Humanity: Zezerar B

[L0ckAndL0ad]

This is my second Shadow Empire game. I got trashed in the first one, but I think I've learned just enough to start an AAR.

Game Settings:

Code: Select all

Starting version: v1.01a-beta1 (just updated to beta2)
 FOW: Complete after colonization
 1 human player, City state start, Militia Only
 Story modules: CrSy/Corp/Cul&Sec
 Tech level 3
 Development speed: Slowest (Epic)
 Org: Sup Com Council only
 Difficulty: Regular

Planet: Siwa class (Large/Super sized)

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Summary

Regime: Humanity
Capital: Hindenburg
Type: Federal Democracy


Constitutional Policies

Interior

• Government size and footprint should be as small as practical, to encourage efficient utilization of taxes and to highlight the fundamental role of private citizens as the only legitimate source of power.
• Government is responsible for providing security, quality of life and infrastructure for all citizens.
• Security, health and education services should be prioritized.
• Government worker pay should be equal or better than population Income per Capita.
• President and Cabinet should resign if they lose the support of its citizens. (Popularity score ≤ 15)

Foreign Policy

• Peaceful outreach stance towards all foreign entities unless identified as a threat.
• Free movement, free trade and all kinds of cooperation are encouraged.
• Migration and asylum seekers are encouraged.

Military

• Quality over quantity.
• Uniformity of designs and force structures for better efficiency.
• Unnecessary losses should be avoided as much as possible.
• Pay should be higher than Income per Capita and civilian worker salary.

Factions

• Sacred Circle (SC) - Heart (++), Commerce (++)
• Merchant Union (MU) - Mind (++), Government (++)

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y303, Spring

First order of business, I changed salaries. Leadership pay was cut to universal 2 cr per position, and Reservists were left with 0. This way I can keep accepting new leaders from factions without spending taxpayer money on them not doing anything useful. Soldier salary went up to 0.006 cr, one point above workers'.

My advisors suggested me to pay some money to Militia. Quick comparison of Militia stats shows that they are quite bad at fighting compared to Regulars, so I will not rely on them in the future. However, they're going to be invaluable during the early months of our expansion. Speaking of..

I've sent out units in all directions and immediately encountered two regiments of marauders, ~2900 men strong each. Militia is going to have to fight them. So they'd get 200 credits. Not more. They already started earning that by stopping an attack of marauders, killing 500 enemy fighters. But then I pulled the men back to Hindenburg to deal with the closest enemy unit.

1st Indy Recon Bn got recruited. I'll require a few small mobile units for area recon, so some more Recon Bns will be ordered next.

[Rekm41]

Subscribed

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y304, Summer

Our military forces have identified couple more individual marauding enemy units and started dealing with them. Militia units operate to the North, while regulars of the 1st Infantry Brigade operate in the South. Two Independent Recon Battalions roam around scouting & screening the open areas.

After the first enemy group was destroyed, situation in Hindenburg zone started to calm down. It looks OK so far, but needs to be looked at frequently. Two sites with rare artifacts were discovered, but I'm not sure yet whether the private enterprises will start scavenging there. Or the Governor. Private Sector just started constructing an Oil Well Community, and plans to build Scout Station next, so that must be it.

The City of Hindenburg is located in a very decent area. It is covered by water and mountains on all sides, leaving only small avenues of approach, making it easy to defend.

Biggest federal budget expense now is Leader & Soldier salaries (57 of 72 cr), with soldiers receiving 43 credits at 0.006 rate. Income per Capita is 0.001, but I do not think I'm going to lower any salaries now. I'd rather sell some excess resources instead. But I'd have to limit the expansion of armed forces for now.

Research & creation of new Organizations is going slow, with Hospital blueprints being slowly refined. High Command HQ Lvl 2 upgrade slowly builds up. I'm yet to build any other building or even a road.

So far so good.

[Jdane]

Interesting move, reducing the salaries of the leaders from the start. You take the hit on relations once, but can only go up from there. Do the reserve leaders grow disgruntled over time over not being payed? Please let us know what comes out of this.

