Part 12: 2475 - 2487

Episode I: 2475-2487




Still the same story more or less: we're holding about even with the Darloks, and can't catch up in production(they appear to have put their Robotic Controls IV into use now).







Over 200 stinger-bearing destroyers now, and we aren't going to do much better than that.




Right about at a third of our income going to the military. That's basically full mobilization in practical terms; you can go a lot higher but it gets really difficult to have a competitive economy. Most of the new spending will go into missile bases, not ships. Willow and Arietis still have a little room to grow, but the other four planets have all been maxed out for a few years with the new population.




We're closest to getting the ECM Jammer here; that's not going to matter right now. After that probably the planetary shield is next and that'll be a bigger deal, but it'll be a while. We're in the mid-level range now in terms of advancement, and for the most part will be operating with what we have, for better or worse.




The rocks have managed to get an alliance back with the Sakkra, but they're at war with the other two small races. Darloks remain totally on the sidelines. They've added the Graviton Beam and Cloning to leap ahead of us in overall tech, but neither of those figure to matter much. Cloning will help their economy a bit if they use it. More worrying is the Armored Exoskeleton, which will make them tougher than us in ground combat. We'll really have to send a lot of troops to dislodge them. However, we will be able to out-grow them.

First things first though. It's clearly the time for war here -- we aren't going to have a better opportunity and it's the only forseeable way to change our 'losing stalemate' situation. We don't even have a choice of targets; only Kronos is within range.




We inform the Silicoids that we are breaking our trade agreement; they are less than pleased. I have no idea what a denebian sewer crawler is, but the comparison rather obviously isn't a compliment. This is better than attacking without breaking the agreements first however -- other empires, and not just them, will consider that twice as bad in a dastardly, backstabbing way. They still consider our relations 'Amiable', but we get the Diplomat Gone thing -- this indicates they aren't willing to speak with us for a few years. Well we don't want to speak with them. Instead, we'll send several dozen Sting Raids to do the communication.

It's time to release the dogs of war!! It takes only a year to get there.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOt6WuWZK10



That strike from the missile bases hurt. Their Merculite missiles are fast enough to hit us; we'll have to remember that and only stick around for the first volley anywhere they have a lot of bases. 35 Destroyers perished for that miscalculation. Took almost all of them out though which is nice. This also shows, by the way, how this 'hit-and-run' tactic becomes less effective over time.




Yeah, they aren't amused. Leading to war is the whole point. We can't actually declare war on them, because reasons; the AI empires only are allowed to declare one. That's a weird game design bit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh8BsSf1DgU



Now the bases are gone, and their ships aren't fast enough to reach us in time to do any damage. We can pound them like this until we control the space above Kronos; then it will be time to invade.




They're sending reinforcements, because why wouldn't they? This is the bulk of them. It'll take some time to knock them all out. Their fleet is still much bigger than ours, but a few years from now that shouldn't be the case.

After a couple more years, we achieve space superiority at Kronos in 2479. Most of their ships choose to run away rather than fight. Either way is fine with me. Time for our first planetary invasion. Kronos presently holds 92M population. We need enough transports to defeat that many and have extra left over to man the colony. Given the current state of tech I'm going to estimate at least 150M will be needed; I'll explain why once I'm able to show the first ground invasion battle. That is a crapton of people, and most of them are going to die. Invasions are expensive, but worthwhile.

Arietis is still regrowing and doesn't have any extra people to send. Tyr/Denubius/Willow all send half of their max. population, and Imra/Mentar a sizable amount each, reducing them to 100M remaining. All told, 179M Psilons are loaded into transports and shipped off, about a third of the empire. That might be overkill, but if so it is not by much. It's crucial that we remain in control of the space above Kronos until they arrive. All planets will also go into max ecology spending for at least a year; the economy is going to tank until we get the population back up. As an example:




Denubius will get an extra 7M in population growth this year due to this; still keeping a fairly small amount in research to avoid any 'atrophy' penalty.

ProTip: You can grow up to a quarter of a planet's current population this way. I didn't actually hit that limit with any planets due to the cost; 20 BC per million, and we don't have any techs that reduce that cost(such as Cloning) yet.




This is the first time we've actually caught someone stealing, though I suspect we've been hit by the Darloks and didn't discover it. You're only told if you catch them. This is a big 'so what', since they already have a better armor than this it won't help them that much. Usually when at war though I tend to up the internal security to +10% and I forgot, so I'll do that now. Also a good time to show off a little-known feature that is not documented anywhere and was clearly added late in development; the Caught Spies report. The only way you can get to it is by the 'C' hotkey.




