[Name unknown] DLC will need another crisis

[Me_]

The current 3 crises are already very uneven, with Unbidden being very common, Prethoryn quite rare and AI extremaly rare and pitifully weak.

The upcoming DLC will feature an option to turn your race into robots, which means that any game in which any nation fulfills that goal will have little justification for AI rebellion (unless the race that goes robot is xenophobe).

On top of thayt, the existing crises have grown stale. Aweakened FE have shaken things up a bit, but another late game challenge needs to be added.

Transcendence seems to hint at some creatures from another reality and we already have the Dimensional Horror and The Worm in Waiting, so maybe some Great Old One? And of course there are all kinds of possible non-combat-related crises (plague, galaky-wide computer virus, supernovae, etc.)

 

[Fourthspartan56]

The current 3 crises are already very uneven, with Unbidden being very common, Prethoryn quite rare and AI extremaly rare and pitifully weak.

Wiz has mentioned that the chances of the crises occurring will be changed in 1.5.

The upcoming DLC will feature an option to turn your race into robots, which means that any game in which any nation fulfills that goal will have little justification for AI rebellion (unless the race that goes robot is xenophobe).

Most likely.

On top of thayt, the existing crises have grown stale. Aweakened FE have shaken things up a bit, but another late game challenge needs to be added.

Maybe, expanding internal options and the ability to build tall is more than enough IMO.

Transcendence seems to hint at some creatures from another reality and we already have the Dimensional Horror and The Worm in Waiting, so maybe some Great Old One? And of course there are all kinds of possible non-combat-related crises (plague, galaky-wide computer virus, supernovae, etc.)

That sounded more likely to me connected to the Unbidden, and I'm sure that they will add something like that.

 

[Dr. B]

Unicron, a giant transformer planet from 1986 will appear in the galaxy and start consuming every star, planet and moon on his path. Jumping randomly across the entire galaxy, growing ever stronger with each doomed world he devours. He can also make other fleets his mind slaves.

Only a civilization who has chosen to shed their mortal forms, uploading their minds into strong mechanic bodies, can stop Unicron. This will involve a huge battle in robot form, and can only have a possibility of success if you possess the Matrix of Stellaris.

 

[Repùblica Vèneta]

Zombies! Space zombies! They overwhelm planetary defenses and consume your pops and launch wrecked starships full of the dead at your other worlds!

Or something like the Necron. Space Egyptians! You realize some ancient race of unimaginable power has been hybernating beneath random worlds across the galaxy, and now they want to kick the young races off their lawn, so to speak.

Or Space Madness! Some crazy virus that manipulates the pops of whole worlds into some massive hive mind like that creepy episode of Rick and Morty.

 

[Tim_Ward]

With the glacial nature of warfare and the 'conquer, like, a thousand million planets' win conditions, a game, if you really insist on playing for one of the victory conditions, can last for a good 200 years after the "end game" crisis shows up.

I therefore propose they be renamed 'mid-game crisis'.

Or they could sharpen that whole part of the game up a bit.

 

[Robotkiller]

Perhaps something more plausible: intergalactic plague or ever-expanding grey goo swarm of nanobots gone out of control.

The intergalactic plague might have two different approaches: research to defeat it or close your borders and hope the other empires die out. If others researched the cure, then they can weaponize it for use against empires that went with closed borders. Think of the Mongol horde bombarding plague infested corpses onto Kaffa in Crimea, potentially the cause of the plague's spread to Europe.

With the nanobot grey goo swarm, it could come about through dangerous tech like the two we have already. More tech research might be needed to defeat it, lest it consumes every planet in the galaxy. I think something like shields will be needed to stop your fleets from turning into more grey goo.

 

[shiro the bushi]

Something causing stars to suddenly die out, sometimes this may be benefical as you may get a fresh blackhole for super science boost but when it hits inhabited systems...people flee via refugee system , production stops..youre left with an empty planet
I would say a really powerful leviathan is causing it

 

[Radically Right Wing]

The current 3 crises are already very uneven, with Unbidden being very common, Prethoryn quite rare and AI extremaly rare and pitifully weak.

