Fallen Empire attacked first 20 years

[Kilij]

Heya, Kilij here! I'm a huge CKII player(over 2000 hours, lol) and decided to pick up the Stellaris Leviathan DLC and give Stellaris another go since I have hardly touched the game(other than making a bunch of Dune-inspired custom Empires) since I got it.

I wanted to just get a good feel for the game despite being pro at CKII so I started a game on normal difficulty with only low AI aggression so I could just boom and save war for later. Stupidly decided to play ironman since I didn't expect to want to savescum and wanted to get some achievements, also I tend to hit ironman just by habit as I always play CKII in ironman except on patches where I've had all the achievements. I did not know what I was about to get myself into.

When the game came out, I played enough MP Stellaris games that didn't go past 10 or so years to get the first decade of play mastered, so I knew to research colony ships first and focus on building mineral mines over power. This game I was getting a great start and expanding within my spiral(playing in a large 4 spiral world) as a hyperlane travel Empire. However I discovered a Fallen Empire nearby me though on a different spiral than the one I'm on, naturally as a newbie I had to look up Fallen Empires on Stellaris Wiki since I didn't know what they were other than being a seeming rediculously overpowered Empire led by a cute marshmello race. The wiki gave me the impression they would just kinda sit there and do nothing unless I triggered their awakening, this was not the case.

On the 19th year when I finally now have had my first ever Stellaris game where I got 5/5 core planets, they declared war on me soon after sending me an ultimatum telling me to surrender 4 planets and be humiliated, with those same conditions as their wargoal. I literally just quit, I don't know what to do at all, this game is really nothing like CKII...

I don't even get why this happened, yes, our borders did touch at one part, but we are on completely different spirals, I don't have any planets in my borders that can travel between mine and theirs. I don't feel this is really fair at all given I'm playing on normal with low aggression and FE's are supposed to be more of a late game foe. If I lose there goes my whole empire I've built. Despite 2 decades only being early game, it still took like 10 hours to make all that progress.

I really don't know how to even feel about this besides a combination of bewilderment and frustration. Is this fair? Is this save salvageable? Should I start a new game and if I do, can I even by sure this or something equally unfair will not happen semi-regularly? Especially given that this was otherwise the best start I've had in this game. Does anyone else have any experiences even worse?

At least this game was suprising in a way CKII never really is...

 

[LordMagus]

Never had it happen to me, ever. They would have been xenophobic isolationists, they don't like borders touching theirs. If they touch, they will come for you. If you're just getting into a playthrough, don't play on spiral galaxy.

 

[ironchanchellor]

It might be better to restart in this case. This game really emphases asymmetrical balance in the early game, as you will face fallen empires which will get annoyed by your actions. From your description, I am guessing that it was a xenophobic empire, as they are the early-game aggressors if your borders are too close. Avoid pissing any fallen empires off by regularly checking the diplo screen and looking up their attitudes towards you. Avoid -100 relations like the plague and you should be clean from Fallen empires. Try another game and turn fallen empires off in the start screen if needed.

Also, hypelanes are bad in spiral galaxy, warp and wormholes are far better to allow expansion in every directions.

 

[Esurnir]

The fanatic xenophobe empire has only one mechanic you settle next to him = you piss him off. Sorry this caught you as complete surprised. I had a friend who had a less severe case where he pissed off a spiritualist by settling on a holy world after hinting it was a bad idea… thankfully for him they just asked that planet cleansed…

If I were you. Accept, yield, make a cross on those five planet and move on. If that make you way too weak you might have to scrub that save, but other than that what you lost is just time and resources, the xenophobe won't wipe the empire, he's just reestablishing his buffer zone, -no other empire- will attempt to take those planet back.

Xénophile and materialist used to be a bigger pain but now they have been made tamer you only have two rule to follow to avoid getting your shit kicked in:

Don't colonize holy world
Don't settle next to the fanatic xenophobe fe.

Fallen empire are like the bears from the long dark. They are the scariest motherfucker but you hear them a mile away and won't go out of their way to destroy you, they'll maul you but leave you with 30% hp left. Regular hostile advanced start are way more deadly as they won't hesitate to finish you out.

Fallen empire aren't the ottomans looking at Albania. They have their needs that need to be respected.

 

[LizardCommander]

Lol, you leave them alone, they leave you alone. You settle too closely to them, and they will wreck you, it's the same basic idea with any empire in the game. The closer you get to them, the more annoyed/threatened they are by you, and the worse your relations will be unless you are their ally.

 

[Kilij]

Ah, yeah just checked and it was xenophobe, guess they'll just attack whoever's nearby. Took some screenies to show how things were situated.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=860683860

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=860684073

So basically I was pretty much doomed from the start and simply didn't know. I expanded to the 'East/Right' within my spiral because there were no empires for quite some distance until the Corrinos and to my 'West' were two empires and one to the south of the hyperlane connecting my spiral with theirs. It would have been a perfect game if it weren't for those xenophobic marshmellows. I would at least like to hold on to my planet on the Polymar system since I don't think it would touch their borders, but then again I don't even know if that's the criterion for angering them or if even just being close angers them

I have pretty bad relations with all the other empires too, except for the ones to my 'south', the Empire of Birana. I have open borders so I could colonize down in that spiral but there aren't really any habitable planets for me down there and it still seems like a bad idea. Not ready for war with the empires on my spiral either, only have a small fleet I used to beat the pirate event.

