Not hot enough, my lord! Let's play Emperor of the Fading Suns (40 turns are enough for most women!)

[DemoGraph]

Introduction

As you probably don't know, Fading Suns is a sword and starship type setting.

It's a verge of 6th millenium and it's dark ages all over again.

► Show Spoiler

Human empire has about 30 star systems under control, about as many lost, is firmly chained to religion (or, at least, a modernist take on religion) and, of course, crumbles, degrades and stuff.


It's besieged by notZerg and notProtoss (or rather, notChaos and notEldar, because the first books were written in 1996, even before Starcraft), attacked from within by heretics and rebels - for one thousand years it has ********. Where once there was a glorious high tech republic, now psykers and riders roam the stars. 95% of population are 18th century tech grade serfs. Nobles, priests and traders are bickering so hard, that the game start canonically coincides with the beginning of a not-hundred-years-war (more like 50 years). The war will be horrible. Horribly vaguely written and likely incompetently conducted as well. Geopolitical competitors would duke it out with everything from sword'n'board to plasmaguns.

Why swords?

Oh, yeah, the stars are fading. They gradually get cooler, turning inhabitable planets into iceballs. Probably. The process is so slow, it could be easily retconned by GM. The process is so slow, nobody knows why it's happening. One of the theories is that interstellar travel and high tech usage attract cthulhu spam from beyond the stars and repubicans had flown too greedily and too deep.

And that's why the tech is largely banned for reasons not quite explained and we can handwave laser swords into the setting. Also, this way you can go to crumbling arcologies to discover ancient secrets and buttsexbots for your adventuring leisure.

It also means the setting runs counter to the current ecological dogma and soyaks would've canceled it, stat, if only they could read.


Let me emphasise again. The PC game is so old, it had seen WTC standing, it's old enough to shag urmum. So old, actually, that its concept was "what could be cooler than Sid Meier's Civilization? Twice the civ! Add moar planets!". Alas, Bobby Kotick struck again and the game was released as an unplayable mess. The balance was ****, half the systems were useless, AI was braindead, the usual early beta stuff.

Despite all that, the game really turned out to be cool, even if only with a hard roleplaying sandbox approach. You could move **** between planets! You could capture every planet out there! And they had production chains! And RPG elements! Spies and assassins! Voting to win! Election meddling! Bureaucracy! Religion! Famine! Plague! Taxes! The good stuff!

Recently, the original devs(!) arose from a two decade long slumber and kinda restored this abandonware to an almost-playable state. There's a GOG version (that I pirated, because GOG doesn't sell to Russia anymore, ******* Polacks). The Steam version seems to be in production for several years now. There're patches that add new content. Devs had included some ideas from mods in vanilla balance to make it not utterly ********.

Oh, and the game seems to be in some kind of a renaissance, because there're new versions of the books being released for the last several years. As you might've guessed the art direction is atrocious.



Compare it to the old stuff.



But it's irrelevant for this thread.

These days I had actually played the game for the first time in more than a decade, had fun and I'm going to share it with you.

[DemoGraph]

We're going to play as a leader of one of the Great Noble Houses.
Great because they have at least one planet under control and at least one sceptre to vote for the regent or emperor (there're lesser houses as well, not represented in PC game).
Noble because it's what we are.
And Houses because we're medieval.

Here're the contestants.

► Show Spoiler

Li Halan are demon-worshippers-turned-crusader Chinese in space. They like praying and roflstomping serfs. Also, they're the only House that canonically captured a developed and populous planet during the game timeline, because they were the only one bold enough to launch a luddite crusade.


Hazat are Spanish legionnaires. They like soldier uniforms, marching and being Spanish. They also feature token ***** sarge.


Decados are Harkonnen-Russian crossbreed, vladimirs galore. They like human waves, heavy artillery, spying and kinky sex, preferably all at once. They're also evil, evil all the time and, of course, have KGB-Gulag-matryoshkas.


Hawkwoods are your stereotypical goody-two-shoes anglo-saxon britbongs. They like chevaliering, aryan blitzkriegs and pretending to not always treat their serfs as furniture (you can't really **** furniture in Fading Suns, after all, because sex droids are haram).


Al Malik could've been golden age Arabs, Inshallah, but PG13 censorship had removed everything interesting from RPG. Now they're sanitized vaguely neareastern dudes. They're also good at tech and trading and mingling with republicans.


Poles, Indians, etc. are absent, praise the lord!
(well, they're present in RPG on secondary roles, but are probably completely absent in EOFS)

Decados, obviously, are sworn enemies of Hawkwoods, because the game was made by Cold War dudes.
Also, there's some tension between Arabs and ****** because former like tech toys and latter like nuns.
And, of course, Hazat like being Spanish.

So, whom shall I play?
Well, if you look at my avatar you might think that I like trading and I'd prefer Al Malik. And that I do.
You might also recall that I'm Russian and think that I prefer russkies. That I do as well.

But of course we're going to play krttkharjimshhh...

...In the memory of the nine and the one...
My lord?
Naaaah...
My lord.
Nyeeeh...
My lord!
Neeeigh...
My. Lord!!
Agh! What? Who? Me? Yes!
It's morning, my lord.
I can see that. You're barging in on me.
Yes, my lord, and I apologise, but it's urgent.
What could be so urgent so early?
Your breakfast, my lord. It's getting colder.
For real?
And your mother, my lord. With every passing moment she gets, forgive me, hotter.

► Show Spoiler

Clothe me! Now!

...pshhhstkkt Team Blue, because Decados' leaders are landwhale, ****** and femoid and Trump had banned them.

We're playing him.


Look at that proud mongoloid. For the horde!
Alexius, canonically, is a future emperor, because of course britbongs should win in an American game.
Also, somewhere in the process he gets a harder facelift than Madonna.


We go with default settings (universal warehouse off - meaning each planet would have its own resource pool, hunger and plague on, high difficulty = many barbarian spawns from ruin goodyhuts).


And we're going without any traits because most of them are either OP, useless or badly broken. I want to give you vanilla experience. Maybe we'll discuss them some other time.

[DemoGraph]

4956 AD +++ The Urgent Matters

First thing we need, before we proceed with the game, is to decide on research. I've chosen biotech, because it's more economy oriented. If we've chosen some of the ancient documentarium traits, we would've already had some techs, but it's only a few turns of a head start, nothing we can't manage against AI.
We get back to tech discussion in a few turns. If you're not in MP, you can safely research blind.

► Show Spoiler

And the second first thing we get is our obligatory ****** sarge! He wants map exchange. Again, we'll get back to it later.


Finally we have a star map!
The map is full of planets connected with warpways. Actually, those are solar systems, but each system has only one significant inhabited planet, because it's magic.
Each planet has a planetary map and an orbital space. We have our small fleet, each unit with 3 action points (AP).


Take a minute to look at the stars again. Because we won't see them for quite some time. We'll be watching dirt.

This is an expanded planetary minimap. We control a small area. The geography of the planet is always visible if at least one of your units has been on the planet, ever. But the cities and units are in fog of war.


Let's zoom in. This's our capitol. In the FOW NE of it is some city we probably want to capture. Also note the gems and trace metals deposit on the E we definitely want to mine ASAP.
On the bottom is resource panel. We're **** poor.


And we need resources to expand, because each engineer needs 100 food, 100 metal and 100 creds. Engineer is like settler from Civ, it builds roads and lives, it builds city and dies. We want to spam them really hard. And we can't. Because we don't have metal income and we're losing food.


We're also losing money. Let's go to house budget screen to see how much.
We're not at war. But we're still in the red. So some neighbour democratization is in order.


But before that let's go to a city screen. Here's our farm. It loses loyalty, because we're taxing it too high.
In this game +1% tax = +10 credits per city = -1% loyalty = -1% from max production (roundup). It's not always more profitable to get resources out of cities, sometimes you want to reduce income in kind, get money and go shopping instead.
The trick is, there's a limited amount of stuff for sale. Interstellar merchant League operates through cities called agoras and restores its stock every 4 or 5 turns. Generally speaking, we won't be able to really depend on it.
The other trick is - your research income decreases proportionally to loyalty as well. So high taxes are bad in a long term.


Let's go to the green Agora building. Here we can buy a limited number of resources or sell an unlimited one.
We have 250 metal in stock and 200 metal in agora. Enough for for 4 engies and then some.
We're losing ~30 food per turn, but we can get 500 from agora if we have the cash.



What shall we do, my lord? We're losing money, the serfs will starve soon and we can't subdue the rogue branches of the family.
The answer is obvious, isn't it?
Yes, my lord?
Tax the **** out of serfs!

So I've raised the taxes.

I also found some tithe I could place my hands on.

► Show Spoiler

If you control a church city (one per planet), you can steal up to all of the 10% taxes the planetary cardinal gets.

I've also decreased military pay from 75% to 50%.
We've already gave them the guns, what else do they need?

It would mean that when they get wounded in combat, they have (current morale) chance to quit combat and zero-out on AP for this turn. It's bad, but we should manage.
We'll also lose 500 credits per turn for each lab (not pictured).
But now we're firmly in the green.

[DemoGraph]

4956 AD +++ Cash crusade

Now we need to expand. If you check agora price list, above, you'll see that those gems are very profitable. But our engineer can't get to the construction spot this turn. What should we do?

► Show Spoiler

Luckily we have an assault lander - orbital and interplanetary cargo ship that will bring our troops where they're needed!


So we land near the place, build a road, a mine and also bring recon tank to check out the NE mine.
Our mine is better, but this one is okay as well. And it seems to have only a small garrison, though there's no guarantee that we've seen everyone (I vaguely remember that there were more units there).


But before committing to this mine, let's check something else.
There're some more neutral cities in serious need of liberation. And I don't remember which one is where. What to do, what to do? These cities are half a planet away.


Fear not, for we have a solution!
This is our cruiser. It has that "Ranged Sp" that denotes long-range space weaponry. Mass drivers, nukes, you name it.


So we conduct recon in the only noble way there is. Via CARPET ******* BOMBING THEM FROM SPACE.


First bombing shows a farm with exotica - basically a cash crop at this moment. It's okay.
But then **** flies up the second time and its bingo! Pieces of gems twinkle on a radar. It means, lords and ladies, that we need to get those serfs under our watchful care ASAP. Who knows what fate might befall them otherwise!
So we bomb that tank killer in the mine once more for a good measure, load one of our nobles and a bunch of tanks into two remaining transports and show those confederates who's boss.


Losses are pretty ok: no unit losses, HPs will heal in time. We can't risk going to that southern city this turn, so we'll wait for healing and cruiser to restore AP.


On the home front we're using planes to scout, moving a mass of weak slow units to that NE mine as well as preparing troops for the next turn freighters to load.


