After Action Report.

I’ve been talking about my deep dive into ES2 for a while now on the eXplorminate Steam forums. They suggested I post it here, so I’m very happy to oblige. In this game, I turned off all victories except Supremacy and vowed to conquer all planets controlled by my three opponents: United Empires (orange), Unfallen (green), and Lumeris (red). I was playing on Hard.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=932803694

For the first part of the game, I focussed on making alliances. Most of the factions were accommodating. But eventually, I started a war with the United Empire since they were the closest AI opponent. After finishing off the United Empire, I turned my sights on the Unfallen.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=935472046

I kinda felt bad about this. The Unfallen had been in an alliance with me since about turn 60.  We had trade agreements, science agreements, and I don’t know what else.  They had jumped in to defend me against the Lumeris early in the game. But, if I went after the Lumeris next, I’d win right away since the Unfallen were allied.  So, stab an ally in the back is what I did.

The first thing that happened upon declaring war was I lost three systems.  The Unfallen had entangled them in their roots and instantly flipped them with influence.  I conquered three of their systems in response, but they sent an invading force into my territory and captured a system next door to my capital!

The Unfallen were a remarkably difficult opponent.  Movement in their space is exceedingly difficult since their roots or tendrils or whatever make travel along starlanes arduous. Also, the defense of their worlds was stiff. I don’t know how much manpower it took to conquer them, but it was a lot.

During the war, they blew up several of my planets including the one with The Academy.  It didn’t affect anything, The Academy went on, but eventually I lost both planets in the Temos system (you can see in the pic below that it's greyed out. No habitable planets are left.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=939269170

After almost 70 turns of war, I had to call a truce. My resources were exhausted, my people were all rebelling, and I was physically tired from managing my fleets and battles.  That was a hard war, and I didn’t win. I was down to my last 6k of Manpower and I needed to regroup.

As soon as my truce with the Unfallen was accepted, the Lumeris took advantage of my weakened state and bought a ton of Pirates and attacked all my worlds which were largely undefended. So while I wasn’t fighting the Unfallen anymore, I had to battle off wave after wave of pirates. I had to pull all my ships back to defend my holdings.  It was a total mess.  I used up every last bit of manpower defending my worlds and building new ships to chase off the mercenaries. You can see on the right side of the pic below how many space battles I had going on at the same time.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943494994

One major problem I also ran into was rebellion. My people became less happy the bigger my empire became.  You can see from the pic below how many systems were in open rebellion.  However, my production on loyal planets was so high, I just kep cruising.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=940581104

I was low on my top tier resources, so I designed a ship out of Antimatter to defend my planets. I put at least two in orbit around each systems as you can see in the pic below. These ships would be used time and time again as both the Lumeris and Unfallen found the pirate mercenaries to be a very effective way of harassing me as I encroached further on their empires.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943495812

The cool thing about the mercenaries is that they used MY ship designs.  So I was facing well balanced ships in combat.  Now the pirates were mainly limited to smaller ships I created, but I imagine in the higher level difficulties the number and size of mercenary pirate ships increases.  I kinda regret not playing this run on Serious instead of Hard.

I I was given a reprieve when war broke out between the Lumeris and Unfallen.  The Lumeris tried to grab a few worlds while the Unfallen were still recovering from our war. They would eventually capture the Lynx and Sirius systems, but the Unfallen would take back Sirius. 

Just past turn 400, I decided to once again take up arms against the Unfallen.  I drove them back to their two last worlds.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942780233

Eventually, I surrounded their homeworld and attacked.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942781027

And won.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942781331

After regrouping once again and refilling my ships with manpower, I invaded the Lumeris.  They had a pretty substantial fleet, and as soon as I attacked their first world, they send a whole armada at me.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943063458

One thing I noticed as I played this game was that the Unfallen were much better ship designers than the Lumeris.  Against the Unfallen, I faced a lot of capital ships (carriers).  I lost a good number of my smaller ships in battle. Against the Lumeris, it was just wave after wave of frigates. I don’t know if that’s a bug on intentional.  Maybe the Lumeris just prefer larger numbers of cheaper ships. Anyway, the frigates posed no threat to me.  I just wrecked them time and time again.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943064212

I eventually discovered their capital.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943454547

And surrounded it.

They did try to dislodge my forces with several fleets of their own, but with over 400 ships in my armada, it wasn’t happening.

