Vic, this "non-aligned forces" behaviour is ludicrous

[Tartannosaur]

Solve the metal problem finally. Was able to turtle with At-guns and rpgs attach to mg division. I downgraded your motorized to basic infantry on the first turn. Ai moved out of the ruins as other major declared war on them. That 4k scavenge was so needed for the Demetalization plant.
I finally unlocked grenadier division and can spread my rpgs around. Should be able to push in 10-12 turn can take the metal deposits.

Mostly been surviving the Passion time and unrest then teching up like crazy on learning era. So many rebellions. And the always spawned on the second tile making them mandatory to kill in one turn.

Got a cloning facility from the 2nd artifact fate card few turns ago it finally stabilized my pop. I got Battledress, missile and serpentinization from ceo/ fate tech unlock. Battledress would be useful but no machine yet in about 6-7 turns heavy industry will be build.

Have atomic unlocks researching tactical nukes then it's rush to micronuke rpg. Taking a gamble on unlocking industry automation which also unlocks walkers techs. I need both anyway no pop. I'm in a learning era so it should be fine. Got to spam those bureaucratic push now.

Wow, you've researched laser rifles and are still pinned down in that peninsula? Talk about an extreme start.

[coot33]

There was simply no metal it's the bottleneck ended up losing as an AI just snowballed and conquered everyone. Should have expanded earlier.

[Khanti]

Anyone have any luck with my challenge save? Looks like a few people downloaded it.

About the military situation: it was easy, as fast, as I created MG battalions and re-structured that motorized brigade into MG infantry brigade AI attacks stopped. Then MG and infantry got new models with heavy combat armor.

About the resources situation: you literally have 0 taxes and high pay roll for soldiers. That means it's necessary to sell resources for credits. Bad thing. I tried to lower soldiers wages to make it playable.
In my own games I keep 0 credits for soldiers. They can get high morale in winning battles anyway.

About political situation: I tend to support one faction to avoid conflicts between leaders. One of your cabinet member just left. And I replaced him with dominant faction member.

It is fun challenge btw.

[Khanti]

(...) I named it "Hopeless Start" because my city was on a narrow peninsula and after expanding south and west early on, unstoppable aliens from the east cut off my supply and I lost my starting militia. As if that wasn't enough, this game had Nemesis enabled and the major regime to the west started with air forces and tanks! They've been bombing us and hammering our forces with armor. So I've been pushed back to three hexes on the peninsula that I've bunkerized and planned to defend to the last man. (...)

Trapped.jpg
02-001 Hopeless Start.7z

Round 55. Perimeter established. City looks safe. AI attacks stopped. Thief discovered and interrogated (had nearly 600 credits)

[Khanti]

Round 55 save file in zip format if anyone is interested in continuing this adventure.
Two major regimes are at door steps. Both have bad relations to player. One is at war, but did not attack from many turns. Even having tanks. Nearest minor alien regime is weak.

Game version: 1.21d (so no blueprints!), difficulty level: hard.

Blueprints are major help for me, so big thank you Vic for it.

[Khanti]

Excellent post offering great advice on how to deal with the alien life one can encounter.
This, great, game continues to reach new heights per what it offers in gameplay...thank you Vic.
Thank you, Arralen, for sharing your file & allowing the rest of us try it out; which gives me an idea. Does anyone have, what they consider, an extremely difficult starting position they would like to share for the rest of us?
CivFanatic's website offers a 'Game of the Month' (GOTM) challenge for all their Civilization games. It strikes me that Shadow Empire would be an ideal game for this format.

I like this idea. I don't know what is a real challenge. My new game is: level hard, v. 1.25, no Oceania, map is known (I prefer that feature), Sentinels around, 1 minor regime at war with me, 15 more minor regimes (of 5 are alien) on map. Plus majors somewhere. Deadly fauna and flora.

[havoc1371]

Seems to be another one of those games where all the AI run forces come gunning for you in a seemly coordinated effort. I've yet to play a game where I didn't have every adjacent nation and unaligned forces attack almost from the start. Nation declares war out of the blue, then the unaligned come running in to cut roads and surround units in perfect timing to support them.

[Khanti]

I downloaded the Pyrorange save and played on it for around an hour or so. I saw the "unplayable" claim and took it as a challenge. These complaints about the non-aligned AI behaviour don't have merit tbh. I loaded the save and saw that you changed the starting zone settings so that you weren't recruiting anyone. I changed that to max 3k recruits for 2 turns, then lowered it to 1k. With that, I raised a couple of Buggy battalions and an MG infantry OHQ brigade within next few turns, made a new buggy design that had armour and upgraded the infantry's weapons. The creatures, though inflicting significant casualties, were slowly pushed away from the city.

(...)

Oh yes, the Buggy is fun to play unless you encounter ruins masters
I like this game
PS: Good advices are in your post btw.
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[AnddyiRaynor]

Cute little moo cows(Edit:tiger/wolf creature, it was hard to see). Is that on an old(5 billion) low gravity world(that is where I get 7m+ beasts, medusa seems very good for that)? They'd have worse stats than that vs air(so maybe helicopters?) or tanks, but those units seem to cover some of their own weaknesses. It can certainly be a pain when an aggressive huge creature wants to eat your guys.

[YonaLavender]

This is turn 8 on a "city start, militia only, low tech" game - and it's GAME OVER.
The "independant non-aligned forces" are coming to kill me off:
1.20s_ConcertedNonAligned.png

That terrain is actually pretty dang favorable to defense with light infantry, especially with how not great militia armor is as a baseline, note that entrenchment only applies to the defender unless you're making a ranged attack, and terrain like a forest gives you a lot of free unmitigated entrenchment the moment infantry steps in. As mentioned before, raising the (by default really low) recruitment rate to 1k-2k per turn and even just putting independent MG infantry to cover the countryside can do wonders for locking down some space. Obviously you want to keep some kind of garrison in the city just to be certain, but even against really steep manpower difference, infantry in entrenchment can do some serious damage before getting pushed back, especially against low quality militia troops like what free folk are stuck using.
Similarly in this terrain, getting into position first is vital; if you find yourself needing to attack to get into position, you've likely come across that position too late, and need some kind of armor to dislodge them.

On the subject of recruitment rate, my personal recommendation is to set the amount as high as you're comfortable feeding in the short term, and set the hire bonus to 0. This could've changed since I've last played, but there's usually enough militaristic zeal that you'll get plenty of volunteers for the food alone, and only might need to provide incentives once unemployment is low enough or you've got unmanaged unrest or a -really- big short term demand of troops or something.