Annexing Minors Makes the Game Too Easy...

[horza66]

I realise the answer is going to be "don't annex/unify minors" if you want a challenging game, but I was wondering if I was missing something. I'm playing with the Nemesis option enabled, along with the one to make minors more aggressive, but still the same process every game: 1. Boost relations with minor neighbours 2. Protect then Client state them 3. Add usual boosts to Foreign Minister 4. Unify each minor 5 Hey presto, bigger than the Nemesis.

I really enjoy the depth of the game but there seems little point in learning the logistics and model design in depth when the mechanics with the minors leads to an easy victory. Anyone any suggestions for how to make the game more difficult without just using house rules about the minors?

[KingHalford]

What planet settings have you tested this on? I'm interested to know if you've managed to get this working outside of Siwa-like planets without lots of friendly farmers.

[Nsf665]

I realise the answer is going to be "don't annex/unify minors" if you want a challenging game, but I was wondering if I was missing something. I'm playing with the Nemesis option enabled, along with the one to make minors more aggressive, but still the same process every game: 1. Boost relations with minor neighbours 2. Protect then Client state them 3. Add usual boosts to Foreign Minister 4. Unify each minor 5 Hey presto, bigger than the Nemesis.

I really enjoy the depth of the game but there seems little point in learning the logistics and model design in depth when the mechanics with the minors leads to an easy victory. Anyone any suggestions for how to make the game more difficult without just using house rules about the minors?

I don't think there should be that kind of answer, since I had similar problem with it, just in MP game.
Typical hard start for both players, but other player exploited it with unifying Minors. At that point I haven't thought about it, since game before that, we started to use "house rule" not to use the Alliance stratagem with majors.
Because it shorten the game even more and since there is no customized victory condition, we stopped using that.
We haven't thought about Minors though and in around turn 20 when, he got almost all Minors around him unified. The game lasted much longer ofc, but I was never able to gain those lost VPs since his lead was over 10+ (and counting) points and with POP always growing, there was no chance.
Right now we have similar thing, just the sides switched /it differs a bit, since the planet is different and all, but still I have like 15 points lead almost since the beginning).

We discussed this a lot that there should be some more difficult stuff going on. Maybe some transition period (couple of years of bureaucracy dependend on the size of the minor? ) until the zone will fully integrate yours or something.
Definitely there should be some more focus (in the future) on diplomacy/intrigues.
Minors could have some "history" and could be undermined by other regimes with different spy operations ("historically we were independent nation and want to be one again" or "historically we were part of the majore regime" etc.) and could become again independent or under other regime influence etc.

Definitely now one part of the game, which is maybe the most easy to exploit (if you racing for the win:) ).

[horza66]

What planet settings have you tested this on? I'm interested to know if you've managed to get this working outside of Siwa-like planets without lots of friendly farmers.

I was playing on Unclassified as it appears that's the only one you can enable the Ocean DLC on. However you have a fair point - I'll try much more hostile planets and see if I can cut down on the minor diploannex cheese simply by having far fewer minors.

[KingHalford]

I wasn't really making a point so much as genuinely asking the question.

That said, I've come across this complaint a lot and it always turns out that people are playing on very easy, friendly planet types. In my experience this strategy does not work on more resource constrained planets where farmers are not present, the hostile Minor types are much more difficult to peacefully integrate and it's usually quicker to just invade them.

There's a tendency for some people to repeatedly play the same map types, find some imbalance with that one type and then ask for it to be nerfed/removed, not realising that it might be a critical feature for a different map type.

But I'm genuinely interested to know if people have tried this on these more hostile planets and are getting different results because I do agree that diplomacy is somewhat overpowered on Siwa etc. and the community wants the game to be better in any way it can be.

[eddieballgame]

Per only be able to play 'Unclassified' with the Oceania dlc; at the top of the screen you have 3 tabs to allow for all planets to be used.
Per the AI being easy to annex, the Hard & Extreme Difficulty settings should change your mind.
Hell, in a recent 'pbem' game I was having to fight with some very angry Farmers; generally the easiest ones to annex on the lower settings.

[KingHalford]

Per only be able to play 'Unclassified' with the Oceania dlc; at the top of the screen you have 3 tabs to allow for all planets to be used.
Per the AI being easy to annex, the Hard & Extreme Difficulty settings should change your mind.
Hell, in a recent 'pbem' game I was having to fight with some very angry Farmers; generally the easiest ones to annex on the lower settings.

