Best Endgame in 4X-Strategy ever?

[Warren]

To be honest, I played all of the PDX Titles for Decades and I think, Stellaris has the Best Motivation for the Late- and Endgame. I often lose Motivation in Strategy Games when I reach the Point where my Country or Imperium is almost unbeatable by the Enemy AI.

But in Stellaris, you know as a Player: There will be the Endgame-Crisis. And if you make the Endgame-Crisis with the Settings very powerful, it will be even dangerous if you're in the Control of the whole Map.

I often lose Motivation right before 2400, but then, i'm saying to myself: Keep on going, because there will be an Endgame-Crisis with a very powerful Enemy, which still can beat you.

This and the Fallen Empires are the Reason why i like Stellaris more than e.g. GalCiv 3 and other Titles.

And... did you ever beat the Endgame-Crisis Events with High Scaling-Settings?

[EleventhStar]

i used to think that, but ive changed my mind.

there are two problems with the end game crisis:
-often you are just waiting for it to happen with nothing meaningul to do for a long time. yes you can adjust this at game start, but that doesn't help you in an existing game if the problem arises. the fact that you say you get bored around 2400 makes me think you kinda agree with me on that one.
-it's often simply bugs out and breaks. meaning all that waiting/preparation turns into a huge letdown.

aside from that, game is still very bad at the _end_ part of endgame. victory conditions just dont exist in this game, which doesn't help with the "i have nothing to work towards past 2400" problem.

[Warren]

Yes, you are right in these Points. It's really like this, from a certain Point you're just only preparing for the Last Fight and it can take a Lot of Time until the Crisis even triggers.

There are also other Problems: I don't know, I get always these Extradimensional Invaders and have only seen twice the other Crisis-Enemies.

But despite these Facts, it's a Part of Motivation for me, to know, that in the End, there's at least something like an "End Fight", like an "End Boss".

And yes, you can't do that in other PDX Titles, an Endgame-Crisis: It would not fit in the Scenarios aside from Sci-Fi-Future Setting.

The Same with the Fallen Empires:
Compared to EU4, just imagine for a Second how bizarre and strange it would be, that there would be a fully developed Nation with the Endgame-Technology in the 1444 AD Start... and doing nothing the whole Time unless provoked.

But still, I think the Endgame-Crisis is a good Mechanism to make one last Effort in the Endgame for Avoiding the Boredom of the "I conquered everything" Case

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by Warren:

But still, I think the Endgame-Crisis is a good Mechanism to make one last Effort in the Endgame

It's a cool concept, just poorly implemented. Both compared to fallen empires, and compared to the myriad of other games that experiment with endgame events.

the way stellaris does it is pretty similar to the way galciv2 did it a decade earlier.

[Warren]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

It's a cool concept, just poorly implemented.

Yes. Problem is, PDX Ideas are often good in concept and poor in implementation. The Fallen Empires but are interesting, especially for new Players: I remember in the Beginning, how i got very powerful with my Imperium, but I did not care about this "Don't Colonize our Holy Planets".

After that, the Fallen Empire gave me a Beating which destroyed and crippled my Empire and let me lose the Game.

Of Course, you know that when you play it long enough. But when we compare it to GalCiv, the Endgame itself is in my Opinion clearly better. In GalCiv 2 and 3, I lose the Motivation as said on that Point where I am too powerful and the Game is basically over.

About the Endgame-Crisis: I never adjusted the Slider to the Full Scale, i don't know how much you can put the Slider up for Scaling, but as said, is there any Information how big the Scaling can be, that the Endgame-Crisis Enemies can defeat even a fully controlled Empire of a good Player?

And yeah, there's the Matter of Numbers, that the AI just overruns the Player when the Scaling is high enough...

Still, I like these Ideas from the Stellaris Team very much

[ColorsFade]

I haven't played every space 4X out there; really only dedicated a lot of time to Galactic Civilizations 3 and Stellaris. But out of the two, Stellaris has by far the best end-game.

And it's not just the Crisis. The War in Heaven (which can happen with regularity if you play on a big enough map with several FE's) can occupy a lot of time and effort leading up to it. And the mid-game is busy with Marauders and territory expansion.

Honestly - when folks say they're bored just 'waiting for the endgame' I kind figure that's their own fault. They must be playing small and staying away from conflict.

I tend to play factions that want to conquer the map (either via direct destruction, or more insidiously like a Megacorp), and when you're playing that way, heck, there's always something to do.

Sometimes the Crisis is just a bump in an otherwise rugged road.

[ColorsFade]

Originally posted by Warren:

But when we compare it to GalCiv, the Endgame itself is in my Opinion clearly better. In GalCiv 2 and 3, I lose the Motivation as said on that Point where I am too powerful and the Game is basically over.

That's GC's biggest weakness. If you're not self-motivated to win by conquest, it gets really boring. And they could fix it easy. Not so much with a crisis, but just have the remaining empires band together against you.

