Shadow Empire - what say you?

[Undercovergeek]

A long term plan begans to hatch

Its quite pricey to build my new tanks so im saving up for a turn or two, after that everyone will head south and take Aurora from the farmers

I have an option to upgrade to high command offices level 3 that brings in heaps of BP - itll use quite a few resources for 6 turns and that will start after the tanks are built

I play a boost BP card again and choose an economic council - whilst its lovely tearing into the military objectives my QOL buildings are woeful for increasing my civilisation levels, i have no schools, unis, hospitals, barracks - i need to catch up on these too

[Huw the Poo]

Well that was a shitty turn. A "crisis of egoism" (random event) has been ongoing for several turns and now half my cabinet hate me, including my secretary. One of my units of sentinels walked into an ambush and were wiped out, so my new zone will apparently have some kind of monster of a neighbour. And lastly my new city wasn't constructed yet because of a lack of logistics points - it's at the end of a long road. In an effort to get it built as quickly as possible I've temporarily halted all logistics movements out of Photoglacier city except in the direction of the new city. I can't help but feel like everything's starting to fall apart...

[Undercovergeek]

Tanks rumble off the production line - the blitzer anti infantry tank brigade (it will be renamed) heads south to Aurora with the other forces that have crossed the red lines denoting the farmers borders - war is declared

Spies tell me theres about 35 militia rifle men units guarding the city - i need to surround it and wait whilst fuel and supplies restock

I have discovered rocketry, RPGs, and gas powered ammunition - i dont know how effective this is yet - but that list coupled with combat armour and the auto rifle mean our infantry is pretty elite

I get my first recruit senior card as opposed to the junior ones and play it - shes a level 4 high command war nuutter who will be perfect as commander of the SHQ or the staff couuncil - getting rid of the current commander is going to cause some serious damage to my relationships so ill hold her in reserve for now

As the turn ended there was some movement from the east that pushed my borders back - ill recruit a battallion or division of the new infantry and head out that way

[Martok]

Hoo, boy.  Looks like things have gotten "interesting" for both of you... 

[Huw the Poo]

Yep things are starting to happen now. I finally got my second zone, whose name escapes me for the moment, heh. The people there are happy but they are slowly migrating out to live with the free folk so I need to do something about it. I ramped up public investment and I also noticed they're "hungry" and using my emergency food to survive. I'm not sure what the mechanic is here, as the city is obviously connected to my SHQ which has more than enough food for everyone, and since I built a supply base half way between both cities there's easily enough logistics to move items. I can only imagine they need to be producing their own food to not count as being hungry.

I have therefore ordered construction of a xeno farm, which doesn't need electricity to run. It only produces 200 food per turn but that will be enough for now. In addition I'm also constructing a second industrial asset at the new city so I will be swimming in IPs soon. The "monster" unit to the south turned out to be a whole brigade of rifle militia. Not sure how they managed to penetrate the armour of my walkers a few turns ago; I guess it must have been a lucky shot(s) due to sheer numbers? Either that or the game's "hard/soft attack/defense" stats mean nothing. Anyway we've got them surrounded so now I'll just dig in and wait for them to dash themselves against my wall of troops.

In other news, telling my interior council to switch priorities really paid off. I had a severe lack of leaders so I called their director and told her to focus on HR. She did, and soon enough I had more leader recruitment cards than I needed. The extra BPs I'm producing thanks to the admin offices I've built in both cities surely helped with this.

Anyway, although it's getting exciting I'm now going away for the weekend so no more action until at least Monday I'm afraid.

[Undercovergeek]

Aurora is finally surrounded and i have two roads leading to the troops down there but not a lot of supply is coming down them - i set up some supply traffic signals cutting off supplies that are being sent west and north and are not needed and build two truck stations on the roads - i can get 3:1 odds at the moment with some guys low on supply and fuel so once its resolved i should be good to go

I order another anti infantry tank, and 3 regiments of machine gun troops - nothing too aggressive but something is slowly pushing my eastern border in

My old secretary ups and defects in a huff - a lot of empire improvement things are discovered - one of the best ones, although i have a water source now is some kind of water/soil filtration system that allows you to tap water without needing an actual water supply, there is one of these for metal too but its undiscovered so far

the model council have designed all they can for now - although ive recently discovered side skirts, so that will be researched and added to the tank models

[Huw the Poo]

It's been a slog but I finally have two cities up and running with no shortages of anything they need. Resources are really starting to roll in now, so I can finally start planning long-term. 1st Inf are now protecting two zones which is absolutely ridiculous, so I need to start thinking about a whole new brigade. That means I need to start producing more food.

...speaking of which, I noticed that it won't be long before the nice little green up arrow next to "food" in the SHQ tab will soon become a nasty little red down arrow. Scanning my zones, I find that any asset producing food is working at reduced capacity due to a lack of logistical points. Sigh. That old chestnut. I guess this is a function of having 1st Inf spread absolutely everywhere. Well, at least now I have the resources to just construct the answer to any problem! I could nationalise the transport hub at Photoglacier city, but doing so comes with a penalty and also I get the feeling it still wouldn't be enough before long. So my next construction project is a rail station at the city. It will take two turns to build, then I will need to replace all my dirt roads with railways.

