/civ4xg/ - Strategy/4X General

>Can't play /pol/

I was looking forward to that. That flavor text was my favourite out of all the traditions.

I guess the reason they removed it was because unlocking all ascendency perks are tied to unlocking all tradition paths, but purity is kind of the only one that makes no sense to take outside of a xenophobic empire. But everyone would be forced to take it eventually just to gain the last ascendency perk.

Everyone, even the most oppressive regime, can claim they're harmony, everyone, even former east germany, can claim to have prosperity, but "purity" and the "rotten foundation of xeno inclusion" only works for a very narrow kind of empire. It's the main thing I was wondering about when I first saw it.

Like Best Korea.
>can't lead a best Korea in space
>can't become the glorious leader
>why even live?

>Can't play /pol/ because Purity was replaced with Diplomacy.

No need to be rude to the insects you're about to exterminate.

It seems likely the mechanics that were originally in the tree have been moved elsewhere in the game. Xenophobe is still an ethic after all and roleplaying seems to be a big focus of this expansion/patch, so it'd be odd if they didn't play up the whole fanatic purifier angle at least a little bit.

Supposedly there are other ways to get Ascension perks besides filling out tradition trees, like event chains. I'm not certain that you'll be expected to fill out every single tradition.

are they finally gonna fix missiles?

I find conquering planets a real fucking chore, though. Different ethic pops, rioting, micromanagements. I vastly prefer liberation, vassalization, and by the time I integrate them, the pops are already nice and peaceful.

Tradition trees looks like they were ripped alive from Civ 5.

Shit user, why are you stealing my ideas, that's precisely what I wanted to do as well.

Alternative idea is a race that seeks to eat and consume all others.

Or technophiles who will eventually go full "must destroy flesh"

Or perhaps a ruthless space corporation

Fuck. Having played Freespace and seeing just how big the ships in that game are was one thing. Seeing ships that dwarf the Colossus is insane.

also
>has ships from Homeworld 1 and 2
>but not cataclysm

They pretty much are.

I'm curious to see how they implemented the Purity options. Technologies? Edicts?

>cede planet
>put a pop from main species on it
>purge all xenos

The buildings will still be intact and the population will regrow automatically.

By the way, if I want to terraform a planet, is it possible to make it uninhabited by just resettling everyone?

Yeah.
Its really nice. Especially if you play a space commies.
>"liberate" some planets
>install local Party members as rulers
>new government is weak and teared by slave revolts or separatist movement(not always but sometimes)
>they rely on you and their fleets are weak
>still they propagate Communism
>and they care of unhappy, unproductive pops who would be burden for you space research programs
>when they are ready to accept communism you integrate them
Even as Xenophobe empire I like to keep allied(vassal) nations for RP.
Anyway its terrible that vassals are fairly limited it would be nice if they could ask concessions in wars or try bribe their overlord if they want colonize planets or something.

That may have been the toughest war I've ever fought and not lost.

With my Guerillas and their ability to ignore desert movement and ZOC penalties I gained the upper hand. I built up a for one large push and took out 6 artillary lined up in the center. The North I simply held. To the South built a railroad along the Milanian coast such that I could dump Guerillas into the combat area to overwhelm their defences as I moved up artillery to siege Erdenet. But finally when I took Erdenet that backstabber Bluetooth DOWd me. I didn't want to end the war with Mongolia too soon but I had to. I couldn't fight on two fronts. Most of my industrial capacity was already going to war with Mongolia.

In a way this is good news though. Now I can build up my defences in Erdenet. This way it won't fall quickly again to the Mongols. Plus I can finally make use of my Great Generals to take ever more land with CItadels and ultimately make use of my Shoshone homeland bonus next time I go to war with Mongolia.

>Supposedly there are other ways to get Ascension perks besides filling out tradition trees, like event chains. I'm not certain that you'll be expected to fill out every single tradition.

True, although it's still probably better for the game if you don't include options that are too narrow. It's not really an "option" if 90% of empires can't justify using it, and the remaining 10% definitely need to take it.

Mostly talking from a fluff standpoint here, don't really know what the gameplay mechanics were.

You cant resettle the last pop.
So either purge or put robot and disassemble him.
Why xenophobes can't use robots?
I get why fanatical one get enraged by even toaster but the mild one should use robots with no empire wide unhappiness.
Its like Praducks don't want xeno purging be fun.

