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Free Will If for no other reason than that it seems somewhat shady that they're getting the queen's genome from some suddenly very helpful humans. I'd expect the genome to be tampered with in some fashion. I had also expected the new secret tech to be Celestial stuff, rather than Voidtech.
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May 12, 2020 03:51
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PurpleXVI posted:Free Will My best guess was that they wanted to keep the tech choice removed from the moral choice, for the sake of player freedom. I don't really agree with that logic though, and a forced switch to celestial if you took the peaceful path would have been thematically stronger.
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May 12, 2020 15:25
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Free will.
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May 12, 2020 15:33
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I agree with the goonmind that we support free will. Just picked up the game myself and trying to navigate the new empire management stuff. I’m a little disappointed though that given how buff the amazons are they don’t get to do much punching 
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May 12, 2020 20:09
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Out buggy friends seems to have prospered just fine outside the goonmind so I vote for free will
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May 12, 2020 21:02
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Another vote for Free Will!
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May 13, 2020 00:39
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Getting in on the Free Will train!
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May 13, 2020 00:54
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Revive the queen, bind the Kir'ko, feed the swarm
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May 13, 2020 03:52
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  You choose to abandon your own heritage? Krz’Tk Xrrlt Ptkch! No one shall stand in the way of Cekto Xa’To and her Queen! Try to interfere with our resurrection efforts and you will face the fury of the Kir’Ko Noz’Rix! I am sure my people will grow stronger by approaching the future as free individuals. Cekto Xa’To is a fool to trust in the descendants of those who enslaved us. Her intentions may be good, but she is setting the stage for another Zok’Shiar without even realizing it. Her attempts to bring back the Ez’Qi’Yu must be stopped!Choosing to not resurrect the Queen gives us a simple starting objective-defeat either Cekto or her Amazon ally Zarai. They both gain plot grudges against us, but war isn’t immediately declared.  It seems you are follower of the Psynumbra teachings. I will forgive you indiscretion, this time. But tell me, why is Zarai Loreg blocking your communications? To keep me from warning your people of Empress Carminia and her plans. Carminia has no interest in the well-being of the Kir’ko. All that she seeks is another way to subdue your race, and the Queen of Queens and her hive projection are the ideal tools...Another Zok’Shiar... then it is as I feared, and the resurrection of the Ez’Qi’Yu must be stopped. Tell me though, why would a human be interested in helping the Kir’Ko retain their freedom?I came to Xa’Kir’Ko on behalf of the benevolent CORE. In the limitless wisdom of its circuits, CORE is devising a new Star Union, one that will avoid the mistakes that were made in the days of old. And it is inviting the Kir’Ko to be part of this new Union – as equals, not as slaves.Unsurprisingly, CORE isn’t the happiest about Carminia’s plots on Xa'Kir'Ko, and has sent its agents here to try and deal with her. Unlike Claudius, Nikael here isn’t asking us to make any decisions right now, but we will at one point have to decide if the ancient AI is just the enemy of our enemy, or if it actually is a friend  The growth have more quests for us, wanting us to clear out some angry wildlife.  While we’re on the topic, we pick up the starting voidtech technology. The primary reason to pick this up is the phasewalk modulator. This defensive mod gives an evasion bonus and lets the unit walk through units and obstacles like psi-fish. The operation that comes with it is fairly questionable. It causes the target unit to teleport to a random space within a few hexes when it takes a hit. Against a single melee unit this can be somewhat useful, as the follow up attacks will likely miss. Against multiple units, or guns, well you have a good chance to teleport into range of something else, or out of cover. It isn’t terribly reliable, which is a bad place to be for something costing real resources.  Heading west from our settlement we run into Nikael’s territory. Our troops will just be clearing out that pirate camp then beginning a long march east.  In theory, we have three opponents on this map, one vaguely friendly face, so this could be pretty difficult. However, we have a bit of an advantage. After our first peaceful annexation of an independent settlement our racial relationship with the Kir’ko is high enough that independent settlements will join us for free. We basically gain two free cities.  Buying a city next to the growth mothernode ticks them off a bit, but I’m willing to pay them off to keep them happy.  I’d like to pick up the third independent settlement, but there’s the small problem of that stack of pirates standing right outside. Since the guards will magically vanish when the settlement come under my control, the place will be sacked immediately. I’ll need a few more units in the area first. Our scouts continue east, towards our first target.  Careful who you speak to, sack-bleeder! You are in the presence of Swarm Herald Poz Tk’Nor. Try to put us back in a cage and we will unleash our fury upon you. You have no power here. Try? I have been pretty successful so far, if I dare say so myself. Want me to show you the way to the cages and help you count how many there are? Maybe help you join them? I am sure we can make space...Your slaver days are over, sack-bleeder. Taste the thrax of the Engulfer! Share the pain of the Tormented! Vomit blight and disease as we feed your corpse to the jaws of the Ravenous, where it will finally find purpose.Rebas here has no friends on this map, and we’ll pick up a serious amount of firepower from the quest rewards for defeating him. Meanwhile on the home front, with the extra cities we have picked up lets us finish the plot quest for the Growth.  You remembered, Symbiont. New saplings are blooming as both our paths returned to intertwine. They sensed the black tangle. We do not grow there, but the Kir’ko can spread their roots in places we avoid. Tread with care, Symbiont. The black tangle lies in a far distance.This gives us a new quest to explore a location on the far side of the map from our starting position.  We also pick up a normal quest, which will let us turn research into more units.  With the marauders no longer hovering right outside the settlement of Aki Tax, and some forces in the area, we have them join up.  