Sins of the Forefathers DLC

[Dire]

The thing is though, given that we know tech and fleets matter through the whole game, players can play with that in mind. This isn't just one playstyle, any method that results in a strong fleet is valid. All the vanilla crisis only kill pops and planets when they take the system with a fleet. In this sense they are as "fair" as anything. They don't kill pops with plague events or destroy planets in unoccupied systems. I think this is an intentional design choice by Paradox.

 

[Dire]

The dead attack non-spiritualists in this instance because they're being manipulated by the Reapers in their campaign, and cremation of the dead is a way to deal WITH the dead rising, rather than the reason why they're upset. Memorialist civics should also be an option that excludes this happening within the empire; good catch.

I can imagine my people do cremation even without the civic though. It's just an example.

 

[Kharrus]

The thing is though, given that we know tech and fleets matter through the whole game, players can play with that in mind. This isn't just one playstyle, any method that results in a strong fleet is valid. All the vanilla crisis only kill pops and planets when they take the system with a fleet. In this sense they are as "fair" as anything. They don't kill pops with plague events or destroy planets in unoccupied systems. I think this is an intentional design choice by Paradox.

A counterpoint to that would be that since they've also stated they wanted to avoid materialist tech rush as end-all dominant meta, and they have made strides towards that. Having clear enemies for an endgame crisis does make things simpler and easier to balance from a design end, so I think the intent of the design choice is that it's safe, which is why it's been only recently with Nemesis that *any* new endgame crisis was added. The last one before that was the War in Heaven with Utopia if I'm remembering right.

 

[Kharrus]

I can imagine my people do cremation even without the civic though. It's just an example.

oh certainly. They no doubt wouldn't be handling their dead all in a single way, so the universal adoption of cremation as a measure to combat the crisis is the driving point of contention for this, since the adoption of a single religion in the galactic community would no doubt be *extremely* difficult to achieve with a non spiritualist majority in the galaxy if that's the case.

 

[Quinzal]

Part of the theme for these particular crises is that you're challenged to "do better" than the precursors you studied that failed to overcome what led to their downfall after studying them extensively. There's a better framework for a cure since your empire has full hindsight of what the Irassians did and didn't do right at the time of the present outbreak.

I understand and that does sound like good flavor, but my concern is that the Javorian Pox Sample lets you put the disease in bombs and drop them on people. It doesn't need to break containment to spread, and because the crisis likely wouldn't pop as soon as someone uses Pox Bombardment, it obviously isn't enough of a threat to cripple the entire galaxy.

That's a good point; i didn't exactly make the timeline for it clear on how it relates to a WiH or if it cancels it out. Ideally it'd happen around when the endgame year starts. A lack of decadence mechanic would make it terrible to have to overcome in any case, so I think this idea could definitely use a bit more work on my end with making overcoming it more feasible. Possibly internal sabotage through your spy network, fabricating evidence of one of the former factions doing dirty? There's multiple ways to go about this without addressing it head-on militarily, especially if you're playing unmodded. I had a large map in mind for most of this, though.

I feel like we need to have that long-awaited espionage rework before anything like this can come into the game, but the idea is pretty sound... although I don't like the idea of a Fanatic Materialist and Spiritualist, Fanatic Xenophobe and Xenophile teaming up.

This is also why I didn't want this to pop if you got the Vultaum as a gestalt; it's possible as well that it could go similarly to the Crusade of the Dead where if you refuse to accept the evidence you could just opt out of being forced into a faction. Thematically it's supposed to be divisive, so having it go like being in the League of Non-Aligned Worlds where you're technically at war with the two extremists would be a route to go.

Sounds good, but my main concern was with the win conditions. Like I said, Stellaris does not lend as well to unique win conditions as something like Civilization is, as a lot more information is withheld from the player in the former than the latter.

 

[Kharrus]

I understand and that does sound like good flavor, but my concern is that the Javorian Pox Sample lets you put the disease in bombs and drop them on people. It doesn't need to break containment to spread, and because the crisis likely wouldn't pop as soon as someone uses Pox Bombardment, it obviously isn't enough of a threat to cripple the entire galaxy.

My interpretation of the Javoran Pox sample has been that when it's activated it's "discovered" on the world you're bombing to give you plausible justification for glassing the entire planet if you're not playing a fanatic purifier. Kind of like planting WMDs in a country you want to invade later. ^^

I feel like we need to have that long-awaited espionage rework before anything like this can come into the game, but the idea is pretty sound... although I don't like the idea of a Fanatic Materialist and Spiritualist, Fanatic Xenophobe and Xenophile teaming up.

Well it's the interpretation to how people would react to having an intelligent operator running the universe. Spiritualists think the entity is proof of a God or gods worthy of worship, and materialists who rely on pragmatic solutions to the perceived harshness of life view such an entity as malevolent, needlessly inflicting countless sapients with the unimaginable degree of suffering people can and often do go through in life. That's inherently a xenophobic reaction stemming FROM a materialist viewpoint, which is why the two are grouped in the way they are.

Sounds good, but my main concern was with the win conditions. Like I said, Stellaris does not lend as well to unique win conditions as something like Civilization is, as a lot more information is withheld from the player in the former than the latter.

I think that's a kind of confirmation bias that we've come to accept since our win conditions HAVE been limited for so long. Nemesis has proven to break the mold for that, and I'm using that proof that inherently different victories like that are possible as the assumption for these proposals being a possibility with the game in its current state.

By putting out new crisis ideas, I don't think they're perfect or even ideal; I'm looking for constructive criticism to fine tune them or expose critical issues with them in order to come up with something that could be conceptually sound enough to use in the game without breaking it, and be achievable.