You can definitely decolonize a planet by purging everyone, not sure if you can do it with resettling, never tried that.

I hope stellaris devs will add changing planet textures at some point.
world full of mines and production has smelters visible from orbit

Also buildings like space elevators that come from the planet would be neat looking things.

would be awesome if we got a "hive city" building that was visible from orbit

maybe make it a building that costs food but drastically increases mineral and power output on adjacent tiles

I was very tempted to an X-Com alien run myself, but I'll probably do that for my second playthrough.

For my first run, I'll be trying to recreate the Tau Empire. Using the new caste system and more varied customisation options for species rights to make it work.

For example, only the Tau primary species could become rulers. While alien races would have limited citizenship but would still be able to take up military service. (Assuming they're not weak or otherwise unfit for the job)

Dont forget chemical castration.

Hope someone rips theshipmodels models from battlefleet.

hope stellaris will eventually have additional megastructures like say Krashnikov tubes or Titan forges

I'd like being able to treat lesser being as livestocks, but not for food, rather for organs.
Like in the old UFO tv show.

Those ships of legend of the galactic heroes are tiny.

But there is thousands of them.

More like lots of these ships are stupidly huge. How do you run a 15km long ship? It could only be worse if that chart had the Freudian Nightmare.

Neutering is a purge type! Completely possible way to get rid of the undesirables in our glorious star empire!

And as far as the ship models from Battlefleet go, there used to be a mod on the Steam Workshop that just had models ripped straight from the game. But it's not around anymore for whatever reason. (Probably because the models weren't scaled and everything was significantly bigger than the default ships)

always good for a post

Most imperial ships have crews in the thousands to tens/hundreds of thousands, and many more automatons/servitors. When a single hive city can have billions of residents on a planet of trillions, in a system home to tens of trillions.. Well, you get the idea. 40k is always OTT on every scale, nature of the beast.

>How does ED help you with that?
I get retention for when random pops migrate to my empire, and this helps them fall in line. Again, you don't get any bonuses for them being different ethos to your empire.

The ED buildings would make them come over, see the shopping mall, and quit lighting everything on fire whenever you do something they don't like. It seems counter-intuitive, because the Hyper-Entertainment Complex is supposed to handle that shit easy. Not true. It counteracts, but does not cure, and basically adjusts the maximum happiness to be above whatever bonus the happiness bulidings give. If their ED is positive they will likely NEVER be happy in your empire, and getting positive ED is extremely easy since low happiness causes more ED which then guarantees they'll never like you again. A base 50% happiness is fine, but if they're diametrically opposed to your empire, they'll find more and more reasons to get upset.

Militarist/Individualist/Spiritualist, Theocratic Republic. Show them Jesus, give them shopping malls, and take planets at will. You won't have to blow Influence on suppressing factions if they quickly forget to care due to your happiness buildings tiding them until their negative ED kicks in, and it lets you turn on certain options like Resettling or Selected Lineages without causing riots or hurting your economy.

yeh but honestly 40k shouldn't be used as a scifi standard because its pretty much space fantasy

Honestly, my favourite 'scifi' is when fantasy crosses over. I find a certain level of self-important 'hard' scifi to get kind of irritating, takes itself too seriously. 40k is at its worst when it treats itself seriously, but best when it toes the line between a consistent setting that understands its own rules & being able to make light of that. Same reason I love the Endless series actually, although they're a lot more understated in certain regards.

In regards to it being a standard, I'd agree in the context of sci-fi, but I think it's the go-to when it comes to silly shit.

>chemical castration
I really hate what they did to the tau. In their original incarnation where they were actually unambiguous good guys they were great and provided a nice contrast to the ridiculously over the top grimdarkness of everywhere else. While being small enough that they were completely laughable and so insignificant the core imperial administration probably still hadn't realized they were a thing.

Then later writers and dumbass fans of all the edgyness missed the joke of them being the only good race in a galaxy of space hitlers and made them into another rinse and repeat faction of grimdark faggots. The only good that came out of that was farsight.

>read Constructor's reviews on GoG
>remember sending thugs to deal with a fire
>read "My tenants complained about the smoke in the house. I sent a repairman and the house exploded, setting fire to my other houses. Exit, read, reset."
HA!

did you forget?
in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, there is only grimdark

Wait hold up, how does Utopia let us play X-Com aliens or the Tau now?

You can neuter pops and keep them happy with drugs now.

