/civ4xg/ - Strategy/4X General

Reposting because new thread.

Anybody have experience with Age of Wonders III ?

I used to love Master of Magic and this seems to be it's best moder day imitation ?

I haven't played it but does it consider magnetospheres, gravity and surface temp?

>mfw the Riftborn ending
>mfw they were the blight all along

Are Vodyani just the weakest faction in ES2?

It just seems so easy to steamroll through their arks without even having to bother about ground warfare

Cravers are weaker

so what's a good fleet composition for stellaris?

Don't hit me with the corvette meme I want a proper fleet

Should I go lots of cruisers or have lots of corvettes destroyers to protect bigger ships or what

based hyperlanes

CORVETTE SPAM CONFIRMED BEST TACTIC

FUCK YEAH VETTES

BASED GENOCIDES

CORVETTE SPAM WINS

wish me luck

...

I think they just take a huge amount of time to expand early game- their only upside is that their arks leave them impervious to being rushed.

>people doubted corvette spam

we all told you it was overpowered

you can't rush an ark unless they retrofit it to all beam weapons
AI vodyani are shit, but they're a great player faction

As the Vodyani, having another empire right next to you is pretty damned good. Rush making a new Ark and watch as your opponent loses their home system in record speed.

MANLET FUCKING CABBAGE

MANLET CABBAGE

Even manlets can score

Gravity and surface temperature yes, but not magnetospheres. I'm guessing it has something to do inlore about the materials being resistant to radiation.

...

Veeky Forums.

How hard is it to rule without either authoritarian or egalitarian?

STALIN

RED MENANCE x3

Because fuck space - fantasy is where it's at ! Amirite guys !?

Orcs ! Goblins ! Elves ! Mythical Creatures ! Sleel clashing with steel ,clouds of arrows and powerful magics !

THEYRE ALREADY DEAD UNCLE JOE PLEASE STOP

youtube.com/watch?v=aX2CcrsxLcQ

CORVETTE SPAM

TO GO BEYOND BRAZIL

PLEASE JUST MAKE IT STOP
/PG/ I ALREADY DEAD JUST STOP

CORVETTE SPAM

somehow I'M the bad guy

hahahaha

I always go Expansion & Master of Nature, then Supremacy & Interstellar Dominion (you need Utopia for the Ascension Perks).

The bonus you get with this combination are amazing, especially since I'm usually aggressively expansionist, the best ones are:
* 2 pops per colony
* 10% Growth Speed
* +1 Unity for Capitals
* +2 Core Systems
* Free tile blocker clearing, removes 9? tile blocker research requirements
* +45% border range
* +2 Admiral Skills
* +15% Fire Rate

Domination is weak unless you're really into vassals (why lol).

Diplomacy is only useful if you're a carebear and/or going for a federation victory. Which is fucking boring. Yawn. RP only.

Discovery is okay, most useful for the +1 leader skills & +10% research speed choices.

Harmony is somewhat ironically useful for hive minds & purifiers because of the Bulwark of Harmony choice if your neighbours are potentially coming to kick your ass. In that case it would be a useful second choice after picking Supremacy as the first choice (would give you +30% fire rate inside your own borders along with some other useful bonuses).

Prosperity is often my 3rd choice. When complete it is a nice suite of reductions to the cost of mining stations, and the cost AND upkeep of buildings & ships.

8-1
BASED STALIN

I need to get ES2.

Nice work, /civ4xg/.

What factions have crazy questlines?

>also rate

United Empire

>allied with riftborn
>help him wage war on the sophons and the cravers
>he helps me against the UE bullies
>i entangle all his systems in vines
>researching the influence capture tech
Surely the best way to repay him is to steal all his colonies at once, right?

B

The Riftborn already got bullied out of their galaxy, please stop bullying them more

The best possible outcome

>
>/pg/ on suicide watch

>Cravers are weaker
I don't know what you've been playing, but they're the AI that always booms in my Endless difficulty games, especially since the patch halved their depletion rate. They're also crazy good to play as, that starter Coordinator ship you get from picking the "intercept" option in their first quest lets you fuck everything up and assimilate minor factions like no tomorrow. They can also easily steal all the early game wonders due to double FIDSI. Battles wise increased CP is always useful and their exclusive Virtual Endless hero is crazy as well.

