Would be a nice change if solider jobs protected civilians from collateral damage the way they defend them from raiding bombardment, would really help garrison armies be better
yes and no , people like to forget how many civilians die in war and lots have their "experience from movies or games" where you see zero or close zero it it happening , ill bring most recent big war who ended , iraq war with USA/allies intervention(war in ukraine is still going so no good statistics) on averige US/allies military killed 2-5 civilians for each iraq soldier they killed , in iraq war about 100k iraq soldiers/paramilitieries died , and about 250k-400k civilians die we know of (how many we dont know , how many was maimed , injured and scared or died later is another story) in most wars majority of casualties are civilians , even "modern wars"
@@VarenvelDarakus but it’s not like stellaris has never thrown realism away for gameplay purposes, and I’m fine like that. Stellaris isn’t trying to be the most accurate space warfare simulator, it’s primarily an economic game
Additional note: Don't build a powerful starbase in the same system as your fortress world, as the attackers will simply capture it and then it is harder to break their seige of the system.
You can get the best of both worlds using the following starbase setup: 6 Ancient Ramparts, Ancient Shield Overcharger, Defense Grid Supercomputer, Communications Jammer, extra module of your choice (command center is mine, but this'll buff enemy ship fire rate), 1 Ion Cannon, fill the rest of the defense platform slots with strike craft hangar platforms. The Ion cannon will fire more or less as soon as enemies enter most systems, which will engage the starbase with the enemy fleet and cause the strike craft to deploy and attack. The starbase and platforms will have shield and armour hardening and buffs, making them extremely tanky, and if the enemy takes it then the things which gave it all it's power (the defense platforms) are gone and have to be rebuilt. You can easily clear 150k fleet power without any special or repeatable techs and the enemy has to evaporate the vast majority of that before they can take control of it.
I build starbases are the frontier worlds. They are here to help my fleet to engage enemy on the best possible ground before judging the strength of my foe. Fully maxed out starbase and my entire fleet behind it.
I usually have a powerful starbase on the direct border and then behind that system Ill have a Fortress World or Fortress Habitat with a weak starbase so if they punch through the starbase there stuck gives me time to mount a defense or counter attack assuming they punch through my fleet and the border Starbase
Well, I would argue the idea is you shouldn't be lifting a siege of a fortress world. Instead as your enemy wastes decades sieging it, you go around them and siege their entire empire. In the end, they conquered one planet, and you conquered dozens, winning the war.
I remember a mod that used to work well with fortress worlds that added a ground canon that could destroy hostile ships attacking it. When it worked I had purely fortresses and that canon to spawn defenses. The canon itself would destroy a random ship in orbit. I’m still surprised Stellaris hasn’t added an official ground to space weapon that does that.
I think the Imperium Galactia games had ground based anti-orbital weapons. But they participated and got blown up during the battle for the planet before the landings took place.
@@poilboiler I could see that, because I know another game that had that concept was empire at war with the ion canons and hyper velocity gun. I still wish they could add a weapon like that though to the game
@@msutter117 Sadly in Stellaris it'd probably be forced randomized weapons like on starbases so you'll end up with ground defense guns only being autocannons with too short range to reach out of the atmosphere.
well, the reason why it's not in base game is because it's insanely unfair to be able to shoot stuff without getting ever shot back even Star Wars: Empire at War "only" had an EMP cannon that did zero damage while shutting down the shields of a target temporarily
@@letsplaysvonaja1714 the hyper velocity gun actually bypassed shields and caused massive damage, like it could destroy a capital ship in 3 shots. But it’s a fair point. The mod I used to use actually had it so if you launched a ground invasion immediately you could destroy it but you will lose ships in the process unless you leave it all to armies with no bombardment. There was work arounds. The mod itself doesn’t work anymore anyway with the last couple builds so I doubt the concept will be revived.
I wish there was something like another tech tier of the planetary shield generator that’s able to block colissi, maybe only up to like 25% devastation or something. It just sucks that other than naval cap, fortress worlds become utterly meaningless once colossi get unlocked.
@@damonedrington3453 that is mostly because Stellaris refuses to provide planet based defense systems... we should be having ballistic silos, lasers, etc... but there is nothing like that making fortresses just slowing bump on the road and not real ultimate blocker enforcing enemy to make that ground invasion.
This video was very helpful, because I've been under the impression for so long that to create fortress worlds/habitats, you had to build as many fortress buildings as possible. It's nice to know I only need one (maybe two for redundancy in case planetary devastation decides to RNG that the fortress building is destroyed) to get the effect, and that I need to build offensive armies for the best defense. Very glad you made this clear, it'll save me so much hassle in the future.
It's still important to spam soldier jobs for naval capacity in the late game, there are only so many starbases you can build before their energy upkeep becomes unmanageable, so you can't rely on anchorages forever.
@@blahmaster6k Well, when you only have two sectors, less than a dozen inhabited planets, and 25 out of the 27 starbases you're allowed are nothing but fully-upgraded and boosted anchorages, they usually do the job for me. (I like playing defensive, with the starbase-boosting traditions.)
You also get the navel capacity boost if im not mistaken. Im glad he explained the not having multiple is not technically beneficial in defense because i definitely was making that mistake thinking it helped but mainly for me i love that navel cap benefit :) spam them soldiers!!! Build a Grand Fleet 🤣
Someday I hope for a way to make it so that planets under bombardment will return fire. Maybe some kind of 'anti ship battery' building or something, could denote it with a custom planet icon or maybe some kind of visible change to the planet like orbital platforms
I would love to see megastructure level starbases in the vein of the Iserlohn fortress from "Legend of the Galactic Heroes". It could be half starbase, half fortress planet, with the ability to produce ships, fire back at enemies, and needs to be sieged with ground armies.
Iserlohn in stellaris would basically a habitat mixed with megashipyard with obscene firepower. Ground invasion for the FPA was the only option because yang was given like tiny fleet and staff and they captured it both times with things closer to subtifuge and infiltration than a ground invasion. The first capture didn't involve any violence to reach the commander. The only time the station was at risk/sieged in a battle was when they used Geiersburg fortress and that was mainly because of alliance infighting. Doing something similar in stellaris would be sending in a small ground uinit in an enemy system and taking it over because you got their admiral/govenor/empire leader
Gigastructures mod has the Maginot world which is basically this. I have killed entire Awakened Empire doomstacks with just static defenses using a maginot world.
might have also been worth mentioning merc enclaves, you can buy >500 army strength (although they aren't very good) in one go and if you build a merc enclave in your capitol system they'll defend it like the dragon (only the capitol system, not your extended borders, if they're not hired elsewhere at the time, they take ~250 days to recall)
@@detachsoup6061 either way they are the quickest and cheapest way to build a ground force, but the built in home system protection is the main attraction. max level merc enclaves with end game tech are well over 300k fleet power (although again, they are terribly designed ships, and you need to pay influence and energy to keep them home/out of xeno hands). keep in mind thats 500 army strength per merc enclave, every 2 years, you get to keep them not just hire them, megacorps can have up to 7 enclaves, thats a 3.5k invasion fleet that could be spawned out of thin air for extremely cheap, very very often, forever
@@XVlove if they declare on you while they're in your systems the fleet goes missing in action, they usually build up outside your borders so you can just recall them, for a hefty fee. they are actually a very good way to bait wars against yourself because you can just take back control of the AI's brand new main fleet that they just spent a boatload of energy to hire, and wipe them back with it. great for 'counter-vassalising'
I mean, mercenary army strength depends on what you provided them with if your species is very strong cyborgs they will be decent if they are a weak race and you founded the mercs before even ascending then yes, you should probably not buy their soldiers
Using Adaptable, Unyielding, and Reanimators can be a nightmare for organic AI trying to invade your fortress world. Imagine that they scrounged up an army probably 1k power over your PDF already massive army. They landed calculating that it’s a victory, only to find out the fight is dragging on because their units are reinforcing your PDF as zombies as they die.