But the devs never listen to stuff like that. They'd rather find new ways to nerf the colony rush.

Originally posted by Warren:

About the Endgame-Crisis: I never adjusted the Slider to the Full Scale, i don't know how much you can put the Slider up for Scaling, but as said, is there any Information how big the Scaling can be, that the Endgame-Crisis Enemies can defeat even a fully controlled Empire of a good Player?

Patch 2.6.3 added new multiplers. You can scale the end game crisis up to 25X strength now. i would have to imagine it's powerful enough to give the best players a challenge.

I've never done anything more than 1.25X. Mostly because by the time the Crisis hits, I'm usually busy with a half-dozen other wars.

[Warren]

It's sometimes funny about the Crisis in the Middle Game: I saw multiple Things happen at one Time, like: The Machine Rebellion of the Robots and the Khan Forming his Horde at the same Time. At the same Time, another Player was waking up a Fallen Empire by "Accident" and the whole Galaxy fell into huge Wars and Disorder...

And later, well, the Extradimensiol-Invaders came for a Beer and a Cigarette, that was... well, very difficult to manage.

But it's also about the Patches and Balancing; like there can only be one Endgame-Crisis at the Time and not multiple.

Just asking: Is it even possible to trigger with the Console more than just one Endgame-Crisis Enemy? Just for fun...

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by ColorsFade:

And it's not just the Crisis. The War in Heaven (which can happen with regularity if you play on a big enough map with several FE's) can occupy a lot of time and effort leading up to it. And the mid-game is busy with Marauders and territory expansion.

yeah fallen empire and everything around them are great. still i have 1000+ hours and never seen a war in heaven.

Honestly - when folks say they're bored just 'waiting for the endgame' I kind figure that's their own fault. They must be playing small and staying away from conflict.

nah it's a snowballing issue (exactly what these features are meant to adress). you can easily conquer the entire galaxy by 2450 on huge once you know what you are doing. and then it's 100 years of just buliding ships.

what the crisis really needs is what awakened empires have: some sort of trigger to make them happen sooner once certain conditions are met.

also being able to adjust the difficulty in game instead of just at game creation wouldn't hurt.

[Warren]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

yeah fallen empire and everything around them are great. still i have 1000+ hours and never seen a war in heaven.

There's always this Things with the Luck of how the Modifier works: I saw that multiple Times with the War in Heaven in my 400 Hours

Some Events did i see only once, like the Worm-in-Waiting, because it's a very small Chance and it's only for Human Players and not AI

[Warren]

Just asking because of my Ironman-Session these Days: Shortly after 2400, one of the three Fallen Empires awakened. It did not start a War yet, it just made 2 Tributary-States.

Can I prevent the "War in Heaven" with an Second Fallen Empire, if I destroy the First Awakened Fallen Empire?

A full-scale Attack with all Fleets, with all the Titans, a Dreadnought and all the other Stuff is right now the best Option, I think...

[corisai]

Originally posted by Warren:

Best Endgame in 4X-Strategy ever?

No, close to be best (and the best for casual player), but no. There is much better games if you're agree to sacrifice some (DW:U) or all (Aurora 4x) graphics.

Originally posted by Warren:

And... did you ever beat the Endgame-Crisis Events with High Scaling-Settings?

Scaling difficulty is equal to "no difficulty" because how it's working.

Grand Admiral 5X was quite managable on 1k stars galaxy previously. Yean, 1M fleets flying around :)

Now with same settings 10X should be beatable (penalty for "wide" empires in form of empire spawl was practically removed = welcome crazy levels of repeatables). Still need to do it myself. Planning it in a week or two if Steve wouldn't fix most of major bugs by that time (don't think he will be able to)

Unsure about 25X without raising end-game starting date and/or maxing habitable worlds. Well, and seems that sacrificing most of galaxy to get a losers buffs will be mandatory

[Astasia]

I think Distant Worlds and GalCiv2 did the crisis concept better. I think MoO2 also had one, but I never played the game. Several MoO clones and the newmoo also have a crisis system, generally enemies appearing from portals, it's not super exciting but it works. Stellaris hasn't done anything unique here, it's been a space 4x staple for probably decades now. I guess Stellaris has more direct control of that difficulty, but I think that's more required because of how unbalanced the game is and players who know what they are doing can just run away with power at ridiculous rates that actually need x25 scaling to challenge them.

[Warren]

Just about my own Question about the "War in Heaven": I prepared the Full Scale Assault, but just before my Fleets reached their Positions, a second Fallen Empire woke up and now, well, I'm going to see that again.

About the Endgame-Crisis:
I don't know about the current Modifiers, but the Extradimensional-Invaders get a much higher Chance to Spawn when the PSI-Jump-Drive is enabled. Guess that was one of the Reasons in some Patch-Versions, why they did spawn more often than the other Crisis-Events.