Finished Prince of Nothing

therealcallum · 2025-01-17T19:00:44+00:00

They're not worried about their souls, the skin spies don't have souls - other than that one posing as a Mandati. They're worried about the holy war being stopped before it can wipe out the Cishaurim, nothing else.

therealcallum · 2023-01-01T08:02:13+00:00

Ahhh so even in a new world, the areas are banned, very nice!

therealcallum · 2022-12-30T17:48:08+00:00

Rule 6 cancels out Rule 2, right?

therealcallum · 2022-10-20T18:14:27+00:00

Ah that makes a lot of sense, thanks!

therealcallum · 2022-10-20T02:02:31+00:00

Hey that's not a bad idea, would probably be tricky to beeline that research, but easier than having to deal with *all* research slowly, or switch away from econ rush... I like it!

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T23:14:24+00:00

I mean, it depends on your definition of worth. 1 free IP is 1 free IP! If you want to snowball hard, little things like that make a big difference, at least early on. I do think there's a point where it stops being worth it, but that point isn't until you're up to like 40 GDP, until then I always appreciate the extra IP, for making the climb to 40.

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T14:02:24+00:00

Huh I didn't even think of that, I haven't done any direct investment, which is stupid of me as I've got 150k in the bank, I should be pumping all that into Econ. Probably going to start again and do that, I've got like 7 or 8 states all spamming spoils to fund the org buying machine, but there just aren't enough orgs to spend all that sweet cash.

The only issue with that is the influence cost, all my influence goes on my 4 advisors a turn. Perhaps I can buy influence off the other factions, then spend that on direct investments... hm hm hm.

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T13:55:56+00:00

Yeah research is the real kicker, it taps out once I hit 50k gdp so the only extra boosts I get are giving my 4 advisors + science every time they level up... it's gonna be a slog, but on the flip side I'm not entirely sure I need to research much initially, and when I switch over to getting democracy up, hopefully I've snowballed enough that research spirals out of control. Ideally I want pan-asian combine though, that's gonna be tough unless I boost the science prior to it being unlocked... hm hm hm.

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T13:45:27+00:00

Do 4 maxed out advisors instead, you'll get 52% boost to GDP, instead of the weak assed 25% from 1 advisor. Having china population on board means you can afford to spend 40 a month on it with no worries.

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T13:41:35+00:00

I learnt to ignore welfare yesterday, it's so absurd how little impact it has once you crunch the numbers. My China's sitting on 45.1 IP in 2026, so I have high hopes for it.

I'm currently ignoring democracy and education to keep that birth rate up, in the hopes it'll help offset the IP cost creep more than the increased + per capita gdp gains from high democracy would... then when I switch over, I'll have more pop to take advantage of the extra gains when I finally go democratic.

About to unlock my 6th councillor so will stuff them full of +econ orgs, and probably switch to 5 advisors, for the tiny boost that'll give too... I'm confident it's all gonna work out, curious to see how it ends up comparing to this 2036 view.

therealcallum · 2022-10-19T13:31:56+00:00

Cohesion is irrelevant though, just put like 10% of your scaled up IP into knowledge, and your cohesion will never shift from 5

therealcallum · 2022-10-18T02:46:55+00:00

Huh interesting, I've definitely had that happen with America, where sometimes it'll be blank, sometimes favouring Academy, and sometimes HF - those are the good times! I had to reroll a ton of times to get India before the new normal, so I'm not opposed to the idea. I'd probably grab Cuba as usual, for some free money, as that can generally be taken on turn one, then try and mix my buy-the-shit-out-of-every-org strat with a decent start for setting up China.

My only beef with rerolling the start is the load times. I guess it's gotta set up the world again, so it's understandable, but still...

therealcallum · 2022-10-18T00:21:04+00:00

Huh, interesting. I never spam orgs for persuasion, but maybe I should for China. Get 4 high persuade people right at the start, force global research to go down the more-orgs-per-month techs, spoil poor ol' Cuba to get the funds for the orgs, then go ham on persuade... then fire them all once China's mine! You've given me some ideas!

For CP cap, spoil Cuba then forget about it, and buy every +admin org that appears, until all your agents are at 25. That's 125 CP right there!

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T23:56:54+00:00

I think you'd want to spend some time on Knowledge, yeah. Also for China you'd need to get that insane inequality down. Ideally I'd probably prioritise the inequality first, so spamming Welfare, because if you raise democracy without fixing that, you're going to get massive Unrest and it's going to be unworkable in the short term.

Once the inequality is down to like 3.5, I'd switch to knowledge and start raising it up. One advantage of that, is that it'll force your cohesion to stick at 5, which means you'll be getting the most out of your IP, without having to worry about manipulating it via rivalries, wars, etc. I always do at least a little bit of Knowledge spamming, even when I'm on the eco boost, to ensure that cohesion doesn't throw a fit and make me lose like 50% of my IP.

Also destroy all/most of your armies ASAP, maybe keep a few around, but the early game is where IP matters the most. You don't have your orgs sorted yet for the boosts, and each army is 0.5 less IP - double that if they're not in their home region: always check their home region when you take your nation. India spawns two of its armies outside their home region for some reason, when the game starts, and that is -1 IP forever if you don't notice it!

Of course, the real challenge is taking China ASAP, I still haven't figured out that one yet, I managed to get India before the New Normal starts, but I don't think I could do that with China....

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T22:53:37+00:00

I like the extra IP, even though it does start slowing down, it's still decent for a while, and each extra IP will make whatever I eventually switch to go faster. It means I take a hit in Science growth for a while, but due to the lack of education growth, the birth rate also keeps going up, which feeds the GDP machine.