Two artifacts sites seem quite lucky to me. More power to you!

Keep the reports up! I'll definitely be following along.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

ORIGINAL: Jdane

Interesting move, reducing the salaries of the leaders from the start. You take the hit on relations once, but can only go up from there. Do the reserve leaders grow disgruntled over time over not being payed? Please let us know what comes out of this.

Two artifacts sites seem quite lucky to me. More power to you!

Keep the reports up! I'll definitely be following along.

It's actually better than I hoped it would be. I feel that decisions give bigger overall negative impact on our relations than leader salaries. My lowest relations are 53 with the Governor of Hindenburg now, with others being 60-70. One leader that I have in Reserve is at 71. Don't they get the relation bonus when you accept them into the ranks? I never payed attention to that.

But yeah, it kinda pissed me off that all these guys and girls were asking me for a job and I had to either accept them and pay them for not doing anything or get relationship hits with their faction. This is taxpayer money! Should be spent responsibly!

I probably should increase the salary for the governors. In my last game it was the governor of my capital who lead the rebellion when citizen happiness went down. Speaking of...

Population happiness is 63. Workers 55. I had danger levels in the 40s due to close proximity of marauders, but now danger is 23 and keeps going down slowly. We should be fine. All is fine. Nothing to worry about there!

[Jdane]

Before your AAR made me realize, I saw requests from factions to accept their candidate as a leader as a no-brainer : bonus to relations and a free leader, what's not to love! Turns out it's not free if you don't make it so.

On the other hand, one could think of the reserve as minor positions of authority, too low level to be detailed in game but high enough to justify the faction member being pleased to get it and being paid, such as can happen in modern states with people becoming head of an agency or a public company sometimes for mainly political reasons.

I agree you should try and get the governor to like you more. Looking forward to the next chapters.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y306, Winter

Interior situation is very good. Hindenburg City population went over 100k. Though there's only 50k private and 4400 public jobs. Thanks to private investments, quality of life and overall civilization levels finally started to rise. SupCom HQ and governmental offices produce 200+ BP, and there's a decent amount of federal supply and credit reserves. Private production of water and oil gives good amount of "due" to be stockpiled or sold.

Here's the most current map.

Situation with foreign entities isn't as good. I think that all of our immediate neighbors were identified. All except one are minor farmer regimes. The last one is a minor nomadic regime - Sogalio Territory, located to the North of Hindenburg. We weren't able to contact leadership of the nomads, so the borders constantly shift. Couple Militia units hold the line, but there is no combat going on.

Schwartzbruck Hansa farmers (also due North) have contacted us to establish borders. There's no intel on their territory, but we're at peace, which is great.

Grayspace farmers (due East) have some valuable assets on their territory: two luxury resorts, ancient Automated Factory and Derelict Mech. Everything else we've discovered in the entire region (not just eastward) is nothing really interesting, so far.



The biggest troubles so far were given by our western Dunkelstaat neighbors. They call themselves farmers, but their behavior is very aggressive. They took some of our land, hard and fast, including a natural thermal source (Hot Baths), advanced their troops towards Hindenburg City, stopping just 600 km away from the Capital. THEN they sent the "diplomats", if you can call them that, asking us to "swear a ritualistic and ancient oath of peace".

Oh, and did I mention that they ambushed our forces on the frontier in a small skirmish couple of months before that?

Ugh.. I'm at a loss, really. They attacked us once (though maybe mistaking us for some marauders?), took our land, advanced to threaten the capital, and now want peace. Such an aggressive behavior is unacceptable.

[Jdane]

That's at least four regiments of Dunkelstaatians militia. What's your OOB?

Also, how did you manage to explore so much terrain? By sending spies to neighboring regimes?

(If you wouldn't mind I would find it useful it you mentioned the turn number along with the planetary date. I'm under the impression year length varies from planet to planet and it makes it hard to guess what amount of time has passed.)

[L0ckAndL0ad]

ORIGINAL: Jdane

That's at least four regiments of Dunkelstaatians militia. What's your OOB?

