I was wondering about fallen empires and means of having really “fallen” ones, not just stagnant yet all powerful empires, and I came up with a few ideas I’d like to share.
The whole thing is about having weaker fallen empires (with a single very powerful one, which I’ll explain later why it’s “decayed”), using the 4 remaining fanatic ethos, and having means for you to help them (intended to be a costly help) with rewards in the end or during it (maybe a powerful ally, recovered from it’s ruins with your aid, a bonus to some resource, etc). I believe these features would induce a new kind of cooperative gameplay, with this new type of NPC, having it’s own challenges and adding some unique roleplay to the game, which is always welcome.
Notice that these events are intended for mid to late game, depending on your technology advancements or empire size (or economy or years passed), in order to catch the attention of these empires to ask for your help.
The Decayed Empires
State of Devastation – Fanatic Militarist
It looks like a regular fallen empire, but looking closer, all or most of it’s worlds are Tomb worlds (poorly colonized). The AI takes the shape of a desperate empire, that has shrunk in a terrible war the galaxy had never seen before, with it’s remaining pops living on dead planets, struggling to survive with the remaining structures, so devastated and resource exploration poor that not even it’s technology advancements could restore it’s worlds. It would then ask for your help by means of resources or by asking you to terraform it’s planets back to the original state. Since the complete terraforming technology seems to take a little too long to be unlocked (correct me if I’m wrong, or if that aspect could be used intentionally), this technology could be instead one of the rewards for helping that empire with your resources. The bigger reward would be having the empire as a powerful ally, once fully restored, also providing a bonus in fire rate for your fleets.
Attacking it while weak could draw the ire and awakening of other fallen empires (probably the one who reduced it to a tomb world hell, as a punishment for it’s militaristic behavior). Fully restoring it could do it as well, but by then you would have this mighty ally and be more capable of turning the tides.
State of Plague – Fanatic Egalitarian
This idea is not entirely new, and many of whom have read the storybook wanted to see it in game, so I’m just giving you a possible way of making it happen. Years of development, migration and growth made this empire more susceptible to foreign diseases and plagues. In the present, you have a few remaining worlds with several alien pops in permanent stasis. The empire, maintained by a nurse-administrator-diplomatic AI, keeps just a small production of resources (through sparse robot pops) to feed the system itself, and a small fleet and army. That AI will ask you to find a cure for it’s pops, a process involving large quantities of research points, maybe a big project that has you to scan a variety of planets and recover ancient lost data on the cure itself.
Attacking this empire could trigger a security breach and spread the plague in a big crisis event.
The reward for helping this empire to find the cure and freeing it's pops from stasis, thus making it fully functional, is having it as an ally, with a bonus in diplomacy with all other empires from eliminating the plague threat, a bonus in research production, and a trait point.
State of Fear – Fanatic Pacifist
This empire has seen the nightmares of the galaxy, panicking and turtling into a single system with one or two planets colonized and the remaining planets having habitats. The system would have some defense stations but none or a small fleet, the people in it would just want to live(hide) in their worlds peacefully and never have to participate in any war. Their turtling doesn’t mean they wouldn’t interact, as they will need the help of the player to defend them against foes, likely any empire nearly, powerful enough to try to conquer them. The system will have some kind of special resource within to make it so that other AI empires will aim at it (the event will trigger mid to late game, reporting the player about a rush in the galaxy for such resource). The rewards for defending this empire will consist of a growing unity bonus as the event (the attacks) progresses and the final reward will be the supply of that same special resource to the player. It’s like an escorting mission, and none of the attacks will be directed to you or your empire, though successfully repelling it could aggravate the relations with the attackers.
