Is Determined Exterminator supposed to be impossible?

[laagamer]

Seriously.

By 2300 the entire galaxy in a league decided to declare war on me.

I had about 30K fleet power broken up into 3 fleets trying to cover choke points on different ends of my empire. Voidworms invading on one end flying past my stations.

Then, seemingly INCREDIBLY unfair, 30K in fleet power magically appeared in my back line and started just whipping me from the inside as I was fighting 3 defensive wars on 3 different fronts.

There was a wormhole in the system. Is that how they arrived? I don't even have that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tech yet.

All in all a pretty not fun experience.

Am I being punished for not knowing how to cheese or something? Should a regular player be able to pick up the game and have fun?

I've got a 180 hours in this game dating back 5 years or so, and honestly how unfair that was makes me want to leave a bad review.

2/10 if I had to leave a review.

[Garatgh Deloi]

As most genocidal empire types (including determined exterminators) you can't really do diplomacy (For the most part, exceptions are a thing) but in return you get some insanely powerful buffs that are meant to make it feasible.

That said you need to be aggressive from the start of the game. By 2300 you should already own a considerable chunk of the map (so that you can compete with groups of normal empires that federates and get into overlord-subject relations and the like).

You not having the wormhole tech is largely irrelevant, if they have the tech they can use it, you should always see wormholes as a potential entrance into your territory (fortify/guard it just like you would any other entrance).

Also, i'd argue that 30k fleet power at 2300 for a genocidal empire (that generally gets a bunch of combat related benefits, cheaper ships, more damage, more capacity, etc) is rather low.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

As most genocidal empire types (including determined exterminators) you can't really do diplomacy (For the most part, exceptions are a thing) but in return you get some insanely powerful buffs that are meant to make it feasible.

That said you need to be aggressive from the start of the game. By 2300 you should already own a considerable chunk of the map (so that you can compete with groups of normal empires that federates and get into overlord-subject relations and the like).

You not having the wormhole tech is largely irrelevant, if they have the tech they can use it, you should always see wormholes as a potential entrance into your territory (fortify/guard it just like you would any other entrance).

Also, 30k fleet power at 2300 for a genocidal empire is rather low.

Okay, thanks!

I was ranked about 11th in the Victory Standings.

Guess I'll watch Let's Plays if I want to try again.

[Aprosule]

By 2300 you should be owning 3-7 full sectors as a Determined Exterminator, but this is more just a simple oversight: AI can use wormholes even if you cannot. From now on always consider a wormhole a one-way starlane that anyone but you can use to attack you. Same goes for Shroud tunnels, gateways, L-gates, etc. Keep tabs on empires that build Quantum Catapults and always prepare for them when at war with them.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by Aprosule:

By 2300 you should be owning 3-7 full sectors as a Determined Exterminator, but this is more just a simple oversight: AI can use wormholes even if you cannot. From now on always consider a wormhole a one-way starlane that anyone but you can use to attack you. Same goes for Shroud tunnels, gateways, L-gates, etc. Keep tabs on empires that build Quantum Catapults and always prepare for them when at war with them.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Seriously? How are ya'll amassing enough fleet power to cover all these while expanding and fighting wars? They're literally everywhere.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by laagamer:

Okay, thanks!

I was ranked about 11th in the Victory Standings.

Guess I'll watch Let's Plays if I want to try again.

Honestly genocidal empires can be considered a challenging empire type until you get a hang of them, its (in my judgement) all about using the bonuses you get to dominate in the early game, and thus building up enough of a lead to handle the mid-late game.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Originally posted by laagamer:

Okay, thanks!

I was ranked about 11th in the Victory Standings.

Guess I'll watch Let's Plays if I want to try again.

Honestly genocidal empires can be considered a challenging empire type until you get a hang of them, its (in my judgement) all about using the bonuses you get to dominate in the early game, and thus building up enough of a lead to handle the mid-late game.

I found it very hard to get naval capacity, even spamming anchorages.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by laagamer:

I found it very hard to get naval capacity, even spamming anchorages.

Keep in mind that your fleet capacity is a soft cap, not a hard cap.

You get penalties for going over it (more and more expensive ship upkeep the more you go over it) but i do recommend going over it when playing a combat focused empire, in most situations.

As long as your economy can handle it you can go over the cap quite a bit.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Originally posted by laagamer:

I found it very hard to get naval capacity, even spamming anchorages.

Keep in mind that your fleet capacity is a soft cap, not a hard cap.

You get penalties for going over it (more and more expensive ship upkeep the more you go over it) but i do recommend going over it when playing a combat focused empire, in most situations.

