I've played Stellaris off and on a few times since I got it in the summer, but this was the first time I completed a game. Where by "completed" I mean "got wiped out in the endgame."
By the time the endgame rolled around, the galaxy looked like this:
- My empire in the southwest corner of the galaxy, member of a federation that collectively occupied most of the western half of the galaxy
- Two Fallen Empires, one materialist and one spiritualist, in the north
- An independent empire somewhat larger than me (an advanced start probably), in the south (on my eastern border)
- A second federation collectively occupying the eastern half of the galaxy
By the diplomacy screen's power ranking, I was #3, behind the two FEs and my eastern neighbor. I was trying to make sure to keep pace with him in overall fleet strength, and eventually declare war once it was my turn to be Federation president. In the meantime, I was hunting down the Guardians near my territory; I did the Dimensional Horror and the Enigmatic Fortress, in that order.
As I was building my fleet back up and researching the Enigmatic techs, the Unbidden portal appeared inside the territory of my immediate northern neighbor (member of the same federation as me). I had about 45K in fleet strength and debated rushing the portal. I decided that, rather than risk badly losing in a battle between my 45K fleet and the Unbidden 57K, I should keep building ships and wait to attack at the same time as some AIs did (this was my first time playing an endgame crisis so I didn't realize how little the AI responds even when the portal appears right in the middle of their territory).
The AIs' opinions of every other empire shot up from the mutual threat, and they were furiously signing migration treaties with each other, but they never bothered attacking the portal, nor did they defend their own space much as the Unbidden fleets began wiping out systems. I tried jumping in to help a couple of times when the Unbidden attacked systems with sizable AI fleets and military stations defending them, but the losses I took doing that were probably counterproductive.
Eventually the materialist FE awakened. On the diplomacy screen I noticed their opinion was high enough that they'd accept an invitation to the federation, so I invited them, in the hopes that it would help nudge them into attacking the Unbidden and also be advantageous later on. Given what ended up happening, this was probably a huge mistake.
The FE did attack the Unbidden, but they didn't commit enough forces to win battles. They used 40K-ish fleets that didn't fare very well against the 55-57K Unbidden stacks. I tried helping them out every time I saw them attacking... combined, we destroyed the first dimensional anchor but then lost badly in an attack on the portal itself.
While I was rebuilding from that loss, the spiritualist FE also awakened and a War in Heaven started between the two FEs. I was automatically on the materialist FE's side from being in the same federation. The large independent empire to my east ended up founding the league of unaligned worlds, and the members of the eastern federation either joined that or became vassals of the spiritualist FE. So I was in a two- or three-front war, with a stronger hostile neighbor to the east and the Unbidden to the north.
I did manage to build up an 80K-ish fleet that, using designs heavy on Giga Cannons/Kinetic Artillery/Matter Disintegrators, that could reliably beat the 50K-ish Unbidden fleets with light/moderate losses (cruisers die a lot, as I've seen noted on this forum), but this wasn't enough to take out the portal since the Unbidden also had a 100K fleet that would jump in whenever the portal was attacked.
I was trying to build my own fleet up to that level (exceeding my naval capacity, but I could handle the upkeep costs), but between the Unbidden periodically attacking my northernmost colonies and the other empires attacking my eastern colonies, I kept having to bring my fleet out into battle and take losses. My ship construction rate couldn't keep up with the losses, and eventually I started losing colonies as they were attacked when I didn't yet have my fleet rebuilt to a strong enough level to resist.
Every so often while waiting for ship construction, I'd take my small fleet and go occupy planets belonging to the spiritualist FE's weaker vassals, in order to rack up warscore; my side was losing the War in Heaven badly but I was able to consistently keep the warscore positive with lots of occupations; the AI wasn't very good at retaking them. Perhaps this was another mistake, prolonging the war when it would have been better to let my side lose quickly.
I wasn't able to build ships fast enough to take out the Unbidden's dimensional anchors as they were built, and they started destroying colony after colony while I was struggling to rebuild my fleet. Once I realized I was going to lose, I turned up the game speed and waited for them to deliver the coup de grace so I could find out what the "game over" screen looks like.
