Stellaris

[kentonio]

Stellaris forever!!!
Sorry, Sid Meier!

Paradox games still get me excited when they're announced. Can't remember the last time I felt like that about a Firaxis game sadly. Well apart from X-Com.

[Proteus_MST]

That's what I call a true OMFG moment.



That are 3 or 4 Prethoryn fleets united as one.
Fortunately they invaded in the space of some other empires, with enough buffer room between them and my empire.
At the moment my 3 battlefleets united have a strength of just 21k (and with this I am on par with the mightiest empires in the galaxy (except the Fallen Empires, of course) ... most empires (among them the 2 empires that the Prethoryn chose ass staging area for their invasion of our galaxy) have fleets that are inferior or even pathetic compared to my 21k).


Unfortunately the pilot of the science vessel that observed the system decided that a good flight vector would be onbe, that leads him directly through this fleet. Ship and crew had only a survival time of a few seconds, when the Prethoryn got notice of its approach

[pchang]

Time to start over on an easier difficulty level?

[Proteus_MST]

Time to start over on an easier difficulty level?

Nope ... fortunately there is still the large Galactic Vhemm Empire between the Scourge and my empire, so I have ample time to prepare.

That's a more recent view of the galaxy (Terra unitas is my empire (well, the lower 3/4 of it))



The Prethoryn already have eaten up almost the whole small star empire that was located at the Rim, in the staging area of my attack and are now beginning with their attack on the Galactic Vhemm Empire (with the empires fleet already having been destroyed).

Till the time they are knocking at my door I hope that I have increased my firepower and have my ships especially prepared for the Prethoryn Weapons and Defense Setup (they have a lot of fighters and missile weapons and have no shields as defense, meaning that an energy weapon heavy fleet with lots of PD-Defenses will have an advantage).

I also will fortify my border worlds to the Galactic Vhemm Empire with Snare-Stations

[pchang]

From what I've read, Prethoryn are a late game crisis. Would you consider your game at the late stage?

[Proteus_MST]

From what I've read, Prethoryn are a late game crisis. Would you consider your game at the late stage?

Nope, just mid game ...
from what I have read in the Wiki, the Prethoryn have a randomized chance for the time when they appear ...
actually 125 years (after game start) like in my game seems to be the absolute earliest date possible (and has a chance of just 10%).

When the Prehoryn appeared I didn't even have Stellar Lances for my spaceships.

So I was lucky that I had the largest empire in the galaxy and that the buffer space between the Prethoryn and my realm bought me 25 years.

Meanwhile I did a lot of weapons research, ship redesign and ship building, bringing the strength of my 3 fleets to 40k total ...
on par with the fallen empires, according to the data in the diplo screen.
And the Prethoryn have crossed Vhemm Space in their extermination spree

Thats the current situation:


The orange space has been conquered by the Prethoryn and the red/green shaded area is contested between Vhemm Empire and Phretoryn. Unfortunately I have no access rights for military vessels in Vhemm space, therefore I can only jump to Prethoryn or contested space with my military fleets (despite the fact that many systems in Vhemm space also have a strong Phretoryn presence.

The system with the green ship symbol in contested space has been "conquered" by me (meaning I killed off all Phretoryn stations there and built some stations of my own there in order to pull Prethoryn fleets out of hyperspace).
I already destroyed 3 or 4 Prethoryn fleets there ... all of them between 20-30k strength ... with just a few corvets and destroyers lostz adjusting to the Prethoryn strengths and weaknesses in the design of my ships turned out to be extremly helpful.
The 46k strong Prethoryn fleet from my previous posting however didn't try to attack (yet)

[pchang]

I just realized that the majority of your screen shots are in English. Is the language localization pretty minimal?

[Proteus_MST]

I just realized that the majority of your screen shots are in English. Is the language localization pretty minimal?

I cannot say anything about the quality of the localization ... I chose english for the language, despite the fact that it also offered a german install.
Anything you see in german (like 1. - 3. Flotte) was custom named by myself (you can custom name more or less anything in your empire, be it planets, systems, ships or leaders ... although there is a display bug with ship names that sometimes let their original names appear instead of the ones you gave them)

[pchang]

Very multi-lingual of you. I'm impressed. Do you get anything special for capturing their Queen besides the accomplishment?

