After having finished some games with different setups, I now wanted to test a purifier race.
The setup is a warrior race that sees the recently conquered as unworthy, ready for the slaughter.
Ethics are Fanatic Militarist, Xenophobe. Very strong, rapid breeders, enduring, nonadaptive, sedentary,
continental. In hindsight, nonadaptive wasn't the best choice.
As I tried to do with after my other finished games, some feedback:
The setup is a warrior race that sees the recently conquered as unworthy, ready for the slaughter.
Ethics are Fanatic Militarist, Xenophobe. Very strong, rapid breeders, enduring, nonadaptive, sedentary,
continental. In hindsight, nonadaptive wasn't the best choice.
As I tried to do with after my other finished games, some feedback:
- You can't disband wormhole stations in sectors but you can create them in a sector. Usually not an issue but with this setup I was in a big negative -300 energy so every bit of energy counts. The big mineral gains and the trades made it workable.
- As a purger, I couldn't immediately purge the recently conquered as I got no robot or genetic mod techs. So, no role playing purifier until I got the robot techs. This made it a hard and less fun (no role playing) setup. Being in a pickle already with negative energy forced me to use the conquered as slaves for the time being. Almost 180 years passed before I could start purging some pops and gen mod some of my pops to take their place. It would help if the player could maybe choose a certain part of the tech tree. Maybe this could also make other techs unavailable. But in this build, I really should have had more options to move Pops around after slaying the weak. Or even if you could cherry pick a few starting techs? Being a purger, it would be logical that I would research the techs needed to put my pops on other planets or robots first.
- Games could be more interesting and diverse if some of the chosen starting techs locked out other techs. You should be able to choose this in the game setup though. Imagine if your starting weapon setup would lock out all others. You want Kinetic, play the whole game with Kinetic. You want to purge? Early robots and genetics but then you can't research some other techs (empire doesn't need them). Just a thought.
- I have posted this before, I don't like the amount of influence it costs to resettle Pops. Pops in this setup don't care so why would others empires care? Because of the missing techs, I put the planets in sectors. But once I got the techs, what a pain. No way to deal with slaves/purge once a planet is in a sector. So you pay influence to get it out to issue the purge command. Resettling then also costs influence, a double penalty. You can move pops to planets in sectors, but you can't purge? As a purger, your diplomatic faith is almost sealed, everybody doesn't like you anyway, why would the influence matter? In this setup, it would be more logical that moving pops costs minerals and energy (organizing the transportation) instead of influence.
- If in the future resettling pops does still cost influence, make it possible to acquire influence by other ways. Maybe trading minerals and energy is a possibility? Influence can be bought IRL for the right price.
- An awakened ascendancy grew large (39 planets). 2 neighboring AI's did so as well: 42 planets and 29 planets. One of them, a fanatic purifier himself. And I thought we would be best purging buddy's
I used a mod "Autobuild" that upgrades buildings automatically. There is an option to do this for the AI as well. I think it helped the AI. Anyway, I wanted to stop the awakened ascendancy as they now declared war on the biggest AI. There was no way for me to barter access to this growing threat. If I did nothing, the AI empires would be wiped out. The only option is to declare war on the attacked AI myself and fight my way through aiming to get close enough to access the original AI threats empire. - Purging robots/Androids takes to long. They are machines and I hope they have software to manage these machines and turn them off. I know you could factor in the destruction of the metals etc. in but then, the time the AI's need to be built should be shorter. It also takes a very long time to build them. Order half the AI's to take apart the other half, and then do this again with the remaining half. Wouldn't take long to disable them all. I can imagine Paradox Intergalactic Enterprises to develop such software in 2200
- Ground combat. Controversial topic. For me, I wouldn't mind if it goes but if it stays, it needs improvements. I'm more of a builder style, global management type of player.
- No point in a distinction between defensive and attack troops
- Make it possible for transports to attach to a fleet or attach an escort to troop transports
- Make the management easier: selecting troops and equip them in 1 go or change the equipment, delete, add, order x number of y type of troops
- Possibly add a counter system to the planet representing the level of fortifications. Do not use a building for it. Increasing the level (the fortification counter) increases the level of fortification and the overall power the troops on the planet have. Higher mineral and energy costs per level (base levels should only cost minerals) and higher maintenance costs. Starting planet should have a high fortification level.
- Orbital bombardment at its highest level only takes out a few top tier fortification levels as the fortifications also represent the terrain knowledge, guerilla warfare, underground networks for supply and so on. When the planet switches hands, the fortification level for the attackers should be lower, at least initially. Attacking with a big force should probably lower the fortifications.
- Depending on the size of the attacking force, there could remain rebels on the planet even after the war is over resulting in a few years of lower planet income. Leaving troops on the planet would counter this but at least you would need to leave a portion of the army there for a certain amount of time.
- Possibly make the ground combat a bit slower (maybe selectable in the game setup).
- When slaves revolt, and there are troops in orbit, make them automatically land on the planet to help, and embark again after combat. Or you could increase the number of troops allowed on a planet.
- If you set war goals for x number of planets, that's what you should take to win the war. Now you often need to take double the amount of systems (and even systems of allies of your enemy) in order to win. Why set war goals if taking these doesn't end the war? If i need to take 10 more system to win, and I occupy them, why would I give them back if the AI made me take more planets than set in the war goals