Awakened Empires annoy me, would like someone to change my opinion

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tepacana

Sergeant
16 Badges
Dec 30, 2016
84
5
  • Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Stellaris
  • Stellaris: Digital Anniversary Edition
  • Stellaris: Leviathans Story Pack
  • Stellaris - Path to Destruction bundle
  • Stellaris: Humanoids Species Pack
  • Stellaris: Apocalypse
  • Stellaris: Distant Stars
  • Stellaris: Megacorp
  • Stellaris: Ancient Relics
  • Stellaris: Lithoids
  • Stellaris: Federations
  • Stellaris: Necroids
  • Stellaris: Nemesis
  • Stellaris: Synthetic Dawn
I play on Commodore mostly, and I have 1,248 hours at present. I find Commodore fairly easy, and I can play it to chill out, other than one thing, Awakened Empires. I can deal with the End-Game crises quite well, and I'd like to think I'm good at the game, but I've never been able to deal with Awakened Empires. Having done some research myself, I've found that a lot of people get events that help them out, like banding several nations together to fight them, but I've never gotten these.

My primary experience with an Awakened Empire was where the was only one (Can't remember which it was) and they attacked me for being to aggressive. I guess I didn't get any events to help me out because I'm (for lack of a better phrase) a villain, but it seems a little dumb to me that Awakened Empires have more fleet power than the Prethoryn Swarm. I've seen people saying to use tactics like "Bait them into a citadel and put your fleets there" But the Awakened Empire sends sometimes nearly 1 million fleet strength to attack me in a death ball (between 600K and 900K over several alternate reloads of a save and trying again), the largest fleet power I managed to make was about 450K.

I have a feeling I'm missing something obvious, but I can't work it out by myself, so I'd appreciate anyone's advice on it. And yes I know I need to git gud :).
 
I play on Commodore too, but I usually put Crisis strength up to x3 or x4, which does make them a lot worse than Awakened Empires. It's perfectly possible to get ~800K fleet power by 2400 even without going into total conquest mode. I'd say it's really the matter of optimizing the growth phase and economy - megastructures do let you grow your economy incredibly fast in the late-game years.
It would be nice to have a slider that sets Awakened Empire strength, though.
 
I'd love to know how you get a navy capacity high enough to support that, I'm maxing out about 1100 naval capacity, which gives me a rough fleet strength of 500K in 2475, do you have a better conversion of navy cap to fleet strength, or simply a higher navy cap? I guess by mega-structures you mean having a Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor, then Ecumenopoli to refine into alloys, the restricting factor for me is navy cap.

(Also kind of curious about your playtime so far, going on the forums always gives me an impression that I suck for having played 1250 hours)
 
Last edited:
Anchorage spam
Various naval capacity techs
Supremacy traditions
A Grand Fleet ambition
Strategic Coordination Center (not only gives direct naval capacity but also more station cap for even more anchorages)
Fortress planets
Mega Shipyard helps (after I got it I converted all other shipyards to yet more anchorages)

I ended up with ~2100 naval capacity and 1.3 million fleet power in 2469 in my last game (which was the first I ever finished). And I also don't consider me a good player even after 1200 hrs in...

Oh and for good measure, if you fight an awakened empire, equip your ships with all penetrating weapons (focused arc emitters and phased disruptors, cloud lightning if you have it) and work on energy weapon damage repeatables, you will just eat their fleets as they rely heavily on shield and armor, which you now just bypass...)
 
Last edited:
I'd love to know how you get a navy capacity high enough to support that, I'm maxing out about 1100 naval capacity, which gives me a rough fleet strength of 500K in 2475, do you have a better conversion of navy cap to fleet strength, or simply a higher navy cap? I guess by mega-structures you mean having a Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor, then Ecumenopoli to refine into alloys, the restricting factor for me is navy cap.