>wanting some weebshit tier space hippies in WH40K

Its not Star Trek you faggot.

It works specifically because it's 40k, that's the nature of juxtaposition. The naivete and hope of the fledgling Tau empire, unable to comprehend their relationship with the greater galaxy and the sheer scale of shite misery that is every other faction.

I think it's more like "the lore was barebones and didn't fit the setting but then Tau got super popular so they expanded it".
The struggle in 40k is not good versus evil, it's survivalists versus expansionists , with Cosmic Cancer in the shadows threatening everything.
Remember ,the entire Warhammer IP is just a toy commercial, it's edgy Transformers , or GI Joe for kids that have started masturbating.There's no moral lessons to be taught , only war to justify decades of kids and neckbeards shoving toy solders ad dice at each other over felt tables.
Even Star Wars/Trek has better lore. WH40k is Harry Potter tier derivative shite.

It's called being the straight man. The contrast serves to highlight how grim and awful everywhere else is by having something actually not grim near it to compare it to.

That the "good guys" are completely fucked on all fronts and only survive by essentially being so small and insignificant they are almost completely ignored just makes it better. Like that time they tried a cultural exchange program with the dark eldar which went... predictably

Got a source on that? Sounds hilarious desu senpai

forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-57-species-rights.995302/

Battle Thralls sounds pretty good for X-Com aliens, to represent how the Ethereals just run around from planet to planet, subjugating new species, genetically altering them and then throwing them at other worlds as their invasion forces.

Wheras for the Tau, a Caste system and the ability to give alien species limited citizenship (so they can't become rulers, like the Tau Ethereals) while they can still serve in the Tau military through the Military Service part of species rights.

(Also Orbital Habitats sound pretty great for Tau Air Caste shenanigans)

Don't forget the time the Tau tried to peacefully greet the Tyranids. They quickly learned to not do that again.

>cultural exchange program
>with the dark eldar
Top kek.

Rate my shrooms

I can't remember exactly where but it went roughly like this
>meet dark eldar
>think they're just a different faction of regular eldar
>try the diplomacy route the tau favor
>offer to exchange representatives to aid communication and such
>dark eldar kidnap literally everyone and laugh their way back to commorragh

And that is why them being nice guys makes the setting better than them being another bunch of grimdark space nazis. They get to be the butt of the most stupid shit that everyone else is way to jaded to fall for.

Why does AoW3 lock your class units behind both a building tree and research when you get a full racial unit tree for free? Is it all just to make getting t4 units harder?

Would a mod making all the class unit tech (aside from t4 units) researched at the start negatively impact the game in any way?

If I remember those traits correctly, you're below -100% growth time, so your planets are going to be filled in literally 1 month.

10/10, would call op.

Being Tau is like joining a game on turn 600+ where you get to have 30 turns alone to develop before you start meeting everybody.

Yeah, but my energy credits are garbage. I take a -25% hit after all policies considered.

who cares? you can instantly colonize planets fully

>medicine
Did I miss something? What's that?

But being "good" literally doesn't make sense in WH40K universe, not with each other race being the genocidal maniacs they are.

And DESU WH40K lore isn't that grim dark. I find 1984 universe waaaay more dark and depressing.

Fuck off butthurt trekkie.

Its "Ethics rework" mod. Its a civ "focus" of sorts - like space construction , medicine, education etc.

Wasn't their tech level at least pretty alright? I thought their main problem was that they have barely any planets and therefore barely any troops and ressources, which is why the empire doesn't really care much about them compared to end game crises like the Tyranids or Chaos.

Yeah, Eldar genetic engineering and a bunch of what are basically evolutionary/spiritual steriods (that the Tau dont even know about) gave them a massive 'early game boost' essentially. In terms of actual material resources, they've got fuck all. Imperium could wipe em out in a year if they weren't dealing with a literal galaxy of more important concerns. Shit, lot of Imperial higher ups probably tolerate them as a buffer in a certain sense.

Their tech level is actually crazy good, but their empire is tiny. If the Imperium felt like it they could drown them in numbers as they usual do, but with chaos, orks and god knows what running around the Tau are pretty low on the purge-em-all list.

>point out 40k lore is shit
>somehow I'm a Trekkie
How many toy soldiers do you own?

You're both right, relax. It's just games. We can recognize the flaws in stuff and still enjoy it.

