Is the AI rebellion the hardest crisis in Stellaris?

[Buyung Kilat]

I love Paradox games. As flawed as they are sometimes (and I'm talking Stellaris mostly), their game mechanics are so vast and intricate that I've become obsessed with mastering them. There's a sense of immersion and accomplishment when I'm building up my empires. There's also a sense of incredible frustration when I'm facing one of those unexpected myriad of worst case scenarios their games throw at me.

Like all their games, Stellaris took me a couple of failed starts to completely get used to. Once I played between 50 to 100 years and I was not doing too good, I'd restart. Finally had my first successful full game playing Earth and I made it look easy. Those ugly one-eyed beholders got nothing on me, I got rid of them in less than 30 years. But it got stagnant and boring for a while before they came as I owned a third of the galaxy and I was playing a benevolent empire thus avoided wars and conflict.

So I bought the DLCs, and I'm currently playing with Synthetic Dawn and Utopia enabled, as the Commonwealth of Man. I started from the south of the map and I was building my empire quicker now, rivaling my competitions, going to war time and time again, and humiliating them. By year 2300 I was occupying space at the north end of the galaxy through a wormhole. Random empire placement meant that most of the AI empires were already taking spaces either side of mine and the north was mostly empty. Then I got my first warning of the incoming AI rebellion so I prepared myself. I've read about the machine uprising on the wikia, and I thought I could be ready for it. When those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tin cans finally woke up, they took all my best planets up north including my precious Gaia wentworth system, only leaving my 2 habitats alone. Down south they took another 2 and my entire economic system collapsed a month after. My first strike at them failed miserably as I completely underestimated them. I reloaded back two years to build my army focusing on the south as I was bound to lose my shipyards in the north once the uprising starts. I was unable to finish building my army, and when the crisis happened, my monthly alloy income went negative along with my energy credits. But I was barely able to beat these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tin cans in the south and slowly regained my 2 systems there. But I could not replenish my numbers. I had to make adjustments through trial and error to get my economy back in the positive which took time while those tin cans quickly took over everything I had up north. I was so proud of getting that system Fen Hannabis but I realized how useless it was now, and it was eating up my resources. They were quicker to the wormhole so instead of me going up there to liberate my colonies, I ended up defending whatever I have left. My empire was virtually cut in half. It was so friggin' frustrating and the whole affair lasted longer than I expected even though their war exhaustion has been 100% for a while. Then I took a chance on a peace treaty and they took it. It didn't occur to me that an armistace could happen but finally the rebellion was over. As a consequence, I was no longer the biggest empire in the galaxy. United Nations of Earth took the rest of the unclaimed colonies up there and by the time the Contingency came, they got ahead of me on victory points.

Now talking about the Contingency. What a nightmare. I was starting to gain ground on those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tin cans, I beat their biggest fleet and had a clear path to the north when these reaper bastards showed up. It was my mistake moving up the end crisis 50 years early because of how boring it got waiting for it in my last game. One of their four hubs showed up right in the middle of my empire. I scrambled my forces and met them head on to predictable failure. I thought it was game over and then the ancient caretakers came and pushed them back. After that, they were moving much slower and gave me precious time. I painstakingly rebuilt my army. If only I had my original resources it wouldn't be so damn hard, and matching up to their main fleet guarding the hub was difficult with what I was working with. But luckily, the caretakers would come by every so often and the other human empire too. With their help, I finally defeated their main fleet. I was bombing their hub when their reinforcement came and I was narrowly defeated. But I'm sure a second attempt would be successful now that their remaining forces around that hub was depleted. I was so focused on that hub that I haven't seen the entire galaxy map in a while. So I zoomed out to strategize on what I was going to do next after conquering that one hub since there were three more. It turns out, all those other aliens were weak as hell. Probably thanks to my bullying tactics in the beginning of the game, all of them were run over by the reaper bastards. I'm stumped. I probably have to see this through at least until 2500. but this is as complicated and frustrating a run as I've ever had in a Paradox game. Not as frustrating as my ironman run doing pre-commonwealth when I got run over by Genghis Khan in CK 2, but close. That one made me swear never to do another ironman. Just not worth it for my peace of mind.

In the middle of this, I also bought other DLCs; Apocalypse, Leviathan, and Distant Stars. I just want to know if this is as tough as it gets for Stellaris. If this is still nothing compared to War in Heaven or the Great Khan then I have to admit that I really do suck at this.

[queenelise9830]

AI rebellion isn't necessarily the strongest in terms of fleet power, but the economy-ruining aspect is something to be feared for sure.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

A few points to consider:

• The AI rebellion is not a crisis. Some people call it a mid-game crisis, but that's not entirely accurate. A proper crisis is intended to be something that is potentially a significant threat to the galaxy. Even the most successful AI rebellion ever is seldom a threat to more than the empire that birthed it.

• Avoiding an AI rebellion is trivial. There are two ways to do it: A) Don't research AI techs, or B) give AIs citizen rights. Every empire that can potentially birth a rebellious AI can easily do one of those two things (if they know to do it, of course), and so anyone can easily avoid having an AI rebellion. That dampens the danger significantly, because while having an AI rebellion occur in your empire can potentially be devastating, you should never have one occur once you know how to avoid it.