The upcoming DLC will feature an option to turn your race into robots, which means that any game in which any nation fulfills that goal will have little justification for AI rebellion (unless the race that goes robot is xenophobe).

On top of thayt, the existing crises have grown stale. Aweakened FE have shaken things up a bit, but another late game challenge needs to be added.

Transcendence seems to hint at some creatures from another reality and we already have the Dimensional Horror and The Worm in Waiting, so maybe some Great Old One? And of course there are all kinds of possible non-combat-related crises (plague, galaky-wide computer virus, supernovae, etc.)

Supernovae? A supernovae is a Galactic Crisis? Didn't we have the idea of some technology that can produce enormous amounts of resources but risks producing machines that can allow your POPs to survive without being dependent on a Civilization to progress, allowing them to simply leave your Empire and thus the declining population causes Empires Galaxy-wide to collapse? Now that seems like a really cool and interesting Crisis.

 

[Me_]

Supernovae? A supernovae is a Galactic Crisis?

Yeah, bad example, although...
We could have a bunch of stars randomly explode and you would eventually discover that it is the job of a mad scientist (I'd like to see some supervillan event chain). All the races of the galaxy would try to capture them (and get a hold of the weapon used), all the while the villain would continue to blow up stars (there would be a warning that the star is going unstable and a bit of time to evacuate/send in the fleet).

 

[Radically Right Wing]

Yeah, bad example, although...
We could have a bunch of stars randomly explode and you would eventually discover that it is the job of a mad scientist (I'd like to see some supervillan event chain). All the races of the galaxy would try to capture them (and get a hold of the weapon used), all the while the villain would continue to blow up stars (there would be a warning that the star is going unstable and a bit of time to evacuate/send in the fleet).

I think that a Crisis should have a bit more depth. An invasion from a neighboring Galaxy, an Artificial Intelligence threat, all of these things are complex, dynamic, and sound pretty realists and like some future event that could actually happen, or a mirror of a historical event which has already occurred. A supervillian would be very cheesy and not at all any kind of realistic or have any dynamic complexity. It is just a guy with star-sploding gun who goes around blowing things up and we have to catch him. I am sorry but that sound like a horrific idea for an interesting End Game Crisis. If we are going to add that I want to add a superhero that flies across the Galaxy and defeats him with One Punch, and all the other super-heroes at super-hero academy will yawn and act unimpressed.

 

[orochi2k]

WIZ mentioned it on Jan.13

"What I'm basically saying is that @RikardAslund is the 4th endgame crisis."

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

For the record, I personally doubt that the Psionics Ascension is actually connected to the Unbidden- the Unbidden aren't actually psionics-related, and the game has provided multiple examples of "extradimensional entities" so I think there's a good chance that the "voices from another dimension" bit could be something entirely new. I also think that tying each Ascension Path to a Crisis sounds boring, and honestly kind of shoe-horned insofar as the Genetics path doesn't have any real strong thematic ties to the Prethoryn despite people constantly assuming it will. Even with the Psionics stuff, a lot of people are assuming it leads to you becoming energy beings (and thus drawing an Unbidden connection out of that), but its equally plausible to me it's more about establishing a shared consciousness ala the Protoss Khala (which IMO makes a lot of sense because Psionics is a Spiritualist-weighted tech tree and the Spiritualist Ethos is all about reducing Ethos drift, which a shared consciousness is generally depicted as being conducive towards).

Hell, even the Synthetics path doesn't appear directly related to the AI crisis; you'll possibly have a higher chance of triggering it while trying to tech up for the Perks, and you'll probably be given a special trait that makes your Synths immune, but other than that I don't see any reason to suspect taking the Perks will automatically make you trigger the Crisis or anything.

That said, new Crisis events would be welcome!

I can agree with some sort of necromorph/zombie apocalypse sounding interesting- sort of like the AI rebellion, but perhaps tied to genetic engineering instead? Perhaps you could tie it to a Strategic Resource...? I could see that being an interesting variant of the general "Crisis" mechanic. We have two based on researching "dangerous" technologies, what about a "dangerous" resource? Something that significantly boosts genetic modification speed, maybe, or gives you an extra trait point, but using it has a chance to discover "previously unknown side-effects" or some such.