In space we've moved two starting frigates (weakest space ships IIRC) to scout planets nearby. Tethys has more cities, while Pentateuch has more mountains. I think I'd need metals soon, so we'll try to invade neutrals on the latter.
Also, space!


Finally, we have a fort on Byzantium II. It's a capitol of the Empire. In the end we're going to fight here. Now all the open combat is forbidden. So, AFAIK, it's a universal nobrainer to load two power armor legions (think space marines) on a freighter and move them to attack barbarians.


Around Byz 2 there's an Imperial fleet we might take under control one day.


Finally we build two engies, and purchase some metal and food to build third one and some food on top to prevent starvation on Delphi (we're still food negative).
And finally we check our income one more time. We'll net +30 metal and -50 food on Delphi per turn. I want to make at least 1 engineer per turn. It means that we'll need to buy 3k worth of goods per turn. While we can tax serfs at 40% and net +2.6k credits, I think it's unsustainable long-term, because when production drops, we'll buy out all the stocks from agora in a few turns. So, I'll leave taxes at 20%, have net +0.8k credits and try to get money in a different way.

And with that the first year, and the first TURN, is over.

[asf]

good stuff

[maidenhaver]

Sounds like another meme game that suddenly everybody played an recommends.

[Decline]

Sounds like another meme game that suddenly everybody played an recommends.

The doppelganger is a *****. Therefore this game is woke and DemoGraph is gay.

[Kalarion]

Suggestion: spoiler the entire post, and take the spoilers off pics, like I eventually did with my BB LP. That way people can save space and not have to click 20-40x to see everything.

[asf]

eofs is interesting but quite broken, you can really research all tech in a few turns if you do it right

grinding planet conquest can be fun though

[DemoGraph]

Suggestion: spoiler the entire post, and take the spoilers off pics, like I eventually did with my BB LP. That way people can save space and not have to click 20-40x to see everything.

A good one, done.

eofs is interesting but quite broken, you can really research all tech in a few turns if you do it right

How? Vanilla tech tree is 149k RP large, lab gives 100 RP max, so it's 1490 lab*turns to research everything. Admittedly, about half the techs are cool but useless units.

[asf]

build a ton of labs

[DemoGraph]

4957 AD +++ Going interstellar

► Show Spoiler

We finish our first tech and start another one.



Then we proceed with fief liberation.
Forward recon sees some enemies. They're 4 hexes away from that city, so it's the garrison that moved out for a counterattack.


Those anti-tank guns might be bad for our armor, so of course we're going to try landscape remodeling on them. But first our cruiser finishes off the artillery on the northern farm. Then we shoot those guns... and miss. Cruiser still has 1 AP so it can bomb again, but I decide against it. Because it likely will change little. Instead I move it to Pentateuch. We'll probably need some fire support there soon.
Meanwhile our crusaders leave the damaged tank behind (shown in darker color; because it probably won't survive any real hit) and attack. The noble is wounded as well, but I think that his high rank will protect him.
Sure enough, there were some more units we haven't seen, that arty was especially troubling. But we rolled well and all went well.


Another tank turned yellow, but it's ok. We move army to the unknown city and it turns out that it's a farm and it's empty, because we've just destroyed its garrison.
We leave that damaged tank and arty behind and blast off to orbit.


We land two artys on that farm we found and bombarded earlier. And it's kinda failure. See, our arty kills one militia and routs another - the enemy fails morale check, quits combat and moves to the hex opposite from the one we attacked from. If you move your unit on top of the routed one this turn, you capture that unit. If not, the owner regains control of it next turn.
Initially I wanted to move both artys back to orbit and off planet. But this rout means that if I do so, the militia would capture the farm back next turn. Also, I can't even capture that militia! My arty had spent 1 AP on combat, it can move to the farm for 1, and sit there with 2 AP, because moving to the forest the militia retreated to would require 3 AP.
Luckily, last turn I've sent the fighter on map recon duty and I can reroute it to kill the militia and land on the farm. Surely those alien corn fields should be sturdy enough for a jet!
So I move it back to the farm... and discover some more gems! One of my engies (that would be ready in several turns) just got a new destination.
Well, back to that pesky militia.
Turns out, I can't kill it with a plane. Because when you move your unit on top of a routed enemy it tries to capture them, not attack... and fliers can't capture. ****. So I move the fighter to the farm to at least block the militia next turn and blast off the arty to orbit. I'm optimizing freighter turns this way. Militia is the cheapest unit out there, only 5 metal, it's not like I really need to capture it.
Only then I realise that that farm had 347 units of food! Or $4.5k if we'd try to buy it from the League. Or twice our annual food income! Absolutely bananas.
And serfs are going to thank me for them!

(Later I've checked other homeworlds in mapeditor and only Delphi (Hawks) and Severus (Decados) have these freebies. Istakhr (Al Malik) has a free noble to capture (if you luck out on him).)

We have a small transport fleet on orbit now and could send hauler with reinforcements to Pentateuch. The question is - what to take there. And for that we'd need to conduct some fighting recon first.


We have three potential sectors to conquer. I would like to capture a farm first, because invasion force would need to eat. The rightmost city in the West looks the farmiest.


So first I land the frigate to check stuff. It gets damaged because it lands not on a city (and it's not a lander class ship), but it's an instant jackpot. 80 food! However, we likely won't be able to capture that farm without losses (that arty has high damage), so I decide to wait a turn for our cruiser to rest before attacking. But I really don't want to lose those freighter turns just hanging in orbit. So I land marines on the road a bit away from farm (freighter gets damaged a bit as well) and move Freighter back to Byz2.


I also move both frigates to explore further planets, back to Byz2 and to Terra. Ah, the home of humanity!
It has an ungodly (or rather, godly) fleet of saints waiting for us to sin with flamers blazing.


Back to invasion fleet. Those arty would simply destroy our armored legions. So we need either meatshields or our own arty to render those useless. We already have tank for a meatshield and three artys. However, I debate whether I should include something else and after some thinking decide to swap to arty to noble and recon tank - noble would give me evasion bonus, and tank will help decide whether I would need additional reinforcements next turn.

Next I want to make additional engies. So I purchase all the metal there's in agora for $1.7 and sell 4 fresh gems for $1.2 to get cash for lab, etc. I build one more engie and we're out of metal.

And with that we're done.

[DemoGraph]

4958 AD +++ Gonna catch them all!

► Show Spoiler

Messages!

Symbiots begin eating population on frontier worlds. Several dozen turns from now and they would come after us.


Aaand the famine. Crap, I kinda forgot about it when I've landed my power legions. I thought they don't need to eat, them being in full power armor with **** recirculation systems and all that.

Welp, it's not bad yet. They've lost 5% and 12% HP, should be good for a fight and heal completely in a turn or two.
"No food? You're spoiling us, my lord!"


We get offers to trade tech and sell tech and accept both.
Tech trade is especially valuable. Not because I really need it. But rather because in my experience AI is reluctant to accept trades to the point of retardation. But is active on proposing trades on a good enough basis. And the more techs I have, the more chances there're to get an offer.



On to liberation! Again!
Cruiser rolls well, he kills both anti-tank gun and arty. Looks like there's only a limited resistance left (I hope for a few militia), so I try for a riskier option. I land hauler near the city and go inside with tanks only, without marines. There was a single militia inside, it routs and I capture it with scout tank. Then I move the whole stack to attack another city, turns out it's another farm with some more arty. I move in and it's another great roll, 2 militia and arty are captured.
I move tank and mobarty to them to dissuade rebels from the remaining city from moving out.


Attention, prisoners! Only today you have a choice of your life! Sign a generational contract and serve me - or die!
How about this for a labour negotiation tactic?
Maybe you should add something positive to improve their loyalty, my lord?
Oh, I see what you mean.
Attention, prisoners! You've seen the power of our military! The crew of our majestic cruiser, The Pounder, had shown you all the rage and firepower you would have if you join our noble cause! You have a chance to show all the worlds of the empire the glory you could be!
Or die!

Finally, an empty hauler moves back to orbit with 1 AP to sit there. Why?
Because last turn I've moved the freighter to Byz2. And while I've played many years ago I still remember that there's agora out there. Freighter crash lands there, gets all the metal for $2.6k, then moves to Pentateuch, reloads it to hauler and pony-trains it to Delphi.


And as if by magic we've got metal for two more engies this turn.
Then we're moving in on that mine. Again, I happen to remember (I've played this game a lot in my days) that it has kinda powerful hidey evasive rebels, so I've brought half a stack of troops to absorb shots and try to do mean reversion.
Sure enough, there're three rebel partisans inside... who manage to destroy my SAM, FFF-, before I capture one with noble. I actually took SAM to be a damage sponge (and to capture routers). But I didn't count on them rolling that well.


Here's the *******. IIRC, you can't build them, they have no upkeep, great spotting (range 3!), evasive (agility 8 means that artillery would miss them 75% of the time). I think they got nerfed somewhat (probably a weaker attack than in EoFS v1.0, but I may be wrong). But they actually have better spotting than spies and come completely free. They're especially good if you consider that, unlike spies, you don't have to wait for them to build for whopping 5 turns (3 for the officer + 2 to turn him into a spy).
All in all, not a bad catch (though worse than a mudkip).


What's with all the commotion?
My lord?
I saw some wenches clothed quite provocatively.

My lord! Serfs celebrate a traditional seasonal mudkipfest.
So?
Don't you know about it, my lord?
I'm not really interested in blackhands. War and all.
They bathe in the healing mud from the finest Delphian hot springs, drink alcohol and then show their, ah, appreciation to...
Everyone.

► Show Spoiler

And now we'll have a planning interlude. Because of course what you need in life is more of my rambling.

A question of strategy

There's a kinda strategic decision to be made.
In two turns we'll have 3 engineers built. If we don't want to lose city production turns, we'll need at least two landers on Delphi. It means that they can do 1 sortie to Pentateuch or elsewhere and then they have to get back.
What do we want to send and where?
We're ~100 food/turn and 52/turn metal positive. And we need more.
I don't remember what Delphi specializes in (I've used to play other houses in the past and anyway my memories are sketchy). But the planet seems to be bad for metal extraction - it's mostly hilly, not mountainous. And we've already found 3 gem deposits. I doubt there should be many more good resource spots, because planets are kinda balanced resource-wise.
We have a good food production at Pentateuch, but no metal and a few cities. It has some mountain ridges, so there might be pretty good spots for mining. But we don't really have recon there.
We can also move troops to some other planet. That is, Tethys or Ravenna.
Tethys seems meh - there are very few mountains. Also, lorewise it should be a homeworld of Imperial Fleet. In EOFS v1.0 it was a rebel world, though IIRC a somewhat underwhelming one. There's a chance that in v1.51 we might land to find tough ministry units we can't really attack yet.
Ravenna is, lorewise, a Hawkwood planet. But we don't have a map of it, because I've sent my frigates elsewhere. And it might not be good mining planet as well.