• What you experienced there is pretty rough, probably worse than your average War In Heaven (although that depends on how you handle the WIH) and probably worse than the Khan (assuming you know not to fight back until he dies). Any one of those, as well as a few other situations, can pop up and just ruin your day, though. Stellaris includes these events to shake things up, so that surviving and winning aren't foregone conclusions after the first 20 years of the game. If you had fun fighting hard and triumphing in the end, then I would say that you are well suited to Stellaris. If you hated every minute of it then there are some options available that will allow you to turn off things like the Great Khan or the end-game crisis, and some of the other problems like the AI rebellion are easy to avoid. So, you may still be able to enjoy Stellaris by excluding or avoiding some of the situations that might be more taxing than you like.

[Buyung Kilat]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Avoiding an AI rebellion is trivial. There are two ways to do it: A) Don't research AI techs, or B) give AIs citizen rights. Every empire that can potentially birth a rebellious AI can easily do one of those two things (if they know to do it, of course), and so anyone can easily avoid having an AI rebellion. That dampens the danger significantly, because while having an AI rebellion occur in your empire can potentially be devastating, you should never have one occur once you know how to avoid it.

Actually I was looking forward to the AI rebellion. It was one of the reasons I bought Synthetic Dawn. I know ridiculous right when you think about it. I handled the one-eyed beholder scourge well enough in my previous game and I was itching to meet these machines. I was purposely making choices so they would come at me.

Originally posted by kingedward9830:

AI rebellion isn't necessarily the strongest in terms of fleet power, but the economy-ruining aspect is something to be feared for sure.

Yeah, what came after was nothing like I expected. To say that I was overwhelmed is an understatement. It's true, the economic damage of the rebellion is enormous. Regaining my carefully planned wealth system was beyond me. Just rebuilding my two regained colonies was a chore. Sometimes I wonder if it weren't for these robots, could I have handled the Contingency better. Although I have a feeling they are probably stronger still than those beholders.

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

What you experienced there is pretty rough, probably worse than your average War In Heaven (although that depends on how you handle the WIH) and probably worse than the Khan (assuming you know not to fight back until he dies). Any one of those, as well as a few other situations, can pop up and just ruin your day, though. Stellaris includes these events to shake things up, so that surviving and winning aren't foregone conclusions after the first 20 years of the game. If you had fun fighting hard and triumphing in the end, then I would say that you are well suited to Stellaris. If you hated every minute of it then there are some options available that will allow you to turn off things like the Great Khan or the end-game crisis, and some of the other problems like the AI rebellion are easy to avoid. So, you may still be able to enjoy Stellaris by excluding or avoiding some of the situations that might be more taxing than you like.

If this is worse than WiH and Khan, then there's hope for me yet I suppose. I'm especially intrigued by the Great Khan. I wonder how he holds up compared to the other Great Khan in CK 2. I just needed some confidence after the beating I took by these tin cans. I also can't stand them making insults at me as an annual event. Makes me seethe. I find my current run more taxing than enjoyable so I probably will not attempt to revive the AI rebellion ever again.

While the Contingency looks incredibly hard, again, harder than the scourge imo, I want to challenge them again in future runs. I was an empire in decline when they appeared in my current run. Who knows if the circumstances were different. But no, never the AI rebellion,... never again. I'm done with them, just as I'm done with ironman.

[Eternum]

hard to fight? no
problematic for your entire economy? yes.. this really is the only thing that makes an AI rebellion scary, the rest of it ain't even worth considering

either give AI citizen rights or don't research AI... thats really all you need

[Elitewrecker PT]

Planning aside, what kind of ship loadouts were you using for dealing with the contingency?

[Buyung Kilat]

I maxed out on gamma lasers first so that's on everything. And then I have the stormfire autocannon which I prioritize over the gauss cannon. I'm currently catching up with my disruptor research, and upgrading when I can. I just need the damn thing to appear on my options list. Research speed also took a back seat for a while.

I've also got my defense covered with the hyper shields.

[Elitewrecker PT]

You mgiht have noticed they have lots of shields and armor, so using penetrating weapons would have been best, like full arc emitter and cloud lightning or disruptor battleships.
Shields are good, they only use energy weapons and fighters.

[Buyung Kilat]

I wish I can get to arc emitter but I think it's too late. I have yet to ever see them on my option list. Cloud lightning appeared earlier in my game. I'll get it when I have the chance. Thanks.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Buyung Kilat:

Actually I was looking forward to the AI rebellion. It was one of the reasons I bought Synthetic Dawn. I know ridiculous right when you think about it. I handled the one-eyed beholder scourge well enough in my previous game and I was itching to meet these machines. I was purposely making choices so they would come at me.

Perhaps ridiculous, yes, but also good for you for playing your game your way.

[RedTurkey]

Wait, I think there is a misunderstanding in this thread, isn't OP talking about the endgame crisis the Contingency ? And not the classic little AI rebellion ?
Because pretty sure there is no 4 HUB to bring down with normal AI rebellion.

Edit : Nevermind, seems like you were talking of the two at the same time and I got confused.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Ye, he had both.

[Buyung Kilat]

Yeah, I had to mention the Contingency because the AI rebellion had a direct effect on the provisions I had when this crisis appeared. The AI rebellion would probably drastically alter my capabilities to face any crisis afterwards.

I have two screenshots of this challenging run as memento to the long hours I put into it.

[queenelise9830]

I miss when you could play as the Uprising instead of your original empire. Even worse situation than playing as your original empire? Yes, they trash the infrastructure when they take over, ruining their own economy from the get-go. But it's still an awesome concept, and I'm still that they removed what was supposed to be a key feature of Synthetic Dawn.