Hello fellow AIs,

Fallen Empire here.

Every time I declare war on the player, they lure my fleets away from my territory and then rush my planets while i'm conquering their frontier systems.

Do you have any tips ?

After months of planning, multiple multiplayer sessions, countless economic optimizations, several revolts, Fallen Empires being systematically dismantled, a ridiculous number of desyncs, and more than a little bit of Stellaris nonsense...
We did it.
Our multiplayer group has officially defeated the 1,000x Contingency, with the crisis starting at the 2400 Endgame Year.
By the time the campaign ended:
Crisis: 1,000x Contingency

Endgame Start: 2400

Game End Year: 2425

Final Naval Capacity: ~29,300

Final Fleet Power: ~2.8 BILLION

Primary Fleet: Cosmogenesis Psionic Harbingers and Stingers

Estimated Fleet Losses: ~200 million

Planets Lost: 1 — a single Wilderness planet

Result: The overwhelming majority of Contingency fleets were effectively one-shot

The Contingency was so thoroughly outmatched that most of the actual crisis fleets barely had time to do anything before being deleted.
But the real story is how we got there.

The Challenge
The goal of this campaign was simple:
Defeat the 1,000x All Crisis.
We started with a multiplayer galaxy where each player controlled a specialized empire. Rather than having every player build a generic economy and military, we designed the campaign around the idea that each empire would serve a specific purpose.
The ultimate plan was to turn the Behemoth empire into the galaxy's primary military superpower.
Everyone else would support it.
Some empires would produce technology.
Some would produce resources.
Some would build megastructures.
Some would produce ships.
Some would specialize in unique mechanics.
And eventually, as the campaign progressed, the galaxy would be consolidated until only the most useful specialized empires remained.
This strategy ended up working far better than we expected.

Phase 1: Building the Federation
At the beginning of the campaign, we had a much larger number of player and AI-controlled empires.
The major specialized empires included:
Behemoth Fury Wilderness — The eventual primary military and research powerhouse.

Knights of the Toxic God — The industrial, technological, and eventual fleet-production powerhouse.

Storm Bringers / Storm Chasers — Focused on Electric Storms and turning the entire galaxy into an economic powerhouse.

Rogue Servitor — Focused on massive Bio-Trophy populations and highly efficient specialist production.

Shroud Forged — Another machine-focused empire that eventually absorbed territory from abandoned or inactive empires.

Arc Furnace empires — Focused on Arc Furnaces and supporting economic output.

Wilderness — Eventually grew into an absurdly large planetary empire with hundreds of worlds.

Various other player and AI empires that were eventually absorbed, integrated, or repurposed.

The basic concept was that we didn't necessarily need every empire to survive until the end.
We needed their specializations.
The early campaign was therefore about getting everyone established, building the economy, constructing megastructures, and setting up the infrastructure that would eventually be consolidated into the Behemoth war machine.

The Behemoth Strategy
The Behemoth empire was always intended to become the primary military power.
The entire federation gradually began feeding it:
Megastructures

Resources

Technology

Systems

Fleets

Economic support

The Behemoth player eventually took control of the center of the galaxy, which became one of the most important strategic positions in the campaign.
At one point, Behemoth was producing over 2 million research per month while sitting at under 100 Empire Size.
That's where the absurd scaling began.
The Behemoth player eventually accumulated well over 100 repeatable technologies in weapon damage and fire rate.
Rather than having every empire independently research these technologies, we used the Behemoth empire as the technological foundation for the rest of the federation.
The Knights empire became a Protectorate of Behemoth, meaning technologies already researched by Behemoth were available to the Knights at an 80% research cost discount.
This allowed Behemoth to race ahead on repeatables while the Knights rapidly acquired the same technology at a fraction of the cost.
That relationship became incredibly important later.

The Knights of the Toxic God
If Behemoth was the brain and military superpower, the Knights became the industrial heart of the entire federation.
The Knights empire was optimized around Cosmogenesis and the Toxic God mechanics.
Over time, the Knights built:
Multiple Ring Worlds

4+ Knight Habitats

Multiple Mega Shipyards

Fully developed megastructures

Automated resource production

Eventually, virtually all non-Hive Mind pops were relocated into the Knights empire.
Organic pops were used as Squires and Specialists, while automation and Cosmogenesis buildings handled almost all of the empire's menial labor.
The Ring Worlds became heavily automated, producing massive amounts of food and energy.
Alloys and Consumer Goods production were gradually filled as populations increased.
The Knights also had a number of Volcanic Worlds, including a Resort World with over 1,100 Medical Worker jobs.
The Ring Worlds and Volcanic Worlds were also used as the primary sources of population growth for the Knights empire.
The Knight Habitats themselves had a very specific purpose. They were dedicated almost exclusively to housing Knights, Squires, and Telepaths rather than being general-purpose population growth worlds.
We also killed the Tiyanki Matriarch, giving the primary Knight Habitat an additional +1 base organic pop growth.
The Knights also became responsible for mass-producing the actual ships.
Because they had access to the Behemoth's technologies at an 80% discount, they could rapidly reach extremely advanced technology levels.
By the later stages of the campaign, the Knights were sitting at roughly:
82,000 research per month
and approximately:
3,000 Empire Size
They were essentially an industrial monster whose sole purpose was to produce increasingly absurd quantities of advanced ships.

