Playable Fallen Empires in future expansions?

[Crapcookie36]

Hey everyone, I've been stalking the forum since the announcement of Stellaris and am super excited to get stuck into the game on release. I wanted to have a thread about the possibility of playable Fallen Empires (most likely not on release) but as a future expansion for the game. Fallen Empires are one of the coolest features in Stellaris for me, bringing together the feeling of the Orions from Moo, the Covenant from Halo and the Reapers from Mass effect. I think that playing as a Fallen Empire would have a distinctly different feel and have a great potential for unique goals to achieve in the game rather than the standard 4x goals of regular empires in the game. There is a great potential for some really cool flavour around fighting a 'doom' mechanic similar to playing Aztecs in EU4 and reclaiming the Tomb worlds we heard about in the Blorg stream. I'd love to hear what other people think about the possibility of playing as a Fallen Empire and some of the unique mechanics they could have to balance the fact they start with an obvious technological superiority. #makespacegreatagain

 

[Namorath]

i think to make them playable and fair they would have to be a complete mess internally for a good period of time to give the younger races and chance to build up and be a challenge to you once you put your house in order

welcome to the forums and coming out from the shadows

to make you feel truly welcome to an internet forum _________________ " insert hurtful comment"

 

[Baro]

It would be pretty hard to make compelling gameplay that gave you something to do while not letting you actually do anything. I imagine it would be a bit like what they tried to do to make playing China interesting in EU4, or most of the pre-western civilizations. Either not-fun busywork to keep you from accomplishing anything and/or severe penalties that you spend most of the entire game waiting to go away so you can finally do something.

 

[Beric]

The entire point of a Fallen Empire is that they don't do anything, period, unless something seriously ticks them off. Sounds like really boring gameplay to me.

 

[ahhheygao]

You should be able to tag-switch to a Fallen Empire (on release) for some ez comp-stomps, but yeah, it'd just be incredibly OP if there aren't artificial blocks and limitations.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I believe a FE in normal gameplay would just be way too easy to be much fun. However, I think a fun mod would be to make fallen empires playable and have several fallen empires in that game separated at opposite ends of the galaxy that you are at war with the whole game and the goal of the early game is to get as many of the "child races" into your federation that you can (a federation that you always control) and try to get them uplifted to the point where they can be your pawns in the coming battle. Find a strong race to act as your infantry, find an intelligent race to recruit your scientists from and so on. Then the mid to late game would just be a battle royal with the other FE federations.

 

[Mordaith]

I think I echo a lot of folk saying that playing a FE would be boring. Basically you are playing a character with maxed out stats - who isn't allowed to interact with the world unless something messes with a very specific thing they disagree with.

 

[nitroholic]

Making Fallen Empires playable either defeats their purpose, or makes for uncompelling gameplay.

They're supposed to be in the midst of stagnation, characterized by apathy/passivity.

I would definitely love to see the concept expanded in the future, though. Fallen Empires have the potential to create a lot of awesome stories.

Wiz said a core idea behind the Stellaris universe is 'the cycle', so perhaps after finishing a campaign you could reload the same world as a new species and see your original one as a Fallen Empire.

 

[barny]

Playing a FE should be pretty boring without a massive rework. Either you wouldn't do much at all or you would just curb stomp everything but another FE. I don't see how that would be interesting to play. It would be like playing France with Techs at level 20+ at the normal EU IV start.

 

[Beric]

Playing a FE should be pretty boring without a massive rework. Either you wouldn't do much at all or you would just curb stomp everything but another FE. I don't see how that would be interesting to play. It would be like playing France with Techs at level 20+ at the normal EU IV start.

Not just that, it would be like playing France at tech level 20 and not being allowed to do anything.

Sure, some of the gameplay could be based around trying to break out of that "not allowed to do anything" mode, but then you're still France at tech level 20, so you're essentially playing on cheat mode.

 

[Otto of england]

I thought about this a bit and they would have to add a few things for it to work:

1. Have meaningful internal issues you have to deal with that is on the same level of funness as fighting foreign wars and such.
2. Have something that your tech points are doing until you 'awaken'
3. Special War goals for when a race violates your holy planet/researchs risky tech, etc
4. Some external threat that is actually something to consider and make your internal management more important. Perhaps when you play as a fallen empire extra galactic invaders are guaranteed, you just don't know when, akin to starting in western Europe in CK2 with sunset invasion enabled.

