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[IronyOwl]

Now that is a thing of beauty. Shame most high-tier units are gonna be mechanical, heavy, and elite.

[EuchreJack]

My next planet after that is a RPR planet as well. The prior one took my Psynumbra level from 3 to 15 - and so when I jumped onto this planet as a Psynumbra Oathbound (as per your example)... I started with Looming Oblivion as one of my techs.  I think that's the first time I've gotten anywhere near so lucky with all the free techs lining up to deliver something advanced as a tier X tech. I suppose it helps that particular tech only has two pre-reqs; it seems like most other secret techs have more complicated trees than Psynumbra. Still, I feel like I'm gonna need it. I do not like RPR.

It'll be easier than the slog I'm going down.  Oathbound have Arc weapons, to which the RPG are weak.  And while they're not weak to Psy damage, it bypasses the heavy armor that RPG units have generally.  Both Psynumbra and Oathbound have status resist stuff, which prevent the crippling status effects from RPG attacks occuring.  Hope you get lots of ROYs instead of EMMAs, as EMMA can takeover your units.

What did you bring for Imperial Reinforcements?

[E. Albright]

Now that is a thing of beauty. Shame most high-tier units are gonna be mechanical, heavy, and elite.

Re: the elite part, it only takes two turns to re-tool from non-elite to elite factories if your production is high enough to build the upgrade in a turn. The Mechanical and Heavy part is unavoidable, alas. Still, the stack of naked Echo Walkers I churned out with that was a sight to behold. Nasty little lizards...

What did you bring for Imperial Reinforcements?

I went with Blackguard Tyrants, Kir'ko Hidden, and Paladin Light Bringers. Not the most practical, but I was being thematic with the whole "I'm totally not a death cultist!" idea. Noble Diplomats, Healing Surge, and Wasteland Scavengers for ops, Self-repair Systems, Combat Protocol Implants, and Shield of Remorse for mods. I didn't tailor things for fighting RPR - that'd've meant more Synthestis, I expect - but most of that should help if/when I roll it out. Not a ton of secondary objectives, though - just contact 4 commanders, destroy 5 Reaper bunkers, and then a win-condition Grail quest. It may be a bit before I've got enough imperial renown to buy more than scraps of that from the contact quest...

[EuchreJack]

I'm glad to hear that you got a Grail Quest.  It's really fun playing as a Psynumbra Oathbound on the Grail Quest.  Totally do the Grail Quest to completion, even if you can win by other means.

I like the Kir'ko Hidden.  Not from an optimization standpoint, since they don't seem to be the best unit, but they're just fun as the ultimate sneaky sniper.

Prioritize recruiting one of your Synthesis Heroes, I found one of those really turned the tide against the PRG.  But overall, I feel like my Psynumbra Oathbound game went a lot stronger versus them, so you should be fine.

[EuchreJack]

So when I've maxed out my sectors, and I want to change one of my sectors to Residential so I can have more, what is the best way to do that?

I'm thinking the quickest route is to detach the sector as a sector base, then reattach it and develop it as Residential.  Although, I'm afraid that the sector will keep its previous exploitation type under that scenario.

[E. Albright]

Nope, it'll ditch the previous exploitation. That's the fastest way. However, if it's not specialized it's just as fast to dismantle the exploitation.

[E. Albright]

I'll just mention this b/c I only figured it out this week, with the caveat that I'm a ditzy blond-haired airhead so you might all already know it: if you have a settlement of another race, the dropdown menu on the upper left of the military research screen lets you research their racial military tree branch.

(For the longest time I thought that was an exclusive of the Sharkan-only thing where they get that from infiltrating op centers. This week I finally noticed it wasn't.)

[EuchreJack]

Heh, I suspected it when I noticed it was a dropdown menu, then was happy to find it was in fact accurate.  Good thing to mention, as you actually need a settlement of another race to confirm the feature, so it's not the most common of scenarios.

Now, the real question is what can the player do with it?  In my game, my alternate race settlement was acquired so late that it'll never catch up structurally with my main race settlements, so I have little incentive to go down the military tree.  It's also on an island connected to my mainland by a teleporter.

[Aoi]

Reading what other people are doing... I feel like I'm somehow playing this game entirely wrong. Which mostly consists of turtling, making 2-4 monstrous cities, and getting a diplomatic victory, because if I don't, the AI either gangs up on me and grinds me into paste (usually happens when I'm not just hunkering down) or does gets a diplomatic win first.

[E. Albright]

I usually get a couple of allies and then smack down anyone else who I don't like the look of - but since I'm playing Empire mode that's often factions rather than AIs. Or if it is AIs, it'll be an alliance with no interest in allying with everyone else. Even as high as Hard the AI feels just as easy to manipulate diplomattically as Easy AI. Granted, I have bad memories of it not being that way, so I think something in my playstyle changed.

EJ, re: other race techs, when I was Sharkan I routinely would go a tier or two deep into other racial techs to snag low-hanging doctrines or mods; units, less so. Beyond that, the Amazon reforestation operation and (if you're willing to dig a bit deeper) the Dvar mountainbuster op are personal favorites. Something else that diversifying lets you do, though, is get a couple of extra direct damage strategic operations. This lets you prime significantly nastier alpha strikes; even if you're at the bottom of you natural tech trees, you probably only have 2-3 such ops, but many races will give you another one at tier 2 or 3 (and by midgame those tiers should be researchable in a turn or less). Trying to storm an AI capital is a whole lot easier if you can drop 5 or 6 pre-primed ops so their doomstack starts at 25-50% health (and a handful of status effects) instead of being battle-ready.

[Biowraith]

I think one of the big patches (the one(s) that added more info about why their opinions changed and revealable personality traits) made diplomacy a bit easier, or at least ensured there'd be a few AIs that'd be more receptive to you.  I definitely find it easier to get one or two AIs on my side early on compared to when I first started playing.  I think Empire mode makes that easier too, since a lot of the maps have stronger marauder threats that keep the AI busy so even if they do declare war it takes them a long time to actually attack (plus if you get e.g. the 3 allied assembly trait, everyone else wants to be your friend cos you have 3 common enemies).

[EuchreJack]

In my game, I'm fighting two AI Empires.  I'm pretty sure they are the 1st and 2nd most powerful empires.  Thankfully, they haven't established contact yet, and I'm always pleased that I've resisted the urge to sell either of them the other's contact info.  I'd actually make peace with one or both of them, but my allies want their blood, and always pull me back in.

Any ideas of what might get one AI empire to seek peace with another AI empire?  Granted, my most loyal ally is a Militarist.  I think he has another trait that is similar.  So he probably started the war, and is likely to keep it going.  But I recently saw him lose a battle, so maybe he'll peace out if the war turns against him more?  Dunno if he'll stop if I cripple the other empire, probably would just push to final annihilation.  I'm trying for a diplomatic victory, so I'd like to wars to stop ASAP.

[E. Albright]

Just out of curiosity: do any of you lot get semi-frequent lockups when playing, particularly when opening unit stats/skills/mods, or commander diplomacy screens? I've also had more than a few crashes to desktop but the lockups are a lot more common. Not predictable-common or reproducible-common, but enough that I get nervous and feel an urge to quicksave before resolving with hero level-ups...

[Biowraith]

I get very occasional instance of it getting 'stuck' when the AI is taking its turn (average of about once every 50 hours of play), but I've never had any lockups or crashes outside of that.

[EuchreJack]

I actually haven't played in the last few weeks, but I didn't get any of those issues.  I think the game crashed once in the 50 hours that I logged.

So I think a recent patch probably broke things.