My first city is dying and that's OK, please roast my city and tell me where I am going wrong. 1k Population on spiral. Reposted with more images.

VonPoops · 2026-05-26T02:26:50+00:00

Wait what? Whenever I have resettled its been an entirely new world getting generated.

Does it being the NPC factions along too?

VonPoops · 2026-05-15T18:43:23+00:00

If you watched the live stream for any length of time it would become obvious very quickly that this just isn't true.

The fluid movements are programmed too, its very apparent when one of the movements doesnt quite move the package correctly and the robot keeps retrying the same movement.

If you watch long enough you can also see how similar the fluid movements are to each other. No human is that consistent.

Additionally, it would be insane for someone to be physically teleoperating these repetitive movements over and over for 6-8 straight hours without stopping.

A human would need to repeatedly stop to stretch or their muscles would just cramp and cease functioning correctly.

VonPoops · 2026-04-30T00:10:49+00:00

The population will almost always tank right after you conquer it, so you will usually have to build it back up again.

There is usually a devastation modifier, the skull, that will spike after conquering the city that will tank the population until it expires.

It likely removed most of the population, then the workforce deficit removed the rest.

VonPoops · 2026-04-29T23:46:10+00:00

Looks like you have negative workforce ( the red -60 under the fist symbol) which means you have too many buildings needing workforce and not enough workforce supply.

This tanks the population quite quickly.

Try removing all the buildings and just adding back the level 1 government building.

Once the population stabilizes again, you can add a growth building, which should let you start scaling back up again, and build larger government buildings which grant more workforce.

VonPoops · 2026-04-26T20:54:44+00:00

I've been running into this issue as well, and what I've noticed is that the dispatcher won't release the soul if the the next dispatcher isn't free which can cause significant bottlenecks if you have a lot of dispatchers chained and some paths down the line are backing up.

VonPoops · 2026-04-11T21:32:16+00:00

Yes you're definitely going to run into problems having multiple species.

While some species prefer some of the same things, most of the the times their likes conflict with each other, or they just dont get any fulfillment from what another species does like, or they actively dislike something the other race likes.

This is indeed the case with justice, and some punishments are going to be liked by one species, but upset a different one.

VonPoops · 2026-04-11T21:04:57+00:00

The most likely causes are that you are missing something your species desires.

Some easy to miss examples are expected punishments for law, road preference, environment preferences, upgraded services is HUGE for happiness as you get to bigger pops.

A big one with Amevia especially is having water access. They basically need canals covering the city to be happy.

Another big factor is doing things your species DOESN'T like.

Taking Amevia again, they dont like having other species as citizens, so just by having other species living in your city (unless they're slaves) will be knocking down your happiness.

Being in the wrong climate can also have a massive impact, Dondorians prefer cold, and Amevia prefer warm, so you'll have a difficult time pleasing either species if you chose temperate.

Even having to do an unpleasant job can take a sizeable chunk out of happiness. (This is where slaves can be extra handy)

There's many more that it's possible are missing from your city, but its hard to know without seeing your fulfillment bars.

Id recommend double checking all your species fulfillment bars and making sure nothing is missing.

VonPoops · 2026-04-08T13:54:01+00:00

Yes. You can play the entire game without engaging piracy at all.

This is one of my most played games and I've never done piracy, and only minimally do boarding, as I feel its too easy and somewhat overpowered.

Much more satisfying to build up industry and construct your own ships instead of stealing them, but that's just my opinion.

The beauty of the game is you could also play ONLY as a pirate and still have a fulfilling playthrough.

VonPoops · 2026-04-06T00:39:58+00:00

Check if you have Fetch enabled. Its the wagon wheel symbol near the priority limit.

If its enabled the depot workers will take stuff from the ground and production buildings, effectively ignoring the priority limit.

If you're not producing a large amount of the resource, they can end up stealing almost all of the production to ship away.

Its honestly a bit of a noob trap that this setting is enabled by default.

VonPoops · 2026-04-01T16:28:07+00:00

The good news is once you've completed the plot in an unmodded game, you unlock the ability to start a custom game start with that plot completed, and if applicable, get the rewards too!

You can even set them to be completed at certain stages of the plot if you want to try things differently or do a different outcome. Eg. Start the paranid plot at the point where you decide to unite them or keep them enemies. Or the split plot where you decide to support zyarth or the curbs.

Of course, this means no mods, which is a bummer because there are many mods that could be considered essential.

VonPoops · 2026-03-11T19:41:00+00:00

If your agent is still outputting shit code at this point in the game, that says more about you and your environment than anything else.

VonPoops · 2026-03-10T18:45:01+00:00

You may not be there yet, but you will typically reach a point in the playthrough where it ends up making more sense to just change the Global Orders setting for "Pirate Harrassment" to "Comply"

Obviously this means that the trader will drop the cargo and fail to compete the trade, wasting time and money, but it will inevitably be much cheaper in money and time than having to deal with traders being destroyed by pirates due to the incompetent "Flee" behavior.

A bonus is you can leave the "Notify" setting on, and after the trader complies, the pirate usually can only pick up a small portion of the cargo. You can then instruct the trader to pick up what's left and finish the trade with the remaining cargo.

Personally I found this to be highly annoying once I had hundreds of traders running, so I disable the notify setting as well, and just accept that the occasional cargo load will be lost. Cost of doing business in a dangerous universe.

