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[Il Palazzo]

Given the pace we're pulling right now, that might not even be noticeable.

[Margrave]

Sorry about the delay, my job AND my home is moving so it's been a hectic week. I'll try and send this off tonight. (TRIED AND FAILED)

Turn Sent.
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Rejoice citizens of the Empire! A new day has dawned and the stars shine brighter!

The Mad Patriarch has been captured and the faithful of Holy Terra liberated! No more shall the pious bow to this false prophet who twists the words of the Pancreator for his own foul plots. He shall be given to the custody of the mendicant monks of the frozen Antarctics of the planet Delphi, where his daily trials will wipe away the sins of his heretical soul. Perhaps a lifetime of cold fish gruel will cause him to see reason where diplomacy has failed.

I declare this to be a day of celebration across House Hawkwood. I announce that I soon shall be moving my personal demense to the homeworld of humanity as my Capital. Though the task of hunting down the fanatical renegades continues, the war shall soon be ended.

-Duke Fredrik Hawkwood, Grand Panjandrum of the Urth.

[Gollor]

Turn sent

[Kebooo]

Should we just call this game? To be honest it's hard to feel any real interest in it at such a slow pace

[Il Palazzo]

We should.

[Margrave]

Unfortunately it's probably for the best.
At least I got to become the King of the Urth.

I know most people are probably drained right now for Fading Suns but I want to start up another game within the near future if anyone else still has that itch.

Just with a few more restrictions about turn around time added.

[Il Palazzo]

Normally, I'd be all for another game, but there's some changes IRL incoming, and playing is likely out of the question for me, for the nearest future.

I might be up to some casual discussion on what we've learned in this round. Updating the unit.dat file is likely not going to happen, though.

[Kebooo]

I'll probably need a couple months break, then I'd be game for another. I want to consider two things - rebalancing this mod in some ways, and developing my own rebalancing of EFS 1.4.

I do want to say that Palazzo just had his fleet over Criticorum destroyed by the al-Malik...so at least we end out on a high note!

[Il Palazzo]

Eh, I knew that'd happen, since I miscalculated shuffling all those ships and was left with too few over that planet, and Gollor's peace treaty was untrustworthy, to say the least. That's why I moved both my relics away. With what I had left I'd likely capture Criticorum within next two years.

[Margrave]

Near future can absolutely mean in a few months time.

If we chose this mod again then I'd want to try out the patched version with the NPC scepters spread out across the galaxy. Maybe even the one with Vau planets removed.

There are a bundle of small changes I'd wanna make to this mod, but the biggest would be adding some kind of SEAL force, giving air to assassins, re-balancing of space forces so that cruisers/dreadnoughts more viable. I would be fine with making fighters/bombers the premier space unit but then we should replace the higher tier units with something else.

I know it would be difficult if not impossible to do, but some kind of semi-disposable drop pod that could piggyback on bulk transports and then independently load a few troops brought with it and drop with 1 or 2 move points to an enemy planet. Marauders fulfill this function but they take an enormous amount of research and resources to get to. And we can all see that most games don't make it to the end.

[Kebooo]

One thing I've been wondering is what the Hawkwood fleet was like. It felt like this shadow fleet hidden away, which could be moderate or huge and overwhelming, waiting for the perfect time to strike (especially after Holy Terra fell). Mine was reduced to probably 10-12 capital ships and 24 fighters/bombers toward the end, all of which I hid after the complete waste of ships above Cadavus. The plan was to pump out nothing but bulk haulers, fighters/bombers, and a few cruisers here and there at the end.

[Margrave]

Not as large as I'd like. I invested too much in to dreadnoughts that I've spent the last ten turns building up fighters/bombers. Something along the lines of 20 cruisers/dreads plus 3 space carriers. To explain, I've been spending more time fortifying or exploiting NPC worlds I conquered instead of building up a proper fleet. And then that proper fleet became nearly worthless to me after it was determined how powerful bulk transports plus bombers could be. I did have three Obun PSYCH warships that I started the game with but I never did get to try them.

One tactic I found very handy on Holy Terra was using an assassin to kill officers (Adamantine/St. Yara/Lexitus/etc) and then using planes to capture Brother Battle. If I had any advantage it was in amassing an absurdly large number of powerful infantry for the future.

That reminds me of another nitpick, Adamantine units count as officers (also Torensons but them being palace alone mitigates this) and cost not even half of officers recruited in forts, including a PSYCH attack, I built hospitals everywhere to take advantage of this.

[Kebooo]

One thing I was trying to do (just out of amusement) was take over Artemis with the Stigmata forces there. I managed to capture a PTS weapon there too. I figured you'd eventually just destroy that force there, or take over as Garrison commander, but even so, it was a fun diversion.

What REALLY needed avenging was Palazzo bringing war to that Vau ambassador war. Never forget

I also had this paranoia that Palazzo had stealth ships everywhere in my territory, waiting to destroy transports, despite the fact there was never one stealth attack against me as far as I remember. My paranoia forced me into more conservative movement of ships. His villainy knows no limits

[Il Palazzo]

I also had this paranoia that Palazzo had stealth ships everywhere in my territory, waiting to destroy transports, despite the fact there was never one stealth attack against me as far as I remember. My paranoia forced me into more conservative movement of ships. His villainy knows no limits

I actually did have at least one of those above each of your worlds, sans Pandemonium. They proved surprisingly effective as combat ships, but being a limited resource, I did not want to waste them on anything trivial.

What I'm wondering about, is whether my electoral deal with Li Halan worked - I lent them my 10 scepters on the eve of elections in exchange for them taking the Regency and me keeping the Eye - not that the latter was much more than those stealth ships at this time, but I figured: anything to keep my antagonists' greedy hands away from the spoils.



In other reflections, the League is a hugely unbalancing faction in this mod. It's got huge amounts of capturable units and ships, including gold generating ones. It can't defend for shit, and as we've all seen, its fleet likes to get stuck on Byzantium. On the other hand, if not for that fleet just waiting for combat restrictions to be lifted, I might have tried claiming the throne...

[Kebooo]

That's why I'm hoping in the EFS remake we'll be able to create more formidable AI. Holy Terra/Leagueheim are jewels as it is, thanks to scepters and spoils of war, so they shouldn't be conquerable so early in the game, at least not by one player. The Vau seem to serve little to no purpose.

I always felt that joulupunikki was studying our natural behaviors, as if studying lower forms of primates, rather than being directly involved in the emperor wars. I'm sure there was some grand vision for him to take over, but I just couldn't tell when he was or wasn't seeing Palazzo as the great demon that he is.