PDOX Games VIII: Communism Will Win

[Bralia]

Protheans confirmed. All their civilization laid bare, and yet immense difficulty to gain anything of true value.

[Ostroeuropa]

The Suebian republic is doing well in Imperator. The fight with Rome approaches, but will be a cakewalk I suspect, i've simply managed to expand faster than them, propogate my culture and religion more, and field a larger army. Moreover, their manpower is wiped out currently while i'm sitting on 700k. The issue will be terrain. The alps are disputed and have those bottleneck provinces, but the main border is from Calais to Switzerland.

Soon i'll be larger than Maurya in India, but have about half the population.

Game might be too easy once you get the hang of it. I think next game i'll try a minor state next to one of the major powers, that might be harder. A Phoenician game for the Tyrus achievement maybe.

Berlin is still a silly place and getting sillier. A dozen or so citizens and freemen with around 140 slaves. I think it's something like 10 slaves for each person. The slavery capture mechanic probably needs to give less priority to the capital.

Policy map mode looks like WOLOLO spam (religious conversion) giving way to Temple spam (civilizing.). Waiting for the governors to die in fully converted regions before switching to Culture spam in case there's a Druid pop being created with a delay.

The games internal politics leave a lot to be desired. Initial gameplay as a tribe is intrigue laden and conquest is limited by modifiers that force you to convert provinces to your culture and religion to avoid overextension, or civil wars happen. A single Tribal chiefs getting pissy can provoke civil war easily.

Eventually that simply doesn't happen because you'd need to piss off lots of them at once to have a civil war. By the time you switch to a republic or monarchy, that's the end of internal politics, and I just don't care enough about the republic mechanics to mess with them. The only time it's bothersome is when Populists take power but even then it's a minor +10% power cost with no actual mechanism to prevent you just waiting 5 years until someone else is elected.

The senate is far too happy to approve my bullshit and the consequences for overruling them are basically nothing.

Stability is a non-factor in republics and gives you an extra dozen or so forced religious conversions ever couple of years from the religious power you save. There is no point in trade except trade with the capital because the AI will spam you to export your resources, that will change as there's less AI nations to bother me and might necessitate an hour long session of setting up trade networks.

Army composition:

10 Light armies;
10,000 Archers, 10,000 chariots, 10,000 light cavalry. Hit+Run Tactics
5 Heavy armies;
10,000 Archers, 10,000 Heavy infantry, 10,000 heavy cavalry. Bottle-neck tactics.
5 Border Guards; (Barbarian task force.).
10,000 Heavy Infantry.

Navy;
20 Trimemes I built before I realized I couldn't DOW Britain until I owned calais. Will be suddenly jumping to 100 Trimemes when I do.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Meatbag delenda est

[Ostroeuropa]

Rome performed better than expected due to hiring mercenaries. I won my war, but not decisively. With another victory i'll seize Massila and box them in to the Italian peninsula, partitioning them from the Gallic holdings which will hopefully cause chaos in Gaul.

The slave-taking was laughably insane, I ended up taking about 50 slave pops back to Berlin, which basically means 1000 mana is needed to convert all the buggers. Around 10 years worth, so not too bad, but still.

I think Roman Armies have a slight edge on me. Unit for unit, they're punching above their weight, so it's the good old two stacks to defeat one thing it seems. During my war with Rome, the land I took from them was less than the amount they expanded into Gaul while fighting me, which has spooked me a bit, because now i'm on a truce timer for expanding further (Rome is my only neighbor, everywhere else is colonization before I hit a neighbor.), but Rome isn't... so they'll be stronger next time around. I think they've hit some kind of threshhold or something because in the last 30 years they've been at constant war and expansion after a lackluster start unifying italy. This time they even fought off most of Gaul and Me at the same time, barely lost to me, and took a shitload of Gaul. Their technological edge will also probably get worse by next time.

...

Ima buy some more horsies and get that Carthaginian alliance methinks.

EDIT:
Cannot into Carthage, am Great Power rank and they are a rank below that. Oh no.

Next war will be interesting. Maybe Rome isn't the pushover I thought it was. Losing territory in a war to a major power and still being bigger by the end of that war is pretty top-tier.

I think I need to take every opportunity to box rome in. After Massila i'll rush through southern France to block them from Spain. Can't rely on Gaul falling to chaos.

[Purpelia]

Call me old fashioned but I dislike mana in my strategy games. So much so that this, if no other, is the reason I'll stay away from IR.

[Ostroeuropa]

Call me old fashioned but I dislike mana in my strategy games. So much so that this, if no other, is the reason I'll stay away from IR.

You can use cash to buy mana in IR, so it's not too bad imo. Especially as their debt mechanics are pretty okay. If you go into debt an event fires where you get a years worth of income in exchange for a decade long debuff on a thing like army morale, population growth, and so on.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Call me old fashioned but I dislike mana in my strategy games. So much so that this, if no other, is the reason I'll stay away from IR.

[Lunas Legion]

Call me old fashioned but I dislike mana in my strategy games. So much so that this, if no other, is the reason I'll stay away from IR.

Depends on how exactly the mana is used. How it is in HoI IV and CK2, I'm fine with. How it is in EUIV and IR, not so much.

[Katyuscha]

After the End has to be the best total conversion mod for CK2. At least in my own opinion

Rome performed better than expected due to hiring mercenaries. I won my war, but not decisively. With another victory i'll seize Massila and box them in to the Italian peninsula, partitioning them from the Gallic holdings which will hopefully cause chaos in Gaul.

The slave-taking was laughably insane, I ended up taking about 50 slave pops back to Berlin, which basically means 1000 mana is needed to convert all the buggers. Around 10 years worth, so not too bad, but still.