So I invaded.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943470872

And won.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943471345

And changed the galaxy into geometric perfection.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943471928

Overall, I had a lot of fun on this playthrough.  It was hard to win this way.  Unhappiness reaches epic levels the more planets you control. I never had a stable government after turn 300 or so.  It didn’t seem to matter much.  I finished the game with over 800 million Dust and 900k Influence. 

I’d say the Unfallen are easily the best AI opponent you can ask for.  They expand, interact in diplomacy, and make war against their neighbors extremely well.  I did not pass them as far as score goes until turn 300 or so.  They are good.  I find that a little surprising since the devs had the least amount of time to work on them compared to all the other factions.  Nice work, guys!

Obviously the game isn’t meant to be played the way I did. There was nothing I could do to control my population.  There weren’t enough laws, luxury resources, heroes, or system improvements to make them happy.  Not even successfully defending them from attack was enough to earn their loyalty.  It didn’t matter though.  My production was always good enough on my loyal worlds to get by.  I feel like there’s some disconnect between design and execution this deep into the game.  

With all the rebellion, it would seem like my empire would be crippled.  But it wasn’t which is weird.  With supremacy victory an option, it’s weird that I can’t do anything to appease my people. I don’t know what to think. There needs to be some way to manage super-large empires in the very late-game.

Anyway, getting to turn 430 or so is pretty good in a game like this.  I will say that performance dropped off toward the end.  Turns took well over a minute to process.  The game did crash twice around turns 412 and 423, but I was able to restart and pick up where I left off.  I never lost a save and I never got to the point where I couldn’t continue playing.  My laptop is only midrange in performance, so people with really nice rigs probably will get better results.  However, keep in mind that I had over 500 ships total by the end of the game and was fighting two dozen battles every turn from the pirates and the Lumeris. I’d say I tested the game out pretty well and it passed.

After all this time, I still give ES2 a thumbs up :)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943471632

Peace

great AAR.

Devs, please fix the AI fleet composition. If they are small shipping, make that AIs role to use at least capable and upgraded small ships in swarms, as well as divide ships for harassing back lines.

Could the OP maybe post a few save games?

I also find the non ability to influence empire happiness in time awful.

Why not introducxe laws/policies/federalisation etc to improve it?

Sure, I'd be glad to post my saves :)

Riftborn01.zip

I'll put them in several posts. G2G isn't linking them too well.  This one is like turn 295 I think.

Losing all my border systems with them when I attacked for the first time was a real shocker.  I'll know to be more careful in the future, but they do pose an interesting strategic challenge.

G2G isn't letting me upload any more saves.  I'll see what I can do about it somehow else :(

Only counter for the Supremacy unhappiness I know of is a Religious Law that fixes the Happiness at Content. I think there's also a few techs that reduce Overexpansion Unhappiness by a %. I'm honestly surprised there is a Supremacy victory when Domination seems more manageable to accomplish.

In general there needs to be an option to raze an enemy colony you'd prefer to not keep. While I am in favor of overcolonization as a mechanic, it can get strained to its absolute limits in a prolonged war, to a degree that I'm not sure is intentional by design.

(Of course I could be wrong and it IS intentional to try to help make military victories less ubiquotus, but even as someone who wants a radical shake-up of 4X status quo in the vein of the Unfallen I'm not sure if that's the best approach.)

There is the vacat option you can pick up, does that allow you to take out a colony you just acquired?

Here's a few more saves:

~Turn 390 (I think): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KW0-YiNVWqdDlPekhBaG1zTTg/view?usp=sharing

~turn 420 (I think): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KW0-YiNVWqWXBJSGR4cllUSWs/view?usp=sharing

-Turn 430 (I think): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9KW0-YiNVWqSWdvY0RVWS1TUjQ/view?usp=sharing

Interesting game! Next time you go to such high system count empire, consider dictatorship and religious, the third law forces all systems to content, ideal to this kind of games.

Loved reading through your AAR, and the impact of your betrayal of the Unfallen! Couldn't help laughing at the definite surprise and struggle you went through :D

Kynrael wrote:

Loved reading through your AAR, and the impact of your betrayal of the Unfallen! Couldn't help laughing at the definite surprise and struggle you went through :D

This playthrough was an overall great experience.  I like it when a game does things I'm not expecting like that.  

Stalker0 wrote:

There is the vacat option you can pick up, does that allow you to take out a colony you just acquired?

Unfortunately, no. You have to wait through quite a few unhappy turns before that option becomes available on newly colonised systems.