That's interesting. Honestly, it's been a long time since I tried to do that strategy since I prefer to beat people into the dust rather than share!

[Vic]

This is on my radar. I don't consider it too easy when playing PBEM since everybody could go for the diplomatic route to annex the Farmers, but against AI it does indeed cause a bit of an inbalance as the AI won't even try annexing (it will fight instead). This is something I want to add in the near to medium future. (together with a bunch of other AI improvements)

[horza66]

Quick clarifications:

This was after three games in a row on an "easy" resource and pop rich start (I was specifically looking for a "big" game where there was not much resource constraint)
Difficulty was Extreme. (A very quick fix would be to make difficulty level severely impact diplomacy chances)
I did indeed miss the fact that there were Ocean DLC specific planet types, lol.
Subsequent games on low resource starts (deserts, low pop etc) did indeed prove to be "challenging". Twice in a row I started next door to the Nemesis, and was quickly eaten! Will drop the difficulty down again and focus on these starts for now. However I would love to see high resource/pop environment where competing with the other Majors in absorbing the minors is part of the gameplay.

[bvoid]

That said, I've come across this complaint a lot and it always turns out that people are playing on very easy, friendly planet types. In my experience this strategy does not work on more resource constrained planets where farmers are not present, the hostile Minor types are much more difficult to peacefully integrate and it's usually quicker to just invade them.

Completely incorrect. I played lots of games on low-tech start with extreme difficulty. On a variety of planets - testing oceania recently. On extreme the minors get insane amounts of militia - and all of these join you after diploannex.

Farmers can be present on many planets, atmospheric farming is not that rare. Also the hostility of the planet is pretty much irrelevant for difficulty purposes, noone cares about envirosuits.

Difficulty does not seem to affect diplomacy chance, and it's pretty easy to annex most of the minors - not just farmers. The only thing that matters is getting to them early, before another major declares war on them.

[KingHalford]

But does this work on Slavers, Hunters and so on?

[eddieballgame]

I have been playing this game since it was released 3 years ago. I have never found it...easy to annex most minors.
Apparently I am not doing something right.

[KingHalford]

I just examined a game-save someone sent me where he's managed to get 100 Relation with Raiders on a Gaia class. That's pretty interesting, I wonder what is working behind the scenes to keep those Raiders so happy and not want to expand? Resources and population are high so perhaps they're happy and don't need anything from anybody?

[mroyer]

I just examined a game-save someone sent me where he's managed to get 100 Relation with Raiders on a Gaia class. That's pretty interesting, I wonder what is working behind the scenes to keep those Raiders so happy and not want to expand? Resources and population are high so perhaps they're happy and don't need anything from anybody?

I certainly don't know the answer to this question, but I have also had that experience - happy raiders and even raiders who reached out to me to improve relationship, then with a little nudging get better and better relationship to 100 and it's not difficult to unify or annex.

But - and I've been playing the game since its first release - FAR more common is the completely incorrigible raiders that are nearly impossible to deal with diplomatically and constantly threaten conflict. I'm guessing this latter case is 90%+ of the time I've run into them.

I have no idea what causes the difference. I do play multiplayer pbem, almost exclusively, and we use extreme difficulty. Perhaps it's different on other settings.

-Mark R.

[eddieballgame]

I concur Mark, there have been a few rare instances where the annexing of certain minors was doable via diplomacy, (strategy cards) & military might...I suspect.
I do seem to recall it, appearing, to be easier to do so in earlier versions. Though I cannot say for sure as my ignorance allowed me to play more aggressively back then.
Then, there was our last game where I was surrounded by a bunch of, well...lets' just say, they were not friendly.
Hell, even the Farmers wouldn't give me the time of day.

[mroyer]

Hell, even the Farmers wouldn't give me the time of day.

Yes, last game was a weird one - you were hemmed in by nasty raiders and farmers(!), I was surrounded by theocratic majors (not a minor to be had) and meanwhile Enda and Gaz ran roughshod over the rest of the planet saying diplomacy was too easy on a farmer world. Go figure...

[pbi298]

I'm happy with the current state of annexing minors. I'm obviously not an uber competent player, as I struggle a bit without being able to annex those farmers. What I find is that I'm able to annex 1 or 2 before running into other minor farmers who, after they are under my protection, get invaded by a major and now I'm at war long before I'm ready, with the game then turning into a less-than-enjoyable slog.

