Stellaris from the Automata Era

Or...when you say it doesn't exist, it really doesn't exist.

So after coming to his senses, Yan Luo said that he must clear up the surrounding geopolitical environment.

Of course, when facing Mushroom, he does not necessarily rely solely on force to achieve his goals.

The experience of his ancestors in the most difficult times told him that force is only one of the means to achieve a goal.

When big shots are forced to do so, they will always choose more clever ways to make their decisions.

"Come, let's form a diplomatic mission and send friendly greetings from Earth to our mushroom friends."

First of all, I would like to state that this delegation is unarmed. Don’t let anyone think of war crimes through battleship diplomacy!

Chapter 292: The Earth's Orthodoxy is Actually Mushrooms

Let's revisit the United States of Blog.

Compared to human aesthetics, the Brog United States should be a kind of fungal intelligent creature that looks like a mushroom and uses tentacles made of plant fibers instead of hands.

In a sense, the appearance is not the type that humans like.

From a cultural perspective, although it is a common view that mushrooms gained emotions and the power to break out of the universe because of the visit of the Golden Disc Explorers from Earth, the fact is that those explorers were unable to leave the constraints of the solar system due to the speed of the universe.

Therefore, how did Mushroom get the golden disc? Yan Luo probably had to go back to the previous universe cycle to ask "himself" this question.

But putting aside these strange views, mushrooms are more friendly than Yan Luo imagined.

It is undeniable that the cultural industry is a very good means of assimilation and invasion. From the beginning of mushrooms walking upright to the exploration of the universe, they have been influenced by the earth's culture.

Friendship, movies, music, these are almost things that Mushroom has never heard of before. Even the name of his own race is taken from the knowledge he has received.

It really makes the earth a civilized Daji, at least...that's how Mushroom sees it.

Of course, everyone has their own unique understanding, and civilization and race are no exception. The militaristic mushrooms shouting about friendship, bonds, friends and the like and attacking other civilizations should have little to do with the Earth.

Now mushrooms are facing another problem, which is:

"So what is the diplomatic corps?"

At Yan Luo's instruction, the humanoid sent a simple note to the mushrooms, but after hanging up the communication, the mushrooms quickly fell into confused doubts.

In fact, the mushrooms' path to unification was too smooth, unlike the Earth, which had gone through a long period of cruel internal circulation and was naturally able to develop this advanced method of stealing intelligence.

In addition, the current version of civilization mushrooms have only come into contact with mud and the earth. How could they know so much?

Of course, the literal meaning is still understandable. Maybe the good brother next door is coming to your house to play?

This is a more vivid metaphor. For mushrooms, the earth may really be a pioneer in space exploration. Just by using the word "predecessor" in this way, humans can express their inner respect.

What's more, they received the gift from the Earth dozens of centuries ago. From a simple perspective, the Earth's pace of exploring the universe is thousands of years ahead of them.

It was only with the enlightenment of the earth that mushrooms looked up at the sky and developed the desire and vision to explore.

So, based on the conclusion, Earth should be a more advanced and superior civilization, right? After all, it's impossible for a civilization to survive for so long and still regress or stagnate technologically, right?

Therefore, the desire of Mushroom to make friends with Earth is not only due to his extreme xenophobia, but also because he feels that Earth can really fight...

At least the slime next door has been severely beaten by the Earth. Obviously, the mushrooms who have seen the Earth’s fleet believe that the Earth has enough military force to express their own ideas.

Mushroom still expressed recognition for such a 'predecessor'.

The only pity is that over a long period of time, the ancestors' clansmen have died out and are now only able to rely on synthetic intelligent humans to maintain their family business.

Mushrooms are not really finding their predecessors who once enlightened them.

Fortunately, this is not some weird magical world line. At least it won't make the Brog United States feel that it has inherited the orthodoxy of Earth culture and rush to seize the Earth to establish the United Nations.

Then bringing the topic back, the mushrooms are troubled by how to receive the diplomatic mission?

"How about learning about those slimes?"

"Slime... isn't that right?"

Although mushrooms have beaten slimes and successfully turned them into their friends, apart from private trade between the two sides, the only real face-to-face offline communication between mushrooms and slimes is when the two sides sign a treaty.

As the winner, no matter how naive you are, you cannot regard the original atmosphere as formal communication between friends.

Fortunately, as a flatterer of Earth culture, Mushroom can always find his own answers in the golden disc.

About 30 days later, Yan Luo, who was still feeling uneasy, adhered to the concept of speed being of the essence in war and quickly mobilized professional personnel to send them to the mushroom territory.