Ironically happened to me once when I tried to invade some AI fanatic purifiers. If I invaded a Planet and didn't have at least 3x as many troops as them, the AI would just slowly kill my own troops while constantly reanimating theirs. Nearly lost that war despite occupying like 90% of their systems and planets because of that.
Good luck doing that when my 7k clone soldier ascendant army lands on your world. Even if that fails to achieve the task my colossus always stands ready.
As someone who has played a moderate amount of stellaris but if definitely not involved in the multiplayer scene, thank you for finally explaining wtf collateral damage on armies is. Without going through wikis, some stats in this game are just not explained!!
I once had a fortress world of 8K near the marauders, just in case they would spawn the khan when I didn’t have any ships nearby. I also had my entire ground military (6k) on permanent station there. Then I synthetically ascended which reduced my garrison strength by like 2K. Really unfortunate.
It’s also worth noting here that morale is also important for both defensive and offensive armies. If they start suffering severe morale loss, then their damage capabilities are reduced dramatically. If you want to assault a fortress world, Psionic armies are fantastic for achieving this as they deal considerably high morale damage compared to most other army types.
Similarly, if you know an enemy is fielding offensive armies that excel at breaking morale (zombies and battle frames to a lesser extent, psionics, warforms and xenomorphs to a greater extent), prioritise armies that counter this strategy. Gene warriors, psionics and fanatical defenders are extremely resistant to morale loss, while robots / machines, the undead, xenomorphs and offspring-led are completely immune to it.
I do wish that a balance could be reached where star bases built up to be border defense citadels were actual threats where its loss it's actually "oh shit, the defenses have been breached! Scramble the fleets!". It feels kind of depressing that even after the mild defense platform rework they did a while back that a decked out citadel is little more than a speedbump in the mid to late game. You can just go "fleet sheet go brr" and take out a maxed out citadel with minimal losses (or even no losses). I still feel the issue is that, with 0 evasion, defense platforms don't have enough static defenses to survive long enough to do damage, and once it's fleet vs core star base, it's no contest. I don't want turtle strategies with actually impenetrable borders, but I'd like defensive citadels to actually be more relevant into the late game such that fortress worlds aren't simply the far better stall tactic.
Always felt weird to me that you only get S and M slots on your biggest baddest citadels. You can hold a half-dozen titans simultaneously but you can’t even fit a large gun? If I want to blow up an asteroid I need to build a defense platform because the citadel guns don’t have the range? I’d expect a T and a couple X slots on a citadel, one X and a few L on a star fortress, etc on down. Plus also P slots on them all. Right now if you’re weak attacking a star base, you can just camp at carrier range and send in fighters to do the job. As long as you can destroy a platform in under 60 days, the fighters will eventually win.
play with the New Ship Classes 3 (NSC3) mod. not only does it bring in new ship classes, it has 2 new levels of starbases and re-adds the defense stations and fortresses from pre-2.0. a t7 starbase by itself armed with a bunch of gun batteries can hold off anything short of an FE's fleet. with a bunch of artillery defense fortresses, it can hold off the FE's fleets
Dont forget about orbital rings. I believe as long as you control the planet they can repair themselves. It may not have much ho when it respawns but that one ship getting left behind to bombard might just die from it
7:45 *Until the jump drives cool down. You can still move system to system with jump drives, regardless of ftl inhibition. It just takes like 200 days per jump
@@jackbright2125not to mention the 50% sublight speed reduction, meaning is your fleets can no longer run from a bad fight. And if your fleets were evenly matched before, that debuff will ruin you.
I remember a playthrough, where the entire galaxy became engulfed by a war between the federations. Before the fighting broke out, I moved my empire into the L-Cluster. Terminal Egress became so heavily fortified, that no fleet could get a hold in there. Three fortress worlds and a mega shipyard two systems away kept my empire safe while I watched the galaxy burn from afar
remember that every defensive emplacement is simply meant to slow an enemy down. if the enemy is determined enough, every defense can and will fall; it is for that reason that you want to use your defenses as obstacles, not as walls. instead of relying solely on starbase defenses and planetary armies, you want to use those to keep the enemy busy while you rally your main fleet and strike at the enemy's offense with your own offense. this is the most surefire way to stop an enemy in their tracks, especially if you have the unyielding traditions that buff your own ship performance within your borders.
"Controlling a planet does not just introduce the possibility that you could lose it. It begins the countdown." -Mon Mothma, Chief of State, New Republic "Every bunker on a world winds back the clock." -Alliance Defence Forces, probably
@@deathtrooper7760 "Every innocent life you take is three more recruits for the Rebellion. I'd explain why, but my stay in this cell will be ending... right now." -last interrogation log of Prisoner 889345-A "Ara Blade", Rebel Infiltrator
This was informative. So now stacking fortresses on my fortress worlds no longer work; this means decentralization is the way to go, plus the importance of a large fleet... and recruiting assault armies for extra strength.
@@TheNaturalnuke Very situational. Do you go for raw power for the best chance of repelling enemies, or less raw damage to reduce collateral damage to your world? Do you use morale breaking tactics for an easy low-collateral win, or morale resistant / immune armies if that's the enemy's plan? Do you use expensive units that cause high war exhaustion when killed, or spammable fodder to slow enemies down for cheap?
We need like orbital turrets on planets to shoot those suckers down. This also then prevents the 1 ship bombard strategy so you will need to commit a fleet to this. And prob strong ones like battleships
I’m playing as UNE, it’s year 57 and I’m already hopelessly far ahead of everyone else in like everything. I’ve bought the friendship of all the other egal empires by advancing their tech and selling them minor relics, minerals and volatile motes, uplifted like a million pre-sapient species to the point that I don’t even need to terraform anymore (of which many were de-evolved in some ancient colossus war so I had to cure many races of that trait too lol) and I’ve got hull regen, ancient shields, ancient swarmer missiles, ancient lasers, mining beams and flagella cruisers. The precursor tech has really paid off, I just ”liberated” a xenophobe megacorp’s frontier sector in its entirety using only 3 naval fleets and 2 transport fleets, all without losing even *one* ship because of how quickly the flagella and precursor stuff chewed up all their fleets and starbases (and because they hadn’t researched cruisers yet). They were so terrified that they folded in just 4 years.
Pretty sure that Overwhelming Force from Supremacy tradition(which picked by almost everyone), kinda counters this 98% bombardment damage reduction also there is an utility component for that and juggernaut aura(which everyone usually call useless) except if this isn't combined with subterranian origin
My playing style [with the mountain of mods i have] mean fortress worlds never really end up enticing the enemy into attacking me. Despite this, I have had games where I've buily fortress *systems.* Completely decked out with mutliple mod-based habitats and asteroid habitations, defense systems dug into the very crust of the planets themselves, and planetary shields that make bombing essentially useless. My goal is always to create a system I can fall back to. A system where, even if the ENTIRE rest of the empire cannot fend off an attack, these five or so planets can. With fun planetary modifiers and relics to create even stronger armies and ancient shields, there's basically no way in hell any AI would field the resources to strike through. It's so fun.
@@deathtrooper7760 I can't really get gigastrictures or L-gates, since I only have the federations DLC. However, some of my mods give me megastructures that are, for all intents and purposes, gigastrictures
Me and my friend went on a total war against a spiritualist fallen empire. Their fleet was away while they were fighting somebody else so we managed to capture a few systems. They of course took them back, but we had the planets captured and we really did embrace our Cadian heritage. They bombed their own capital from orbit. We went through like 10 admirals and 1000s worth of ground armies. In the end they recaptured it, but they were left with 3 populations left on the planet. Gotta say it was fun, but probably not for the planet's citizens
I'm both grateful for, and frustrated by, these tips. I don't think I would of ever figured out any of that stuff on my own. Just having to know the per-requisite research for these things and that planetary ftl inhibitors stopped functioning when the planet goes below 50% bombardment damage were things that I've never seen documented down anywhere.
