[Name unknown] DLC will need another crisis

[Malecord]

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.

I think a crisis should not automatically kill the empire in spawns in.

BTW one thing that can be leveraged when you make a crisis "ancient" (any kind of crisis) is that you can start an event chain where you need to send your science officers (with escort maybe) around the galaxy to uncover hints on how the empires of the past dealt with the crisis. It could be interesting imho. (maybe a virulent crisis could make empires less keen on opening borders with infected empires)

 

[Zoinker]

I think a crisis should not automatically kill the empire in spawns in.

BTW one thing that can be leveraged when you make a crisis "ancient" (any kind of crisis) is that you can start an event chain where you need to send your science officers (with escort maybe) around the galaxy to uncover hints on how the empires of the past dealt with the crisis. It could be interesting imho. (maybe a virulent crisis could make empires less keen on opening borders with infected empires)

Never said the crisis would outright kill the empire it spawns in, just that it would create a faction that would try to sway the empire towards policies/ethics that would benefit the parasite.
They wouldn't even have to succeed at that. The initial empire could catch on what's happening and root out the faction, but by that time it would have spread to other empires via open borders and/or treaties where it might have better success.

 

[LordMist]

I like the virus/parasite/zombie idea that has been mentioned before a few times.

I had an idea that I haven’t read before (at least not in this thread).
Rise of Zodd:
This crisis starts with some messages that some slave populations in the galaxy have started to follow a new religion (Zodd).

After a while a new system will appear on the map (The Well of Zodd) and random slave populations from over the entire galaxy will move to this planet. They become the Followers of Zodd, and they want to “free” the galaxy. Any planet they capture will be cleansed of none-slaves (The refugee system can be used here) and new slave populations from around the galaxy will fill up the spaces these cleansed pops leave behind. Their primary target will be empires that use slavery, but even non-slavery empires won’t be safe, as the Followers of Zodd will blame them for not freeing them sooner.

To end this crisis you will need to break through their many defenses and find/capture the High Priest of Zodd, who will randomly travel from one planet to the next in his new empire. You can capture him by occupying the planet he’s on. But there is an added difficulty, any occupied planet from the Followers of Zodd will free itself after a year/18 months, killing all (or part of) the occupying armies. Once the High Priest is captured he will be proven to be a fraud, and his new empire will fall. The empire that caught him will get to choose what to do with the followers of Zodd. They can either enslave them again, purge them or allow the slave remnant to remain alive as a new normal empire within the galaxy.

 

[Zoinker]

Zodd idea sounds intriguing, but it's kind of weird that planets just automatically free themselves without effort. Would make more sense to have them periodically spawn large-ish armies that engage your garrison, forcing you to keep part of your army on each occupied planet or risk losing it again.

 

[Milten]

I still think that before addition of new end-game crises, old ones should work properly first.
Mid-game crises niche is empty however. Besides galaxy threat events there should empire threat events as well. These could also serve as additional anti-blobbing barrier, with large empires being easier to collapse.

 

[ConcidiusTullius]

There is a lot of room for a mid-game crisis. What this game lacks that previous Paradox titles did have was a real threat from rebellion. In Stellaris you only get revolts if you ignore some faction. Its very easy to never have one. However in previous games these could pop in as rebels or partisans or what have even if you played perfectly. They also served well to break up blob empires by striking them where they were thin. Events for revolts of limited sizes could be tailored to the society.

Slaving despots might get a large scale slave revolt. I do see these hit the AI but they are usually just one world and easily contained. Five or ten worlds might actually have a more realistic hope of freedom.

For theocracies there could be heretical movements. Horrible religious wars seems far more common over small differences than larger ones. There might be a slow but steady event chain leading to a civil war if not carefully managed.

In democracies it might be harder. Perhaps the losing faction of an election could get events to lead them toward a break or revolt. It ought to be rare but possible. Perhaps the more utopian governments could face a malaise event chain that weakens them unless they fight against the stupor.

For all government types there could be the threat of a coup. The fate of many a junta or dictator has been to die at the hands of their own military. This could be a threat that turns a portion of the fleet or army in revolt. Perhaps it could be halted by a purge of officers or reduction in fleet strength.

We could also face more minor regional threats. Renewed pirate attacks or bigger amoebas could add in minor threats that will need to be faced. Perhaps a Mule type event for backwater powers. They get a new government and a fleet of fancy top line ships that suddenly make them a threat. They won't be a real galactic threat but they would be a menace to have next door.

 

[rcasale]

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).

I agree with this. Too often does a crisis get stalled because it hit the wrong part of the galaxy. Really, there is no reason for the crises to put all their eggs in one basket. The Prethoryn should attack from multiple vectors, and the Unbidden could open multiple portals.

Me personally would ditch the whole concept of of an 'end game crisis'. There is just too much that can go wrong that could cause the event chain to become spoiled, whether it be a bug or some interaction between the crisis fleets and AI empires.

