Prethoryn Swarm defeated by... AI federation with ~30k fleet

[PhoenixDown]

I have finally encountered the scourge and was pretty stocked about it. They spawned on the other side of the galaxy and got a hold on one planet. I exchanged active link with AI to see how many there are and well... they were outnumbering me, but still I sent my fleet to see if I can do anything to slow them down a bit. When I got there I started to fight one fleet and suddenly poof - they disappeared. Checked the log - nothing. At first I thought it was a bug, but then I noticed the modifier:

They spawned on Matsonia. AI federation actually bombared the only planet they had in their garsp and defeated them. Not sure if I should laugh or cry.
Is this normal? Extradimensional Invaders were much better I have to say They have eaten half of the galaxy before I closed the gates.

 

[Meneliki]

I found the same thing. The 'fleet strength' indicator on the Prethoryan units is misleading. When they spawned in my game, i had my 30k fleets mopping the floor with their 50-55k fleets. I suppose it could just have been super lucky in terms of my loadout vs. theirs, but the numbers just seemed wayyy off.

 

[PhoenixDown]

I found the same thing. The 'fleet strength' indicator on the Prethoryan units is misleading. When they spawned in my game, i had my 30k fleets mopping the floor with their 50-55k fleets. I suppose it could just have been super lucky in terms of my loadout vs. theirs, but the numbers just seemed wayyy off.

Vanguard fleets were about 5k so it wasn't a problem for AI feds, but the main force was 50-70k stacks x5. There's no way AI would be able to defeat them since federation forces have trouble coordinating usually. Here's what I think happened: Scourge ignored AI fleets completely and AI just bombed scourge homeworld and the event ended.
Prethoryan first planet should have more fortifications or make AI scourge guard it at least in the beginning of invasion.

 

[Sarnmy]

A roaming Wraith destroyed the Unbidden portal in my game today. Honestly the end-game crisis are kind of a joke right now, no matter what happen they can in no way pose a challenge to an awakened empire, they just get erased on spawn.

 

[Calvax]

A roaming Wraith destroyed the Unbidden portal in my game today. Honestly the end-game crisis are kind of a joke right now, no matter what happen they can in no way pose a challenge to an awakened empire, they just get erased on spawn.

I've had the unbidden get wiped out in no time at all by an AI empire they spawned next to. That was a while ago and I thought it was half luck half because I was playing on normal. Playing on hard difficulty yesterday I got my first Robot Uprising in 125 hours of gameplay. I was quite excited, especially because I only had a small number of bots in my empire (from captured planets, sectors were forbidden to build them as I was going for a slave/purity playthrough) and the uprising had started in the massive, aggressive rival empire next door. I put down my rebellions easily and started to gear up, taking my fleet over capacity in anticipation for a hard fight. I began spamming more defence armies everywhere and aimed to have 50 gene warrior divisions complete ASAP.

I was looking forward to seeing my enemy crumble to the point I could sweep in and grab some juicy systems on the border, then shore up to put down the rebellion myself.

Barely a year into the "crisis" a bunch of AI empires wiped out the robots just like that. They sent in a fleet to the robot home world and blockaded it whilst the AI fleet was off in some random system blockading another world. After a few months of literally nothing happening someone finally landed an army on the robot homeworld and the robot fleet disappeared.

Disappointing. As. Fuck.

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

AI rebelion was joke from a start. Prethoryns are quite bad too, most of their fleets can be easily beaten. The only one I had a problem with was unbidden on hard, wich was defeated too by either FE or Sentinels (i'm not quite sure which one destroyed its giant fleet) but left me with my fleet crushed enough to other empires gangraping me before war even ended.

I always wanted crisis beeing strong and close to be imposible to beat at last on hard difficulty. Unfortunatelly, there was too many complains from players who refuse to be flexible and treat it as some kind of diabolus ex-machina instead of culminating point of campaign.

 

[Kilmantor]

I found the same thing. The 'fleet strength' indicator on the Prethoryan units is misleading.

It's the same with the Unbidden. I was shocked when they started throwing several 100k fleets at me and I just had one ~120k fleet. So I attacked them when they came near my core worlds and expected a tough fight with me as a close winner but high casulties. In the end my kinetic artillery shot the crap out of them and I just lost 4-6 cruisers.

Seems like it really depends on your fleet-setup.

 

[niallmcfc]

It's the same with the Unbidden. I was shocked when they started throwing several 100k fleets at me and I just had one ~120k fleet. So I attacked them when they came near my core worlds and expected a tough fight with me as a close winner but high casulties. In the end my kinetic artillery shot the crap out of them and I just lost 4-6 cruisers.

Seems like it really depends on your fleet-setup.

