I had my first game of the new expansion on stream today, I love it so far!
Soloing vs AI on grand admiral with scaling difficulty, I decided to go inward perfection because I like being left alone and trying to build a nice highly defended empire. I ended up getting really lucky with the hyperlane layout and was able to claim a huge amount of space and planets.
I also was a lithoid race starting on a ring world which is apparently challenging due to mineral issues which is sorta true but you can easily deal with it with a few bio reactors. easy money!
I'm about 69 years into the game so far, Got massive fleets and great economy, but I'm kinda concerned by the devouring swarm right next to me. Going to be streaming again tomorrow where I'll be reinforcing all my stations so no one thinks of trying to attack me. :D
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Yeah hyperlanes are a huge RNG and can both benefit you greatly or absolutely destroy you... In the last few games, I had very nice hyperlanes. At one point, there was only one huge chokepoint that connected my homeworld sector to rest of the galaxy, until mid-late game (if you are lucky) AI doesn't usually have jump drives, so that chokepoint was really good at holding people back (had about 16k citadel there) and basically everything behind the chokepoint was mine. About 20 sectors or something.
I haven't played Grand Admiral difficulty yet though, and probably wouldn't. I am a military freak and usually start spamming fleets very early on.
Militarist Gestalt!