V9: Chapter 2
…
Since everyone was hunkering down and getting their shit together, it was time for me to keep pushing my lead.
In-game, there are quite a few things that players can do to catch up. The primary one is to ally like the Dwarves, Undead, Dark Elves, and Beast Tribes did. Allies share Citadel level, and that’s a massive boost that you get to keep even after you stop being allies. Even in-game with NPCs, you can find another NPC faction that’s losing like you, and you can send them an ally request and they’ll accept it, especially if you’re across the map.
There even used to be bugs where people would just ally NPC factions at the start of the game after finding them and get an upgraded Citadel early. People stopped doing that when they realized that NPCs can usually make better use of the extra resources than them. The devs kept the option available, but made it chance based, and if you failed to make an alliance you’d lose your Leader and Citadel. Meaning, that you received a game over.
What’s the chance of the NPC faction accepting and not fucking you over instantly?
10%.
It also deletes the most recent autosave and save, if you didn’t turn the option off in the settings, so rerolling it loses you at least a few turns.
The devs really understand that gamers will do crazy stuff again and again nonstop… if there isn’t fifteen minute period between each attempt.
What was I talking about again?
Right, catch-up mechanics.
At the highest difficulty level, with all the crises coming at you, usually restarting is your best bet. All you’ll be doing is delaying the inevitable. However, below that level and with just one or two apocalypses coming your way, then you can make use of a lot of mechanics. Use the intrigue layer to steal money or tech from your opponents. Wall up your chokepoints and farm random events with your new Champions, so that they can level up and take the place of those you lost. Start improving tiles like crazy and get buildings for your districts that reduce happiness, but increase production.
Of course, there’s costs to doing so.
Spies stealing money aren’t preparing insurrections or rebellions.
Defenses at chokepoints have high upkeep, and whatever army you make is going to be weaker than the one you lost if they stayed alive. Decreasing happiness means lower population growth, or even losing population entirely. There are also tons of bad events that only pop when you have high upkeep costs, low military strength, and negative happiness across your empire. Budding rebellions, brigands spawning, and demands from your citizenry to improve by building certain buildings or removing certain ones.
But if you use those rebellions and brigands as EXP to level up your new armies and Champions, you’ll get a decent army.
And, if you have enough money stolen from your enemies, you can choose the option to just give your citizens money to fuck off while you fix the nation.
So, yeah.
There are catch up mechanics that can be implemented if you’re on the back foot.
But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, they take time and effort to implement.
Any decent opponent would put you down before you could spend either and see the results.
In short, while I did need to spend money keeping my lead, I also needed to keep putting everyone else down before they caught up.
My first target?
The Wardens.
…
On the surface, the Wardens are your fanservice faction with all their troops, Champions, and leaders barely wearing anything. Every one of them was fit, had dark tans, amazing muscles, white hair, purple eyes, and great looks. In the early days, when the game first released, the forums were filled with ‘what I expected and what I got’ memes, with a lot of players gravitating towards them.
Everyone expected a lewd race that catered to every demographic.
Everyone got a death cult with yandere supermodels that can’t be fixed.
A lot of people considered that an upgrade, but they’re not living on the same planet as the Wardens.
The Wardens are cultists who worship paradise. Paradise for everyone and everything on the planet. To do that, they either get you to drink the cool aid by spreading their culture across your territory and population, or they march in with armies that they can easily regain until all your armies and city populations are wiped out.
If you prop up your own religion to counter theirs, then they’ll consider that grounds for war.
If you stall their culture by having a decent culture of your own, then they’ll consider that grounds for war.
If you go to war against them, they’ll never surrender until you’re at their Citadel, where their greatest wonders are, and you’re looking down the barrel of decades of a slow slog of a siege.
I think that the average siege of a Warden capital takes fifteen turns.
Turns are three months long from my estimates.
That meant the siege will last nearly four years, with them reviving their troops incessantly and equipping them with basic Citadel armor and weapons. Meanwhile, for those four years, my troops will need logistical chains, replacement weapons, get rotated out and back in, and astronomical amounts of national treasure and will power. All the while, I’ll also need to watch my flanks from any attacks by the Warden’s allies, as well as making sure morale is high, otherwise the Wardens will break out, spread over their territory, and I’ll have to redo the siege after they surround their capital with temple-fortresses.
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In other words, Wardens are best dealt with at the endgame with the freakishly op weapons at that stage, after their power has been curtailed the entire game. However, if you had to deal with them before then, it’s generally agreed upon that causing a civil war was your best bet, while building up an army to swoop in and take everyone out at the same time. While you’re doing that, you also need to keep improving your nation, researching, doing events, and search for items or Wonders.
Juggling all that on overnight gaming session is great.
Handling it all was barely tolerable with help.
Thankfully, I could just focus on the nation building and research and events, while everyone did everything else.
…
I didn’t visit the research district often, but when I did, I was generally happy with what I found.
Today was no exception.
The first service rifle and infantry kit were finally ready, and Ayah was presenting it to me with pride.
“As requested, here is the final design of the infantry pack.” I left the designing to the scholars and the infantry that were going to use them. The final design was surprisingly like a larger, more durable school backpack. Main compartment with two straps, side pockets, and a second sub pouch. Zippers were thankfully figured out after a few pieces were made from the Citadel, so things could be secured. “It is waterproof and durable. The straps on the bottom are for carrying a sleeping mat. It can carry three days of water, one hundred rounds of ammunition, and a field repair kit. There is also extra space can be allotted for anything else a soldier needs.”
Ayah moved on to squares of fabric next to the bag.
We commandeered an empty classroom for this little presentation, since there was a lot of the kit.
