Eysteinh wrote:

Gzar nice initative but can you make those pictures slightly bigger I cant make out the values.

Right click -> view image.

Is there a way to make the images normally clickable in your post?

Im going to come to gzar's aid in this forum.   It is REALLY easy with the military law to reduce ship cost and use tier 0 missles with barrage to have a fleet moving and strong enough for piraes.  You only need to research two tier 1 military techs (the 7 cc one and the double missle one) and your fleet can take out endless pirate bases NP.  Just before you kill any fleet turn on the military science law you'd be amazed at how much you get from micro-ing that.

I just won a elimination victory on turn 123 with the hissho on those settings. heres the autosave from a few turns prior.

Autosave removed because its from a different game (forgot did a AI test just after I won the elemination)

It is set to endless pirates endless everything lots of minors.  And I chose random galaxy that I think happened to end up being a spiral six.   Lawl. Large.  

First you get xeno-industry, public-private partnerships and food production to get the basic economy. Then you go get +40 XP shipyard and start building it immediately. Get small hulls in the meantime and build 4 attackers with lasers. Get siege module after that and start building 3 siege support ships. Then you get +3 CP and tanks. Merge the ships into 7 CP fleet, swap force composition to 100% tank, add an admiral and sail forth killing pirates and conquering minors and even fight other empires. After that get behemoth blueprints and upgrade the starting behemoth with T2 white missiles and armor for very good defense on your homeworld. Here is my save on turn 30 so you can see me doing exactly that.1233.sav Feel free to send the behemoth against pirate base and wipe them with barrage fire.

I am currently putting together a game to prove GZar's point ATM.  Endless Pirates, standard Hissho, Endless difficulty, random galaxy large 7 opponents normal settings.  I will get you a save in a few hours to show how easily they can beat others.

My opponents are Cravers, UE, Sophons, and Modified Vaulters (To make them tougher) and Modified UE to make them tougher as well. (Just to OVER prove Gzar's point).  Here is the save of the start. I will add a save at turn intervals that I feel are relavent.

AutoSave 96447.sav turn 8 i think

AutoSave 96469.sav  Turn 30, I have 7cc tier 2 fleet with troops and siege modules already. going to easily take the vaulters and pirates.  BTW you get bonus's as hissho for getting minors and HW's if I am not mistaken weeee  Funny part is I never got a first colony to colonize.

AutoSave 96482.sav

Turn 43 - endless pirate layer is going to die, then turning to vaulter systems with siege power they can't come close to. The AI had suicided its ships by repeat teleporting to its colony and back before I took it. 

Id also like to note that I am not using the Behemoths in any fashion that I would call Abuse, IE mining probes. Node Stacking, ECT.

AutoSave 96489.sav turn 50. Looks like my upgraded vaulters and the pirates are going to be part of my snowball.  Research is cued up to get more CC by the time I reach there homeworld, and I just sit and siege until its at 0.  Also every lair or pirate fleet that pops up is free science and dust.  

I'm going to continue my game on my own, but I would like to throw out there in this particular galaxy I am having success starting in the same lane as another race, and I never used my original colonizer (I had to not-retreat to not lose kie).  I have never dropped below devoted and as Gzar has already pointed out, I can take everything any other player has colonized with relative ease.

Now our methods differ but the point is the same.  I can stay devouted going well over the threshhold and only use the speed boost and industry kie features (they are truly the only ones worth anything)  I may toss another save in here and there.

Last save turn 69 got annihilator beam.  you may not because rewards are random.  But I think this seals the deal for me, even with the AI's boosted FIDS

AutoSave 96508.sav

AutoSave 96509.sav turn 70 after a few losses to my white tier 0 ships with pirates.  Have both  lairs about to be destroyed, pretty much game is on lockdown, did not colonize a thing.  Willl continue as there are many AI's and much fun to be had.  But this is a example without exploiting behemoths how strong the hissho steamroller can be using some of gzar's tricks.  

What if instead of an over colonization penalty, it was a penalty based off of how many races were in your empire? The whole point of a warmongering empire is to fight and beat another empire and take their stuff (land, resources, etc). It would make much more sense realistically to have a keii drain becuase of other races (aside from the starting minor race) since you would have to "keep them in order" with Hissho customs. It makes little sense to have a keii drain on over colonization since you can very easily manage a very efficient empire whether big or small. Instead, if it was just based around how many other races are in the empire, it would somewhat mimic approval and be a permanent problem that the Hissho would have to accomodate for. This would also support both a super aggressive playstyle as well as a passive one since you won't have as much of a keii drain unless you assimilate other races.