There should still be incursions; unbidden attacking and prethoryn scout forces, and it would slowly ramp up as the game progresses.

 

[Atahal]

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

Sometime, i think i am not playing the same game as the rest of the community...

But, Unbidden, very common, prethoryn quite rare? Wtf.
Prethoryn is the crisis i have to face 90% of my games.


But still, an other crisis is a good idea. Crisis are probably one of the best points of stellaris anyway.

A good crisis idea could be a non territorial entity, just to break with the other criss who always have territories like the rest of the players.
At first, we just have a message telling us the entity spawned, but we can't see her on the galactic view.
This entity has to eat planets or suns, and get stronger each time it does that.
When it has enough power (like, 1/3 of the global fleet power of all galaxy's players), it appears on the galactic view.
At this point there is multiple possibilities:
- The entity conquers a system, and sleep in it (but still maintaining its fleet power to 1/3), while sending a huge amount of spaceships everywhere on the galaxy (Not to conquer, but to harass and destroy), everybody, without logic or tactic, to force everyone to unit against it.
- The entity continues to eat suns/planets to gain power, forcing everyone to unit against it if they want to survive.
- Whatever probably more.

This is just an idea, but i like the concept of "long term" and global range it can have.

 

[Voldurak78]

A lovecraft inspired crisis would be cool too. A space god that drives whole planets mad and adds them to his adoring empire that will require you to destroy him in a big boss battle to destroy his empire.

 

[Qilue]

A lovecraft inspired crisis would be cool too. A space god that drives whole planets mad and adds them to his adoring empire that will require you to destroy him in a big boss battle to destroy his empire.

This kind of already exists. If you ask a curator about the dimensional horror you find near a black hole, you learn it's from another reality and only part of it has entered and fortunately was somehow stopped from fully crossing over.

 

[Robotkiller]

I have no means of providing empirical data, but my first game resulted in the Prethoryn. However, they were quickly wiped out because their ships weren't doing anything and they arrived in the second largest empire, eclipsed only by mine.

 

[niallmcfc]

Maybe it's because I've just 'finished' my wh40k-inspired game (Fanatic xenophobes, guess which FE awakens as I'm purging a planet?) but something like Chaos I think would make a good one. Areas of the galaxy could become inaccessible due to storms, or accessible with very high attrition-on-movement. If you've taken the ascendancy perks for consciousness then some of your pops could be 'hijacked' by daemons, and members of your empire might defect and worship the monsters from the warp. Could make things interesting if some of your armies on planets could defect- maybe Genewarriors, Psionics and Assault armies can, but the rest can't. Would force you to choose whether to risk a high value, high damage pop defecting or to switch to the worse but more reliable armies.

 

[youpi ck]

I have 2 ideas of crises of end of part:
- the first is a probe from another galaxy recovered by one of the empires of the game. This empire wanted to recover the information that the probe contains the connected one of its factory to disassemble it but the probe commanca to create vessels of construction then the empire éssida to destroy the probe but one of the vessels of construction it escaped And it began to be created in large quantity while remaining hidden they installed reactors on asteroids and sent them all on inhabited planets. The vessels can destroy the asteroids.
-the second one would go better with the DLC leviathan a moment a gigantic creature is discovered in the center of a star this creature would use the energy of the star to become more and more powerful but the star being at the end of life 1 Years after the supernova of the star in question a giant creature ravages all it finds on its way it a priori searches to find empires and destroy them.
when this creature is dead we learn that it is they who would have massacred the previous empires and the entirety of their fleets.

sorry for my english

 

[MaP_Prime]

A potential End Game Crisis I would absolutely love to see is something like the Beast from Homeworld: Cataclysm.

 

[CuddlyKitten]

Mind controlling infiltrators could be pretty cool.

All empires in the galaxy gains a faction which needs to be supressed. As they gain strenght ships start to disappear from the more powerfull empires and pops start getting a certain ethos. This hits all empires but weak ones wont have the strength to supress it as much. After a while the collected fleet shows up in the empire with the most support which changes to the mind flayer faction. All controlled pops rebel if there is a chance they can win. Otherwise they hang around causing trouble. All empires with too advanced a faction becomes vassals to the mind flayer empire. Over time the flayers start integrating the vassals. Pops under their direct controll get substitutated over time since they are a parasitic species.

The flayers declare war like a normal empire and can also form alliances and federations. Their wargoal is always vassalisation or a very large liberation which turns into a vassal. If you beat a flayer vassal you can purge their leadership and restore them, but then you also get no other spoils.

Initially they start with a bonus to relations but this decreases over time as the galaxy starts to understand what is happening.
Likewise at first all other empires get a negative modifier which turns positive over time.

In short the crisis should make the entire galaxy first go to a more equvilant stage in power, then make it combust into a Grand melee and eventually have empires unite against the common enemy.