Our actual troops finally get back to the middle of our territory, and are about to embark and cross the bay. In the meantime, we pick up the first voidtech doctrine tech. Because Voidtech is one of the secret techs which actually has significant non-military applications, both are non-combat techs. Echo protocols represents the use of echo walker technology in the civilian sector, which improves the productivity of all colonists by 1 food, science, research or production. Sadly, this isn’t super competitive with other economic doctrines unless all your cities are really large. The second is Preventive Surveillance, which improves the vision range of all units by one hex, and scouts by a second hex. This cool, but not necessarily something I find super useful. Overall, a bit of a disappointing tech. Next, our scouts finally reach the location pointed out by the growth. This place is bizarre... I can feel the currents of the Void pull at the foundations of our reality. Its humming melody is growing louder inside my mind as it starts resonating with the dreams from the past. No... no... the sounds are too intense! I cannot shut them out... (A second flash, then another, and another, until the area is pulsing with purple light as more and more creatures like the first spill out onto the rocks. Just as you try to focus your mind and reach out to one of the arrivers, your sight becomes shrouded and the vision ends.)The images... the flashes... were they a true dream experience or just a hallucination? If what I saw is true, our ancestors did not always live on Xa’Kir’Ko – they came to it travelling through the Void! Is that where our psionic abilities come from? It this why we are so different?There are so many new questions swarming through my mind. Once we have dealt with current pressing matters, I will have to invite our people’s wisest Dream Readers to share and discuss this discovery. But for now, the resurrection of the Ez Qi’Yu requires all our attention.The black tangle is half a mountain sector with three cosmite nodes in it, and half nothing. Just a blotch of pure blackness that can’t even be flown through. I would like to take control of it, as these are three of the four cosmite nodes I’ve seen on this map, but the probably isn’t in the cards.  Back on the eastern front, Poz has finally sailed himself to the coast of Akl’Tax. While he is disembarking, an amphibious detachment has been tasked with intercepting some marauders, which gives us a good opportunity to discuss the Growth units I’ve been picking up.  Probably the most commonly purchased units from the growth are these soldier bees. They’re essentially a slightly fragile t2 flying unit, though they can compensate slightly with their life draining melee attacks. However, the built in armour melt on their corrosive spit makes them hit very hard compared to other fliers. Not a particularly complicated unit, but a good flying units are always welcome, flying melee is a fairly rare ability that can be very useful against other flyers and these are available as soon as you make peace with the growth.  The second T2 unit is the vine bud, a heavy melee unit with the ability to summon an expendable secondary unit. Without taking the summon into consideration, there are some minor twists to the unit. They can’t be flanked, which minor but nice, heal themselves and gain armour and stagger immunity when entering defence mode, and immobilize units on hit, preventing the enemy from running after you make melee. Oddly despite being an amphibious unit, it still takes some serious penalties when fighting on water. It cannot summon a vine sprout or take advantage of it’s special defence mode.  The summoned unit is the vine sprout, which is basically a smaller version of the main Vine bud, with the same immobilize effect, defence tricks, and immunity to flanking. The interesting trick about this unit is that it cannot move without using it’s tunnel ability, which is on a short cooldown. However, that probably won’t matter, because with 12 base HP the sprouts won’t live very long once they jump in. One nice trick is that all combat summons inherit any compatible mods from the base unit that do not provide extra abilities -that’s why this one has regeneration. Anything you can put on the vine bud will be inherited by the sprout, which is a convenience other combat summons don’t have. Now, the entire problem with this unit is that it is more expensive than the soldier bee for some reason, and just isn’t as broadly useful as the bee.  Back on the homefront, we found a new colony on the coast.  And get a quest to build some irrigation equipment.  Our first mercenary hero, Tkok, shows up, who conveniently comes with piloting skills. I have engulfers researched, and I spring for an engulfer mount so he can catch up with the troops that are already on their way to Rebas.  Because I’m going to be using a lot of bees and engulfers on this map, It’s time to actually research some biochemical weapons. The first tech is bit disappointing, providing an acidic mod that grants armour melt to the unit it’s on. Because engulfers and soldier bees come with abilities to melt armour already, this is a bit redundant-you can’t melt someone down to negative armour after all. The tactical operation could be a bit more useful, applying biochemical vulnerability and slow to units in a small radius. As the Kir’ko, this tech line isn’t very useful-you’re primarily using melee units and psionics with your default units, with a couple secondary biochemical attacks. You need to invest heavily into engulfers, a unit that needs to be researched, or a unit even further down the tech tree, before you’ll be making heavy use of this tech branch.  Next turn our remaining land units stack up, clear the pirate camp, then head to the milestone charge station to get enough movement to immediately re-embark.  As we are out of the tutorial, empire tasks are re-engaged. We pick up the economist, which is the reason that Echo Protocols is bad. This doctrine will give essentially every colony +10 to an income, as opposed to +1 per population. It has a tendency to outshine many early game economic doctrines.  We finally find our Amazon opponent, just north of the black tangle, and to the far northwest of our home colonies. Hopefully she’ll stay quiet for the time being.  Along the way to syndicate territory, we take on a random group of pirates, mostly to take a look at a unit we missed in the Dvar campaign.  The Dreadnought is the t3 dvar ship. Well, at least that’s the listed Tier. Ships in this game work in a very gamey way, and the dreadnought is simultaneously much cheaper than a land bound t3 unit and vastly more powerful than them. All ships work like this, which still doesn’t balance out the fact that they cannot interact with the majority of the valuable territory in the game. Generally, the primary role of ships is to prevent land bound foreces from crossing the water, at least without trading at a very energy ratio with the fleet. But is that really something you want to spend resources on, or in the case of T3 ships, research on? Regardless, the Dreadnought is an AOE damage machine-It’s repeating heavy shell turret does half damage to any adjacent units, and the broadside is a rare 2 hex aoe at artillery range, though you have to spend an action reloading every time it fires.  This was definitely a mistake. One of the transcendent in the attack force is picked off after absorbing the dreadnought’s opening salvo through it’s link.  