Feedback On Winning Brutal Servants .3.54

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resistterra
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:39 am

Feedback On Winning Brutal Servants .3.54

Post by resistterra »

just finished a brutal Servant campaign on 0.3.54. did not use a single nuke or assassination nor interacted with space portion of the game at all, focusing solely on earth. campaign finished at the start of 2041 though I could have won far earlier and with less frustration.

enjoyed the qol features implemented since .3.27 such as army pathing and hiding techs but there were some gripes.

Servants still have the assault alien assets available and attempting to contact alien agents does nothing at all and shouldn't be an option either. aside from annexing into alien nation it is not clear what abductions, spreading xeno flora or setting up alien facility actions do.

when raising popularity sometimes your councilors give you a notification saying it could be the aliens and should be investigated among other role play breaking notifications. you cannot trade resources without having a space station either.

diplomacy is still random and unusable. ai contacted me for a trade, upon adding an item and they would not accept. reverting to their original offer was also unacceptable. no consistency or feeling that the ai acts in its own interests, just random offers the player themselves cannot make.

aliens never had less than 96% of total fleet power even without me messing with HF or the Resistance or using a single mc point. they still go negative on resources, Resistance was somehow down 20k funds and I had to constantly refuse turncoat Protectorate ships. Exodus had 1.6k boost which it couldn't use with its 455 funds, economy is very badly mismanaged. research is better then .3.27 but still too low. AI is one of the biggest areas needing improvement.

Servant campaign is still missing something. you can't lose with current faction ai and there is no requirement to go out into space. maybe a research based timer where if you don't complete the game before certain techs are researched the aliens cut off support and go it alone?

priorities tab should have the design templates button that sends you to the nations screen, I didn't know about custom default priorities until I was far along in the campaign. an actions tab showing possible set nation policies for actions such as federation/unifications would be helpful.

AI in general isn't active or effective after declaring war. alien nation is at war with several nations yet most armies are idle in random places.

big problem though was the difference between starting nations. aliens first landed in Saudi Arabia so for role playing purposes I thought I would create the Caliphate as my base of operations. this alone took way too long and is something I highly regret. if I had simply started with USA or China I could have completed the game countless hours earlier.

small/poor states are not viable or fun. they start out really bad and you will win campaigns before they become good. there is no point at all in trying to uplift mediocre or even decent nations vs starting with a good one right off the bat. this wouldn't be so bad if the control point cap didn't also heavily penalize you for having a federation of smaller countries. upon uniting the caliphate my cp usage more than halved and it was agony before then. high cp techs costs further hurts starting with these low research nations.

heavy research gate for super states compounds this as well as the long delay to peacefully annex other countries first through federations then through unification. you go through all the trouble of wasting research and many hours just to gain access to a super state with a really poor starting research base only to waste even more time hoping the ai doesn't easily coup a nation and set you back a year. making mediocre quality armies with their low Ip is not helpful and sets them back further.

meanwhile as China or USA you ignore all that noise and use your superior research output on things that help you win the game such as more councilors, better ships and faction objectives with cp to spare. lots of nukes and good starting armies too. its fine if one method is easier than the other but currently the gap is absurd and the systems behind it punish you really hard for even trying.

cooldown for peaceful federation and unification should be reduced. Research cost for cp techs as well as for African, South American and West Asian mega states also need to be cheaper to account for the very poor start.
neilwilkes
Posts: 184
Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2022 10:44 am

Re: Feedback On Winning Brutal Servants .3.54

Post by neilwilkes »

I am not at all sure I get the point of playing 'Brutal Servants' as this nerfs the Aliens massively.
Which defeats the whole point, surely?
resistterra
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:39 am

Re: Feedback On Winning Brutal Servants .3.54

Post by resistterra »

I don't understand what you mean.

this is feedback on the Servants campaign itself such as "it could be aliens" notifications when raising your own popularity as well as more general feedback such as the AI idling navies in Eretria when at war with Poland.
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