[Proteus_MST]

Very multi-lingual of you. I'm impressed. Do you get anything special for capturing their Queen besides the accomplishment?

Cannot say.
Unfortunately the queen spawned several jumps away from my science ships ... and just when I arrived in system, a science ship of the Galactic Vhemm Empire was finishing the job. So, no queen for me

According to all I read the queen is supposed to be a nice addition to your space forces. Battleship sized and spawning warrior drones every x days (although I don't know if you have to pay energy credits for maintenance of the queen and her warriors)

[pchang]

vhemm must be weakened now. Just switch to a military government and conquer them.

[Proteus_MST]

vhemm must be weakened now. Just switch to a military government and conquer them.

Actually that's what I have planned, now that I have destroyed all nearby Prethoryn fleets (including the large 46k strong) ... but I am part of a federation and must wait an additional 3 years, till it is my turn to be president, before I can declare war on them (fortunately the Galactic Vhemm Empire is one of only a few empires in the galaxy that is no part of any Federation or Alliance )

[pchang]

Pls post updates. This will be my game source until I can buy/install the game myself. I am on a series of trips and won't have the chance to try Stellaris for at least a few more weeks.

[Proteus_MST]

O.K., here the newest adventures of the Terra unitas

I waged war against the galactic Vhemm Empire. I would have liked to set "Vassalization" as War goal, but that would have required an unreachable high warscore (something around 280). Therefore I chose to demand the possession of a couple of planets atr my border instead, in order to reach deeper into Vhemm territory and be better able to defeat the Prethoryn.

The result (after I also cleaned some Prethoryn worlds, in order to gainm access of their territorxy can be seen here:



As a result of my war the Vhemm empire split in 2 parts ... the original Vhemm empire, as well as a splinter realm tnamed "Vhemm Nation" that was soon vassalized by the Bruggan consolidated planets (the dark blue neighbor of mine).
Unfortunately, when I hadn't fortified all of my new acquired Vhemm planets with space stations yet, a large transport fleet of the Prethoryn took the chance to occupy one of said planets ... and, before my own armies drove them off, purged all inhabitants. Even more unfortunately the game engine (due to buggy behavior, I guess) now believes that I did the purging, resulting in a 5% happiness malus for most of my population, as well as a massive relationship hit of 100 with most other empires (which only slowly returns to 0, with a speed of 2 per month).

Also I now have a Vhemm resistance movement on all occupied planets which occasionally blow up a building on said planets (fortunately their support isn't very high)

Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy the crew of a science vessel got sucked into another dimension ... while the chief scientist and half of the crew returned immediately, the other half of the crew took some months to reappear ... on board of a cool looking other science vessel:


Its equipment was hopelessly outdated ... but fortunately the ship kept its cool looks even after I upgraded it to my tech level

The Prethoryn meanwhile seem to have lost their last large fleet when they tried to attack one of my fortified planets. A whopping 28k strength, but it was lead by a rather young (just 1100 years old) and only moderately experienced queen ... and my armadas were just one warp jump away.


With the Prethoryn front being kept quiet and a 4th fleet having been built I used my next presidency of the federation in order to declare war to the Dabba Continuum ... a Fallen Empire (the red one south of my territory and west of the Vhemm Empire) which is ... ahem was ... in possession of 3 huge ringworlds ... one totally destroyed, the other one totally intact and another, northern one with just one section intact.


In order to test their strength and because even one section of a ringworld being vast superior to any planet I chose the northern ringworld as war goal.

With the result that now my empire is in possession of a just 3/4 destroyed ringworld, several other (normal) systems that were formerly within the fallen empires borders and scan data that allow my scientists to open up technologically very advanced fields of study

[pchang]

Cool. How long to research the new techs? Have you researched the advanced governments? Does the science vessel being sucked into a rift mean that the rift late game event is about to spawn?