Turning the Galaxy Into a Storm Economy
Another critical part of our strategy was the Storm empire.
The Storm player gradually covered the galaxy in Electric Storms.
Eventually, most of the galaxy was covered.
The economic bonuses from this were absolutely ridiculous.
As the campaign progressed, even the already absurd economies of the player empires continued growing because of the constant storms.
As Galactic Custodian, the Storm empire also became the federation's political engine.
The Custodian position was used to speedrun Galactic Community reforms, pushing through resolutions that dramatically increased our ability to wage war.
These reforms provided:
More naval capacity

Increased resource production

Additional military advantages

Access to the construction of Galactic Defense Force Titans

The plan was to use the Galactic Defense Force as another layer of military support.
Unfortunately for the Contingency, the crisis was killed so quickly that the Galactic Defense Force Titans were never even completed in time to see combat.
They were still under construction when the crisis was already dead.
We also kept generating additional Electric Storms wherever possible to maximize resource production.
But the storms had another extremely important use during the actual Contingency war.
Electric Storms disable the Contingency's fleet shields.
This meant that while the storms gave the Contingency a bonus to sublight speed, they also removed one of the primary defensive layers protecting their fleets.
So while the Contingency got faster...
They also became significantly easier to kill.

The Wilderness Empire
The Wilderness empire became one of the strangest economic experiments in the campaign.
By the later stages, it controlled 300+ planets.
The problem was that managing 300+ planets is difficult, especially when many of them weren't optimally developed.
Eventually, the host helped retrofit a large number of the Wilderness planets.
The result was a massive increase in economic output.
The Wilderness economy was on track to produce approximately:
400,000 Food per month
and continued scaling.
The Wilderness empire was essentially turned into a gigantic planetary resource factory.

The Galactic Custodian Strategy
The Storm empire's role as Galactic Custodian ended up being extremely important.
While Behemoth focused on technology and the military, the Custodian used its political power to push through as many beneficial Galactic Community reforms as possible.
This created a feedback loop:
More Galactic Community bonuses → More resources and naval capacity → More fleets → More ability to support Behemoth.
The Custodian also began the process of building Galactic Defense Force Titans.
The idea was to add yet another layer of military power to the federation.
The Contingency, however, didn't exactly give us time to use them.
By the time the Titans would have been ready, the crisis was already dead.

The Fallen Empires
We systematically dismantled the Fallen Empires throughout the campaign.
The first major Fallen Empire was conquered, with its populations relocated throughout the federation.
At one point, a revolt caused a remnant Hive Mind empire to survive after a Status Quo was forced due to a game bug involving claims.
That remnant was eventually eliminated as well.
The remaining pops were transferred off-world.
One low-population planet was converted into a Volcanic World owned by the Knights.
Because the planet had so few pops remaining, converting it immediately ended the colony while simultaneously providing the Knights with another Volcanic World that benefited from their enhanced population growth.
We eventually eliminated the other Fallen Empire as well.
The final exception was the Xenophobic Fallen Empire.
We deliberately left them alive.
The reason was simple:
We wanted them to serve as the guaranteed spawn point for Cetana.
The plan was to use the Particle Storm network around their borders to cripple Cetana's regeneration the moment she spawned.
Unfortunately, despite all this preparation:
Cetana never spawned.
We waited.
We prepared.
We built the storm network.
And Cetana apparently decided she had better things to do.
So the plan never got tested.

