The Failed War - a short anylitical AAR

[Falhxer]

When winning the majority of battles is still not enough...

Hello everyone, this is gonna be a short AAR broadly detailing a war I started with the utmost convinction that I would be able to win. Contrary to my planning, the war went on completely different from what I was expecting. I failed to achieve many initial objectives and what I tought it would be a relatively quick war transformed in something much worse. My blitzkrieg strategy failed, It did not help the fact that I also engaged on multiple fronts and I failed to strike with decisive abd overwhelming force.

I'm using a slighty updated custom mod I use in my main AAR: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-and-collapse-a-stellaris-aar.1555118/page-2
I needed to test it in a parallel game to see if the updates I brought to my mod were indeed good ones. To keep it short, for whose who have yet not read my main AAR, the mod in a way tries to achieve hoi4 in space. With more fleets that are both cheaper to build and upkeep, naval cap is increased and tied to pops (pops will now provide naval cap too) with various tech, space travel is slower and systems are upscaled from vanilla, making them three times bigger and everything else three times smaller including planets, stars, ships, etc. My update change the number of starbases an empire can have, I multiplied three times the number of starbases based on systems and each pop contributes with a slow value towards starbase cap. Usually the AI never overbuilds starbases, but with this small change the AI will freerly build them. This in my opinion makes the game more fun. More systems can now be fortified, more starbases can be transformed in anchorages, etc. It changes the game quite a bit. By defeating a fleet now that fleet can retreat faster near a friendly system and taking systems even against smaller empires is a much greater challenge now. The AI wont hesitate to build fortresses and taking those systems even without a fleet to protect them can have quite the toll on the invader. Instead of vanilla, where the scarcity of starbases meant smaller empires were easier to conquer, now it takes more time and I was able to see more cases of succesful rebellions. Where smaller empires managed to hold long enough to gain indipendence, while in pure vanilla it would mean certain defeat. Enough of this, time to talk about The Failed War.

As the title already implies, this is a war, that went in a different way I planned. While it was a major miscalculation and mistake on my side it made me quite happy knowning that the small update I made to the mod spiced up the game a lot. This is an analytical AAR, there is no narration here. I will focus on the war, it will be a general description since I haven't taken any screenshots. I may roll some previous saves and take some screenshots from there but other than that the war is not particularly well documented. I could try technically to reconstruct the battle the took place based on the log battle which documents each battle, where it took place, who were the participants and the aproximative losses. Unfortunately it could spirale out of control in a full fledged AAR and I'm already working on two AARs so I must restrain myself. This decision alone to just write about the war alone will take time from my main AARs. Despite this, still I wanted to make an AAR about this war because it was just THAT good. I had fun I haven't had for quite a while. Also I'm a sucker for last stands or wars that start well and end in failure, the turn of tides that will completely change the old order, it has their charm I guess.

How it started:

How it developed (the war is still not finished yet):

Here we can see the casualties of war, both sides have suffered till the current date, 2343.06.08:

The penalty for reaching 100% WE is rather unforgiving and I disabled the status quo, so it's up to the involved parties to negotiate a peace agreement.

In the next part I will discuss the war itself, it will be a generalised overview. I will talk about the tactics and strategy I've used and why it failed in short and long terms which inevitably spelled my doom. Funny enough, when I saw that I failed to succesfully launch a blitz against the weaker neighbour, the Divine Ozkox State and I had to keep 60% of my force stationed there for a longer time. I understood then that this was gonna be a long drawn war, what I didn't expect was this much of disastrous outcome.
I said previously, there will be no narration in this AAR, well, I lied, there will be a small amount of narration. I will present who are the war participants and I will discuss the previous wars in a few lines and what led to this entire outcome. Still the focus of this brief AAR is just the war.

I have used the same game settings as in my main AAR, so you might want to check it quickly to see what they are in case you are curious.

 

[Falhxer]

The strategies used in the war and how effective they proved...was a rather controversial topic...

I played as the Autocracy of Sol and the Khessam Star Republic was my vassal. In this part I shall discuss how the war progressed. In the next part we shall discuss about the protagonists and the causes of this war.