So Pentateuch it is.
We need to explore it first. It's very mountainous and has a lot of water, so foot explorers would be bad. It means that we need to move planes from Delphi, preferably both of them. So we bring them both to the well (it's the only city in range of both planes), doing a little bit of recon in the process, and first lander ships them to P.
The second lander can send some small attack party, and I choose to send two artys we already have in orbit.

We also build 2 engies. It leaves us with 66 food, 99 metal and $36. We can't buy more metal, but we can disband militia to get 4 metal back. And we can sell 4 more gems to get $1200. And with that we order a third engie.

And again, we're over.

P.S. Also, there's a League cargo fleet over B2 that should restock agoras soon. And Al Malik are encroaching on Leminkainen! (actually, the AI is supplying himself via the shortest route of Istakhr-Aylon-Leminkainen/Criticorum).

[DemoGraph]

Out of interest I've searched for "letsplay fading suns" and depending on VPN, search engine and exact wording this thread comes from second (duckduck) to about 30s (Google on German VPNs) place in the world already. We're often behind links to youtube videos and tabletop RPG pages (like shops) and are sometimes the first among text or picture LPs.

Quality content! I should probably go nag Rusty for some megabadger.

Edit: We be kings and gismo!

► Show Spoiler

[DemoGraph]

4959 AD +++ Dirty scum!

Did I hear some commotion again?

► Show Spoiler

Rebels! Rebels! Guards!


There's a bloody rebellion on Delphi!
And aliens keep genociding humans on Absolution, my lord.
Who cares. My fief is in danger! It's a good fief! It brings me all the good things! And cash!



I won't be able to live properly without it!
Mum would kill me!
Where're these bastards? This dirty mob of scum and villainy?


They rebelled at the lab.


You see, rebelling deducts 50% from city HP. It means they've just halved our research for a few turns, until the city heals itself.
Rebellion spawns a random assortment of units. Some partisans, some basic guns. Here we were lucky, because half the stack are useless flaks we shouldn't even trip over. Still, it's good that the capitol has some reserves and a random assortment of units to kill these guys.
We gather everything, even militia, and roll over them, capturing another partisan and a lot of chaff in the process.


Victory, gentlemen!

Party time! Feast, everyone!
But my lord, there is no food!
What do you mean, there's no food? Last year we were food positive!
Yes, but you see, that farm...

How is it even possible?!

Well, remember me moving that plane offworld? I kinda forgot to finish off that militia. And they kinda captured the farm back, just as I feared.
So half our food production are on the other hemisphere and we have no real way to capture it back. And we're -15 net food again. There're still 300+ food in agora, so we shouldn't starve. But it was embarassing.

Highlanders! I blame highlander rebels lurking under bushes!
Yes, my lord. Rooiboslanders.
Slanderers, yes!
Yes.
Yes. But what shall we do?
It is for you to decide, my lord.
You're my advisor. I call you to advise me!
Well, there's your cousin's hunting party not far from there.
How not far exactly?
He could be at that farm in 2 or 3 years.
What?
He does like hunting.


We also can send a group of tanks from the south. They were left behind after the conquest.
We have a stray tank army just sitting there?
I wouldn't call that an "army", my lord. More like, a division.
How many tanks?
About 250, on paper.
On paper?
We're still retrofitting them after the war.
So, how long to get them there?
They would also need 3-4 years to get there.
3 years?!
No roads there, sire.
I thought this planet had 2 billion people.


It might be said so, yes, my lord.
So, where exactly are they?
They're not exactly people.
What?
They're serfs, my lord. We're trying to do something about it, but you see, they know only their potatoes.
We'll have to change it some day.
Yes, my lord.
Now, where was I?.. Ah, yes. The rebel scum! So, your advice was?..
My advice was to wait, my lord. The glory awaits on Pentateuch! Let's get things sorted out there first!
(and maybe nobody would recall why that airforce was sidelined)
What?
Glory, my lord!
Glory, yes! Onwards, to Pentateuch!

So, again, I'd like to find out what happens on attack before deciding what to do at home.
That fort is docile for now, but I don't remember what makes rebels wake up. And it would prevent landing, because that elephant-looking gun is an anti-orbital cannon (PTS) that would shoot at our craft landing or lifting. So, let's try killing it, shall we?


Actually, if we compare units, the cruiser is about on par with that gun statwise (though about 10 times more expensive). So we'll try to bomb it and bail if something happens.


Surprisingly, it did ok. It lost 7% HP and dealt 41%. Now, strictly speaing costwise we're probably at a loss here, but it should help ground troops to suffer less casualties.


We try assaulting... and all goes well!


(I thought that I've really lucked out here, because the enemy had both arty and meatshields and also that lasergun. So I've tried replaying this fight several times to see just how lucky I was. Turns out, it was a typical outcome. During indirect fire phase enemy arty either misses the scout tank or hits medium tank ineffectively, during direct fire phase our tanks and marines decimate the enemy (who has almost no direct attack of its own to retaliate) and during close fire phase the enemy is already weakened, so they crumble easily. I sometimes lost the scout tank if enemy rolled well.)
(We'll get to combat mechanics some time later in this LP, when it will be crucial. For now, when I show you the unit stats, just assume that higher numbers are better, though not always linearly so.)

There're many mountains around the fort. So we put both planes in freighter, land them and go on exploratory flights. Some ruins get discovered, but no resources so far.



I've decided to land two arties near the western equatorial neutral city, because it was closer to the already captured ones and it would be easier to get planes there for future scouting. Turns out, it's a mine. So we add tanks, bash militia and capture an arty.


Then both landers and freighter return to Delphi to be engie taxis next turn. This makes a problem of that farm kinda moot. I land hauler on it, remove small exotica stock away and send hauler to Pentateuch empty - there should be enough troops there to finish capturing.

Finally, there're League fleets over Penta and Leminkainen. It means that agora on Delphi should be restocked next turn.
In preparation for that we buy some food from agora. For the feast, remember?

[DemoGraph]

4960 AD +++ For I have seen the light

► Show Spoiler

Pharma is finished.


And Decados give us a fair exchange! Best buds, luv!


We're moving an engie to build a mine for gems, and a noble to capture... nothing, because our way is cockblocked by that militia. I can move past it, but in this case it would move north to our new mine. So I kill it and leave that farm empty for a turn.
I swear, leaving that militia alive was the dumbest mistake ever. We'll lose about 80 food and 60 exotica or almost a full engie-worth of income, because we haven't produced anything there.
(In hindsight, it would've been better to capture that farm and catch that militia next turn. It has enough AP to move only 1 or 2 hexes so my noble could catch up easily. Oh, well.)


I've also built another mine, for 10/26 metal. Full potential of our mines is 128 metal/turn. Real output would be about 80 because of taxation and expansion (new buildings are created damaged and then heal up in about 4 turns). Still, it's much better than the 0 we've began with.

On Pentateuch our plane just got his sight range increased by 1 hex.


At that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see!
Truly, a miracle of the Pantocrator! Let us praise his wonders, brothers!

Actually, it was a result of religious conversion. Each planetary church has a ruling sect. It slowly converts all the units on this planet to this sect. Sects adjust unit and city stats, sometimes to a pretty dramatic effect. You can change the sect every several turns.
I suppose, you can change the sect to make specialized planets, though I haven't played enough to be familiar with it (especially since you can't see the effects anywhere ingame and have to rely on reading gamedata txt).
The sect mechanics were added in the last patch. They're still pretty raw and could lead to dumb outcomes like this one. Just think of it. Our elite jet pilots who spend all their time being dashing drunk geographers had just decided they want to forfeit the faith of their fathers out of nowhere. I mean, who am I to judge them, because just look at that dirty chick and her phat phallic cylinders and that titbeard statue.


And when the end comes and fire and madness descend upon us from the skies we shall make the only thing that remains.
We make love.

► Show Spoiler

Of course our overtestosteroned pilots had been falling on them like dominoes.

Still, I think, it would be more believable if units had a conversion chance only if they were in one hex with (or at some distance to) a heretical city or a preacher unit.

Here's the difference in stats between our traditional Amalthean plane and an Escatonic one.


Also, the fact that conversion has happened means that there IS a church on this planet. We definitely want to own that gothgirl spawn point.

The locals from the fort seem to move out to flank us...


Actually, I have no idea what are they doing. Do they try to move to our mine without fighting my mighty 3 units?
They're dumb, so we bomb them.
We see that the arty is at least a 6th unit in there, though Pounder sees only two of them. And then he gets shot back at! This laser PTS seems to have moved out to attack our mine. I decide to risk it and bomb it back... and bomb it to death with minimal damage. There's probably about another half a stack there. We move troops back to the mine and bring in a hauler full of reinforcements from the west.


We build another mine. Those 1 tile islands are pretty great for metal.


The guild did restock the agora, so we clear it of metal and get 2 more engies.


Before we finish, here's another miracle.
AIs are flipping their **** so hard, they could almost be Hawkwoods (hawks are characterized as the house that "seen more ups and downs during its history than a ***** in zero g" or something like that). v1.51 has them constantly adjusting their tax from 0 to max and it leads to jumps in production that directly affect score graphs.
Can't you see the quality of the game already? It's glorious!
Or it's some obfuscation tactic that prevents us from seeing their true power.

[DemoGraph]

4961 AD +++ Emperor of the fading farms

► Show Spoiler

Hey, free money!


On Pentateuch enemies had retreated. I don't know why. So I've gathered the halfstack and moved it forward. Then I've tried to bomb that other city and found out that it's the Church and that its garrison had returned to it (at least partially). And that the Pounder can't destroy a goddamn peashooter SAM in two runs, FFS.


Last of the Pounder's AP was spent on recon bombing that other city. Turns out, it's an arborium (think agricultural arcology, can grow food anywhere). Also, turns out, it's empty. The garrison had probably ran away for some reason (to attack us!).
We can drop bulk hauler there to capture it. But it has no units available nearby (because we sent them all to attack that fort). If we land the ship and rebels move on it, they'll capture it without battle. That's why you scout first and move later, kids.


And look what did our brave explorers find! One day, hopefully soon, it will be a great place for a mine. Not yet, though. First we need an ungodly amount of food and metal for all the engies. So we've disbanded one of the captured SAMs to get enough metal for one.


Also, one engie was built on Delphi. It's sent to Penta with a partisan. I think, there're some great places for metal mines there.
(You can also see League fleets on agora resupply runs.)