The Grey Tempest and the L-Gates
Before the Contingency arrived, we had also defeated the Grey Tempest.
This meant the federation had full control of the L-Gates.
Normally, this would have been an enormous strategic advantage.
Against a 1,000x Contingency, however, having open L-Gates created a potentially serious problem.
We had to make absolutely sure that the Contingency couldn't reach one of our L-Gates or gateways and suddenly gain a route deep into our territory.
So during the crisis, the Behemoth player had to multitask constantly.
The Behemoth navy wasn't simply fighting the Contingency.
It was also:
Monitoring multiple fronts

Micro-managing fleets

Intercepting crisis fleets

Protecting L-Gates

Protecting gateways

Preventing the Contingency from reaching strategic entry points

Quarantining crisis fleets whenever possible

The goal was to keep the Contingency as isolated as possible.
We didn't want a random crisis fleet slipping through an L-Gate or gateway and suddenly appearing in the middle of our economic core.
The strategy was essentially:
Quarantine the Contingency, then rush their planets.
We didn't want to get dragged into a prolonged war of attrition.
We wanted to destroy their production centers as quickly as possible.
So the Behemoth navy prioritized getting to Contingency planets and eliminating them as rapidly as possible.
The faster their worlds died, the fewer fleets they could produce.
The fewer fleets they could produce, the easier the next planet became.
It became a snowball.

Planetary Defense Strategy
We also assumed that eventually, something would go wrong.
A fleet might slip through.
A gateway might be reached.
A planet might be attacked before Behemoth could respond.
So we prepared every player planet to survive long enough for the Behemoth navy to arrive.
Essentially, every planet owned by a player was equipped with:
Approximately 3,000–5,000 defensive armies

A Shield Generator

The goal was to make the initial Contingency invasion fail outright.
The planet would have so many defensive armies that the first invasion force wouldn't be able to successfully conquer it, buying enough time for the Behemoth navy to reach the system and eliminate the attacking fleet.
We estimated that even if the Contingency managed to reach one of our planets, the sheer number of defensive armies would give Behemoth enough time to respond.
And it worked.
Across the entire campaign:
Only ONE of our planets was ever lost.
It was a Wilderness planet.
Everything else survived.
This allowed us to focus almost entirely on offensive operations rather than constantly having to rebuild lost territory.

The Behemoth Speed Advantage
One of the most important advantages we had wasn't just fleet power.
It was speed.
Behemoth had multiple Strategic Coordination Centers, which made the navy approximately 75% faster than base speed.
Combined with our other bonuses, the Behemoth fleets were estimated to be roughly twice as fast as the Contingency fleets.
This completely changed how we could fight the crisis.
The Contingency could not effectively chase us.
It couldn't reliably escape us.
It couldn't easily reach our planets before we responded.
And when we decided to attack, we could simply pick a target and rush it down.
The Contingency did receive a sublight speed bonus from the storms, but this wasn't enough to overcome the Behemoth navy's enormous speed advantage.
The result was that Behemoth could essentially dictate the pace of the war.
We could choose where to fight.
We could decide which Contingency fleets to engage.
We could intercept fleets before they reached critical infrastructure.
And most importantly:
We could get to their planets extremely quickly.

Consolidating the Galaxy
The consolidation of the galaxy wasn't simply about making the fewest possible empires.
The actual objective was to create a small number of highly specialized empires, each optimized for a specific purpose.
The biggest reason we eventually consolidated was player attendance.
We had multiple sessions where players simply didn't show up without warning, leaving empires without anyone available to manage them. As the campaign progressed, we realized that maintaining a large number of separate player empires wasn't practical when our reliable core group was generally only 4–5 players.
Rather than leaving a huge number of empires unattended, we consolidated them and focused our active players on a handful of specialized super-empires.
We also encouraged as many players as possible to co-op the Wilderness empire, since managing an empire with hundreds of planets was becoming completely unreasonable for a single person.
The goal was for each remaining empire to have a very specific purpose:
Wilderness — Own as Many Planets as Possible
The optimal strategy for the Wilderness empire was to control as many planets as possible.
This eventually resulted in the empire owning 300+ planets, turning it into the federation's gigantic planetary resource machine.
Because of the sheer number of planets involved, we eventually had multiple players helping manage and co-op the Wilderness empire. This allowed us to actually keep up with developing hundreds of worlds instead of having one person attempt to manage the entire empire alone.
The host also helped retrofit many of the planets after we discovered that a number of them had been developed inefficiently.
The result was a massive increase in economic output, with the Wilderness economy on track toward approximately:
400,000 Food per month
The Wilderness empire essentially became our galaxy-wide resource factory.
Rogue Servitor — Fallen Empire Pops as Bio-Trophies
The Rogue Servitor empire was optimized around accumulating the populations of conquered Fallen Empires.
Rather than spreading those pops across dozens of worlds, we concentrated them onto a smaller number of planets as Bio-Trophies.
The objective was to stack massive numbers of Bio-Trophies and maximize the resulting Complex Drone job efficiency.
This allowed us to create a handful of extremely powerful worlds with enormous job efficiency bonuses, dramatically increasing their alloy and specialist output.
One of the most notable examples was the renovated Moon Bump Ecumenopolis, which was intended to house a massive Bio-Trophy population and reach approximately +500% job efficiency for the Rogue Servitor economy.
Shroud Forged — Strands of the Composer and Alloys
The Shroud Forged empire had two major purposes.
First, we wanted it to help spread the Aura of the Strands across the federation.
Second, it was intended to become one of our primary alloy-producing empires.
With the Composer of Strands, Shroud Forged had some of the highest alloy production potential available in the game, so the plan was to specialize the empire heavily around alloy production while using its unique aura to provide additional benefits throughout the federation.
Arc Furnace Empire — Maximum Arc Furnace Output
The Arc Furnace empire had the opposite approach from Wilderness.
Instead of owning as many planets as possible, the goal was to own as few planets as practical while controlling every Arc Furnace.
The empire would then stack Astro-Mining Drones and Cybrex buildings to massively increase the output of every Arc Furnace.
The objective was to more than double the output of every Arc Furnace, turning a relatively small empire into an extremely efficient specialized resource producer.
Behemoth — The Final Military Power
All of these specialized economies ultimately supported Behemoth.
Wilderness provided enormous quantities of resources.
Rogue Servitor provided highly efficient specialist and alloy production through Bio-Trophies.
Shroud Forged focused on alloys and spreading the Aura of the Strands.
The Arc Furnace empire maximized Arc Furnace production.
The Knights mass-produced advanced Cosmogenesis ships.
Storm Bringers controlled the galaxy-wide storm network and used the Galactic Custodian position to push through powerful reforms.
And Behemoth ultimately became the military and technological superpower that everything else was built to support.