I got some schadenfreude from watching the Unbidden start eating away at the territory of my eastern rival, who didn't resist them despite having 60-70K worth of fleets he'd attacked me with earlier. Also at one point the Aberrant showed up, but the Unbidden immediately destroyed their portal and the one remaining Aberrant fleet just sat and did nothing.
Thinking about what I should have done differently:
- Maybe I shouldn't have researched Jump Drives, or at least held off on researching them until I'd beaten my largest rival. On the other hand, since the Unbidden appeared in another empire's territory I don't think I was the one that triggered them.
- Maybe I shouldn't have invited the materialist FE into my federation, since if I'd been neutral I wouldn't have suffered attacks on two fronts. I didn't know at the time that a War in Heaven was about to erupt, of course.
- Maybe I should have rushed the portal as soon as it appeared. I still don't think I would have won. Once I'd researched matter disintegrators and had a fleet consisting of specialized anti-Unbidden designs I could beat a 50+K Unbidden fleet with a 40-ishK fleet, but I don't think the fleet designs I had when the portal appeared would have done so well. However, maybe if I was fast or lucky enough I could have destroyed the portal even while losing a fight against the Unbidden fleets.
- Maybe my empire was too small to have a real chance in this endgame crisis. I had about 40-50K in total fleet strength with my naval capacity maxed out, but the wiki recommends 100K to attack the Unbidden portal system. My general weakness in Stellaris might be that I'm too slow to expand; my previous games were ones that I got bored with and abandoned after being boxed in by stronger neighbors (for this game, I used the "disable advanced starts near player" option, which I think helped a lot).
- Maybe I didn't really do anything wrong, but just got really unlucky having the Unbidden spawn right on my doorstep and then getting caught up in a War in Heaven at the same time. I'm okay with that since I still had fun, but it's also fun to think about how I could have done better.
By the time the endgame rolled around, the galaxy looked like this:
- My empire in the southwest corner of the galaxy, member of a federation that collectively occupied most of the western half of the galaxy
- Two Fallen Empires, one materialist and one spiritualist, in the north
- An independent empire somewhat larger than me (an advanced start probably), in the south (on my eastern border)
- A second federation collectively occupying the eastern half of the galaxy
By the diplomacy screen's power ranking, I was #3, behind the two FEs and my eastern neighbor. I was trying to make sure to keep pace with him in overall fleet strength, and eventually declare war once it was my turn to be Federation president. In the meantime, I was hunting down the Guardians near my territory; I did the Dimensional Horror and the Enigmatic Fortress, in that order.
As I was building my fleet back up and researching the Enigmatic techs, the Unbidden portal appeared inside the territory of my immediate northern neighbor (member of the same federation as me). I had about 45K in fleet strength and debated rushing the portal. I decided that, rather than risk badly losing in a battle between my 45K fleet and the Unbidden 57K, I should keep building ships and wait to attack at the same time as some AIs did (this was my first time playing an endgame crisis so I didn't realize how little the AI responds even when the portal appears right in the middle of their territory).
The AIs' opinions of every other empire shot up from the mutual threat, and they were furiously signing migration treaties with each other, but they never bothered attacking the portal, nor did they defend their own space much as the Unbidden fleets began wiping out systems. I tried jumping in to help a couple of times when the Unbidden attacked systems with sizable AI fleets and military stations defending them, but the losses I took doing that were probably counterproductive.
Eventually the materialist FE awakened. On the diplomacy screen I noticed their opinion was high enough that they'd accept an invitation to the federation, so I invited them, in the hopes that it would help nudge them into attacking the Unbidden and also be advantageous later on. Given what ended up happening, this was probably a huge mistake.
The FE did attack the Unbidden, but they didn't commit enough forces to win battles. They used 40K-ish fleets that didn't fare very well against the 55-57K Unbidden stacks. I tried helping them out every time I saw them attacking... combined, we destroyed the first dimensional anchor but then lost badly in an attack on the portal itself.
