Great Khan isn't fun.

[ExecutiveOdin]

It's impossible to defend against. Last game they only had access to me through a wormhole. fully upgraded starbase, fleet limit death blob defending it. I killed a dozen of their fleets all 16k and one oddly 5k before I ran out of resources and they overwhelmed.

You shouldn't HAVE to surrender and wait for the khan to die. That's bull.
All my games from now on will have marauders turned off. I hate turning off things like that but it's just so garbage. How does a "civ" that only has 3 systems have the resources to field that many ships?

[Azor]

Last game he spawned at around 2350 for me, I surrendered immediately and then by 2360 had killed him for the second time and gotten the respective achievement (this was on Commodore difficulty). He's not unbeatable.

In my game before that he spawned by 2320; I wasn't able to kill him but managed to keep him off my territory and prevent him from expanding until he died from age (Captain difficulty); I even managed to defeat him once in that run. You need not surrender.

[ExecutiveOdin]

I'm reading about it now and seeing he actually spawns in a ship. I bet it was his fleet that finally took out my chokepoint because he showed up with a second 16k group and my fleet absolutely melted.
Still I'm disabling maruders from now on. I wasn't even playing for military I was playing a heavy science game trying to see if I could turn my race into robots. Now that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and I am going to start over.

[Chastity the Celibate]

It’s my favorite crisis

[ExecutiveOdin]

Why?

[mcsproot]

Originally posted by GARAP:

Last game he spawned at around 2350 for me, I surrended imediatly and then by 2360 I had killed him for the second time and gotten the respective achievement (this was on Commodore difficulty). He's not unbeatable.

In my game before that he spawned by 2320; I wasn't able to kill him but managed to keep him off my territory and prevent him from expanding until he died from age (Captain difficulty); I even managed to defeat him once in that run. You need not surrender.

How can you surrender then fight him?

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by ExecutiveOdin:

Why?

It’s the only one where you don’t lose if you surrender. Also, it’s dynamic. Sometimes I have to surrender, sometimes I can ward him off. Sometimes he’s on the other side of the galaxy. Once I actually subjugated and integrated the Successor Khanate.

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by mcsproot:

Originally posted by GARAP:

Last game he spawned at around 2350 for me, I surrended imediatly and then by 2360 I had killed him for the second time and gotten the respective achievement (this was on Commodore difficulty). He's not unbeatable.

In my game before that he spawned by 2320; I wasn't able to kill him but managed to keep him off my territory and prevent him from expanding until he died from age (Captain difficulty); I even managed to defeat him once in that run. You need not surrender.

How can you surrender then fight him?

Independence War

[Azor]

If it encourages you, I wasn't playing for military either in my first-mentioned run; I was playing pacifist materialist empire and kept a 1k fleet power (I had so much because of a cruiser I received from an event) until he spawned by 2350.

Originally posted by xnadu27:

Originally posted by mcsproot:

How can you surrender then fight him?

Independence War

For the record, it is not considered at war when you declare your independence from The Horde because it is a mid-game crisis; declaring independence will only turn it hostile.

Now here's some info

Marauders use only tier 3 technology.
They use mostly kinectic weapons, meaning they will destroy your shields pretty quickly.
Their ships are equipped mostly with armor rather than with shields.
They use Flak (countering Strike crafts) rather than Point Defense.

And here's some tips

From the wiki:

Defensively: Excluding a few odd Energy weapons, Marauders focus almost entirely on kinetic and missile weaponry. Accordingly, shields are practically useless.

Offensively: They rely primarily on their Hull points, then their Armor. A few models have shields on par with their armor, but mostly these can be ignored. There is very limited Point Defense, with a focus to countering strikecraft. Due to their low values, it might be best to just punch through shields and armor even with unfavorable weapons to maximize hull damage.

Missiles aren't a real problem though since only their Galleons (of which there is one per fleet) have them and these come with no more than one equipped.

I personally favor armor, missiles and disruptors when designing my ships against marauders.

Also, The Horde has this very cool mechanic.

