Open Beta Patch v1.26o2 (12 may 2025)

[Mechasaurian]

Are we going to see a reworking of Militia any time soon?

Because as it stands, I only ever use them for garrisoning cities, and defending against marauders and wildlife in the early game. They're pretty rubbish otherwise. A lot of people on the Discord proclaim that they always scrap militia because they're more useful as population than as troops.

The one big potential advantage they have over regular forces is that they come as "seasoned" out of the box where regular troops always have to be trained from "green." I'd like to be able to give proper factory-manufactured arms to the Militia instead of letting them scrape by with improvised weapons and ancient out-of-date gear.

[Uemon]

I was noodling around with the new Colossal planets and they are very cool. 5g.

One issue I found on planets cold enough to have snow is that the weather patterning on the surface is clear rectangles or vertical lines.

I was right about to post this. The straight lines in particular seem to have a bias for north south direction.

[Uemon]

Are we going to see a reworking of Militia any time soon?

Because as it stands, I only ever use them for garrisoning cities, and defending against marauders and wildlife in the early game. They're pretty rubbish otherwise. A lot of people on the Discord proclaim that they always scrap militia because they're more useful as population than as troops.

The one big potential advantage they have over regular forces is that they come as "seasoned" out of the box where regular troops always have to be trained from "green." I'd like to be able to give proper factory-manufactured arms to the Militia instead of letting them scrape by with improvised weapons and ancient out-of-date gear.

I would consider two changes, maybe, for militia:
1.) Give us a way to reinforce them in mid/late them. Something that requires an active investment by the player but allow us to reinforce militia after early game. Gotta keep it balanced in some way i guess so it cant be super fast/efficient. But like a way to give them a bunch of money or maybe some special building we can make that does that etc.
2.) There could be an option for militia units to perform an active task of some kind which would be beneficial to the player and would keep them occupied in mid/late game, thus giving them use other than combat value. For example sending them to perform "scavenging" action, which improves your scavenger buildings or something like that. Basically they have to be static and sit somewhere and in return they boost metal/oil you get from ruins.

OOOOH. Imagine if you send them to the ruins and they progressively start finding better and better gear longer they spend there?

[Uemon]

Couple of things i would personally love to see:

1.) Minors have gotten bigger variety and thats cool. But minors themselves are basically... totally meh. They dont really feel like active players on the map, more like pre-set pre-defined road bumps sitting on the map waiting for you or major AI to just mop them up. What if minors actually played some kind of game of their own? In Stellaris you have "pre warp" races that have to go through various technological ages before they can basically wake up and start playing the game like a regular empire. In Victoria you had non westernized nations that have to finish a mini game of their own before they can join the rest of the technologically more advanced power and start researching the same tech tree. Again, in Stellaris, you have Fallen Empires that can awaken and do all sorts of game/map defining things. Well... Minors in SE do nothing. They just sit there. I wish there were things for them to do. Like maybe unique buildings they can build which change their behaviors. Unique locations that change their behavior. Imagine a religious minor "awakening" and going ape shit genocidal with GR tactical nukes because someone capture their holy site somewhere on the map. There is actually one similar event for minors now that i think about it, the shadow forces or whatever its called, when a minor gets a bunch of units and basically attacks you soon after. Thats a cool one. At least some minors have a town and a couple of units so they kinda appear like actual players. A bunch of them really dont. In particular spiders and robots. They are just... bland and boring. Also very passive. I think they should be reworked mechanically. There should be things in their territory which have effect on their behavior the same way physical towns have on raiders or farmers (they need to defend them). Right now spiders and robots basically declare war on me, drive up to my troops and just sit there for 100 turns without attacking them. Robots tend to have 4-5 separate units of couple of robots each and spiders tend to have 5-6 units with like 4-5 spiders each. As soon as you get combat armor and gauss rifle you can just wipe them out.

2.) More map verticality and general geography. Other than a few particilar planets, most biomes are very open and usually the only viariation is kinda flat - low mountains - mountains. This means that a lot of time warfare is really maneouvering and cutting the enemy's supply lines. I mean its exciting when you go for high risk high reward push and end up cutting off 150 AI units. But i also feel like maps could be made much more exciting if there were actual geographic features like ledges and separated altitude levels which created more corridors and funnels. I would love to see Mars like Olympus Mons, a massive dominant geographic feature with ledges and valleys, a place you cant just drive straight through as long as you can afford IC cost to build road. Same thing with canyons, gorges, huge impact craters. I would love to see those act more like geographic features and not just graphics on the map.

