Same for me when I started playing. Especially in multiplayer. After a while, if you keep playing, you will find a good balance between a standing fleet and going into tech. If you know your neighbour is building a giant fleet, especially in the early game, just fortify any neighbouring systems. Its okay to have a smaller fleet as long as their power doesnt get "overwhelming". As long as its just "superior" its still manageable with a good defense. Start building a giant fleet once war is actually declared. This will also safe you the struggle and pain that is upgrading your ships with your far ahead technology. Easy way to survive early game, and once midgame hits you will become a massive snowball. Especially when people start to underestimate you, but that usually doesnt happen if youre playing with good players.
Not really. At least no more than smashing bugs is fighting. The only real fight he talks about is once you've worn them down and take on their main fleet.
Justin Thompson my point is don’t label your video as “no fighting” when you’re clearly fighting. If this video achieved this through economics alone then the title would be fine.
Suprisingly there is a good reason for going purifier now; having your own internal market that cant be pricebombed by others... Damn now I want internal market into an optional decision available to all xenophobes, giving them the ability to choose between trusting xenos markets or no.... :D
Playing fanatical purifier will not be affected by the pricebombing tactic however the strategy of denying the enemy their own production would be effective against most empires except large and decentralized empires where significant portions of the empire will have to be conquered before affects are felt. In fact a FP might be more susceptible to this strategy as they cannot access the galactic market even if the prices are sky high it can be better than nothing, also they cannot trade directly between empires. They do get bonuses to army and navy firepower so it might be more difficult to pull off against a FP
every purifier campaign needs to be hot from the get go. Spam science ships, rush automatic exploration, send 7-10 science ships out to auto explore and locate all of the nearest empires. Then build up two 2k fleets and take down all your neighbors one at a time. Once you clear out 3 other empires near you, you basically have a fourth of the galaxy open for resource exploitation, and none of the further empires will be able to reach those systems quickly enough to keep you from expanding. It's actually a lot of fun lmao
this isnt tactical warfare its strategic. Tactical would be "on the battlefield". Strategic is "the entire war/front in full picture, including economic/societal concerns"
Reminds me of the pre 2.0 days and warp drives/wormholes. I used to keep a small fleet of corvettes to raid the enemy energy mines and only the energy mines. It was a lot of micro but the end result is worth it.
As a former intel analyst in the USAF tactical warfare typically means short term ad hoc time critical, where strategic is long term warfare like economic or strategic missiles. Good video!
One thing I've done in the past is during a war while your holding systems the enemy owns, is to scrap/destroy all mining and research stations in the systems you don't have claimed especially strategic resources, so when the war ends and those systems return to the owner they will not be getting any resources from them and will have to spend more time and resources to rebuild those stations. Unless the empire is incredibly wide this probably wont completely cripple their economy post-war but it will keep them busy and lacking resources for quite a while. One downside this could have is that the empire won't have to continue paying the upkeep cost for the stations and might have an excess energy credit production if they weren't relying on energy mining stations, however only destroying energy mining stations alone could harm their economy in the short term if they were relying on them to offset/pay for most of the other station upkeep costs.
Well if your only ethic is fanatical xenophile, you won't have much ideological differences with everyone (ah, yes, i forgot the xenophobes, they can be befriended like every other empire), except of course Driven Assimilator, Fanatical Purifiers, Devoring Swarms and Determined Exterminator, but these will always be a problem.
suming up the video in 2 min : if you can counter the enemy fleet , if your enemy needs a resource higher the market price of sed resource ( personely don't recomend it ), if your enemy's fleet is bigger just go around it with yours + enought transport to take planets.
if you know where there traderoutes run you can also go and take a system which has a lot of tradevalue running through if you can`t get to the capital.
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. -sun tzu
My favorite tactic is the pop bomb. Requires you to have vandalized and integrated an empire already, but once you do, you resettle all unwanted pops to a single planet on the borders of you future war target. Then you give em the system. A single over populated planet wrecks havoc on just about any empire, bonus points if the planet is undeveloped or demolished to outpost state. I used this in my last playthrough to cripple the economic powerhouse empire of a rival alliance. Good times
Defensive armies would of helped more than defensive stations. It would slow your invasions significantly and possibly long enough for a relief force to come help.
Unless you have a dedicatied fortress world, invasion armies are always really, REALLY bigger than the defensive armies. At the same time, I lile the idea of building a lot of bastions on your frontline planets just to dig in and slow down the hostiles with FTL inhibitors. The only way to break a world lile that, if you don't have like 20 Mega Warforms, is to use orbital bombardement. You can counter that with a planatary shield generator, which I would likely have since I put one of every type of building that gives bonus planatary armies (such as the militart academy, the bastions and the planatary shields). Having these shields will give you MONTHS to react and assemble a task force to liberate your world from the orbiting fleet.
Nihalistic Aquisition is good for this, or BarBars. Since Pops are so important, raid pops. I tend to play tall. One of my fav runs was BarBars going into Synth Ascension. Raid, Grab, Assimilate. Especially specialized worlds, like Ecus or Generator planets. Havent done it with Gestalts, tho.