As for the so-called professionals, they were naturally Adam, who had a successful cooperation experience, and the humanoid high-level 'Black' Blake.

Yan Luo is quite resolute in treating human and mechanical life equally.

What's more, seeing that these people have been doing nothing recently, we must find them something to do to increase their appearance rate.

Of course, this decision was not very friendly to both parties, or it unilaterally made Blake feel unfriendly.

"Ever since the last time I negotiated with you with the Terrans, I've had a bad feeling. It seems like it's been confirmed now."

Blake is considered an older generation of humanoid, at least in terms of age he should not be younger than Gemini models like Popola and Divara. His perception of mechanical life cannot be described simply as bad.

However, given that the current human was a 'hero' who was dedicated to mending the relationship between the two sides, Blake could only suppress his discomfort.

Now all he could do was to gaze at the stars through the glass of the mission ship, so as to achieve the purpose of out of sight, out of mind.

“But I think it feels pretty good.”

Oops, that was a mistake!

Faced with Adam's smiling response, Blake suddenly felt that his previous verbal provocation was a bit hasty.

When dealing with the Terrans before, everyone set out separately and only met when doing serious business, and once it was over, they would immediately disband.

There will be no opportunity for communication between the two sides at all. Now that we are envoys sitting on the same boat, why do we need to communicate in language?

After all, even if he was scolding Adam, Blake felt that he was at a disadvantage.

This is like the Catholics and the Orthodox in the Middle Ages. When the priests of the two factions met, they would never just verbally express their own views. They would probably use hammers to make the other party remember their doctrines.

A grand reconciliation of Eastern and Western religions? Don't even think about it until the blood of the other side's believers is shed dry!

For example, in the current situation, both sides are considered senior executives, and it doesn't matter what the subordinates think when they are tired of fighting. As for them, they feel uncomfortable without using physical means to pry open the other party's system.

At least that's how Blake feels.

Chapter 293: The Earth's Mission Feels Something Is Wrong

Of course, a fierce firefight did not break out on the diplomatic ship in the end. After thinking it over again and again, Blake still felt that the overall situation was more important.

As for Adam... this guy has already broken away from traditional mechanical life forms, and he is not very old. If converted into a human being, he is just a child who is about to learn to walk. How could there be hatred between the round head and the human form?

But he could still understand the mutual dissatisfaction between some groups. This had already risen from the fate chosen by the program to an emotional entanglement. Both sides did not know how many brothers and sisters had become the exploits of the other side.

It can only be said that the fusion of humanoids and mechanical life is no longer something that this generation can solve, but I heard that the gradually increasing new generation of humanoids and awakened round heads seem to be more harmonious.

It seems that the communication that humans once talked about is still effective, but I don’t know whether that human can rely on this to unite the two groups.

"Never mind. That's not my concern." Adam turned his head, a smile on his face again. He cast his gaze on the humanoid Blake. "We still have about two weeks of travel. How about getting to know each other and discussing the mission?"

"I don't feel like talking right now, thank you."

Mission? What other mission could there be?

This mushroom trip was completely different from the one with Terran. The last time was for a mutually beneficial negotiation with Terran, and all the dialogue links were controlled by Yan Luo behind the scenes.

For Mushroom, to put it nicely, it is a diplomatic visit, but to put it bluntly, it is a spy invasion.

They were sent out solely for the purpose of collecting intelligence and information, which was comparable to traveling on public funds, and they didn't even spend their own money.

As for what kind of treatment you can get, it all depends on the mood of the mushrooms, but no matter how bad it is, you can see the attitude of the mushrooms towards the earth.

However, this kind of large-scale civilization exchange generally does not require harsh requirements from visitors. In any case, they will not be served with just kimchi in terms of food and accommodation.

If they really want to do this, it’s either because the relationship between them is not good and they just deal with it casually, or they are really poor and can’t make ends meet. It can’t be that they are mysteriously confident in their own culture, right?

All we can say is that the relationship between civilizations itself can yield a lot of useful information from small details.

This visit to Earth is to collect this information.

Knowing this, it no longer matters whether the travelers have good or bad relationships; they just need to leave everything they see and understand to humans to handle.

After Blake politely declined, Adam naturally wouldn't get close to her again.

Fortunately, he had the foresight to keep his younger brother Eve on this trip, otherwise Blake's attitude alone would have caused the brother complex to explode.

After a moment of silence between the two sides, as if time had just passed, the ship carrying the diplomatic delegation slowly sailed out of the port and headed straight for the mushroom territory.

This part of the journey will take two months.

In fact, there is no actual geographical border between the Earth and the Bloo mushroom. Instead, it is the mud that has a large area of ​​contact with the mushroom.