(Also kind of curious about your playtime so far, going on the forums always gives me an impression that I suck for having played 1250 hours)

Nah, I'm around 1000 hours, so you're doing better than me in that regard.
How's your repeatable technologies looking? Stuff like them, tech in general and the military edicts all give buffs to fleet power that get pretty high with higher ship counts. Navy cap around 1000 by 2400-2500 sounds good enough - though I do usually have bug federation fleet to accompany that, with me as the permanent president. There's really little reason not to get federation fleet to supplement your own fleet power, especially since AI often builds it into the cap very fast.
Navy cap can be increased pretty easily with fortresses. Either drop few of them on every planet or build habitats with a mix of commercial buildings (for jobs) and fortresses. Soldier jobs are easily the primary source for fleet cap in large empire.
My general strategy is mostly about pop growth. Colonize every rock, run nutritional plenitude form day 1. Bigger your population is bigger fleet you can get. That way more people can work in forts giving you naval cap, and more people can work making alloys. Pop growth is the king in this regard.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
As others have pointed out, your fleet power is too low. I regularly have over one million fleet power by the time an FE awakens. Do as @Kruzenstern suggests and spam Anchorages, create fortress worlds, build a Strategic Coordination Center, and spam the repeatable. You'll be an Awakened Empire-crushing-power-house in no time.
 
but I've never been able to deal with Awakened Empires

Yeah, I was just starting to get cocky when my Fallen Empires awakened... now I know what you mean.
Playing on Grand Admiral, 5x, year 2288.

While I usually have no problems fighting my neighbouring AI-empires, even if they have way more fleetpower than me (at least upto the first 80 years), I find it surprisingly tough to fight awakened Empires. Even their starbases usually come at a minimum of 170k fleetpower with around 635k combined hull/a/sh (more if you also look at the 4-10 defense stations surrounding them). This makes them tougher than every spaceborne or other monster except the crisis itself. And so far I have only mentioned their starbases and not their fleets.

I am not complaining.
Awakened Fallen Empires are really not supposed to be push overs.
To be honest, I really appreciate the challenge. It's 2288 and just 2 game years ago I thought it might start to get boring after having tributized half the galaxy. No, it won't. At least not for a while...

My primary experience with an Awakened Empire was where the was only one (Can't remember which it was) and they attacked me for being to aggressive.

Same here. It was probably the xenophile FE.
After seeing how many escort-ships the Awakened Fallen Empire started to constantly produce and considering it only a matter of time until they would decide to attack the meanest slaver and worst warmonger in the galaxy (me), I thought it wise to make a pre-emptive strike.

Strength comparison:
My biggest fleet consists of 21 BBs with a formal fleetpower of 92k. Altogether my fleets add up to almost 450k fleetpower.
Naval capacity is 1484 (of which only 1063 are used due to seemingly having never enough alloys).
The kind of standard fleet of the Awakened Empire seems to be 8 battlecruisers plus around 32 escorts, roughly 400k fleet power. They (talking in plural but meaning only 1 FE) have around 6 of those fleets and do like to combine them if necessary. This means they have around a combined 2400k fleet power in comparison to my 450k.

My strategy:
1) Shy away from direct fleet battles (because losses will be horrible even IF I'd win the battle)... except I find very small enemy fleets (which are usually scattered newly built escort-ships).
2) Try to conquere the planets from the Awakened Fallen Empire (now called AFE)

To achieve 2) conquering planets I must fight the starbase in that system first. In every battle against plain AFE-starbases I try to use my whole fleet and still take losses and severe damage. The AFE-planets with the smallest ground defense have 584 strength, the strongest 3500 strength. So prepare to build LOTS of assault armies or, much better, your best Gene Warriors plus some Xenomorphs. I am having more than 50 gene warrior armies right now, constantly building more (because, yes, I was a bit too cocky when deciding on my pre-emprive strike against a AFE).
To keep the conquered planets, I station some armies. Nevertheless the AFE has assault armies, too, and they are truly elite. There is no other way, at one point one needs to catch and destroy them, best done if the AI leaves them "undefended" in a system. With undefended I mean every situation with no full AFE-fleet in the same system. If it is "just" a starbase with several hundret k fleetpower, go for it. It's half the victory if you manage to destroy those armies because it secures your own and your conquered planets from the AFE even without ever achieving fleet superiority.

To achieve 1) avoiding direct battles (in my scenario I'd loose any straight battle anyway or only gain pyrrus-victories) I find 2 things important:
# Speed... obviously... but the important part is that your battleships are faster (much faster) than the battlecruisers of the AFE. My BBs have a base speed of 217. Adding 15% speed from edict and using fast admirals they achieve a speed of around 290 which makes them faster than the AFE Battlecruisers (speed 225-250)... which is good because my BBs are doing a lot of running away *grin
# ALWAYS keep an eye on the positions of your fleets and make sure that they won't get cornered. If the AI manages to force you into a battle you do not want to fight, jump away to a save location (save as save when also taking into account that your fleet will be on half speed and strength for the next 200 days).

