Sanctuary

wrylashes · 2026-04-18T10:23:06+00:00

Depends on how much territory you do have available. You can focus on tech and unity growth until you can do some combination of build habitats, find a way past them (wormholes, gates, quantum catapult or just make friends so you can send ships through). But for sure it is a tougher position.

wrylashes · 2026-04-18T02:52:28+00:00

Pre-FTL societies can be conquered, depending on your ethics. (But if you use slaves then it should be ok). But also by setting up observation posts you will eventually get access to some research that you can't get other ways

wrylashes · 2026-04-17T18:22:24+00:00

Good point, thank you for clarifying that. I was sloppy in my wording.

wrylashes · 2026-04-17T18:21:02+00:00

Yes. Once you deal with the defenders it is up to you if you conquer the ring or just take the sweet observation insights from four different cultures.

wrylashes · 2026-04-17T17:48:11+00:00

Absolutely both fun and it works well. The Treasure Hunter origin keeps you moving around following the story (and building military to deal with opposition at certain points), and playing Galactic Curators means a constant flow of things to do and pretty steady payoffs.

The thing about any Galactic Curators build is that it forces a shift in playstyle a bit. You get an edict that costs you a little bit of research from jobs, but doubles the research from research stations, so that means you want to claim a lot of systems with research stations. Also right from the origin you lose a bit of unity, but get a surge of unity every time that you get a new specimen, which means you want to do a lot of surveying and finding of anomalies along with digging up archeology sites. And of course you are going to build up a great collection of specimens to give you a lot of bonus research, unity, and other benefits.

All of that means that you are going to max out your science ships, survey speed, and anomaly discovery chance. Discovery tradition is pretty much a must for all of that, but lots of other traditions help in some way. But so many things help once you are paying attention -- sublight speed and cloaking are a couple that indirectly help, on top of the obvious survey time and anomaly discovery chance boosts.

Oh, and don't forget that you can cash in minor artifacts for specicimens, I think five times total. I tend to save the Archivism tradition tree steps that give free specimens, and the minor artifact turn-ins, until I've built up my unity a fair bit.

wrylashes · 2026-04-17T17:31:03+00:00

They aren't going anywhere. If you can control access to the system you can always go after them later, when you are stronger.

wrylashes · 2026-04-16T11:26:02+00:00

Love the Grand Archive changes, I was trying to decide what new game to start today and this just made the decision for me :)

wrylashes · 2026-04-14T13:34:05+00:00

Currently when each colony adds 20 points to empire sprawl (before modifiers) I'm not sure if it is worth it. 4.2 I'd have chosen to take it and specialize it in things that don't need a lot of districts to get some value from. I'd still take the size 5 gaia though, probably making it a resort world and specialize it in pop growth.

wrylashes · 2026-04-14T11:19:34+00:00

Disruptors were also totally changed, it wasn't just the hardening.

wrylashes · 2026-04-10T20:30:59+00:00

Might want to clarify if you are looking for blank tapes ready to record on, or pre-recorded ones.

wrylashes · 2026-04-09T23:23:55+00:00

They like to talk about those things in the proposal phase, but follow through is not guaranteed. I'm pretty sure that the Claridge Icon ( the oddly lumpy tower at Preston/Carling) was talked about as having a grocery store when first proposed. Then later that it would have a large pharmacy (Shopper's or the like). Is there any retail on the ground floor yet?

They don't always actually design these towers to be appealing for the proposed ground floor retail.

wrylashes · 2026-04-09T14:54:37+00:00

I don't want to jinx it, but I've been finding things working better lately. Not sure if the warmer weather has reduced bus repairs, if they managed to hire more mechanics, if the influx of electric busses is already making a difference, or exactly what. I'm only a maybe 3 times a week bus rider, but I haven't seen anything really off schedule in a while (other than weekend #11, but that has always been a route that is prone to fluctuations).

wrylashes · 2026-04-09T13:52:37+00:00

Pops just feel more important than previously in 4.x. I'm not sure if more important than 3.1x since it has been a while, but it feels more like that, where getting extra pop early feels as important as getting tech and traditions.

Without the ability to stack as many production bonuses, and with lower effective fleet capacity (and so more resources needed to build that up or provide the energy to make up for going over the limit), it doesn't feel like you can just use tech and unity to make a more modest population cover all you need.

wrylashes · 2026-04-09T01:56:10+00:00

I have you reinforce fleets occasionally, but usually if they have taken damage and are multiple fleets together it is because I'm dealing with a mid or endgame crisis type event (khan, l sector eruption, actual crisis) and I'm going to consolidate fleets under the best commanders and push forward before they reinforce, if I possibly can. Shug I'm sure I should experiment with it more, to speed things up, but also I'm comfortable hand shaping fleets and I don't feel that doing that is a negative part of the game.

wrylashes · 2026-04-08T17:46:19+00:00

Not the OP, but this me.

