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[Great Order]

the Fallen Empire next door awoke as Benevolent Interventionalists. And immediately declared war on me. A war I didn't have the option to surrender in.

you should have got an option to submit beforehand, the popup isn't immediately clear and many dismiss it, but the only way out from that war is to become a subject before it starts and rebel later.

Sometimes they don't let you become a subject. Not sure if that's a bug or not.

I had it in one of my games where they were determined to take my land. I couldn't surrender (As in the option was greyed out), I couldn't submit to them pre-war (because I knew I couldn't take them, but there was a -1000 modifier), and they'd refuse a white peace on account of them carving me up like a spit-roast pig.

[Rolan7]

When the xenophiles awaken in a certain mode (like in response to a crisis) their diplomacy is different.  I don't think they were offering states to become signatories, in fact there was an option to have them join *my* federation.  They were only a couple points away from accepting, but sadly I couldn't get any favors from them and gifting them resources didn't seem to help.

When the crisis was defeated that option disappeared and they were back to collecting signatures, though they didn't harass my federation as we were far stronger.  And I let them exist because they did help out against the crisis.  Whereas the Xenophobe FE was learning about multiculturalism
(And I got to crack open their shielded worlds!  That was !!!fun!!!)

[MorleyDev]

Also seems like Galactic Custodian and Imperials don't get an option to surrender. Just got into a "three-way War in Heaven" in a modded Gigastructures where I tech rushed to the point I got basically every significant megastructure and a 1000k total fleet.

I shall bring peace and prosperity to my new empire!

[Duuvian]

Started a new game with more empires and advancved empires on Captain. Much better so far, but I think I could set it higher unless I start next to an empire that diplomats won't save me from until I can build fleets. In that case I could try to get a guarantee from an AI maybe. I think I'll play this one out and see how challenging it is later. I've built to my 20 fleet limit for a patrol fleet and was offered a non agression pact with the neighboring Bandit Kingdom, which is the only aggressive empire I have borders next to. They were threatening me early on but some diplomats and 20 corvettes seems to be enough to have them rival a genocidal hive mind type empire they border instead of me. I like when the AI makes smart choices like that from a narrative standpoint.

Also using 3x research times. I didn't sprawl so hard this time because of the 30 empires I think. I still got a nice chunk of the bottom edge of the galaxy, enough to split off to a couple of vassals pretty soon once I finally scape together enough resources for the last colony ships so the Ai is growing pops on the colonizable worlds. That way I'm not throwing so many consumber goods into the administration building bonfires.

Spoiler: early game screenshot, had custom empires spawn next to me out of luck (click to show/hide)

I found a possible bug too. I found a ratlike species (Ketlings I think) living on tomb worlds, and the worlds could not be surveyed because they were settled. The survey ship could be ordered to survey, and would start, but at the start of the next month would cancel it. I had to invade those planets at which point they were unable to be surveyed as I controlled them. The ratlike species is pretty terrible except for trade value bonus and psionic, so I just made their tomb worlds trading worlds. I'd make them leaders due to the psionics and because they have enough population to show up once in a while, but they are fleeting as well.

I also went Unity + mineral production player species this time. I decided to try a Unity species because I take usually take Feudal for better vassals and Aristocratic for the Noble Estates building, which gives unity and +5 stability per Noble job. It would have been a great game for the Intelligent Engineer dwarves I made last game though, I have a planet with +20% Engineering research doh

Spoiler: current map (click to show/hide)

I have no idea why my resources are so negative in the screenshot. Sometimes it just does that a few months and then goes back to positives for some reason. Bug? Something I don't know I should be doing? I dunno.

EDIT: Might be the unemployed pops doing something to the resources, I fell behind due to having to sell minerals for a while. I colonized about 20 planets at once and they are just starting to become productive.

[LoSboccacc]

I have no idea why my resources are so negative in the screenshot.

You moving fleets? If that puts you into the negative for energy it also hits your jobs efficiency, hard.

[Rolan7]

I've found that the resource indicators are always incorrect (maybe always worse) after loading a save game, up until the monthly tick by.  I just started ignoring it but I suspect that it doesn't factor in trade, but there could be other factors.

[Telgin]

The inability to survey Ketling planets is a known bug, but I can't remember if it was fixed in 3.0.3.  The bug where the galactic custodian being destroyed also destroying (crashing) the game was fixed at least, so I was able to continue my last game and eventually lose to the Unbidden as I expected I would since habitats aren't as good as they used to be.  Even 45 of them wasn't enough of an economic base to support a big enough fleet to defeat the Unbidden on 5x.

