Being a Fanatical Purifiers is so hard

[Hugh]

You can't get research agreements. Everyone hates you. They all rival you so they mostly become friends with each other and defensive pacts galore. You can't trade or talk to the curators.
It's insane. Even ruthlessly exploiting all the bad AI, I still only made it to mid game.
Has anyone won a game as a fanatical purifier?

[cooltv27]

I have, but it was cause of a really good start on a ring galaxy.
I had a xenophobe FE on one side of me and a spiritualist FE on the other side and no contact with any other empires. I could develop my empire completely out of reach of anyone who would want to kill me.
I doubt it counts as a real experince

[Idrinth]

try the smallest possible galaxy, their difficulty also scales with galaxy size after all.

[dark cron]

If fanatical purifier is too hard to begin with, you can still reform goverment or even add the extra civic (Galactic Administration Tech) later in the game.

[markdb92]

You cant remove the civic in the next patch thus stuck being one.

[devilindupriest]

Max naval capacity at all times till mid-game, keeps most groups from starting anything with you till then. At that point keep it up, and keep expanding/building sectors. Soon you'll be attacked. I went all in on traits and civics that boosted naval power (fire speed, and mod traits that boosted fleet damage 6/12%) Everything else by end game you can have got, or will outgrow, eh? Sooner or later you have enough minerals, research, planets, population, etc. Makes for a rough start. You need to expand fast enough (despite not being highly adaptable fast breeder, bonus core planets etc) that your capacity is as high or higher than theirs, even with the smarter ai mod the ai wont be maxing out it's fleet early/mid game though. AND you need to keep that naval capacity mostly filled in bursts. Also upgrade shipyards for moar ship capacity. By midgame sooner or later someone will start something with you, and odds are between no bonuses and all the defense spending, they're ahead of the tech curve of you.

Good.

Also, odds are at least one other person will join in/federation/defensive pact. Demand whichever planets look tasty/near your border/create a blockade that keeps the remnants of the soon to be loser blocking other empires from rubbing uglies with you. Lure in the nearer or weaker side's fleet with the corvette gambit, have your doomstack parked one system away in the direction the enemy is coming from, warp in on top of them. Or split stack and do the same if you don't like corvette lures. Since it's early mid-game he'll have 10 ish planets probably, smash through each of them blasting military stations, shipyards, and any ships he pumps out. Let the other guy grab a planet or two. Start building armies at this point if you can afford to while pumping out enough ships to keep you above the other guys stack. (this is why sectors, btw. Defensive War 25 influence to raid the sector piggy bank)

Sometimes a third or fourth enemy may declare during this. Usually the hangers-ons are chicken and if you don't take much damage and trounce one enemy they'll decide to wait and see what happens.

Head over, find a way to bring the 2nd enemy fleet to battle and crush it. Recap your planets if need be. Split stack, leave half to keep 2nd enemy in place, take the other half still flagged as rally and still pumping out ships back to the first guy. Start walking the line capping planets like they owe you money. Split off 2-3k if need be to start making circuits of his rebuilding starports again to keep the corvettes out of your hair.

Also, also, generally pick the enemy you aren't demanding planets from to trash. Weakens them both, and your shiny new planets are undamaged and have their spaceports.

Generally by the time things run down any additional empires that declared will time out and start offering peace. If one was particularly weak looking refuse and keep the train rolling to grab planets from them after the first/two are dealt with.

Having survived a round or two of that you'll have weakened the empires touching you enough and grown enough (and also importantly! Research debris while fighting in the next sector over. Stealing their tech keeps you near to parity via brute force overkill of fleet power), and hopefully Bonsai Hedge Trimmed the neighbors into a shieldwall to block the further out empires, that no one will bother you again for a long time. Late-mid game it may happen again, as one of the bigger 'outside' empires pushes a hole through your shieldwall or is in a defensive pact and is now far enough on warp drive tech to be able to figure out a route to you through their territory.

Big help, imo for no-tech advantage, no resource advantage, no diplo advantage all damage Purity Pure Purifiers: scattershot starting traditions. Discovery-+anomaly chance+research from survery then Prosperity to Energy Grid gives unity then Exploration to Capital building unity and maybe at that point the 'colonies -33% less extra unity cost for traditions'. Then Supremacy all the way (partly for the extra unity per rivalry, and partly because heck yeah, Fiah Powah!). At that point you've got a bunch of bonuses, and all the unity adders so backfilling Exploration, Discovery, and Prosperity will go *almost* as fast as doing 1 at a time.