Haven't thought about that. I'm gonna start a new game later as assimilators and try to get that perk early on. Everyone will be spawning pops for me to abduct. :D
fighting an enemy on a tactical level means fighting and reacting on or near the actual battlefield (the induvidual squadrons/ships decisions in actual combat), this is not actually possible in Stellaris seeing as the tactical decisions happens automatically and is controlled by the AI when two fleets engage in combat, the operational level is your decision as a player to engage the enemy in that system or with this or that type of fleet based on the number of hostile ships or the quality of said ships, the strategic level is your decision to attack a certain system based on its production, its value to the enemy war-effort or its strategic position as a system junction. The type of warfare you are talking about is strategic, Im making a decision to avoid confrontation with your forces to strike at you where you are the weakest, your logistics and your production and at the same time destroying your ability to obtain resources by controlling the market. Fighting a war like this in any paradox game is very hard to pull off but its scary when seen in action.
Due to the limited options in the game, I do agree that this is an example of a Fabian Strategy. Then again, due to the context of the game, this could be referred to as the tactical option.
Well 'tactical' is based on context. The smallest scale at which you can micro is manually moving fleets around to specific planets and hitting specific targets, while positioning armies in specific places. That would therefore be the tactical layer of the game. Strategy would be the larger overall battleplans on the galaxy map, for example "we're going to attack this empire from the right and draw their forces to us, then you hit the left"
Nice Vid. I am currently playing as a Mercantile Oligarchy to have a large sprawling trade empire. My goal is to get commercial pacts with every possible group and make them all economically dependent on me. This warfare style is very suited to my empire.
Wow this makes a very good sci-fi. Out world is attacked by stronger aliens. One genius commander is sending a special force to take over their homeworld discreetly to win the war.
This sort of thing only really works if you have jump drives though. That or a back door route into their space. If you didn't have jump drives you would have just needed to push through the bottle neck where their main fleet is. Back before 2.0 when they made hyperlanes the only FTL system I use to use these sort of strategies a lot. Hypergates or warp drive behind enemy lines and capture a few planets then run from their slow moving fleet. Back when everyone else was whiny about Stacks of Doom I was laughing at the fools as I run circles around their stacks which they no longer could afford to maintain. After all a stack of doom can't be in two places at once and I'd have my fleet hitting to locations of theirs. The common argument I'd hear against this was "Yeah but your leaving your planets defenseless." To which I would respond, "One that's what defense armies are for. And Two I got two fleets to their one and thus can capture twice as many systems for every one I lose." In stellaris wars maybe fought in space but they are won on the ground. And if you have more troops than they enemy and can get them into position you win the war. Space battles are just for clearing the path for those troops.
I just realized that the market I had used so far kept adjusting the prices because other empires kept buying and selling too. So, that was a shared market all along?! The possibilities! And here I thought that was my personal market or something. :D
I'll sound like a contrarian here, but oh, well. I like much of your stuff, Aspec, and you generally have an insightful play style. When you say economic warfare, however, that's not technically what this is: during WW1, the Brits blockaded the German ports in an effort to strangle their economic capacity and overall strategic ability to wage war; here, you're more directly attacking enemy positions, which is not the same as what the Brits did in WW1. Yes, you're still chipping away at their economy (which I do myself and is very effective), but you're not so much conducting economic warfare. Not your fault, either: Stellaris doesn't allow for this type of indirect conflict management. Making and breaking alliances, on the other hand, is present and quite effective at ending conflicts before they really start.
@@gilgamesh4869 Yeah, what was that cheating all about? He also lectured us about quality being more important than quantity - then he neutralized their qualitative advantage with a cheat and spammed them with numbers!
I think that the game situation given in the video was a bad decision. I think it would be much clearer to show the effect of this strategy in the early game against a bigger empire than in the end game when everyone has spare energy and spare alloys.
Is there anyway to "uplift" a vassal/federation ally's economy so that they're more useful in warfare? After taking them to war to subjugate or impose ideology they just don't seem to come back. I've tried the feudal societies civ, research agreements, as well as gifting various resources with mixed results. My original strategy was to keep my core empire just under the sprawl cap and create buffer states.
Isn't there a pretty substantial penalty to jumping until it recharges the jump drive? During which point your fleets can be annihalated if properly engaged? I mean yea this works here but if they had a home defense fleet or even if their home systems were slightly more fortified you've halved your damage output and your speed not including the economic strain of massing a sufficient army to completly overwhelm planetary defenders along with multiple fleets.
I have already won a couple of games with flexible fleets.Never thought about the use of Corvetteswarms.And the use of the jumpdrive like that is an interesting tactic aginst other Empires.I only used it against the rapid response to endgame crisis where time is at the essence.I can actually not really remember a game where there had been any conventional enemys left when I had eqipped my fleets with jump drives.But well all in all that is a very smart strategy to counter enemys with stronger fleets.
A part of me feelz like people say "armies are not good and you shouldn't build them untill you need them" is something people say so they can catch others unprepared to deal with this exact tactic.
I'm yet to try a "no-jumpdrive" challenge playthrough, maybe it will even make something else spawn than the unbidden^^ what I often do with the amount of different fronts that I have is Cruiser-commandos to saturate all the fronts and go for maximum occupation even against superior stations. I use the jump drive almost exclusively in defense. Oh and branch office heavy, tall megacorps might actually counter this issue of tall empires... hmm
Yeah this is cool and all, but.... 200 corvettes in ONE FLEET?!?! I’m just gonna sit over in the corner and be barely able to beat the AI with my 40k fleets at year 200...