 

[Nirmara]

Considering the focus of the DLC (internal politic) and the fact they are adding a refugee mechanic, the galactic plague (regular plague, no zombie) seem's like the most fitting crisis that could happen but all of this is pure speculation.

 

[Zoinker]

I have three words for you: Vacuum Metastability Event.

Also, a galactic plague sounds good, but if my science leaders start locking themselves in their labs and eating their post-graduates I'll go back to CKII.

 

[Milten]

Galactic plague is way over the scale. Empire-wide plague is fine, but I don't see how xenophobes would catch it on galactic scale.

 

[Antiochus V]

As somebody mentioned above a Necron type event of a formerly sleeping race appearing at random locations is pretty good, it might solve some of the problem of the crisises failing to make enough initial headway to be a threat (I usually see the AI flatten the crisis as it appears).

Similar to the above, I would like to a mass effect style reaper invasion - but I think that would need to be in a galaxy with no fallen empires. I think it is different enough from the Swarm to be a unique invasion. Perhaps there could be a background build up to it, with odd discoveries and then efforts to delay it.

I think some lesser crisises are needed, perhaps the AI Rebellion could be downgraded to this. This could include the sudden difficulty in using hyperlanes for a period of time, perhaps with them all being reset at the end. Likewise Warp travel could become slow and dangerous, and something bad could happen to wormholes. These crises would hit either types of individual empires hard, or parts of the map.

 

[Malecord]

I think a biological crisis could also be something we can have.

Biological crisis starts as a virus that affect a certain race and transform that race into sort of zombies. In 1.5 you have per race discrimination. So we already have some tools for giving the player some interesting choices. After the initial outbreak the virus could adapt to multiple races starting to spread on multiple worlds and then to nearby empires.

After that it must be discovered that the virus is actually a sophisticate parasite that aims to take over the galaxy by possessing all the sentient races. And so it takes it to space.

The "trigger" (outside the usual year, fleetpower, etc) could be that one of the several temples/artifacts we find on initial quests on colonizable planets was actually carrying the seed of the parasite.

 

[Vaar]

Something I've never understood is why each game is limited to one crisis. I would love to have an option were all the crisis could fire, while limiting them to one at a time. I've only ever gotten the swarm, and would have a lot of fun playing each of the crisis with my empire.

As far as the new patch changing robotics, they could easily enhance the crisis with new features. One possibility is that parts of your empire could rebel, or the crisis could become a faction in your empire.

However, I do hope we see more crisis in the future.

 

[Zoinker]

I think a biological crisis could also be something we can have.

Biological crisis starts as a virus that affect a certain race and transform that race into sort of zombies. In 1.5 you have per race discrimination. So we already have some tools for giving the player some interesting choices. After the initial outbreak the virus could adapt to multiple races starting to spread on multiple worlds and then to nearby empires.

After that it must be discovered that the virus is actually a sophisticate parasite that aims to take over the galaxy by possessing all the sentient races. And so it takes it to space.

The "trigger" (outside the usual year, fleetpower, etc) could be that one of the several temples/artifacts we find on initial quests on colonizable planets was actually carrying the seed of the parasite.

A variation of this could be that instead of the parasites going full zombie, they would quietly infiltrate top level individuals in the patient zero empire that would start a faction that would inexplicably take over the empire and then spread to any empire on good terms / open borders with that empire. Once the rest of the galaxy figures out what's happening they have a growing federation working to advance the cause of the parasites, that's still trying to recruit more members. If the player gets hit with the parasite faction they can choose between resisting (causing internal disharmony, but also reducing the effectiveness of the parasite faction since they're more in the open now) or embrace it and fight against the rest of the galaxy on behalf of their brain slug overlords.

 

[Gaen]

Necron crisis sound like it would just spawn in an awakened empire, need something more to make it uniq. Could you make something with a Borg like crisis or similar badie trying to assimilate the galaxy?