State of Tyranny – Fanatic Authoritarian
This empire will be slightly different, as well as the means of “helping it”. It will have the same average size of a fallen empire, or bigger, and the double or triple the firepower. The planets are filled with enslaved pops of many species (non authoritarian thus unhappy with it), under the rule of a merciless tyrant. The tyrant will be dismissive of almost all of your actions, and you are not intended to directly confront it, instead there will be another way of weakening it. When you happen to grow to a certain point or after a certain quantity of years (anything that could mark the mid-late game, as I said before), you’ll receive a message from a secret slave faction asking for your help on freeing them. That’s the real “decayed empire” you’ll be helping here. How would you help I’m not really sure, perhaps a good excuse for a spying mechanic (which so many people talk about here), but there could be others like using resources to help them escape, sneaking fake vessels mimicking that of the empire, searching for breaches in security, I don’t know. The incoming slave pops will have a variety of bonuses itself (they are ancient and advanced races with a poor fate in the past), while providing a bonus of happiness to other pops in the worlds they move in as well. As the event progresses, you’ll receive a growing bonus in influence, and the tyrant empire will start weakening, yet it will get closer and closer to discovering the source of the aid and wage war on you (also awakening in the process), so you should proceed with caution, it’s intended to be a delicate and dangerous event.
I’m aware that not all player empires could be compatible with the logic of helping others, such as xenophobe empires, but there’s always the option of conquering any of the decayed empires (with it’s own penalties). There might be some other “holes” in my logic, unbalanced risk-reward, something misplaced for a mid-late game, etc, so any advice is welcome.
In addition, unique technologies or traditions could be unlocked for completing these events, for example:
-A new weapon reward from the militarist (anything you can imagine, like energy missiles, I don’t know, maybe something with balanced stats and an unique bonus to planetary bombardment).
-Further genetic augments from the egalitarian (could be a small bonus for adaptability, costing 1 trait point).
-A new building from the pacifists (maybe fortification + unity yielding).
-And a new policy stolen from the authoritarian (perhaps for unrest reduction).
These would be also obtainable after a while if you destroyed the decayed empires/fought the plague. It’s up to you to choose the path.
Finally, perhaps the whole “decayed” theme could fit well in a crisis expansion as additional features. Though I can’t say exactly how each of them would behave in a galaxy crisis situation, perhaps one of the outcomes could be either finding a way to self restoration or accepting it’s doom as for the first three ethos, with an AI Crisis unleashing the plague crisis in the egalitarian case (which is rather sadistic), and the fourth one would probably awake just like any other fallen empire.
That's all, hope you guys liked it, I've been here for a while (though this is my first post) and I think that’s such a creative, rich community, so please comment what would you change to make the idea more interesting
The whole thing is about having weaker fallen empires (with a single very powerful one, which I’ll explain later why it’s “decayed”), using the 4 remaining fanatic ethos, and having means for you to help them (intended to be a costly help) with rewards in the end or during it (maybe a powerful ally, recovered from it’s ruins with your aid, a bonus to some resource, etc). I believe these features would induce a new kind of cooperative gameplay, with this new type of NPC, having it’s own challenges and adding some unique roleplay to the game, which is always welcome.
Notice that these events are intended for mid to late game, depending on your technology advancements or empire size (or economy or years passed), in order to catch the attention of these empires to ask for your help.
The Decayed Empires
State of Devastation – Fanatic Militarist
It looks like a regular fallen empire, but looking closer, all or most of it’s worlds are Tomb worlds (poorly colonized). The AI takes the shape of a desperate empire, that has shrunk in a terrible war the galaxy had never seen before, with it’s remaining pops living on dead planets, struggling to survive with the remaining structures, so devastated and resource exploration poor that not even it’s technology advancements could restore it’s worlds. It would then ask for your help by means of resources or by asking you to terraform it’s planets back to the original state. Since the complete terraforming technology seems to take a little too long to be unlocked (correct me if I’m wrong, or if that aspect could be used intentionally), this technology could be instead one of the rewards for helping that empire with your resources. The bigger reward would be having the empire as a powerful ally, once fully restored, also providing a bonus in fire rate for your fleets.
Attacking it while weak could draw the ire and awakening of other fallen empires (probably the one who reduced it to a tomb world hell, as a punishment for it’s militaristic behavior). Fully restoring it could do it as well, but by then you would have this mighty ally and be more capable of turning the tides.
State of Plague – Fanatic Egalitarian
This idea is not entirely new, and many of whom have read the storybook wanted to see it in game, so I’m just giving you a possible way of making it happen. Years of development, migration and growth made this empire more susceptible to foreign diseases and plagues. In the present, you have a few remaining worlds with several alien pops in permanent stasis. The empire, maintained by a nurse-administrator-diplomatic AI, keeps just a small production of resources (through sparse robot pops) to feed the system itself, and a small fleet and army. That AI will ask you to find a cure for it’s pops, a process involving large quantities of research points, maybe a big project that has you to scan a variety of planets and recover ancient lost data on the cure itself.
