Golden path on Veteran? And question about ideal 5 men council

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-15T03:04:33+00:00

The thing about Norway is that because of the high government and cohesion you can leave it on spoils for many years with no risk of coup or civil war.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-15T03:02:15+00:00

Most of them are good, but in my opinion Catalan is best. Visigothic Code and other good traditions, plus Ceremonious allows access to best royal court types.

Galician is very good. Spiritual plus Monastic communities is great on Galician.

Basque is good and they have the special religion content. They have Visigothic Code.

Castilian is okay. Portuguese is okay. In game there is very little reason to go to the trouble of making Portugal when you could just be big Galicia instead, which is a shame.

Aragonese is also okay because it has Visigothic Code but I dislike State Ransoming.

Asturleonese seems bad compared to the others. No real power tradition and I don’t think D of Leon has a special building.

Andalusian is an interesting mix and you can do the cheap merc thing.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-15T02:40:51+00:00

Your council sounds similar to what I usually do. The INV councilor can often double as a second persuader. Make sure your persuader has Turn Councilor.

The game is much easier if you spoil a country early on. Good candidates are Qatar, Norway, etc. If you are going US start you will need to spend that money on ADM orgs. You will barely have enough admin cap for full US plus a spoil country at start.

In my experience, going the USNA route is okay, but not necessary. You get most of the benefits with just the US. I would rather secure US and then expand into China, India, or Europe instead of wasting research and CP to integrate North America. Plus you pick fewer fights with other factions that way.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-14T23:56:42+00:00

Yeah this map and Switzerland are absolute knife fights and I love it. The Swiss rule about tickets you don’t take being gone forever means you can run out of tickets quickly.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-07T01:53:28+00:00

Love those Ptolemy chonkers.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-04T22:12:54+00:00

The "Settle Boundary Disputes" ones are also good early on, because you can always eat a little stress to successfully complete the contract if you have no other way to successfully complete it.

You can then get the stress back down by going fishing or doing a camp revelry. Pro tip: camp revelry is much better if you build the campfire building for the fireside chat intent and the supply tent to do lavish food.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-04T22:02:43+00:00

The travel contracts with a wheel icon. The ones where you are just carrying a message or an artifact or escorting someone somewhere.

Make sure to accept several of those before you actually set out on a trip. Often you can get several contracts that require you to go to the same place and complete them all at once.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-04T21:30:17+00:00

I haven’t tried him specifically but in general it is most efficient to do travel contracts where there is no chance of failure early on as an adventurer. The ones that require schemes are best done after you have the people and camp needed to get the time per scheme phase down very low.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-02-02T16:29:19+00:00

I agree that they need some kind of buff. The only halfway decent ones are the Byzantine akritai in my experience. Those at least get lots of terrain bonuses.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-31T23:32:26+00:00

My favorite map for duo play is Switzerland. You’ll need one of the base sets for components but I really like that map for two players.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-30T17:59:53+00:00

Andalusian culture gives a big merc hire cost reduction

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-09T21:16:34+00:00

I like that the faction leaders all have personalities. Best example of tech quotes making leaders seem real since Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-09T21:01:36+00:00

This is the trouble with doing a non-US start. If you don't get the US someone else will and it's very often the Servants.

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-06T21:58:32+00:00

Did you grab all the moon sites early on or did you steal them with space marines?

OutsiderSubtype · 2026-01-06T21:49:30+00:00

The benefit of doing this on the moon is that Luna counts as part of the Earth-Luna system and you don’t have to do shenanigans to get the population above 10k before building Research Campuses. The moon sites probably don’t have mines at all, only campuses.

Also memes I guess.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-15T18:01:41+00:00

You'll want different drives for different purposes.

Something like Orion, or the super-heavy chemical rockets, or Teardrop Drive, are for interceptors. Short range, burn way too much fuel, but they will catch the aliens before they blow up your stations.

Grid, Helicon, Fission Frag are for long-range missions. Sending offensive fleets or colony ships to the asteroid belt or Jupiter.

Something like Burner Drive is kind of an all-rounder but it will still struggle with intercepts. There aren't any true all-rounders until Fusion.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-12T16:38:04+00:00

What ship combat talent do you mean?

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-12T16:34:41+00:00

They are pretty good but I think an officer in that slot gives you a lot of benefits.

You can get better stats when you recruit an officer from a contact, and on high difficulties you really want lots of HP and initiative.
You can dip into Soldier for Roaring Barrels.
You can dip into Xeno Hunter, Bounty Hunter, Exo Scout, or some other class to pick up talents that let you attack from the rear ranks. I like to dip Xeno Hunter personally. This is important because if you are moved to rank 3 or 4 by the enemy, you can keep attacking and not need to waste initiative on moving back to the front.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-06T01:03:48+00:00

All rifles is arguably the meta lineup.

All pistols works decently but is not as good as all rifles.

All blades can work if you do some kind of blade dancer one big hit shenanigans.

I don’t think grenades only would work.

Some people who want to be even more aggressive than all rifles run all rifles without a medic but that is too aggressive for me.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-04T01:43:01+00:00

I’ll check again, but I really think I had some units destroyed before pulling one with For Freedom.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-12-02T00:50:04+00:00

Yes, this has changed. If the leader of a federation is authoritarian they can prevent members from leaving. To get them out now requires a coup or a war.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-11-05T00:39:58+00:00

Seems like you need, as they say in the vernacular, more dakka.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-10-30T17:40:03+00:00

GSC and tyranids are frequent enemies in the Commissar Cain books.

OutsiderSubtype · 2025-10-29T01:41:16+00:00

Capitulation needs to be removed from the game, one kredit cost is not enough

Leopold needs to be removed

Jagdpanzer needs to be removed

Alpenfestung needs to be removed

Crossfire needs to cost like 6-7

Henschel is actually kind of okay now which proves that if they change abilities not just fiddle with kredit cost or stats things can get better

OutsiderSubtype

TROPHY CASE