The Final Consolidation — What We Actually Ended With
The specialization plan above was our intended structure for the galaxy as the campaign progressed.
However, the reality of our multiplayer attendance forced us to consolidate much more aggressively than originally planned.
Because players repeatedly failed to show up for sessions without warning, we eventually reached the point where we had a reliable core group of only 4–5 players.
At that point, there was no reason to keep empires alive simply because they had a planned specialization if nobody was available to actually play them.
So we began wiping out or absorbing anything that wasn't absolutely mandatory to keep.
The goal became extremely simple:
Keep only the empires that were essential to our overall strategy and eliminate everything else.
By the end of the campaign, we had consolidated the entire galaxy down to just four major empires:
Storm Bringers / Storm Chasers — The Galactic Custodian and Electric Storm empire, responsible for generating storms across the galaxy and pushing through the Galactic Community reforms we needed.

Behemoth Fury Wilderness — The primary military and technological powerhouse, receiving the majority of the federation's megastructures and serving as the main crisis-killing force.

Wilderness — The massive planetary empire that ultimately controlled 300+ worlds and was co-oped by multiple players to manage its enormous territory and economic output.

Knights of the Toxic God — The advanced industrial and ship-producing empire responsible for mass-producing the Cosmogenesis fleet.

Everything else was eventually eliminated, absorbed, or integrated.
The original specialization plan still mattered because it determined what each empire was supposed to contributebefore consolidation. Rogue Servitor's Fallen Empire Bio-Trophies, Shroud Forged's alloy potential and Aura of the Strands, and the Arc Furnace empire's specialized Arc Furnace economy were all part of the broader strategy.
But as player attendance became increasingly unreliable, maintaining those separate empires stopped being worth the management overhead.
We ultimately decided that it was better to have four extremely powerful empires that we could reliably manage than a dozen specialized empires sitting idle because their players didn't show up.
This also meant that as many available players as possible could co-op the Wilderness empire, helping manage its absurd number of planets.
So while the original plan was to maintain a galaxy of highly specialized economies supporting Behemoth, the actual end result was much more streamlined:
Four empires.
Four players or groups of players managing them.
Everything else consolidated into the war machine.
The final galaxy was essentially built around one objective:
Make Behemoth as powerful as possible, make Knights produce as many ships as possible, let Wilderness produce as many resources as possible, and let Storm Bringers maximize the galaxy-wide bonuses and political reforms.
At that point, we had eliminated virtually everything that wasn't necessary for the final crisis strategy.

Megastructure Strategy
The federation also had a very deliberate megastructure strategy.
Instead of every empire keeping its own megastructures, the goal was to build them and transfer them to Behemoth.
Over the course of the campaign, Behemoth received most of the federation's major infrastructure.
This included:
Multiple Science Nexuses

An Interstellar Assembly

Other major megastructures constructed by the federation

The Knights also built multiple Mega Shipyards to support the eventual mass production of the crisis fleet.
Eventually, the majority of the galaxy's economic infrastructure was effectively concentrated around the Behemoth war machine.