Once the Great Khan dies the Horde will become unreachable, leaving an automatic message if diplomatic contact is attempted. Within a year the Horde will change into the following:

If the Horde owns no planets it will turn back into a Marauder Empire.
If the Horde owns between 1 and 5 planets it will turn into a strong regular empire.
If the Horde owns between 6 and 9 planets it will split into two regular empires that will constantly war with each other.
If the Horde owns at least 10 planets it will fracture into four regular empires that will constantly war with each other
Regular empires created from the Horde are Fanatic Militarist.png Fanatic Militarist and Xenophobe.png Xenophobe Hegemonic Imperialists.
If the Horde had at least two Satrapies there is a 10% chance it will instead turn into a Federation Builders regular empire. Every former Satrapy will be offered the chance to join a Federation with the former Horde, which will also be its first president

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

They're much less of an issue if you set the mid-game start date later on. In a recent game I had set the mid- and end-game transitions to be 200 years rather than the default 100. By the time a Great Khan occurred (mainly because I had just wiped out one of the other 2 marauder clans), I had nearly all non-repeatable technologies researched and 2 fleets of about 40k-50k fleet power each. I simply waited for the Chosen fleet to go through the wormhole (which was conveniently directly adjacent to their starting area, and led to a location right within jump drive range of my northern choke point), jumped a couple systems away, waited out the recovery timer until my fleet was back at full strength, then blasted the poor avian from the skies. Twice.

Oddly, one of their surviving fleets consists of nothing but 5 galleons.

[Shinzor]

I have never had a problem with it, I stack trickster,hit and run war doctrene and Erudite when I can it seems to cut down on my costs by alot especialy when fleets are stacked/supported with my starbases for defencive wars, I also run fleets that have 2 cruisers 4 destroyers 8 corvets for every single battleship, I find it gives a good mix of damage dealing and damage midigation

[Azor]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

They're much less of an issue if you set the mid-game start date later on. In a recent game I had set the mid- and end-game transitions to be 200 years rather than the default 100. By the time a Great Khan occurred (mainly because I had just wiped out one of the other 2 marauder clans), I had nearly all non-repeatable technologies researched and 2 fleets of about 40k-50k fleet power each. I simply waited for the Chosen fleet to go through the wormhole (which was conveniently directly adjacent to their starting area, and led to a location right within jump drive range of my northern choke point), jumped a couple systems away, waited out the recovery timer until my fleet was back at full strength, then blasted the poor avian from the skies. Twice.

Oddly, one of their surviving fleets consists of nothing but 5 galleons.

Setting mid-game to so late completely denies the Horde's mechanics. Even AI-controlled empires will have no issue dealing with it at that point in time.

[Shinzor]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

They're much less of an issue if you set the mid-game start date later on. In a recent game I had set the mid- and end-game transitions to be 200 years rather than the default 100. By the time a Great Khan occurred (mainly because I had just wiped out one of the other 2 marauder clans), I had nearly all non-repeatable technologies researched and 2 fleets of about 40k-50k fleet power each. I simply waited for the Chosen fleet to go through the wormhole (which was conveniently directly adjacent to their starting area, and led to a location right within jump drive range of my northern choke point), jumped a couple systems away, waited out the recovery timer until my fleet was back at full strength, then blasted the poor avian from the skies. Twice.

Oddly, one of their surviving fleets consists of nothing but 5 galleons.

That takes out so much of the challenge, when it's like that not even the war in heavy/end game crisis is a challenge unless you change the other settings as well, good for a relaxing layed back game

[Alpharius]

Pretty sure that’s the point of the Khan. It shows up, rearrange the galaxy power, territories, and alliances, then goes away after a bit.

[Synical]

As long as there's only one hyperlane in the direction of the Khanate into your territory, you can usually foritfy with a Citadel loaded up on defenses and a single shipyard with a 30-40K fleet and hold off indefinintely. If you can't, just surrender. You don't lose anything except some resources, and the Khanate falls apart eventually. A little chaos in the middle game is Fun™.

[Master Zone]

Originally posted by GKMoggleMog:

Pretty sure that’s the point of the Khan. It shows up, rearrange the galaxy power, territories, and alliances, then goes away after a bit.

I mean, it is a mid game crisis... It's meant to be a lower grade end game crisis.