It is true, that if attacking the academy was somehow more reasonable, most of the concerns would be amended.

I am thinking more and more about disabling Awakening. Nakalim have some gameplay goodies, but there are a lot of typos and other unmatching moments in its lore descriptions and quests. Or just really poor descriptions that lack flavor. Not the amplitude level of faction design and execution. And they seem to abandon fixes and improvements as well. Academy screen feels like a placeholder with cheap images for every role. Its implemention into the existing quests and lore is absurd. Cool tension created by original quests and Celestial Worlds questline is ruined by Isiander just showing himself turn 20 and demanding dust or influence. No introducing quests for this, no explanation at all. Roles are unbalanced and narrow designed. They don't feel like they can take part in a space opera of such scale. There are some interesting moments like general idea of Academy as an international faction.  But this DLC could be SO much more. PItty.

These were just some thoughts written. Think I'd just delete them, that kind of feedback doesn't belong here. :)

It's not just the speed at which the Academy expands (which in-itself is terrible), it's the rediculously overpowered academy fleet you can get extremely early in the game.

In my last multiplayer session I won the fleet on the first bidding. The fleet has 20k+ attack power, 16 movement speed, and you get it for 20 turns on normal speed.

I had scouted my 2 opponents. In 4 turns of movement I was at his capital with the fleet, invaded and raised it on the same turn.

I then started to move on the other players capital, at which point everyone said that they don't want to play anymore.

It needs to be toned down by scaling the attack power of the fleet throughout the game. The first round the fleet should be relatively weak. It should be strong for that stage in the game, but not game ending like it is now.