The next turn Cetko makes himself known, founding a city next to my northernmost city. This is pretty alarming, as all my forces are rushing the syndicate. I start withdrawing most of the troops on this city south of the channel, because there’s no way to hold against a surprise attack.  Prior to the assault on the syndicate slavers, we pick up Volatile afflictions, the second biochemical tech. The primary use of this is going to be infusions: ionic, which switches the biochemical damage to arc damage and inflicts electrified, a status that does damage over time and reduces enemy accuracy. Because my scouting of Rebas has revealed he’s a promethean, and thus has a cheap biochemical resistance mod, we’ll need this on the air force as soon as possible. In general though, because all mechanical units have arc vulnerability, this is always a good option. The tactical operation, corrosive detonator, is a serviceable AOE with massive impact stagger and armour melting. Generally a quite flexible tactical operation, though the damage isn’t impressive.  Our armies finally make landfall, and start lurking around the syndicate borders.  We then get a quest that I am forced to admit exists in this game.  Since he already hates me and my troops are skulking around his borders, Rebas declares war on me. However, the then decides to pull his troops back from his capitol, leaving it relatively undefended.  Only relatively. It seems Rebas has maxed out the militia of his capitol, and we have to beat up two tanks to take the city.  The tanks focus on our new hero Tkok, and successfully down his engulfer. Thankfully I have a spare vehicle in the armoury.  Concentrated ranged fire brings down the tanks in short order, and the snipers on the battlements are jumped by frenzied who can walk through walls, teleporting shotgun troops, and their own mind controlled former allies.  After that battle, we pick up a tech we won’t have a chance to use before then next round. Infection is one of several mod techs that are rather focused on improving melee units. The primary draw is psi-infected claws, which provide all the units melee attacks with a chance to concuss, panic, disable immobilize or drive insane anything that gets hit. Four out of five of those will make the target lose their actions next turn. Less useful is the poison excretion mod, which causes equipped units damage and attempt to poison all adjacent enemy units at the end of every turn and explode on death. It will add some damage and health to your melee units, but won't fundamentally change the way they work..  Rebas isn’t so willing to let me keep his capitol. Starting to burn it down didn’t really help. Regardless, his forces regroup and offer battle, and I think this time I can accept.  As the attacker, we have a bit of a positioning advantage again. The stack off the far left isn’t going to be in range of anything for a turn or two, which means this central stack will be facing two and a half stacks of my troops at once. Kurresh makes the most of the time we have by mindcontrolling the bees on the first turn, and dodging the overwatch thanks to his smoke cloud.  Poz jumps in as well, and panics the smaller bees.  Tkok’s stack has the hardest job. The enemy commander is going to be crashing into him soon, but he also needs to do his part to finish off the central stack before the syndicate forces regroup. They do have some new units to do this with, but they aren’t going to be a huge help.  Worker bees are the t1 growth unit, and are a strange hybrid of scout and healer. These, generally are not two types of units that go well together, and worse they’re a melee unit, which does not have great survivablity, and a healer, who need to not die. They aren’t useless, but you are probably better off saving up for soldier bees, though there are some uses to throwing healing into flying stacks.  The response by the syndicate forces is fairly anemic. What things that aren’t out of range or incapacitated mostly waste their fire on a shrouded and pain transferred Kurresh. The central hero for some reason decides to rush in and block Poz. Poz phasewalks past, and leaves him to the squad of echo walkers right behind.  At this point, the centre stack is mostly annihilated, and we haven’t taken any casualties.  Our next priority is keeping Rebas himself from wreaking our party. While abundant biochem resistance prevents the detonator from doing more than tickling him, staggering two snipers will keep them from doing much damage next turn, and leave them vulnerable when I can actually get my hands on them.  With the enemy range force suppressed, the primary action is an aerial melee between bees and unleashed. We also have some heavy melee infantry skulking around on the ground, taking potshots with their backup guns, who could be a bit of a problem when some actual ground forces get into the area.  Yet another syndicate hero rushes in to close quarters to throw grenades at me, leaving him free to get devoured by bees and plants, while I try to figure out how to dig the syndicate infantry out of cover.  Several round of battle bile leave the heavy melee troops barely standing, and if they’re smart, able to beat some of the frenzied to near death.  The easy solution is to get Poz around the flanks and start hitting them with Screech.  Then the bees descend.  The enforcers decide to hang back at shoot rather than risking melee for some reason, then die ignominiously to lingering electrification. Seeing that the battle is lost, Rebas plasma surges into the pack of frenzied.  He is, unsurprisingly, torn apart for his troubles. Unhand me, insects! You lot were bred to obey!Die, vile creature! May your death bring peace to future Kir’ko generations. We gladly welcome the Kir’ko Shis’Lax into our swarm. There is always place within our castes for those who had to suffer at the hands of the sack-bleeders. With the defeat of Rebas, I’m going to end the update, which is long enough as it is. However, there is an expansion releasing in a week, and for safety’s sake, I’d like to finish this map before the accompanying balance patch drops and confuses things. Thus, I’d like to call a vote a bit in advance of any actual decisions [] Submit to CORE [] Remain Independant. mr_stibbons fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 02:23
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Hail CORE! Also re: things one is forced to admit existing, one of the dwelling names for the growth is the Hen'Tay Mothernode or something like that
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May 19, 2020 02:34
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JOIN THE CORE What can I say, I'm not sure how smart it is, but I love robot friends.
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May 19, 2020 02:45
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CORE sounds like a great gAI. What could go wrong?
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May 19, 2020 02:46
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Stay independent. The swarm can have allies, but never again masters.
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May 19, 2020 02:53
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We fight for freedom. We shall not submit to human slavery, a false queen, or AI overlords. 