AI battle ability:
There is lots of talk that the battle AI is brain dead.
Well, I am an experienced strat & tact gamer and would consider myself quite good at such games and I am also aware of the severe disadvantages any AI in a strat-game has against a human player... and I must say, kudos to paradox, they did a good job.
Of course, the AI is making "horrible" mistakes. But those mistakes become horrible because as a human I can not only learn and react but I especially have a highly superiour ability to recognize patterns and EVERY AI must use patterns (because nowadays AIs can't really learn but rely instead on patterns).
And what paradox has done, dividing the game in start-/mid- and endgame phases and each phase with its unique opponents which are thrown at you, is a remarkable simple as clever solution to some of the most common problems in 4x-games.

The conclusion:
If you want to have fun, fight the AI when it still has huge advantages in firepower. This actually forces you to think to beat the AI.
This kind of guerilla warfare I find highly thrilling and relies on the basics of guerilla warfare:
# take your time
# wait for the enemy (AI) to make mistakes
# only engage in battles you choose.
While "waiting for the enemy to make mistakes" might look cheap, it is THE strategy to beat a stronger enemy. The only other being the, let's call it the "US-way", of using highly superiour forces. Superiour due to tech or mass or a combination of both.... which is, in terms of gaming, not very thrilling.

I'd love to know how you get a navy capacity high enough to support that, I'm maxing out about 1100 naval capacity, which gives me a rough fleet strength of 500K in 2475
Well, you probably have already done what I am suggesting otherwise you hadn't achieved 1100 naval capacity:
# upgrading your starbases to star fortresses with anchorages and naval logistics offices
# building on planets strongholds and upgrading them to fortresses
So my advice: You just never stop doing so but build more and more... while collecting also all the doctrines etc. raising naval capacity.
While there is kind of a cap on star bases you can build, there is none on strongholds and fortresses. Additionally strongholds can be build efficiently on every planet regardless of hab and type since any soldier will always produce 3 naval capacity, so it's a good fill up on especially your worst planets.

As a matter of fact, in 2288 my restriction is still alloys and not naval capacity because it is rather early in the game and my first (and only) ecumenopolis is still not fully built (10 foundries out of 18 done). Thus it is rather recent that my alloy production got over 1k/month, now at 1890/month, still raising and with lots of other planets besides the ecumenopolis also producing alloys.
 
Last edited:
  • 2
Reactions:
I play on Commodore mostly, and I have 1,248 hours at present. I find Commodore fairly easy, and I can play it to chill out, other than one thing, Awakened Empires. I can deal with the End-Game crises quite well, and I'd like to think I'm good at the game, but I've never been able to deal with Awakened Empires. Having done some research myself, I've found that a lot of people get events that help them out, like banding several nations together to fight them, but I've never gotten these.

My primary experience with an Awakened Empire was where the was only one (Can't remember which it was) and they attacked me for being to aggressive. I guess I didn't get any events to help me out because I'm (for lack of a better phrase) a villain, but it seems a little dumb to me that Awakened Empires have more fleet power than the Prethoryn Swarm. I've seen people saying to use tactics like "Bait them into a citadel and put your fleets there" But the Awakened Empire sends sometimes nearly 1 million fleet strength to attack me in a death ball (between 600K and 900K over several alternate reloads of a save and trying again), the largest fleet power I managed to make was about 450K.

I have a feeling I'm missing something obvious, but I can't work it out by myself, so I'd appreciate anyone's advice on it. And yes I know I need to git gud :).
You can always knuckle under, wait for the mechanic 'Decadence' to weaken them post-awakening, and then overthrow them.

Pre-2.0, FE didn't have to wait for endgame year to awaken. Imagine that 600k-900k when the most power anyone has is 60k. Pretty much all you COULD do was bow, unless you had a big federation of people who were also 60k.

... but yeah, it's kinda silly that Crisis Fleets, by default, are weaker than AE fleets. I argue they should remove 25x strength, make 5x the new 1x, and 25x the new 5x. Goodness knows we've been power-creeped enough.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Awakened Empires are hugely advanced. Their fleets should be stronger, all the way to end game. You're not meant to be able to fight them when they first awaken. Best bet is to avoid them (if you can).