Mid to late game, push for 100k stack and decent mineral gain/high energy reserves, set up a bunch of ships to come off the line soon, set 3 fleets of 25 troopers at the border, hit pause, declare war on the closest fallen empire, jump on top of their fleet (which may run away and leave you fighting 16k stations). If it runs clear the sector and chase it down. You want to research it's debris for goodies. Keep pumping out ships to keep fleet power up enough that your shield-wall of freenemies is too scared to try to jump you. Once you take 3-4 planets a stagnant fallen empire will typically cave. Smash everything in the sky first so you have stuff to research. Then stick a robot on each world so they don't go poof, set the previous inhabitants to Exterminate and let the unity roll in from Exterminatus while you resettle a few pops to their tasty tasty precursor factory world.

Sit back again for however long you have left, expand internally backfilling good planets you pushed past to expand/protect your borders, keep the fleet powr up and work on tech a bit (even though you need wars to keep parity, focus on resource/acension techs, use wars to steal military tech). By the time you reach 100k with a defensive wars purifier with no tech/resource advantages you're probably past 100 years and it's probably time to start chewing your nails for an Awakened Empire or crisis to start popping up. There may be some hassles from outer-empires, but for however long your shieldwall lasts before they absorb it completely you should be fine. They may blob around and bump up against you somewhere along your border, but the border contact should be small, and generally they'll hate their long-time enemies just as much as they hate you as a fanatic purifier, so you have a good 50-100 more years of them fighting the guy they keep weakening rather then them risking facing your doomstack. If they do, same as early game, defeat in detail, completely trash one sides ability to build fleets and invade his best planets to turn them into unhappy war zones, and demand the best planets that don't disrupt your blob or your shield wall from anyone else who jumped in.

[marciosouzas]

Being a devourer swarmer is worse, at least with fanatical purifier I was able do survive even with isolationist ideology. I used a lot the bonus of atack. I took advantage of the fact that the strongest empire was at war to further weaken it. And I confirm that it was one of the best games I've had, I was not bored at all.

[Hugh]

Originally posted by dark cron:

If fanatical purifier is too hard to begin with, you can still reform goverment or even add the extra civic (Galactic Administration Tech) later in the game.

Yeah that is still an option

[Hugh]

Originally posted by marciosouzas:

Being a devourer swarmer is worse, at least with fanatical purifier I was able do survive even with isolationist ideology. I used a lot the bonus of atack. I took advantage of the fact that the strongest empire was at war to further weaken it. And I confirm that it was one of the best games I've had, I was not bored at all.

It certainly is interesting

[Divid]

Playing any sort of purifier is always hit or miss. either you snowball early or you die because everyone will take a shot at you. Personally i feel its balanced that way, and i like it.

[Jimib4158]

Originally posted by Tommy Wiseau:

You can't get research agreements. Everyone hates you. They all rival you so they mostly become friends with each other and defensive pacts galore. You can't trade or talk to the curators.
It's insane. Even ruthlessly exploiting all the bad AI, I still only made it to mid game.
Has anyone won a game as a fanatical purifier?

yea i think they made it to make the AI harder.

I have one near me and I am lucky he didnt take me out early....because I am a rapid expander and so vulnerable to the rush attack style.

Yea the one game, that i had one near me, I got so lucky....the roll was really nice with many rich resource worlds.

The clincher is I had a very miltaristic neighbor...he had the military perks AND HE decalred the Xeno guy his rival....but was VERY friendly to me.

The result was obvious....those two early went at it, and the Xeno guy found his match in the miltary guy, they fought to a stand-still....the only prob I have with the roll is I have a fallen VERY close to me....luckily he has not awoke

[Jimib4158]

Originally posted by Divid:

Playing any sort of purifier is always hit or miss. either you snowball early or you die because everyone will take a shot at you. Personally i feel its balanced that way, and i like it.

Agreed...gives the AI a one-up on you,its the perfect AI counter to my rapid expansion policy

[ingosupercute]

That's what you get for being the bane of the galaxy. I find it somewhat comforting that all purifiers and devourers AI usually start by absorbing one, two or even more species in their neighbourhood and later get ganked upon by everyone and their mom until they get banished from the universe for good. Self sustain is a strong motivation for others to set their rivalries aside for a while and do what's neccessary to survive.

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Being a fanatic purifier isn't meant to be easy.. I mean.. trashing out diplomacy.. it has its downsides. You can choose to try to make the game easier by making the map smaller, less opponents.. but really it's not worth the while if you're not going to have fun with it.

[Meewec]

i mean, you are going around saying "yeah, i'm going to kill you somedday" to everyone you meet, kinda like with devouring swarm where you're saying "you are food, i am hungry, get in my belly" to everyone. of course they're all going to band against you

[Saxon]

Well it makes sense. Your empire has the openly stated goal of exterminating everyone who isn't of their species. So naturally everyone is going to try to stop you. AI purifiers are always the first to die in my games, and even player purifiers REALLY need to be good at the game to stand a chance as soon as federations emerge. I'm saving it for when I run out of other challenges.