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May 19, 2020 03:24
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Stay independent, there's no reason to assume that CORE is trustworthy and we've already had a few ideas of what it does to what it doesn't like.
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May 19, 2020 17:23
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Acknowledge//Submit to the AIs.
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May 19, 2020 18:31
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The Kir'Ko will be free! No more enslavers, be they mortal or metal! Also one thing I like about the opening narration for this mission is the slight break in our protag's voice (or at least, the male voice) as he says "Xa'Kir'Ko, your hatchlings are coming home." It's such a small touch, and I'm half-convinced it might be my own audio playing hob with my headphones, but I heard it, and as far as I'm concerned it's canon.
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May 19, 2020 19:06
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Independent. Bug free, free as the wind blows.
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May 19, 2020 19:36
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Independent bugs are the happiest of bugs.
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May 19, 2020 20:46
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Independant - bugs and computers don't mix
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May 19, 2020 23:56
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People who played Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic might want to pay attention to the storyline on this map.
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May 21, 2020 19:51
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my dad posted:People who played Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic might want to pay attention to the storyline on this map. Oddly enough the only AoW I didn't play was 2. What are we missing?
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May 21, 2020 20:15
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PurpleXVI posted:Oddly enough the only AoW I didn't play was 2. What are we missing? Nothing particularly important, there are (or at least it's what it looks like to me and a few other people) hints about some kind of connection between a faction from AoW2 and the Kir'Ko.
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May 22, 2020 13:39
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Independent bugs Already going to war with other kir'ko over the potential threat that a queen might be used to strip them of free will again. Seems in character for them to not submit to another potential overlord. In hindsight I could see the Kir'ko design having some references to the shadow demons.
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May 22, 2020 14:44
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 After the defeat of Rebas, the amphibious parts of our army are heading back west, along with Poz and Kurresh who are too powerful to leave behind. The rest of the footslogging brigade are staying on the eastern continent and subjugating the now leaderless syndicate colonies.  However, beating Rebas has handed us some free units in our capitol, and it’s time to test them out.  We have picked up the Kir’ko tank and the Kir’ko artillery. Lets start with the tank.  The barrager is the first Kir’ko T3 unit, and functions as their tank-a heavy unit with slow movement speed, and standard attack ranges on its weapons. Its primary attack is its biochemical barrage, a low accuracy repeating aoe attack, much like the Dvar rocket artillery. Of course, there’s no way to increase the barrage range beyond 7, which prevents the barrager from working as artillery. Also, the biochemical channel is somewhat lacking in good mods-no blinding, or massive impact is annoying. The biochemical discharge is sort of a secondary weapon, being a little low on damage for a t3 attack without stagger, but having both a repeating attack and a decent single action gives the barrager some nice flexibility. The last trick is the blinding gas, a single action AOE blind at range seven- a good option for opening turns. Though non of these are particularly powerful, the barrager has a good range of options that let it work in multiple situations. The barrager also is in the same boat as the engulfer, as stacking the Kir’ko’s defence tricks on something that’s already a tanky ranged unit can just create a virtually unkillable monstrosity that slowly grinds the enemy down.  After the barrager softens up the pirates, the Tormented closes the battle.  The actual Kir’ko artillery unit is the Tormented, a crawling ball of psionic hate. It’s artillery shot, Echoes of Torment, does a bit more damage than most artillery before taking into account the benefits of psionic damage, but has no stagger effect on it. It also doesn’t scatter, it’s a barrage type AOE that rolls to hit on every unit in range, for good or ill. I’m a bit torn on whether this is a good trade off, as this leaves the tormented lacking in utility compared of conventional artillery. While the kir’ko have enough melee attacks that they don’t really need to use AOEs to get around high evasion units, not having a massive impact ranged attack is a flaw of the race. It also has a range seven single action secondary attack, with fairly weak damage for a t3, and a five range chance to drive a target insane, at a slightly low chance of success. Ultimately, for the final t3 of the Kir’ko, Tormented are a bit disappointing. They don’t feel much better than Ravenous or Barragers, though obviously all three units have different uses. Also there’s another Dvar ship here.  The basic dvar ship, the ironclad, is roughly like if you took a bulwarks gun and put it on a dvar tank. These don't really mesh as well, trying to both be a ranged unit and a melee unit, but whatever, it’s a ship. It isn’t super important.  It seems we finished our fight with Rebas just in time. We get the first of the two inevitable war declarations not two turns after finishing our first war. We don’t share a border with Zarai, so it will be a bit before anything comes of this declaration. In preparation, we need to get more military tech.  After a slightly disappointing mod tech previously, Resilience is a much more attracting package. Adaptive carapace is the primary draw, a defensive mod that grants and additional point of armour whenever the unit it’s on is hit. It does mean that you have to replace your regenerative carapace with it though, but as unit health increases and minor battles become less common, the stock of that mod starts to fall. Adaptive Carapace is very good at keeping your units alive in one big fight. The second mod, tunnelling claws, is only compatible with the Frenzied and Ravenous, but provides both a large boost to damage and the ability to tunnel under overwatch and intervening terrain. This is a serious game changer, especially for the Ravenous. Lastly, the operation is a combat summon, which we’ll get to later.  