Let's Play Stellaris: Part 21 - Ticking Over

"The Cartel had by and large halted it's early rapid expansion in favour of testing their mettle against the Uriy Suns. The Grand Plan, a post conflict initiative saw the expansion continuing with the main goal of ensuring a vast economic base to support an equally vast military. With the exception of the vagrant marauders and the declining fallen empires most of the Cartels rivals were at least double in size, this initiative would change that. For the moment, the galaxy paid little attention to the Fox Cartel, turning to the more immediate concerns of more aggressive neighbours and their own internal issues. In time they may come to regret not paying much heed to a fledgling criminal empire."

Stardate: 10-3-2287

So here we are again folks trying to build up the Fox Cartel to be powerful enough to go kick down some space doors and take some space loot. To say I feel like I need a much much bigger military is understating it right now but we also need the economy to support it too, if the first fleet were to be destroyed right now, it'd take years to rebuild it if not longer because of how low my alloy production still is. So some more immediate goals to add to the 'Grand Plan':

1. Continue to improve our economy not just in the basics like minerals and alloys but also the more exotic resources like rare crystals and exotic gases as we will need those for building upgrades not just our ships.
2. Improve our population growth, either by using planetary and empire wide edicts but technologies and buildings too.
3. Specialise Nova Druzhnik as our primary energy credit generating planet to bankroll basically everything as to maintain the fleet, star-bases and defence platforms alone we will need a lot of energy credits.

With both of our consumer goods factories now upgraded and me prioritizing farming jobs on Vulpinus our resources have finally stabilised for now but before I even build any buildings I will wait for more population. Meanwhile Hades colony is more than able to make use of one of it's building slots so lets actually get an exotic gas refinery converting some of our minerals to gas. As for Nova Druzhnik let's get the energy grid building to start working it toward being our primary energy world. 

Meanwhile the galaxy seems to be ticking along fairly quietly the two wars that were going on between the other empires have stopped so maybe this is the calm before the storm. Whilst I may not be planning on sending the Cartel to war anytime soon that doesn't mean someone else won't come knocking looking for trouble. Our scientists from the physics division at least break up the lull by unlocking the upgraded version of the energy grid, handy! As I have some serious colonising to do later on I decide to get the self-aware colony ships to help get the colonies established a bit more quickly. 

A tropical world being terraformed into an alpine world ahead of the Cartels ambitious expansion plans.

Then we get the big one, the society research division finishes researching the system capital complex, our capital upgrade building and an extra civic point to spend. Before we do that lets get them applying their foxy cunning to another project. Another +20 to my admin cap? Don't mind if I do, off you go science minion!

Now let us make use of that new shiny civic point, there are so many potentially useful options here. I could keep it in character by going for Private Military Companies to improve our armies. Franchising would mean any subsidiary empires give us more of a cut whilst reducing branch offices impact on our empire sprawl (it's an admin cap thing.) Or even Free Traders, improving our branch office income and our trade value meaning even more shiny energy credits. Maybe even Media Conglomerate? Making our people happier whilst also slowing down how fast we accrue war exhaustion. Trading posts for even more star-bases? So many good options, argh!

A new civic, so many good options!

After some back and forth pondering I settle on the 'Free Traders' civic for the simple fact that the 'Grand Plan' is all about boosting my economy to support a military. And I think it fits, the Cartel may be militant but they like a profit too as it means they can buy more ships and bigger guns. Also I intend to be making extensive use of branch offices so improving them is also a win. Speaking of which, let's see if we can worm our way into the illicit underbelly of some of our neighbours shall we?

The Uriy Suns is a no go for branch offices as we still have a post war truce active with them for about another year and the Prossnakan Star Hunters are also a no as they are fanatic purifiers so they basically want to blow up everyone that isn't them. So I find an outlying world of the Skanuri Bloc to get a small branch office on, I can't do anything with it yet though. The Alvothari Hegemony however have a nice ripe capital world I can afford to set down roots on, so let's see what fun we can have on their homeworld.

Two whole building slots to play with? Well well, the Alvothari are not going to enjoy this but I sure am, onwards minions! First off lets get a wrecking yard building for those sweet sweet alloys our military so craves. For our second option let's get an illicit research lab down too, more science is always a plus if you ask me. I'll see what other planets we can make use of later once we have some more energy credits and influence to burn. It does give these empires a casus belli (or cause for war) but yeah hopefully I'll have some serious firepower and defences by the time they get annoyed enough to use it. I hope.

Sadly the big branch office doesn't survive long so it looks like the Alvothari are quite on top of their game when it comes to crime. I wonder if there's a way to protect them that I am missing, I guess I'll find out sooner or later. The Skanuri Bloc throw another insult our way which is kind of adorable when you consider the only way they can get to Cartel space is by going through a fallen empires territory. Good luck with that bird brains.. And then they open their borders to me, what? I sense some kind of elaborate ruse with a dose of shenanigans, I am not falling for that! I'll avoid any obvious 'foul play' puns as these birds seem a humourless lot.

Let's finish off this part for now with our next physics research project, with our improved colony ships ready well ahead of schedule let's see what we want next. Nothing utterly amazing but given the Uriy Suns use of missiles in the last war let's get the improved point defences researching just in case.

The current state of the galaxy, those other empires are getting pretty large now.

With the galaxy seemingly ticking over quietly and the Fox Cartel continuing it's plan to build up before advancing again, time to bring this part to a close.

As always I do hope you enjoyed reading and I welcome all feedback, comments, tips etc either here or on twitter! Til next time!

If you missed the last part you can find it here!