[zgrssd]

2.) More map verticality and general geography. Other than a few particilar planets, most biomes are very open and usually the only viariation is kinda flat - low mountains - mountains. This means that a lot of time warfare is really maneouvering and cutting the enemy's supply lines. I mean its exciting when you go for high risk high reward push and end up cutting off 150 AI units. But i also feel like maps could be made much more exciting if there were actual geographic features like ledges and separated altitude levels which created more corridors and funnels. I would love to see Mars like Olympus Mons, a massive dominant geographic feature with ledges and valleys, a place you cant just drive straight through as long as you can afford IC cost to build road. Same thing with canyons, gorges, huge impact craters. I would love to see those act more like geographic features and not just graphics on the map.

For 2, keep the game scale in mind.
1 hex is about 200km short diagonal
1 turn is about 2 earth months.

The entirety of operation overlord happened in 1 Hex, half a turn.

[Uemon]

WOW ok.

Lots of differences with AI.

I just had a game where 2 (TWO!) AI regimes befriended me instead of just outright suiciding into me. I havent seen this in a while.

And im playing a game right now where the AI didnt go stupid into biofuel and has like 200 infantry units which is proving much trickier than i had anticipated. The whole dynamic is different when they dont just spam tanks.

I still have the feeling that AI's struggle a bit too much with conquering their first city. They gobble the land, no problem, but the actual city hex can often take like 20+ turns.

[Uemon]

Ok so this is definitely a problem:



Turn 75. Just conquered major AI's capital.

And everything is starting to make sense.

IMO they should be taught to make building bureaucratic office I the first thing they make, and bureau II a high priority as soon as its possible..

This also likely explains why they fail to take their first city. They are generating so little research that it takes them ages to unlock infantry armors or weapons which means that they are basically spamming out turn 1 infantry well into the game. And that sucks at pretty much everything other than holding ground.

Another thing to consider would maybe be some sort of building that gives minimal amount of IC, something along the lines of scavenging furance design wise.

Im starting to really suspect that the main reason im beating the AI is simply snowball effect that stems purely from more efficient turn 1 resource management. I almost always go bureacratic office I, economic council, and wait until i get solar plant (without adding anything else). After solar plant i add military council until gass or gauss and padded armor or combat armor, and then model council. After bureau I i go metal mine, if food is good, ignore water/food, and go for industry I > bureau II. AI seems to struggle with this.

[Uemon]

Just for comparison to illustrate my previous point, AI capital vs my capital, turn 75, check out the civilization difference in particular:



Ok ill stop the spam now.

[zgrssd]

Ok so this is definitely a problem:



Turn 75. Just conquered major AI's capital.

And everything is starting to make sense.

IMO they should be taught to make building bureaucratic office I the first thing they make, and bureau II a high priority as soon as its possible..

This also likely explains why they fail to take their first city. They are generating so little research that it takes them ages to unlock infantry armors or weapons which means that they are basically spamming out turn 1 infantry well into the game. And that sucks at pretty much everything other than holding ground.

Another thing to consider would maybe be some sort of building that gives minimal amount of IC, something along the lines of scavenging furance design wise.

Im starting to really suspect that the main reason im beating the AI is simply snowball effect that stems purely from more efficient turn 1 resource management. I almost always go bureacratic office I, economic council, and wait until i get solar plant (without adding anything else). After solar plant i add military council until gass or gauss and padded armor or combat armor, and then model council. After bureau I i go metal mine, if food is good, ignore water/food, and go for industry I > bureau II. AI seems to struggle with this.

Pretty sure they don't use the BP system for the most part.
It is right in the manual under AI cheats.

[Soar_Slitherine]

The AI does use BP according to the manual, though it buys stuff with them directly rather than using the organization system.

[Arralen]

3 problems I'm having in my latest playthrough:

• I have an earthlike planet at 4.25AU: -31°C median temp. Very dry planet with 2% ocean and 3mm rainfall. Yet, the whole map is covered in snow which mean "Water Lvl 9 umlimited" ... and the map generation places "Water Deposits Lvl 8 200K" everywhere, even the obligatory starting one.
  That in itself isn't that bad, but I wonder - is the private sector going to builds mines there, and the AI players as well?
  .
• I am getting "incidents" with my leaders every 2-3 turns. This results in constant unrest and leader relations/loyalty plummeting. I'm atm at Meritocracy 50 (active: Strenght of Will), Enforcement 64 (Discipline, Eff.Goals, Strongarming) and Heart 63 (National Pride, Friendship, Joint Struggle) - yet they're all pissed ... .
  .
• The BIOSPHERE tab says "Currently the planet has proto-cellular microbiological activity". Yet at least one of the minor nations are some (very pissed off) arachnoids!
  Are those supposed to be there? Living happily with an 96%N2, 3%O2 atmosphere a -30°C?