And this great mining place is... right near that food bonus I hadn't seen in the fog of war, **** it. Well, we'll have to sacrifice the food, because 48 metal are much more valuable for us now than 68 food.


Finally we order one more engie on Delphi and a bunch of militia to garrison new cities.
Next turn we're getting 3 more engies on Delphi. And with only one lander around it's time for some urbanization... or transfer of more engies to Penta. We'll see.

Finally our noble captures that farm on Delphi that eluded us for so long.
Farmgals, ahoy!


A surprisingly uneventful turn.

Not enough atrocities, my lord.

► Show Spoiler

Geroff me, geroff me!

[DemoGraph]

4962 AD +++ Mass Education

4 cities are captured on Absolution at once!

► Show Spoiler

Zergiots sure like eating pops there and are a serious menace to all interstellar community... Anyway, money!



The Pounder had preventively bombed that fort again. And missed. But we've seen that there're a lot of units. That arty is a ninth one. My attacking stack has 8, it might get munched.


So we move two tank units from Delphi to Penta and add stray partisans and a power legion to strengthen the stack and get recon and...


That fort has a noble. It would be good to capture one.
We bomb again to soften up the defenders and miss. Then I recall that noble agility bonus works during space bombardment. So Pounder attacks with 4 accuracy vs 9 effective agility of the target, meaning that he has 30% chance to hit. That was a complete waste of turns.
Then we attack. I decided that it would be better to feint (we outgun them, but not decisively enough to win via alpha strike... besides, I hope to get that noble; we do have armor superiority, with feint it should render their militia and SAMs pretty useless). Still, we lose a tank and almost lose another. No prisoners. Meh.
Still, I think it was the strongest enemy stack so far and we've stomped it.


Then I divide the troops - a few fast tanks remain at the fort, two 6 AP infantry move a bit closer to church and others go forward. The logic is to maximize number of troops at the church next turn, while leaving some back to heal. If it was an intelligent AI or a human, he could've killed our pops piece by piece.


Finally, expansion! On orbit of Penta we have a lander with an engie. We land him on the freshly captured fort, raze it and build a mine on top.
We'll get back to resource model in this game a bit later. Suffice it to say that I did some autistic calculations and decided that this place is best for expansion at the moment. 50 metal! Only the mine near it and that single-hex island mine on Delphi are comparable to it in pure metal output.
After that the lander has 2 AP left. We can either move one of the tanks and a partisan to scout and hopefully capture one of the remote cities on Penta... Or we can move lander to Byz2 to buy more metal and stuff. I decide to combine these options and move a tank and a partisan to orbit, transfer to one of the APless freighters there and move lander to Byz2. These interstellar freighter turns are just too important to waste at the moment.

Then there're two engies on Delphi. There's a slight problem with them - I can't move them to any good extractor points this turn (no freighters). And I don't want to build any army production buildings without having a good food-metal income. Same goes for manufacturing buildings that would create advanced resources.

So, groaning theatrically and dragging my feet, I build two labs at once. Who needs all those techs, right, right?


They would require about $1k in upkeep per turn. But we can get 14*300=4200 from selling gems, so this should be very manageable.
And, frankly, we need the tech.


Then we sell 15 gems (+$4.5k) and buy all 210 metal and some 300 food from agora (-$6.6k) to make another 3 engies. Yes, so far we've built only engies and militia. Did I mention that we're going to spam them like it's not tomorrow yet?

Interlude - Dark Age of Technology

► Show Spoiler

At the first glance, the tech in this game is pretty typical. You have buildings that create resource points (RP). Each lab gives 100 RP/turn. Each turn you throw RP at the tech slider, it fills, tech toggles on.
However, there're two quirks.
1. Each tech requires 1% of its cost in RP maintenance every turn (deductable from RP income). If you fail to provide it, you lose the tech.
On the one hand, the cost is pretty negligible (1 RP ~= 5$).
On the other, if you lose some of your labs, you also may find that you've lost some or all of your techs and have to start over.
Here's the tech maintenance screen. Note that there's a "Strike" button that allows you to abandon the selected tech.


2. Techs have church like levels. Church bans some techs. Some of the tech they ban is bad (plague bombs, AI porn), some of it could be useful (strong units, AI porn).
If you obtain those techs somehow, you either have to strike them or wait for inquisitors to come burn your brainiacs alive - they attack your labs until you drop the offending tech automatically.
In the beginning, the Church's fleet is one of the strongest. And inquisitors are also pretty powerful. So they can easily wipe the floor with you. Later in the game, of course, a runaway player can purge them back, because Church AI can't argue or be forced to adjust to you. The moment you get a proscribed tech, it'd a fight to the death.

Now, the mechanics are pretty barebones, but they're there and they give room for some RP and pacing choices.
If anything, I would've liked the mechanics to be more pronounced - the tech costs to be higher and the Church more active and nuanced. Alas, we have what we have.

Interlude - Freighters and tech

► Show Spoiler

So, as you've surely noticed, I value those freighter turns a lot.
And we can't build freighters now, because we lack tech, starports to build them in and resources to build them with. Namely, electronics and singularities; but those could be bought. Starports could be captured (I think, Tethys has one), but it's not a scalable solution. We need mass freighters to really explode in economy. And for that we need to be able to build ports, cyclotrones and fusoriums and electronics.


It means researching physics tech subtree. By a sheer coincidence (and a virtue of a bad balancing) the same techs would also bring the biggest profits and open up a bunch of units necessary for basic defense and attack.
I've read game data files on technology and units a bit and found out that I've goofed with going biotech first. My intention was to open arboriums (farms mk2) to get a lot of food everywhere. But they're not that profitable and definitely don't lead to the same utility.
Goddamn devs, why couldn't they balance their **** right after 25 years!

Anyway, I think that I'll finish bio research to get those arboriums after all. Because Delphi is already -50 food/turn, globally we're only +20/turn, buying from League is expensive and shipping food to Delphi every few turns would take those precious freighter turns.

To other news.

► Show Spoiler

There's a small league fleet over Delphi. I'm almost sure that they won't refill agora next turn, because they've already done it now. But if they do, it would be great.


krrshhhttk

To other news. Our valiant frigate "Valiant" and its detachment had traveled far and wide mapping planets we've lost maps of because we're that medieval. It came as far as Stigmata system, spending all fuel for maneuvers, as is proper during that long of a jump.
From the orbit of Stigmata he mapped not only the planetary surface, but also a small fleet of unknown allegiance. Including a starbase that, according to our experts, is able to oneshot him if it attacks.


Will there be hostilities? We do not know. Anxiously but hopefully we all pray for the safety of our sailors!
I already found the captain's widow number, in case she would be in need of a solace...
Will we see our first fleet action?
And not only a fleet one...

Where did those unknown ships came from? Did Stigmata garrison abandon their anti symbiot duty only to mingle with deviants and technobarbarians?
Stay tuned to find out!

[DemoGraph]

4963 +++ Trading in the Futures

2 more cities go to symbiots on the planet Absolution.

► Show Spoiler

Wait-wait-wait. Where did you get that minimap in a corner there? We definitely don't have a map of that planet.


My cousin is a holy seer. He sometimes doodles me his nightmares about that forsaken planet.
That doggy-styled bikini girl definitely won't be forsaken. He draws her on every report he sends.

Yep, it's a dev oversight. Not that this map is really useful (especially on a pregenerated map and stuff). Just a generic sloppiness.

About the reports. Are there any news about or valiant Valiant?


It's alive!
What? Why?
Rebels are surely afraid of our noblesse and superior firepower!
...

They didn't attack for some reason. Rebels sometimes skip their turns and do... something. Maybe they were attacking Stigmata. Or maybe just bugged out.

Back to Penta.
There doesn't seem to be many units in that church. Still, we bring half a stack, just in case, and capture it pretty easily.


Thanks to this conquest income from tithe skim rises from $1610 to $2212 or 602 per 6 cities.
I thought that the skim is $100/city (maybe also * health), but in this case we should've had either +552 or +600. It seems that the calculation is somewhat more complex. Maybe it's +1 per unit as well. Or maybe it's bugged.
Whatever, those gothicc eskatonik tithes sure are welcome.

► Show Spoiler

Recon plane found some rebels lurking near the ruins. They might "pop" those ruins and spawn a bunch of rebels we may not be able to deal with.
The spawns are random, you may get a bunch of militia or a whole army of holy ripped motherfuckers; one of the multiplayer tactics is to go around pinging ruins on other people's HW (I'll try to demonstrate later).
Really lucky that we've seen them. So we send a small detachment (tank killer and partisan) from that SE mine. They kill rebel arty and SAM. Tank fails morale check and zeroes out on AP. Whatever, they've prevented ruin popping and that's everything that was needed of them.


After some freighter shuffling we land partisan and an arty to capture arborium. I knew that there shouldn't be that many units there after we've killed those SAM and arty. But I sure didn't expect 4 militias there. Still, it's +70 food, so we're good.


Then we send a bunch of food and damaged troops to Delphi on hauler and lander (next turn they'll also send engies to new construction spots). We send freighter to get metal from Byz2. We also recon bomb a mine and a polar farm, but there're no units there, so we can't check how productive are they (UI quirk/oversight - you can't access stack info screen with city income panel if there's no stack).

Then, after some consideration I send cruiser to Delphi. There's almost nothing left to capture on Pentateuch (I hope that 1 lander and a stray freighter should be enough to get that mine in a turn or two). So we have to choose the next target for capture. It's either:
- Tethys - it's lightly populated and I still don't know whether it belongs to imperial fleet.
- Ravenna - barbarian jungle world.
- Leminkainen - another barbarian jungle.
I like Leminkainen's geography slightly more. But I think I'd prefer to protect one of jumproutes to Delphi, it being our capitol and all. So Ravenna it is. Carpet enlightenment awaits!


Agora on Delphi is restocked again, so we sell 10 gems and buy another 200 metal and 100-something food. We're -50 food and +115 metal there now, and +65/+200 galaxywide. This trading basically gave us another turn of metal income.
+1 engie on Penta, +3 on Delphi.
We can also see agora on Byz2, because we've been there once. It's not MP, so there's no danger of people stealing our ****... And there's a League fleet in orbit... So we purchase another 200 metal to just sit there doing nothing in hope that next turn they'll renew agora stock, and our freighter would get 400 metal to send home.

This turn was a short one, because I was mopping up and freighter turns were spent on logistics.

[DemoGraph]

4964 AD +++ Men of Steel

Just as planned, the agora was restocked, and we've blown all our money on cold steel.

