Fallen empires MASSIVELY buffed?

[moonjail]

Basically title. For my past several runs, the fallen empires, of all types, are STARTING with between 500k and 1M fleet power; as much as 400k per individual fleet. No, they are not awakened. I'm playing on Ensign with no mods. Anyone else experiencing this?

[Carog the Fat]

Yes they seem stronger more than likely due to the new crisis and there ships being available to players now.

[Lasagna]

They have new ships.

it's a good thing because FEs were total pushovers and got rolled by normal AIs in the late game.

[jodnus]

It was needed.

With player empires being able to do more with every DLC, it kind of broke the fantasy when they weren't a threat by mid game. And I am not even that much of a min/max player

You could easily take one out on your own for dark matter tech well before the war of heaven kicked off.

[moonjail]

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

[jodnus]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

I can't speak to developer intent, but I have all DLCs, and in my latest run through I didn't (and possibly couldn't) take them out on my own when the war in heaven broke out.

I got my doomstack from the 10+ empires that came together when I converted my fed to non-aligned powers and took point.

Also, IIRC they get a debuff over time after they awaken so they eventually fizzle out and become easier to challenge as the game wears on.

[Black_Rat]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

You would need to provide far more detail on why you believe that before anyone could help you.

[Azor]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

That's entirely wrong. It's hard, but far from impossible. With good economic skills you can beat a fallen empire at around year 2300-50 without any DLC or meta build, that's 50 to 100 years before end game. At 2400 you should be able to surpass any fallen empire, again without DLC or meta.

That said, Fallen Empires are supposed to be challenging for new players. They even have a mechanic that weaken them called Decadence:

Decadence is a mechanic affecting Awakened Empires to prevent them from establishing a permanent hegemony over weaker empires. 20 years after a Fallen Empire has awakened it will start to accumulate Decadence. Decadence increases in increments of 2 and has a 0.5% chance to increase each month for each planet the Awakened Empire or its subjects possesses. Once Decadence reaches 100 it imparts the following penalties:

−66% Resources from Pop
25% Ship weapon damage, ship hull points and shield hit points (stacks with any penalties caused by resource shortages, if present)
+100% Vassal opinion penalty for having less fleet power than all of them combined~

If they're still too much for you, then either increase end game year (they can only awaken after end game year) or disable them.

[Balm]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

yeah sounds about right for paradox
update game, include some changes, but gate power creep for player behind dlc

[moonjail]

Originally posted by Black_Rat:

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

You would need to provide far more detail on why you believe that before anyone could help you.

I'm not asking for help. I'm (1) asking for people to confirm my observation that FEs have been strengthened severalfold, which seems to be true; and (2) saying that this feels like a huge overcorrection. Maybe it's because I'm smothered by a couple of them in my current galaxy in a way that makes expansion extremely hard. But I have friends with multiple hundreds of hours in the game who agree that this big of a jump seems ridiculous.

[moonjail]

Originally posted by Azor:

Originally posted by moonjail:

Playing without several of the DLCs, though, this makes them utterly impossible to deal with in any way. Is that the design intention?

That's entirely wrong. It's hard, but far from impossible. With good economic skills you can beat a fallen empire at around year 2300-50 without any DLC or meta build, that's 50 to 100 years before end game. At 2400 you should be able to surpass any fallen empire, again without DLC or meta.

That said, Fallen Empires are supposed to be challenging for new players. They even have a mechanic that weaken them called Decadence:

Decadence is a mechanic affecting Awakened Empires to prevent them from establishing a permanent hegemony over weaker empires. 20 years after a Fallen Empire has awakened it will start to accumulate Decadence. Decadence increases in increments of 2 and has a 0.5% chance to increase each month for each planet the Awakened Empire or its subjects possesses. Once Decadence reaches 100 it imparts the following penalties:

−66% Resources from Pop
25% Ship weapon damage, ship hull points and shield hit points (stacks with any penalties caused by resource shortages, if present)
+100% Vassal opinion penalty for having less fleet power than all of them combined~

If they're still too much for you, then either increase end game year (they can only awaken after end game year) or disable them.

I'm not sure we're on the same page. I'm talking about >1M fleet pre-awakening. I have a pretty substantial fraction of that in ~2350 (not at my desk to check the exact year); but in my experience that's on the EXTREMELY high side.

[Azor]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Originally posted by Azor:

That's entirely wrong. It's hard, but far from impossible. With good economic skills you can beat a fallen empire at around year 2300-50 without any DLC or meta build, that's 50 to 100 years before end game. At 2400 you should be able to surpass any fallen empire, again without DLC or meta.

That said, Fallen Empires are supposed to be challenging for new players. They even have a mechanic that weaken them called Decadence:


If they're still too much for you, then either increase end game year (they can only awaken after end game year) or disable them.

I'm not sure we're on the same page. I'm talking about >1M fleet pre-awakening. I have a pretty substantial fraction of that in ~2350 (not at my desk to check the exact year); but in my experience that's on the EXTREMELY high side.

We're exactly on the same page.

btw fallen empire ships are terrible vs disruptors/arc emitter (they have no armor/shield hardening) and their weaponry are very specialized, so can you can easily counter if you're having issues with them

[jodnus]

Originally posted by moonjail:

Originally posted by Black_Rat:

You would need to provide far more detail on why you believe that before anyone could help you.

I'm not asking for help. I'm (1) asking for people to confirm my observation that FEs have been strengthened severalfold, which seems to be true; and (2) saying that this feels like a huge overcorrection. Maybe it's because I'm smothered by a couple of them in my current galaxy in a way that makes expansion extremely hard. But I have friends with multiple hundreds of hours in the game who agree that this big of a jump seems ridiculous.

I think this is a YMMV situation.

I would have to disagree that their new power level is inappropriately balanced. If anything, it mostly caught me off gaurd, and actually made for an interesting play through as I had to make different decisions than I otherwise would have.

[moonjail]

Originally posted by jodnus:

Originally posted by moonjail:

I'm not asking for help. I'm (1) asking for people to confirm my observation that FEs have been strengthened severalfold, which seems to be true; and (2) saying that this feels like a huge overcorrection. Maybe it's because I'm smothered by a couple of them in my current galaxy in a way that makes expansion extremely hard. But I have friends with multiple hundreds of hours in the game who agree that this big of a jump seems ridiculous.

I think this is a YMMV situation.

I would have to disagree that their new power level is inappropriately balanced. If anything, it mostly caught me off gaurd, and actually made for an interesting play through as I had to make different decisions than I otherwise would have.

That's fair. I can definitely say that having a juggernaut FE blocking chokepoints that would turn 10-jump routes through my empire into 2-jump ones is creating some... interesting predicaments. If I could eliminate that this playthrough would become kind of trivial.

[Veg]

Power creep for players continues to grow out of control. There has to be counter balance

[Sir Snuffles]

the war in heaven is working as intended, you should need to team up with the galaxy to fight back a fallen empire when it happens. if you can solo it by the time it triggers you either are meta gaming hard. or you are playing modded