[grime]

Some notes from a recent play through and many failed starts:

Autonomous cloning facility is game breakingly broken. Towards the end game it was producing up to 10000 new pop a turn, and my Capitol was well on its way to being level 7 (over 800k pops) - 4 times larger than any of my other cities.

Early-game, especially in extreme, is almost too difficult. It's highly dependent on getting good rolls, and especially, the Eager Industrialist fate card. IP is often the limiting factor. Part of the problem is that private sector will build everything but Light Industry first. I think it should be a bit more biased toward an early light industry, if only to make the starting turns somewhat more viable.

[Arralen]

Part of the problem is that private sector will build everything but Light Industry first.

In my recent playthrough (1 zone, low tech, 4 councils, milita only) the first thing the AI build was the Light Industry, and finished it in turn 8.
Proceeded to build Scout Station, Brothels, Waste and Library, planning to build Town Customs in turn 30.
So the problem might be related to the startup settings, or the map?

[Uemon]

I think its completely random? Ive seen light industry I being built first and ive seen private sector build 10 other things before it.

But overall i think we really need early game rebalance. AI struggles. A lot.

[zgrssd]

2 problems I'm having in my latest playthrough:

• I have an earthlike planet at 4.25AU: -31°C median temp. Very dry planet with 2% ocean and 3mm rainfall. Yet, the whole map is covered in snow which mean "Water Lvl 9 umlimited" ... and the map generation places "Water Deposits Lvl 8 200K" everywhere, even the obligatory starting one.
  That in itself isn't that bad, but I wonder - is the private sector going to builds mines there, and the AI players as well?
  .

That planet makes sense. All the water is frozen on the surface. Very little water is fed into the rain cycle. So rainfall and oceans are deceptively low.

I doubt the Private Economy should build mines. Water is pretty much abundant, once a little bit of state mining happens. And thus water will be abundant with the traders. So private water will likely not sell well.

[grime]

I think its completely random? Ive seen light industry I being built first and ive seen private sector build 10 other things before it.

But overall i think we really need early game rebalance. AI struggles. A lot.

It might be biased by initial government choices? Maybe choosing commerce would cause it build industry first - I'll have to play around some. Planet settings were Cerberus, Large. Extreme Difficulty.

[Uemon]

Some notes from a recent play through and many failed starts:

Autonomous cloning facility is game breakingly broken. Towards the end game it was producing up to 10000 new pop a turn, and my Capitol was well on its way to being level 7 (over 800k pops) - 4 times larger than any of my other cities.

Early-game, especially in extreme, is almost too difficult. It's highly dependent on getting good rolls, and especially, the Eager Industrialist fate card. IP is often the limiting factor. Part of the problem is that private sector will build everything but Light Industry first. I think it should be a bit more biased toward an early light industry, if only to make the starting turns somewhat more viable.

Yup. If you get just 1 its basically gg game over youve won.

[Mechasaurian]

Are we going to see a reworking of Militia any time soon?

Because as it stands, I only ever use them for garrisoning cities, and defending against marauders and wildlife in the early game. They're pretty rubbish otherwise. A lot of people on the Discord proclaim that they always scrap militia because they're more useful as population than as troops.

The one big potential advantage they have over regular forces is that they come as "seasoned" out of the box where regular troops always have to be trained from "green." I'd like to be able to give proper factory-manufactured arms to the Militia instead of letting them scrape by with improvised weapons and ancient out-of-date gear.

I would consider two changes, maybe, for militia:
1.) Give us a way to reinforce them in mid/late them. Something that requires an active investment by the player but allow us to reinforce militia after early game. Gotta keep it balanced in some way i guess so it cant be super fast/efficient. But like a way to give them a bunch of money or maybe some special building we can make that does that etc.
2.) There could be an option for militia units to perform an active task of some kind which would be beneficial to the player and would keep them occupied in mid/late game, thus giving them use other than combat value. For example sending them to perform "scavenging" action, which improves your scavenger buildings or something like that. Basically they have to be static and sit somewhere and in return they boost metal/oil you get from ruins.

OOOOH. Imagine if you send them to the ruins and they progressively start finding better and better gear longer they spend there?