A couple things that they can already do:

1. Give you very low starting pops
2. Your ships, armies and stations are very expensive
3. Very low pop growth
4. Low happiness and low war tolerance (unless its another fallen empire or end game disaster)

 

[jaredstanko]

im not at all interested in playable fallen empires, there would be no fun in it they are inherently disbalanced and meant to be held at bay by their inward perfection.

what i am interested in is scenario generators where i can be the endgame disaster in a lived in universe.

 

[Olliganak]

I remember in an earlier thread one of the Devs (can't remember which one) stated (if I may paraphrase a bit) that playing a game about managing the internal politics of a decadent state existing as a shadow of its former self would be fun, if the game was about that in the first place. As is the Fallen Empires behave counter to the way all other empires are expected to act. Instead of expanding, researching, and interacting with other nations, they sit in one place, already have all the best techs, and try their best to avoid interacting with anyone.

That being said, there is quite possibly some way that Fallen Empires could be made playable in a way that is actually fun, but I am admittedly not clever enough to think of it.

 

[ahhheygao]

what i am interested in is scenario generators where i can be the endgame disaster in a lived in universe.

Good... Good!

 

[Vasious]

I guess there could be a way to have gameplay.


Controlling the FE the moment that it wakes up, on a single world and a low population and the lack of the ability to support the war machines.
Biding time, sending out scouts to reclaim the old factories and weapons from Tomb worlds of your fallen Empire, meanwhile using your agents and access to powerful technology to tweet the development of younger races to become your thralls, just as the younger races uplift and modernise pre FTL species

Add in a hostile FE that was responsible for your original fall, that will wake & destroy you if you move too openly too quickly, so you cannot just expand and colonise as you would normally as a younger race, you will need minions to claim the tomb worlds and weapons caches and factories for you.

 

[IronFish]

At first I thought "no way!", but citing the Aztec doom mechanic sounds intriguing…

I wonder what mechanism might make a Fallen Empire interesting and challenging.

Maybe some sort of a "Shadow War" (à la Babylon5) mechanism, where your goal is not conquest but rather showing the other Fallen Emipre(s) that your Ethos/Ideology is the right one by manipulating the younger civilizations to advance your cause…

However, that sounds like something beyond the scope of the game – unless it would be a late expansion, which might enable it to utilize possible prior expansions dealing with espionage and other subtle machinations.

 

[Tiaexz]

1. Have meaningful internal issues you have to deal with that is on the same level of funness as fighting foreign wars and such.

Unfortunately human psychology makes it inherently unfun.
Starting small and growing big is like going to an all you can eat buffet, and grabbing delicious food. You gain more and feel rewarded for it.
The other is like having a plate of food, and random people keep coming along and stealing the chips, mushroom, steak, and fighting to keep it. It is just irritating. You are losing and getting punished.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Unfortunately human psychology makes it inherently unfun.
Starting small and growing big is like going to an all you can eat buffet, and grabbing delicious food. You gain more and feel rewarded for it.
The other is like having a plate of food, and random people keep coming along and stealing the chips, mushroom, steak, and fighting to keep it. It is just irritating. You are losing and getting punished.

I remember Rome: Total War's Barbarian Invasion expansion was quite fun whilst playing as the Western Empire. There was a certain savage joy in holding off the barbarians for as long as I could and falling back as slowly as possible.

Maybe that was just me.

 

[TheWalkingLost]

I remember Rome: Total War's Barbarian Invasion expansion was quite fun whilst playing as the Western Empire. There was a certain savage joy in holding off the barbarians for as long as I could and falling back as slowly as possible.

Absolutely, Survival games have a place. Trying to bolt it to the side of a GSG/4x/Empire Builder is not that place. [in my opinion]

Especially since the scenario can occur organically. visa vi, Build Powerful Empire, Research Lots of Tech, Lose control, Struggle your way to an Epic loss.

Fallen Empires are just Late Game Empires that didn't fulfill a victory condition and stopped trying. You can do that in this game as is.

 

[ahhheygao]

I remember Rome: Total War's Barbarian Invasion expansion was quite fun whilst playing as the Western Empire. There was a certain savage joy in holding off the barbarians for as long as I could and falling back as slowly as possible.

Maybe that was just me.

But even in your example, you're still fighting a foreign war (besides, the barbarian hordes are not THAT much inferior, not to mention their sheer numbers) instead of dealing with punishing internal issues and rebellions, which was what @Tiaexz initially responded to. I do agree with you and @TheWalkingLost that HOLD THE FORT survival mode is fun, too.