I knew that their tech was definitely above standard issue imperial guard equipment, but those aren't exactly the emperor's finest soldiers. So I wasn't quite sure how it would compare to space marines or ancient stuff from the age of technology.

But I'd say that regardless of their current state, they have the advantage of still having a technological growth. Mankind and tech development seems to have had a bit of a falling out.

>being "good" literally doesn't make sense
But it does? The location the Tau are in specifically enabled them to be good guys.

It's far enough away from the eye of terror to be relatively safe from chaos and the warp is fairly stable as far as the warp goes, tyranids are coming into the galaxy from above and below the galactic plane and are focused on terra due to the astronimicon, not the eastern fringes, the eldar aren't genocidal and quite like the naive new guys around there to manipulate, and the local stars are fairly densely clustered making their rather slow FTL less of an issue than it otherwise would be

And the imperium? They regard them through a full on realpolitik lens, sure they're an issue but a tiny one, black crusades, hive fleets, reactivating necron tomb worlds across the empire, orc waaaghs and so on, are MUCH bigger issues. They treat the Tau as something like ablative armor on their eastern borders to soak up anything that might come from uncharted space over there, with the full intention of wiping them out once the real threats are dealt with. Or they would have that intention if they were big enough that the high lords of terra actually knew and cared about them enough to be able to name them. Which they aren't.

All that shit is why the tau worked as a "good" faction. Ultimately they were naive idealists in a reality where EVERYTHING is awful, not truly comprehending how amazingly blessed their tiny tiny sector of space was for them and blissfully unaware of the reality twisting horrors on the other side of the galaxy and how easily they could be eradicated should any of the real power in the galaxy turn their gaze on them. They are just bit players so far down on everyone priority list that hasn't happened yet.

>Their tech level is actually crazy good
>Still can't into warp travel

a fraction of warp travel is about technology

Just to put things in perspective, the Tau use plasma weapons as standard issue gear, something that the Imperium uses relativly rarely because they can't build it without a good chance of blowing themselves up everytime they pull the trigger.

did you put that backwards by accident

Humans have a lot of crazy-advanced shit left behind, but cannot replicate/generally don't understand it, and deffo can't develop it. The shit they do have is surrounded in mysticism, but when it works, it's mind-shatteringly good. Tau refused to believe Titans existed, for instance, cause they'd never think that kind of warfare to be plausible. Same goes for the scale of Imperial fleets.

He's right though, warp travel is 10% tech and 90% having psykers to navigate for you and the tau have no psyker ability whatsoever,

>And that is why them being nice guys makes the setting better than them being another bunch of grimdark space nazis.
The tau are't grimdark space nazis, though.

They are grimdark space communists.

Navigators are genetically engineered, so that's technically technology.

Anyway, Tau just have a high average of widely available technology, mainly because they have such a small population. They still can't really grasp how many humans a single Hive World contains.

Mankind still has technology it can reproduce that shits all over anything the Tau have, from the Ordinatus to the AdMech's various military technologies it equips it's Skitarii with. It just can't give every single mook in it's armies a master-crafted plasma caliver.

Isn't the standard issue gear pulse weapons? I thought plasma was for the battle suits.

But regardless of that, what you can afford to be standard issue is more a matter of scale rather than tech level. A small military is easier to equip with high tech weapons than a giant pangalactic legion of conscripts.

So the main criterium for comparison would be how the Tau's best weapons, armor, ships, vehicles, compare to the Imperium's best weapons, armor, ships, vehicles.

I always liked that aspect of the tau, it reminds me of Asimovs Foundation stuff.

The empire in that series is pretty like the imperium, they build stuff big and functional because they don't need to improve on them, they have the resources to make inefficient shit and it just doesn't matter.
The foundation itself though was, initially, a single planet colony on the rim of the galaxy and just couldn't maintain the same inefficient shit the empire did once things started to go to shit, so they focused on miniaturization and efficiency with the end result that they developed things like a belt buckle sized energy shield that could protect against small arms fire wheras the empire could only build generators big enough that they were static buildings for city defense or on starships.
This eventually results in a situation where warlords are using massive empire battleship relics after the fall of the empire that get oneshot by tiny foundation frigates with superior firepower, durability and maneuverability due to them having actually pushed the tech to its limits.

>But it does?
But it doesn't.
The second they make contact with anyone from the "main" WH40K universe their ethics and mentality has to make 180 degree change OR they are going to get wiped out.