Also, how did you manage to explore so much terrain? By sending spies to neighboring regimes?

(If you wouldn't mind I would find it useful it you mentioned the turn number along with the planetary date. I'm under the impression year length varies from planet to planet and it makes it hard to guess what amount of time has passed.)

Yep, that's the spies that brought me the intel on the neighboring regions.

Regulars:
3x Ind Recon Battalions
1x MG Infantry Brigade (converted to Corps and getting +3500 men next turn)
1x Ind Infantry Battalion (GR Jet/MG, 400 men)

Militia:
1x Sentinel unit (10 mechs)
2x Mobile Regiments
1x Guards Regiment
3x Mobile Battalions
2x Guards Battalions

Militia Regiments are quite good because they have MGs, RGPs, Artillery, Motorbikes/Buggies. Dunkelstaat units are militia riflemen exclusively, it seems.

I'm confident we can take our land along the border back and push them into retreat. I declined their "peace" offer (so our relations are now @ 8 points) and will deploy all our forces to deal with incoming units, but we're definitely not going to declare war right away. I'll start by trying to intimidate them into falling back and will only attack if that fails. They came very close to our installations and cannot be left there just like that.

If we can get our border back to where it was, I'll send the diplomats to sign peace without a problem.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y306, Summer

So, Dunkelstaat regime kept their inertia and continued advancing.



Fortunately, they don't actually have any tanks. Or any heavy equipment, for that matter. So they quickly ran into serious problems, facing combined forces of our Militia and Regular units. We have enough men to support the front line and eliminate individual surrounded enemy units, causing them serious casualties.

But we'll soon have to stop and pull some units back, because we won't be able to support so many men in the field at once with our limited civilian logistic support. I'm yet to construct any government logistic complexes.

Civilians built "Scout Station". It's not for scavenging, but for QoL/Security. And the Governor does not seem to be able to excavate the artifacts from the excavation zones. So the government is going to have to construct the sites to examine the ruins, eventually.



In other news, Queensstate contacted us to sign a peace agreement and mark the borders, for which I'm very happy. There's still a non-aligned controlled zone to the south, so I'm keeping one Independent Recon Bn there to screen the area.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y306, Late Fall

Good news is, we keep pushing the enemy back, we've discovered Artillery and completed research into High Velocity Guns. That's about it.

Now onto the bad news. My best leader, the governor of Hindenburg, rebelled against me. I was going to relieve him for embezzlement that exact turn! Well, I intended to pull back some forces anyway...

Next, the friendly Schwartzbuck Hansa regime to the North is no more. They were taken out by some Theocratic major regime called Hochstaat. Naturally, I tried contacting them but failed. Then, as usual, I sent spec ops agents to investigate the area covertly. And failed again. Hochstaat was hostile to us to begin with, and now I think they're going to declare war on us.



I need to wrap it up with Dunkelstaat ASAP. That was my plan anyway, but let's hope there's actually enough time.

I was going to give you more good news, but.. Well, the spies I sent to non-aligned zone to the south tell me there's no one in charge there and there's a lot of good stuff remaining from GR to be taken. Two Automated Factories, derelict military spaceship, Waterfall Turbine and who knows what else. But it's all pretty far away, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to actually go there any time soon to settle the zone. I'll try to reserve at least some resources & units for this, but I'm getting stretched pretty thin already.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y308, Winter

The war with Dunkelstaat is over. We've pushed them back from the geothermal source 400 km west, which I find to be sufficient, and then I called the diplomats to settle the matter. Let's hope they've learned the lesson.

Now I can breathe a bit more easily and focus on making the Humanity more prosperous. Logistical problems during this war showed the need for centralized logistics hub in the capital, so I had no other choice but to nationalize the Truck Station there. Another lesson learned is that Militia's artillery played an invaluable role in offensive operations. Regular units still have no access to artillery, but we're making everything in our power to make it happen ASAP.

