One Story Stops, Another Begins

A Final Farewell to Our Corporate Crime Jellyfish People

With the release of Shadows of the Shroud and recovery from a medical thing that all my momentum for the Salorim Syndicate has left me. While there are some really good times, there are a few main issues that are causing me to end this empire and follow along.

There was a new expansion with new stuff to try that I wanted to check out.

This is a pretty easy one. A fundamental part of playing a Paradox game is “don’t ask questions just consume product and get excited for next product” and with the additional AI content that Stellaris loves to push this slop reaction to the game is more important than ever. It’s hard to get excited about playing something when you can imagine the future that you could have using the new stuff. Additionally, I think that the computer reacts very poorly to new patches when you’re running a campaign.

I want to run proxy wars full stop. In fact, I want to run them so much I can’t imagine playing the game without them. The additional levels of dynamic action that you, as the player, can cause is extremely exciting. I’ve played several games where I’ve used proxy wars to destroy a fanatical purifier that I couldn’t reach and I like that they give a reason to engage with the espionage track. By shifting all of the operations to “nice to have options” with proxy wars being the meat and potatoes of going down the espionage route I’m very excited about the future

I’m a bit softer on many of the psionic choices because they play into my least favorite parts of 4X games.

I Messed Up My Accension Pick

I don’t know why I picked cloning. I really don’t understand why I picked cloning of all the potential picks in the game.

I Messed Up By Not Having Meat Ships

I thought I picked them and I didn’t. Oh well lol. I don’t understand why I can’t get through a game without the metal ships but I really want to.

I think we reached the natural conclusion of the game

Too much power, influence, and allies made my run trivial and the scaling of megacorporation wasn’t going to help at all.

So long to the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company – the greatest trade federation of all time. With that, I’ve narrowed down my next streaming game to two different options and want to talk about them.

The build might be buggy

It is entirely possible that bug involving corporate holdings is causing branch offices to get shut down that hasn’t been fixed. Since it occurs when you don’t have a commercial pact this is really, really bad for a criminal enterprise.

What Game Do I Want To Play

I’ve recently done a lot of spiritualist empires and xenophile empires as part of my research into automatic resettlement. I’ve played around enough with the shroud where I don’t want to play that, wilderness, or tankborn. While I think that Superstitious is by far the best civic in the game to play and need to start games without it. I’ve been unable to really push through and get far enough into a game to feel good.

I really wanted my stormborn/psychic/unyielding run where I force proxy wars and force people to cross my inhospitable territory to work out. It never meshed in a way that satisfied me in a way that I enjoyed.

I also want something that will get my out of my rut of “early game turtle, make friends, and boom after getting hydrocentric.” It’s a very nice way to play but isn’t kind for creating the sort of kinetic action we crave.

I don’t want to play around in the shroud. Maybe in a few weeks, or after some of the items get sorted out but I’m forever getting the same patrons and I don’t like it one bit. I really like the genetic and cybernetic path that is offered in biogenesis and think the shroud stuff just takes too long to finish and work through. A xenophile/spiritualist run makes getting the extra envoys and progressing down the chain of zro addiction pretty easy.

I don’t want peace, I want problems always. I want meat ships made from my enemies who work the ocean as my slaves. I want to taste the exquisite shrimp that only comes from defeating your enemies and making them yours. I want to find my inner pirate and swing my sword like this.

So, with this problem set I need to get out of the “peacefully turtle by making friends and rush hydrocentric” mindset into something with a little more swashbuckling. I don’t want to focus on psionic/shroud stuff. My solution is to create an early game based on the swift application of violence to keep a high level of interest without getting too bogged down in the details. I loved biogenesis and think it should be a focus of whatever I do going forward. I want technology, exclusion, and jellyfish.

High Kingdom of Eternity

My first option is the High Kingdom of Eternity. There is a lot to like about this – the early game is going to be fueled by Technocracy and the Imperial government. I’ll be able to grab a lot of systems early on and if I’m close to another empire I’ll use the nihilistic acquisition to get some additional pops. I think an opening of Discovery and Supremacy

One area that I’m worried about is unity. With Academic Privilege instead of social welfare as my it is more difficult to get the unity.

Numerian Assembly

Ok, this is basically the same except we’re using parliamentary system instead of technocracy and really hate outsiders. Early game is going to be a little harder even with the fanatical xenophobe making up for some of the lost influence from

This build has the benefit of getting more unity and can quickly swap to technocracy or a better civic after unlocking my third tradition and beginning accension.

One thing that bothers me about both of these builds is that I’m using bio-ships and Anglers as a civic. I really wish that slavery was fixed so I could attempt a more authoritarian build.