What victory are EL vaulters best for?

I am accepting them into my tree society
How is that bullying

>anyone on suicide watch over the cup

science, can you even read?

Science

Thanks

Yep. Bordering Cravers in an Endless game = a bad time.

They're actually one of the stronger military factions too due to the holy resource mechanic boosting the effectiveness of units wearing that resource

Remember to watch our match tomorrow against /egg/

We should qualify for the main Veeky Forums league on the basis of this result.

Thanks, I'm not 100% trustful of the in-game list so I thought I'd ask.

Science, duh. Doesn't the game already list preferred victory types in faction selection? They get all sorts of science bonuses, and their unique teleportation ability is the ultimate defensive ability.

They're pretty great for Supremacy as well for that reason, because they can easily protect the capitals they conquer. Vaulter units all have the "technolover" trait as well, giving pretty hefty additional bonuses to gear if it's their selected holy resource at the moment. Combined with the fact that they have racial bonuses to strategic resource extraction means they have extremely highly kitted out elite units.

late game they get fucked though

I'd expect /egg/ to be autistic about this as well, so it's unlikely for Brazil to happen again.

There is no late-game if the cravers do well

reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/61nolh/ship_equipment_load_out_for_141_15/

>inb4 reddit

>so what's a good fleet composition for stellaris?

50 Corvettes (kinetics or lasers, until you get energy torpedoes)
20 Destroyers (they are kinda meh so doesn't really matter)
15 Cruisers (medium plasmas and a flak battery when you get it)
10 Battleships (kinetic batteries)

>(embed) (embed)
So you can't even fix a pastebin, you fucking retard.
Friendly advice : let Spiderbro do it. At least he doesn't force shitty editions.

hey spiderbro

Temperature.
Only thing that can make colony cost lower than 2.0 ( but hiogher than 0 ) without any tech.

Gravity will make the planet uninhabitable if its off even by 0.1 degree.

Ideal temperature for default humans is 14 C, max deviation is 24 so lowest without a penalty is -10 C.
Pump more greenhouse gas into Mars atmosphere ( 0.1 will suffice ).

I'd rather (embed)s than an offtopic OP desu

That's what happened.

>How hard is it to rule without either authoritarian or egalitarian?

It's not that hard anyway, just takes longer to get productive pops.

When you conquer a planet ensure you fill it with defensive armies to reduce unrest, and a governor, if you have a lot of influence then use the happiness edict.

Factions were a mistake

Also :
Quick rundown on colonization in Aurora WITH DEFAULT HUMANS.

Gravity cant be changed and has to be countered with either genetic modifications OR underground infrastructure.
Gravity does not factor in the colony cost, planets with less than 0.1 G and more than 1.9 G will have N/A colony cost meaning they will not be habitable without support.

Temperature is either raised by greenhouse gas or lowered by anti greenhouse gas. Green gas has a upper cap, you can pump as much as you like it into atmosphere but after a certain point it wont change temperature anymore ( Titan in Sol cant be terraformed to colony cost 0 for this reason ). Temperature factors into colony cost.

Any "dangerous gas" in the atmosphere ( ammonia, methane etc ) will keep colony cost at 2.0 until pumped out entirely regardless of conditions.

Water, tidal axis, day length, magnetic field - dont matter, have no bearing on colony cost and are purely for RP purpose.

Feel free to ask if you want to know something.

What are the best traits to add to your species in mid/end game?

the ones that fit your planet's specialization

you are specializing your planets, right, user?

Make like 30-40 cruisers. Then maybe 10-15 destroyers with point defense and small weapon slots for screening missiles, strike craft, and corvettes. Cruisers should have all medium slots or 1 large slot with the rest medium. Put plasma in the medium slots and kinetic artillery in the large slot if you have it, otherwise just run full plasma. Corvettes and Battleships are situational. Spam corvettes with energy torpedoes if enemies have a lot of shields, but only in addition to your cruisers with destroyer escorts comp. Battleships are too expensive and take too long to build to be really efficient if you need to shit out a high damage fleet really fast. If you have the time and resources though, building a fleet of all kinetic artillery battleships will make your fleet extremely formidable. If you're super rich and have the time to do it you could replace your Plasma Cruisers with Plasma Battleships mixed with Artillery Battleships, but its usually more practical to just stick with cruisers.