All but one (Applied Science) Councils have been created, so I have to optimize the budgets of all of them. Military research, especially Model Design and OOB will get priority, with Economy being on almost the same level of spending. I fear that our northern neighbors (nomads and the theocratic major regime) will be causing us troubles soon enough, so we have to prepare.

Everything else seems to be going fine. My scores & levels currently:

Popularity 74
Word 78

Tech 3.46
Admin 6.57
Civilization 3.12

I guess I'm doing something right.

[Jdane]

Wow, that's an impressive regime admin level.

About the usefulness of militia artillery, was it something you noticed when you used it for indirect fire or direct fire (i.e. as they support other troops while they are assaulting the opposition's lines)?
I'm on the fence about them in the indirect fire role. Sometimes it seems effective, sometimes not very. I suspect it's not when I fire at units on which I do not have good recon though.

At any rate, keep up the reports. It's a pleasure to read an AAR on Shadow Empire. Humanity will prevail!

[L0ckAndL0ad]

ORIGINAL: Jdane

Wow, that's an impressive regime admin level.

About the usefulness of militia artillery, was it something you noticed when you used it for indirect fire or direct fire (i.e. as they support other troops while they are assaulting the opposition's lines)?
I'm on the fence about them in the indirect fire role. Sometimes it seems effective, sometimes not very. I suspect it's not when I fire at units on which I do not have good recon though.

At any rate, keep up the reports. It's a pleasure to read an AAR on Shadow Empire. Humanity will prevail!

My admin level is so high probably because I generate 254 BPs currently. I still feel like I need more BPs, because of the EPIC research difficulty (5x the usual cost). It's Round 31 and my regular troops are still worse than my Militia! Seems kinda backwards, but I work with what I have. Also makes me really sweat about fine-tuning the budgets, giving ongoing development as much share of the BPs I can.

As for artillery, the problem is when the enemy is dug in and has good readiness. I did not look that much into the exact numbers during all the combat rounds, but I feel like the artillery allows overcoming the enemy with much less casualties. This also goes to our own readiness levels, actually. Motorized Militia units were often better prepared to fight offensively because they had better Readiness after movement. I'm not ready to motorize all the infantry yet, but all the infantry that's suppose to advance & attack fast should definitely be motorized.

Indirect fire is great when your troops are not in shape to fight offensively, but need to put pressure on the enemy, make him busy dodging the shells. So integrated artillery is a must in my view. But I'm not sure yet how scalable this would be due to costs. I'm currently developing 150mm artillery, and it's gonna be very pricy, like ~50 metal per unit or something.

[Jdane]

Thanks for your answer.

Artillery is pricey in metal for sure. In one game I went cheap with the caliber because there were no metal deposits around or ruins to scavenge from, and the 105 mm cannons I spent a year's worth of metal income on were ridiculed in a duel against my major opponent's militia artillery. [8|]

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y309, Late Fall

Our internal development goes well (except for one tiny rebellion ignited by one of my leaders), but the neighbors keep me in high alert mode. Grayspace farmers (to the east) wanted to invade me for some reason, but our diplomats managed to persuade them not to. I heard some rumors about them gathering some mercs to attack us and wasn't going to believe it, until I had some actual evidence. Well, crisis is averted for now, but they did get some good gear.



Including tanks. Small, unworthy tanks. But tanks nonetheless. And we had none. So... I decided to modify the scout car to create an ersatz tank. I kinda overdid it, I guess, it requires a lot of fuel, but it should be able to deal with the enemy tanks.



In other news, the northern nomads keep invading our territory and attacking our merchants. Army is not enthusiastic about defending our merchant caravans for some reason. Despite my best wishes, there's no way for us to reach any sort of diplomatic agreement, so I think we're going to have to deal with them with force. Militia units that are still available will be sent north.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y312, Winter

Hindenburg's population reached 200k. The zone is doing very well. Civilian economy and quality of life is booming. Artifact recovery work is giving us some amazing finds. So far these are: 4x Automated Factories (most useful, but can only have 1 per zone), 2x Cloning Facilities (kinda useless, cuz we have enough people around anyway), Wasp Hive (robotic swarm for military employment), Antigrav Lifter (not sure how that works), Cortical Simulator, 2x Dopaminator. And there's still A LOT of ruins to sift through!

