Any tips for Difficulty 9?

[stadtpark-hartmut]

I'm in a death spiral. Guess I need to go back and do different reforms first.

Intrigue isn't a problem, rebels aren't a problem, Focus Points and Admin points a plenty. Really nicely managed empire, but my military is losing planets left and right, I can't produce ships fast enough and my once very competitive squads lost their edge - the enemy is improving faster than me and bringing 3x the amount of ships.

Guess I have to either start over or load a pretty old savegame, where things hadn't spiralled out of control yet.

[Klikkit]

Get the reform that halves the cost of stretching the budget early. It lets you do a lot more with the budget to make things work.

Avoid fighting the cybers. They relentlessly try to retake lost territory. If you can’t wipe them out very fast just let them be. They won’t attack you if don’t take their original planets.

What enemy is taking your planets? The Hive? The civilized empires?

[stadtpark-hartmut]

I went back a hundred turns to turn 11, effectively restarting my run. Will focus on a better squad design and more industry and cheaper ship-building and more modernization points earlier, by going directly for the Space Force reform.

Hopefully I can get a few mineral rich planets in the window where I am strong and then go from strength to strength. Need to go for handpicked expansion to special resources / metals, especially "Copperium" that makes ships cheaper.

Last time I went with fiscal reform and more Focus Points reform first and concentrated on Unity and keeping Intrigue and Rebels progress down and went for more Colony Ships etc.
- but what worked fine at difficulty 7 now needs to go in a different order at difficulty 9. The automatic expansion in all directions just isn't happening - I need to be much more defensive and bleed fewer ships.

(I always keep the peace with all civilized races.)

My highest unused potential is frontloading the "3x7 free focus points" from personal effort thingy even earlier, if I do have to start over / roll a new Galaxy, maybe that needs to be a Turn 1 thing. (Edit: not really practical, as one also needs Admin points for Court changes.)

[Chris Koźmik]

Off-topic: Once you finish your run, you can drop me some balance tips (like: on Difficulty 9 I had "list of things too easy" at early/mid/late game). :D
Preferably with a save or two :D (I love checking savefiles from players to examine the balance from a real game)

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Originally posted by Chris Koźmik:

Off-topic: Once you finish your run, you can drop me some balance tips (like: on Difficulty 9 I had "list of things too easy" at early/mid/late game). :D
Preferably with a save or two :D (I love checking savefiles from players to examine the balance from a real game)

Will do. Getting to 15 Win-Points will take a lot longer than on lower difficulties it seems.

While I haven't stalled my 2nd attempt yet, actual map progress towards planet count and population count is still so early, that I am really away from any runaway / snowballing effect. (I am at turn 107 right now (again) in my 2nd attempt at "9" - this time I think I will win and not enter a death spiral).

Might take a few more free days of playing - sadly have to go to work in RL more than I like.

P.S.: Main / 1st lesson learned so far is to only go on the attack, once I have a clearly better squad. - Preventing an early waste of crew and ships means disincentivizing my fleets: going Budget 0 on fleet (- 30%), setting all fleets to defensive, doing the planet claims in a hand-picked fashion, playing around with higher "Percentage-Requirements" vs Alien - just prevent my fleets from banging their heads against a wall for as long as I do not have an advantage.

2nd lesson learned was plonking down 2 Fortress worlds to pacify a front, so my fleets can concentrate elsewhere, and plonking down 3 Starbases on the offensive front, so I can actually make some progress in at least one direction.

3rd lesson: As for acquiring advantage:
- test out more squad-options and modernization options.
- Do Space Force reform first for 20% extra Beam Damage and Admiral/Vice Admiral +3/+2 Competence boost.
- Do the industry and modernization projects first, go for ressource deals and capture planets with strategic ressources, to make ship production cheaper, raise hp / shield / beam damage etc.
- second row of ship modernizations went into making them produced more economically; lowering crew might be next

I hope my choice for going Education Reform next will pan out to further give me technological advantage. 3rd Reform right now is Admin, as to lower my Bureaucracy Cost. - (going Fiscal Reform 3rd made me reload an older save after realizing that my bureaucratic overhead was the main culprit of me being unable to afford my "Projects")


P.S.: at lower difficulty levels (e.g. 7) I never needed my Budget to go into Infrastructure, as my tax policy already did the trick. This time ("9") I actually went for Infrastructure, as I had some Budget points free for going with Zero Fleet and Zero Army early on, and now have reached a point where I no longer need to boost titles, and probably can afford some Infrastructure budget to eternity.

P.P.S.: While not intending to save-scum, I probably reloaded a few Audiences more than I would like to admit while testing out the best course of actions, and sometimes finding an artifact to sell for 11k vs not finding one can be the difference in affording a few starbases etc.

Final Edit for now: What I really appreciated, was a "Council" vote doing away completely with my Corruption. (Allowing me to postpone some Anti-Corruption Laws and Reforms and decisions until later).


Actually: let me send you my current savegame. Sadly I already deleted the ones where I was entering the death spiral. - I tend to rage-clean my savegames after long sessions.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484850978
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484854467
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484859560

I am still working on Admin-Reform. - While I really do want Fiscal Reform now, as my effective tax would go from 70% to 96%, but back then I went with Admin first, because the Fiscal events (Bank and Stock exchange) actually cost money up front, and it is better to only start territorial expansion with Bureaucracy Cost reformed, else outgrowing my money problems wouldn't really work anyway.

Still: the actual problem with "territorial expansion" is to actually pull it off. As soon as I allow Fleets to request reinforcements, my ship burn rate will go through my stockpile in maybe 6 rounds: hardly enough to actually capture a system.


Edit: Things I would have done differently: Add FED-shares instead of subracting them, because this time I actually gave away 200 in an Event, and that hurts more the smaller the absolute amount in play is.

(In earlier playthroughs I never gave away any, and the fastest way to increase your percentage of shares is actually subtracting them.)

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Damn. I'm stalling again. Corruption is back with a vengeance, as the next Great Council had nothing to say on corruption this time...

And even with 100 extra Modernization my Squad keeps stalemating. Somehow they got better and my window of opportunity is closing for who knows how long. Might need different Blueprints. - Edit: found better squad - I really need to be less wedded to certain ideas.

Difficulty 9 is hard. As it should be, I guess.

Edit: is it random which policies are discussed in the Great Council? Suddenly I got "Judicial Prerogatives" again. With how hard everything is, I feel more and more like doing a bit of save-scumming to get it. - I mean: Council isn't all too often - might as well reroll my luck...

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Oh, boy.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3485127365