Started a new game on Grand Admiral for the first time

[unmerged(350868)]

Hello

I have played several games on Grand Admiral with scaling diffculty and it has not been much of a challange. So I decided to take the plunge on a huge galaxy with 10 AI at non scaling Grand Admiral. I was 57 years in and I thought I was doing pretty well. I was more powerful that all of my neighbours with whom I had great realations, with a huge amout of room to grow. There were a couple of empires to the east, one a fanatic purifier, and one that didnt like me, both quite powerful, but both at war. Plus there were about 10 jumps buffering us.

Then I started to get a massive influx fof refugees from the empire that didnt like me... although suddenly he wanted to be friends. Then I got a huge intel boost and had complete view over both empires... OR what was left of one of them. The Fanatic had completely conquered the other. It had a fleet of around 25k, and 22 starbases.

I have around 10 starbases and a fleet of around 4k. If I maximise my fleet output and upgrade all of my bases to naval yards, I could increase that dramtically, although it will take a few years.

I am a bit worried to say the least. Should i go for defensive treaties with my 3 neighbours... although I am not sure they will be much help in a fight as they are on the wrong side. It is a good 20 jumps to my heartland, so I have a bit of a buffer if shit goes down.

I am guesing being a warmonger might have helped as I could have conquered my neighbors and added the pops to my own... But that is not my playstyle (perhaps where I am going wrong). I have around 13 colonies, with 5 more queued. The Fanatics have 11. Their diplomatic weight is only 200 more that me, althoug they have a Humiliated 25% penalty. I have more pops (423v464) and he has slightly better tech (168v156) and a better ecomomy (459v333). Fleet is 647 v 92 ... lol... I think.

What should i be doing?

Should i give up on continued expansion and prepare for war?

Cheers!!!

 

[ASGeek2012]

I assume the "Fanatics" are that big light grey blob in the upper right corner of the map? If so, the AI generally does not declare war on you until you border them, so you have time before they attack. It definitely would be a good idea to build up your fleet, but you don't have to go wild about it if your other borders are secure (allies or friendly towards you). If you have room to expand, you should still keep expanding, if for no other reason than to acquire the resources you need to support a larger fleet.

You definitely want to improve your research. If you can't have a bigger fleet than them, have a better teched-up fleet instead.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

I just had an influx of 42 pops show up on one of my new planets as refugees. WIped out my influence, but it also supercharged my economy... apart from food. Wiped out my influence though. ANd my admin is now giving me a 22% tech penalty. 52 months from Starhold.

 

[Fulgrymm]

But did it wipe out your influence?

 

[Incompetent]

I just had an influx of 42 pops show up on one of my new planets as refugees. WIped out my influence, but it also supercharged my economy... apart from food. Wiped out my influence though. ANd my admin is now giving me a 22% tech penalty. 52 months from Starhold.

Why would it wipe out your influence?

If it's because you resettled everyone, you don't need to do that. Organic pops will resettle themselves assuming you give them the freedom to do so. Just make sure you have enough jobs and housing empire-wide. (Edit: unless you're suffering from a "new colony" rule... hmm. Probably they should fix it so refugees prefer to go to places that don't have such modifiers.)

Food shortages can easily be fixed in the short term with the market, if your economy is sound overall. (Actually it often makes sense to buy food anyway, as the AI overproduces and depresses the market price.) You can then just add a few agriculture districts somewhere to rebalance your economy. With the tech penalty, you just have to eat it until you get more bureaucrats, but the actual cost of the bureaucrats will be trivial compared to the benefit of the extra pops. Once your empire is on a sufficiently large scale, it starts making sense to have a bit of an admin cap buffer to deal with this kind of situation.

 

[Restless Native]

If fanatic purifiers get going they really snowball. You’re going to need to triple the size of your fleet to have any chance. Number of starbases isn’t directly relevant because you fight those one at a time. If you can avoid bordering them for as long as you can that will give you more time.
The problem is if you give up on expanding the FP will take all that empty space and it’s resources will be thrown at you. War is inevitable. Expanding is preparing for war.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

On the influence thing... yeah it was from redistributing them. I was not sure how quickly they would go. I was worried about an uprising as the planet they had settled on only had like 6 housing and was (going to be) my main food production planet. It was already close to capacity on jobs and housing, and 40 plus new pops was causing problems. I had tons of open jobs on other planets that I could immediately fill.

If I had just left it how long would it take 40 pops to move out on their own? Would there have been a possibilty the planet would rebel?