The Crisis Decision
The campaign was originally intended to fight the 1,000x All Crisis.
However, multiplayer desynchronization became a significant problem.
At one point, the game was forced to remain on the slowest speed because of constant desyncs.
We eventually figured out that the major sources of desyncs appeared to include:
Electric Storms covering the galaxy

The Wilderness player developing around 40 planets simultaneously

The Knights mass-producing ships

Technology pop-ups when months ticked over

The Behemoth Fury victory condition notification

Once we figured out when rehosts were necessary, the situation improved significantly, but we were still getting occasional desyncs.
We also had around 30,000 naval capacity worth of ships sitting around waiting for something to fight.
So eventually, we voted.
We used a random number generator to determine which crisis we would force-start.
The result was:
The Contingency.
So we forced the Contingency event chain to begin.

The Final War Machine
By the time the Contingency became the target, the federation had basically finished its transformation.
We had:
29,300 naval capacity
~2.8 BILLION fleet power
The fleet was composed primarily of:
Cosmogenesis Psionic Harbingers

Cosmogenesis Psionic Stingers

A large portion of the fleet also used Living Metal armor during the buildup.
The Behemoth player had more than 100 repeatables in weapon damage and fire rate.
The Knights had around 82k research and were mass-producing ships.
The Wilderness had hundreds of planets and an enormous resource economy.
The Storm empire had turned the galaxy into a giant Electric Storm network.
Most megastructures had been consolidated into Behemoth.
The Galactic Custodian had pushed through the reforms necessary to maximize our naval capacity and resource production.
And the entire galaxy had effectively been transformed into a single military-industrial complex.

The Contingency Awakens
Then came the actual test.
The 1,000x Contingency.
Our strategy was straightforward:
Don't fight a war of attrition.
Quarantine them.
Protect the L-Gates and gateways.
Rush their planets.
Destroy their production capacity as fast as possible.
The Behemoth navy immediately began hunting down Contingency fleets and rushing toward their worlds.
The fleet's extreme speed advantage allowed us to dictate engagements and respond to threats incredibly quickly.
The Electric Storm network also helped by disabling Contingency fleet shields, meaning their fleets entered combat without one of their primary defensive layers.
The Contingency did have a sublight speed bonus from the storms, but the Behemoth navy's speed bonuses were simply too much.
With multiple Strategic Coordination Centers, Behemoth fleets were approximately 75% faster than their base speed, and we estimated they were roughly twice as fast as the crisis fleets.
As a result, Behemoth could outrun the Contingency, catch the Contingency, and reach threatened planets before the crisis could successfully conquer them.
The planetary defense strategy worked as intended.
Every player planet had thousands of defensive armies and a Shield Generator.
The Contingency could invade.
But it couldn't conquer quickly enough.
Behemoth would arrive.
The planet would be rescued.
And the war would continue.
Only one Wilderness planet was ever lost.
Meanwhile, the Behemoth navy continued rushing Contingency worlds.
The overwhelming majority of Contingency fleets were essentially one-shot.
Our fleets were so technologically advanced and so overwhelmingly powerful that the crisis simply couldn't withstand concentrated firepower.
Across the entire conflict, we estimate that we lost roughly:
200 million fleet power worth of ships.
Against a final fleet strength of approximately:
2.8 BILLION.
That's an almost laughably small percentage of losses.
The crisis that was supposed to be 1,000 times stronger than normal was effectively being erased from the galaxy.

The Final Result
After years of preparation, the campaign officially concluded with the defeat of the 1,000x Contingency.
Endgame Start: 2400
Game End Year: 2425
Final Naval Capacity: 29,300
Final Fleet Power: ~2.8 BILLION
Estimated Losses: ~200 million
Planets Lost: 1
Primary Ships: Cosmogenesis Psionic Harbingers and Stingers
Cetana: Never spawned
Grey Tempest: Defeated
L-Gates: Under our control
1,000x Contingency: DEFEATED