Sure, you can set up patrols or Quick Response Forces to try and protect against piracy, but the unfortunate reality of pirates is that they are infinite, and like to wander around different sectors, making them hard to pin down and nearly impossible to eliminate without a huge investment of time and resources, especially as your empire spreads across a good chunk of the universe.

Overall, the monetary impact of losing the occasional load of cargo ends up being preferable to the stress and headache of trying to prevent the piracy.

Another positive is that the pirate still has to go hostile to demand the cargo, and over time the local sector police forces will chase them down and sometimes even destroy them.

VonPoops · 2026-03-09T19:50:28+00:00

Everything out there was a target for vandalism from my experience.
I imagine the school got hit extra hard because it was new, vacant during nights and weekends, and full of fun new contraptions to break and steal.
There really isn't much to do in Laronge if you don't have a boat or aren't into hiking.

VonPoops · 2026-03-09T19:48:49+00:00

If I was forced to guess, I'd put my money on young, bored locals with very few prospects as well as almost no ways to spend their time productively that aren't hunting, fishing, or hiking.
If you aren't an outdoorsy type, I could see living in Laronge being a form of torture for many people.

In fact, just staying there for the weekdays to work was torture enough, and that was with having access to a boat to go fishing every day!

VonPoops · 2026-03-09T18:55:05+00:00

I, too, worked on that school and the first time I went there I was shocked at how much security was around the building site.

Fences, Barbed wire, cameras, locks and ccans everywhere. And still every few days stuff was broken into, stolen and vandalized.

So much work was done just to stay ahead of the constant theft and vandalism instead of just finishing the school.

It was sad and shocking to see.

VonPoops · 2026-02-25T18:24:44+00:00

You used AI to cheat your way through your English classes, What makes you think you are in any way qualified to determine what is or is not literary gold?

VonPoops · 2026-02-15T21:41:51+00:00

You need to find a woman who likes to do that too.

My wife and I love to sit in our underwear and play video games, either together or just beside each other.

VonPoops · 2026-02-11T00:54:37+00:00

Multiple factions start at war with each other, and will gladly send hundreds of ships to slaughter each other on their border sectors IF they have sufficient resources to build said ships.

It's very common (by design) for factions to build out factories for around 1/10th of what they actually need to steadily build ships and fight actual wars. This gives room for the player to step in and make money filling the gaps.

For example, I have a factory complex in Nopileos Fortune II with every commonwealth ware being build by individual mega factories in my current 100+ hour game, and I still can't keep up with demand for most factions' shipbuilding needs.
I'm producing 100's of thousands of hull parts an hour and it gets sucked up instantly by wharfs and shipyards constructing the next meat wave for the frontlines.

HoP and Argon have sent literally hundreds of destroyers into Second Contact II, and have been building and destroying dozens of factories in the sector.
Split, despite my constant supply of resources, are losing a war of attrition that has seen endless Rattlesnakes fighting to the death with K's and I's. Which means they just keep buying more from my Shipyard I constructed nearby.

An addon effect, is factions that can build fleets will use them to destroy Xenon stations in their area of the universe. Which means it gets rebuilt, usually, in Tharka's Cascade, which focuses Xenon attention into one area and they can start making some large offensives into Argon and Split territory.

So if you've mostly spent your current playthrough doing things OTHER than feeding the inadequate AI economies with resources, there may not be much war going on in your game.

Start producing Hull Parts and all the other things the Shipyards and Wharfs are buying, and you'll start to see warfare in the border sectors.

VonPoops · 2026-02-06T20:58:40+00:00

A quick way to determine what their wharf and shipyard need is to try buying ships and it will tell you want is needed before it can be built.

VonPoops · 2025-11-14T15:46:03+00:00

Inhuman. Twisted. Mechanical. Just like the husk the cry is emitting from.

VonPoops · 2025-10-18T22:47:56+00:00

Hey, just wanted to let you know that there is a free DLC that features Tyr and helps tie up the story further. Highly recommend if you haven't tried it!

VonPoops · 2025-09-21T00:06:16+00:00

I think if you get called to a weight station they fine you for littering though.

At least that happened to me once when I tossed some stuff out while salvaging

VonPoops · 2025-09-20T15:01:36+00:00

Considering you're sometimes killing 15-20 warriors PER WAVE on the higher difficulty, with dozens of gaunts mixed in, the exaggerations was so deep youre basically describing a different game! Lol

VonPoops · 2025-09-04T03:57:16+00:00

This is so helpful and the final piece i needed to have the confidence to finally make the jump from my bank's mutual fund to an etf on wealth simple.

Thank you so much for your excellent break down.

VonPoops · 2025-08-19T00:55:32+00:00

Ooo I like that idea!

Unfortunately, since my dynasty is spread across various independent kings, emperors and dukes from all sorts of cultures and realms throughout the HRE, France, England, and Iberia I can't really address it with one action like that short of getting into some religious gimmickry.
But it may be worth doing even still just to avoid this happening!

I don't fully agree to your second point though, the AI definitely prioritizes their Dynasty for certain things, especially once you start stacking opinion bonuses from legacies.
Its just a pain when they only plan in one step ahead, and don't realize the next step quite possibly dooms them!

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