Ah, was wondering how new habitats stood up in a lot of ways, this being one of them. Glad to know they're still a great way to turn an otherwise empty but chokepoint potential system into something hardened.
Glad to know my Terran Federation (a la Starship Troopers) are playing correctly. The first two buildings I always place on a planet is a Stronghold and a Holotheater
In one of my games, I got lucky. 7 habital worls in one system. Ended up being invaded but never lost that system. During the mid game ended up becoming a 1 system game. Where i used orbital rings to make each world defendable and made it impossible to invade!
I remember years ago when we still had 3 forms of FTL transportation, me and a buddy were in a coop game. We just won a war and my buddy annexed some distant land in the south eastern quadrant. Few years later the scourge arrive. Buddy starts producing nothing but armies on one of the capital planets he annexed. 10 years later we start to push back the scourge and reclaim some territory. I Inspect some upcoming systems are realize none of them have been eaten by the scourge. Eventually I find it, the ultimate fortress world with unlimited soldiers, single handedly holding up the entire scourge invasion force
I would like to see the addition of surface to orbital cannons which could deal with small fleets, feels cheesy that one or two corvettes would be enough to efficiently blockade an advanced society
In my last game I built a fortress system and it's the only way my empire survived. Both the Prethoryn Scourge and the War in Heaven triggered but because I had nearly 300,000 power in starbases/orbital rings, a fortress habitat and a fortress world (with about 25,000 power in defense armies) my empire endured long enough to evacuate to the L-Cluster. I rushed a ring world and saved my empire from utter annihilation. That game was absolutely nuts.
I really enjoyed using the Forced Devolution Beam on worlds. I imagine the last three pops spared on a planet of 800 billion pre-sapients will have a very hard time of it.
Fortresses only planet actually helped me manage all the prisoners I've got by conquering the universe as a perfect robotic intelligence. 200 pop on a single planet is quite an experience Sadly enemy empire took it back briefly and fred all the prisoners. I lost a lot of eneergy credits that day, damn
Unyielding is such a powerfull tradition. Yes, its a defencive one, while Supremacy is offencive, and thus effective both on offence and defence. But unyielding is so strong on the defence and economy, providing both more and cheaper starbases early on and attritioning any invader due to cheaper starbases and home territory buffs, I go for it nearly always.
I mostly play my hydrocentric empire and use the colossus to turn enemy planets into ocean world that I can inhabit after the war. Much more elegant than cracking the planet and making it useless forever.
@@rizkiramadhan9266The naivete to think filthy xenos could be innocent. Having their planet cracked is the most humane way of dealing with them. The rest go to the processing plants where they can attone for their transgressions on the supermarket shelves.
Fun fact: Fortresses provide FTL Inhibition even when disabled, so you can build a fortress, disable it to remove the motes upkeep, and then build strongholds for defense armies.
lol. this video taught me that collateral damage is good. ive been thinking it was talking about friendly casualties this entire time and have avoided armies and traits with it. now it’s all I’m ever going to use lol. thanks
It makes worlds way easier to capture but also makes repopulating and rebuilding them afterwards an huge pain (especially larger worlds with lots of pops and infrastructure). Both strategies have merit: Either make the capture process easier and way more likely to succeed, or go the hard route and have a good or at least decent world ready to work almost immediately after its capture.
basically, and this is an important lesson that applies in real war too: don't think of fortified positions as impregnable. Don't try to defend your empire by building fortress worlds on your border and hope that will stop the enemy. No, fortresses are used in two ways: 1) to funnel the enemy into a different position. If you got two borders with an enemy, you reinforce one, and put your fleet on the other. The enemy will realize it's a bad idea to attack the fortress world, and go for your fleet instead, allowing you to know where they will attack. 2) and this is the reason why 1 works, use it to boggle the enemy down. If they attack your fortress world, their fleet will be stuck there for years, decades even. This will allow you on the meantime to either rebuild your fleet if it was sunk, or even better, just go into your enemy's empire. Yes, the fortress world will fall eventually, but by the time it does, you should have conquered most of your enemy's empire in return. The reality is, the best defense is a good offense, and in the end, you need a fleet to win, like it or not. But the strong defenses allow you to funnel the enemy into your fleet, or to boggle them down so your fleet has free reign to invade your enemies.
Honestly I depend on my fleets to do the heavy lifting defensive wise, i usually have 12 fleets ea at 100k power just for defensive purposes 6 battleship fleets and 6 corvette fleets the enemy does not last long in my territory and I’d rather use my worlds for production purposes
I don't know anything about Warhammer, but dang that's a cool quote. Reminds me of the quote from either Claude-Étienne Michel or Pierre Cambronne at Waterloo: "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!"
That's not me. I think UA-cam added a feature where it recognises when a UA-cam video mentions the like button, then lights it up! But honestly I don't know
Important question for when you're trying to quickly garrison a colony before an invasion: From my observations it seems that soldier jobs take some time before they actually create a defense army, so what are the actual triggers for them to spawn? Time based? Enemy proximity?
Basically fortresses are just speedbumps, but a speedbump that can blunt a spearhead from steamrolling. This is why I personally like using many micro fleets with large or X cannons in guerilla like warfare. I can hit an enemy everywhere. (though this was long ago, so don't know how new updates changed FTL travel.)
They are so useful. Also at anything later than like early midgame, Starbase are really only useful as rally points to stack your fleets on to slightly bolster their power
So, ultimatly, you still need to win the war fleet vs fleet. However, fortress worlds, or just fortress buildings, buy you A Lot of time and give you more ability to choose engagements.
The Cadian 412th have faced doom before and we bested it then and we will best it today. Men! Now is the hour of your calling, this is the reason you are alive, The Emperor needs you, I need you!
To bad planets can't be equipped with warhammer 40K surface to space emplacements to make bombing or cracking a planet risky business as the cannon's/missiles would pick off ships rapidly to begin with but slow down as devastation goes up meaning more of them were destroyed as time went on.
it's reminiscent of my 8k atk army battle on enemy fortress planet. It took three months to bring it down with countless casualties. And more surprisingly, the opponent has 3 f@cking planets like this ☠️
Your two main goals in ground combat is killing the enemy and breaking morale. In the early-mid game, most armies provide moderate stats for both. In the late game, you tend to have a single army type competent at both
One thing I would be considering is the time it takes to make them. Ideally you go for the strongest, but there will be times where you need an immediate army. Which is why clones are great. Typically though, build the strongest armies you can during peace time and clones during war time unless you have time.
I use mixed armies because I’m always a xénophile and you can only recruit a limited number of armies of each species. But you can’t control who goes to the front first, so if you have a cunning plan of mixing different strengths and having then complement each other somehow, RNG will screw you up. (And there’s isn’t much of a way for units to complement each other anyway, ground combat is too simplistic.)
