Balancing the Crises

[scaper12123]

Right now, the endgame crises are pretty easy apart from the scourge, which makes them the most annoying of the bunch because they are the red-headed step-child. Firstly, the crises need to be made much harder. The Scourge is fine for the time being, but unbidden and robots need a stronger starting navy. Second, crises need to be either a quick but exciting blow-out of a fight or a methodical series of attacks that whittle their forces down.

The reason I suggest the blow-out is if the crisis spawns in the player's system. They're kind of screwed if the crisis can't be taken out quickly. There needs to be a way for us to tell the galaxy "Hey, these guys are gonna kill us and you'll be next. Send your navy over and we'll try and level them together." There could be a lot of approaches to this, but if a nation is pretty big it should have enough influence to call for that level of assault. It would be pretty exciting too for the intensity and scale of the battle.

When the crises attack smaller nations that wouldn't be able to call for this, it should be what the devs are already calling out for i.e. a slow methodical assault. To that end, I don't think they're doing it quite right at this point. The unbidden is the best example: they get ships faster with more dimensional anchors. In my mind, it should be the opposite effect: they get reinforcements slower the more spread out they are. As a compromise, they should have a significant combat boost in their own space (hence wanting to spread out). This would mean the galaxy would have to whittle the Unbidden down until they have very little space left.

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

The Scourge is not fine. It's too easy. Easier than Unbidden, at last for my fleet composition. Their ships are complete design failure that can be beaten by the most bizzare designs. That crisis need a buff too.

 

[Dementor4]

My experience is that Unbidden are too hard, AI rebellion is too easy, and the Scourge is just right. But I think for everyone it depends on which one they get and how well they're set up to handle it at the time.

But in all cases, I've found allied to be almost entirely useless. I've never had a situation where allies are a relevant part of helping to defeat or even manage a crisis. Most of the time any enemies I have open their borders only for a few years and then close them right back up again, even while the crisis fleets are devouring their system from the inside out. Other empires will go to war with each other like nothing was happening at all. I had a Fallen Empire become guardians once and all that they ever did was suck up a bunch of other empires while keeping their fleets parked at home.

 

[Ixal]

Imo the AI rebellion should be changed to, at first, stay hidden and instead use the faction system and migration to spread around and maybe even replace pops (who then join factions which want migration treaties or refugees welcome which allows more synt pops to come into the empire).
Only when the AI has spread around and infiltrated many empires will it up the game, start terrorist bombing and finally go into open rebellion.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

In all my time playing this game, I have never seen the Scourge or the AI rebellion. It's Unbidden in every single game ._. Either the RNG hates me or I'm doing something wrong.

So I can't talk about the other two but the Unbidden? First of all, I want to see less of them to give other crises more of a presence. Second of all, I wish their initial wave was a lot stronger. Strong enough to stand up to an Awakened Empire at least long enough to establish a foothold and set up a couple of Anchors/other crises equivalents. Perhaps it should scale against the combined power of the galaxy? Afterwards, once they have enough territory, they should start to split up their fleets, patrol territory, send harassment units out and so on, to give other empires a chance to start fighting back.

But the initial boom is the important part. In my games, the Unbidden just kinda... die off-screen. Not terribly interactive.