Even though the earth was divided into its lands after a war, the territory still looks long and narrow and ugly.

After all, the original purpose was to have a stable route with Mao Meng. After seeing that the territory of the mud had been penetrated and there were even non-mud territories to explore, the pace of the earth's expansion was slowed down.

Likewise, Earth's humanoids need more time and energy to build humanoid manufacturing factories on the habitable planets they discover, in order to increase the number of their 'scarce' compatriots.

As for the round-heads, they have the vast Koprulu Sector to choose from.

To be honest, Yan Luo still felt it was a pity that the humanoids did not fight for the richer Koprulu. However, considering the long distance there and the fact that it relied on a wormhole to maintain passage, it was understandable that the humanoids had some concerns.

And although Koprulu looks rich, the crisis there is equally great.

Because the bugs everywhere in the interstellar space are a cultural feature unique to the Koprulu sector, you must try it.

Even though Yan Luo had a laissez-faire attitude towards mechanical life, he would occasionally look at the reports sent by N2 and the others, which also described conflicts between certain planets and wild insect swarms for various reasons.

Just looking at the accumulated reports, I'm afraid the round-headed guys over there have already gained a lot of experience fighting the Zerg. Now the only thing missing from both sides may be a Zerg version of Rak'shir.

In short, all we have heard on Earth is that there is a mushroom next to the mud. As for the geographical scope of this mushroom and whether there are other civilizations next to the mushroom, Yan Luo has no idea.

After he turned his gaze back from the distant Cygnus, he finally realized that the area near his home had not been fully explored.

As for the exploration and research ships that were previously scattered everywhere to expand the star map... sometimes you have to admit the efficiency of the centralized power system. After learning that Yan Luo wanted to figure out the situation in Cygnus, those research ships are probably now in the subspace on their way, or just preparing to leave the subspace.

I hope they won’t come back to explore the area around their hometown later..

Anyway, this is all because the humanoid is too subjective and active, and it should not have much to do with Yan Luo.

Of course, the Earth Diplomatic Corps on this side of the topic did not cause any major events this time.

Although they may need to pass through the area on the slime side, the rampant slime pirates are obvious to all.

However, because they had made arrangements in advance and considering the military strength of the Earth, those guys who read "pirates" and "private armies" did not have the courage to cause trouble for the diplomatic corps for the time being.

I don't even know if it's because they were afraid of mistaking their targets, but the pirate activities also subsided a lot, at least before the diplomatic corps passed through customs. But as soon as they left, special pirate activities immediately appeared along the route they passed.

If it weren't for the special military activities on Earth that everyone was clearly aware of, Blake and Adam and his party would have suspected that it was a privateer sent by their own country.

It was only after the diplomatic ship entered the mushroom area that the mystery was finally revealed.

Borlaug, a tropical planet with a humid climate.

Compared to Earth, mushrooms seem to be more welcoming and generous. After entering their territory, the mushroom frigates arrived after receiving the message and preparing for a long time.

Of course, the diplomatic mission’s stopover point was not a random mushroom border galaxy, but after traveling through more than a dozen galaxies, it went straight to their home planet, which would make those who talked about the Dark Forest Law cry to death.

After arriving in the Blog galaxy, Blake and Adam quickly saw through the glass of the ship the huge fortifications near the Mushroom mother planet and the ring belt built around the planet's equator.

"It's the Star Ring. The mushroom still has some strength."

In fact, compared to Ringworld, many people may admit their mistakes at the first moment.

But don't get me wrong, the Star Ring is not a habitable ring world, nor is it a very advanced technology. It is a group of defensive artillery batteries designed around the planet.

If possible, a civilization that has just entered space also has sufficient capabilities to carry out construction.

However, the real difficulty of the Star Ring lies in its construction cost and technical concepts. For an empire on the rise, every penny of minerals must be invested in infrastructure, and only when there is surplus production capacity will it consider the construction of the Star Ring again.

However, as a purely defensive facility, it is actually unnecessary to build it around the mother planet.

After all, by the time it takes effect, others have already deployed troops at your doorstep. By that time, the fleets outside will probably have all been wiped out. If the fleets haven't won the battle, forget about these defensive turrets. This will only allow you to die with some dignity.

Even from a defensive perspective, building fortifications based on star bases would be more effective, at least in terms of firepower alone.

However, as a supplementary means of planetary defense, it is still barely sufficient and is a useless thing that would be a pity to throw away.

Of course, it would be fine if there were magical bonuses in Stellaris, but from a realistic perspective and with Yan Luo's pathetic scientific understanding, it can only be said that even dogs can't build it.