Sorta but not really. Also depends on what you mean "strongest". TL;DR: Army types just encourage flavor imo, due to the simplicity of land warfare all that matters is how fast you want to conquer a system and move on. Any army type will do if you have enough for the situation you need them for. For example, compared to regular assault armies: -Slave armies cost 50% to build, have 66% build time, cost 50% upkeep, do 100% dmg, do 75% morale dmg, do 125% collateral dmg, have 100% health, have 75% morale and cost 50% war exhaustion when killed. They trade slightly lower some stats for much cheaper costs, making 2 slave armies superior to 1 assault army effectiveness for the same cost/upkeep. But they aren't readily available to all, you need to have an enslaved species in your empire to recruit these. -Psionic armies cost 250% to build, have 133% build time, cost 250% upkeep, do 200% dmg, do 300% morale dmg, do 50% collateral dmg, have 350% health, have 500% morale and cost 300% war exhaustion when killed. They trade much higher costs for even higher stats, in terms of raw damage they may not compare to 3 assault armies but their health surpasses 3 and their morale damage is on par with 5 assault armies. Meaning they absolutely demolish routable armies relative to their costs, especially slave armies but will perform slightly worse for their costs against unroutable armies. They are also even more exclusive than slave armies because they require an entire ascension perk to unlock. -Robotic armies cost 150% to build, have 100% build time, cost 150% upkeep, do 100% damage, do 100% morale dmg, do 150% collateral dmg, have 200% health, cannot rout, cost 50% war exhaustion when killed. They trade higher costs for higher stats and immunity to routing. Less raw damage but more health relative to their costs combined with being immune to routing means they will out DPS other armies per individual army, making them well worth the costs. They are slightly more exclusive than slave armies but less so than psionics, because you can't build more of them than you have pops and they "grow" much slower than organic pops but do not require an ascension perk or specific ethics (even spiritualists _can_ use them if they _want_ to). In summary all this comes down to is incentivizing certain flavors of empires to build certain types of armies that thematically fit with them: A technocracy (bonus points for mechanist origin) will be able to build a larger population of robot pops faster which enables them to field appropriately sized robotic only armies, which feeds in to the whole techno vibe. A biologically ascended empire will be able to field the most elite armies (space marines!) of biologically perfected warriors, which feeds in to the genetic mastery vibe. And if you're feeling particularly vengeful you can unleash a horde of literal xenomorphs on enemy planets to give a satisfying feeling of "f*ck you" to the enemy. In practice it doesn't really matter though, you can rock nothing but regular assault armies well in to the late game. The perceived loss in cost efficiency is entirely negated by building 1 or 2 generator/mining districts across your empire, aka its negligible in the grand scheme of things.
meanwhile me a determined exterminator with a colossos with a world cracker: Huh there is nothing defending the border but a single planet, ow well *blows up planet*
I once played a Progenitor Hive so the progenitor upgraded all the Defencive Armies. My super heavy defended World was captured incredible fast. The progenitor pop was killed and all the upgraded Defencive Armies despawned. Never played that Origin again...
idk I really hope they rework ground combat in this game after playing something like Endless Space 2 and other 4x games this is the one area that needs some love in Stellaris not asking for like Warhammer 40k Dawn of War RTS stuff. I really like the options you have in something like Endless Space 2.
It would be nice if defensive generals had the same mechanics as assaulting ones. I’ve found defensive generals are a waste of time since they tend to die as soon as a single army folds rather than the whole assault like an attacking general. Really good way to waste your experienced generals and ensure that the mechanic is never used
I love fortress worlds and habitats. Having a road block on my borders with about 4k+ soldiers and a shield generator amuses me. Until they bring out a collosus that is. I wish there were planet to space artillery defenses though. That's something you see a lot of in sci-fi that is missing in stellaris.
most faction don't overwhelm you with fleets and if your can have a fleet there reinforcing the star base 9 times out of 10 they cant beat you unless they outnumber by a insane amount
Everybody gangsta until the bot starts using kidnapping instead of normal bombardment. Why take the fortress when you can steal all the pops producing soldiers?
Fortress worlds are far more effective against the AI during the mid game when it starts forming federations around you or rivals gang up on you if you decided to sit and build tall rather than endlessly expand. However, by the time of the crisis events you need to be ready. Stations may be pointless against the AI since the AI will and does death stack it's fleets, it is however useful against crisis enemies as they have powerful tiny fleets (awakened ancients) or powerful singular roaming fleets that split in all directions (invaders/horde). In previous years building up a station was enough to deter the AI, but that is no longer the case, if the AI rivals or surrounding empires decide to gang up on you, doesn't matter how powerful your fleet is, or how strong your stations are, it will attack based purely on calculating your response time. So, having a Fortress world is enough to hold them down till all your fleets can go for their death stacks if they decide to be sneaky with their fleet movements or gang up on you 2+v1.
Genetically tailoring a sub-species of soldiers can also be quite useful. Genetically tailored species turned into gene warriors can get over 200 power each if I remember right.
Well i remember how many fortress habitats ida e build tô get 8000 fleet cap, 38 worlds (6 resources world, the rest was Just fortress habitats) was my first 25x crises run
"the planet broke before the guard did" is a mandatory quote in any stellaris fortress video.
Fanboys: Cadia will never fall!
Failbaddon: Haha planet cracks brrrr
:p
When you need a colossus when the armies cant win
Cadia Stands
CADIA STANDS!
Cadia Steht
Would be a nice change if solider jobs protected civilians from collateral damage the way they defend them from raiding bombardment, would really help garrison armies be better
I actually suggested that to the Devs before they were reworked to protect pops from raiding!
@@MontuPlayshow did they react?
yes and no , people like to forget how many civilians die in war and lots have their "experience from movies or games" where you see zero or close zero it it happening , ill bring most recent big war who ended , iraq war with USA/allies intervention(war in ukraine is still going so no good statistics) on averige US/allies military killed 2-5 civilians for each iraq soldier they killed , in iraq war about 100k iraq soldiers/paramilitieries died , and about 250k-400k civilians die we know of (how many we dont know , how many was maimed , injured and scared or died later is another story)
in most wars majority of casualties are civilians , even "modern wars"
@@VarenvelDarakus but it’s not like stellaris has never thrown realism away for gameplay purposes, and I’m fine like that. Stellaris isn’t trying to be the most accurate space warfare simulator, it’s primarily an economic game
You could make it so that each extra Fortress protect another 1 or 2 pops from collateral damage.
Additional note: Don't build a powerful starbase in the same system as your fortress world, as the attackers will simply capture it and then it is harder to break their seige of the system.
You can get the best of both worlds using the following starbase setup: 6 Ancient Ramparts, Ancient Shield Overcharger, Defense Grid Supercomputer, Communications Jammer, extra module of your choice (command center is mine, but this'll buff enemy ship fire rate), 1 Ion Cannon, fill the rest of the defense platform slots with strike craft hangar platforms.
The Ion cannon will fire more or less as soon as enemies enter most systems, which will engage the starbase with the enemy fleet and cause the strike craft to deploy and attack.
The starbase and platforms will have shield and armour hardening and buffs, making them extremely tanky, and if the enemy takes it then the things which gave it all it's power (the defense platforms) are gone and have to be rebuilt.
You can easily clear 150k fleet power without any special or repeatable techs and the enemy has to evaporate the vast majority of that before they can take control of it.
I build starbases are the frontier worlds. They are here to help my fleet to engage enemy on the best possible ground before judging the strength of my foe. Fully maxed out starbase and my entire fleet behind it.
I usually have a powerful starbase on the direct border and then behind that system Ill have a Fortress World or Fortress Habitat with a weak starbase so if they punch through the starbase there stuck gives me time to mount a defense or counter attack assuming they punch through my fleet and the border Starbase
It can be argued the other way since if the war become a stalemate you will get the starbase back.
Well, I would argue the idea is you shouldn't be lifting a siege of a fortress world. Instead as your enemy wastes decades sieging it, you go around them and siege their entire empire. In the end, they conquered one planet, and you conquered dozens, winning the war.
I remember a mod that used to work well with fortress worlds that added a ground canon that could destroy hostile ships attacking it. When it worked I had purely fortresses and that canon to spawn defenses. The canon itself would destroy a random ship in orbit. I’m still surprised Stellaris hasn’t added an official ground to space weapon that does that.