Attacking this empire could trigger a security breach and spread the plague in a big crisis event.
The reward for helping this empire to find the cure and freeing it's pops from stasis, thus making it fully functional, is having it as an ally, with a bonus in diplomacy with all other empires from eliminating the plague threat, a bonus in research production, and a trait point.
State of Fear – Fanatic Pacifist
This empire has seen the nightmares of the galaxy, panicking and turtling into a single system with one or two planets colonized and the remaining planets having habitats. The system would have some defense stations but none or a small fleet, the people in it would just want to live(hide) in their worlds peacefully and never have to participate in any war. Their turtling doesn’t mean they wouldn’t interact, as they will need the help of the player to defend them against foes, likely any empire nearly, powerful enough to try to conquer them. The system will have some kind of special resource within to make it so that other AI empires will aim at it (the event will trigger mid to late game, reporting the player about a rush in the galaxy for such resource). The rewards for defending this empire will consist of a growing unity bonus as the event (the attacks) progresses and the final reward will be the supply of that same special resource to the player. It’s like an escorting mission, and none of the attacks will be directed to you or your empire, though successfully repelling it could aggravate the relations with the attackers.
State of Tyranny – Fanatic Authoritarian
This empire will be slightly different, as well as the means of “helping it”. It will have the same average size of a fallen empire, or bigger, and the double or triple the firepower. The planets are filled with enslaved pops of many species (non authoritarian thus unhappy with it), under the rule of a merciless tyrant. The tyrant will be dismissive of almost all of your actions, and you are not intended to directly confront it, instead there will be another way of weakening it. When you happen to grow to a certain point or after a certain quantity of years (anything that could mark the mid-late game, as I said before), you’ll receive a message from a secret slave faction asking for your help on freeing them. That’s the real “decayed empire” you’ll be helping here. How would you help I’m not really sure, perhaps a good excuse for a spying mechanic (which so many people talk about here), but there could be others like using resources to help them escape, sneaking fake vessels mimicking that of the empire, searching for breaches in security, I don’t know. The incoming slave pops will have a variety of bonuses itself (they are ancient and advanced races with a poor fate in the past), while providing a bonus of happiness to other pops in the worlds they move in as well. As the event progresses, you’ll receive a growing bonus in influence, and the tyrant empire will start weakening, yet it will get closer and closer to discovering the source of the aid and wage war on you (also awakening in the process), so you should proceed with caution, it’s intended to be a delicate and dangerous event.
I’m aware that not all player empires could be compatible with the logic of helping others, such as xenophobe empires, but there’s always the option of conquering any of the decayed empires (with it’s own penalties). There might be some other “holes” in my logic, unbalanced risk-reward, something misplaced for a mid-late game, etc, so any advice is welcome.
In addition, unique technologies or traditions could be unlocked for completing these events, for example:
-A new weapon reward from the militarist (anything you can imagine, like energy missiles, I don’t know, maybe something with balanced stats and an unique bonus to planetary bombardment).
-Further genetic augments from the egalitarian (could be a small bonus for adaptability, costing 1 trait point).
-A new building from the pacifists (maybe fortification + unity yielding).
-And a new policy stolen from the authoritarian (perhaps for unrest reduction).
These would be also obtainable after a while if you destroyed the decayed empires/fought the plague. It’s up to you to choose the path.
Finally, perhaps the whole “decayed” theme could fit well in a crisis expansion as additional features. Though I can’t say exactly how each of them would behave in a galaxy crisis situation, perhaps one of the outcomes could be either finding a way to self restoration or accepting it’s doom as for the first three ethos, with an AI Crisis unleashing the plague crisis in the egalitarian case (which is rather sadistic), and the fourth one would probably awake just like any other fallen empire.
That's all, hope you guys liked it, I've been here for a while (though this is my first post) and I think that’s such a creative, rich community, so please comment what would you change to make the idea more interesting
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