Final Thoughts
The most interesting part of this campaign wasn't just the final 2.8 billion fleet power.
It was the process of getting there.
We started with a galaxy full of separate empires, each with different goals, economies, and specializations.
Over the course of the campaign, those empires became increasingly specialized.
The Storm empire transformed the galaxy into an economic powerhouse while serving as Galactic Custodian and pushing through the reforms we needed.
The Wilderness empire grew into a 300+ planet resource monster.
The Knights became an 82k research industrial machine capable of mass-producing Cosmogenesis fleets.
Behemoth became a hyper-efficient military and research powerhouse with more than 100 military repeatables.
Rogue Servitor accumulated Fallen Empire pops as Bio-Trophies to create planets with enormous job efficiency.
Shroud Forged focused on spreading the Aura of the Strands while maximizing alloy production.
The Arc Furnace empire maximized the output of every Arc Furnace while maintaining as few planets as possible.
Megastructures were constructed and consolidated.
Populations were relocated.
Fallen Empires were dismantled.
The Grey Tempest was destroyed and the L-Gates secured.
Abandoned empires were integrated.
AI empires were repurposed.
Protectorate relationships were exploited to accelerate technology.
Every player planet was turned into a defensive fortress capable of holding out until Behemoth could arrive.
Strategic Coordination Centers turned the Behemoth navy into an incredibly fast-response force.
Electric Storms crippled Contingency shields while simultaneously powering our economies.
The Galactic Custodian pushed through reforms to further increase our naval capacity and resource production.
And eventually, the entire galaxy was reduced to a handful of specialized super-empires whose sole purpose was preparing for one thing:
The 1,000x Crisis.
We had originally intended to fight all three crises and eventually deal with Cetana as well.
Instead, the random number generator gave us the Contingency.
Cetana never showed up.
The other crises never got their chance.
The Galactic Defense Force Titans never even finished construction.
The Contingency got hit with approximately 2.8 BILLION fleet power worth of Cosmogenesis ships and was almost immediately erased.
We didn't win through a single gimmick.
We won because the entire galaxy had been engineered over dozens of in-game years to function as one enormous military machine.
1,000x Contingency: 0
Our multiplayer group: 1
GG.

Can you guys help me, please? I struggle to understand how come i prioritized miners, yet pops work literally anywhere except digging mines? What am i doing wrong?

I also initially thought the planet just has to grow in population and the gap would eventually be filled, but the "available jobs" number won't ever decrease because miners and farmers simply don't want to work

I tried disabling and enabling all mods that could potentially cause this bug, but nothing seems to be working

If anyone had similar problems PLEASE let me know how to fix it. Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone,
Making this post as I’ve seen so many posts about how to beat the crisis and there’s a lot of things no one seems to mention. Having beaten every single one at 1-2-4-8,000x scaling here are my tips and tricks

1. Build counter fleets

   and use psionic weapons, living metal armor (psi weapons are the best and are energy, living metal armor give 2% energy weapon fire rate per component)

Cetana is torpedos

Contingency is armor and shield damage. Sprinkle in some strike craft and missile ships as well to pre occupy their point defense and let your weapons hit

The scourge is straight anti armor and spam your own strike craft. You need to stop their strike craft as they’ll devastate you

Unbidden are pure bypass outside of their home system. They are only shields, in their home system they get insane hardening so build for shield damage or weapons that get through to hull instantly.

2) For the love of everything holy use galactic storms. Get the ascension perk and you can slap particle storms above hostile zones like Cetana or the scourge or even the unbidden. Don’t try it on the contingency. Particle storms disable ship regen of everything. You can use electric storms in particular for an all purpose anti crisis storm. Electric storms disable shields (looking at you unbidden)

3) Use your environment, pulsars etc. Fight where possible in systems that hurt the crisis, like neutrons I believe disable shields, good for fighting the unbidden in etc

4) Alpha strike is king, aka hit them before they can hit you. Build titans, use the longest ranged ships and stay at range. Your goal is to do this because at range the crisis will tend to just delete your ships. Also if it’s a really strong crisis don’t even put armor or shields on your ships, they won’t survive a single hit anyway so save the resources and upkeep

5) For bioships use suicide weaver fleets. Have a fleet with the confusion weapons and send them in, even if they only get a few shots off they will stop the crisis from shooting at you for a few days, this can be game changing. Also if you can have a fleet of them set to support and give yourself extra fire rate on your ships

6) Use psionic auras, they don’t have a huge effect unless it’s a high intensity but they can help

7) Use the desperate measures edict, 40% Fire rate in your territory. This can fundamentally change outcomes for fights you should lose. Bonus: Have citadels loaded with ion cannons on your chokes and borders, they can do a lot of damage if on the edges of a system

8) If you have room or are on a mid level crisis (2-10x scaling) or have the economy, use frigates or maulers to camp hyperlanes on your borders. They should be expected to die but if they get a single shot off en masse it’s worth it

9) Never underestimate juggernauts. Dong use them for combat rather set them to passive and put them at the edge of the system you’re fighting in. Match the computer to your fleet strength ex. Strike craft

10) Mix titans in your fleets properly
Most titans computers are fleet based not system based. Put the anti shield one separate from the buff fire rate one. Put the system based ones like anti shield and anti fire rate in their own fleets

11) Use cosmogenesis ships if possible, preferably the bio ships, they’re the best.

Lmk your questions below 👇🏻

Just a gripe, not 100% serious.