The growth also provide us more quests, which will be easy enough to finish.  While the majority of our force is still sailing west, the clean up crew has completed their job, and subjugated the two remaining syndicate colonies. It seems that Rebas never had a chance to clear this heavy weapons factory, and as these troops aren’t doing anything in the immediate future, we might as well take a crack at it.  The enemy walker moves in and gets torn apart by the pack of frenzied, but our new hero Merrin is overextended and in danger of being overwhelmed.  So we deposit some help.  The Abyssian is the Kir’ko combat summon unit. Unlike the sapper, this actually does something that the rest of the faction doesn’t do, being a mobile “shotgun” unit with single action attacks. It’s primary attack is corrosive bile, an attack with decent damage and armor melting, while it has a shorter ranged auto hitting wax cement attack with a chance to stun via covering the target in too much glue. You will generally be leading with the stun attack, and if the Abyssian survives, tunnel into flanking positions and continue making a nuisance of itself.  Though purification fields free the enemy from the goo assault, but it does give us enough of an edge to turn the battle around.  This gives us a free prospector, which is hilariously useful. Every empty sector on the map is now open for prospecting.  Then, we get the second declaration of war. As we actually share a border with Cekto, we’ll have to actually worry about this one  Cekto isn’t completely ready for an assault on us, but the has fortified his border city, and has a flying task force in the wilderness to the north.  Step one is getting rid of that flying task force with our own before it has a chance to cause trouble in our back lines or link up with the rest of Cekto’s troops.  We also finish up that growth quest while more troops land on the northern continent.  On the next turn, we pick up the next psionic tech, Dominion of affliction. This gives us the ability to swap psionic damage to biochemical, poison targets which isn’t super useful, as well as an operation that disables a single target. This isn’t he most useful tech in the world, and it’s something that you’ll probably only pick up if you were aiming for psionic techs down the line.  Doing some advanced scouting, we see that Cekto has yet more troops, hanging around in Zarai’s territory. It doesn’t look like I will be able to beat these troops the Cekto’s frontier city.  And it seems there are yet more troops garrisoning a city to the north. This is fairly concerning.  We also pick up the second Kir’ko doctrine tech perspective. This offers two doctrines representing the philosophical differences in Kir’ko society. Act of Retribution gives a global damage boost against non-kir’ko units, while Act of Reconciliation grants additional influence gain and bonus happiness for all your cities based on the number and quality of diplomatic pacts you have with other players. Neither of these are actually useful to us at the moment. In retrospect, I’d been assuming that after beating Rebas I had the game in the bag and picked up a bunch of techs that weren’t immediately relevant. Afterwards, I do try and refocus my tech choices towards more practical priorities.  A few turns later, our army finally gets to the border. By that point, the southern enemy force has reinforced their forward city. Because I can’t win a 3 v4 match with city defences on the enemy side, I’m not attacking. The same, however, is true for Cekto. Let the staring contest commence!  Speaking of practical techs, Anthropologic research, the second cosmite/influence income tech. You will know when you want this  Cekto isn’t interested in the staring contest. Her forces move north, linking up with yet more reinforcements. At this point I’m pretty badly outnumbered, despite a slight quality advantage. It’ time for the ultimate strategy: Wait for the AI to gently caress up.  Right on cue, Cekto moves into attack, then bails out at the last minute. This isn’t the first time that this whole campaign that the AI has done this, move to attack position, then not actually attack and get ripped to pieces on my turn. I suspect his is because the AI is finding some hidden information at the last moment that flips it’s attack-don’t attack logic to not attacking, and rather than recognizing that, screwed or not, they have better odds with a suicidal attack, they die. Regardless, I really hope this little logic glitch gets patched.  Regardless, as the AI isn’t being competent, it’s time for them to die.  Our two t3s and Kurresh, along with some hidden, will be handling the leftmost flank. With mostly pack of worker bees opposing them, they won’t have much of a problem.  The centre is being commanded by Poz, along with some new growth units. A science vessel that I forgot to screenshot had the t4 gun Medley in it. This is a bit of a joke item, as it inflicts four different basic status effects on hit, which, in theory, will leave the target helpless and taking an incredible amount of damage over time. In practice, it would be better to stun, stagger or kill the target.  Those new growth units are flowering nodes, the growth T3. The primary reason to bring this is it’s pheromone spray ability, which is will mind control biological or cyborg units until the end of combat. To supplement this, it has a repeating biochem attack in allergenic spray and a range 5 aoe in noxious pollen, both of which inflict allergic reaction, which makes the enemy more vulnerable to physical and biochemical damage, which can make said units more likely to be mind controlled. It also has the usual growth benefits of being immune to flanking, amphibious, and healing and stagger immunity when in defence mode. The lack of outright damage is a bit disappointing though. I wouldn’t blame anyone who decided to buy more soldier bees than these.  On the left flank, we have what is in theory the most threatening enemy group on the map, a pack of fully modded and highly experienced frenzied. But, they are dealing with the worst nightmare of frenzied, a stack of flying units. The opening volley of battle bile manages to down an engulfer, but after that they have two turns of attention from killer bees.  The surviving hero from the enemy center breaks to right flank, hiding in a smoke cloud and some cover, and putting some extra pressure on that flank, and leaving only a small amount of ways to get damage on him.  