► Show Spoiler

Do we regret it? No! 181 metal on Delphi + 426 on Byz2 = 607, six engies!
We're gonna roll!
To starvation again, my lord.
29 food on Delphi, -56 next turn. We're at least 627 food short.
We can buy 63 on Delphi + 535 on Byz2 + transfer 87 from Penta = 685. It means we need $7.8k.
We've sold a bunch of resources, but got only $5.7. Again I have to do some freighter shuffle magic to get resources from one of the outlying mines to the capitol and move both engies I have to place this turn back to orbit and also get $14.5k.
Then I shuffle some more (it's a logistical nightfoal, plans within plans) and manage to bring enough food for 6 engies to Delphi AND place both engies this turn. Maybe it wasn't optimal, but we got another farm and a lab.


Let's recap.
It's turn 9 and we have 13 engies being built on Delphi and 3 on Penta. Considering that we've began the game with 9 cities (including the useless fort on Byz2), soon we'll have a simply disgusting citycrawl. That is, if I manage to place all that spam and don't fall into starvation.
Just to think that only several turns ago I thought that we're about 150 food positive, I won't need those arboriums any time soon and we can switch to researching physics. I'm glad I didn't.


Brief me on the food situation again, will you?
We can't expand agriculture, my lord. The fading of the suns...
Is a great spiritual challenge for every believer!
Of course. But there're also economic consequences.
Specifically?
(Had he seen a potato? Ever?)
It's not hot enough, my lord. Good farming regions are few and far between. Serfs can survive on a substistence basis. Our economy requires more... intensive approach.
So how are we going to fix the lack of food?
Technology, my lord.
!!
Arboriums need only flat space. We should be able to cover the poles with them...
Spreading a sin of technological infantilism!
The Dark beyond the stars...
krrtchkt
...took away a crutch. It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents.
Bene Gesserit schools?
brrrrt
Eskatonik, my lord.
Oh, yes. Where were we?
Technological overexpansion would make the serfs too independent!..
...but they surely would be grateful to you for a possibility to be scantily clad and all frolicking under the domes. And food, my lord. All the food they might want and share with us would surely improve your standing.
Proceed. And don't forget to notify me when our domes of pleasures, ah, gastronomic would be completed.
Of course, my lord.

Seriously, I really hope that arbo tech would be completed in a few turns, solving all our food problems for a long time, if not forever.


In the end, we've got all the metal we required and will soon get demographic boom. Because steel is for humans.

(Originally it's a wedding-breeding song.)

But for now we have other matters.
The Pounder and a hauler with two arties fly to Ravenna to try and find a capturable farm.


And what's that?


Why is Valiant still at Stigmata? I thought he should've been saved from those rebels?
Mylord! It's not like we forgot about him or left him to die there for some nefarious reason!
Then explain yourself!
Stigmata garrison commander had asked us to help with orbital recon. Seeing that the brave garrison has almost no fleet of its own I've decided to help!
So? Did we find anything?
Actually...


Send them out of there. Now.
Yes, my lord.
The Stigmata is doomed, isn't it?
I think so, my lord.
We're next ones, aren't we?
al-Malik are closer, my lord. And there're league fleets in the vicinity that might give them a good fight.
Can we do anything to help? Anything at all?
Actually...


As, of course, you know, the regent will distribute ministries, including Imperial Fleet, Imperial Eye, and Stigmata garrison itself.


Li Halan, the Hazat and Decados had already demanded the votes from us.
Everyone but al-Malik?
I think they've noticed the symbiots as well.
So we need to support somebody for regent to be elected and ministries be redistributed. In that case somebody will get the fleet and might be able to stop the xenos.
Yes, my lord. Whom shall we support?
The Hazat.
My lord?
Decados are out of the question. And Li Halan are too self-centered. We need strong allies in these troubled times.
Yes, my lord.

(There should've been a rant about engies. But it kinda expanded too much for my liking. I'll write it separately in a few days.)

[DemoGraph]

Interlude - Engie rant

There won't be a really long rant after all. I wrote several pages of detailed discussion of the problem, and then google sheets went to shits and ate it.

So, here's the twopager.

► Show Spoiler

1. EOFS economy is badly balanced. Many advanced manufacturing cities provide mediocre income. So you're incentivized to spam extractors and build advanced cities only when league trading isn't enough and/or you're moving to mass consumption of advanced resources.

This leads to planetary grids full of extractors. I begin to build one myself in this LP. It contradicts the setting completely (many planets have only a few millions of pops living on them with giant swathes of wilderness inbetween), and so is immersion breaking.

Also, it makes a choice between intensive (high) and extensive (wide) economic expansion irrelevant.

Check the pic below. It's probably the most typical result of a long game. Note planetary extractor checkerboard and infinite city sprawl (ICS) below and on the pole (see minimap). It's disgusting. All planets turn out to look like that in the end.
Yes, the pic is 300 turns in the game. But each planet fits about 70 extractor cities. At turn 9 I already produce 3-6 engies per turn in this LP, so I should be able to spam such an extractor grid in about 20 turns.


2. Engies cost 100 food, metal and creds. Or $2100-2700 in money terms. ROI (return on investment) from extractors is 25-35%. ROI is so large that you can spam expansion engies non-stop, quickly turning planets into an ICS. It's immersion breaking.

3. Engie spam is usually superior to military interplanetary expansion because a) engies are too cheap, b) you can't build interstellar transports from the beginning, so your logistical capacity for expansion is severely constrained.

Average unit (med tank) costs 40 metal or 400 cred. Expansion party of 4 tanks = $1.6k, comparable in price to engie. It's much higher if you take into account opportunity cost from 2 freighters at ~$17k and same 25-35% ROI, so $4-6k/turn more.

You can't even say that military expansion is better in terms of tempo. Expansion takes several turns, long enough to be comparable to engie 4 turn production time. Especially if you consider that engie takes 4 turns to produce anywhere, including in resource extractors; while expansion party would likely require 8 fort/factory city-turns and this is without a freighter. You can substitute those med tanks with militia-arty, but those would suffer large losses, so they're very freighter-intensive. And better expansion units are gated behind tech for 10-20 turns, they're not early game.
Also, rebel planets are usually sparcely urbanized, so each expansion party usually captures 1-3 cities and then it has to be moved by a freighter again.

(Originally I've made detailed turn-by-turn example comparison of military expansion vs engie building. I can't be bothered to repeat it. Blame Google.)

4. In MP freighters and space fighters are on the same research path. Space fighters effectively prevent rushes from turn 10-15 (1200 RP or 15 lab-turns + some time for construction). Because you can spam them and leave them on the planetary surface, they're great for ambushes - they would go to space only when enemy freighters warp in and are sitting ducks. Now, the enemy can also bring his cruiser to help with cheesing, but you can as well.
You need 6k RP more (or ~75 lab-turns) to get to freighters and/or landers.
Losing some of your 4 starting transports when you have 20-30 turns until their replacement, is a significant impediment.

5. You can see that lead dev...
Andrew Greenberg, he was one of the original VTM devs, probably THE original Fading Suns dev (I'm not sure), and is a generally cool RPG guy.
...So. You can see that Mr Greenberg is completely unconcerned with EOFS economy, because in his LP he has literally thousands of resource units, many turns of output, just sitting there doing nothing.


Yes, he's showing off combat for a primarily American audience, not some boring calculator stuff... But still.
He's there for roleplaying and that's really okay. As you might've guessed from my other LPs, I'm all for roleplaying as well.
But it shows the priorities.

Sum up

For 25 years EOFS economy was badly designed up to the point of being broken. It is still broken. It will probably never be fixed unless modders intervene.

How to fix it? First steps would be to:
- dissuade ICS - significantly ramp up engie cost, up to about x5 of a current one, increase production time and limit cities where they could be produced.
- make military expansion easier, because it's a goddamn wargame after all - introduce mercenary freighters that players could hire for a quick logistical boost.
- remake all the resource production balance, because it's a disgrace.

P.S. I'm actually making such a mod on and off for quite some time. I've already fixed engies and the city economy, but the combat economy and balance are still unfinished. I haven't even began to change economic units, tech, ministries, sects, fluff and galaxy map. And it's not my top priority at all. With luck I might finish it this year.

[rusty_shackleford]

Always found it a bit strange that they decided to make a strategy game based on their tabletop RPG rather than an RPG

[DemoGraph]

Always found it a bit strange that they decided to make a strategy game based on their tabletop RPG rather than an RPG

I think that there's a tonal discrepancy between the game mechanics and the setting.
On the one hand, the ruleset and some parts of the setting are written for a typical D&D murderhoboing. Small group of teenagers in space vans are killing evil for fun and profit. The factions are one-dimensional. There're almost no economy or rules for a campaign play.
On the other, the premise and the setting are simply screaming for long adult campaigns. The setting is tropey, but quite rich. They have about 30 planets fleshed out and maybe 30 organizations (houses, sects, guilds or bureaucracies). Setting supplements have the majority of the story hooks focused on some kind of political action. In this regard it's like sci-fi Ars Magica.

I'd say that the ideal representation of the setting would be CK2-like game (with more adventuring and skill-based conflicts and less map painting).

[DemoGraph]

4965 AD +++ Death and taxes and breeding, oh my!

What is this again?

► Show Spoiler

A business we've discussed a few days ago, my lord. Now sign here.


We went with the Hazat.
I probably should've tried to convince AIs to vote for me, but it should've been done a few turns ago. And I forgot.
What are these elections? Oh, just a way to win or lose the game. Disregard it for now, we'll get back to it soon. Elections could wait for another time (I can almost hear background Yankee screeching). But you see, I began writing about that thing just below and kinda got carried away.
What 'that thing'?
We've semi-automatically chosen the old-new patriarch. And since we're pretty medieval and all that church business is pretty important, today was a good time to write an interlude about religions. But, again, it turned out to be too large. I'll finish writing it soon-ish, cross my heart (with your flaming blade).


Meanwhile, here's Ravenna from orbit with my guesses.


We need to capture a farm to feed our invasion force again and probably send some food to always hungry Delphi. We have only two arty in orbit, so I decide to unleash the Pounder on the SW farm candidate. And sure enough, it's a farm with ATG and two unseen units I presume to be militia.


Then we land and see another arty. Pounder bombs it to half health, we attack... and have our asses handed back to us. Because there was infantry inside, rebels had rolled well and we've missed all of them. The only good thing is that our horrible troop morale (we're still paying our troops half wages) has led to immediate rout. Otherwise that infantry would've picked our arties apart. We pick them up instead and jump back to Delphi to get more cannon fodder.


We'll be back, scum!

Both agoras were restocked again.
And we're back to the food problem. You see, we're net +70 food galaxywide. But we're also net 230 metal. It means that if we want to keep spending metal on engies, we're actually 70-200 = -130 net food even before purchases from the League.
That's a lot. To remedy it somewhat we ponytrain a fresh engie from Delphi to Penta and crashland him near the church to build...


