My empire, destroyed after domiating the whole game... what did I do wrong?

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Hey guys.
Beginner here. Just started a third campaign after several dozen of hours playing already.

Medium universe size with default settings, second easiest difficulty ( the default one )

I created a custom faction, human scientist and materialistic oriented with the biological ascencion to spam the galaxy with humans.

I still don't get how I lost the game.
By the year 2450, I had:
- a dozen of planets, mostly upgraded.
- 3/4 planets for rares ressources only, such as exotic gas.
- 3 planets for science
- one planet for alloy, one planet for consummers goods
- a dozen of habitats, science, generators, minerals or alloy oriented
- around 1000 pops
- around 200 k fleet power and a colossus with ionic canon to paint planets and settle my human on it instead

The rest of the galaxy was extremely weak, barely being able to align more than 10k fleet power. I could have litterally fight against every other non-fallen factions alone.

I also opened the L-gate and exploited it ( I refused to enroll Gray, thinking he may turn against me eventually, playing RP ), killed the specter and the scavenger bot. I eliminated couples of empires, painted their planets with my colossus, colonized them, and created human vassals from the created sectors.
All my ressources had positive income, with +300 alloys and +500 energy when I got destroyed ( being science focused, I have the science megastructure complete and was building a Dyson sphere, reaching a good +130% of science research )

An AI revolution weakened my empire but in the end I recovered and was way ahead in terms of victory condition.

Then, all of sudden... a Fallen Empire awaken, rolled over litterally anyone ( including the mechanical faction he was in a civil war with ), and destroyed my empire within a few months, sending waves of 100k fleets from everywhere.

Despite having fortified shockpoints and fleets ready to fight, I had no chance and just gave up. The End Game crisis also didn't happen.

My point is: my empire was quite efficient and optimised. From scientists choosen properly and some assisting research to leader choices and proper pop ressettlement, galactic community in my pocket, sector management, commercial trade route lucrative and protected... Is there something I did wrong? How could the Awaken Empire destroy me anyone so easily while other empire by 2400 didnt even get 20k fleet power?

Is the fallen empire overpowered, or did I invested too much in habitats or research? Should I have created a federation instead of using vassals ( once again, other 'normal' empires were EXTREMELY weak, so I prefer isolationnism and ultimately, extermination and colonization leading to human vassals ) ? Or did I just let the Awakened empire spread too much and become too OP? I can't explained why I lost so easily in the end, not even having seen the end game crisis, while I dominated the whole game and even 1 on 3 the great khan and his allied on my own.

PS: I successfully pushed back the first waves of the awaken ( 20 to 30k each, some couldn't even go through my fully optimised and developped star bases ) but was defeated when the 100k ones cames, having nothing to protect the rest of my empire and my ressources ).

Looking for advices from grand-amiral level players here.
Thanks :)

[The_Renegade09]

Similar thing happened to me.
I wish the game setup allowed you to adjust FE strength, similar to adjustable crisis strength.

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Originally posted by coolman552:

you didnt have enough military power, i play with the mindset that everything in this game is a means to get more alloys to make more ships

if you have megacorp dlc you should always make atleast one ecumenopolis for foundry districts and have atleast 2 or 3 alloy dedicated colonies

I believed that the amount of research I had was enough to make my fleet much stronger than my ennemy's and that if would in the end make a difference...

[RawCode]

obviously you not managed to build gate network by 2450 with such "performance"

1) fortress habitats on chokepoints will completely stop invasion, AI need literal decades to deal with fortress habitats

2) gun fortress are useless waste of resource, you need only archonages and nothing else.
trade can be handled by single trade station over your capital and gate network

3) making gates in every system with planet and borders provide much more benefits than spamming habitats only

4) obviously every planet must have fortress to stop AI from sending single ship "fleets" all around

[Hexagoros]

Originally posted by Virthuss ( French in Tw ):

Originally posted by Ryika:

Your numbers just aren't anywhere near where they should be.

1000 Pops near 2450 is very little. There are essentially four things you can do: Build LOTS of habitats, build robots, build Clone Vats (from Bio Ascension), and go around, conquering people to get their pops... and ideally some combination of these. It sounds like you didn't do particularly much of either of them, and largely just stagnated because of it.

You may also have messed up your economy, but not pushing the number of pops in your empire in one way or another will inevitably lead to stagnation. At the point you had +300 alloys and +500 energy, you could have had thousands of alloys per months, and tens of thousands of reseach produced, plus a whole bunch of soldier jobs for thousands of naval capacity, just for perspective.

I didn't actually build any forteresses to be honest... Maybe this point was my weak point. I'd like to know where to build them though.