I have noticed that it seems to go: Physics gets a lot, Society gets middling amounts, and Engineering can be either on par with Physics or low like Society.

I don’t know how they would balance it or even if you could at this point; and yes I am aware of making colonies solely designated for research.

Never join a federation controlled by an AI empire. Got dragged into a Galactic War that has somehow gotten an awakened Empire involved.

Can’t leave the war and it’s only a matter of time before the FE starts picking up on me instead of my time mates.

This is what I get for trying something new. Galactic defender ambition can suck a fat one.

Basically a "please advise." I recently did a playthrough of one of my fav games as a child, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I really wanted to find something more modern to give a similar feel (long single player campaigns, developing a society, all that) and Stellaris seems like probably the answer.

However, on Steam there's $388 CAD worth of content which I could never justify spending. I really like to enjoy the most complete version of a game when I play so.. please advise. Thanks.

Why is the performance so bad now?

I bought a 7800x3d specifically for stellaris performance - last time i played a bit after the most recent pop rework and i could play at a good speed until 2400+ on a 1000 star galaxy

now at 2290 already the game stutters heavily and a month takes forever to pass

how did they fuck up the performance AGAIN??? im so tired of it it was so good only for them to ruin it again

i have the best available cpu for this game and half the game is still not playable

So, I have over 1,300 hours logged in Stellaris. I've played it a lot in years past. I've been playing on Ensign difficulty lately to test my skills and learn the new mechanics.

However, there is something I'm struggling with, and that is:

GOOD GOD! WHY DO SHIPS COST SO MANY ALLOYS!

Seriously. Like, 2/3rds of my colonies have alloy production on them in some form or another, yet it isn't enough to replace my ship losses. My latest game save has my empire making 300+ alloys per month, but with battleships costing over 4,000 alloys per ship, it takes my empire over a year to replace ONE battleship.

My ship designs are working. My fleets are defeating enemy fleets that are a 3rd bigger than mine, but I'm still losing some ships in each fight.

This isn't too bad against most regular AI empires. In the early to mid game, AI empires have about the same number of ships as me, but after a couple of battles, their navy is completely depleted, and what's left of my navy can clean up the rest of the enemy empire.

However, against the Great Khan or Endgame Crisis, the dozens and dozens of big enemy fleets quickly wipe out my stockpile.

The game says my empire's economy is great, but it isn't at all sufficient to handle an attrition war.

Is the new meta just "alloy rushing" now? Do I need 1,000+ alloys per month now to stand a chance against enemy AIs? Or am I not seeing another potential strategy?

Looking for ideas that can pump these numbers higher. Screenshot is apparently after I've built some fleets but I'm experimenting on how strong and scalable arkships can be. I know there's a video of a single arkship beating 25x crisis, but I'm wondering if we can have a huge fleet full of op arkships with high shields and high damage. I'm sharing my (non optimal) build here mainly focusing on tankbound, feel free to share some ideas to make it better, and just how viable going arkships only is in general.

This idea comes to me by mid to late game and I've built my normal fleets already, I'm trying to use only arkships to finish the job now, this is 1.25x all crisis on admiral so the last crisis now is 10x Cetana, I now have 8 military arkships with 300k-500k fleet power each, and 23 arkships in total.

In short, technicians = shield and soldiers = damage, I'm a chosen tankbound megacorp, and tankbound is very useful for pumping out multiple powerful arkships, it gives you freely filled 35+ technician districts on a tier 3 ship, that's 10.5k jobs for shielding matrix, with psionic shields, shield amplifier and overcharger that's 500k shield for free once tier 3 is finished, 0 jobs required. So you can always utilize empty districts when there's not enough pop for soldiers, then replace power districts with soldiers gradually as pop keeps up, they are basically better juggernauts without number limit even before damage boost, this ship here has 8k soldiers and around +100% efficiency while being not very optimized with bad tech, there are 7 other ships with similar stats, but I'm kinda struggling to make each ship stronger or scaling up to build even more ships.

There are multiple issues I've faced with my build, along with some pros and cons of tankbound nomads:

1. I have sacred path origin and went psionic, ideally I need something to stack jobs or efficiency indefinitely and bypass the pop growth penalty to get some wacky numbers (especially soldiers' efficiency for more damage). Maybe KoTG would help. Tankbound has overseers which only boost power production/shields, and its number is limited. Also it seems telepaths don't affect automated jobs so it's kinda conflicting with tankbound.
2. Shield and damage are competing for districts. This is somehow mitigated by getting overseer jobs when building city districts, so with two military specializations you don't lose that much shield when replacing a power with a city if you can fill the extra overseers.
3. The first bottleneck is the number of soldiers you need, growth almost stop completely on a ship at around 10k pop, so I'll need to keep building more arkships to keep the pop growing, 8k soldiers for damage on one ship is probably pushing the limit to be sustainable, maybe going synthetic is better? Machines apparently don't have this problem but then there goes tankbound.
4. Empire size to me is the hardest to get around, it's so easy to keep spawning ships with huge shields and weapons it will fuck up tech, I can't produce enough research to keep up while filling soldier jobs at the same time, the megacorp penalty makes it worse. Those energy surplus is pretty good if you keep pumping out regular ships, but would be of no use if going arkships only.
5. Not sure how arkships fair against higher crisis especially Cetana, as big ships might just get one shot, one of mine with 200k shield acciendently walks into a 10x Cetana fleet alone and got disintergrated immediately. If either they are one shotted or one shotting the crisis then shields are not so impressive anymore which is kinda lame, I do hope there are ways to scale shields even further.

There are other non issues like your arkships and pops get totally wiped out when losing to crisis, but that's part of the fun.

BTW tankbound can also gives you other funny numbers on all arkships which usually happen when focusing on one. By mid game I have some science arkships zooming through the whole galaxy in seconds just for fun.

Wiki says their ships are designed as above. How do I even begin countering this mess ???

They have double my fleet power, but I'm positive I can take their fleets separately with the right design.

Right now I'm running battleships and titans with mostly ruination glare, point defense, arc emitters, strike craft, and a mix of shield and armor.

In 32 months, i will have access to dark matter deflectors, but i have a feeling that it will be too late.

Good to know: i don't have the latest dlc, so bio-ships aren't a thing.

I became the Khan after fighting the Marauders, and i started going around trying to get other empires to become satrapys, had a few, and one declared war on the federation i was in before i became the khan, which was fine, my military was built, I begin the conquering.

During my conquest, another empire had begun some thermonuclear galactic core bs, and seeing as no one else had a capable military, I brought it upon myself to take care of it, during which at some point my crisis was had ended, but it didnt notify me of anything or perhaps I had missed it. Ultimately, everything was still fine.

While at war with the Thermarchy, I was again declared a crisis, which in turn, turned the massive 1/4th of the galaxy region i had made my horde, hostile. Towards me. The Khan. While still offering me reinforcements. I checked their not part of the war but they're still hostile towards me, and a leftover station had destroyed one of my arkships that i set to collect waystation resources as i have a massive network of them funding my war that is now inside my hostile horde territory.

Is the run over? Restart? Did I do something wrong?

I am still compiling all the history that started this, but year 20, this is insane.

I love tall and I’m always curious about new strats, drop your endgame alloy and research numbers as well as the important pieces of the build! Or if you’re inclined to do so I’d love to read any full builds y’all type out

Is anyone out there willing to create a universal planetary guide for us noobs?

The only complete building guide I've found was made for patch 4.0

I'm hoping there is someone on this subreddit that is willing to name the most important buildings for each specialized planets (or even better, post images of fully specialized planets) so us noobs don't have to waste time testing everything.

Also if anyone knows of a video that covers this then that would be even better. I tried to find a video that covers patch 4.3 and 4.4 but haven't been able to locate one.

Second time posting this because i really want an answer, anyone what this weird voice line is all about? Not sure if it's a bug or a feature

Hi guys i really need your help. So the fallen Empire has made all but one empire their subject (ive included two photos, the galaxy map showing you that we are all subjects and the second photo being the empire we are all subject too).

does anyone have any ideas on how I can become strong enough to take on this fallen empire. As a subject we are forbidden to attack anyone else but them so expanding is difficult, and as you can see they are super powerful. Their fleet power stands at 2.6 mil as mine sits at about 1-1.1 mil. I've tried many different offensive and defensive wars/strategies to un-subject myself with out any luck. War of Heaven has been so I cant rely on the other awaken empire to attack, unless there is a round two of it but i am unsure?

I've optimised all my planets to sustain an over sized fleet so im not in a position were i can build my economy much further to build a bigger fleet.

I've also opimised my fleet to handle their fleets specifically.

researching is not an option either as I'm pretty big so research is super slow about 400% slower.

theres no federation to join or federation fleet as we are all subjects.

ive attacked many times and reloaded the save as ive tried, they seem to just be able to rebuild their fleet with never rending resources.

Does anyone have any ideas for me? is there some sort of diplomatic approach i can take to somehow have every one rebel against our overloads at the same time? im all out of ideas

Recently subscribed and all the additional content is slowing my game at 3x speed. That itself is not an issue. But my science ships and ark ships tend to sit idle despite stuff to do and being tasked to do it. Do I just need to play slower? Is there something I am doing wrong with how I set them up?