Palace!
Because it increases our income by $1.5k and this's enough to buy 115 food while the best farm I can get is about 80 and it will go completely online only in a few turns when its HP restores. The palace begins taxing immediately.
Taxes. And death.


We have another little problem. There're 20 cities on the planet. We were building 12 engies last turn. And now we've added another 3. We don't have enough cities to produce engies from, so we have to build them on outlying farms and whatnot. In the future it might be hard to get them to construction places. I hope we'll manage.
I actually can't build any real military units, because every production place is churning out engies like there's no tomorrow.


A setback on Ravenna doesn't matter. A lack of military production doesn't matter. In a decade or so we shall train more clerks than it was done it centuries. And we shall do as it was once said.


But let's hope that our new urban class won't get any funny ideas.

P.S. As some of you might've noticed, deaths were evaded this time.
But nobody shall escape our taxes. And engie breeding program.
Nobody!

[DemoGraph]

Interlude. The Universal Church of the Celestial Sun

► Show Spoiler

In the RPG



All humies in the empire follow Universal Church of the Celestial Sun. It's a notCatholic church, with a universal power hierarchy, planetary archbishops voting for pope, etc. The key difference is that the church is universalist one - it accepts many sects as long as they don't openly contradict the orthodoxy (and don't try to overthrow it or the existing imperial order).
The God is the astral sun that shines upon souls. Souls are wifi routers. They can reflect this light back if they're "polished" enough, if they do, they unite with the God after death. If you don't polish and die, your soul can't ping the way back to the basic station and remains traveling in the dark to be subverted and consumed by demons from the dark between the stars. In the end of times, God will explode all the stars so that their supernovas sweep all the lost souls back to him. Be good to not get lost, knave. That's it.
Sects differ in their interpretations of this dogma. The light may come only from God (Orthodox teaching) or from a person as well (emitter-router model). The light may shine upon everybody or only upon the chosen ones (priests and nobles) who may reflect it upon everyone else, including you (if you polish your lord's mirror well enough, you sinful girl).
Orthodoxy is divided into Mahayana (they think even aliens have proper soul mirrors) and Hinayana (only humans do). Basically, universalist vs humanist, xenophilius lovegoods vs HFY factions.

While I might sound edgy, I unironically like the religion they wrote. It's somewhat simplistic, but generally looks believable and fitting for a post-technocratic distopia. It's definitely better than all D&D "religions" and is more than enough for the setting about space van murderhobos.

In the game

Mechanically, the sects in the game provide loyalty, healing and production bonuses to cities and stat bonuses to units. That's it. No special mechanics, abilities, units or techs.
Every 10 or 20 turns patriarch elections happen automatically. The sect with the highest number of votes gets patriarch (if I'm not mistaken, cities go for 10 votes, units for 1).


Orthodox
Economic powerhouse.
Canonically, they have a token ****** patriarch (pictured). In the game he's a typical white dude with shaved head (above).


+10% to all resource extraction and +5% city loyalty on top (think either +50 cred or +5% more production per city). +5% loyalty to troops as well. When their pope is in power all the labs become slightly more expensive.
I didn't run calculations, but I think they have the largest potential output of all the sects.


Sanctuary Aeon (Amaltheans)
That's us currently. Healsluts!


+5% resource extraction (except metal, but includes exotica and gems (generally useless, because gems are extracted from resource pods only, in stacks of 5, rounded down; it has very limited effect when your city has, e.g. 78% loyalty, then you can get over that 80% threshold a bit earlier)). They have high bonuses to healing units and cities and +20% unit armor (sometimes effectively useful). When their pope is in power, all cities get even more healsluts.

Eskatonics
Gothgirl mages, we have their HW on Pentateuch.
Also, wearers of the funny Persian top hats, because why not.


You should stop immanentizing eschaton!
They lose all the good production bonuses, get some fringe ones, barely better research... but +1 spotting (it improves recon range by 1 hex for some units), +2 agility (+10% attack evasion) and +50% psy armor. Pope gives slightly improved research to everyone.

Incarnates
notProtestants.
Canonically, Incarnates began popular again after ~700 years of absense when the single prophetess has managed to inspire unwashed al-Malik masses. She was killed by Li Halan on the orders of ****** patriarch sometime later during Emperor Wars.
Pictured - Incarnate insignia.


10% prod bonuses for manufacturing (almost useless), 10% research bonus. +1 spotting again, +5% evasion and their units have +10% AP (only useful for air and hover 10+ AP units and is generally useless). +5% unit loyalty as well. Their pope gives 5% manufacturing bonus (pretty meh) and a bit of research to everyone.
I think, Hawkwoods should've been made into these mechanically, though there might be some issues lorewise.

Avestites
Pulpy flamer inquisition. All their lore is centered around the notion how edgy they're.


+10% city loyalty, +20% food. Now we're talking. They dump research a bit and make tithe skim rebellions more often. +2 spot - all their units have +1 vision range and this's very good when you don't know the map. Also +10% unit loyalty and cooler psy attack. Their pope tanks research for everyone.

Brother Battle
Knights Templar, uncluding banking shtick and rumours of heresy.


Mechanically they're half inquisitors, half healsluts, but better. +15%(!) city loyalty, +10% food, 5% healing bonuses. +1 spot (see above), agility, attack, stronger close attack. 25% more unit wages, but with +15% unit loyalty they net +10% wage. Their pope tanks both production and research.

Mendicant Monks
Think black monastics.


Across the board bump to production and research, and pope gives even more, but nobody has them so they're cheat option for people who can read data files and don't care about the setting.

If I had to rank them by power, I'd say bros, avesti, orthodox, (mendicants?), amaltheans, inca, eska.
Those loyalty bonuses are simply too good to miss.

Eris is the shittiest! The horror! No wonder the game flopped.

Seriously, though. Eskas main shtick is their bump to psy armor. And psy attack is so rare it's almost a non-issue. They also give bonus to psy attack, but it's mainly useful against symbiots (you can't win the game kicking them; only al-Malik and Hawks are placed good enough on the gal map to try to use it), and even vanilla psykers rip symbiots apart (that's their main idea). Oh, and they give some bonus to ruin drops, but I'm not sure how big it is and whether it works at all.

As you can see, even though I'm powergaming, I kinda maybe try to stay within the setting or both my planets would've already been bro.

In vanilla RPG about 80% of population are Orthodox. EOFS differs a lot.
Sects had zero meaning in EOFSv1.0.
In the last patch devs had somewhat arbitrarily switched whole planets to various sects to make them more competitive and make the change of the patriarch possible.
Hawkwoods became Amaltheans - because they're carebears.
Hazat became Avestites - nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!
Decados became Eskatoniks - because they're evil.
Al-Malik became Incarnates - because they're high tech and republican and somebody had uncritically read too much Weber.
Oh, and Li Halan remained Orthodox, because somebody has to.
The changes are kinda hamfisted. But the mechanics are there, so they could be modded into something good.

Interlude. Rebellions

► Show Spoiler

It's probably a good place to discuss rebellions.
They don't happen randomly. They mainly happen when you skim (steal) the church's tithe. To skim a planet you have to control a planetary church city.
I believe the mechanics are undocumented and haven't tested them, but it seems that it has about 10% chance to happen once on each planet you skim for 100% (and 5% if you skim at 50%?). Maybe it's also modified by city loyalty.

Rebellion doesn't mean that your units turn neutral. Rebellion means that a random city gets damaged for about 50% of its (current?) HP and about 6-12 units spawn that are random mix of partisans, basic anti-tank guns, arty or SAMs. When they spawn, they begin static and move only after one turn. If not for partisans they would've been really weak.
If you don't skim, there's no chance for rebellion, ever. No interhouse tension, no intrigues, nothing.
Decados tend to have a trait that reduces the chance of rebellion. Since skim is pretty useful early game it's an okay one.
If you have a tightly packed capitol region with a stack of fast units (or a bunch of garrisons a few hexes apart) the rebellions are almost harmless.
If they spawn in some god forsaken shithole of a mine, consider it lost, because they're usually enough to kill a few militias you might have there. In this case it's good to have some transports in orbit (or in emergency stacks) to quickly lift relief force wherever.

1 hauler in orbit and 1 on the gathering point should be enough to send 8 units anywhere. But these 2 haulers are luxury in the beginning.
Also, as I've mentioned previously, the prospect of capturing partisans is an award in itself.

To wrap up.
The game lacks real house management and internal strife mechanics. We're long away from from CK2 or Civ4 in complexity.
But I think that this religious rebellion mechanic is pretty neat. It forces you to either plan for possible contingencies or accept suboptimal income. It adds meaningful choices with a very minimalistic programming.

PS. Oh, and there're rebellions that happen when your city (or unit) loyalty drops below 25%. It's a non-issue, because only a ****** would achieve that (because it means you drop all your resource production by 75%, you're completely dependent on agoras for goods and they don't provide enough).

[DemoGraph]

4966 AD +++ Elections and meddling

Great news, my lord!

► Show Spoiler

Yes?
We became patrons of Imperial Eye! The biggest spying bureau out there, my lord!
Great! Great! I believe you're already handling the matters there?
Of course, my lord!
Anything else?
Nothing of import, my lord. Your mother has been looking for you.
That's quite important, dear D.
Yes, my lord. She's in the eastern wing.

Yes, there were elections.


As I've promised, here's the interlude.

Interlude: Elections

► Show Spoiler

Elections? In my empire?
Yes. We're more of a Holy Roman Empire ripoff than anything, so there're noble elections.

You see, Vladimir Alecto, the last and only emperor, has donned a crown of brain frying and his followers were consequently raped into extinction (as can be seen in the game intro and read in the books). Subsequently the regents were reelected for 400 years. But there was no emperor.

The election system is simple. There're elections every 10 years. Every noble house, Church and the League have 5 scepters (handwaved into existence by Vladimir, IIRC). 1 scepter = 1 vote. Majority wins regency. On a draw, nobody is regent. You can vote only if you have noble-class unit on Byz2 (noble upgrade (blademaster) or any modded one also counts).