While I was rebuilding from that loss, the spiritualist FE also awakened and a War in Heaven started between the two FEs. I was automatically on the materialist FE's side from being in the same federation. The large independent empire to my east ended up founding the league of unaligned worlds, and the members of the eastern federation either joined that or became vassals of the spiritualist FE. So I was in a two- or three-front war, with a stronger hostile neighbor to the east and the Unbidden to the north.
I did manage to build up an 80K-ish fleet that, using designs heavy on Giga Cannons/Kinetic Artillery/Matter Disintegrators, that could reliably beat the 50K-ish Unbidden fleets with light/moderate losses (cruisers die a lot, as I've seen noted on this forum), but this wasn't enough to take out the portal since the Unbidden also had a 100K fleet that would jump in whenever the portal was attacked.
I was trying to build my own fleet up to that level (exceeding my naval capacity, but I could handle the upkeep costs), but between the Unbidden periodically attacking my northernmost colonies and the other empires attacking my eastern colonies, I kept having to bring my fleet out into battle and take losses. My ship construction rate couldn't keep up with the losses, and eventually I started losing colonies as they were attacked when I didn't yet have my fleet rebuilt to a strong enough level to resist.
Every so often while waiting for ship construction, I'd take my small fleet and go occupy planets belonging to the spiritualist FE's weaker vassals, in order to rack up warscore; my side was losing the War in Heaven badly but I was able to consistently keep the warscore positive with lots of occupations; the AI wasn't very good at retaking them. Perhaps this was another mistake, prolonging the war when it would have been better to let my side lose quickly.
I wasn't able to build ships fast enough to take out the Unbidden's dimensional anchors as they were built, and they started destroying colony after colony while I was struggling to rebuild my fleet. Once I realized I was going to lose, I turned up the game speed and waited for them to deliver the coup de grace so I could find out what the "game over" screen looks like.
I got some schadenfreude from watching the Unbidden start eating away at the territory of my eastern rival, who didn't resist them despite having 60-70K worth of fleets he'd attacked me with earlier. Also at one point the Aberrant showed up, but the Unbidden immediately destroyed their portal and the one remaining Aberrant fleet just sat and did nothing.
Thinking about what I should have done differently:
- Maybe I shouldn't have researched Jump Drives, or at least held off on researching them until I'd beaten my largest rival. On the other hand, since the Unbidden appeared in another empire's territory I don't think I was the one that triggered them.
- Maybe I shouldn't have invited the materialist FE into my federation, since if I'd been neutral I wouldn't have suffered attacks on two fronts. I didn't know at the time that a War in Heaven was about to erupt, of course.
- Maybe I should have rushed the portal as soon as it appeared. I still don't think I would have won. Once I'd researched matter disintegrators and had a fleet consisting of specialized anti-Unbidden designs I could beat a 50+K Unbidden fleet with a 40-ishK fleet, but I don't think the fleet designs I had when the portal appeared would have done so well. However, maybe if I was fast or lucky enough I could have destroyed the portal even while losing a fight against the Unbidden fleets.
- Maybe my empire was too small to have a real chance in this endgame crisis. I had about 40-50K in total fleet strength with my naval capacity maxed out, but the wiki recommends 100K to attack the Unbidden portal system. My general weakness in Stellaris might be that I'm too slow to expand; my previous games were ones that I got bored with and abandoned after being boxed in by stronger neighbors (for this game, I used the "disable advanced starts near player" option, which I think helped a lot).
- Maybe I didn't really do anything wrong, but just got really unlucky having the Unbidden spawn right on my doorstep and then getting caught up in a War in Heaven at the same time. I'm okay with that since I still had fun, but it's also fun to think about how I could have done better.
without rushing the portal you'd probably need an 80k fleet, designed specifically to counter Unbidden, in order to take out one anchor at a time. A strong empire warring at your borders would make it impossible for me. Unlucky pal.