At least you've got 40k, at year 200 I had a fleet of 10k at max fleet capacity. T.T Probably because I turned research and unity costs to 5 times the normal and 100% empire sprawl locked me in stone age. :D
There was a game that ame out in 1999-2000, Imperium Galactica 2. It was unbeatable in conventional way coz AI was a huge cheater. Almost all campains that ive played, no metter the strategem, i was allways dwarfed by invading fleet. This strategy was the only one that i could use against them. Invaders had like 300% racial bonus to production +150-250 planetary bonus vs mine max 250% on particular planets. Ended up building shitload of ground forces and loaded them into stealthy crusers specifically outfitted for ground support. Had three fleets - one huge one as distraction, second for moping up ground forces of captured planets and one for culling reinforcments. They ended up with no planets, no ground forces and one huge usless space fleet.
is the jump drive still in the latest version of the game? currently in the endgame crisis and i didnt know of the possibility to jump anywhere else than what the hyperlane dictates (except for wormholes, gateways and that conceptual drive my science ships have that makes the MIA for years). I could imagine tha ability to jump basically anywhere on the map got cut out for balancing reasons...
Trying this with an ally. Im using my fleets, and decoyrvettes, to destroy their mining and research stations and starbases & defenses, while my ally bombards planets, and my troop ships follow tgem around and invade accordingly. We have captured 5 20+Tile planets so far. But the enemy still has several more. It's only a matter of time before tgeir economt collapses. When that happens, will their main fleet be immobilized?
I’m confused which guns and technology counter other technology... can someone tell me where to find a video or website or tell me in the comments? Thx
OK, expected tactic - just like in starcraft 2, the more you go behind enemy lines and poke the economy the better. Now I got a different question - how to defend from such a strike? In theory as an attacker with jump drive you could for example check out how many planets the enemy has and do a bomb rush to steal all planets the enemy has to end it within like what 2 months? There are no anti - jump technologies where you can catch an enemy into a trap. There literally is no geographic tactics on a flat open surface, there are no advantages on flanking an enemy where lets say 3 fleets of 10k can outgun one death ball of 60k. It only comes down to the ship setup. There are no "terrain" tactics, no high ground, no asteroid belts that for example cripple corvettes or something that cripples battleships or a specific weapon (yes there is a star that dumps your shields, but that is it). This game does not really have a lot on actual field tactics like choke points, high ground or terrain bonuses or hendicaps like nebulas.
1. The counter is a jump drive. If you are gonna attack someone who is higher tech, you better make sure you know what you are doing. 2. Don't relay on the market. Use it for selling stuff, and early game buying the things you need to keep your economy from imploding, maybe keep food or just one resource depend on market, but not multiple. 3. Defend your most important production worlds. I always go 2 fortress and 1 shield on my most important planets. 3 building slots is worth having defenses, than to loose it all. 4. Don't focus on one thing only for your ships vs human player (some AI with mods also know how to counter you). For example, I always use 3 shields 3 armor on my battleships, this way, there is no real counter to them, you're forcing the enemy to also go jack of all trade. Unless you know an attack is coming, and you scouted the enemy and know how to counter them and upgrade in time. But I always stick to jack of all trades, half shield, half armor. Also, never go to war as aggressor if your enemy is much more higher in tech (this vid, the enemy had tier 3 hyper lane, not even tier 4), even if you outnumber him.
cole Not e every one is using it, and its not that effective to corvets. As I said, scouting is more important than many think it would in stellaris, its important to keep a eye out on might be enemy tech and fleet, as well as trying to keep yours hidden. Early its easy, late game well, nebulas are your best friend if the enemy doesn’t have the sentry array.
It is important that the advantage of jump drives is neutralized if the defender also has a jump drive. They are always supposed to act as one of the dealbreakers of going tech heavy compared to just going as wide as you can. Checkpoints, especially fortress worlds, can be massive to fight off fallen empires early, before you even have the means of taking their armies on. You just keep them bottled in a seige they will not win, so they keep bombing the planet. In the meantime you use your fleet to slowly carve into their fleet, as you can create new ships, and they cannot. At some point you will have crippled their fleets enough to win and this is where you can go on to capture all their shiny shit. Just make sure to have a strong economy and a lot of shipyards as you will want to shit out as many ships as you can.
in general jump drives are pretty stupid and are why tech rushes are borderline broken. makes choke points and the like pretty much obsolete once their out. basicly instead of focusing defenses on the choke point you have to decentralize your defenses to the planets. that means building up big defense armies to counter the big offense armies which while isn't very flashy it's basicly your best shot at countering this rush since your opponent main goal is just to quickly scoop up as many planets as he can and cripple you while your scrambling to get your economy into order before you lose. this situation is the one time where the "resilient" species trait actually is usefull.
Ok but what to do at the first 20 years when there is no jumpdrive but a neighbour that hates me? Trying hit and run behind the lines with corvettes too?