In terms of conceptual design, kinetics are the best all around weapon from early to late game. They are the most effective standard weapon type against shields, especially larger kinetic guns, so if your enemies use a lot of shields you should switch to kinetic weapons. Plasma eats through armor like crazy so it's your mainstay for defeating fleets with lots of big ships (cruisers and battleships), but they are less effective against shields which is why you need to pair them with kinetic artillery or energy torps. Energy torpedoes are pretty much the only kind of missile/torpedo worth using because they are immune to point defense and do 200% damage to shields.

Thanks! Added 0.1 greenhouse gases like you said and Mars now has a nice 11 Celsius of surface temperature. Colony cost immediately went to 0!

Say, if a planet doesn't have a hydrosphere, can we use the water function on the terraformers to create one?

That's a no brainer only for the thrifty/industrious/natural... etc. But I have the starter trait points PLUS two new trait points.

So for example for the energy world, what else than thrifty would you take?

Anything more than thrifty would be a waste of social research and therefore time, however, I would choose Conservationist? (-consumer goods cost) and/or Communal for the happiness. Anything that doesn't have a cap (rapid breeders useless on max pop planets, for example).

>What are the best traits to add to your species in mid/end game?

In stellaris?

Well, firstly I assume you've been smart and each planet has a specific role.

In that case:
Mine planet - Industrious, Strong, Very Strong
Food planet - Agrarian
Energy - Thrifty
Science - Intelligence, Natural Whatever

Leftover points consider :
Communal, Conservationist, Change Favourite Habitat Type (if applicable)

If you have Utopia with the special traits from the final bio ascendance, then Erudite for science planets and Nerve Stapled for Slaves (ie, Mine & Farm planets)

You can add water to planets with terraformers but aside of some minor temp increase its a pure cosmetics.

Nice.

if you plan on going genetic ascension then you should wait until you have both perks for the full 7 points

either way go with anything that boosts the resource in question and then something like communal or conformist with remaining points

sedentary is basically a free point since you'd be crazy to allow free migration anyway so hopefully you have it/can add it after perks

>>also rate

It won't be as balls out expansionist as an Authoritarian Xenophobe race with some form of Adaptive but it looks like a very good all round race.

The positive traits you've got are fine, although I'd replace conservationist with strong, and solitary with maybe slow breeders or slow learners (because you have a +1 leader level it reduces the impact the slow learners would have).

Mechanist I wouldn't bother with since being a fanatic materialist you're likely to get them extremely early anyway and most starting planets are best for becoming energy and then tech planets. You could I believe take Meritocracy which would give you another +1 to leader level.

they really need to add things that increase megastructure build cap

they're useless as is but with my 67k minerals doing literally fucking nothing for decades on end, I should at least be able to build some structure with them

fucking dumb game

Yeah. What really concerns me is after the conquest malus. The initial 10 years I can have control but if it stays chaotic afterwards it becomes unbearable. Can I give citizenship to everybody without egalitarian?

>play EL on hard, several eras ahead of everyone
>play EL on serious, several eras behind everyone

thanks

drop solitary and add repugnant

fuck what the normie empires think

Age of Wonders 3 has more in common with Civ than with MoM. I recommend playing the older games if you haven't played them yet.

It's an okay game (maybe even good with the DLC), but as a fan of the previous games I can't help it but feel disgusted because of the direction they have taken. Might buy the DLC on sale and give it another shot.

If you like the idea of MoM (insane(ly) powerful and creative magical spells and beings), I might also recommend Dominions 4. The gameplay is differenct from a 4x (more like MoM meets wargame), with little province management, but great battles. Only really shines if you are willing to play PBEM (play by email) multiplayer though, but it's probably one of the deepest, most entertaining and satisfying online strategy experiences.

My objective is to have a cosmopolitan empire capable of early conquest as well (also to set foot on every planet possible with droids). Thats why I picked mechanist. Anyway, most of the minerals early on come from the mines, hence the mining guilds.

Two things concern me: energy and overall unrest.

>Yeah. What really concerns me is after the conquest malus. The initial 10 years I can have control but if it stays chaotic afterwards it becomes unbearable. Can I give citizenship to everybody without egalitarian?

Full Citizenship is only restricted if you are Xenophobe.