Is Isyander supposed to be this annoying? The last few games I played, his fleets swung by and blockaded/killed my first colony once, and grabbed all the interesting unique planets anywhere near him, at a much larger range than normal empires would (for fear of losing them). Other empires I might feel safe just wiping them out, but with his initial armada I get the feeling that would be both unsafe and lock me out of a lot of unique content. 

I've not seen him be that aggressive. You didn't bring up his sister did you?

Yes, I've ran  into this problem in the early game. The problem is that they expand into my constelation at a faster pace than I could muster, locking me out of the best systems.

you can also set academy to easy I guess.

Since the release of the expansion, I've never seen Auriga's system not settled by the Academy by the time that my scouts first discovered it. That's fairly disappointing because I don't want to have to invade the system in order to colonize Auriga, but that's unfortunately what it takes with the Academy being able to colonize systems.

He's never killed my outposts, although his fleets definitely blockade my systems regularly and his colonizers will snatch everything they can with great rapidity.

It's certainly annoying. I'm not sure if Isyander is able to do that because the Academy "empire" is led by the Religious party and thus gets their 'invade planets and ignore borders while in cold war' starting law, or what. I don't think that actual empires are able to close their borders to him anyways; there doesn't seem to be much in the way of interaction with the Academy, despite that being the main selling point of this expansion.

When he killed my outpost, it had just been settled the turn before, where a momentary blockade can wipe it. Was quite frustrating as I had no idea he'd ever blockade so I thought it was safe.

In my view, this could be solved (or at least reduced) by having him unable to colonise until, say, neutral hackers become active. And perhaps for allies of the academy to be able to buy systems from him at great expense.

That was just hilarious...that was beginning of the game, not even a single colony was finished...and then Academy fleets droped on my capital and not yet finished colony...besieged status, negative dust, almost wiped colony, constant scraping of my ships and unasigning of my hero (and there were no end to this...)...and then, he started to colonise everything around me (and there were not too many free systems around)...had to drop the game cause was totally crippled...really, something should be done with this "feature" of Isyander fleets cause now it's horrible.

Sounds like fun. It´s nice to have these unpredictable things happening.

md143rbh7f wrote:

In my mind the Academy would make more sense as an empire that starts out with a small amount of well-developed territory that it aggressively defends, but it really shouldn't expand or randomly attack other people's outposts. 

I feel like one easy fix for the random blockades and attacks on mining probes (and civilian ships?) is to change his default law from religious to another party. This doesn't stop his forward settling or the OPness of getting the Spear early on, but seems like a good start.

Edit: Typo.

Since patch 1.5.8. the Academy in my games is not randomly sieging anymore, or blockading. Only when i am in war with him.

I do like your first idea, that there is a cluster of planets around the Academy that are his. Superpowerful.

I think it s fun to have a competitor like the academy blocking some important systems, so you have to choose between peace with isy or those systems, but I did not run into huge problems with the academy yet, so maybe I m to positive here!? :)

The Academy hasn't been a major problem for me in games, my outlook is more that their behavior doesn't really reflect the faction as it has been portrayed. I have trouble reconciling an aggressively expansionist Academey with the secretive, exclusive Academy that has been portrayed up to this point. The delay on the colonization is largely to fit in with this concept of them starting as a small, reclusive faction and then growing in power, influence and reach as the game progresses which seems to fit the lore of the Academy a lot more. 

lumino wrote:

I think the main problem here comes from religious empires automatically bombarding all planets/blockading systems with whom they are in cold war with as soon as they fly through their space (not just AI, also as a player). This has been a quirk since the beginning and it should be made an active choice rather than an automatic action.

And @lightjolly -When you have several multiplayer games in a row where you have to start over because an (in that phase of the game) unbeatable force drops three of your colonies in a row and then when you are at turn 30 with no colonies he has settled all the good worlds around you. How is this nice and unpredictable? It only adds frustration.

Making him unable to settle planets until at least neutral hackers is active seems like a very good suggestion from @pgunn. 

You just have shit luck, like the dude who always spawns next to cravers

I really hate this fleet of his, it's invulnerable

Gvaz wrote:

I really hate this fleet of his, it's invulnerable

Did you try to attack it with bigger fleet?

It's not possible to create a bigger fleet by the time it comes out the first time.