One problem, we're running at the limit of our energy capacity. I had to limit Hospital, University and High Command HQ to 50% working capacity to fit the max load. A team that was working with ancient archives managed to find blueprints for a conventional oil-burning energy plant. But this happened just recently. A couple of months back I had other thoughts...

Our Militia went north to confront the nomads, pushing them away from our borders. Nomads attacked first. A war began. Initially, I just wanted to get rid of the nomads. And then it occurred to me - what is going to happen with their territories? Theocratic regime of Hochstaat is very close by to the east from there, and it will certainly try to fill the void. But there are also huge swaths of land to the west, ridden with marauders and controlled by no one. This is how I decided that we have to start colonizing nearby regions. We have to settle there, once we've dealt with nomadic warbands.

Manifest Destiny came to mind immediately, but.. do we have other options? Allow marauders control these regions? Or let Hochstaat and other rather hostile regimes take them? Also, there are powerful technologies and items to be claimed there. Do we let them fall into the wrong hands? There's a Geothermal Turbine right there, where the nomadic warbands roam. We were looking for a good, clean energy source for years now! We will keep our positive outreach towards those who are willing to be peaceful with us. Our stance on foreign policy hasn't changed.

In the mean time, a Light Tank was developed. The initial version of Custer received 60mm High Velocity gun and 25mm armor. I was hoping that giving it the best gun available will provide a great punch against armored targets and decent soft attack. But, alas, it doesn't look good, given that 99% of the enemies we've encountered so far were using infantry mostly exclusively. So, I ordered a new version, with 40mm howitzer gun. And it's looking much better as a universal attack vehicle now!



Militia's attack bogged down. Newly formed 2nd Infantry Brigade (mot), reinforced with 1x 105mm Artillery Bn and 1x Light Tank Bn went north to support the war effort. The regulars are equipped with newly developed equipment, including rifleman (Auto Rifle + Padded Suit) and MG team (Adv MG + Padded Suit) kits. Do not want to sound sinister, but it's a great opportunity to field test all the new equipment.

[L0ckAndL0ad]

Y314, Winter

The nomadic warbands of Sogalio were destroyed. It took me a while to figure out the way I'm going to layout our future logistical network, but the first leg to the North is done. Sogalio City starts to grow slowly, located right where the geothermal turbine was found. Couple of small resource deposits were surveyed in Sogalio, with one of them being Radioactives (430 units @ lvl 3). It was decided that such materials may be considered of strategic importance, not to mention being highly dangerous in the wrong hands, so the government of Humanity took responsibility of mining this deposit. Same should be done with all other new deposits of radioactive materials.

Similarly, all future ruins should be attended by the government. Why? Look what we've found near Hindenburg! When deployed, this self-sustaining high-tech Gravitonic Collector provides 500 units of energy with minimal human operational input or maintenance. With the power of gravity! We're immensely far away from understanding such technology, so let's hope it's not creating a hole in our own space-time continuum or something like that while it's operational!



As I'm dealing with strategic-level logistic issues and equipment model designs, I look forward to exploring new lands. There are three directions we can go now: North West, West, South West.

Here are the updated maps.

To the North West, planes of the Pemirar zone include at least 3 Luxury establishments, tiny degraded Auto Factory and a Derelict Ancient Mech. To the West, Laperilia zone is mostly made of forest, but our scouts failed to identify anything of value. Both zones border with Dunkelstaat, which failed to expand there for some reason.

The zone to the South West, strangely called "Tools Industries", features a really nice 200 enrg-strong Waterfall Turbine, Derelict Spaceship and two degraded Auto Factories. There's quite a lot of mountains and heavy forest areas, so it's gonna be hard to explore and fight there, that's for sure. The easiest pick would be the North West, the Pemirar. I'm sure the army boys will enjoy "exploring" the luxury brothels there :\