AAR: A pilgrimage through fire and steel - [Complete]

[ete]

This is one of the most crucial techs for me. Tree farms let my forest-only bases start to seriously grow, and marks the start of the time I start being able to near constantly build useful facilities.


Holding the chokepoint for a while, but it's awkward due to fungus and their elite units


Yea, sure. You're getting mashed by her fusion reactor troops, but we can do some tech trading.




That'll help with the fungus, but I've truced the CCs for now.


Excellent.


Still at truce, but built a road down for when the fighting starts.


Making a land bridge towards the Geneachs, quicker than going through the CCs.


And my mass-forest is coming nicely.

During this time almost all resources went into tree farms and other facilities, my bases are now becoming pretty well equipped.

[ete]

In the next installment: Can the Pilgrims overcome their greatest foe yet, the Genearchs?

[Sigma]

According to that power chart: Yes, easily.

[ete]

Yea.. I was thinking of including that, but I felt it would build tension better to make it look like they have some hope.

[ete]

Uni's falling back, but Im still truced with CCs, despite their threatening words. I'd like to focus on one at a time, and am still producing few units, facilities instead.


Exchanging a few units, pushing them back, building roads to attack with.


Another core tech, will delay unit production for some time while all my bases make Hybrid Forests, but boost my research and growth of bases massively.



No more riots for me!



Attacking, attaching that monolith to the road network for quick healing.



Another base falls.

[ete]

Pushing them back, take their HQ and with it the WP and CV.


Finally start fighting the CCs, take their exposed base.



Geneachs crumbling.


Troops getting close to the CC's home, the last real bastion of resistance on Planet.

[ete]

After losing only one base, the CCs surrender. Slightly disappointing, I was hoping to take their HQ and the command nexus, but it's not worth the effort.


You see the suddenly massive boost in the rate my powergraph grows? That's when I entered pop boom thanks to the Cloning Vats. Both the Imperium and Genearchs had perma pop-boom this game, and that's why they stayed vaguely close to me in power and built big things.



Ah, they were one base from surrendering too. The Pilgrims control Planet.






GG, AI.

[Buster's Uncle]

 

[Sigma]

So what is your overall impression of how these Factions performed?

[ete]

Pilgrims: Interesting to play as, different from any of the other factions. Combination of worm rush+aggressive bonuses is nice, and it makes a change for Fundamentalism to be a non-terrible option. Seemed fairly balanced.

Machines: Grew fast and had the potential to be super deadly, their mass of units was scary at the start, but their achilles heel worked correctly and Probes ended them.

Imperium: Monsoon start+constant pop boom should have given them an amazing setup, but unfortunately the AI's bad teraforming, total lack of tactical ability, and horrible production prioritization kinda made them topple to a flood of Impact rovers in only a handful of turns. They can be extremely dangerous, but were not this game. It's when they get air before you it gets tricky.

Genearchs: Took a surprisingly look time to start taking bases from Leviathan, given their constant pop-boom. Faction advantages were much smaller than their SP, so not the ideal test.

CCs: With the CN they have a really easy time getting Elite troops, and they did push back a few light pokes early on thanks to terrain as well as trimming back the Genarchs slightly, but never became a real aggressive threat. If only they'd had rovers, fusion, and good weapons.

Leviathan: Held back the Genearchs for impressively long. Their normal drone issues were eliminated by the TM, which probably helped them a great deal. They had a LOT of forests by the end, and would have been in a nice position if they'd got tree farms/hybrid forests.

University: Had immunity to probes and VW for their drones, and they used it to tech pretty well. Were never in a position to do much harm to anyone though, kinda isolated, and did not have enough to stop me rolling them with rovers.

[Sigma]

Genearchs: Took a surprisingly look time to start taking bases from Leviathan, given their constant pop-boom. Faction advantages were much smaller than their SP, so not the ideal test.

My most recent update to the Faction set gives the Genarchs (renamed the Chrysalis Collective) some significant buffs, including boosting their Morale to +2 (which was how it originally was) and increasing their Talent production from 1/4 to 1/3.

[ete]

That may have given them enough of a buff to push back Leviathan sooner and be in better shape to face me, not sure though.