Corvette spam is weird but I can't deny the efficacy. I still like my main Naval force having a reasonable mix, but the Corvette fleets always overperform.
nice strategy but does it really work? usually ais in strategy games don’t give a damn about any resources or building times or any of this. usually they are coded differently for balancing reasons... i have never played a strategy game where destroying the ais economy really matterd. if this works it would be a first. :) and kudos to the creators!
hmm.. in the end it sounds easily... but how do u defend this kind of warfare ? for the crash on the Alloays someone could argue that u can re-shape your planets to produce more Alloys instead of Strategic ressourses. how would u defend against it if u face such strategy against yourself? it has to be countermeasures against it.
Espionage mechanic that allows at least an approximated view of the enemy's resource production sounds great too. Would make it easier to trade and to pick targets for a war. :)
the concept of fighting where their strength is not & using mobility to do so doesn't completely require jump- jump just really helps with it ^^ look at your enemy: decide where your hits will hurt most; find a way to hit there :)
To be fair i didnt buy it for war. I bought it for RP. Last 3 games ive played ive played as a Democracy focusing more on peaceful trade and diplomacy and federating. After a while i just use impose idealogy on all the inferior/pathetic empires[i focus on tech above all else]
I want to ask this because I don't know if anyone else has had this issue, but does it seem like Admirals always seem to die before they get to high ranks? Because I don't know why but I almost never have an Admiral over level two after the last update even with the trait. Just wondering.
They are getting exp way slower.Only reliable way I know is having a massive battle,that is not skewed too much in your favor(60-40),have massive losses and either win a pyrrhic victory or have w valiant defeat(that does not destroy your admiral's ship).Only then can you level him reliably
My Stellaris games usually go like this:
- *goes all out tech in early game*
- *gets massive score lead*
- *gets steamrolled because he has no fleet*
are you me? so many games.....
same lol
Same for me when I started playing. Especially in multiplayer. After a while, if you keep playing, you will find a good balance between a standing fleet and going into tech. If you know your neighbour is building a giant fleet, especially in the early game, just fortify any neighbouring systems. Its okay to have a smaller fleet as long as their power doesnt get "overwhelming". As long as its just "superior" its still manageable with a good defense. Start building a giant fleet once war is actually declared. This will also safe you the struggle and pain that is upgrading your ships with your far ahead technology. Easy way to survive early game, and once midgame hits you will become a massive snowball. Especially when people start to underestimate you, but that usually doesnt happen if youre playing with good players.
I normally focus on tech and compensate for my lack of fleet with lot of bastions on my Empire's chokepoints
i usually tech up until repeatables then i convert to alloys and ignore tech.
>winning without fighting
Whole video is about fighting.
Not really. At least no more than smashing bugs is fighting.
The only real fight he talks about is once you've worn them down and take on their main fleet.
Justin Thompson please explain to me in what world taking out their home system isn’t considered fighting?
@@Mephil The point was he doesn't confront their main fleet until the end.
Justin Thompson my point is don’t label your video as “no fighting” when you’re clearly fighting. If this video achieved this through economics alone then the title would be fine.
Justin Thompson it even says “winning without fighting” - even fighting the main fleet at all is in violation of this statement.
Sure it matters whose got the biggest stick. Matters a lot more whose swinging it.
ayyy
Thats what she said
Just drop 350 avatars on top of them and force tidi job done ^_^
Ayt looks like someone knows stuff. Nice oneee
and where you hit 'em ^^
and if they see it coming :)
Suprisingly there is a good reason for going purifier now; having your own internal market that cant be pricebombed by others... Damn now I want internal market into an optional decision available to all xenophobes, giving them the ability to choose between trusting xenos markets or no.... :D
Playing fanatical purifier will not be affected by the pricebombing tactic however the strategy of denying the enemy their own production would be effective against most empires except large and decentralized empires where significant portions of the empire will have to be conquered before affects are felt. In fact a FP might be more susceptible to this strategy as they cannot access the galactic market even if the prices are sky high it can be better than nothing, also they cannot trade directly between empires. They do get bonuses to army and navy firepower so it might be more difficult to pull off against a FP
Brooklyn rage
every purifier campaign needs to be hot from the get go. Spam science ships, rush automatic exploration, send 7-10 science ships out to auto explore and locate all of the nearest empires. Then build up two 2k fleets and take down all your neighbors one at a time. Once you clear out 3 other empires near you, you basically have a fourth of the galaxy open for resource exploitation, and none of the further empires will be able to reach those systems quickly enough to keep you from expanding. It's actually a lot of fun lmao
Watching the dev clash with ASpec was incredibly entertaining
Their first mistake was giving me the most power empire in the game. :L
ASpec that was the worst mistake they could have made.... rip devs... LOL...
this isnt tactical warfare its strategic. Tactical would be "on the battlefield". Strategic is "the entire war/front in full picture, including economic/societal concerns"
I wanted to scream that from like the first min of the vide ;D
I mean he is like Russian right you can’t expect the world from him
KatKapsa shhhhhhhhhh you want to disrespect a Russian.... they have nukes😬😬
No. It is actually a tactical video. Strategy would be never to get into this war in the first place.