“Since coloring and dying each pack and uniform was deemed difficult, shawls and camouflage covers have been commissioned instead.” With the diversity of biomes on the continent, this was the best course of action. Every region was different in fauna, flora, and environment. Instead of making uniforms specific to each place, covers for gear and the uniform were better from a logistical standpoint. Otherwise, we’d need eight sets of uniforms for every soldier. Cloaks you can just put on, or duffels you can stuff your pack into, were easier to mass-produce and stock up. “We worked extensively with the Children of the Elm and the few Scholars that we have on staff. The aim of the new camouflage is to obscure the shape of the individual and make them blend into the environment.”
“Both look good.” I didn’t have military training or anything, but the stuff was looking modern from my point of view, so it may be great. These guys at the university were here because they could innovate, research, and make things happen. What was I going to do? Waste more than a year and a half of investment and effort and say it’s shit? “How about the rifle?”
Ayah’s grimace told me a lot.
“The issue lies with longevity. The barrels wear out after five hundred rounds.” We were taking a massive leap from Minie balls rolled up with paper wads and gunpowder and primers. Instead of going the needle rifle route, we were going straight to brass cartridges with built-in primers. It was why I focused on getting a lot of armor on my pikes and getting locomotives, while also encouraging any market that wanted to work with brass. I wanted metallurgy to be good enough to start making rifled barrels and their ammunition. However, it looked like the ammunition was too strong and the barrels were too weak. Probably because the alchemists were great at replicating the contents of the bullets used by the semi-automatic cannons produced by the Citadel. Meanwhile, metallurgists were trying to desperately make steel that can withstand near-futuristic ammunition. “But it is within tolerances and improvements are planned. However, if we want to stay within the current timetable, the first batch will have this defect.”
“Do it. We need those guns. If the ammunition does what it needs to do, we can deal with needing to replace weapons. Make a note for quartermasters to replace the weapons after five hundred shots.” The current weapons that we had were good for killing mobs and Tier 1 units. However, we saw that they weren’t enough all the way back when we fought the corrupted Conquerors. Those guys were technically upper Tier 2 units, mid-game units that can be churned out incessantly by a decent economy, and they ate up tons of ammunition. Literal tons. The average Conqueror took over ten shots to put down. Given how many shots miss, we only took them down through sheer volume of fire. Even then it was a close thing. We won because they were heavily outnumbered, in a chokepoint, and held back. If they had another thousand Conquerors waiting on the wings, we’d have lost. “The ammunition does what we need it to, right?”
“Indeed, it is a miniature version of the rounds produced by the Citadel for the Conqueror’s guns. We tested your recommendations and found it effective against large targets and longer ranges.” I asked for stopping power and they provided it. I wasn’t a gun nut, but did like westerns a bit as a kid. One of the facts that stood out to me was that when driving out west people killed a lot of buffalo, and even as a kid I thought that’d take a lot of firepower, since those things were massive. The 50/90 Sharps cartridge was for putting those massive creatures down at long range, made without any fancy propellants, and robust enough for the Wild West, so I put it forward as a potential design. They worked off it, and now I was looking at the bullets. Rounded tip, rimmed cartridge, and brass cylinder about the length of a finger. “Production is completely without assistance from the Citadel.”
“Very good. Any luck on testing different shapes for the ammunition and different compositions?”
“The primary will be lead, but cone-shaped steel has proven very effective at penetrating armor. Sustained fire even gets through Citadel armor plating, but our attempts at explosive rounds and incendiary rounds are better suited for that.” That made sense. Lore-wise, Citadel alloy armors are very bullet-resistant, but the meat behind it typically isn’t. That led to incendiary weapons or explosives to make the person wearing it burn alive or get hit with enough force to break something. “But we believe that the normal round with the lead tip contains enough firepower to kill most targets. Tests on a few bandits from Warden stock showcased that they find it difficult to dodge, and a single hit is enough to blow off large chunks of their body.”
“Then, put the exotic ammunition for small runs and only for specialists, after they’ve been deemed safe for use. We have what we need.” These were the guns we were going to use to conquer the Wardens. Given the fact that they can revive in the battlefield, but revival took more time and effort if the body was less whole, I wanted a rifle with a lot of stopping power in the hands of my massed troops. In fact, I was tempted to dissolve my pikes and turn them into rifles. But that never ended well in the game, since there’s always something that rifles can’t put down fast enough, so I abstained. “What’s next?”
I turned around and faced the rest of the square classroom.
Like a science fair, the products of the projects I gave my scholars were arrayed simply with details and data on simple posters. The scholars were all just waiting at a get together, enjoying a free meal before they get bonuses and a small faction, until they return in a week. Every single one of them was a mind that I cherished and carefully kept track of, and I barely abstained from giving them all Iterant spouses, and just settled with giving them Iterants as personal assistants.
Because, through them and the university, I now had a military roughly around the Civil War era.
Roughly, because there was one thing that we invested that was beyond that.
Ayah smiled as she walked over to present the two-wheeled, breach-loaded, and rifled artillery piece. Beside it was a larger version of the munition meant for the rifle, but with a different form of ammunition. Instead of a cannon ball or a shell, it had a hollow Citadel Alloy dart filled with lead, which was surrounded by a sabot jacket. Once fired, the gases built up and propelled the whole thing forward. The sabot provided the seal for the gasses to push the dart forward, and came apart after exiting the barrel… letting loose a nigh-unbreakable, Citadel dart full of the densest material we could reliably get our hands on at the target.
Ayah didn’t say anything, and gestured at sloped armor over half a foot thick made of Citadel alloys… pierced completely through.
Yeah.
We finally have something that can put down an Ascendant warmech and anything else of their caliber.
That meant we had a chance at winning, no matter how slim, instead of just prolonging a loss.