I think the Imperium Galactia games had ground based anti-orbital weapons. But they participated and got blown up during the battle for the planet before the landings took place.
@@poilboiler I could see that, because I know another game that had that concept was empire at war with the ion canons and hyper velocity gun. I still wish they could add a weapon like that though to the game
@@msutter117 Sadly in Stellaris it'd probably be forced randomized weapons like on starbases so you'll end up with ground defense guns only being autocannons with too short range to reach out of the atmosphere.
well, the reason why it's not in base game is because it's insanely unfair to be able to shoot stuff without getting ever shot back
even Star Wars: Empire at War "only" had an EMP cannon that did zero damage while shutting down the shields of a target temporarily
@@letsplaysvonaja1714 the hyper velocity gun actually bypassed shields and caused massive damage, like it could destroy a capital ship in 3 shots. But it’s a fair point. The mod I used to use actually had it so if you launched a ground invasion immediately you could destroy it but you will lose ships in the process unless you leave it all to armies with no bombardment. There was work arounds. The mod itself doesn’t work anymore anyway with the last couple builds so I doubt the concept will be revived.
Colossus: "Nice Fortresses you got there. Would be a shame if something happened to it."
I wish there was something like another tech tier of the planetary shield generator that’s able to block colissi, maybe only up to like 25% devastation or something. It just sucks that other than naval cap, fortress worlds become utterly meaningless once colossi get unlocked.
@@damonedrington3453 that is mostly because Stellaris refuses to provide planet based defense systems... we should be having ballistic silos, lasers, etc... but there is nothing like that making fortresses just slowing bump on the road and not real ultimate blocker enforcing enemy to make that ground invasion.
This video was very helpful, because I've been under the impression for so long that to create fortress worlds/habitats, you had to build as many fortress buildings as possible. It's nice to know I only need one (maybe two for redundancy in case planetary devastation decides to RNG that the fortress building is destroyed) to get the effect, and that I need to build offensive armies for the best defense. Very glad you made this clear, it'll save me so much hassle in the future.
It's still important to spam soldier jobs for naval capacity in the late game, there are only so many starbases you can build before their energy upkeep becomes unmanageable, so you can't rely on anchorages forever.
@@blahmaster6k Well, when you only have two sectors, less than a dozen inhabited planets, and 25 out of the 27 starbases you're allowed are nothing but fully-upgraded and boosted anchorages, they usually do the job for me. (I like playing defensive, with the starbase-boosting traditions.)
You also get the navel capacity boost if im not mistaken. Im glad he explained the not having multiple is not technically beneficial in defense because i definitely was making that mistake thinking it helped but mainly for me i love that navel cap benefit :) spam them soldiers!!! Build a Grand Fleet 🤣
Can collateral damage or bombardment destroy the fortress?
@@Matoro342 As far as I know? I didn't think it had any specific special resistances or anything.
The subterranean origin + Noxious trait + Undead armies + unity picks + fortress and shield gen = You will have to crack this planet to win.
Hence the quote: "The planet cracked before the guard did".
Someday I hope for a way to make it so that planets under bombardment will return fire. Maybe some kind of 'anti ship battery' building or something, could denote it with a custom planet icon or maybe some kind of visible change to the planet like orbital platforms
I would love to see megastructure level starbases in the vein of the Iserlohn fortress from "Legend of the Galactic Heroes". It could be half starbase, half fortress planet, with the ability to produce ships, fire back at enemies, and needs to be sieged with ground armies.
Iserlohn in stellaris would basically a habitat mixed with megashipyard with obscene firepower. Ground invasion for the FPA was the only option because yang was given like tiny fleet and staff and they captured it both times with things closer to subtifuge and infiltration than a ground invasion. The first capture didn't involve any violence to reach the commander. The only time the station was at risk/sieged in a battle was when they used Geiersburg fortress and that was mainly because of alliance infighting.
Doing something similar in stellaris would be sending in a small ground uinit in an enemy system and taking it over because you got their admiral/govenor/empire leader
Absolutely. Especially when there's the LotGH ship sets floating around
Gigastructures mod has the Maginot world which is basically this. I have killed entire Awakened Empire doomstacks with just static defenses using a maginot world.
Oh damn fellow fan of LoGH, those are rare
And yes it would be an awesome megastructure
might have also been worth mentioning merc enclaves, you can buy >500 army strength (although they aren't very good) in one go and if you build a merc enclave in your capitol system they'll defend it like the dragon (only the capitol system, not your extended borders, if they're not hired elsewhere at the time, they take ~250 days to recall)
Army strenght doesnt say much. Especially if the units are weak it can actually hurt your defense.
Yeah, and then the enemy hired your enclave and then suddenly you had enemy literally outside your capital gate
@@detachsoup6061 either way they are the quickest and cheapest way to build a ground force, but the built in home system protection is the main attraction. max level merc enclaves with end game tech are well over 300k fleet power (although again, they are terribly designed ships, and you need to pay influence and energy to keep them home/out of xeno hands).
keep in mind thats 500 army strength per merc enclave, every 2 years, you get to keep them not just hire them, megacorps can have up to 7 enclaves, thats a 3.5k invasion fleet that could be spawned out of thin air for extremely cheap, very very often, forever
@@XVlove if they declare on you while they're in your systems the fleet goes missing in action, they usually build up outside your borders so you can just recall them, for a hefty fee. they are actually a very good way to bait wars against yourself because you can just take back control of the AI's brand new main fleet that they just spent a boatload of energy to hire, and wipe them back with it. great for 'counter-vassalising'
I mean, mercenary army strength depends on what you provided them with
if your species is very strong cyborgs they will be decent
if they are a weak race and you founded the mercs before even ascending then yes, you should probably not buy their soldiers
This is why Maginot fortress worlds are so awesome. And if the enemy does crack one of those, the Colossus that did the cracking gets destroyed.
Using Adaptable, Unyielding, and Reanimators can be a nightmare for organic AI trying to invade your fortress world. Imagine that they scrounged up an army probably 1k power over your PDF already massive army. They landed calculating that it’s a victory, only to find out the fight is dragging on because their units are reinforcing your PDF as zombies as they die.
Zombies are terrifying no matter what, unless you have very strong soldiers like warforms or xenomorphs.
Ironically happened to me once when I tried to invade some AI fanatic purifiers. If I invaded a Planet and didn't have at least 3x as many troops as them, the AI would just slowly kill my own troops while constantly reanimating theirs. Nearly lost that war despite occupying like 90% of their systems and planets because of that.
Good luck doing that when my 7k clone soldier ascendant army lands on your world. Even if that fails to achieve the task my colossus always stands ready.
@@georgeousthegorgeouslaughs in 10k mercenary army
As someone who has played a moderate amount of stellaris but if definitely not involved in the multiplayer scene, thank you for finally explaining wtf collateral damage on armies is. Without going through wikis, some stats in this game are just not explained!!
I once had a fortress world of 8K near the marauders, just in case they would spawn the khan when I didn’t have any ships nearby. I also had my entire ground military (6k) on permanent station there. Then I synthetically ascended which reduced my garrison strength by like 2K. Really unfortunate.
It’s also worth noting here that morale is also important for both defensive and offensive armies. If they start suffering severe morale loss, then their damage capabilities are reduced dramatically.
If you want to assault a fortress world, Psionic armies are fantastic for achieving this as they deal considerably high morale damage compared to most other army types.
Yeah they can literally invade the minds of the enemy
Warforms go brrr.
Psionic armies are useless against the superior might of steel, why worry about morale if everyone is a robot?
