How to win a War in Heaven?

[mcsproot]

So I had one trigger for me, and it's not looking so good.

I'm part of the League of non-alligned Systems, along with the most powerful non-FE/AE in this game on a 1000 star map.

The AEs both have 350k fleets, at fleet cap mine is 180k.

One of my neighbours who I'd been taking territory from ever since they became a Devouring Swarm (they were my ally until then) was a Thrall, so I started invading them, the idea being to occupy their planets and take them out.

Problem is, their overlord keeps mopping up behind me. The best I got the Warscore to was 51%. I did try invading their systems but Warp is much slower than Jump Drive and they caught me fast and wiped out half my fleet from behind (my fleet had just engaged a spaceport when they arrived, and I lost 90% of my battleships before I could return fire, so I retreated).

Then the other AE started invading my ally, the strong one, who seems to be doing nothing to reclaim their worlds (their fleets is Equivilent to mine, sometimes Superior). This pushed the warscore on that war up and up towards them.

After a few years, they keep trying for peace. The AE I am 'winning' against offers white peace, so I can keep refusing. The other one wants some planets, which is costing me influence each time.

I tried invading some of their vassals, but they quickly mop up behind me. I suppose I could send some troops to my ally and re-take his planets while keeping their main fleet busy with their vassal?

The main problem is, the AE's aren't really fighting each other, they are mostly fighting the League, and my allies are doing precious little.

So....what's the trick? Or is this one just doomed? I was aiming for Last, Best Hope and I think for that you need to get Total Victory against both.

EDIT: It's close to the 200 year mark, I guess I could wait out for the eventual Crisis and hope that it targets one of the AE's so I can mop them up?

[TSP]

Joining the League can be a really bad decision to make, depending on your empire's strength when it happens.

If you can hold on long enough for the Crisis to happen and it seems the only way out for you, then do that. This should be a last resort however, as the Crisis is very likely to wipe the floor with everything in the galaxy, because you will still be in a 3-way war, now a 4-way war. So only aim for this if you see really no way out of the WiH.

Since it's already 200 years, I'd say Prethoryn is the most likely candidate. Which, with the new buff, seems, to me, to be by far the strongest Crisis (Unless you get AI when you yourself are Synthetic, or god forbid, End of the Cycle, RIP).

WiH while choosing the League draws a lot of variables depending on whom joins what. You could have a few Fanatical Purifiers in your League but they got battered through those 200 years OR they grew massively...


Your "friends" are likely not helping you out much because they don't tend to pick fights they cannot win. Depending of the state of your Galaxy, you may be fubar and a Crisis may indeed be the best way, but it depends on how much you're pressured. If you can just power up your own empire even if your allies grow weak, you might just come out on top after all. In that case, a Crisis may be detrimental (Especially if it spawns on your side of the galaxy!)

[mcsproot]

Originally posted by Agent Orange:

Joining the League can be a really bad decision to make, depending on your empire's strength when it happens.

If you can hold on long enough for the Crisis to happen and it seems the only way out for you, then do that. This should be a last resort however, as the Crisis is very likely to wipe the floor with everything in the galaxy, because you will still be in a 3-way war, now a 4-way war. So only aim for this if you see really no way out of the WiH.

Since it's already 200 years, I'd say Prethoryn is the most likely candidate. Which, with the new buff, seems, to me, to be by far the strongest Crisis (Unless you get AI when you yourself are Synthetic, or god forbid, End of the Cycle, RIP).

WiH while choosing the League draws a lot of variables depending on whom joins what. You could have a few Fanatical Purifiers in your League but they got battered through those 200 years OR they grew massively...


Your "friends" are likely not helping you out much because they don't tend to pick fights they cannot win. Depending of the state of your Galaxy, you may be fubar and a Crisis may indeed be the best way, but it depends on how much you're pressured. If you can just power up your own empire even if your allies grow weak, you might just come out on top after all. In that case, a Crisis may be detrimental (Especially if it spawns on your side of the galaxy!)

I don't really intend to win this game, I'm more achievement hunting. The main achievement I was aiming for was Slave to the Systems. I have no problem with abandoning this game if Last, Best Hope is out of my reach.

Do AE's also scale with map size? May try again on a smaller map.

[TSP]

Originally posted by mcsproot:

I don't really intend to win this game, I'm more achievement hunting. The main achievement I was aiming for was Slave to the Systems. I have no problem with abandoning this game if Last, Best Hope is out of my reach.

Do AE's also scale with map size? May try again on a smaller map.

AE's don't scale with mapsize, but because empires themselves like having a lot of room, they're likely to be more powerful (unless you set to many ai empires) than they'd be on smaller maps. Consequently, as most empires tend to join one of the two AE's in a WiH, it stands to reason that once you're falling behind in a WiH, it can go downhill a lot faster than on smaller maps.

Because certain ethos never join AE's, it will be in your favor to help them grow before the WiH starts. The less empires there are (The better ratio for Fanatics etc) the better your chances when joining a League. Empires with any of the other ethos that are really big also have a larger chance to join the League (Or even on their own), but this is never a guarantee and thus usually not worth the risk.

So both making sure the fanatic purifiers etc. grow large while keeping other empires small is your best bet to winning a WiH while joining a League.

It is very tricky to balance, because you don't want yourself to be small either, so sacrificing a lot of fleets can be very detrimental to your success and will likely even turn the fanatic purifiers against you because you're weaker than them.

[Ungenau84]

Patchnotes 1.6
"The power of Fallen/Awakened empire fleets now scales somewhat to the size of the galaxy"

[TSP]

Originally posted by Ungenau84:

Patchnotes 1.6
"The power of Fallen/Awakened empire fleets now scales somewhat to the size of the galaxy"

I stand corrected, and I found the values. Under common\country_types\00_country_types.txt, both the fallen empires get a 50% scaling to galaxy size and awakened empires get a 100% scaling. Crises get a whopping 300% scaling.

This means that fallen empires are ~50% stronger in a "1000 star galaxy" than they'd be in a "500 star galaxy". In this context in a WiH, they'd both be considered awakened and scale at 100%.

[Ruinous]

And add on top the difficulty scaling.