Hi! Arithmetician here!
Nearly two years ago, I did a Warhammer 40K-based Stellaris run, "Stellaris 42,000: The Imperium Reformatus - As Ever in the Grim Dark Future, There Is Only War"
The Imperium of Man, as it was, has fallen. Centuries ago, the raging Warp Storms that cut across the galaxy encroached on the Sol System and Holy Terra itself, the heart of the Imperium. The rest of the Imperium was immediately cut off from...
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Since then, the ‘Under One Rule’ Origin came out, and I had the inspiration to do another Warhammer based run, but this time in the 30K / Great Crusade era, which the origin was practically written for.
Unfortunately, at the time that I was setting up such a run, my father passed away in May, and then I had a serious health issue myself (which is going better now), which made me not be in the mood for Stellaris for some time. But fast forward to November, I was finally ready to revisit the idea for the campaign.
Humanity in this play through is largely modeled after baseline humanity, with the addition of Perfected Genes, from the origin, Rapid Breeders (to represent how numerous humanity is in 30K/40K), and Unruly, to pay for that trait, and since when is humanity good on actually agreeing on things?
Starting civics are Crusader Spirit (it is the Great CRUSADE, and it allows for more interesting options than if we were just Fanatic Purifiers), and Distinguished Admiralty, which is both a very strong militaristic civic that works well with Crusader Spirit, but more importantly, synergizes with our Luminary.
Xenophobe is obligatory for the Imperium, whether as 30K or 40K, and crucially, it allows us to purge xenos. While I am pragmatic enough not to purge ALL xenos, since pops are power in Stellaris, I will make it a roleplaying rule that any Khornate, Nurglite, Tzeentchian, Slaaneshi, Chaos Demon, or Chaos Cultist pops MUST be purged via an Extermination purge, Armageddon bombardment, or world-cracking Exterminatus via a Colossus, if possible. Chaos is NOT to be tolerated in the Imperium.
Militarist is also key, since we will focusing on building a powerful navy to subjugate both xenos empires and scattered human empires that are not in compliance with the Imperial Truth.
And lastly, the 30K Imperium is definitely Materialist, being explicitly anti-religion (at least officially). This will also allow us to take on Relentless Industrialists as a planned third civic later, representing the environmental degradation (and enormous output) of the Mechanicum’s Forge Worlds.
And our Luminary is Sethano, in a nod to our eventual Empress of Mankind from Stellaris 42,000K. Sethano is an admiral, which with her Origin and Distinguished Admiralty means she will start at Level VI. As for her traits, she starts with Genome Artist and Titan of Industry as positive ones, and Blunt as her negative trait.
Early game, a leveled up Genome Artist is actually more impactful on one’s economy, as if one levels it up twice (which Sethano starting at Level VI will allow me to do), it gives -30% pop upkeep. That is a lot of extra food and consumer goods for an early colonization rush, which is highly incentivized by the Origin, which gives points for leveling up the Luminary trait based on how many planets and systems you control within the first 40 years of the game. Moreover, it is very fitting with the canonical backstory of the Emperor of Mankind, or in Sethano’s case, the eventual Empress of Mankind.
Titan of Industry doubles down on the economy-boosting traits, and not only reflects Sethano’s alliance with the Tech-Priests of Mars, but also the industrial tendencies of Sethano from my 42K game.
Given that the Origin rewards being highly aggressive, Blunt is practically a free pick for us. Xenos are to be subjugated or enslaved (or purged if they are Chaos-aligned). Any negotiations with xenos are with the eventual goal of subjugating them, but war will be our preferred instrument of expansion. Moreover, Blunt is the only starting negative trait of the ones available to use with our ethics that does not damage our economy or unity production in some way.
This is NOT an ironman/achievements compatible run. I do use Gulli’s planet modifiers as the main gameplay altering mod, along with a mod that permits Armageddon bombardment stance for all empires of certain ethics - after all, what would 30/40K be without a proper Exterminatus? Wild Space is another key mod, making some parts of the galaxy entirely uncolonizable, representing regions of space where Warp Storms rage, which will at times lead to interesting galactic geography, and make it so that we are still discovering secrets in the galaxy even late into the game.
I also sparingly used console commands, but this was primarily either to correct the occasional bug, or trigger certain events to challenge me for AAR narrative purposes.
(It took me HOURS to get a proper spawn right near the center of Segmentum Solar... fortunately, I was doing other things in the meantime. It was still frustrating though, so I’m glad I was able to get a good campaign from that start.)
Difficulty is Grand Admiral with Midgame Scaling, set to maximize by 75 years in. Given the early game emphasis of Under One Rule, I wanted to have a more active start, rather than just turtling for the first several decades.
And now that I’ve got that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this AAR!