Piotr Morzydusza ok you are an absolute moron
"winning without fighting"
proceeds to fight the entire video
I mean he didn't he to clear out the whole path there just took out their money makers
Reminds me of the pre 2.0 days and warp drives/wormholes. I used to keep a small fleet of corvettes to raid the enemy energy mines and only the energy mines. It was a lot of micro but the end result is worth it.
Aspec
The art of needing ages to explain something.
Still great tactic though
As a former intel analyst in the USAF tactical warfare typically means short term ad hoc time critical, where strategic is long term warfare like economic or strategic missiles. Good video!
"When the Ruhr Valley stopped, all of Germany came to a stop"
Always love these discussions, new tactics and ways to play.
Did you just make a video gloating about how you corvette spamed the familly??
Yes, yes I did.
@@A_Spec you've con'd the cons ua-cam.com/video/f1N5lZw7e78/v-deo.html
One thing I've done in the past is during a war while your holding systems the enemy owns, is to scrap/destroy all mining and research stations in the systems you don't have claimed especially strategic resources, so when the war ends and those systems return to the owner they will not be getting any resources from them and will have to spend more time and resources to rebuild those stations. Unless the empire is incredibly wide this probably wont completely cripple their economy post-war but it will keep them busy and lacking resources for quite a while. One downside this could have is that the empire won't have to continue paying the upkeep cost for the stations and might have an excess energy credit production if they weren't relying on energy mining stations, however only destroying energy mining stations alone could harm their economy in the short term if they were relying on them to offset/pay for most of the other station upkeep costs.
nice
Nice
For a mad dictator, your thought process is quite calm.
I just make friends with everyone and let them fight it out while providing resource to everyone. I’m the enabler that helps everyone.
is it possible to be everyones friends? some of them seem to always hate me no matter what, do you just give them all your resources?
Well if your only ethic is fanatical xenophile, you won't have much ideological differences with everyone (ah, yes, i forgot the xenophobes, they can be befriended like every other empire), except of course Driven Assimilator, Fanatical Purifiers, Devoring Swarms and Determined Exterminator, but these will always be a problem.
suming up the video in 2 min :
if you can counter the enemy fleet ,
if your enemy needs a resource higher the market price of sed resource ( personely don't recomend it ),
if your enemy's fleet is bigger just go around it with yours + enought transport to take planets.
Yeah
grammar nazi in 3 2 1
summing, "if you can, counter", "resource, raise", said, personally, enough
@@sukul3889 thank you, I had no idea what he was saying
"The Contingency which isn't really causing any problems"
OOF! This Crisis got off-screened! XD
I must say, I expected something else from this video... But there was still tons of useful info in it ! THX
if you know where there traderoutes run you can also go and take a system which has a lot of tradevalue running through if you can`t get to the capital.
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not
supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in
breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
-sun tzu
1:44 subtitles on
Would love to hear more of your analysis on the dev game's tactics
My favorite tactic is the pop bomb. Requires you to have vandalized and integrated an empire already, but once you do, you resettle all unwanted pops to a single planet on the borders of you future war target. Then you give em the system. A single over populated planet wrecks havoc on just about any empire, bonus points if the planet is undeveloped or demolished to outpost state.
I used this in my last playthrough to cripple the economic powerhouse empire of a rival alliance. Good times
I didn't even feel bad about it either, jack holes caused the contingency... Weak saus crisis...
This is genius. Was it mp or sp?
Mp
Defensive armies would of helped more than defensive stations. It would slow your invasions significantly and possibly long enough for a relief force to come help.
Unless you have a dedicatied fortress world, invasion armies are always really, REALLY bigger than the defensive armies. At the same time, I lile the idea of building a lot of bastions on your frontline planets just to dig in and slow down the hostiles with FTL inhibitors. The only way to break a world lile that, if you don't have like 20 Mega Warforms, is to use orbital bombardement. You can counter that with a planatary shield generator, which I would likely have since I put one of every type of building that gives bonus planatary armies (such as the militart academy, the bastions and the planatary shields). Having these shields will give you MONTHS to react and assemble a task force to liberate your world from the orbiting fleet.
Nihalistic Aquisition is good for this, or BarBars. Since Pops are so important, raid pops. I tend to play tall. One of my fav runs was BarBars going into Synth Ascension. Raid, Grab, Assimilate. Especially specialized worlds, like Ecus or Generator planets.
Havent done it with Gestalts, tho.
Barbarians are terrible atm, no scaling.
Haven't thought about that. I'm gonna start a new game later as assimilators and try to get that perk early on. Everyone will be spawning pops for me to abduct. :D
fighting an enemy on a tactical level means fighting and reacting on or near the actual battlefield (the induvidual squadrons/ships decisions in actual combat), this is not actually possible in Stellaris seeing as the tactical decisions happens automatically and is controlled by the AI when two fleets engage in combat, the operational level is your decision as a player to engage the enemy in that system or with this or that type of fleet based on the number of hostile ships or the quality of said ships, the strategic level is your decision to attack a certain system based on its production, its value to the enemy war-effort or its strategic position as a system junction. The type of warfare you are talking about is strategic, Im making a decision to avoid confrontation with your forces to strike at you where you are the weakest, your logistics and your production and at the same time destroying your ability to obtain resources by controlling the market. Fighting a war like this in any paradox game is very hard to pull off but its scary when seen in action.
