Could somebody please patch the random attacks during the Campaign (Chaos)

[warsinger2]

So here I am round 80ish having a total fleet value of roughly 12k points across 9 squadrons and suddenly, without an significant event I get attacked by 6 Aeldari fleets across 3 systems worth a wooping 17k points, 4x 3.5k fleets and 2x 2.5k, oh the great Devourer also adds a fleet of 3k and the false Emperor one of 2k. Tyrannids, Empire, ok but an Aeldari Fleet big enough to win the Gothic war attacking is a little beyond the fluff and beyond engaging gameplay. Oh and the Phalanx which I destroyed before suddenly reappeared ...awesome.

Oh and there was no event that you need to prevent. The Aeldari just suddenly decided to lauch the biggest campaign in 10.000 years. Er ...right. Single hard hitting attacks I am all in favour, launching an attack that dwarfs Abbadons 13th crusade in ship number as a random hickup is stupid.

The Aeldari attack me with enough ships to win the Gothic War. That random attack mechanic is beyond stupid.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

What you have ran into with the giant Aeldari invasion was the "The Seventh Path" Aeldari ultimate power, which was introduced back in June 2019's "Campaign Improvements" patch. Here are the details of the fun (haha) feature:

AI Ultimate Power
Allow the enemy to thrive with impunity at your own peril! If certain conditions are met, the enemy AI’s faction-specific Ultimate Power will be triggered. Most of these apply to a single system. Although new dialogue will give narrative context to each of these, a Waaagh! never needs context, if you ask us.

Aegis of the Imperial Fist: The Phalanx joins the battle.

Chaos Portal: Chaos threat level in the sector rises 10 points.

Waaagh!: Ork Fleets have their max fleet capacity doubled.

The Seventh Path: Aeldari threat level rises by 1 in every sector, and if left unchecked too often, will trigger an invasion in every sector.

Hive Hunger: Tyranids devour an entire system, removing every attribute of its planets.

Dolmen Gate: Necrons will perform an invasion in the sector every turn.

Unforunately the only way to turn this off is to start a new Custom game and disable the Ultimate Power ability from the AI's available actions in the Custom game's options.

I know it seems bad to start a new game, but you have an opportunity to play with much larger fleets - you can set the maximum leadership and renown sizes to 130% or more higher, and as a result the game will play through more quickly than with the default starting fleets.

I need to check to see how much further I am ahead in my custom game with larger fleets, compared to my first playthrough...

[GrenadeMagnet6]

So comparing my playthroughs, by the start of turn 108:

At plain Medium difficulty I was at the following statistics in my plain game:
- Level 8
- 17,700 renown
- Six sectors open

And now in my Custom Medium game with the Ultimate AI power turned off (along with other changes), at turn 108:
- Level 11
- 33900 renown
- Eleven sectors open

So if you start over with a custom game and a larger fleet size you should advance to turn 80 in roughly half the time.

I created a separate thread to discuss my custom game settings, which is light on spoilers (in most places) so you can see what impact some of the settings have.

Here's a summary of my settings:
* Medium-skill base
* Player renown and leadership set to 130 % ( and the enemy AI fleets and missions will scale up the same)
* Enemy crew skill level starts at 3
* AI Invasion cost raised from 20 to 22 action points (10%)

Note when starting with these custom game settings the lack of resource generation will restrict your ability to max-out your fleet sizes until you get the economies up and running in four of the first five sectors (Agripinaa, Cadian, Belis Corona, and Chin_Care).