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

you've got two chokepoints that you have to secure with fully upgraded bastions, maxed out defense platforms and a fleet stationed there

then just chill and let them hit their head against the wall

be sure to research ftl inhibitors, and adopt supremacy and unyielding traditions

that fe watchers (i guess they're fanatic xenophiles) won't let them pass, and eventually will declare war on them if they annoy them too much by not complying to end purge etc.

other federations might prove capable in dealing with them too so that you can jump i and finish the rest

oh yeah, you should federate yourself for that free fleet doubling

 

[Ryika]

On the influence thing... yeah it was from redistributing them. I was not sure how quickly they would go. I was worried about an uprising as the planet they had settled on only had like 6 housing and was (going to be) my main food production planet. It was already close to capacity on jobs and housing, and 40 plus new pops was causing problems. I had tons of open jobs on other planets that I could immediately fill.

If I had just left it how long would it take 40 pops to move out on their own? Would there have been a possibilty the planet would rebel?

Planets don't really rebel, unless you ignore them for ages. If you have a lot of unemployed pops on a planet (3 or more), the game will eventually present you with a choice to either pay some consumer good upkeep for them, or the add the criminal underworld modifier to the planet. Not ideal, but far from the end of the world.

At baseline each unemployed pop on a planet has a 5% chance of moving to another planet, but each month only one pop can move away from each planet.

Depending on the state of the game, using Influence to move pops is actually surprisingly efficient. If gives you an almost immediate return of resources that you can use, and it's going to be much bigger than the energy you spend on moving an unemployed worker, and allows you to grow stronger far quicker and easier than using that influence than expanding to new systems would - and it also doesn't bring you closer to your enemies.

The downside is of course that you'll not move closer to new planets if you use your influence for resettlement. But then again, that's a Purifier that's coming closer. If you just allow them to just do the expanding, then the moment you can beat them, all of those systems are yours for free anyway.

Generally speaking, I'd focus more on research. Having a total of around 1k year 50 is the least I'd aim for in strategies that don't use early conquest. You have a lot of planets, but they're just not very productive without the research bonuses, and building a strong fleet is much cheaper if you have high level weapons and the appropriate hull upgrade/cost reduction techs.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

btw., what's that orange icon below the alloy production? i can't recall ever seeing it in my games

 

[nestorius]

scaling difficulty I find to be incredibly easy even with grand admiral as you start at the lowest difficulty at the start it gives you a massive boost when its important. I found actually playing on non scaling captain to be harder than scaling grand admiral.

 

[Restless Native]

I just realised that’s a fallen empire in the top left. So looking at that there’s an opportunity to limit them to two choke points as someone has already pointed out. Two bastions with shipyards behind them for reinforcements and upgrades. That’s your best bet.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

You need to take them down asap or they will get out of control. With a genocidal in your region it should not be difficult to build a coalition against them. If you and 2 other GA AI DOW the purifier all at once, the coalition should severely hamper if not outright destroy the genocidal. Just make sure your coalition members can reach the purifier through hyperlanes.

Look in the diplomacy tab of the purifier and see who is rivaling him. Start using diplomats to improve relations with the genocidals rivals.

Others are suggesting to use choke points and fleets to create a wall. That's ok but I have had GA purifiers crack my defenses (which I thought were strong) more than a few times. The best, safest and most reliable way is simply having more fleet power than the genocidal. Your allies fleets are good force multiplier and keeps the purifier busy while you focus on taking planets.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

btw., what's that orange icon below the alloy production? i can't recall ever seeing it in my games

Lol... Thats the notification that the shared resources is empty... Dont judge. You can use cash instead of minerals for buildings and districts. I do try to mamange most of my early colonies manually, but you are limited to the minerals that you can afford.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

Generally speaking, I'd focus more on research. Having a total of around 1k year 50 is the least I'd aim for in strategies that don't use early conquest. You have a lot of planets, but they're just not very productive without the research bonuses, and building a strong fleet is much cheaper if you have high level weapons and the appropriate hull upgrade/cost reduction techs.

What the best method to build up research early?

I built 2 additional labs in my capital early on. Should i just be building tech worlds pretty early?

I had been prioritising resources to be fair, to feed the growth of my empire.

2 of my neighbours are at war... I think that I can vassalise the other

 

[Restless Native]

It looks like an enjoyable challenge. Would you consider sharing the save file?

 

[unmerged(350868)]

I have all the DLC and no mods.