Due to the limited options in the game, I do agree that this is an example of a Fabian Strategy. Then again, due to the context of the game, this could be referred to as the tactical option.
Well 'tactical' is based on context. The smallest scale at which you can micro is manually moving fleets around to specific planets and hitting specific targets, while positioning armies in specific places. That would therefore be the tactical layer of the game. Strategy would be the larger overall battleplans on the galaxy map, for example "we're going to attack this empire from the right and draw their forces to us, then you hit the left"
I wish the market was more strategic tho instead of infinite amounts of everything selling and buying
You noticed my comments....yay! Here come the advanced strats~! Show us the magic Aspec!
Nice Vid. I am currently playing as a Mercantile Oligarchy to have a large sprawling trade empire. My goal is to get commercial pacts with every possible group and make them all economically dependent on me. This warfare style is very suited to my empire.
The whole time I was thinking “okay, I get it. Cool.”
But I got real excited when you trashed the galactic market!!!
Wow this makes a very good sci-fi. Out world is attacked by stronger aliens. One genius commander is sending a special force to take over their homeworld discreetly to win the war.
And then your enemy has lots of insanely powerful defensive armies, augmented with plenty of defensive assault armies... XD
@@StarboyXL9
Then you get the genocidal diplomatic de-buff and no one likes you any more...
@@PerfectAlibi1 Jokes on everyone, I'm already a xenophobic purifier, everyone already disliked me
@@LoLCTHSKateer
Playing a fanatic purifier is boring...
PerfectAlibi opinion
@@PerfectAlibi1
Alright, we've found the Xeno sympathizing traitor.
I often do this tactics with super carriers from the mod NSC2, works like a charm
This sort of thing only really works if you have jump drives though. That or a back door route into their space. If you didn't have jump drives you would have just needed to push through the bottle neck where their main fleet is.
Back before 2.0 when they made hyperlanes the only FTL system I use to use these sort of strategies a lot. Hypergates or warp drive behind enemy lines and capture a few planets then run from their slow moving fleet. Back when everyone else was whiny about Stacks of Doom I was laughing at the fools as I run circles around their stacks which they no longer could afford to maintain.
After all a stack of doom can't be in two places at once and I'd have my fleet hitting to locations of theirs. The common argument I'd hear against this was "Yeah but your leaving your planets defenseless." To which I would respond, "One that's what defense armies are for. And Two I got two fleets to their one and thus can capture twice as many systems for every one I lose."
In stellaris wars maybe fought in space but they are won on the ground. And if you have more troops than they enemy and can get them into position you win the war. Space battles are just for clearing the path for those troops.
I just realized that the market I had used so far kept adjusting the prices because other empires kept buying and selling too. So, that was a shared market all along?! The possibilities! And here I thought that was my personal market or something. :D
Ye, the galactic market is shared.
This will be useful for my no attacks run. I will not harm a SINGLE BEING
This has completely changed my outlook on war.
This is exactly the type of warfare I subscribe to.
Wow, this has been the earliest I've ever been for a aspec vid
Thank you Aspec! This is fun to do!
This was beautiful
I'll sound like a contrarian here, but oh, well. I like much of your stuff, Aspec, and you generally have an insightful play style. When you say economic warfare, however, that's not technically what this is: during WW1, the Brits blockaded the German ports in an effort to strangle their economic capacity and overall strategic ability to wage war; here, you're more directly attacking enemy positions, which is not the same as what the Brits did in WW1. Yes, you're still chipping away at their economy (which I do myself and is very effective), but you're not so much conducting economic warfare. Not your fault, either: Stellaris doesn't allow for this type of indirect conflict management.
Making and breaking alliances, on the other hand, is present and quite effective at ending conflicts before they really start.
it is strange that the game doesn't have a blockade feature, you would expect such a thing to exist in such a game
The "economic warfare" part of it is manipulating the market. Take away their money, inflate prices of strategic resources, win.
this has been my strategy since i first got the game. not that many corvettes but have always considered that as well.
just started playing stellaris a couple days ago. boy do I have a long ways to go lol.
Makes video to show off own intelligence and game knowledge >>> makes claims on the wrong empire.
Its Aspec he has no intelligence or game knowledge, the only game knowledge he has is the commands he uses in console to cheat.
@@gilgamesh4869 Yeah, what was that cheating all about? He also lectured us about quality being more important than quantity - then he neutralized their qualitative advantage with a cheat and spammed them with numbers!
@Gilgamesh He used observer mode to show us the enemy empire. He is doing a strategy video, not a playthrough...
I think that the game situation given in the video was a bad decision. I think it would be much clearer to show the effect of this strategy in the early game against a bigger empire than in the end game when everyone has spare energy and spare alloys.
Can be resumed by "Go for the Throat"
Smart tactics, i will employ some of these to my own game and see where it leads.
Is there anyway to "uplift" a vassal/federation ally's economy so that they're more useful in warfare? After taking them to war to subjugate or impose ideology they just don't seem to come back.
I've tried the feudal societies civ, research agreements, as well as gifting various resources with mixed results.
My original strategy was to keep my core empire just under the sprawl cap and create buffer states.
Set up monthly transfer of resources for 30 years?