The crises are a joke right now. They're fundamentally broken and don't work. This is too bad because years ago when the game was still playable, the Crises could mop the Awakened Empires up if isolated and not sufficiently supported. Now they bug out and their AI self-paralyzes shortly after spawning half the time,

I do agree that sometimes the AE's are a huge pain in the butt. If you spawn right next to a militant one and get forced to thralldom early, I usually just restart. It's not fun after that.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
So the big thing I missed was fortress worlds, completely forgot about that for some reason, I couldn't see a method of increasing further purely based on starbases, but after some time and a small loan of 1 million dollars I should be able to have a pretty high naval capacity. I guess it feels like a bit of a difficulty shock, because my 500K is more than sufficient for fighting off the other empires in the game, which is what I interpret the purpose of a military to be, then, all of a sudden, something far more powerful trots up. I suppose that's why they annoyed me, but I get the point. It also sounds like people have better conversions than me for turning navy cap into fleet strength, for example 1.2 million with 2400 navy cap. I have a ratio of 454.5 strength per cap, while the second example gives 500 strength per navy cap. I guess that might be a small discrepancy due to admiral levels, but it seems too significant, especially seen as that represents 110K at 2400 cap.
 
I argue they should remove 25x strength, make 5x the new 1x, and 25x the new 5x. Goodness knows we've been power-creeped enough.
Good God, NO.

Please be aware that there are those of us who have yet to "git gud" at the game. In my very first game of Stellaris, I was massively overwhelmed by the end game crisis set at 1x difficulty. There needs to be an easier difficulty tier for first time players and players still learning how to get better at the game.
 
  • 4
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Good God, NO.

Please be aware that there are those of us who have yet to "git gud" at the game. In my very first game of Stellaris, I was massively overwhelmed by the end game crisis set at 1x difficulty. There needs to be an easier difficulty tier for first time players and players still learning how to get better at the game.
Yeah, I was too, and if it hadn't been for the strength of a pre-2.0 Guardian Awakened Empire I'd have been eaten by the Prethoryn. But we also need to be cognizant of the fact that, in comparison to when crisis fleets were first made and balanced, players can become MUCH more powerful even without DLC.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Good God, NO.

Please be aware that there are those of us who have yet to "git gud" at the game. In my very first game of Stellaris, I was massively overwhelmed by the end game crisis set at 1x difficulty. There needs to be an easier difficulty tier for first time players and players still learning how to get better at the game.

I'm with ASGeek here - I still die to more than I beat 1x crisis in the current game.
 
But we also need to be cognizant of the fact that, in comparison to when crisis fleets were first made and balanced, players can become MUCH more powerful even without DLC.
Fair enough, though it still takes some level of skill to get to the point where things like the end game crisis can be considered easy. I think all 4X games get to that point if you play them enough. I believe the devs tried to compensate for that by making so many aspects of the game customizable.

It can also have to do with play style. I've watched a lot of Stellaris videos by the YouTuber Lathland. He does runs with the mid-game and end-game crisis years set INSANELY early and managed to beat it almost every time. But to do it, he often runs really deep in the red on either energy (because of his massive fleet) or consumer goods (because of his tech rushing) and is constantly having to do stuff with the market to keep his economy afloat. I mean, yeah, it works, but it's not the way I like to play. I consider keeping the economy balanced as part of the challenge of the game.
 
  • 2Like
  • 2
Reactions:
It can also have to do with play style. I've watched a lot of Stellaris videos by the YouTuber Lathland. He does runs with the mid-game and end-game crisis years set INSANELY early and managed to beat it almost every time. But to do it, he often runs really deep in the red on either energy (because of his massive fleet) or consumer goods (because of his tech rushing) and is constantly having to do stuff with the market to keep his economy afloat. I mean, yeah, it works, but it's not the way I like to play. I consider keeping the economy balanced as part of the challenge of the game.
As someone who's also beaten super-early high-strength crisis, you don't need to do any of that. The crisis is slow enough that you can take your time. ESPECIALLY if you snipe its construction ships and destroy its relatively defenseless outposts to make it backtrack. The 2.0 reworks to FTL made the crises anemic compared to what they used to be like.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I can change your opinion.
2498-06-01.png

You don`t need to conquer everything.
2476-05-03.png
 
My strategy:
1) Shy away from direct fleet battles (because losses will be horrible even IF I'd win the battle)... except I find very small enemy fleets (which are usually scattered newly built escort-ships).
2) Try to conquere the planets from the Awakened Fallen Empire (now called AFE)

While fighting the Awakened Fallen Empire I realized that attacking it was probably the bravest, most stupid and definetly one of the most thrilling things I have done in Stellaris so far.

