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[Salmeuk]

Diary of Salmeuk the III, Supreme Dictator of the Empire of The Hounds of Dando

we lost because I was dumb thanks for reading

*ahem*

I shoved off from the lakeshore with the wooden paddle, the canoe splashing as I pushed. Me, the disgraced prince, running from his duties as the empire of his late father crumbles around him, now planned to escape one last time, from everything and anything to do with his heritage. I struggled against even these weak laketide waves, unfit as I was for this kind of work. A prince does not paddle, especially under duress.

To the north, hordes of alien natives wielding machineguns firing bullets of poisonous lead had stolen the precious rare metals and oil reservoirs and the most beautiful tramline to a genuinely amazing ski slope that I know for certain I will never experience again. To the east, upstart minor states and their mercenary militias occupied the lowland villages, and threatened the capital with gangs of motorbike hooligans. And to the south, the Wernerstein agressors. Those thousand tanks who murdered our 25,000 strong army of true soldiers in the irradiated southern rustbelt now pushed north, crushing free folk and militia alike. It was likely the Wernerstein empire that would soon control these palace grounds, this resevoir, the oil pumps and metal mines and rare metal mines and even the strange alien reactor dig site that would have soon provided us with all kinds of secret materials, and all the lands before me. Those foul Wernersteins.

I paddled into the center water of this great lake Wanenna. Here, we would wait, floating for as long as the crackers and cheese and wine I had brought along lasted me. Then, I would close my eyes and paddle in circles until I landed on some distant shore, and there I would face this fate of mine. I turned to open the lunchbox only to discover I had packed the empty one instead.

I would be lonely, without the cheese.

===

thanks for existing in my fog of war for 37 turns it really made things exciting, I'm not even joking. still though I am pretty shit at this game. learned a lot, lost a lot, eh

without spoiling too much...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

lets just say my early lead in terms of just about every resource was quickly turned about when I realized just how densely populated my region was. honestly, I should have admitted my noobishness and savescummed the two wars I started in the first three turns with nearby neutrals / outlanders... but I refused. The prince's succession and subsequent downfall was too compelling a narrative to avoid creating a disaster for myself. Perhaps Shadow Empire's greatest feat is to create a dynamic political world where characters have a certain power over the player and their interest - and then have an OK game around that world.

anyways I learned a lot about how to fight walkers and whatnot from all of you. That helped me win the western hills, but that turned out to be a complete waste of time anyways since BOTH infantry leaders who helped in this manner ended up defecting... wow thanks you fuckers.

so. I ended up being literally extorted for 484 credits from Wernerstein, which I paid FOOLISHLY since they literally declared war on my the NEXT turn. This new front was coupled with the continuing war in the east with the outlanders, their fucking dinosaur riders proved too much for my worthless armies, so everything was shit and getting shitter by the turn. their combat armor and properly formed tank groups made my life hell.

queue the somewhat-friendly-until-right fucking-now-alien-natives running down from the northern slopes like some kind of greenish, multi-limbed Zulu. . and of COURSE this was about the time I realized WHY Wernerstein had ultimately gone to war with me. Their placement had been on the tail end of an archipelagic formation, which meant they were essentially locked in against little else besides me and a few others. I think, I never confirmed this, but it would explain their absolute insistence that I be wiped off the face of the planet.

With no new recruits, and only just now finding the production ramp order to properly make machines and tanks flow, it was pretty hopeless. Then the useless neutrals east declared war, the fucking neutrals with like 6k troops total, and I knew it was absolutely, definitely assuredly, done for.

[Il Palazzo]

R.I.P. Hounds of Dondo. Thanks for playing, and for the narration. It would appear your start was terribly hardcore. So much for AI majors helping to balance the game.

[E. Albright]

Dying by map placement sucks. Hopefully this was a good learning experience, at least: that's how the prior game felt to me. How were your initial leaders and model designs? That rarely makes or breaks you, but it does ramp up difficulty in the face of other challenges.

The number of majors for a map this size either being 6 or 11 is kinda annoying for 4-player games. 2p, you have 4 AIs. 3p, 3 AIs. With 4p, I didn't feel comfortable with 2 AIs b/c that meant by simple math some players could be facing more opposition than others... but jumping up to 7 AIs doesn't actually change that, while definitely making even spacing harder. We shouldn't have gone with survival stress after all, I think. Although some of it is almost certainly how the dissolution played out - judging by the amount of radiation in some areas near me, a different dissolution phase could have put a lot more regimes next to me, and that could have ended up being one or more majors.

tl;dr - the RNG in this game's setup really is capricious, and while that can be quite entertaining in SP, it's not great for MP balance...

[Salmeuk]

agreed. my models were aircraft, and I never actually figured out how to form new formations of aircraft before I died. I developed a number of what felt like useful bombing craft and would have had ample supply to use them, however the fight ended up being entirely decided by the armor / cav side of things. I think my leaders were pretty bad. I think the only way I could have fought back against Wernerstein would have been to build a metric fuckton of AT guns and wait in the irradiated ruins for assault.

RNG is annoying because in order to assess the viability you must spoil the map. this game leans towards simulation in some ways, but is obviously gamified in others, and it mostly works but leads to some rough edges where the two approaches to design clash. one obvious way is this aformentioned imbalance in map generation. Realistic terrain with historical reasoning for population placement is great, but also entirely by chance will you find yourself surrounded or dead at the start.

[EuchreJack]

I immensely enjoyed reading the tale of the Fall of the Hounds of Dando. Maybe we'll get to see a single-player Rise of the Hounds of Dando?

