemployed pops, and I don't what happened there...

I can't fix the synths issue because Fanatic Purifier won't allow me to raise the living standards of robots above slavery even if I change the policies, which means having to get rid of robots to avoid a potentially disastrous Synth Uprising.

We are at war with the rest of the galaxy barring those who sided with the Repeucid.

The enemy has just dumped a 150k fleet into Prikki core territories.

And, it's an Ironman save - all this wreckage is now saved without any prospect of reloading an older save to reset it.

---

I can fix this - it will have affected everyone else just as badly, and in particular the Fallen and Awakened Empires will have lost their Attack Moons and Megastructures. It weakens the Prikki massively, but at the same time it creates new opportunities - I no longer have to destroy half a dozen enemy Attack Moons for example.

The Prikki will adapt. 2375 is an impossible target now, it'll be the 2350s at the earliest before I can resume offensives, but this isn't game over yet.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

2344 - High Executioner Gnash:

The revolution was swift. Swift, but destructive.

The Admiralty - fed up with the Purification Committee - turned the battleships on the Prikkiki Ti under the flag of the new Gnashki Ti. Vengeance One - under command of former Grand Arbiter Vipsi Aiyo-Ji - along with two other loyalist fleets were sabotaged and destroyed. As were the Planetary Drive Yards in an effort to prevent the Prikkiki Ti from building a new navy.

The Prikkiki Ti lashed out, sabotaging dozens of starbases as the navy closed in on Gish, and even destroying Megastuctures when the inevitable was realised as a last grasp against the rebels.

With space dominance, the rising star Prim G'Rrib-Gnash lead the occupation forces on Gish, and proclaimed herself the first High Executioner of the Prikki.

The coup quickly took control.

 

[Nikolai]

That is unfortunate. Another reason not to do Ironman when doing an AAR I guess. Hooe you manage without the mods!

 

[CBR JGWRR]

That is unfortunate. Another reason not to do Ironman when doing an AAR I guess. Hooe you manage without the mods!

They're back now - load up the game again with them. It's just the damage has been done.

But I'll just roll with it as fallout from a coup.

 

[CBR JGWRR]

So, I have to say that this is the second AAR to end up suffering a repeatable CTD a few months after an ironman save. So, not good... That is the nature of modded games unfortunately, you have the extra content but there's a fair chance of something going wrong eventually. And it certainly would not have been helped by the accidentally running the save unmodded briefly enough to save; that always causes instablility.

----

Which means writing a closing statement.

Which is hard; in the end, you don't want the Prikki to win after all.

By choosing a setting of using the Stellaris premade civilisations, I was hoping to have that feel of a "canon" galaxy. And it just didn't work; the Prikki are too hostile for it to work. Functionally? It would have been no different to if they had been numbered, at least from the Prikki perspective.

From everyone else's perspective, this run was horrifyingly dark.

Fanatic Purifiers/Determined Exterminators ruled to all practical matters half the galaxy when the CTD happened. The rest of the galaxy was locked into a four way war. Billions of people were being slaughtered for food and minerals, planets were being destroyed. Civilisations obliterated.

The Prikki would have loved the galaxy they shaped of course - Vengeance came to many worlds. They grew strong.

But for a reasonable man, a passenger of the tale...

If the Yabuntu Iriphubliki represented the world that I would build, a hope for a better future, then the Prikkiki Ti represent the world that must be stopped; a vile race that invites it's own destruction by the reasonable being an evil that cannot be reasoned with.

That reformed Prikki were essential to the rise of the Iriphubliki seems such a blazing contrast by comparison - with the Iripubliki, they took the Prikki in and changed them into wholly different people. There would have been no Unbidden crisis, because they would have been vanquished. The Awakened Empires would have been kept in line.

What does this mean for everyone's favourite omnicidal geckos?

How would things be different if others had done what the Iriphubliki accomplished, and changed the Prikki?

The Iriphubliki represents what my civilisation would be.

But this galaxy had no Iriphubliki. It had the Prikki, who were mostly as capable - I was a few decades from achieving the economy to deliver the same goals as the Iriphubliki did - but that capability was squandered by the wastefulness and futility of Fanatic Purifiers.

Instead of the wise and constructive Iriphubliki, it had two egotistical revisionists trying to recapture a hint of the world they lost who plunged quadrillions of people into war while extra-galactic invaders raged.

Two AARs that featured the Prikki among the many characters, with so very different outcomes.

In the first, it was worthwhile to envision a future state.

This galaxy?

I cannot say that I want to envision a future for this galaxy. There is no good here; the only good people known got crushed with their bodies used as fuel for Clone Vats or for the feeding of ravenous reptiles, and the good people outside the Prikkiki Ti ended up crushed by the Unbidden, by the Repeucid, by the Auridian...

The Unbidden were not a substantial threat - with three Fallen Empires and two Awakened Empires, plus the rising Prikki, the Unbidden should have been spawn-camped and crushed.

But egos got in the way. The Prikki were smart enough to see the path - they knew to crush the Unbidden first. But no one else would even talk to them, fearing the passage of Prikki battleships. The Prikki therefore, couldn't act when the threat was containable easily. Then the mess of the reclaimers meant the Prikki made the mistake of siding with one of them out of fear before they knew the facts, before they realised the chains that would come from the Repeucid, the huge tolls on their economy, and the casualties as Prikki died to fight someone else's war.

This started with a question:

The Prikki have successfully opened their shielded world;
what will they find in a galaxy where everyone is more advanced than they are?

In a single word, they found death.

 

[Nikolai]

Well, however bleak that ending note was...it was a very accurate and worthy end note. Thanks for doing this story, I look forward to whatever is next!

 

[CBR JGWRR]

The next one will be much less grim.

 

[Arithmetician]

Sorry to hear about the CTDs. That sucks! And that’s a reason why I only used cosmetic, achievement-compatible mods when doing ironman runs for an AAR. The next run I’m planning is much more heavily modded, and subsequently, I probably won’t be doing ironman for that one, so I can fix things if they go wrong. Still, it’s a good lesson. And I very much liked your description of the very grim dark state your galaxy ended up in. I started on the last page, but I’ll have to read the rest when I have the chance.

Better luck next time!