Yo, calm down butthurt trekkie. Not everyone jacks off to Picard and his evolved sensibilities.

Tau aren't nice guys, they just seem to be because everything else in the setting is so fucked.

It's constantly implied they're just sheltered and niave about the threats of the galaxy and that they'll either have to become maximum xenophobe like everyone else or get wiped out.

Even as it is, they're extremely 1984 in a lot of ways their society is run. In pretty much any other setting, they'd be the bad guys.

There are three canon possible outcomes for 40k:
a green galaxy
a bug galaxy
Chaos rapes everything

>Emperor finally sheds his corporeal form and coalesces into pure spiritual ascendance, as was planned
>The Second Renaissance of the Imperium
Except the High Lords of Terra are fucking scared shitless of losing their power base.

I'm never sure what the Imperium acutally can produce and what it can just keep running. I'm pretty sure stuff like Titans and Emperor class battleships are something the Mechanicus can't build anymore, but I got no clue about small arms.
From what I understand the Imperium is slowly but surely losing technology because people can't build the best stuff anymore and only maintain it through repairs they mask as sacred rituals because they got no fucking idea what they're actually doing.
Which, amusingly, is exactly what happend to the empire in the Foundation saga, knowledge got lost until they were too dumb to even run nuclear powerplants.

Pulse is technically just low intensity plasma tech, it's less powerful than the stuff the empire uses but that's because they actually thought to make it NOT explode on use, figuring reliability was quite important. The bigger plasma stuff on battlesuits does outgun the empires stuff and because they actually understand the tech they use and don't just mindlessly reproduce 20k year old designs, it also doesn't explode.

I was specifically referring to before the retcons that made them always space 1984 when they actually were legitimately good. Them evolving as a species and adjusting their attitudes as they slowly wake up to the harsh realities would've been great. It's that the retroactively changed them into castrating mind controlling space hitlers from the get go instead of them growing into it.

Pulse weapons are technically a plasma weapon, it's a particle accelerator that causes a brief plasma flare when it hits it's target.

But then the Adeptus Mechanicus can field more troops from it's Skitarii Legios than the entire Tau Empire can many times over, and their basic weapons are far nastier than Tau pulse weapons. Skitarii Vanguard and Rangers can both handily outgun Fire Warriors, either by ignoring their armour with magnetic accelerator muskets or hosing them down with a hail of cancer-bullets.

Imperial Guard vs Fire Warrior equipment isn't really a fair comparison given that the Guard as trillions strong and designed to win battles of attrition. A better comparison would be Tempestus Scoins vs Fire Warrior equipment, and then the Imperium comes out of it looking a lot better.

They have a lot of systems, factory planets, huge production bases able to mass-produce these patterns of technology, but they're unable to refine, understand or develop them. The only breakthroughs they get is when they find lost STCs. All of the things listed are still produced by the Imperium, but if they lost the production base (especially if it's limited to one planet for a specific pattern) they essentially lose access to that tech forever. Ryza is a good example.

hehehehe

i stole their system after finding double shadow play and this was their response

They can build Titans with the exception of the Imperator class.

Small arms wise, they can reproduce most stuff they have working copies/knowledge of except for things like phosphex and volkite weapons.

It's more a matter of quantity, a lot of their stuff can only be built by a handful of artisans across the entire Imperium. Which like you say, means that every time one of these artisans dies due to the planet being fucked by some catastrophe, they lose an irreplacible piece of technology.

Except for phosphex, because sentient napalm was so scary it's discoverer destroyed the instructions on how to create it.

>decide to play stellaris
>oh hey a new expansion
>read about it
>no longer want to play until it comes out
wew.

>sentient napalm
fuuuuuck that.

>mfw Dyson Spheres only give you +50 energy

It'll be out i the next month just hang in there

You forgot 4.
>emperor's corpse dies and he instantly reincarnates
>proceeds to actually fix things
>rolls with the godhood because starving chaos didnt work so he might as well overpower them with dat worship
>humans win
>tau exterminated like rodents on his victory lap

STOP IT.

Don't need the Emprah back anymore, Roboute Guilliman AKA The Saviour of the Imperium is back to un-fuck things

>Capital of an Empire that envelopes a quarter of the galaxy
>Surface looks the same as we left it

For those unaware, this guy's tweeting information about the Civ 5 rippi- I mean traditions in Stellaris twitter.com/dmoregard