[eddieballgame]

@ pbi298...I have quite a few games 'under my belt' (& still have much to learn to include the new dlc Oceania), many in multiplayer.
I can't recommend multiplayer enough, particularly if one can join up with a great bunch of dedicated players...like I have been fortunate to do.
Certainly made dealing with that 'pandemic' doable.
Every game has been a wonderful, experience in how to deal with the challenges that each unique planet offers.
The games I have found to be the most interesting, as I tend to role play my positions/status are the ones where I have had to struggle the most.
That includes the difficulty of annexing/conquering certain races. Almost to the point where I enjoyed it....almost.
Having to deal with the human (?) alien life, particularly the ones that need convincing they can't push you around & excellent human players is the ultimate 4x experience. imho
Shadow Empire checks all the boxes in my book.

[arosenberger14]

I think it's less the ease of annexing minors and more the massive power boost you get from annexing your first city when you're playing a 1-city start. Since minors have about the same starting population as a major, annexing one of them basically doubles your population and starts the snowball rolling. It makes it so that the biggest determining factor in how strong a major will be is how many minors are close by.

An easy fix might be to make minors more, well, minor with only ~1/4 to 1/10th the city population as the majors so that the big boys gain less by gobbling them up and have to rely more on natural and free-folk growth than snowballing via (diplo)annexing.

[Overlord015]

Agreed, I posted the following on the steam suggestion thread as a potential solution:

Some suggestions (future expansion, DLC?) for making minors a little more dynamic and more than road bumps:

- Have their militia upgrade in equipment and composition relative to the global average of all majors. Basically make it so their equipment is either half or a full level below the lowest major faction tech level. Their OOBs would open up relative to the highest level faction in this area.

- Keep them as being unable to build regular armies, but otherwise they actively work on improving their territories. The speed at which their militia upgrades, replenishes, and expands is relative to their economy.

- Like major factions, their territories, although now smaller than the current ones have a guaranteed chance of spawning strategic resources on map gen (water, metal, oil, etc).

- Their settlement tile has a ruin plus a scavenger camp, and is bunkerized.

- They start with one discovered and developed strat resource, it is bunkerized, and they always keep it garrisoned. This will only be a water resource if the map generated is a low water map.

- The generated resources and IPs are stored in their zone storage over time, this is divided by half and granted to the player when conquering or integrating the territory. If conquered, these are reduced by a further 10 to 30%. After taking the territory, the player gets the option to choose whether to build a new SHQ and keeping the resources on site, this increases happiness, loyalty, and cultural integration. Otherwise they can cart the resources back to another SHQ, with the opposite effects of the previously noted.

- Slavers and other non-settlement owning minors now have settlements, the above all applies.

- Non-Farmer minors are twice as hard to integrate, and should be a source of headaches and maybe even outright revolts over time even if peacefully brought into your faction.

- Xeno factions have one or two unique building chains tied to them. Maybe a type of mining or farming resource that in the case of the first give you a small set of a strategic resource without needing actual access to a node of said resource. In the case of the farming one, it could be a higher yield xenofarm, and in planets where the nutritional value of local flora and fauna is set to zero it gives you access to an applied science tech that allows you increase the nutritional value by each level researched. Also, their units can be built and replenished if you build an SHQ at their settlement. Modernized versions that keep them viable until the late game are available based on your tech.

- Add a line of events for dealing with and addressing the question of slavery when integrating or conquering a slaver minor, maybe with the potential of your faction being ideologically subverted and in turn becoming a slaver empire if you're running an Autocracy/Fist faction.

- A line of events dealing with the integration, and marginalization of mutants and xenos when you are peacefully integrating or conquering their factions. With the end result of them being integrated as equal citizens of your empire. Alternatively, they can be integrated as dissatisfied second class citizens, always generating some degree of unrest, or an outright pariah/slave caste, with its own associated benefits, if running fist/autocratic empires, but always generating unrest and guaranteed to revolt every so often.

- Until fully integrated, culturally, minors will behave like an independent faction in your empire, often making demands of you relative to the development and protection of their territory. Going to zero in relations causes them and their militia to revolt and revert back to minor status. If you have an SHQ and units tied to it, there's a chance those go with them based on their morale levels and your relationship with the SHQ commander.

TLDR: The idea here is to buff the benefits of annexation, but also expand on the assimilation mechanic to make it a multi step process that could potentially bankrupt or even destabilize the player's empire if they don't manage the integration process right. Essentially make them both harder to conquer and annex, plus add meaningful and immersive/flavorful ways of managing either process.