As long as your economy can handle it you can go over the cap quite a bit.

Oh, ♥♥♥♥. Okay, that would've definitely helped! I was drowning in resources!

[mss73055]

No, playing Determined Exterminator leaves one to blame.
While you may be more in a mood to smash things than to learn.

also, nice try Putin :D

[The Grand Mugwump]

Originally posted by laagamer:

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Honestly genocidal empires can be considered a challenging empire type until you get a hang of them, its (in my judgement) all about using the bonuses you get to dominate in the early game, and thus building up enough of a lead to handle the mid-late game.

I found it very hard to get naval capacity, even spamming anchorages.

Fortress worlds and habitats are great for raising naval cap. I especially recommend building fortress habitats at chokepoints to your empire, because an invader will have to bomb or invade them to get by them, which buys a ton of time unless you're fighting an awakened empire's armies.

And we typically get huge fleets early in the game by going over naval capacity and by utilizing our experience with the game to stack as many bonuses on our production as we can, like planet specializations, upgraded alloy forges on forge worlds, ascension perks that boost our economy (like mastery of nature if you need more raw resource districts), etc.

[The Grand Mugwump]

And yes, genocidal empires are very hard to learn. You have to be extremely aggressive throughout the entire game in order to get the resources and planets to survive when the rest of the galaxy starts banding together against you. You definitely want to wipe out at least one or two neighboring nations before they can start forming defensive pacts with each other to slow you down. And federations, overlords and the galactic community are a genocidal nation's end-game, since that allows large numbers of nations to jointly declare war on you at once. You need to have the economic and military strength to rival that.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Originally posted by laagamer:

I found it very hard to get naval capacity, even spamming anchorages.

Fortress worlds and habitats are great for raising naval cap. I especially recommend building fortress habitats at chokepoints to your empire, because an invader will have to bomb or invade them to get by them, which buys a ton of time unless you're fighting an awakened empire's armies.

And we typically get huge fleets early in the game by going over naval capacity and by utilizing our experience with the game to stack as many bonuses on our production as we can, like planet specializations, upgraded alloy forges on forge worlds, ascension perks that boost our economy (like mastery of nature if you need more raw resource districts), etc.

Okay, so I think I'm missing planet specializations. What do you mean by fortress world? Can't they just fly past occupied planets?

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by laagamer:

Okay, so I think I'm missing planet specializations. What do you mean by fortress world? Can't they just fly past occupied planets?

Planet specialization is simply configuring a planet to a specific purpose and stacking all the bonuses you can that boosts that purpose (Building and upgrading the specialized buildings, using the correct colony role, orbital ring buildings that boost the role further, even modified pops or planet types, etc).

You can designate colonies (planets) to different roles, the game does this automatically if you do not do it manually, but you may be better served by doing it manually (especially when it comes to empires that use both alloys and consumer goods, since their specializations makes a world only produce one of the two): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3241833156
The fortress world designation gives:
+25% Stronghold build speed.
-10% orbital bombardment damage.
+20% defense army damage.

If you have the FTL inhibitor tech and a fortress (The upgraded stronghold building) on a world they can't fly past that system (they can only return the way they came) before first taking that world or destroying the building.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Originally posted by laagamer:

Okay, so I think I'm missing planet specializations. What do you mean by fortress world? Can't they just fly past occupied planets?

You can designate planets to different roles, the game does this automatically if you do not do it manually, but you may be better served by doing it manually (especially when it comes to empires that use both alloys and consumer goods, since their specializations makes a world only produce one of the two): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3241833156
The fortress world designation gives:
+25% Stronghold build speed.
-10% orbital bombardment damage.
+20% defense army damage.

If you have the FTL inhibitor tech and a fortress (The upgraded stronghold building) on a world they can't fly past it (they can only return the way they came) before first taking that world or destroying the building.

Ah. Thank you!

So, it really isn't possible to build these and play a defensive game. Darn.

Is there an "evil" pre-built race you'd recommend that isn't quite so blitz as Determined Exterminators?

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by laagamer:

Ah. Thank you!

So, it really isn't possible to build these and play a defensive game. Darn.

Is there an "evil" pre-built race you'd recommend that isn't quite so blitz as Determined Exterminators?

Genocidal empires in general are ill suited for defensive play (as a generalization, i bet someone can make a build that works), they (again as a generalization) need a certain level of aggressiveness to keep up with the other empires.

If you want something more evil that you can play defensively then perhaps a dictatorial Technocracy that aims for the Cosmogenesis crisis path (assuming you have the necessary DLC).