In other news, fully 1,600 nonaligned forces committed suicide against my troops this turn. Amusingly, half of these were because a unit decided to attack my newly-minted 1,800-strong machine gun battalion - heavily entrenched and specifically equipped for defense. Honestly, entrenchment is your best friend if you're defending. It does wonders.

Also, a few turns ago I decided to continue recruiting colonists despite already founding my second city. I'm glad I did, because I realised one of the major reasons the city wasn't yet self-sufficient was due to a lack of workers, so off the colonists were sent to fill the jobs. Next turn I completed two construction projects.

[Undercovergeek]

The war with aurora has begun - they fairly well dug in and the forst round of combat at 3:1 sees me cause few casualties and take a few including an all important anti infantry tank, there are 5 more on their way. The second round faired better at 3:1 killing about 9 units of defenders and a few of my own, as well as the new tank brigade, imanaged to find another band of sentinels so theyre on the way too

Im having difficulty getting any supplies down here so have built two truck stops and 2 supply centres on the 2 roads ive built towards aurora - one is working well, the other still isnt getting enough supplies to complete the construction - ive resorted to traffic signalling to divert all the supplies down these roads - well see what happens next

to the east the indigenous gastrolobsters have finally been found and defeated preventing a wandering monster shutting down roads and supply routes - theres still something moving out to the west that intermittently shuts down my access to the ruin and its research bonus - the monster hunters will head that way next

ive managed to research sideskirts for the tanks but as theres no enemy tanks out there ill hold off on that for now, medium tanks and APCs have been discovered but no researched

supply wise i read on Reddit that those that wish to uncomplicate supply and not have to micromanage the logistics build supply centres and truck stops every 5 hexes and a new city every 15 - ill look into this

[Martok]

supply wise i read on Reddit that those that wish to uncomplicate supply and not have to micromanage the logistics build supply centres and truck stops every 5 hexes and a new city every 15 - ill look into this

Interesting.  I'd be very curious to see if/how well that works. 

[Undercovergeek]

Well the truck stops and supply centres have literally thrown all the supplies south like I wanted - the city 15 hexes away turns out to be aurora so there’s that!!

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah it'll definitely work, it just won't be 100% efficient. But I suspect (fervently hope) that once we upgrade to railways we'll have far fewer supply issues.

Geek - didn't quite have time to take my turn before work, soz. Will do it ASAP this evening.

[Undercovergeek]

no worries chap - im on the cusp of toppling aurora and then i can explore more

[Huw the Poo]

So my new zone (I'll remember the name eventually I swear) still isn't producing enough food. I examined the xeno agri dome and just can't work out from its turn log what's going wrong. The only clue I've been able to find is somewhere in the reams of planet info a line about the planet being resistant to xeno crops maybe? That's all I can think of. So reluctantly I scrapped the dome and ordered construction of a normal one that needs water. Luckily I still have massive amounts of spare water - it will be a long time before that arrow turns red.

Joy of joys, I happened upon a "Galactic Republic" tank. Only one, but it's an absolute monster. I'll save that for when I really, absolutely need something to die.

Also my first railhead was built in an area to the south where I have a large part of 1st Inf gathered to repel nonaligned forces. I even had enough IPs left over to build the connecting railway! It's nice to finally be at a stage where I don't have to fret over every last resource when I want to build things.

Once I've got my new zone stabilised I really need to look into raising a second brigade to free up 1st Inf to go exploring.

[Martok]

So my new zone (I'll remember the name eventually I swear) still isn't producing enough food. I examined the xeno agri dome and just can't work out from its turn log what's going wrong. The only clue I've been able to find is somewhere in the reams of planet info a line about the planet being resistant to xeno crops maybe? That's all I can think of.

This is another example of why I'm always so hesitant to jump back into Shadow Empire, even though it fascinates me and I love the setting.  So many things in the game are explained poorly or not at all -- and as in the above example, should really have been explained beforehand (so that you didn't waste time & resources building something that ended up being not that useful) -- and the player is then left to dig for answers if they want to figure out what the problem is. 

I get that this is *not* a game that holds your hand, and I totally respect that.  But too often, it still seems like it goes to the other extreme, where you feel like you're pulling teeth all the time. 

Joy of joys, I happened upon a "Galactic Republic" tank. Only one, but it's an absolute monster. I'll save that for when I really, absolutely need something to die.

You gotta love discovering Precursor tech/toys...   

[Undercovergeek]

Aurora falls with the addition of the extra tank and the sentinel - our southern border now appears to be the southern most part of the map so we can concentrate on spreading east and west for a while - there is still some activity to the west, be it beasties or enemy i dont know - i send all the mobile units, 2 tanks, 2 buggys and 3 sentinels that way to have a look - the infantry will rest in Aurora - theres plenty of supply

I had found 4 oil fields during the battle with aurora but private enterprise has taken 2 for itself so i quickly start mining on the other two - the resources panel shows nothing in the red for the first time since starting, all force replacements have been paid for - ill take a breath whilst building the oilfields and resting the troops and then start again

I had a poor bunch of exiles a few hexes away who i managed to keep alive somehow but i forget every single turn to connect them to the network, ive passed the mission and gained the kudos i just keep forgetting to link them up - theyre south east and something is mooching around that area too so ill have a look soon

beauracratic offices and industry are expanded again, we research sealed roads and gas powered ammo, and the RPG - the model team have also discovered the bazooka - i dont know if these two are connected so ill have a look next turn