So here is a quick Sophons test run, was able to make a fleet of 7 and invade a minor civ turn 30 on endless with endless pirates. Didn't even have to use siegers (however I researched them still by that point) or make tanks, all was done with just upgraded troops. Also didn't get it why would you upgrade to tanks immediately if you go with siegers? Waste of manpower kinda.

 Actually could make it quicker, but I made an arguable decision of researching eukaryotic sap and wasting 2-3 turns for a benefit of having happy on my main and a booster ship for my fleet.

Due to new tier fleet cost calculations I failed to make a booster ship in time. The cost went up when I finished my Autonomous. Was still fine at 7 movement speed though.

Also easily managed to get 2 new colonies before invading while as Hissho you would barely finish your first by that point. Could go with 3 but I felt like growing my main was a better option due to the Interplanetary Transport Network's production.

That was kind of a good start with an extra tier 0 planet. But I feel you can do it even with just the Hekim if you skip Landscaping, Plasma Metalurgy and Eukaryotic Sap technologies.

Also I have a Craver nearby who is probably my next target, his fleets will be much weaker than mine for quite some time because mine get constant xp from my hero and will be really fat when I reach his main.

That was on a different map so it's not directly comparable. What was the map seed?

My map had very difficult start and my colony actually got wiped by unlucky pirates spawned from discovery. Yet my screenshot still has significantly more FIDS than yours despite you having much more systems and better start.

Exact same pop number but 50% more industry, almost double science. Positive dust not heavily negative. Full manpower instead of empty. Only thing Spohons have advantage in is food.

I'd say Hissho are in better position here but then again different map so not directly comparable.

Gzar wrote:

That was on a different map so it's not directly comparable. What was the map seed?

My map had very difficult start and my colony actually got wiped by unlucky pirates spawned from discovery. Yet my screenshot still has significantly more FIDS than yours despite you having much more systems and better start.

Exact same pop number but 50% more industry, almost double science. Positive dust not heavily negative. Full manpower instead of empty. Only thing Spohons have advantage in is food.

I'd say Hissho are in better position here but then again different map so not directly comparable.

I actually forgot that you left a seed in this thread, so I decided to make another quick run on your map with similar enemies. The start was actually tougher, with a pitiful monsoon on my main which had only 3 production. Also that spiral arm had a lot of hot groups (bad for sophons..) and only 1 tier 0 planet which was in the system of 2, but I still had to grab it for those luxuries and titanium per turn. Because of the lack of tier zeros I had to skip eukaryotic sap and grab pev scales to colonize an arid nearby. It grew daaaamn slow and I had to boost it twice but it still worked out nicely in the end.

Turn 30 I still managed to grow 2 colonies and conquer a minor civ. Ofc FIDSI numbers are not huge compared to Hissho but my main argument was that a turn 30 invasion is not something exceptional and can be consistently achieved even by the faction with one of the weakest starts (only Horatio are worse probably).



I invaded Sisters of Mercy with an army of 600+ upgraded troops and I still have some to get Illo as well. After that my core is set, 5 out of 5 initial colonies before overcolonization. Here you can see an overall power of my initial fleet. This kind of composition is actually much stronger than it seems because of the Sophon hero and his +40% energy damage skill. 

With that kind of agressive colonization I easily pushed Industrialists which are second best after ecologists and have access to some good laws. An influence problem is ready to be solved by Eden Incense system upgrade, but if I had none of those, another huge milestone for influence as Sophons is when you get your first trade company (senator skill +50 per company) which is like 10-20 turns away from that point. Unique planets help to sustain laws as well, but even with Dirty Hands act and free laws only you are good to go.

Next I'd probably go for Graviton Research then Preditive Logistics and then Commercial Frameworks to grow my core, then I like to go for 2 behemoths with 5 +10 FIDS +5% FIDS modules and put them on systems I want to strengthen. And then.. haven't decided yet :D But it turns out to be an interesting game. 

So my main point was to prove that an early invasion possibility is not what makes Hissho op. And I think you understand it as well, because your initial focus was on the lack of penalties for early war, not the war itself. This thread just got kinda messy and I was afraid you guys could start focusing on wrong subjects. That was fun to participate in your challenge, though! Ty for that Gzar xD

the hissho are fine. they just need the mining bug fix.

the only thing need fixing is the damn behemots.