For the other species and the robots, I didn't really want to have them in my empire. For RP reasons, I played as a human arce willing to live with humans only.

Can you win by doing isolationnism and forming alliances?

No fortresses by 2450? Where were you getting your Naval Capacity from?

Oh, that's right, you weren't using any Naval Capacity.

That, on top of only 1000 pops, and only 200k fleet...honestly, you were a paper tiger. Just because the rest of the galaxy was weak by comparison does not mean you were strong.

As everyone else has said, your numbers just weren't high enough - at all.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Not to mention, 3k tech can be gotten from one full lab planet.

[RawCode]

you will get 4.5k from full lab if set everything properly

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Originally posted by Hexagoros:

Originally posted by Virthuss ( French in Tw ):

I didn't actually build any forteresses to be honest... Maybe this point was my weak point. I'd like to know where to build them though.

For the other species and the robots, I didn't really want to have them in my empire. For RP reasons, I played as a human arce willing to live with humans only.

Can you win by doing isolationnism and forming alliances?

No fortresses by 2450? Where were you getting your Naval Capacity from?

Oh, that's right, you weren't using any Naval Capacity.

That, on top of only 1000 pops, and only 200k fleet...honestly, you were a paper tiger. Just because the rest of the galaxy was weak by comparison does not mean you were strong.

As everyone else has said, your numbers just weren't high enough - at all.

Well, remember I'm beginner man... That's only the third game I played. First one, was smashed by the scourge, second one got rekt as an assimilator day one, third one: this.

The micro management was getting insane and I had troubles midgame to keep my economy reliable. As I totally overran my opponents and I was stronger than the scourge on my first game for the same difficulty, I somehow believe that was enough. Now I know I was wrong and ♥♥♥♥ can happen.

Also reminder, but I was destroyed by the AI uprising, the first I ever encountered, and being a novice, I wasn't prepared. I could achieve victory against machine but all my planets were destroyed to the ground and had to be rebuilt.

Finally, can you guys give me an ideal late game planète compo? Like 39% research 30% allow 30% rare ressources etc

[Elitewrecker PT]

There's no ideal comp. You produce as many rare resources as you need to keep the advanced buildings running, and as many alloys as you need to rapidly build fleets in case of need.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by RawCode:

you will get 4.5k from full lab if set everything properly

Is that using indentured slaves?

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

There's no ideal comp. You produce as many rare resources as you need to keep the advanced buildings running, and as many alloys as you need to rapidly build fleets in case of need.

Got another question, is it better to have two planet with allow factories NOT upgraded or one planet with fully maxed alloy factories? I sometimes neglect upgrading building due to a shortage of rare ressource

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Virthuss ( French in Tw ):

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

There's no ideal comp. You produce as many rare resources as you need to keep the advanced buildings running, and as many alloys as you need to rapidly build fleets in case of need.

Got another question, is it better to have two planet with allow factories NOT upgraded or one planet with fully maxed alloy factories? I sometimes neglect upgrading building due to a shortage of rare ressource

Two planets with maxed allot factories
There should be no way you have a resource shortage if you can buy it monthly from the galactic market. Set it up as an auto monthly buy and it'll only be a slight fluctuation in your EC income at the end of the month.

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Originally posted by Virthuss ( French in Tw ):

Got another question, is it better to have two planet with allow factories NOT upgraded or one planet with fully maxed alloy factories? I sometimes neglect upgrading building due to a shortage of rare ressource

Two planets with maxed allot factories :steamlaughcry:
There should be no way you have a resource shortage if you can buy it monthly from the galactic market. Set it up as an auto monthly buy and it'll only be a slight fluctuation in your EC income at the end of the month.

But then I had shortage of energy lmao

[Presi]

Just an update, I might be second place for playthrough if I continue playing. I have 5300+ pops currently and rocking 15 to 20k tech, my empire is slightly smaller than the biggest empire in my game currently, but I have more planets than them, and even more if I want to keep on terrorform the planets

[RawCode]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Originally posted by RawCode:

you will get 4.5k from full lab if set everything properly

Is that using indentured slaves?

slavery is very strong, you can get really close to GA AI output with proper setup, especially in case of bio ascension that allows you to "remake" pops to fit your current needs.

[Shad]

Originally posted by Virthuss ( French in Tw ):

All my ressources had positive income, with +300 alloys

There's your problem. By awakened empire times, you should be minimum +1k alloys (better +2/3k). +300 basically means you cannot replenish losses (or build nonstop megastructures), and you will get rolled over by the AE. As a rule of thumb - there is never ever ever such a thing as "enough alloys".

AEs are powerful, capable of rolling combined fleetpower of a million even on medium difficulties.