When regent is elected, he can distribute 3 ministries to the houses:
- Imperial Fleet - they have 2 dreadnaughts, 2 cruisers, a bunch of light ships and a small production center on Byz2.
- Imperial Eye - Spies, they have a fort on each house HW with some basic defense, a spy and a lander. They also have high tech combat infantry on Byz2. No production, all their bases are single forts near the agoras and 1 (one) electronics city on Byz2.
- Stigmata - Anti-symbiot garrison of the same planet. They have a real production base there, some nice ground units, but no fleet or transports to carry them.
Regent can give one of the ministries to himself. He usually does that, and usually takes the fleet, because it's the most powerful ministry - you can easily clear the fleet of an opponent's house and bomb him into a stone age or use 2 dreads and 2 cruisers to bomb away whole rebel planets during expansion.
Generally speaking, all the ministries are gimped.
Stigmata soon gets symbiot drops and spends all the time running around them.
The Eye has a halfstack on each HW, but AFAIK it's usually cleared in MP to stop the Eye player from ruin griefing (popping ruins in hope of spawning a large rebel stack). They also have a small force on Byz2, but nothing else. (Even if they aren't cleared due to homerules, they should be neutralized diplomatically - ruin popping is a definite act of aggression. In that case all that remains for them is to run on de jure neutral territory and spawn rebels and try to get loot there. It's significantly less profitable endeavour.)
The Fleet is strong, but it can't rebuild itself. So if it loses 1-2 large battles, it becomes a non-being.
There's no incentive for player to improve ministry assets. You want to dump all the good stuff for a short-term gain, because you might lose it after the next election. And in case you'll decide to build something for a ministry, you'll have to buy units using your own resources for literally no gain.

Back to election. It's the only way to win the game. When another election comes, the current regent may declare himself emperor. He has to win that election and another one, after 10 turns, and that's it.
At that moment combat becomes allowed on Byz2, so that pretender noble could be killed during an all-out war. That's the moment when everyone should dogpile on a runaway leader.
Since there's no incentive for other players to vote for you being an emperor (no kingmaker mechanics, winning by score or other alternative routes), you usually declare yourself when you have the majority of votes and think you can hold it (you've either captured many scepters or killed others' nobles on Byz2 and blockade it).

So, to win the game you want to kill or capture scepters, kill or capture nobles on Byz2 and/or persuade others to vote for you in intermediate elections to get ministries for a leg up.
Voting is a neat design that evades a problem of finding that last enemy unit and other kinds of map painter's fatigue. If only it was more fleshed out and intricate, it would've been a great system.

In the real world

Canonically, Alexius Hawkwood won when he became regent and got imperial votes from Li Halan, al-Malik, Church and League, while Hazat and Decados had been busy pillaging Byz2 and being ********.
Also, at some point Decados got Stigmata and moved the garrison to attack al-Malik on Criticorum. Only to be stomped by local furries, despite having some of the best troops in the Empire and orbital superiority. Something something the greatest schemers cannot into war. To add insult to insult, at the same time symbiots attacked, and Alexius got brownie points for bringing his fleet to Stigmata and saving humanity (as if he wasn't enough of a mary sue already, ffs).
Yes, the writing quality still makes me roll my eyes so hard, I can see my ***.

As I've said, in the EOTFS everyone has 5 scepters, because mirror is easy to balance. RPG doesn't really mention how many scepters there're (it happens after the Alexius's victory so it's kinda irrelevant). But here's a fan theorycrafting that I dig that says that the Church has 8, Hawks and Decs have 6 and others less.

Anyway, back to game.

► Show Spoiler

Yes, neckbeard, they're almost as fat as you, because they've got the Fleet! Some day it might become a problem... but now momoney!


On to planets.

Delphi - We build 2 more labs and a mine.

Ravenna - The Pounder bombards the farms while waiting for reinforcements.

Pentateuch
We explored that mine a bit. Garrison artillery has left the city, so we can try to kill rebel stacks piecemeal.


We send a lander with a noble and a space marine to capture it and all goes really well. We even capture a militia.


Now, to the main topic of the turn.

The Eye

The Eye HQ on Byz2 is a pretty good one. We have a lander, 2 spies, officer, 8 high tech "Shock legions" as well as some defense chaff.


For me those legions + lander are a second best bonus for getting the Eye. They're both tough and hit like a truck. And, unlike for Stigmata, they have a way to be moved offworld even in the early game - landers. So we can use them to try to weaken tough rebels and capture their cities ourselves. And it just so happens that we're 1-2 jumps from Leminkainen, Tethys and Ravenna, so we can begin using them quite soon.
(Arguably, we could also go to, say, Criticorum, but canonically it's al-Malik planet so I'd like to expand to it later. Also, I don't want to overextend.)


The only problem with this base (besides it being unsustainable PoS) is that electronics plant. It is useless. We don't have inputs for it. We could buy it from the League. But 10 energy + 5 trace cost 260, while selling electronics back to the League would give 7*35=245 or net $15 loss. Even if we move to 8 prod (when city morale improves) it's still only $20 profit (equivalent of 1.5-2 units of food), so meh.
Vanilla economy sucks so much.

On the other hand, every planetary fort has 500-800 food that we can use. So we can forget about food problems on Delphi for a while and we can sell some of it on other homeworlds to raise emergency cash. And if the Eye units begin to starve, it's their problems. Again, in MP with good diplomancers we should probably assume that they won't remain ours after 10 turns.

Let me demonstrate now the gifts that the Eye giveth in MP (and the reason why it should be purged indiscriminately on your homeworld at turn 10 at the latest).
You put a spy on a lander and then go bump a ruin. Ruin spawns rebels. If you're lucky, they are strong enough to kill an unsuspecting player.
Let's see what we get.

Severus - rebels spawned a bunch of arty and mid game tanks. Not that strong of a stack, but enough to distract a player and maybe capture several cities. I also hope that there're more advanced units I just can't see.


Kish - several lategame tanks and planes... also that red hoverball is a plague bomb. It's as nasty as it sounds and potentially can wipe Li Halan's homeworld. We'll get back to it in a few turns.


Istakhr - there're symbiots on orbit. That big goddamn fleet of theirs. We won't be able to ping the ruin and get back to orbit, because they'll catch it next turn. So we simply land near the ruins and wait.


Aragon - oh, yeah, ruins can also spawn symbiot and vau units. They would be rebel owned, but still. Those can be pretty tough.


Like that war-tower there. It's simply insane. It has so much armor and firepower, it should be able to destroy any unit one on one, even dreadnought. And it can wipe out almost endless number of early game units.
OTOH, it will kill our lander as well if it decides to attack us. That would be sad but acceptable.

Next turn we'll see how naughty we turned out to be.

P.S. I had actually savescummed to get the Eye, because Stigmata looked like a more boring option.
No other ministry expands your game as much as the Eye. Stigmata and Fleet, while powerful, are concentrated on 1-2 worlds and don't provide as much action.

[DemoGraph]

Edit. There was 4968 turn before 4967 one. Whoops. Will repost in a mo.

[DemoGraph]

4967 AD +++ Spying stratagems synergize in severe shadows for the slimiest of symbiot shenanigans, sexy!

Something wondrous has happened! This year symbiots hadn't eaten anyone*!

► Show Spoiler

* Except for the Eye's lander that was hiding on Istakhr from them, the one they shouldn't have even seen!

* And an unknown number of al-Malik guys they might've bombed, but who cares.

Welp, let's finish with the Eye then.
I was moving infantry on Istakhr to try find the agora, when I've stumbled upon this. Since the engine doesn't support allied stacks, you can only attack. AI seems to always choose yes, and this's a prime way how you can enforce AI infighting in custom games.


We've pinged that ruin and it seems to have some advanced bombers for al-Malik to play with as well as space destroyer. It's time to hide the spy somewhere to maybe try to ping that ruin again later.


No idea what we've pinged on Severus (probably large stealthy stacks), but I hope it will be painful. We evacuate the lander to the Eye's fort.


On Kish we've hopped the spy a bit and found a new mine as well as more ruins. Oh, Li Halan, in but a few turns...


On Aragon the rebels are pursuing our spy. The lander has survived in orbit, but we can't evaq him, because there're 4 PTS guns that would rip our lander to shreds. So the spy runs away in hope that they would lose him.


The lander retreats to Byz. We suspect that we'll lose that spy after all, so I'll rather send him to pick cool space marines for rebel hunting together with the lander from Delphi.


Ravenna

We land on the farm whose garrison has made our arty to flee two years ago and capture it with noblesse and impunity.


Now that our invasion force won't starve, the Pounder pounds another farm for an ATG, we land and...


That's a lot of stuff. And the hauler is out of moves, because I was careless. Let's hope that rebels won't attack (they probably shouldn't, the garrisons are pretty passive IIRC).
Let's see whether we'd be able to send reinforcements from Delphi.

Pentateuch

Our heretical jet is busy exploring north-west. They didn't find anything of note.
I suspect they spend all their time exploring those Eska chicks.


The other jet also turned Eskatonik, but these immediately bring us a result. They explore southern continent pretty quickly and find a monastery (tech goody hut, no rebels to spawn).


We've began to explore and build up the future capitol region. The planet has everything to become a powerhouse.


We return noble and power armor back to Delphi on that lander. Not that they're needed there. I didn't want to leave them in the mine in the middle of a nowhere, and I needed that lander on Delphi to engie taxi next turn. They kinda hitched a ride.
We've fed them some story about peasant frolicking again, of course.
Even nobility and their pet dogs are subservient to out great industrial push.
Have a pic of (soon-to-be) Hawkwood space.


Delphi

Instead of sending reinforcements to Ravenna, we spend freighter turns to send two engies to the north pole. In two turns we'll have arboriums, they should be well positioned by then.


We've built 7th lab near agora. Maybe not the best placement (on the road, near potential enemy, enclosed hills nearby we'll have to patch with another building), but I wanted to save engie turns and there was nothing better to do with him.


Leminkainen

The Eye's lander with two elite space marine legions can spare AP before end of turn. So I decide to test land on this planet near farm-looking city. It turns out to be a farm. It also turns out to have hovertanks inside for some reason!


It's a quite an angry mufasa that can compete with our legions one on one. And it seems to have militia shield and who knows what else. So we "nope" out of there immediately and go to Ravenna. Surely there would be some softer targets to lose our guys against.


House matters

We've finished the last tech before arboriums. RP is 385/492. We'll have them in two turns.


We've discovered another monastery in the south pole of Delphi. Do note that I evade it, just like that other monastery. They give a random tech, but, AFAIK, only from the list of techs you can research or already researching. But if they give you a half-researched tech, you don't get RP back. And they don't care about the cost of the tech, so it could be some 200 RP ******** or 1500 RP powerhouse. You want to ping them either on a critical point or when all (most) of the available techs are expensive.
Since we don't have engies to place right now, there's no point trying to RNG that arborium tech 1-2 turns earlier. Also, we can research 7 cheap techs (@240 RP; half of them will be useless for quite some time), and only 3 kinda expensive ones (@400-800 RP). The odds are stacked against us.
Oh, and in MP you of course want to ping them right away so that they wouldn't get stolen by others. Or you declare your HW off limits and surround that monastery with militia, I suppose.


Also, ~$3.7k for techs from AIs.




