Crisis Invaders should be stronger than (even awakened) Fallen Empires...

[Krajzen]

There is one thing with the Big Balance of the game which is really annoying me.
The real final boss of this game were always supposed and previewed to be crisis invaders, with their cool designs, unique mechanics, epic event chains. Either them or regular AI empires that got very strong. Fallen empires were supposed to be mostly passive, stagnant, declining old dinosaurs to defeat late game. Less exciting and hyped than crises.

Currently, at least in my games, it is really frustrating me how often and insanely overpowered awakened
fallen empires are. They are unbalanced like holy hell. At this very moment there is thread on the first page describing 500k (!!!) fleet power AFE that is completely unbeatable by half of galaxy combined, after 200 years, after defeating crisis invaders. In my opinion it definitely shouldn't look like this. Game's narrative consistently points at crises being ultimate danger and hypes them, alternatively has a lot of features for dealing with regular enemy empires, with FEs being background NPCs... And then one of them awakens and everything else in the galaxy is a complete joke. This is both unbalanced and immersion breaking.

At least in my games it looks like this, idk if I just have very bad luck. Other people reported similar issues.

I wod be very happy if fallen or especially awakened fallen empires were nerfed the hell out of them to be actually secondary, "optional" bosses instead of hidden overpowered ultimate threat. This is the niche of crisis invaders.

(Not to mention the fact that probably it would be the best for the gameplay if regular AI empires were capable of endangering player so much by the late game)

What are your thoughts?

Also, two digressions
1) How often do you a) Have AI rebellions at all b) Have powerful AI rebellion crises?
2) I have the feeling the game's paxing as in some way really off, that both crises and awakenings tend to happen simply too fast for the vast majority of empires to become strong enough to not be joke against them.

 

[Gyrvendal]

I agree that regular empires should be more of a threat and crises probably need a buff. Although if you leave them alone and they grow a fair bit they can become very hard to deal with atm. At least with the fallen empires you can just accept vassalization whereas the crises will wipe you out.
Only had an AI rebellion once and it was over in a year. Most useless crisis ever.

I think the only way to improve this issues would be to make the AI of regular empires less lackluster. That is an ongoing process and hopefully one day we can have a late game regular empire that's a real threat. Until then, awakened FE will have to do.

 

[Ezumiyr]

I think they awaken too fast. I'm ok with them gaining incredible power after some time, if you don't take care of them, but at the beginning they should have difficulties to re-rise, they should need to pass reforms and to convince their unwilling population.
But, to be honest, when fallen empires awaken late, it's the same thing as end game crisis : they are weak compared to the player. It's really a timing problem - and the problem is that they tend to awaken early a bit too often. More generally, I think it's a problem with the combat system. They'll either have more or less fleet power than you, tactics and technology don't really matter. It's purely numbers vs. numbers and I don't think it'll be possible to fix that before a combat-focused DLC/patch.

I've never seen an AI rebellion after 400+ hours in game.

 

[Mitchz95]

When a xenophobic FE awakened in my last game, I just declared war and conquered them before they had a chance to snowball. It was anticlimatic, to say the least.

 

[Adamsrealm]

They shouldn't be stronger. They should jut have a more eleborate, long winded method to take them out, such as what the unbidden have now with their dimentional anchors.

I personally think their should be a set of wind up events, where the game generates the threats, and you get a series of research projects to slowely uncover what the threat is.

Initially there will be no engagement between the invading hostile forces and existing empires, systems/colonies/ships within certain systems will just simply fall quiet, dissapear, andhe systems become shrouded from view.

Once a point in the research chain has been reached, you will get first contact, this will give you some sensor views of their space and make them vissible on the map (this point is seperate for each empire, requiring each to do it's own research, though allies and federations share information).

Once you make first contact they will perceive you as a threat and begin to invade your space, at first thier ships will have significant bonuses, but progression in researching them will remove these over time.

You will also be unable to take the fight to them, instantly losing any ships you send into thier space, this will ensure that the players are always on the defensive initially preventing instant blapping of a crisis.

Once more research progress is acquired you will be able to enter their space and push back, however your ships will initially receive large debuffs whilst in thier space, research will remove these over time.

You will be able to push the invaders back to a certain point, however 1 or more systems will be flagged as "fortress" or "epicentrer" of the invasion and will require a set of events to be completed before you can finally get rid of the crisis (the events to end the crisis should not be easy).

This will ensure that simply sending a giant fleet to blap the crisis will not be a viable answer, I'd even go as far as having triggers for certain fleet strengths that level the playing feild or force the player to restrain from sending all of their forces into an end game system for the crisis.

All these people moaning about the crisis' being too hard really need to up their game, and use a better strategy, I ended up having to let myself be subjugated by an awakened empire to survive a crisis. I then had to survive a war in heaven and finally break away from the overlords and smite them by uniting the rest if the galaxy against them. That game was hard, as I effectively had three crisis' one after another.