Phase I, the early offensive
The Autocracy of Sol launched a surprise attack on the Golden Pact, a defensive alliance between the Misharan Bonded Merchants and the Ma'Karan Enterprises. Two Megacorporations that for now collaborated and divided the controlled systems in different zones of influence. Many empires were subject to their whims. The Khessam Star Republic alligned itself with Earth after rather undocumented events that involved a desire of revanchism and the subsequent success made them pledge their undying support to the Autocracy of Sol.
Sixty percent of Terran forces were sent in a blitz attack on the Divine Ozkox State. Intel info indicated that the aliens managed to built quite a decent navay and could threaten Terran colonies that were directly bordering them or were away just a jump or two. Whatever the intel was true or not, after all Sol managed to obtain internal organs of the aliens and achieved a great degree of espionage dominance, however the attack failed. Terran forces were too slow in capturing enemy starbases and then rapidly engage Ozkox forces which when they saw the rapid and imminent Human fleets approach, they fled without hesitation deeper inside their systems. This forced the force to remain longer in the area and caused massive delays on the Silicron Kernel Front.
The remaining forty percent of fleets attacked nevertheless but failed to achieve the planned goals and when reinforcements from the two Megacorporations started to pour in a general retreat was ordered. The Silicron Kernel forces have been engaged before and some of their fleets suffered heavy casualties with minimal on our part. This would become a trend in the first phase of the war, where Earth would be able to inflict twice to thrice more casualties. Later on the casualties would pile up pretty quickly, especially on the part of the Khessam Star Republic that would slowly head towards total collapse.
The Empire of Dygan, neighbouring the Divine Ozkox State, during the major part of the war was rather uncooperative and answered in force only when Earth invaded one of their colonies later in the war.
The Ma'Karan Enterprises for a good part of the war were busy dealing with the Khessam Star Republic, which was an useful distraction but later proved to be unreliable and nothing more than a great burden to Sol. The Terran vassal managed to slitghly push inside the smaller states and occupy the Silicron Kernel isolated systems and colonies but the pressure they had to endure was simply too much. In part Earth was responsible for this failure. The unresponsive and slow reactions and the overall total incapacity to push beyond Silicron Kernel systems into Misharan Bonded Merchants' systems by the part of the Autocracy of Sol, allowed the two powers, much more superior in both population and industrial might, to slowly grind the Terran Vassal's fleets until their total destruction.

There were a few tentatives, later in the war, after the inital debacle, to occupy Misharan colonies by Earth, however the attacks left too many weak points for the enemy to attack and many fleets had to simply preside systems and defend them from enemy incursions. This left the remaining forces overextended and in turn they were picked apart by much larger counter attack forces and defeated or forced to an immediate retreat. Another issue was the fortified systems, taking them with smaller forces often proved impossible. In practive raids deep inside enemy systems for the distraction purpouse became simply an unrealistic strategy.

In the next part, we shall see the Misharan counterattack and the occupation of ex Silicron Kernel colonies. The counter attack proved so quick and effective, Sol had to fight for a good part of an entire decade just to push back the merchants. The aliens whatever or not expected Sol to attack, had a lot of fortress systems while Sol focused solely on the offensive on the most part avoided to build fortress systems and only fortify a few systems near the Divine Ozkox State.

(I didn't expect the AI to be so aggressive, I was completely unprepared for such an overwhelming response and I lost several colonies to them, it was absolutely brutal and it took me a long time to repel them back)

 

[HistoryDude]

I mean, if your strategy was blitzkrieg, it arguably makes sense that it didn't work. Blitzkrieg doesn't work long term - you run out of land to plunder eventually. Granted, this should be less of a problem in Stellaris since space is vast, but it could still apply.

 

[Falhxer]

I mean, if your strategy was blitzkrieg, it arguably makes sense that it didn't work. Blitzkrieg doesn't work long term - you run out of land to plunder eventually. Granted, this should be less of a problem in Stellaris since space is vast, but it could still apply.