We caught one Alkari spy last year. If you suspect a lot of enemy activity, this is a good thing to check. The manual recommends raising internal security to maximum in order to catch a lot of spies even if they are hiding; I've not found this to be particularly effective but if I run into a game where they are stealing and blowing up a lot of stuff, I will try it and see if I have any better luck. It's expensive. Just doing the +10%(one-quarter of the max) on internal security costs 5% of income as I mentioned previously; I don't think it's usually worth going higher than that.

In 2481, the first of our armies arrive:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXIV_lLaQl4



And then there's also this:




They take out the comet just in time. That will free up their fleet to come after us, but I'm not at all concerned.

The kill ratio in that ground invasion is more concerning. About 3:1 in the Silicoids favor. That means we didn't send nearly enough! We'll send more ... and bomb them to at least nullify the growth rate. However, that will also destroy a lot of factories which is why I haven't been doing it up to this point.

The invasion video background is just like landing on a planet to colonize it as you probably noticed, with the exception of course of the existing colony on the right and the troops display. The key thing to notice is the tech at the bottom. We had Duralloy Combat Armor and Hand Lasers; they had no weapon but Zortrium Armored Exoskeletons. Each of these give a bonus to ground combat rolls.

The way it works is that size of force is irrelevant; you get nothing for outnumbering them. Each 'round' will result in 1 trooper, i.e. 1M population, dying off from one side or the other until one side has none left. Whoever has troops remaining controls the planet. It's a random roll of 1-100, with the default odds being 55-45 in favor of the defender. The more tech you have, the more you shift this in your favor. Bulrathi get a +25 so that would start them out at 70-30 attacking, 80-20 defending; if you don't have better tech than them don't even try basically. It would appear it's about a 75-25 proposition here in favor of the Silicoids, which is about right; the Hand Laser only gives us +5, Zortrium is better than Duralloy armor and Armored Exoskeleton is much better than Combat Armor(the starting option). You can also have personal shields, those have come up but we've bypassed them.

It is kind of amusing to consider the possibility of marching every able-bodied adult into combat as your 'army', but overall I like the system used here. It'd be nice if size of force mattered, but the fact that it doesn't ensures the tech wins out and maybe that's better. Makes it simpler also, but it definitely could have been expanded/refined.

Quite important is the fact that if you win an invasion, you keep the factories intact(though you have to refit them) and you have a chance of discovering tech(up to six advances per planet!) that they have but your empire doesn't. How many you discover is based on a random factor and the amount of factories you capture -- that makes it much better to preserve them. In this case we almost have to bomb them though -- we could eventually wear them down with numbers, but that would take a very long time and a ton of people. In this case I'm choosing a middle path; some bombing but we're still going to try to leave some infrastructure intact.




A little dense, but they are starting to get the point. We'd officially be at war already if relations hadn't started off so well. Also, this is one of those diplomatic messages that really wasn't proofread apparently, which I find a bit aggravating.




Here's a nice little bit of work by the AI; they clearly put some cloning effort in. Grew from 80 to 90M in a single year -- that doesn't happen naturally. We couldn't even bomb it all away, and took out 25 factories in the process. I don't think there's going to be much left to salvage once we take it ....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5dhI70yUh4



Lost 100M, killed 37M. Them there are bad odds. And they finally declare war. Still have 92M on the way, but another few dozen are sent as I'm thinking that's not going to be enough. As you can see this can be a real undertaking.




By the way, check out our improving relations with the Alkari here. This is because of the key dynamic of MOO Diplomacy: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We're still at war with the birds, but may well get a peace out of this. Every time we attack the Silicoids, we get a boost to our Alkari relations because they are at war with them as well.

ProTip: If you are in a situation where you can't quite get an AI empire to do something you want them to do, attacking an enemy of theirs can often push them over the edge.

After another round of bombardment and troop combat, resulting in 29 factories and a couple dozen more dead population, they register their approval ... sort of. And with the same bad grammar.




And we also discover the Silicoids have developed Class X Planetary Shields. CRAP.ON.A.STICK. That's a game-changer, because when they get those built, our Stingers will do nothing against their bases. Literally nothing. We've got to take what we can, as quickly as we can within reason.

The Alkari agree to a peace treaty, but aren't interested in a trade deal. We'll try that again later. The next year we incinerate 7 cruisers that decided to show up, and get their population down to 14M. That'll be enough bombing now; they won't be able to grow much from there. Still destroyed 79 factories in three years of bombardment; they had over 200 so some is still intact, but it's costly nonetheless.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcba9_9v3wE



Finally we achieve victory! Hundreds of millions of Psilons died to make it happen, but a new solid planet in the middle of the galaxy is ours. And so is improved armor, which will immediately improve our odds against the Silicoids in future engagements.

That gives me a perfect chance to make everyone wait another day to find out how the next decade of the war proceeded ...