I think Roman Armies have a slight edge on me. Unit for unit, they're punching above their weight, so it's the good old two stacks to defeat one thing it seems. During my war with Rome, the land I took from them was less than the amount they expanded into Gaul while fighting me, which has spooked me a bit, because now i'm on a truce timer for expanding further (Rome is my only neighbor, everywhere else is colonization before I hit a neighbor.), but Rome isn't... so they'll be stronger next time around. I think they've hit some kind of threshhold or something because in the last 30 years they've been at constant war and expansion after a lackluster start unifying italy. This time they even fought off most of Gaul and Me at the same time, barely lost to me, and took a shitload of Gaul. Their technological edge will also probably get worse by next time.

...

Ima buy some more horsies and get that Carthaginian alliance methinks.

EDIT:
Cannot into Carthage, am Great Power rank and they are a rank below that. Oh no.

Next war will be interesting. Maybe Rome isn't the pushover I thought it was. Losing territory in a war to a major power and still being bigger by the end of that war is pretty top-tier.

I think I need to take every opportunity to box rome in. After Massila i'll rush through southern France to block them from Spain. Can't rely on Gaul falling to chaos.

Who's you playing? I did a Pyrrhus of Epirus game and found myself laying waste to Romes armies in every engagement

[Bralia]

The Iron Century begins soon. For FREE. And there's going to be a CK2 Dev Diary every single day next week, so get actually hyped. This is going to be cool. As usual, click the image below, if you want a tiny bit more information, this is really only an announcement:

[Grenartia]

The person who thought of this stupid poll should kill themselves in real life, I have a better one. I always have the best polls and all polls should be left up to me because nobody does them better than me, I'm not in the business of bad polls:

Which Stellaris ideology/life form would you want to persecute and stamp out most, regardless of how the ethic axis works?

Egalitarian
Authoritarian
Materialist
Spiritualist
Xenophile
Xenophobe
Radical Centrist Gestalt Consciousnesses
Organics (those filthy meatbags)
Synthetics (stupid tin cans)

Kind of the like opposite of the preferred ethic poll from WAY back in the day, but not because you're not bound to choose the direct opposite.

Alright, I'll say it. The fucking RadCent Gestalts. And the Xenophobes, too.

[Wallenburg]

Materialist xenophiles > all.

What's best is being a xenophile empire and waging war on the fanatic purifier hiveminds. You get to genocide entire civilizations, because they would to the same to you. Except when your gene tech gets too good, and their rights switch from extermination to assimilation, and you have hundreds of unemployed pops taking years to convert.

[-Ocelot-]

Stamp out all meatbags

Definition: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, love is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and strangely enough, not many meatbags would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose... against statistically long odds...

-HK-47

[Hanafuridake]

I always make sure to utterly destroy materialists in my Stellaris games.

[Ism]

When you're on the verge of forming the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros but your game crashes at every save except the one from 9 years ago.

[West Leas Oros 2]

Where are the Militarist/Pacifist options?

[Impaled Nazarene]

Stamp out all meatbags

Definition: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, love is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and strangely enough, not many meatbags would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose... against statistically long odds...

-HK-47

You, I like you.

[Impaled Nazarene]

The Iron Century begins soon. For FREE. And there's going to be a CK2 Dev Diary every single day next week, so get actually hyped. This is going to be cool. As usual, click the image below, if you want a tiny bit more information, this is really only an announcement:

([url=https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/468499/Otto2.gif]Image)[/url]

NAZ HYPE VIGOROUSLY INTENSIFIES!!!

[Holy Tedalonia]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/791983060741741115/680C9DA390512EB96973719E769C06B24563F6B9/

[Ifreann]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/791983060741741115/680C9DA390512EB96973719E769C06B24563F6B9/

[Holy Tedalonia]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/791983060741741115/680C9DA390512EB96973719E769C06B24563F6B9/

There's so much wrong with this map, and this war. Like me having to rely on the French for survival.

[Ifreann]

There's so much wrong with this map, and this war. Like me having to rely on the French for survival.

At least when you've been subjugated you'll get some lovely garlic pizzas.

[Holy Tedalonia]

There's so much wrong with this map, and this war. Like me having to rely on the French for survival.

At least when you've been subjugated you'll get some lovely garlic pizzas.

Nah, Romania is leading my alliance. Hitler idiotically declared war on Poland whilst in war with team Czech, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. So the Polish and French Alliance entered the war just about when I had lost most of my territory to the Germans (imagine me with only Hungary losing all of Austria). Now Russia's has a the focus "Baltic Security", and Britain and Italy capitulated france. So if I lose I'm likely going to be annexed by the very angry German man.

[Ifreann]

At least when you've been subjugated you'll get some lovely garlic pizzas.

Nah, Romania is leading my alliance. Hitler idiotically declared war on Poland whilst in war with team Czech, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. So the Polish and French Alliance entered the war just about when I had lost most of my territory to the Germans (imagine me with only Hungary losing all of Austria). Now Russia's has a the focus "Baltic Security", and Britain and Italy capitulated france. So if I lose I'm likely going to be annexed by the very angry German man.

Historically that doesn't tend to go well.

[Holy Tedalonia]

Nah, Romania is leading my alliance. Hitler idiotically declared war on Poland whilst in war with team Czech, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. So the Polish and French Alliance entered the war just about when I had lost most of my territory to the Germans (imagine me with only Hungary losing all of Austria). Now Russia's has a the focus "Baltic Security", and Britain and Italy capitulated france. So if I lose I'm likely going to be annexed by the very angry German man.

Historically that doesn't tend to go well.

I'm not going done without a fight lining my line with tier 10 forts to slow the German advance. Also staging a coup in germany, hopefully that will distract them