[Telgin]

Boy, I really hate the new early spawn mechanics for the Unbidden.  I've lost 3/3 games in 3.0 because if anyone in the galaxy researches jump drives then they can spawn any time after 2400 by default.  So, I keep getting my butt kicked because they spawn in 2410 and I miss out on 40 years of repeatable techs.  Don't bother leaving the crisis setting on random since you will get the Unbidden 30-40 years early no matter what if you research jump drives.

Can't decide if I should just bump up the end game year to compensate or try to avoid jump drives for 50 years myself and hope the AI is too bad at the game to get to that point.  I tried bumping it up to Captain and the AI still gets tons of rebellions so I'm not sure they could get to jump drives by 2400.

Maybe 5x is just the best I should expect to be able to beat now, but I used to be able to reliably beat the Unbidden on 10x.  Even though pops are worth more now, I used to have 4k+ pops by 2450 when they could spawn, but now I have to keep facing the crises with 1.3k pops in 2410 and it's not even close to the economic output.  The pop growth changes in 3.0.3 help, but ring worlds are still garbage.  They're not remotely worth the alloys and rare resource upkeep when 50 years of pop growth gives you 15 pops on each section, even with automatic migration.  I had 2 ecumenopoleis that only got up to about 75 pops by the time I surrendered.

[MrRoboto75]

funbidden

[MorleyDev]

Huh, I don't see the rebellions you are on Captain. I usually only play on Captain or below if going for an achievement, since I can tech rush ahead of the AI pretty easily with a good build so they aren't a challenge, but not seen any empires implode on themself. See the odd empire have a planet leave and usually get protectorated by a neighbouring rival, but not like the entire galaxy collapses in on itself. I'd kinda expect some empires to have rebellion issues, keeps the galaxy feeling a bit dynamic.

But I usually play low empire count + high primitives because I like that the galaxy has a mix of tech level empires at once. I've before played a huge galaxy with no other empires but 5 fallen/3 marauder and modded 25x primitives, and just...stayed in a corner with a tall empire and a few vassals and watched the galaxy do it's thing.

As for ring worlds, I find the trick is to create them in their own sector and release it as a vassal. Let them build up and then put in the effort to reintegrate them in a decade or two. Earlier I described that as gaming the system, but thinking on it I actually like the mechanic of having to leave sectors to be semi-independent and then put in work to reintegrate them later. Isn't that literally how colonies worked in real life, being left to their own devices to establish themselves then their parent empire coming in and taking control?

Vassals from sectors will grow faster in pops than sectors at the moment, so releasing sectors as vassals means only that vassals pops count towards their growth rate rather than your entire empire.

Plus the AI changes to make the AI more aggressive means that Vassals actually can help in war for a change. When I went to war with an Awakened Empire I basically didn't need to field armies because my vassal kept sending 10x Gene Warriors to invade the planets, and since I'd already took the starbase I still got the planet after they conquered it for me.

Also, thing to remember: big planets are for specialists, small planets are for resources and pops. You don't want to fully develop a small planet, you want it to be a backwater that feeds your larger and more important planets.

Rather than buffing up pop rates for empires again, I kinda think Paradox should focus more on interactions with vassals, sectors, and federations as a way of building up your powerbase. Maybe make vassals give you some resources, and automated sectors closer to micro-vassals?

[Telgin]

I wouldn't be overly averse to a stronger focus on vassals, but right now it feels janky and like an exploit to release a sector as a vassal just so the pops magically start growing faster.

I primarily build ring worlds for research too, and releasing them as vassals removes most of the point of that.

Lastly, I guess ring worlds really are just bad now since they halved the size of segments and doubled their number without decreasing the rare resource upkeep.  So they're very expensive on top of sucking.  Maybe that will get fixed in the next patch.

[Duuvian]

Vassals from sectors will grow faster in pops than sectors at the moment, so releasing sectors as vassals means only that vassals pops count towards their growth rate rather than your entire empire.

Plus the AI changes to make the AI more aggressive means that Vassals actually can help in war for a change. When I went to war with an Awakened Empire I basically didn't need to field armies because my vassal kept sending 10x Gene Warriors to invade the planets, and since I'd already took the starbase I still got the planet after they conquered it for me.

Also, thing to remember: big planets are for specialists, small planets are for resources and pops. You don't want to fully develop a small planet, you want it to be a backwater that feeds your larger and more important planets.