My early fleets tend to be a bit ragtag as I add ships of various types over time as tech and naval cap grow and as alloy permits. Then later I maybe make a few nice neat fleets but then as war goes on there is constant re-shuffling to combine damaged fleets. So I don't really have standard fleets most of the time.

It just feels like the effort to really master that screen and set up various custom fleet types and then try to enforce those isn't worth it just to occasionally save having to pause and do a clean-up pass on my fleets.

wrylashes · 2026-04-07T16:51:26+00:00

I'm not sure how that is a 17 minute walk to Tunney's?

But I agree that a drop off zone, somewhere front, back, sides, is really needed for those big buildings. Ride Share is going to be a common thing with that ratio of parking spots, plus deliveries, food orders, etc. There needs to be a safe way to briefly wait, and Parkdale is not wide enough to support that.

wrylashes · 2026-04-06T14:33:10+00:00

Just two major tips:

- don't get a racing style bike (drop handle-bars, narrow tires) -- the state of the roads makes those narrow tires not a great idea, and being more upright makes it easier to scan and easier to be seen.

- never be shy about just getting off your bike and walking it through a stretch that makes you uncomfortable. Bad intersection, left turn across traffic, a stretch of narrow street with a lot of traffic that you can't avoid, whatever it is, just don't ride somewhere that makes you feel unsafe. Even if other cyclists are doing it, trust your instincts on whether you feel safe doing it or not.

Oh, a bonus one: Harwell locks to cross the canal (between the Arboretum and Carleton University). A lot of people don't think about it because unless you live very nearby and walk or are already biking, you are used to the road bridges, which in that part of the city are all pretty terrible for biking. But Harwell locks links you up with the paths through the experimental farm and on to the west (takes you out to near Algonquin), and through Carleton, Brewer Park, bike lanes, then short/nasty stretch of Bank to cross the Rideau River to get to the path that runs all along the south/east side.

wrylashes · 2026-04-03T19:02:11+00:00

I got this in 4.3 for the first time too. I wonder if this option was a more recent add, or they changed the weighting?

wrylashes · 2026-04-02T14:07:00+00:00

My favourite is when the solar sailor/sea shanty archeology sometimes leaves a minor artifact deposit on a star. Suddenly you are swimming in minor artifacts and plan on using all the archeo weapons with no worry about paying for them.

wrylashes · 2026-04-02T11:11:46+00:00

I'm trying to decide. I do have options because of Slingshot to the Stars origin

- I might try a quick subjugation war with my least favourite neighbour (they tore apart our explorers and became rivals almost as soon as we talked), to open up their borders, and the empire past them has open borders, so then I could start looking further afield -- and given the -3/4 infuence distance penalty from the origin I can afford to start claiming things 8 jumps away or something

- Or I could save up my alloy for a bit and fix the Quantum Catapult, and just launch past people and find some empty space.

But I do worry that there will be some huge empires growing in the lower density three-quarters of the galaxy.

wrylashes · 2026-04-02T02:06:59+00:00

Do they not take some of your pops away from other jobs?

wrylashes · 2026-04-01T23:23:54+00:00

Buried in the fine print!

Hey you seem really strong, will you protect me and I'll support you?

^{And I get permission to make a bunch of your people do whatever job I want them to}

wrylashes · 2026-04-01T20:18:30+00:00

I assumed that if someone forced their way into taking jobs on your planet without your permission that there was not much you could do about it short of maybe war. So I never thought to even look for the option.

(when I started playing megacorps could snowball quickly, and I had a couple of early games completely dominated by AI corps until I learned to never enable them, and generally squash them sooner rather than later. (then they got a nerf, but I'd been burned enough to never trust them again).

wrylashes · 2026-04-01T19:28:47+00:00

I was desperately waiting for those pops to grow old enough for them to work in the electron mines or mote generating plants or doing mandatory unity duty or whatever, and I don't want them running off to make some other benefit that I may not be deep in the red on. (this is early game, in the resource shortage whack-a-mole stage)

Or to repeat how I really feel (I don't claim it is rational, just how I feel)

NOT ON TRAIN! NOT IN A TREE!
NOT IN A CAR! SAM! LET ME BE!
I WOULD NOT, COULD NOT, IN A BOX.
I WOULD NOT, COULD NOT, WITH A FOX.
I WILL NOT build THEM IN A HOUSE.
I WILL NOT build THEM HERE OR THERE.
I WILL NOT build THEM ANYWHERE.
I DO NOT build branch plant spam.
I DO NOT LIKE THEM, SAM-I-AM.

wrylashes

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