I lost my first return game (on 1.10). That’s OK, I understood what was happening and why I lost. Some tips in the next post.
Here was the final view of the map. It was a Siwa class planet (Earth like), with some radiation, desolate wastes, and high mountains. Alien worms lived in the mountains, and I think they wiped out some minor factions because I encountered few. Here is a zoomed out view of my four zones.
To my south was a major regime that I befriended early on. Republicans, and pretty easy going neighbors. We agreed a non-aggression pact - which was my biggest mistake. Later on I needed to invade them to win, and I took a massive loyalty hit from my most senior advisors for breaking the pact. Militarily things went well during the invasion. Upgraded infantry and tanks won most fights. I had fun sending infantry through the mountains to circle while my tanks rolled through the valleys. I think it was a low pop world because the cities and the defending units were not that massive. This is a close up view of my push south (I am green). I paired tanks with anti-tank guns, supported by mobile infantry in trucks.
I managed logistics just fine. I am no expert! The biggest thing I learned since last attempt was to build truck stations and other “logistics extenders” one hex off of the main route. This helped fix a lot of my issues, where sometimes dropping a truck station right on the long road had previously made things worse. Here is a partially zoomed out view of that same front, the logistics lines in grey. Notice the two small indents in the road to the north - those are truck stations.
I got beat because a third major was already big, and they also invaded my southern neighbor at the same time. The third major grabbed more lands than I did, and triggered the “higher than 50%, and greater than 25% more than second place” victory condition. Nasty people, theocrats, I should have attacked them first. Good work, AI (on Regular difficulty).
Ran for 72 rounds, a great learning experience.