I actually can't spend these money right now. Because agora on Delphi wasn't restocked. And if I try to buy metal on Byz2, game engine detects that there're allied cities nearby (the Eye under my control, you know) and gives the metal to the Eye instead of spawning it on an empty hex under my control!
Quality!
Now, I can buy metal and build an engie in my national fort... But why? I don't need cities on Byz2. And raw resource transport density is much higher - you can get a full stack of resource, up to 999 units of it, in one cargo slot... Or a single engie.
This is preposterous! Those bureaucrats just can't wait to put their hands on my assets!
Yes, my lord. Nobody has ever condoned an atrocity as enraging as this one.

[DemoGraph]

4968 AD +++ War!

My lord! We're under attack!

► Show Spoiler

[Empire of Angels • Reverp Verison • Ender Güney]

What?
Al-Malik are attacking the agents of the Eye on Istakhr!
WHAT?
We've just received the news via courier ship. Three weeks ago our trading delegation was cornered near Samarkand. There were no survivors.


My lord! Al-Malik ambassador asks for an audience!
Make him wait! Councillor!
My lord?
Do you know anything about it?
We're controlling and directing the local Eye, according to agreement with regent Lazarus. They were ordered to conduct peaceful reconnaissance and, of course, look for ancient artifacts and anything that could strengthen the house. The usual low profile activity, my lord!
Are you sure?
My lord!
Are you sure?!
Yes.
My lord, the ambassador...
Let him in.
Lord Hawkwood.
Explain yourself.
My lord! We've discovered a plot to organize a rebellion in our heartland. On Istakhr itself! We've traced the perpetrators just as they were heading to agora to purchase weapons. We've told them to surrender, but they refused. After the battle we've discovered, with shock and disbelief, that they were imperial agents. And as we all know...
This's outrageous, sire.
My lord! Let me finish!
No. It is enough, ambassador. We wouldn't have instigated a rebellion on a homeworld of our ally. We're not Decados. And if we did, we would've provided the weapons ourselves, not resorted to the League's secondhand trinkets. I assure you, the forges of Delphi can supply any tool of destruction fathomable.
But my lord!..
I expect a full apology and a proper compensation for the incident.
My lord... I have instructions to do the same.
It is decided then.
But my lord, the negotiations!..
There will be no negotiations.
For us shall speak our steel.


Remember me saying?

this's a prime way how you can enforce AI infighting in custom games.

That's exactly what's happened. Yep, I've left a unit on a widely travelled road. And that unit turned out to be invisible for AI. I've enforced AI aggro upon myself.

Well done, graf de Mo. You sure are worthy of your grafenkrone.
By the way, D. I wanted to ask you for quite some time. Where's that Mo of yours?
Moscow oblast.
What?
It's on Holy Terra.
Oh. An ancient fief?
I suppose so, yes.
A Hawkwood one?
I believe you can call it a mixed one. But we have a long history of interaction.


Good. I'm glad I have such a competent and faithful servant for this war.
Thank you, my lord.

Diplomatic messages have arrived.
I've heard about your problems with treacherous al-Malik, dear friend. While I can't help you directly...
That fleet is completely useless, isn't it?
...I've organized a charity ball to gather some funds for your war effort. Don't waste them all at once!


Li Halan are offering a basic tech in exchange for an intermediate one. Reject.


al-Malik are... what? Reject!


Delphi

My lord!
What is it now?
Rebellion, my lord!


When it rains it pours, isn't it? Where're they?


That's far.
Yes, my lord. We were also training an engineer at that farm. I believe we'll lose it.
What do you suggest?
My lord?
We have two assault landers and a freighter in orbit, we could land...
I suggest we let them capture it.
What?
Our arboriums and engineers are almost over. This's an unfortunate turn of events. But this farm only produces about 30 grans of food. If we now order the ships to send supplies to future arboriums, we'll soon have 200 or 300 grans of food.
But our people!..
Would have to wait for the liberation. Again. Like they did a decade ago. I beg you, my lord. Let those rebels run their way. When they run out of breath, we will crush them. But not now.
Very well. And about that engineer?
We shall evacuate the resources and our loyalists, as many as we can.

So we did. It's not a huge loss. We have 6 other engies on their merry way to arborium spots.
There's half stack of rebels there. No chance we would be able to handle 3 partisans this turn. So we've cancelled the engineer construction and are evacuating the resources to the west.


Ravenna

The Pounder bombs again. It's pretty effective: he kills arty and SAM and damages another one. However, after some hard thinking I decide that two ATGs with infantry screen could be too dangerous for my party, and we should wait.


I also thought about landing Eye's troops there and attack. But there's a chance that they would capture that farm. And there's no way to get it back from them. So instead we do some landing recon... and they get jackpot - gem mine! We immediately pack our invasion force and attack. The enemy also has ATG, but militia screen is much weaker than infantry one. One of the arties derps out, but we get another 3 gems/turn for future sales.


Pentateuch

Everything is peaceful here. We're prospecting the resources and found some as well as some ruins and that gem deposit. Another prime expansion target.


The Eye

Agents of the Eye were exploring their own island on Byz. Nothing of note yet, but I'm doing it just in case.


On Delphi we're exploring, but so far didn't found anything of note. That area to the east was explored by local clergy who already found exotica and ruins and got lost in taiga somewhere.


On Severus the Eye has explored the orbit to check whether there're rebel ships. There were none - it seems, that the ruins only had terrestrial troops. The Valiant then jumped there en route to further exploration. Decados are moving two of their freighters - they're probably expanding to Cadavus (NE).
We didn't try to land back to ruins, because rebels are probably still too close to them.


We did find another ruin on Kish. And a new Li Halan mine as well as artillery party on some kind of a desert crusade.


On Aragon rebels seem to have lost our spy. He also noticed a ruin and went closer to investigate... and then noticed a meson PTS cannon on top of it (anti-orbital BFG). It seems that the Hazat has already pinged this ruin and retreated, but the rebel garrison is a static one. We'll try to get back to the first ruin. Maybe the rebel would aggro on Hazat and we could plunder it.


Finally, on Istakhr we're in a pickle. The fort is definitely lost. We've lost the lander to symbiots, so we can't evacuate. The garrison is small, so it won't hold out for long. I suspect that I remember where agora is, so we could sell ministerial food to at least get some cash... but we won't be able to reach it and we don't have vision of it, so we won't be able to interact with it anyway.
We kill a bunch of militia and SAM on the road and get back to fort. And the spy hides in the forests NW, hoping that the rebels would go further south and we could get back to that ruin for loot.


Generic

Engies finished: Delphi - 6, Penta - 1.

Interlude - War and invasion balance

► Show Spoiler

To be frank, while I've made the war declaration pretty dramatic, I don't expect a lot of real combat. The AI has symbiot fleet in orbit, effectively blockading them. Al-Malik might've even lost some or all of their ships to symbiots. On the ground we may lose the Eye fort on Istakhr, but they're the cannon fodder anyway.
Yes, it's pretty anticlimactic.
That's another problem with the game design of EOFS. Freighters-spacelanes are, on the one hand, a significant bottleneck that stiffles expansion. On the other, if attacker has a fleet on the enemy orbit, he can attack anywhere on the planet. Enemy retaliation force may then need tens of turns to come from the capitol to invasion force (leaving the capitol open to raids or capture).
I believe the devs had thought that being too vulnerable to rushes is bad (after all, we're trying to make a game about voting and aristocratic intrigues here), that's why they've limited logistics that much.
But it leads to unintended consequence of early wars being too unfeasible. Attacker would need 3-5 turns to move troops from HW to HW, another to land... and he would likely act under a significant numerical disadvantage.

Now, the problem could've been solved, if houses bordered each other. It's exactly this way in the lore. Many fiefs are also dispersed among several neutral or competitor's planets.
But in this case a new player would have to manage 3-5 planets from the first turn. And the game was probably oriented on teenagers as well, so it was scrapped.

Overall, kinda shy game design.

[DemoGraph]

4969 AD +++ Green Revolution


[Carbon Based Lifeforms - Hydroponic Garden]

► Show Spoiler

Finally, arboreums!


We'll have to get back to them later. Because we have some rebel scum to turn into fertilizers. They've captured the farm and moved out.


We risk attacking them with a half-assembled force and it's a great success!
I expected that we'd have more casualties, but I can't be bothered right now to check whether it was lucky or I'm missing something and their force is weaker than it seemed.


The AI demonstrates its braindeadedness. EP is a starting tech that costs 240 RP. GM costs 580 and is a direct prereq to arborium tech. And we've almost finished researching EP (though it could be said that AI doesn't know it). Reject!


As per the common SMAC of Civ tactic, you prep your settlers or production assets for the tech/soc switch and then max out the effect immediately.
We build 6 arboriums on Delphi the turn we get the tech. By doing so we've added 250 food prod only during the next turn or about 490 when all arboriums would heal to max productivity. We're already net 220 food. Finally.


Engies finished: Delphi - 2, Penta - 1.
We buy 200 metal and several hundreds of food, disband one of the freshly captured flacks for metal and build 4 more engies.

The Eye

Istakhr - nothing happens. al-Malik aren't attacking for some reason. Maybe they don't have a force nearby or they're harassed by symbiots.
Aragon - nothing as well.

Severus - we've discovered that the Decados had already explored the first ruin we've pinged, they only got about 100 trace out of it. Rebels are moving what seems to be to Decados's capitol and they're pursued by another small stack. Everyone seems to have a fun time.


On Kish we ping another ruin for Li Halan to have fun with. There's a bunch of advanced units with attack power of 100, including those strat bombers. If they were player-owned, they could wreak real havok.


Then we evaq to the middle of nowhere and bingo on another ruin (that V-shaped mountain range looked suspiciously mysterious).


Leminkainen - En route to Ravenna we recon land troops near rebel cities (just to use those APs for at least something). One is the farm we capture with minimal damage. Another is a factory we don't attack - firstly, because I suspect that there're more rebels there. Secondly, because I need those rebels to recapture that farm from the Eye.


Ravenna

We risk landing assault lander near that single city. It could've been fort with PTS gun. But it turned out to be a jungle valley church in the middle of nowhere. We'll capture it some day.


Pounder has bombed that farm again, turning it into the most bombed lunar landscape city in all our planets. We're probably ready to land and that we do, killing the garrison of that farm quite okayly.
However, our hauler gets damaged from ~70% to 30% hp and is out of invasion landing missions for some time. He can be destroyed by all that crashlanding (landing in cities prevents this).
We leave groud troops to heal at the farm for a turn, and hauler gets back to Delphi.


# Pentateuch

We've discovered some more metal on Penta and send two engies on assault lander to settle for gems and food later.