Yeah, I think this game proves Zero AI Majors is the correct number for balancing multiplayer.  Anything else practically guarantees some major imbalance.

[E. Albright]

Can I see what your aircraft look like?

Those feel like they can be a trap - they're far from useless, especially against AI/indies, but it can be tricky to use them effectively - and they're generally not a great investment early-on given how narrowly focused their design council is, and how much you'd likely benefit from other military research at that stage if you don't found the design council... and also how much the initial structural design benefits from even modest linear design research.

As far as new aircraft formations go, it's very dumbed-down compared to land forces. You design an aircraft model for a given role, and then you'll be able to make formations that have that role. For the most part, any aircraft role can be used for ground attacks; the differences between them come into play when you're looking at defender retaliation and their willingness to dogfight. I'd assume there's some precision modifiers for high-vs-low altitude (b/c otherwise there's no reason for any ordinance-based aircraft to ever be low-altitude), but the air forces manual doesn't mention anything about that. I should probably look closely at modifiers next time I do an airstrike, and possibly even dig into detailed combat output.

[Karlito]

Tactical bombers close in to the city (where the airfield is) to blow up tanks are probably one of the better uses of aircraft, at least as I know them, though I certainly don't feel like I've had the industrial slack to start building up an airforce (and might not ever in this game).

Turn ended and was sent on to the Hounds. I assume he hasn't formally resigned through the secretary yet.

[Il Palazzo]

Send the turn to Palazzo. I think Salmeuk's resigned already. In any case, I've his password, to rectify this if needed be.
You have my email in the PMs we exchanged back when we were organising this.

[Karlito]

Send the turn to Palazzo. I think Salmeuk's resigned already. In any case, I've his password, to rectify this if needed be.
You have my email in the PMs we exchanged back when we were organising this.

Gotcha. It's sent

[Salmeuk]

I am excited for further developments - particularly if Wernerstein is encountered. I savor the day I hear of their destruction.

Can I see what your aircraft look like?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

probably super inefficient or something, i still have no real context for designing these things. I am only reading now that it requires airbase lvl3 which I failed to build? I swear I initiated that construction!! ahh ok that might be why I never gained the option to raise a formation of craft.

[Karlito]

probably super inefficient or something, i still have no real context for designing these things.

Looks it to me. Short ranged and no doubt expensive, and maybe not even all that much soft attack. I'd rather just have artillery.

My testing seemed to show that air units could be raised on any airbase tile- even one that was theoretically too small. Dunno why you wouldn't be able to.

I'd assume there's some precision modifiers for high-vs-low altitude (b/c otherwise there's no reason for any ordinance-based aircraft to ever be low-altitude), but the air forces manual doesn't mention anything about that. I should probably look closely at modifiers next time I do an airstrike, and possibly even dig into detailed combat output.

It's set during model creation, funnily enough.

Spoiler: High Altitude Penalty (click to show/hide)

Level bomber from a single-player game I had.

[E. Albright]

The other thing I'd say is that given the wildlife on this planet - not to mention the tanks that eventually killed you - you'd've been better off with Precision Bombs so the planes did hard attack.

With some tweaking in an old save so there's no linear tech interfering, I can manage to get ~8 hexes range out of that basic loadout in this atmosphere. Of course, shifting from propeller to turboprop would let you increase that range ~50%, with much better fuel economy. And for that size of payload, I'd be inclined to go down to a light airframe. That let me get ~9 hexes with probably half the fuel consumption. In that case, switching to turboprop increased its range ~75%.

[Il Palazzo]

So, House of Dando was still in the game. There was a message about resigning, but also I could click on 'resign' again. Maybe it takes a turn to process? I don't know how it's supposed to work.


Anyway, here I am, counting how many turns before all my metal sources get depleted, and of course the demetalization facility gets left for last in the discovery queue. You had eight chances to get it right, you stupid rng.

Still no diplomacy. Plus, I found the trogs' skinnier, angrier cousins:

Spoiler: Cavebeasts? Cavebeasts. (click to show/hide)

There's also a healthier variety with 'only' four attacks:

Spoiler: it is mildly absorbent (click to show/hide)

[Karlito]

So, House of Dando was still in the game. There was a message about resigning, but also I could click on 'resign' again. Maybe it takes a turn to process? I don't know how it's supposed to work.


Anyway, here I am, counting how many turns before all my metal sources get depleted, and of course the demetalization facility gets left for last in the discovery queue. You had eight chances to get it right, you stupid rng.

I've rolled literally every other option than Heavy Industry and Demetalization. At least I'll get one thing I want next time.

Also there's been a profile feat sitting at a 15% chance to adopt for like 20 turns.

[E. Albright]

Right there with you. Heavy was my second-to-last tech, and Demetalization was my last. White Castle at least got Heavy earlier on and is IIRC about to finish their first asset of it. The reason I spent the two Archives I "bragged" about upthread was a desperate hope to short-circuit this bottleneck - no luck, ofc.

Without looking, my initial metal mine runs out in 5-6 turns. I have two more, but the irony (heh) is that they're not from my best-in-class expansion. All that's given me is LOTS of oil. All three mines are within my initial territory.

[And ugh. Turn sent after being re-done start to finish b/c somehow it neither autosaved nor saved as an eot.se1 when I left SE, but I'm pretty sure I ended the turn and did Save Game and Log Out... It's still probably an error b/tw keyboard and chair, but I don't see how it happened. So ugh. Especially since this was a tedious "fiddle with infrastructure, militia reinforcement, and zone borders" turn; I'm pretty sure I re-did at least one or two things wrong (or not at all), and the leader I recruited was definitely worse the second time around, sigh...]