Similarly, if you know an enemy is fielding offensive armies that excel at breaking morale (zombies and battle frames to a lesser extent, psionics, warforms and xenomorphs to a greater extent), prioritise armies that counter this strategy.
Gene warriors, psionics and fanatical defenders are extremely resistant to morale loss, while robots / machines, the undead, xenomorphs and offspring-led are completely immune to it.
I do wish that a balance could be reached where star bases built up to be border defense citadels were actual threats where its loss it's actually "oh shit, the defenses have been breached! Scramble the fleets!". It feels kind of depressing that even after the mild defense platform rework they did a while back that a decked out citadel is little more than a speedbump in the mid to late game. You can just go "fleet sheet go brr" and take out a maxed out citadel with minimal losses (or even no losses). I still feel the issue is that, with 0 evasion, defense platforms don't have enough static defenses to survive long enough to do damage, and once it's fleet vs core star base, it's no contest. I don't want turtle strategies with actually impenetrable borders, but I'd like defensive citadels to actually be more relevant into the late game such that fortress worlds aren't simply the far better stall tactic.
Absolutely!
Always felt weird to me that you only get S and M slots on your biggest baddest citadels. You can hold a half-dozen titans simultaneously but you can’t even fit a large gun? If I want to blow up an asteroid I need to build a defense platform because the citadel guns don’t have the range?
I’d expect a T and a couple X slots on a citadel, one X and a few L on a star fortress, etc on down.
Plus also P slots on them all. Right now if you’re weak attacking a star base, you can just camp at carrier range and send in fighters to do the job. As long as you can destroy a platform in under 60 days, the fighters will eventually win.
play with the New Ship Classes 3 (NSC3) mod. not only does it bring in new ship classes, it has 2 new levels of starbases and re-adds the defense stations and fortresses from pre-2.0. a t7 starbase by itself armed with a bunch of gun batteries can hold off anything short of an FE's fleet. with a bunch of artillery defense fortresses, it can hold off the FE's fleets
You can do 600k citadels without mods and if you pick the right components a citadel with a small 200k fleet can even defend 10x the crisis ships.
@@matthewnuss1551 they also massively buff the stats and amount of slots every tier of station has. Its honestly kinda busted but i love it
Dont forget about orbital rings. I believe as long as you control the planet they can repair themselves. It may not have much ho when it respawns but that one ship getting left behind to bombard might just die from it
Cadia stands!
What about the battlefleet Cadia ? Brave man and woman on void ships fighting against chaos
7:45 *Until the jump drives cool down. You can still move system to system with jump drives, regardless of ftl inhibition. It just takes like 200 days per jump
You gotta be careful doing that though since the -50% damage is pretty nasty.
@@jackbright2125not to mention the 50% sublight speed reduction, meaning is your fleets can no longer run from a bad fight. And if your fleets were evenly matched before, that debuff will ruin you.
I remember a playthrough, where the entire galaxy became engulfed by a war between the federations. Before the fighting broke out, I moved my empire into the L-Cluster. Terminal Egress became so heavily fortified, that no fleet could get a hold in there. Three fortress worlds and a mega shipyard two systems away kept my empire safe while I watched the galaxy burn from afar
remember that every defensive emplacement is simply meant to slow an enemy down. if the enemy is determined enough, every defense can and will fall; it is for that reason that you want to use your defenses as obstacles, not as walls. instead of relying solely on starbase defenses and planetary armies, you want to use those to keep the enemy busy while you rally your main fleet and strike at the enemy's offense with your own offense. this is the most surefire way to stop an enemy in their tracks, especially if you have the unyielding traditions that buff your own ship performance within your borders.
"Controlling a planet does not just introduce the possibility that you could lose it. It begins the countdown."
-Mon Mothma, Chief of State, New Republic
"Every bunker on a world winds back the clock."
-Alliance Defence Forces, probably
"Every bunker on a world turn the clock forward for it´s destruction."
-Imperial Death Trooper Division
@@deathtrooper7760 "Every innocent life you take is three more recruits for the Rebellion. I'd explain why, but my stay in this cell will be ending... right now."
-last interrogation log of Prisoner 889345-A "Ara Blade", Rebel Infiltrator
This was informative. So now stacking fortresses on my fortress worlds no longer work; this means decentralization is the way to go, plus the importance of a large fleet... and recruiting assault armies for extra strength.
So the real question is: what’s the cheapest most efficient assault army? Clones? Zombies? Genetically engineered soldiers? Things to pursue
@@TheNaturalnuke perhaps whichever is the strongest you have.
No longer works??
@@TheNaturalnuke Very situational.
Do you go for raw power for the best chance of repelling enemies, or less raw damage to reduce collateral damage to your world?
Do you use morale breaking tactics for an easy low-collateral win, or morale resistant / immune armies if that's the enemy's plan?
Do you use expensive units that cause high war exhaustion when killed, or spammable fodder to slow enemies down for cheap?
We need like orbital turrets on planets to shoot those suckers down. This also then prevents the 1 ship bombard strategy so you will need to commit a fleet to this. And prob strong ones like battleships
I love every video, but guides are really appreciated Montu!
I’m playing as UNE, it’s year 57 and I’m already hopelessly far ahead of everyone else in like everything. I’ve bought the friendship of all the other egal empires by advancing their tech and selling them minor relics, minerals and volatile motes, uplifted like a million pre-sapient species to the point that I don’t even need to terraform anymore (of which many were de-evolved in some ancient colossus war so I had to cure many races of that trait too lol) and I’ve got hull regen, ancient shields, ancient swarmer missiles, ancient lasers, mining beams and flagella cruisers. The precursor tech has really paid off, I just ”liberated” a xenophobe megacorp’s frontier sector in its entirety using only 3 naval fleets and 2 transport fleets, all without losing even *one* ship because of how quickly the flagella and precursor stuff chewed up all their fleets and starbases (and because they hadn’t researched cruisers yet). They were so terrified that they folded in just 4 years.
To be fair, Cadia(the planet, not the guard) only fell once Chaos got bored and cracked the planet. No defense will hold forever.
Planet cracker go brrrrr
"Abbadon had a temper tantrum, went "FUCK YOU, I HAVE A BLACKSTONE FORTRESS!" and fucking YOTE that bitch into the planet"
Cadia never fell.
Cadia stands.
Chaos didn't get *bored*
Abbadon just got desperate...
And if Horus was alive at the time he would have his head for using a black fortress like that😂
Pretty sure that Overwhelming Force from Supremacy tradition(which picked by almost everyone), kinda counters this 98% bombardment damage reduction
also there is an utility component for that and juggernaut aura(which everyone usually call useless)
except if this isn't combined with subterranian origin
I believe that that only affects the amount of ships you need to reach the max amount of bombardment. I might be wrong though
looks like standard +- damage modificator, -100%+20%=-80%, not 100% sure though@@art-games6230
My playing style [with the mountain of mods i have] mean fortress worlds never really end up enticing the enemy into attacking me. Despite this, I have had games where I've buily fortress *systems.* Completely decked out with mutliple mod-based habitats and asteroid habitations, defense systems dug into the very crust of the planets themselves, and planetary shields that make bombing essentially useless.
My goal is always to create a system I can fall back to. A system where, even if the ENTIRE rest of the empire cannot fend off an attack, these five or so planets can.
With fun planetary modifiers and relics to create even stronger armies and ancient shields, there's basically no way in hell any AI would field the resources to strike through. It's so fun.
gigastructers up in the l-gate cluster
@@deathtrooper7760 I can't really get gigastrictures or L-gates, since I only have the federations DLC.