Eventually the bees make it into melee range, ending the resistance.  Meanwhile, on the left flank, the enemy frenzied are slowly being melted in electrified acid clouds before the growth move in to mop up.  At this point, the rest of Cekto’s army isn’t much of a threat.  They just get torn apart by a vastly superior force.  Nikael makes some more overtures, but as per the thread vote, he is turned down.  With the majority of Cekto’ army dead on the fields, an aerial detachment is dispatched to take the frontier city while the footsloggers move north.  We then pick up a tech that we really do not have the cosmite to make use of. Neogenisis is the penultimate Kir’ko mod tech, and it continues the trend of being pretty ridiculous. The first mod, resuscitation glands, will resurrect the unit it’s on at the start of your turn once with a bit under half health every battle, though this does not work if something is standing on it’s corpse. Cloaking carapace is the final and best carapace mod, providing universal camouflage on the strategic map, bonus evasion, and even more evasion until end of turn every time the unit takes a hit. This gets pretty nuts, but can only be applied to light units. It will keep your infantry alive into the late game like nothing else Lastly, the tactical operation One with the Swarm is an infamous tactical operation, that improves swarm shield to +5 shields across your whole army for two turns. This is a key part of the unkillable kir’ko cheese.  The last tech to pick up is Void Technology, from our long neglected secret tech. This is strategic operation branch tech, providing an enemy army debuff in Localized Void Rift and a much more useful defensive operation is Void Barriers. Controlling the movement of enemy armies is one of the most powerful abilities in the game, and this will slow your opponents to a crawl in the target colonies area. This practically guarantees that you will manage to get the jump on them if they try to attack the colony that is using this.  A short way to the north, we find Ceckto’s capitol, lightly defended after the massive casualties her forces have revived. One down..   So the Kir’ko are turning against each other... fascinating! And unfortunate: we lost a helpful asset. The Kir’ko integration project will have to rest for some time. Empress Carminia will not be pleased. Lucky for you, the Empress has a very forgiving nature. We will meet again, Poz Tk’Nor.Leave now, Zarai Loreg of the Amazons. I hope you are wrong, and we will never have to sense your kind on Xa’Kir’ko again. This world belongs to the Kir’ko. We shape it, just as it shapes us in return. Past present, future – they all align in the dream of the Kir’ko Terym and their swarm. Wait, that’s it? I really want to like this mission. The setup in the stakes of the mission gets you very invested, but all the routes end in an anticlimax. And, on a map that’s already on the small side Oddly, defeating Zarai or Cekto isn’t listed as an immediate victory quest, which led to some confusion on my part, and even more of an anticlimactic feeling on the players part. If you chose to side with Cekto, you’ll get an objective to clear the xenoplague labs near Rebas’ capitol, and after that’s done, the mission is done, with an ominous ending slide as Poz’s narration becomes the voice of the hive. This route at least feels like it’s doing something narratively with the anticlimax: it feels almost like one of those fake endings in RPGs when you take a route out of town instead of finishing the plot. Of course co-operating with the most powerful alliance on the planet, despite the obvious concerns, would be easy. But on the independence route, the mission is still kind of short. If you do end up defeating Zarai you get the following mission, much happier end dialog instead.  The Omega group? Gerol Tichly? It would appear your supposed friend is not who she claimed to be, Cekto Xa’To. What other information may she have concealed? Do you really want the fate of our people depend on the technology of a shady human you know so little about?It is true... my love for the Ez’Qi’Yu made me ignore any doubts I had about Zarai Loreg’s motives. Only now can I sense the danger of her promises. But our Queen, the Hive... it may be all lost forever if we abandon this project.Do not let your mind dwell in gloom, sister. There is so much left to discover about our past on Xa’Kir’Ko. We may yet be able to return to the Hive one day. But when we do, it will be through the evolution and will of the swarm, not through some laboratory creation grown in an alien cloning vat.I also want to apologize for the last vote. I was fairly sure there would be an explicit choice to ally with CORE or not on this path, but apparently there isn’t. Anyway, I may be taking a bit of a break after this mission, so I can actually play the new expansion and take a bit of a break form Lping.  So, who are we visiting in two weeks? [] The Vanguard, who have been waiting patiently since the beginning of this LP [] The Amazons, last vote’s second place finisher. [] The Syndicate, the newcomers on the block who are just the worst. mr_stibbons fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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May 29, 2020 02:21
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I'd say the Amazons for no particular reason.
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May 29, 2020 11:17
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mr_stibbons posted:[] The Syndicate, the newcomers on the block who are just the worst. This sounds good! 
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May 29, 2020 13:16
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Amazons if only to have lots of animals.
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May 29, 2020 13:26
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Amazons. Let's get the no doubt embarassing 'all-female faction written by and for men' nonsense out of the way.
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May 29, 2020 13:51
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Cythereal posted:Amazons. Let's get the no doubt embarassing 'all-female faction written by and for men' nonsense out of the way. To be honest, I never noticed that vibe from the Amazons in this game- they're more Space Elves than anything else. So I might as well jump on the Amazon bandwagon!
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May 29, 2020 14:03
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Vanguard, let's get the milquetoast out of the way.
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May 29, 2020 21:58
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The Syndicate are surely just misunderstood, not evil. Right?