Unbidden do go 100% shields to be fair. I had a similar experience. They spawned, I was going to ignore but thought what the hell. Jumped over, crushed a fleet, destroyed an anchor- invasion over. To be fair they then jumped 250k worth of fleets in the system and I ran like a whipped dog. It seems the problem is coordination.

Did have a fun Prethoryn though. They spawned next to a weaker empire and slowly pushed through them, ran into a (non-awakened) FE and this awesome 40k-like 'always war' situation happened. Was great to watch the endless back-and-forth and see the losses piling up in the situation log.

Seems like crises need to spawn in a weak spot and build momentum before they get really fun. Perhaps they should always go for the weakest possible target when spawning.

As a side note, this is something else awakened fallen empires ruin. It's not really much fun to see a 'galaxy threatening crisis' get utterly stomped straight away. Not that I complain either, but it's not entirely fun for the FE to be completely whipped after fighting them off and happily join you in a federation (though that may be a bug)

 

[PhoenixDown]

Awaken empires are much bigger threats than crisises I agree.

Seems like crises need to spawn in a weak spot and build momentum before they get really fun. Perhaps they should always go for the weakest possible target when spawning.

Mine spawned in weak federation and still got defeated lol.

I always wanted crisis beeing strong and close to be imposible to beat at last on hard difficulty.

I think crises are strong enough on normal. AI just needs tweaking to defend at the beginning to prevent them being defeated by pure luck and let them grow.

 

[Antiochus V]

Awaken empires are much bigger threats than crisises I agree.



Mine spawned in weak federation and still got defeated lol.



I think crises are strong enough on normal. AI just needs tweaking to defend at the beginning to prevent them being defeated by pure luck and let them grow.

Perhaps part of the solution is to give the newly arrived aliens a temporary bonus to reflect their alien nature. Thus for the first year or two the normal empires should have a damage penalty against them to reflect their lack of knowledge in how to fight them.

'Lore' wise it makes some sense and might give the Unbidden or Prethoryans enough time to settle in.

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

I think crises are strong enough on normal. AI just needs tweaking to defend at the beginning to prevent them being defeated by pure luck and let them grow.

Prethoryns on normal are barely better than FE and crushingly worse than AE. I defeated them by myself with only 1 other 2-star empire beeing involved - and I dont even consider myself good. On hard they are more difficult to beat but not that difficult to contain and isolate (becouse of AI issues and also becouse their bio-ships are dissapoitingly underperforming). I was pressed harder by other empires than that so-called "crisis".

 

[Tigey]

It's the same with the Unbidden. I was shocked when they started throwing several 100k fleets at me and I just had one ~120k fleet. So I attacked them when they came near my core worlds and expected a tough fight with me as a close winner but high casulties. In the end my kinetic artillery shot the crap out of them and I just lost 4-6 cruisers.

Seems like it really depends on your fleet-setup.

It does indeed.

I had the exact opposite experience to you with the Unbidden. I had gobbled up several Fallen Empires and had amassed an effectively invincible doomstack - 200+ endgame tech Battleships with Lances, Kinetic Artillery and multiple repeatable techs boosting them. This doomstack literally melted everything placed in front of it - even other doomstacks were generally destroyed before they got into a proper firing position - with ships being destroyed one by one as they entered firing range. It got to the point where I actually split my fleet on several occasions in order to avoid things becoming too easy.

I went into the battle with the Unbidden a lazy and overconfident Admiral. I believed I had every reason to be - my fleet had taken all comers during the earlier War in Heaven, and I outnumbered these Unbidden chaps over 3 to 1. Their main advantage seemed to be their strong shields - but I reassured myself that my ships' weapons worked best against shielded targets.

My glorious battleline opened up on the Unbidden menace with everything it had...

Only to find that my massed fire was utterly ineffective against them. Despite ravaging everyone else - the Unbidden were different - their ships dodged and weaved and evaded my fire - I could barely score a single hit on them. 200 Battleships worth of Tachyon Lances and Kinetic Artillery proved almost completely incapable of tracking their ghostly ships, managing a hit rate of barely more than 3%. Literally hundreds of thousands of damage points sailed harmlessly into the interstellar void - whilst the super accurate Unbidden disintegrator beams bypassed most of my shields and armor.

In the end - my short range point defence guns (Flak Cannons with decent tracking) ended up my most effective weapon during the battle - scoring more damage than my huge Kinetic Artillery guns. Dozens of battleships were lost whilst closing to point blank range to hit them with these flak peashooters.

It was a fantastic battle, a phyrric victory barely won at great cost, and I fully deserved the losses as punishment for my laziness in fleet design and shameful overconfidence.