The war lasted for 6 years then I was able to conquere the last colony of the Awakened Fallen Empire (AFE).

The Battle-AI handled itself surprisingly well, actually it gave me so much trouble that I needed to press pause all the time to check the status of the AFE-fleets which were constantly hunting my fleets, reconquering lost planets or attacking my nearby tributary. It was amazing to see how fast and responsive the AI reacted to what my fleets did.

Fleet setup at start of war 2288:
54 BBs (lost 13)
101 CCs (lost 83)
79 DDs (lost 59)
80 CVs (lost 46)
Total fleet power: 485k

AFE-fleets:
48 Battlecruiser
130 Escorts
Total fleet power: 1870k (the reason such a few ships can heap so much fleet power: +321% weapon damage, +366% armor and shield pts, +326% hull pts, those ships were tough)

The fleet power difference shows why it was rather stupid to attack but I wanted to see...
Although applying a strict tactic of avoiding battles vs the overwhelmingly strong AFE-fleets, I had quite severe losses (see above). There was constant attrition when attacking the very strong starbases, very small AFE-fleets I did intentionally attack but even they cost me ships, twice the AI was able to catch my fleet and losses were high (luckily, though, not against the combined AFE fleet). Attrition on the AI-side took it's toll, too. When the war ended the AFE was down to only its strongest fleet: 16 BCs plus 36 Escorts (which, after having conquered the last colony, was void anyway since any empire loosing its last colony in a total war gets removed from the galaxy).

Twice I managed to kill the assembled army-fleet of the AFE which was important since otherwise I wouldn't had faced a chance.
I lost track of how many armies I built and lost, many. As many as reaching 100% war exhaustion in 2293. Time was ticking then and I needed to become more reckless.
The AI built armies wherever it could all the time as well and usually cared well for them. In 6 years I was, as mentioned, only able to catch the army fleets twice.

It wasn't what I'd call a comfortable victory. The AI was still a very big threat and in the end it was a race against the time due to war exhaustion.

Whow, I did it!
Stupid, crazy... I can only recommend it!
And so much learned...
 
Last edited:
I'd love to know how you get a navy capacity high enough to support that, I'm maxing out about 1100 naval capacity, which gives me a rough fleet strength of 500K in 2475, do you have a better conversion of navy cap to fleet strength, or simply a higher navy cap? I guess by mega-structures you mean having a Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor, then Ecumenopoli to refine into alloys, the restricting factor for me is navy cap.

(Also kind of curious about your playtime so far, going on the forums always gives me an impression that I suck for having played 1250 hours)


In my last game I shamelessly abused both MEGASTRUCTURES and EDICTS to do OK. Effectively my passive playthrough was:

  • Expand as quickly as I could PEACEFULLY in the early game. Got 30+ systems out of a 400 star galaxy.
  • Build as many Anchorages as I could afford to [I kept one TRADE and one BASTION even in end-game]
  • Abuse MEGASTRUCTURES in the mid-game to add things like Dyson Sphere, Matter Decompressor, Strategic Coordination Center, etc.
  • Abuse EDICTS to get +energy, +minerals, +fleet cap
  • Change diplomatic stance to SUPREMEACY
  • IIRC pass a few Galactic Community resolutions here & there to add even more fleet capacity
  • IIRC have at least some jobs to help with fleet capacity
  • Overbuild my fleet cap because the Dyson Sphere gave me the extra energy to do so .... Matter Decompressor gave me extra minerals which got fed to at least one Ecumenopolis (sp?)
  • Having some RESEARCH ring-worlds didn't hurt my science generation which wasn't great at all for a lot of the game

Basically with my 30+ systems in 2466 I was at something like 1887 fleet capacity. Counting the overbuild I could afford field 2688 hulls and still had enough positive energy & minerals that I could sustain a war for a while.

NOTE: I'm not a good player and was very PASSIVE in the above playthrough. Other players that build "fortress worlds" or are much more aggressive flat out put me to shame.