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May 30, 2020 17:32
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The description for Act of Reconciliation was cut out. Barragers are one of the better Kir'ko units in my experience. They don't have the best damage and their accuracy isn't great, but they also don't have to jump through the hoops the Dvar artillery does in order to be effective and the Kir'ko have a lot more ways by default to boost accuracy or reduce enemy evasion, and if you're able to find the site that boosts accuracy for units built in the attached city they barely need any help. Also, the Kir'ko actually do have a couple ways to increase attack range, though they're both pretty high-level- there's a hero skill that boosts range in a 1-tile area of effect, and the t4 gives a battle-wide boost for the same amount. It's not a whole lot, but it does mean they can bombard city defense weapons outside of retaliation range. Tormented are a bit of a harder sell in comparison, but they do have a niche in being one of the only units to have a single-shot main weapon, meaning they can use all their movement and still attack at full efficiency. They're meant to work in support with your melee troops, sneaking in to flank after the melee units tie up the enemy. They also combine extremely well with the higher tier Psi mods, though the amount of research needed is high enough you're not likely to see them in a normal game. I'll throw in a vote for the Syndicate as well. Please show off the announcer voice if you can, it's so good 
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May 30, 2020 23:11
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kvx687 posted:I'll throw in a vote for the Syndicate as well. Please show off the announcer voice if you can, it's so good The male Syndicate VA is so good- even when he's reading out something innocent or neutral he sounds like he's plotting something
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May 30, 2020 23:20
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  There are still many worlds in need of the caring hand of the Amazons. With our terraforming equipment, we bring new life to barren planets and grow them into lush gardens. But the harmony we create requires fostering. Pests must be culled and trespassers caught. I was raised and trained as an amazon matriarch. We are the shield and the spear protecting that order. We have tracked Berhane to a planet called Thanakiwa. She will know better than to expect mercy from her former protege, so we have to prepare for maximum resistance.The amazons are, in concept, the opposite of the dvar. Rather than being stranded on resource rich but airless rocks, the amazons were trapped by the collapse of the union on recently terraformed worlds, with no industrial base and limited natural resources, but still with access to some very sophisticated terraforming technology. This led to the survivors taking equally drastic steps to rebuild their society, most famously the use of genetic engineering and either cloning or artificial fertilization to create an all female society. Why? That isn’t exactly clear. Really, much of how the amazon society’s history and day to day working is only touched on lightly by the game. From what details we do have, it’s easy to extrapolate a fairly dystopian society, what with Mahina being raised for her jobs from a young age, and possibly genetically engineered for that job. Is everyone raised for a specific job that they are genetically engineered for? Equally, the program of mass terraforming of worlds, and defending them from trespassers seems awfully similar to an aggressive colonization campaign. But none of this is dwelled on by the game, and may not be intentional on the part of the writers is up for debate. It doesn’t help that unlike the Dvar or Kir’ko missions, that at least start with a colonization effort which gives a degree of normality to the story, the amazon missions are about an exceptional military expedition.   Matron Mahina, during the landing sequence we noticed plenty of wildlife on this planet. Many of them seem powerful, and could prove to be capable combatants. Perhaps we could tame them to bolster our numbers here?Hmm, good thinking, sister. We should scout the area for strong beasts to capture. But our priority mission comes first: tracking down Berhane. We must find her last known location and start the hunt from there.We start with two quests. The main one is simply to find Berhane, and a side quest to hunt down a few stacks of wild animals. We are starting with a larger than average army though.  Just south of our initial settlement, we find an offshoot of the growth. While there’s no plot quest related to them on this mission, they would be a fairly strong ally, so I decide to be nice.  Just to the east is the first pack of quest animals, which gives us a chance to start explaining the starting amazon lineup  Generally battles as the amazon always start the same way-scan a target on the first turn.  Biomancers are the amazon support unit, and one of the primary linchpins of the amazon lineup. In addition to a ranged heal on any biological/cyborg units, they offer two very powerful debuffs. The most commonly used is Scan: catalogue, which makes the target more vulnerable to all elemental channels, and then applies the same debuff to all other copies of the same unit on the other side of the battlefield. Since spamming multiple copies of your best unit is pretty common in this game, just one biomancer can offer up a massive amount of bonus damage in a late game battle. On to of that this is single action, range 9 and auto hits, which makes it very reliable to land turn 1, where most other debuffs would be out of range. Their second debuff, manipulate: sleep is only range 5, but stuns a unit until it takes damage. Because you have the freedom to take units actions in any order, this downside isn’t much of one-just throw the sleep on after shooting the target. Now, the downside is that this is a pure support unit. Your only damage option is a range 5 strength 8 repeating attack and are barely tougher than a T1. A few of these are essential to your armies, but too many are useless.  Once the biomancers have softened up the enemy, the rest of the army can pounce, while the biomancers sleep anything that can’t be brought down.  Lancers are the other t2 amazon units, and are a destroyer style fast melee unit with a gun. Their primary trick is the flanker passive, which increases damage when flanking the target. Otherwise, these are quite simple. This is a probably a good time to talk about the general aesthetics of the Amazon faction, which is in my mind, absolutely top notch. The way the advanced technology blends in with the animals without dominating them is very unique, and does a great job of weaving both technical advancement and harmony with nature themes together. The general lack of cheesecake in an all female faction greatly helps as well. Except for some reason none of them are wearing shoes. That still feels like a stupid decision. After the first turn is wrapped up, it’s time to look at research  Now normally I don’t explain my tech paths much, but we’ll have to take a look at it a bit now.. The recent patch didn’t provide the avalanche of unit buffs that the previous patch did, but it did make some important changes to the way military research works. Namely, the weapon techs in the middle are now cross linked-you no longer have to research up the entire tree from the start, instead, every tech grants you both of the next tier of weapon techs. This makes it much easier, late game, to keep a modded up army with a variety of units in it. In addition, research costs for these weapon techs have been slashed across the board. Rather than one tech per cost tier up to tier ten, you have pairs of t1, t2, t4, t6, and t8 techs. This compensates for the generally under performing nature of the weapon techs compared to secret tech and racial mod lines.  This could be the doing of my old mentor. We should investigate, but with cautionTurn two also spawns another new quest. We’re going to focus on finishing off the first quest though. One of our scouts will get to the new one eventually.  In the meantime, we have more units to talk about.  