My options are nonstandard though. I like a slower paced game, and also wanted to see if I could push my system a bit. I have yet to notice any slowdown in a game I have played although my system is probably only a "midrange" (Ryzen 5 5600/16gb 3000mhz/ssd/6gb1660gtx). I thought more growth and more colonisable planets might work in the AIs favour.

Stars 1000
AI 10
Fallen Empires 4
Maurauders 3
Tech x2
Habitable Worlds x 2.25
Crisis x5
Mid Game 2375
End Game 2500
Victory Year 2600
Difficulty Grand Admiral
Agressiveness Normal
Logistic Growth Ceiling 1.85
Growth Scaling 0.15

The economy should ramp up a bit over the next couple of years. There are 23 colonies, with 3 or 4 more scheduled.

I hve started to increase naval capacity. Built a Bastion infront of one of the choke points (the actual chokepoint is on the border due to another civ expanding then losing the territory.) My fleet is tiny though. I have complete sight of the purifiers territory, and he has a fleet ten times the size of mine. Based upon his alloys though I hve no idea how he can support let alone expand his fleet. He is at war wih all of his neighbours, some of which are part of a federation. Their fleets are committed leaving him vulnerable.

 

[unmerged(350868)]

Welll. I dont know if the game is bugged, but I was unable to get any war exhaustion against him whatsoever, after taking a huge part of his empire, he still had all of his ships, as they it did not seem to register any kills at all. Eventually when I did get a kill, it still did not register any war exhaustion. When I rereached 100% and it timed out I still did not get an option to make peace..

My fleet was pretty much done at that point. He would have just kept on pushing into my territory. I assume his fleet were jumping away before they died... Or is this a bug... Surely a bug, no?

I tried to find a force peace console command. Could npt see one, but I found one called create add_ship. I called my corvette "alpha" so I tried that and got a size 32 titan... so I went with it, and though I could force a peace through status quo and salvage my game. I eventually pushed into his capital with my titan fleet, after completely wrecking my economy ... still no kills seeming to register from my battles. Then all of a sudden just before i got to a status quo, the galaxy declared a crisis against the Fanatics.

Still not sure how his economy could build and support over 2000 fleet power, take zero losses in a war, despite me leaving wreckage in every system we fight, and replace all of those losses almost immediately. I know the AI gets bonuses at this level. If it was not for the Purifiers, I thoink the game would have been a reasonable challange, but the diffculty jump was off the scale with the Fanatic Purifiers. None of the AI races could come anywhere close to raising his number of ships.

Perhpas if this had happened later in the game it was have been a more interesting challange. Or perhaps if I could have ended my war and rebuilt my fleets. I think I will play on without my Titan Fleet and see how it plays out. I am wondering if disbanding all of his captured starbases might slow him down a bit by creating a no mans land.

 

[Talanic]

Still not sure how his economy could build and support over 2000 fleet power, take zero losses in a war, despite me leaving wreckage in every system we fight, and replace all of those losses almost immediately. I know the AI gets bonuses at this level. If it was not for the Purifiers, I thoink the game would have been a reasonable challange, but the diffculty jump was off the scale with the Fanatic Purifiers. None of the AI races could come anywhere close to raising his number of ships.

Oh. Your enemy has the Become the Crisis perk. Makes him take a tiny amount of war exhaustion and lets him make Menacing ship types out of minerals, no alloys required. Menacing ships are weaker than the regular version, but, well, you can make them by the bucketload and you suffer very little war exhaustion when you lose them - and when you do enough damage and complete enough projects, the entire galaxy declares you to be a crisis and attacks. Watch out; there's a good chance that they got a pair of huge capital ships from that, capable of blowing up a whole solar system.

Anyway. Since you're in a crisis war now, you can only win by completely annihilating him. Or letting your neighbors take any systems you don't care about. The war will end when he has no more planets.

As far as console commands, peace_on_player should work but you may need to figure out which number that country has. There's also a 'surrender' console command but it causes a complete surrender and would cause you to annex the entire fanatic purifier. I feel like 'truce' or 'offer_peace' may be there too.

 

[gamerk2]

I don't care if you are playing a Fanatic Pacifist Inward Perfection build, NEVER SKIMP ON FLEET POWER. 4k 57 years in is bad; I generally have two 20:10 stacks of Corvettes/Destroyers up by then, and ideally Cruisers are on the way. Heck, if I'm comically large I might even have a third fleet up by then. Even Fanatics avoid attacking Empires that can beat them straight up.