Rather than buffing up pop rates for empires again, I kinda think Paradox should focus more on interactions with vassals, sectors, and federations as a way of building up your powerbase. Maybe make vassals give you some resources, and automated sectors closer to micro-vassals?

I've been making Feudal empires for a while but in the past I've run into two factors with deciding when starting vassals. The first is that I was worried that basically I would be turning a big piece of the empire into something that just sits there, even if  recently pops grow faster. Since the update I've seen my accumulated rather than created vassals making fine navies for their size if I send them alloys, but I wasn't sure if they would use the ships to expand or even to help me out, or just sit there, so I've hesitated to make new vassals even though I'm in a great spot to do so in my current game I think.

The other was sprawl; in the previous version I was better able to keep up with it so that there wasn't much need for a vassal when I could make a consumer good sector instead. I think it's better now because I can never keep up with sprawl, so I'll have to establish some vassals for a while and maybe reintegrate them once I have better tech or a solid resource base or whatnot. I guess I hope it works good and that whatever madness it ends up with in the planetary build choices is a positive for the main empire instead of many rebellions due to lack of amenities or something. It would be cool to be able to influence a vassal, like tell them hey you should focus consumer goods or motes and trade them to me in an ongoing trade. I haven't tried that yet so I don't know if even vassals would accept a multi year trade or if those are turned off like system trades for the AI.

EDIT: Also I think I read about Imperium up above, dang, I was going to try that last update they had so I could revise my review if deserved. That game had some potential, was going to give the new update a try and re-review it on Steam because that was the only Paradox game I've at least recently gave a bad review on. It seemed like they were trying to make it better., and I had heard good things about 2.0 or whatnot; I was just going to give it time while doing other things while they ironed it out. oopsie

[Bralbaard]

The AI certainly seems to have issues with rebellions.

I started a playthrough as a corporation at commodore level, and got an advanced start neighbour (the Giranshu) This empire also managed to conquer a planet with a very large primitive civilisation in the first decade. I expected that I was going to have great problems catching up with them, but instead their empire was split into two when the primitives rebelled in 2214.

I had opened a branch office on their homeworld so I have some insights in what went wrong for them. Apparently they had assigned a corrupt official to govern their home sector, this drives up crime and instability for their homeworld to the point that my branch office generated a net loss each turn (I'm a normal corporation by the way, not a crime syndicate). The situation in the rest of their empire must have been even more dire with the unhapiness effects that conquest of primitives tend to give, and this must have resulted in the rebellion. It probably did not help hapiness that the Giranshu were slavers either.
Anyhow when the Giranshu finally beat the rebels into submission their empire had collapsed and the corrupt governor was still in power, so this will likely repeat in a few years time. Refugees are fleeing their empire in droves, I'm getting 3 or 4 pops as refugees each year.

The AI should at the very least replace that corrupt governor. Also, the rest of the galaxies AIs appear to be doing just as poorly, it is only 2220 now and the victory tab says I'm in fifth position for victory., Only the Fallen empires are ahead of me and I'm well clear of the rest. I had sworn I would finally play a game to the end game, but I'm feeling a terrible itch to restart.
I'm not sure if all of this can be blamed on the game itself however, I'm playing with some mods, that may well have made things worse (potent rebellions), I'll remove it from my mod list, I guess..

[Rolan7]

That raises an interesting point about Paradox AI design.  Replacing that governor immediately is definitely the best move (the 200 energy is almost never going to be too costly).  But the AI isn't designed to make the best moves, it's designed to make as interesting-looking a galaxy as possible.  Having a neighboring empire fall to pieces because of a bad governor is interesting and even a little surprising, and that means their AI design worked in that case.

Likewise, the existence of useless governors like that rewards the player for replacing them.  I used to think of that as annoying busywork.  But now that I've played some multiplayer games where everyone wants to avoid pausing the game constantly, I see how it's an actual skill to be multitasking and checking up on such things.  Player attention becomes a limited resource and there are small or huge consequences for missing stuff.  I was shocked and delighted to see the subterranean empire burst to the surface and claim one of my first planets, because apparently that happens if you accidentally forget the special projects!  My friends and I ended up welcoming them into our federation and they played a clutch role later against the Khan.

Just a ramble about how "success" isn't really the AI's purpose.  Of course in some patches it's been too silly/incompetent and stretched credulity that way.  Maybe that's the case here though I haven't personally experienced much trouble.

[Egan_BW]

It would be kinda nice if it were competent enough to not need to rely on magical difficulty buffs which instantly go away when their stuff comes under the control of the player, though.