Isn't there a pretty substantial penalty to jumping until it recharges the jump drive? During which point your fleets can be annihalated if properly engaged?
I mean yea this works here but if they had a home defense fleet or even if their home systems were slightly more fortified you've halved your damage output and your speed not including the economic strain of massing a sufficient army to completly overwhelm planetary defenders along with multiple fleets.
A huge fleet that could take over any fallen empire *vs* literally just going around it
I have already won a couple of games with flexible fleets.Never thought about the use of Corvetteswarms.And the use of the jumpdrive like that is an interesting tactic aginst other Empires.I only used it against the rapid response to endgame crisis where time is at the essence.I can actually not really remember a game where there had been any conventional enemys left when I had eqipped my fleets with jump drives.But well all in all that is a very smart strategy to counter enemys with stronger fleets.
A part of me feelz like people say "armies are not good and you shouldn't build them untill you need them" is something people say so they can catch others unprepared to deal with this exact tactic.
So Smart, that's make feel that's more intersting type of playing
I'm yet to try a "no-jumpdrive" challenge playthrough, maybe it will even make something else spawn than the unbidden^^ what I often do with the amount of different fronts that I have is Cruiser-commandos to saturate all the fronts and go for maximum occupation even against superior stations. I use the jump drive almost exclusively in defense.
Oh and branch office heavy, tall megacorps might actually counter this issue of tall empires... hmm
Yeah this is cool and all, but....
200 corvettes in ONE FLEET?!?!
I’m just gonna sit over in the corner and be barely able to beat the AI with my 40k fleets at year 200...
At least you've got 40k, at year 200 I had a fleet of 10k at max fleet capacity. T.T
Probably because I turned research and unity costs to 5 times the normal and 100% empire sprawl locked me in stone age. :D
There was a game that ame out in 1999-2000, Imperium Galactica 2. It was unbeatable in conventional way coz AI was a huge cheater. Almost all campains that ive played, no metter the strategem, i was allways dwarfed by invading fleet. This strategy was the only one that i could use against them. Invaders had like 300% racial bonus to production +150-250 planetary bonus vs mine max 250% on particular planets. Ended up building shitload of ground forces and loaded them into stealthy crusers specifically outfitted for ground support. Had three fleets - one huge one as distraction, second for moping up ground forces of captured planets and one for culling reinforcments. They ended up with no planets, no ground forces and one huge usless space fleet.
is the jump drive still in the latest version of the game? currently in the endgame crisis and i didnt know of the possibility to jump anywhere else than what the hyperlane dictates (except for wormholes, gateways and that conceptual drive my science ships have that makes the MIA for years). I could imagine tha ability to jump basically anywhere on the map got cut out for balancing reasons...
Trying this with an ally.
Im using my fleets, and decoyrvettes, to destroy their mining and research stations and starbases & defenses, while my ally bombards planets, and my troop ships follow tgem around and invade accordingly.
We have captured 5 20+Tile planets so far. But the enemy still has several more.
It's only a matter of time before tgeir economt collapses.
When that happens, will their main fleet be immobilized?
Can’t wait till the CE edition will be this far!!!
Wow, I'm clearly still very shit at this game.
i want to see that war from the families perspective
All hail Trevor!
I swear you were using EVE online terminology for a bit there
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I stole all your trade worlds
And your foundry worlds too ;)
thrawn would be proud
I know this is old but still. I prefer this as well. There's nothing better than bankrupting friends through there own massive armies.
War. War never changes
Every game barring one that I've played, no matter how big my fleet is, the ai just teams up to have enough to beat me, no matter what approach I take
Aspec just a side question. How did the " whitout fighting " got in the title ?
I think he means without major fleet engagements on the frontline between capital fleets that take months to resolve.
Seizing the means of production... how very communist of you haha
there's a reason they were the designated target...
Okay mister Sun Tzu junior
I’m confused which guns and technology counter other technology... can someone tell me where to find a video or website or tell me in the comments? Thx
My first and only playthrough so far was 23 hours of building up only to take 2 planets and have that screw my economy beyond repair
Join the discord, send in the save game. I'll take a look at it for a salvage video.
OK, expected tactic - just like in starcraft 2, the more you go behind enemy lines and poke the economy the better.
Now I got a different question - how to defend from such a strike?
In theory as an attacker with jump drive you could for example check out how many planets the enemy has and do a bomb rush to steal all planets the enemy has to end it within like what 2 months?
There are no anti - jump technologies where you can catch an enemy into a trap. There literally is no geographic tactics on a flat open surface, there are no advantages on flanking an enemy where lets say 3 fleets of 10k can outgun one death ball of 60k. It only comes down to the ship setup.
There are no "terrain" tactics, no high ground, no asteroid belts that for example cripple corvettes or something that cripples battleships or a specific weapon (yes there is a star that dumps your shields, but that is it).
This game does not really have a lot on actual field tactics like choke points, high ground or terrain bonuses or hendicaps like nebulas.
1. The counter is a jump drive. If you are gonna attack someone who is higher tech, you better make sure you know what you are doing.
2. Don't relay on the market. Use it for selling stuff, and early game buying the things you need to keep your economy from imploding, maybe keep food or just one resource depend on market, but not multiple.