However, some of my mods give me megastructures that are, for all intents and purposes, gigastrictures
Me and my friend went on a total war against a spiritualist fallen empire. Their fleet was away while they were fighting somebody else so we managed to capture a few systems. They of course took them back, but we had the planets captured and we really did embrace our Cadian heritage. They bombed their own capital from orbit. We went through like 10 admirals and 1000s worth of ground armies. In the end they recaptured it, but they were left with 3 populations left on the planet. Gotta say it was fun, but probably not for the planet's citizens
I'm both grateful for, and frustrated by, these tips. I don't think I would of ever figured out any of that stuff on my own. Just having to know the per-requisite research for these things and that planetary ftl inhibitors stopped functioning when the planet goes below 50% bombardment damage were things that I've never seen documented down anywhere.
Ah, was wondering how new habitats stood up in a lot of ways, this being one of them. Glad to know they're still a great way to turn an otherwise empty but chokepoint potential system into something hardened.
Glad to know my Terran Federation (a la Starship Troopers) are playing correctly. The first two buildings I always place on a planet is a Stronghold and a Holotheater
In one of my games, I got lucky. 7 habital worls in one system. Ended up being invaded but never lost that system. During the mid game ended up becoming a 1 system game. Where i used orbital rings to make each world defendable and made it impossible to invade!
I remember years ago when we still had 3 forms of FTL transportation, me and a buddy were in a coop game. We just won a war and my buddy annexed some distant land in the south eastern quadrant. Few years later the scourge arrive. Buddy starts producing nothing but armies on one of the capital planets he annexed. 10 years later we start to push back the scourge and reclaim some territory. I Inspect some upcoming systems are realize none of them have been eaten by the scourge. Eventually I find it, the ultimate fortress world with unlimited soldiers, single handedly holding up the entire scourge invasion force
I would like to see the addition of surface to orbital cannons which could deal with small fleets, feels cheesy that one or two corvettes would be enough to efficiently blockade an advanced society
In my last game I built a fortress system and it's the only way my empire survived. Both the Prethoryn Scourge and the War in Heaven triggered but because I had nearly 300,000 power in starbases/orbital rings, a fortress habitat and a fortress world (with about 25,000 power in defense armies) my empire endured long enough to evacuate to the L-Cluster. I rushed a ring world and saved my empire from utter annihilation. That game was absolutely nuts.
Every time i watch your content, i load up Stellaris again 🙂
The Colossus Project is a must have for any late game Stellaris Empire.
I really enjoyed using the Forced Devolution Beam on worlds. I imagine the last three pops spared on a planet of 800 billion pre-sapients will have a very hard time of it.
To quote Rogal Dorn: The best offense is a good defense.
Fortresses only planet actually helped me manage all the prisoners I've got by conquering the universe as a perfect robotic intelligence. 200 pop on a single planet is quite an experience
Sadly enemy empire took it back briefly and fred all the prisoners. I lost a lot of eneergy credits that day, damn
This didn't really make me more optimistic about my defensive prospects, lol.
There is always the memorialist civic on your next run!
Unyielding is such a powerfull tradition.
Yes, its a defencive one, while Supremacy is offencive, and thus effective both on offence and defence.
But unyielding is so strong on the defence and economy, providing both more and cheaper starbases early on and attritioning any invader due to cheaper starbases and home territory buffs, I go for it nearly always.
This is why I skip land wars, and just go straight to cracking.
That's why I have Gigastructural Engineering and build Maginot Worlds.
I mostly play my hydrocentric empire and use the colossus to turn enemy planets into ocean world that I can inhabit after the war. Much more elegant than cracking the planet and making it useless forever.
Imagine being such a noob you massacre innocents smh
@@rizkiramadhan9266The naivete to think filthy xenos could be innocent. Having their planet cracked is the most humane way of dealing with them. The rest go to the processing plants where they can attone for their transgressions on the supermarket shelves.
@@rizkiramadhan9266Imagine being such a noob you don't.
Using mercenary armies and then staging them at your fortress world it's a good way to buff them up.
taking origin where your people live underground makes you immune to orbital atm, at least to pops and with the shield you armies should replenish.
Fun fact: Fortresses provide FTL Inhibition even when disabled, so you can build a fortress, disable it to remove the motes upkeep, and then build strongholds for defense armies.
Everyday is a learning day in stelly
lol. this video taught me that collateral damage is good. ive been thinking it was talking about friendly casualties this entire time and have avoided armies and traits with it. now it’s all I’m ever going to use lol. thanks
It makes worlds way easier to capture but also makes repopulating and rebuilding them afterwards an huge pain (especially larger worlds with lots of pops and infrastructure).
Both strategies have merit: Either make the capture process easier and way more likely to succeed, or go the hard route and have a good or at least decent world ready to work almost immediately after its capture.
basically, and this is an important lesson that applies in real war too: don't think of fortified positions as impregnable. Don't try to defend your empire by building fortress worlds on your border and hope that will stop the enemy. No, fortresses are used in two ways:
1) to funnel the enemy into a different position. If you got two borders with an enemy, you reinforce one, and put your fleet on the other. The enemy will realize it's a bad idea to attack the fortress world, and go for your fleet instead, allowing you to know where they will attack.
2) and this is the reason why 1 works, use it to boggle the enemy down. If they attack your fortress world, their fleet will be stuck there for years, decades even. This will allow you on the meantime to either rebuild your fleet if it was sunk, or even better, just go into your enemy's empire. Yes, the fortress world will fall eventually, but by the time it does, you should have conquered most of your enemy's empire in return.
The reality is, the best defense is a good offense, and in the end, you need a fleet to win, like it or not. But the strong defenses allow you to funnel the enemy into your fleet, or to boggle them down so your fleet has free reign to invade your enemies.
finally the good space game
but this is not Mass Effect Andromeda
@@yb1149 Your ability to point out the obvious is inspiring
So layered in depth, Several of these Fortress Habitats when possible for the most fun whilst keeping your pants on
Honestly I depend on my fleets to do the heavy lifting defensive wise, i usually have 12 fleets ea at 100k power just for defensive purposes 6 battleship fleets and 6 corvette fleets the enemy does not last long in my territory and I’d rather use my worlds for production purposes
I don't know anything about Warhammer, but dang that's a cool quote. Reminds me of the quote from either Claude-Étienne Michel or Pierre Cambronne at Waterloo: "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!"
4:01 I never noticed that UA-camrs could set up ques to light up the like button like that. Really threw me off for a second there.
That's not me. I think UA-cam added a feature where it recognises when a UA-cam video mentions the like button, then lights it up! But honestly I don't know
I feel fortresses should also give bonuses to battle.
Important question for when you're trying to quickly garrison a colony before an invasion:
From my observations it seems that soldier jobs take some time before they actually create a defense army, so what are the actual triggers for them to spawn? Time based? Enemy proximity?
Might refresh on the turn of the month.
As mentioned I think its turn of the month, may be a specific amount of time as well.
Basically fortresses are just speedbumps, but a speedbump that can blunt a spearhead from steamrolling.
This is why I personally like using many micro fleets with large or X cannons in guerilla like warfare. I can hit an enemy everywhere. (though this was long ago, so don't know how new updates changed FTL travel.)
They are so useful. Also at anything later than like early midgame, Starbase are really only useful as rally points to stack your fleets on to slightly bolster their power
THE PLANET BROKE BEFORE THE GUARD DID!!!!!
So, ultimatly, you still need to win the war fleet vs fleet.
However, fortress worlds, or just fortress buildings, buy you A Lot of time and give you more ability to choose engagements.
I see your fortress world and raise you the Galaxy's largest Super Soaker.
*violently rinses away your defenses with a Deluge Machine*
The Cadian 412th have faced doom before and we bested it then and we will best it today. Men! Now is the hour of your calling, this is the reason you are alive, The Emperor needs you, I need you!
