Feeling somewhat guilty about conquering the noble people of Earth (who very nobly surrendered to save precious human lives), we deported all of the Terran humans to Pallyria, and imported all of the Pallyrian humans to Earth. All except for a few million child orphans on both sides, who were too young to move. The Yax'Kalockian irenic democracy meanwhile debated all of this from afar and decided they wanted the United Nations of humans back and went to liberate the Humans, going to war with the poor Tzar Bao.
All according to keikaku
The CNS Fleet under Olga successfully lost by just the right amount, forcing the Yax'Kalockians to liberate the planet of Pallyria in negotiations. The Yax'Kalockians went home exuberant, believing they had defeated the humans and contained their threat, not knowing they had merely succeeded in helping Bao move the capital of the Commonwealth to where it all began:
Planet Earth.
Giving Pallyria over to the United Nations' descendants didn't seem like all that bad of an outcome either, given that they didn't like our government (best government, heaven wills it), and wanted their own democracy. Suddenly they got their own democracy and the best galactic neighbourhood to explore - everyone won!
(And in gameplay terms, I was giving up the ubersystem to the AI Human Galactic Nation in exchange for a pretty mediocre system, as to hold onto the god-tier system and expand would be so OP as to not provide any challenge).
We ventured forth from Earth to establish a more permanent presence on a hitherto alien past, and located Felzadir III and Felzadir I, two worlds ripe for settling. Felzadir I would become Aman, the power plant of the COM, and Felzadir III would become Takama Shrineworld.
The Takama Shrineworld was named in honour of the Tzar's daughter, and was a Shrineworld because as a category 25 continental planet sitting on the doorstep of the capital, it was easily the most valuable planet in the entire galaxy (to the COM). Valuable in terms of real wealth potential - it could become a massive Research planet, power plant, agri-world or industrial hive-world, a fleet manufactury or advanced resource processor, and it would be without parallel outside of the fallen Empires.
Furthermore, the planet itself was beautiful. Tidally locked in orbit with the star Felzadir, half the country was in eternal darkness and the other half in eternal light, with the fauna having evolved to be stunning in day, night and twilight. Pilgrims from across the galaxy would flock to this one floating cosmic rock to marvel at its natural wonder. Thus it made sense to make this THE Shrineworld.
Each ruler of a Divine Mandate may in his or her lifetime construct their own Mausoleum on one planet, to remind all the people of the lessons to learn from them in life, and the mistakes they made leading to death. The Mausoleum is a grand structure with little productive use beyond this. Thus (with some modding to allow multiple Mausoleums to be built on a planet), the Takama Shrineworld was born. Eventually there will come a point where all the productive factories and engineering labs are gone, and in their place only endless ranks of Mausoleums dedicated to the great teachers; it shall be a total rejection of materialism for the sake of a monument to all the COM stands for.
In gameplay terms it will be an unproductive brick that completely tanks my research and serves little purpose beyond being a Fortress within a Fortress, which is appropriate for a militiaristic spiritualistic xenophobic space Empire. We don't need original science where we're going, bahahaha.
Moving on, there was an incredibly priceless for my xenophobic scientists, when they researched the nature of the Tyanki space cow. We determined they were relatively harmless space grazers and were not a threat, being peaceful and innocent xenos. Just as we researched this, some space amoeba showed up in our space and slaughtered the cows with ruthless impunity. Our scientists concluded that innocent xenos did not exist, and those that did, would be quickly killed by those that were not. RIP Space cows.
Admiral Olga herself would one day fall victim to the space amoeba menace.
She commanded our fleet well,
Bringing one of the amoeba to hell,
With flagellators ahead,
Her own navigator dead,
She brought one more amoeba to hell.
Everything is owed to Admiral Olga, I cri evertim ;-;
Elite crystaline xenos orbiting a pulsar. Search for these things ASAP, as they provide the basis for crystal plating research - an invaluable piece of technology. Perhaps the most important piece of scouting Admiral Olga aided in, short of the discovery of Earth itself.
Upon the death of Admiral Olga, our research vessel tried to return home (as its guardian fleet was now dead), and found it could not. It set to researching upon the planets within the new Human Galactic Nation (the successor to the Terran United Nations), whilst Bao's daughter, Tzarina Takama Miroslav, set upon dealing with why our research team was barred from returning.
Our research team found that the Human Galactic Nation were sending the offspring of the oprhans we left behind to populate their worlds. As a result, they were populating whole systems with those who held our beliefs. It resulted in a strange democratic utopia with a core of the United Nations offspring living in research centres and financial power plants as individualist materialists striving to advance technology and freedom (they switched from progressive individualism to technocratic liberalism as a result of the widdly Yax'Kalockians), whilst the martial xenophobic spiritualists populated the frontier, industrial and agri-worlds, and all of them got together just fine! Next we'll see space cows eating space amoeba, it's crazy. Also it's hilarious to imagine these orphan children fleeing their intellectual parents to the stars; "fuck you mum, fuck you dad, you're not my real parents anyways, I'm gonna be an offworlder with religion and war and sheeit"
"NO JIMMY, NO, THIS IS NOT THE HUMAN GALACTIC WAY"
Meanwhile back at home the foul Yax'Kalockians had encircled us! That's the thing about insectoid cosmic liberals, you threaten to burn them with galactic fire ONCE and they encircle you. It's just not fair #NotallCOMunists.