3. Defend your most important production worlds. I always go 2 fortress and 1 shield on my most important planets. 3 building slots is worth having defenses, than to loose it all.
4. Don't focus on one thing only for your ships vs human player (some AI with mods also know how to counter you). For example, I always use 3 shields 3 armor on my battleships, this way, there is no real counter to them, you're forcing the enemy to also go jack of all trade. Unless you know an attack is coming, and you scouted the enemy and know how to counter them and upgrade in time. But I always stick to jack of all trades, half shield, half armor.
Also, never go to war as aggressor if your enemy is much more higher in tech (this vid, the enemy had tier 3 hyper lane, not even tier 4), even if you outnumber him.
AzuAlx Ex cloud lightning and the large version of it. Is the hard counter to that. Bypass all armor and shields
cole Not e every one is using it, and its not that effective to corvets. As I said, scouting is more important than many think it would in stellaris, its important to keep a eye out on might be enemy tech and fleet, as well as trying to keep yours hidden. Early its easy, late game well, nebulas are your best friend if the enemy doesn’t have the sentry array.
It is important that the advantage of jump drives is neutralized if the defender also has a jump drive. They are always supposed to act as one of the dealbreakers of going tech heavy compared to just going as wide as you can. Checkpoints, especially fortress worlds, can be massive to fight off fallen empires early, before you even have the means of taking their armies on. You just keep them bottled in a seige they will not win, so they keep bombing the planet. In the meantime you use your fleet to slowly carve into their fleet, as you can create new ships, and they cannot. At some point you will have crippled their fleets enough to win and this is where you can go on to capture all their shiny shit. Just make sure to have a strong economy and a lot of shipyards as you will want to shit out as many ships as you can.
in general jump drives are pretty stupid and are why tech rushes are borderline broken. makes choke points and the like pretty much obsolete once their out. basicly instead of focusing defenses on the choke point you have to decentralize your defenses to the planets. that means building up big defense armies to counter the big offense armies which while isn't very flashy it's basicly your best shot at countering this rush since your opponent main goal is just to quickly scoop up as many planets as he can and cripple you while your scrambling to get your economy into order before you lose. this situation is the one time where the "resilient" species trait actually is usefull.
Aspec’s “How to wage Galactic War”
are you gonna do a play through of the latest update? i am having troubles with almost everything, mainly consumer goods and empire sprawl.
Ok but what to do at the first 20 years when there is no jumpdrive but a neighbour that hates me? Trying hit and run behind the lines with corvettes too?
Corvette spam is weird but I can't deny the efficacy. I still like my main Naval force having a reasonable mix, but the Corvette fleets always overperform.
🎶I will win but never fight...🎶
0:00 Nation called FNG...
Fucking New Guy.
Ofc. MW4.
Thank you for this. Now what I'm thinking about now is how to counter this strategy. Is it a counter PD Corvette fleet?
Cruisers with high tracking
Wouldn't Battleships outfitted with smaller weapons be able to deal with corvette swarms?
nice strategy but does it really work?
usually ais in strategy games don’t give a damn about any resources or building times or any of this. usually they are coded differently for balancing reasons... i have never played a strategy game where destroying the ais economy really matterd. if this works it would be a first. :) and kudos to the creators!
hmm.. in the end it sounds easily... but how do u defend this kind of warfare ?
for the crash on the Alloays someone could argue that u can re-shape your planets to produce more Alloys instead of Strategic ressourses.
how would u defend against it if u face such strategy against yourself? it has to be countermeasures against it.
Hi Sir What do you think about idea to make technologies in game trade on market for very hight price ?
Espionage mechanic that allows at least an approximated view of the enemy's resource production sounds great too. Would make it easier to trade and to pick targets for a war. :)
That could work but they would probably be able to hold out for a few years
Aspec if we do not have jump drive technology, how can we pull the strategy off?
the concept of fighting where their strength is not & using mobility to do so doesn't completely require jump- jump just really helps with it ^^
look at your enemy: decide where your hits will hurt most; find a way to hit there :)
Maginot Line intensifies
ive noticed you seem to like lower lane density in your videos. do you usually play this way or does it make it easier for these types of videos?
I always use your preset in gigga structures.
this dude is dangerous we shouldn't let him join the strategy company at military
Blinking zone troopers
i just like blowing up planets.
To be fair i didnt buy it for war. I bought it for RP. Last 3 games ive played ive played as a Democracy focusing more on peaceful trade and diplomacy and federating. After a while i just use impose idealogy on all the inferior/pathetic empires[i focus on tech above all else]
"Winning without fighting" Now why would anyone wan't to do that?
Hello.
Hi.
Hey.
Ya
Hej.
Stellaris came a long way, huh...
Galaxy brain strats
I want to ask this because I don't know if anyone else has had this issue, but does it seem like Admirals always seem to die before they get to high ranks? Because I don't know why but I almost never have an Admiral over level two after the last update even with the trait. Just wondering.
They are getting exp way slower.Only reliable way I know is having a massive battle,that is not skewed too much in your favor(60-40),have massive losses and either win a pyrrhic victory or have w valiant defeat(that does not destroy your admiral's ship).Only then can you level him reliably
In a nutshell their levelling costs now alloys.