 

[PhoenixDown]

Perhaps part of the solution is to give the newly arrived aliens a temporary bonus to reflect their alien nature. Thus for the first year or two the normal empires should have a damage penalty against them to reflect their lack of knowledge in how to fight them.

'Lore' wise it makes some sense and might give the Unbidden or Prethoryans enough time to settle in.

I would rather have paradox tweak the AI a bit, but if it's impossible a temporary buff would be nice.

Prethoryns on normal are barely better than FE and crushingly worse than AE. I defeated them by myself with only 1 other 2-star empire beeing involved - and I dont even consider myself good. On hard they are more difficult to beat but not that difficult to contain and isolate (becouse of AI issues and also becouse their bio-ships are dissapoitingly underperforming). I was pressed harder by other empires than that so-called "crisis".

Unbidden were quite a trouble in my game. I had to sacrifice half of my fleet to lock the portals. I was probably fighting 4x my fleet size at the entrance in the end.
Out of curiosity since I have exactly no experience fighting them: what ships design were you using against the scourge?

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

Out of curiosity since I have exactly no experience fighting them: what ships design were you using against the scourge?

mixed, with gigacanon and kinnetic artilery beeing a staple of my BBs. Against Prethoryns I used bizzare fleet mixes (even with bombers), sub-optimal ones I guess, becouse I suspect Tachyon Lances and full-armour would do much better. Point-defence and high-end armour/shield mix is enouth to figh against scourge. Since scourge was for me a let down I didnt tested my mixes much. Unbidden were much more challenging and I remmember them beeing the only one that actually beat me pretty hard (after the patch and on hard, I am yet to see how good it is on normal righ now).

 

[Antiochus V]

I would rather have paradox tweak the AI a bit, but if it's impossible a temporary buff would be nice.



Unbidden were quite a trouble in my game. I had to sacrifice half of my fleet to lock the portals. I was probably fighting 4x my fleet size at the entrance in the end.
Out of curiosity since I have exactly no experience fighting them: what ships design were you using against the scourge?

I went with a mix of kinetic (including their XL weapons and the auto cannons) with some PD or Flak against the scourge and that seemed to work, I use that as a standard design.

 

[Searry]

The crises need a very big buff to be an actual menace or interesting.

 

[niallmcfc]

It does indeed.

I had the exact opposite experience to you with the Unbidden. I had gobbled up several Fallen Empires and had amassed an effectively invincible doomstack - 200+ endgame tech Battleships with Lances, Kinetic Artillery and multiple repeatable techs boosting them. This doomstack literally melted everything placed in front of it - even other doomstacks were generally destroyed before they got into a proper firing position - with ships being destroyed one by one as they entered firing range. It got to the point where I actually split my fleet on several occasions in order to avoid things becoming too easy.

I went into the battle with the Unbidden a lazy and overconfident Admiral. I believed I had every reason to be - my fleet had taken all comers during the earlier War in Heaven, and I outnumbered these Unbidden chaps over 3 to 1. Their main advantage seemed to be their strong shields - but I reassured myself that my ships' weapons worked best against shielded targets.

My glorious battleline opened up on the Unbidden menace with everything it had...

Only to find that my massed fire was utterly ineffective against them. Despite ravaging everyone else - the Unbidden were different - their ships dodged and weaved and evaded my fire - I could barely score a single hit on them. 200 Battleships worth of Tachyon Lances and Kinetic Artillery proved almost completely incapable of tracking their ghostly ships, managing a hit rate of barely more than 3%. Literally hundreds of thousands of damage points sailed harmlessly into the interstellar void - whilst the super accurate Unbidden disintegrator beams bypassed most of my shields and armor.

In the end - my short range point defence guns (Flak Cannons with decent tracking) ended up my most effective weapon during the battle - scoring more damage than my huge Kinetic Artillery guns. Dozens of battleships were lost whilst closing to point blank range to hit them with these flak peashooters.

It was a fantastic battle, a phyrric victory barely won at great cost, and I fully deserved the losses as punishment for my laziness in fleet design and shameful overconfidence.

I'm a touch surprised you did so well against AI with only 200 BBs. Corvette spam is still very real in AI fleets

 

[YagabodooN]

In my last game the Scourge finally appeared after getting nothing but unbidden over and over. By the time I changed my ships to Lances and Plasma guns a 2 planet empire goes in with their 6k fleet, yes you read that right 6k fleet and sniped their homeworld while the swarm mothers were doing who knows what.

Most anticlimactic crisis ever.

 

[Slarkon]

agree they both need a buff

 

[Mitchz95]

In my current game I'm running with 25% habitable planets, most of which have already been claimed by one empire or another. I'm expecting the Scourge to be wiped out on sight. Which is disappointing, because they're my favorite crisis so far.