Once it slowed and bogged down it was over for me. Surprisingly the AI did a good job at responding and that means my mod works as intended.

Funny enough in the previous wars I used the same tactic and it was devastating for the AI, mistakenly I was convinced it would work here too, how wrong I was. Well, I will go in more detail in the next parts about it anyway.

 

[Falhxer]

The aliens' counterattack was extremely well coordinated and overwhelming in power...yet they refused to engage us...we tried to wage wage war on their fleets while they waged war on our industries...so many colonies were lost...it took a long time to retake them back and the damage done was irreversible...

As phase I was reaching it's end, phase II started, it was the reversing of fortunes for Sol. The attack group One eventually managed to defeat ninenty percenty of the Divine Ozkox State navies and the process of occupation began. One fleet remained to seige the remaining free systems but it became clear very soon that the Ozkox were crippled beyond recovery and they would unlikely be able to recover any time soon.
While the engagements with the Ozkox were met with success the situation near the Silicron Kernel turned sour quickly. A combined attack of the machines and the Megacorporations managed to simulataneously target all the neighbouring Sol's systems and capture the undefended colonies. The defending fleets were unable to put any meaningful resistance in the face of such massive counter offensive. The initiative has been lost and now the Autocracy of Sol was on the defensive. Almost an entire decade was required to push back the aliens and the damage done to the colonies was quite heavy. With time the situation would only get worse and a great rebellion woluld cripple Sol even further. The tactics that used to work in the previous wars, were now failing in almost every aspect.
To exacerbate the situation unbeknownst to the Autocracy of Sol, in the early phase of war, the Golden Pact was busy putting down rebellions in another part of the local stellar cluster and their fleets were focused on crushing their rebels first. Sol failed completely to use this opportunity. The next unused opportunity was when two Fallen Empires declared war upon the Golden Pact. Their losses are unknown to Sol to this day, should have they been heavy the Golden Pact was able to quickly recover from them and continue to pressure Sol to be on the defensive. Future historians would critque this severe lack of initiative for many centuries to come. Another common critique, would be the meager invading force. While in the previous wars, Sol had proven to be powerful and aggressive enough to crash their enemies. This war was started with the same convinction, what the Autocracy lacked were fleets. Experts could point out that Sol needed at least twice the invading force to have at least some chance, having declared war with such small force was nothing else but the act of mad men.

The arrows represent almost accurately the counteroffensive by the aliens and the subsequent attempt to push them back. The Terran vassal was quickly swarmed by enemy fleets and struggled for the majority of the war to push them back or mount any significant offensive against them. Despite this, the loyal aliens still fought and captured enemy colonies at every presented opportunity.

 

[HistoryDude]

That looks bad. Let's hope that the Autocracy can recover and push back the hostile powers. Losing reputation in the wider galaxy could lead to small empires binding themselves to Sol's enemies...

 

[Falhxer]

That looks bad. Let's hope that the Autocracy can recover and push back the hostile powers. Losing reputation in the wider galaxy could lead to small empires binding themselves to Sol's enemies...

Wait until you see the next part, hehe (in an ironic way hehe). While non playing a for a bit, I had time to think about the solution to the issue and I found something (cough massive slave sellout cough, since I'm overpopulated anyway). So the war is still uncertain until I finish it for good, ofc it will be just one try not reloading saves etc. I would have done it in ironman but as usual ironman just breaks out of nowhere for me so yeah...I will never use it again.
Still I technically occupied a lot of systems and colonies so pushing me back is gonna take a lot of time until my navy is completely wiped out (well considering I'm almost out of alloys and the current production is very close to zero, yeah... And let's not speak (spoiler alert ahead) about how I lost 1/3 of my naval cap when the rebellion happened to me, so now unless I conquer them quickly, the costs are gonna bankrupt me very quickly) other than that is not that easy for the enemies to quickly reconquer everything before too they reach 100% WE and if I manage to survive and still have some captured systems while keeping mine then I consider it a success nonetheless. Surviving such a foolish war is already something. Ofc assuming I survive until they reach 100% WE so yeah, wish me good luck on that.