Started a new game while I was waiting for reply and choose spiral again since I didn't see your replies yet. I didn't know it wasn't beginner friendly, kinda figured it was good for newbs since it provides some isolation yet you can cross the spiral at certain points with hyperlines. Actually the empire I choose for this new game was warp drive and I actually couldn't get to the other spirals at ALL with warp drive. Don't think I like the start on this new game either though, hardly any minerals and I'm stuck on a spiral with, you guessed it, a FE, albeit a Zenophiliac one that even gave me open borders so I could theoretically expand past them, but still seems like a trash start compared to the one I had.

I don't know if I would like to disable FE's though, maybe for the time being until I "Git Gud", but coming from a CKII perspective I find my greatest enemy to be boredom of having no opposition by end-game or even by mid-game since I snowball into an empire within decades in that game. From a design perspective they seem great to balance the late-game, but having them be this territorial in the opening decades is pretty much game-ending, especially given my low aggression settings. I had even worse relations to the Ixians who I nearly bordered with as well.

If I choose to continue that save. what should I do? Should I do anything to those regions before I lose them, like trying to give the ones with other species on them independence? Could I keep any somehow or at least build outposts so I can hold onto the solar systems without the planets?

If I start a new one, what galaxy shape should I do?

 

[Derp]

Go with the standard elliptical shape. Also, make sure you scout aggressively in the early game. The unpleasantness with the FE probably could've been avoided if you knew they were there.

 

[iniudan]

Lol, you leave them alone, they leave you alone. You settle too closely to them, and they will wreck you, it's the same basic idea with any empire in the game. The closer you get to them, the more annoyed/threatened they are by you, and the worse your relations will be unless you are their ally.

Actually outside of xenophobe, the three other fallen empire don't care are all if you settle next to them, you can even pressure their border with frontier outpost to colonize planets in their border and they still won't care.

Quite a few AI personality also don't care that much about border and will require very aggressive pressure for them to actually care.

 

[LizardCommander]

Actually outside of xenophobe, the three other fallen empire don't care are all if you settle next to them, you can even pressure their border with frontier outpost to colonize planets in their border and they still won't care.

Quite a few AI personality also don't care that much about border and will require very aggressive pressure for them to actually care.

Most AI personalities will generate border friction, which leads to a significant degradation in relations, which inevitably results in war.

 

[zukodark]

Most AI personalities will generate border friction, which leads to a significant degradation in relations, which inevitably results in war.

I wouldn't say "inevitably". Many AI personalities care about border friction, but not enough to go to war over it, and you can often have good relations with your neighbors.

 

[ShadowDragon868]

RNJesus screwed you. It's not unsalvable, but it's up to you if you want to go to that much trouble.

There is, however, one potential upshot; if you bait the FE into a war and throw everything - ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING - into killing so much as ONE of their ships before capitulating, it'll create wreckage you can analyze, which will put potentially game-breakingly powerful late-game techs into your tech tree as always-available.

Other than that, let them have their buffer zone, lick your wounds, and expand into Biranan territory. Do NOT let yourself get hemmed in entirely. Build yourself up. Grow mighty. Prepare yourself, and when the time comes, take retribution. It may take centuries. So be it.

 

[Madzai]

In my current game I also had a Xenophobic FE nearby. Left them alone with huge free space between our borders. By as time passes my borders grow - and soon by ~ 80 years out borders will collide. And my borders grow from initial habitable cluster around Homeworld so i didn't have a real choice not to settle there. And, btw, border friction penalty appears way before our borders touched each other.

 

[Kilij]

Would buffer states help or hurt in this regard? I just found primitives between me and the FE, could make some vassals between us.

I ended up just surrendering, and they even assassinated my leader to salt my wound, so got a new guy elected(I'm Theocratic Oligarchy) now who's specialty is colonization(go figure!). Relations ended up souring with the Birana guys to my South and lost open borders so I probably will war them even though now they're allegedly stronger than I(according to in-game projection it say they've a superior fleet, though I kinda doubt that now that I have better ships(still no shields though)). Can probably expand 'south' into the outer spiral if I win. The great unknown of discovering the Stellaris mid-game(for me it's a first, probably not a big deal to you guys, lol) is soo close to within reach, I want it to be this game, but feels like I'm just going down a downward spiral. Will the FE still cause future issues even I expand away from it? Relations are still pretty bad, worse than -100 if I recall.

 

[TempusxX]

sorry you had trouble with a fallen empire, you see a fallen empire you see what kind of fallen empire they are and if there personality is Fanatic Militarist with Fanatic Xenophobe then that means that if you colonize to close to there borders then there is a chance they will attack you. Each fallen empire has personality and ethos, the Fanatic Militarist don't colonize to close.

The Enigmatic Observers, they hate slavery - which is self explanatory I would believe if there is one near you if you draw its attention

Holy Guardians - there are worlds to them that are holy and if you colonize them then you will get there attention

Keepers of knowledge - dangerous technologies like robots and synths will get there attention on you