The core amazon unit is the huntress, using biochemical arrows, for reasons which are not exactly clear. Using a bow has some serious downsides compared to an assault rifle-huntresses do not have overwatch, and only have a base range of 5, increased to 6 in cover. The upside, is that because the arrows seam to be somewhat explosive, is that they ignore cover and innate evasion bonuses. Generally, and somewhat counter to the expected fluff, this means huntresses struggle against melee opponents, who have an easy time reaching melee without overwatch or decent range, but can easily win firefights against static shooting units, especially with their second ability. The real power of the huntress is their cool down ability, flash arrows. This is a range 5, 6 in cover, AOE that staggers and inflicts blind on targets hit. This is pretty huge against early opponents, blind remains one of the best debuffs before full stuns show up, and careful use of flash arrows are key to keepign huntresses alive. It does bug me slightly when something as relatively mundane as a flashbang grenade is both powerful and exclusive to a small range of units. Technically the Dvar have an early flash mod, but it still feels odd that other factions aren’t using these surprisingly useful little bits  One of the unique perks of the amazon faction is that you start with a random low tier neutral animal in addition to you starting armies.  Manhunters are the bargain basement wild animal unit, and mostly exist to be target practice for early game expansion armies. Like the bigger cousins we saw earlier, they have a standard melee attack, and two lower damage jump attacks, one for air targets and one for ground targets. Now, you may notice that these stats look oddly good. One of the other perks of the amazon faction is that all neutral animal units that end up under your control get the Primal Controller buff. This gives said animal 2 points of shields and 10% more damage on all attacks, representing fitting amazon technology to the animal. As most neutral animal units are deliberately undertuned so they die easily when players are expanding, this buff is needed to bring them up to par.  And of course, we also have a secret tech unit.  Now, under normal circumstances, lightbringers are a t2 melee infantry unit. But the amazon’s didn’t breed rid-able dinosaurs so they could walk into melee, and the amazon lightbringer is a flying unit. As you have probably noticed by now, flying is a good ability to have, especially for a melee unit. In addition to the standard melee attack, the light bringer also has a single action AOE melee attack, that inflicts the soulburn status effect and puts the light bringer into defence mode. This causes other celestian units to do more damage to those units. Interestingly, on the standard light bringer, this is a full action jump attack, for closing the distance and getting around terrain. Since the second part doesn’t matter to the amazon version, they get a single action version. This make them even more survivable on the turn they make contact, but does leave them more vulnerable to overwatch. The flying versions of these, at least, are very very good, and we’ll be making use of them.  The final quest stack decides to wander out of range, which is briefly annoying, before I realize something.  Swift beaks can’t attack air units. No drill or training matches the thrill of a real hunt! Unfortunately, we could only take a few of the beasts into our care. Most of them had peculiar growths on their bodies, unlike anything we have seen before.Matron Mahina! We have discovered a Xenolab facility not far from here. It seems to be central to the corruption afflicting the wildlife. We dared not enter alone, but we suspect that it may contain more answers.Thank you for your candor, sister. That is troubling indeed, and something we will need to investigate immediately. Was there anything else.Yes, Matron. We have found the tracks of a larger predator. Judging by the footprints, it must be enormous.Finally, a challenge! Send for the Shrikes, muster the Lancers! We have big game to hunt!The first round of the hunting sidequest gives us yet more hunting to do. In the meantime, we should probably investigate those mysterious smoke signals.  Sisters, please help! I’m stuck in my ship, and these Kir’ko will cut me to ribbons! Reaching what turns out to be a crash site, the next step of the quest is to defeat a group of angry Kir’ko unleashed.  In addition, a random event on an energy pickup gets us a free autonom laser roomba. He’s not exactly anywhere where he can help in the immediate future, but free units are free units.  The first tech we’ll be picking up is actually from our secret tech. The celestian order is the legally distinct light side of the force when compared to the psynumbra. The primary draw of this tech is the Tenets of Tranquility mod, which provides immunity to negative morale effects and stagger resistance, as well as make the unit Enlightened. This rule provides a small morale boost, and causes these units to do more damage to soulburned units, but the main value comes from other celestian effects which only effect or are empowered by the presence of enlightened units. For example, the operation on this tech, cleansing light on its own heals a unit for 10 hp and cleanses all status effects, but that heal is increased by 5 for each enlightened unit on the battlefield, to a max of 30hp. This tech is one of draws of the celestian tech, as both of it’s rewards are good at covering for weaknesses in a racial line up. If, like the kir’ko, you have no innate stagger resistance mod, tenants of tranquility is extremely powerful. Meanwhile, if you have no easy way to clear status effects early in the game, cleansing light is a useful option to keep in mind.  On the next turn, our quest problems solve themselves, as the rampaging kir’ko stack decides to throw itself at our new sector defences.  Because the capitol starts with free militia upgrades, and militia upgrades can create advanced units without needing the actual research for some strange reason, we have yet more units to talk about.  The arborian sentinel is a strange unit, because it’s capabilities are skewed more than most units in the game. A 10 power repeating attack, and 8 power aoe, are terrible damage output for a t2 unit, much less a research-locked one. However 60hp + 2 shields is massive for said tier, and that only is reinforced with the Manipulate: shield ability, a free action buff which adds 3 points of shields to any unit, including the sentinel itself. That gives it the defensive profile of a t3 tank as a t2 unit. Is this good though? Pure durability is only really useful if you make the majority of your army. If these and higher tech units are the most of your force, it can be overwhelming, but mixing sentinels in with your basic units isn’t a priority. It is large enough to hide infantry behind, which is useful, and if you are dealing with large amounts of melee units, the superior range, overwatch and entangle effects of this unit are just what the doctor ordered.  The kir’ko bunch up to take advantage of their swarm shields, which conveniently lets me blind the lot of them with a single flash arrow.  In the end, even the stunned kir’ko manage to bring down my arborian before being shot out of the sky.  I am, though my training as a matriarch is not yet competed. You should address me as Matron. We are here to hunt down Berhane and bring her to justice. Do you know of her?Yes, Matron, I do! I was on her research team. We were trying to find uses for the Xenoplague.You served Berhane? Then how can I trust you? Give me a good reason why I should not just abandon you to your fate here... Accepting Cerusa will have her join us as a hero, and as we don’t start with a plot hero this mission, it would be immediately helpful. However, accepting her into our ranks will also lead to Mahina using the Xenoplague secret tech in the next mission, which will actually have consequences. At the very least, she won't hold a grudge for our not-really rescuing her.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:19
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Will we stick with Celestian if we don't let her join?
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Jun 14, 2020 23:43
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PurpleXVI posted:Will we stick with Celestian if we don't let her join? Yes
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Jun 14, 2020 23:44
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Don't let her join. We've already seen the xenoplague stuff.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:54
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Agreed. Don't Let Her Join We wanna see the cool new glowy stuff.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:58
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She has sinned against the light!
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Jun 15, 2020 00:24
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