The obvious way to reinforce the militia would be to give them surplus gear.

Though this might require a reworking of soldiers and gear work. Which would be welcome - I'd very much like to be able to take my veteran Light Tank crews and put them to work on my Medium/Heavy Tanks. Maybe in the Militaria expansion?



On a different note:

The Peripheral Mining strategem really is a blessing. I just had a very intense game on a small world where i was quickly boxed in by Major AI powers that had outpaced me in terms of military technology. I was forced to play a defensive game, holding ground in forests and mountains while building up my technology and industry to the point I could push them back. It was a low-gravity planet that was not very permissive for air forces, but extremely rich in fuel depots, so my go-to solution was lots of monstrously powerful Heavy Tanks which guzzled fuel at a rate that would have been prohibitive on a more fuel-poor world.

It was good game that showcased Shadow Empire's strengths. And it was arguably only made possible by Peripheral Mining - without that, this would probably have been an unwinnable situation handed to me by the RNG, thanks to how quickly the resource depots tend to dry up otherwise.

[Xxzard]

3 problems I'm having in my latest playthrough:

• I have an earthlike planet at 4.25AU: -31°C median temp. Very dry planet with 2% ocean and 3mm rainfall. Yet, the whole map is covered in snow which mean "Water Lvl 9 umlimited" ... and the map generation places "Water Deposits Lvl 8 200K" everywhere, even the obligatory starting one.
  That in itself isn't that bad, but I wonder - is the private sector going to builds mines there, and the AI players as well?
  .
• I am getting "incidents" with my leaders every 2-3 turns. This results in constant unrest and leader relations/loyalty plummeting. I'm atm at Meritocracy 50 (active: Strenght of Will), Enforcement 64 (Discipline, Eff.Goals, Strongarming) and Heart 63 (National Pride, Friendship, Joint Struggle) - yet they're all pissed ... .
  .
• The BIOSPHERE tab says "Currently the planet has proto-cellular microbiological activity". Yet at least one of the minor nations are some (very pissed off) arachnoids!
  Are those supposed to be there? Living happily with an 96%N2, 3%O2 atmosphere a -30°C?

1. No, the AIs and private industry will not build mines unless there is a need and presumably a high trade value.

2. This can happen. I am not exactly sure why, but sometimes you have 1 or more leaders who are just really prone to these sorts of incidents. If it is happening a lot to specific leaders, you could try to replace them.

3. Arachnids seem to be generated pretty much anywhere.Good luck explaining how they survive, but they make sense as some extra minor variety on planets without other wildlife.

[zgrssd]

3 problems I'm having in my latest playthrough:

• I have an earthlike planet at 4.25AU: -31°C median temp. Very dry planet with 2% ocean and 3mm rainfall. Yet, the whole map is covered in snow which mean "Water Lvl 9 umlimited" ... and the map generation places "Water Deposits Lvl 8 200K" everywhere, even the obligatory starting one.
  That in itself isn't that bad, but I wonder - is the private sector going to builds mines there, and the AI players as well?
  .
• I am getting "incidents" with my leaders every 2-3 turns. This results in constant unrest and leader relations/loyalty plummeting. I'm atm at Meritocracy 50 (active: Strenght of Will), Enforcement 64 (Discipline, Eff.Goals, Strongarming) and Heart 63 (National Pride, Friendship, Joint Struggle) - yet they're all pissed ... .
  .
• The BIOSPHERE tab says "Currently the planet has proto-cellular microbiological activity". Yet at least one of the minor nations are some (very pissed off) arachnoids!
  Are those supposed to be there? Living happily with an 96%N2, 3%O2 atmosphere a -30°C?

1. No, the AIs and private industry will not build mines unless there is a need and presumably a high trade value.

2. This can happen. I am not exactly sure why, but sometimes you have 1 or more leaders who are just really prone to these sorts of incidents. If it is happening a lot to specific leaders, you could try to replace them.

3. Arachnids seem to be generated pretty much anywhere.Good luck explaining how they survive, but they make sense as some extra minor variety on planets without other wildlife.

Arachnids are clearly not local life:

5.4.2.7. ARACHNIDS
A non-human Minor. These spider-like creatures are on the verge of consciousness and are found on many Planets. They have very tough carapaces and slow metabolism and they survived almost everywhere they were present when the Dissolution War happened. Why they had a small presence on so many human Planets is a question whose answer has been lost in time. Diplomacy is impossible, and they’ll kill any humans (civilian or military) they can get their hands on.