To bad planets can't be equipped with warhammer 40K surface to space emplacements to make bombing or cracking a planet risky business as the cannon's/missiles would pick off ships rapidly to begin with but slow down as devastation goes up meaning more of them were destroyed as time went on.
I wish they had some type of orbital cannons or platforms.
Making them a primary defense against space craft
how to defeat a colossus death beam: make a giant mirror
"The planet broke before the guard", CADIA STANDS!!!!
When your planet is so well protected that we train the army faster then they are lost
The best defence is a good offence ^^
2:47 (Ascension Perk = Never Surrender) to help with Fortress Worlds
a cadia a game keeps the pain away.
literally built a cadia in every stellaris game for years.
it's reminiscent of my 8k atk army battle on enemy fortress planet. It took three months to bring it down with countless casualties. And more surprisingly, the opponent has 3 f@cking planets like this ☠️
If you could build a planetary fortress and then customize its defenses like add ground to orbit missiles and lasers and such
Whilst talking Assault Armies, I was wondering. Is there any reason to use mixed armies or should you just go for the strongest you can recruit?
Your two main goals in ground combat is killing the enemy and breaking morale. In the early-mid game, most armies provide moderate stats for both. In the late game, you tend to have a single army type competent at both
One thing I would be considering is the time it takes to make them. Ideally you go for the strongest, but there will be times where you need an immediate army. Which is why clones are great. Typically though, build the strongest armies you can during peace time and clones during war time unless you have time.
I use mixed armies because I’m always a xénophile and you can only recruit a limited number of armies of each species.
But you can’t control who goes to the front first, so if you have a cunning plan of mixing different strengths and having then complement each other somehow, RNG will screw you up. (And there’s isn’t much of a way for units to complement each other anyway, ground combat is too simplistic.)
Sorta but not really. Also depends on what you mean "strongest".
TL;DR: Army types just encourage flavor imo, due to the simplicity of land warfare all that matters is how fast you want to conquer a system and move on.
Any army type will do if you have enough for the situation you need them for.
For example, compared to regular assault armies:
-Slave armies cost 50% to build, have 66% build time, cost 50% upkeep, do 100% dmg, do 75% morale dmg, do 125% collateral dmg, have 100% health, have 75% morale and cost 50% war exhaustion when killed.
They trade slightly lower some stats for much cheaper costs, making 2 slave armies superior to 1 assault army effectiveness for the same cost/upkeep.
But they aren't readily available to all, you need to have an enslaved species in your empire to recruit these.
-Psionic armies cost 250% to build, have 133% build time, cost 250% upkeep, do 200% dmg, do 300% morale dmg, do 50% collateral dmg, have 350% health, have 500% morale and cost 300% war exhaustion when killed.
They trade much higher costs for even higher stats, in terms of raw damage they may not compare to 3 assault armies but their health surpasses 3 and their morale damage is on par with 5 assault armies. Meaning they absolutely demolish routable armies relative to their costs, especially slave armies but will perform slightly worse for their costs against unroutable armies.
They are also even more exclusive than slave armies because they require an entire ascension perk to unlock.
-Robotic armies cost 150% to build, have 100% build time, cost 150% upkeep, do 100% damage, do 100% morale dmg, do 150% collateral dmg, have 200% health, cannot rout, cost 50% war exhaustion when killed.
They trade higher costs for higher stats and immunity to routing. Less raw damage but more health relative to their costs combined with being immune to routing means they will out DPS other armies per individual army, making them well worth the costs.
They are slightly more exclusive than slave armies but less so than psionics, because you can't build more of them than you have pops and they "grow" much slower than organic pops but do not require an ascension perk or specific ethics (even spiritualists _can_ use them if they _want_ to).
In summary all this comes down to is incentivizing certain flavors of empires to build certain types of armies that thematically fit with them:
A technocracy (bonus points for mechanist origin) will be able to build a larger population of robot pops faster which enables them to field appropriately sized robotic only armies, which feeds in to the whole techno vibe.
A biologically ascended empire will be able to field the most elite armies (space marines!) of biologically perfected warriors, which feeds in to the genetic mastery vibe.
And if you're feeling particularly vengeful you can unleash a horde of literal xenomorphs on enemy planets to give a satisfying feeling of "f*ck you" to the enemy.
In practice it doesn't really matter though, you can rock nothing but regular assault armies well in to the late game. The perceived loss in cost efficiency is entirely negated by building 1 or 2 generator/mining districts across your empire, aka its negligible in the grand scheme of things.
I think planetary anti orbital weapons would go far in making Armies more essential
meanwhile me a determined exterminator with a colossos with a world cracker: Huh there is nothing defending the border but a single planet, ow well *blows up planet*
Lithoids with resilent, noxious, citizen service and underground origin
Subterranean lithoid reanimators with unyielding gang RISE UP
Automatic like for the 40k quote
CADIA STANDS!!!!!!!!!
This is why I love armageddon bombardement
Me with Gigastructural Mod:
MAGINOT WORLD YOU SAY MAH BRO?
I once played a Progenitor Hive so the progenitor upgraded all the Defencive Armies. My super heavy defended World was captured incredible fast. The progenitor pop was killed and all the upgraded Defencive Armies despawned. Never played that Origin again...
That intro is underrated lol
My inner death korps of kreig will make note and take to heart
idk I really hope they rework ground combat in this game after playing something like Endless Space 2 and other 4x games this is the one area that needs some love in Stellaris not asking for like Warhammer 40k Dawn of War RTS stuff. I really like the options you have in something like Endless Space 2.
Oh no, now I have to actually use them
It would be nice if defensive generals had the same mechanics as assaulting ones. I’ve found defensive generals are a waste of time since they tend to die as soon as a single army folds rather than the whole assault like an attacking general. Really good way to waste your experienced generals and ensure that the mechanic is never used
personaly iv found starbases as the main border protection if youv the economy
I love fortress worlds and habitats. Having a road block on my borders with about 4k+ soldiers and a shield generator amuses me. Until they bring out a collosus that is.
I wish there were planet to space artillery defenses though. That's something you see a lot of in sci-fi that is missing in stellaris.
most faction don't overwhelm you with fleets and if your can have a fleet there reinforcing the star base 9 times out of 10 they cant beat you unless they outnumber by a insane amount
The army tip is overpowered if you’re a robot empire with battle frame armies
Everybody gangsta until the bot starts using kidnapping instead of normal bombardment. Why take the fortress when you can steal all the pops producing soldiers?
I only bother with planets that the auto engage will fight. Unless the planet has ftl inhibt prevent reinforcement.
Fortress worlds are far more effective against the AI during the mid game when it starts forming federations around you or rivals gang up on you if you decided to sit and build tall rather than endlessly expand. However, by the time of the crisis events you need to be ready. Stations may be pointless against the AI since the AI will and does death stack it's fleets, it is however useful against crisis enemies as they have powerful tiny fleets (awakened ancients) or powerful singular roaming fleets that split in all directions (invaders/horde). In previous years building up a station was enough to deter the AI, but that is no longer the case, if the AI rivals or surrounding empires decide to gang up on you, doesn't matter how powerful your fleet is, or how strong your stations are, it will attack based purely on calculating your response time. So, having a Fortress world is enough to hold them down till all your fleets can go for their death stacks if they decide to be sneaky with their fleet movements or gang up on you 2+v1.
98%.....before that NPC fleet starts dropping trash on you
Genetically tailoring a sub-species of soldiers can also be quite useful. Genetically tailored species turned into gene warriors can get over 200 power each if I remember right.
Well i remember how many fortress habitats ida e build tô get 8000 fleet cap, 38 worlds (6 resources world, the rest was Just fortress habitats) was my first 25x crises run
Two words: Maginot Worlds.
Digital Machine Empire has entered the chat.