Tzarina Takama Miroslav had four options. The first was to surrender and seek vassalage under the guidance of the Yax'Kalockians, gaining access through their territories and subverting their Empire from within. The second was to try and make amenable relations by not being so hostile to them, which was not an attractive option because it did not deal with their frontier outpost on our side of the Orantes cloud. (As an aside, the human and yax sides of the cloud were separated by some inhospitable star systems that held no habitable planets, and whose only life consisted of hostile autonomous mining units neither of us owned, providing a buffer we could not change without invading the other's sides - as the yax'kalockians had done to us).
Takama led the humans to victory without much of note to be said. The mighty Yax'Kalockian fleet launched itself for another assault on Earth, but Admiral Lobtikka sailed into defeat.
'It's a trap!'
Shortly before the Yax'Kalockian fleet found itself caught atop a Snare Class Fortress, a minefield and two interlocking fields of Excellence Class Fortresses. Salvoes and salvoes of torpedoes and a small contingent of attack craft launched themselves at the Yax'Kalockian fleet, wiping out many of their screening corvettes. As soon as he could admiral Lobtikka led a swift emergency recall out of Felzadir Gate, right into the waiting men and women of the Olga Armada.
The Dauntless battleship, Obnoxious battleship, Watchdog battleship and three audacity cruisers made mincemeat of their fleet.
The retreat of the Yax'Kalockians to their half of the Orantes shroud allowed us to move forth and secure more of our neighbourhood. The Yax'Kalockians wanted our Betharian stone and Garanthium ore, and to do so they needed to place an outpost on Urallion. We needed to gain control over the star system of Talassus and Kergaros in order to firmly establish a human core. The reason being the Yax'Kalockians had established in their lands a Yax'Kalockian core full of interconnected Yax planets, and if they managed to establish a Yax planet on "our" side of the cloud, their influence would be too high for us to stop and they would eventually surpass us in everything. Our attempt to keep them away by establishing Fortresses in Yamek's gate and Talassus didn't work because increasing influence from the more advanced Yax forced us to dismantle our Forts in Talassus, after it fell under their ownership. We couldn't further increase our own influence there because there were no habitable planets, thus these stars devoid of habitable planets became buffer zones demarciating human and yax sides. An exception was Pesch, which held a tropical planet, ripe for human settling. Pesch became the Pesch gate and after more war, was settled by humans, securing Yamek's gate and Talassus gate.
There's not much need to go into detail as to what battles went on when. The Yax'Kalockians had superior industry, physics and societal engineering, but could not crack Felzadir Gate open. Thus they could never reach Earth. When it came to defending their planets
from invasion, they failed, when it came to
launching planetary invasions they failed, and it seems this is a result of their species being individually, very weak. They are like ants in that they are "communal," they are happy living together, and that they are "conformists," they like to think alike. But they are also weak, unlike terran ants (better than space ants). It was only a matter of time before they were defeated, and as their first territory was liberated by COM, it was only a matter of time before the Yax'Kalockian Empire would be split between West Yax'Kalockian nation and East Yax'Kalockian nation.
The West was an ant-version of COM, and the East version was the regular hive mind democracy full of sheeple ants.
During the COM-Yax wars, the COM had annexed two of the Yax'Kalockians' planets. We had no desire to have Yax'Kalockians in our Empire or to rule over them as masters, we just needed to stop them projecting influence northwards so we could settle Pesch with humans. Thus the autonomous Bucktryx Tymtryx sector was born.
The autonomous Bucktryx Tymtryx sector had two planets, one of which was entirely manned by robots. We used this loophole as under Spiritualist sharia law, robots were haram and not allowed. Thus we could not build any more, and were obligated to dismantle them wherever they were. However we could build colony pods that just so happened to require the building of robots for, thus we finally were able to settle one of the planets in our human core:
Oxocodolfian robot, meet planet Titan. The weather is lethal, the planet is a bleak tundra and there are titanic lifeforms lumbering through the tornado blizzard storms. We're hoping to research terraforming some time soon so the planet won't kill humans (immediately), but that's a long way off and so Oxocodolfian robots will have to do.
As a last note, to gauge how physically weak the Yax'Kalockians are, I deliberately sabotaged the defences of Bucktryx so that the liberal loyalists could successfully liberate their country and return it to East Yax'Kalockian nation. What I did not count on were that two pops worth of Yax'Kalockians had adopted our way; two COM loyalists vs the entire planet of Yax loyalists. The COM loyalists won, sitting within their bunkers, with worf guns worfing.
Thus I got stuck with the Yax'Kalockians.
Yes. I've been waiting for this.
Brace yourself for walls of cosmic text
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Topic: Stellaris: Paradox Interactive IN SPACE (Read 1743456 times)