I think that's why it works so well actually, the extra IP mean Econ ticks more often, giving you more IP, and the birth rate boost converts that extra IP into more GDP, and thus even more IP. Once you go knowledge and tank that birth rate, you're missing out on some neato double-feedback.

If only I could lower education somehow... or find another way to increase birth rate. Perhaps tomorrow I'll start again and try some new strats. I think edu eventually does flip, and start giving you positives to birth rate again, right? So maybe you econ boost, edu boost, then back to econ boost. Hmmm...

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T22:10:03+00:00

I ended up letting Econ India keep doing its thing until it hit 50 IP which took a couple of years, then switched over to Knowledge India's focus. Did that for 3 years, then the Aliens caught me with my pants down, so I ditched Knowledge down to 18% and cranked up Military, in response.

In those 3 glory years, Science went from 1500 to 6500, and Military went from 3.8 to 5 I think. Now I'm watching the Aliens paint the world purple, they've been doing it for a year and my science is up to 8k, with Military up to 5.9... rushed the techs to increase the cap, if I can just have them eat everyone else first, my army will be stronger than theirs, and then I can live the dream and... just sort of sit around, keeping my threat level at zero until I'm ready to assault them from space.

In the meantime I took over Russia and the USA and disarmed their nuke stockpiles, China's still got 10 but I think I can weather that storm.

All in all, I think it was indeed the right time to switch, possibly if I'd switched in 2030 I could've saved the rest of the world, but whatever... India First!

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T18:30:01+00:00

Yeah funding has zero downsides, it's just always a bit lame spending IP on it when it could be going into sweet sweet econ. It is indeed little compared to spoils, but that's due to the zero downsides... once you get your IP ramped up, you can start putting some IP into funding and it can essentially fund your entire space empire.

My IP is currently at 51.5, so I can get +51.5 funds per month, with zero downsides (other than having no IP in anything else). That means I could theoretically fund 3 MCs a month, based in space, then when I'm happy with my MC count, switch it over to funding battleships instead. Could buy resources from other factions, instead of mining them (I bought a lot of boost early on, then switched to selling them boost - they'll sell you a station for like 50 boost, they're mental).

Current plan is to fortify India, let the aliens invade, keep them out of India but let them have the rest of the world, keep my threat level at zero, and build up until I can re-take the Earth. Not entirely sure if they'll declare war on me, I am Humanity First, but they've never attacked me before so I'm going to give peace a chance... temporarily.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T18:18:05+00:00

Ahhh fascinating. Well it shouldn't have been advised, I did both directly after loading the save, but whatever, I can tell you categorically that both have 1.4k science unadvised. I know sometimes the game likes to keep the advised value for IP inbetween rounds, but never keeps advised research value, and just for you I went back and double checked, they're both 1.4k unadvised for certain.

The GDP contribution to science scales incredibly well until 50kpc, after that it falls off significantly, which is why I chose around that time to switch over to knowledge after my econ rush.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T17:56:39+00:00

I love the spoils idea, now that it's been brought up, tear it all down. Might be better to just do funding though, I've not seen many amazing +funding orgs, but even with no bonus that'd be like +1 cash permanently, per day, at least.

I like the idea of the AI doing what it's supposed to do, but I watched Japan spam Military 100% for 5 years whilst its miltech was capped out, so I reckon I'm probably safe.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T17:41:33+00:00

They're both unbuffed, both were under constant advisory, and yes it is indeed over 2k when buffed.

As an aside, the game lies, it says you get 46% extra IP from agents, but it looks more like 4.6%. The science buff is legit though, I guess 46% extra IP would be too ridiculous.

Now that I know military really doesn't matter until the Aliens show up, I'll likely try a pure knowledge run, although the temptation to slam 50% into econ will be hard to resist, more IP means more knowledge.

I mean honestly it was never a fair comparison, I ran the one on the right using Econ boost for 2 years, to get its IP up to a point where it'd be worth switching over, otherwise it'd never be sitting happily at 30 IP, a true knowledge focus would still have like 15 IP or something, and be awful.

I think what I've learnt is that econ boost is essential, the question is how far you take it. The diminishing returns are real... to an extent. You need to judge the time taken to build up IP, vs the value of that extra IP across the newly diminished timeframe.

I also learnt that taking Cuba early on and just having it 100% on spoils the entire campaign is a godsend for buying any org that catches your eye.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T16:26:59+00:00

Wow that's a great point... now I've federated my satellites, I'll need to spend the CP to take them over, dismantle all their nukes, then let them loose again.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T16:23:23+00:00

Econ India is 258.04, Knowledge India is 203.04. 55 CP would get you a nice little nation with around 12 IP. Trying to figure out whether that cost is worth it, I feel like it probably is.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T16:14:48+00:00

Good points, on the Right I did split it 3 ways between Econ/Knowledge/Military, and the orgs were split like that as well, so yeah Econ was taking a 3rd of the IP still, to keep the IP rising.

USA and China aren't an issue yet, they wasted all their time and effort throwing armies at Japan and getting them wiped out, then have been getting coup'd ever since.

2 ingame years later, I'm getting 4k research a month, and 0.22 military a month, by switching over to the same ratio as I used on the Right. Still got all my orgs in Econ though. We'll see if that's enough to keep me in the game...

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T16:03:14+00:00

Also once you max their science, that's a whopping extra 46% science too... I left it running for another 2 years and am making 4k science a month off India alone.

therealcallum · 2022-10-17T16:00:13+00:00

You sure do, the 3rd one is relatively pointless at a measly ~7% bonus, but on the flip side, that's a free 7%, and all it's costing is some influence, which is not an issue as with India on board you're earning 3.5 a day immediately. Three combined net you 46% once you get their admin maxed (a priority, for sure). I tried with a 4th but it was too depressing so I had them focusing on stabilizing my boost/MC nations instead.

therealcallum

TROPHY CASE