"Children.... Children! stop playing in the wizards' room..."


Idea


The Endless might be gone, their name be a legend but their relics are spreaded allover the galaxy awaiting for the new children that leave in it, to come and get them.


But curiosity killed the cat, and the Academy heroes triggered the activation of The Guardians.

They are half-sentient machines built by the Endless and impregned with Endless' logic. Probalby the closest things to an Endless in the whole universe.


Their reason to be is simple: Protect the Relics at any cost and destroy those who tried to stole them from the Endless.


Their technologie quadrants will be different from the rest of the humanoid races, in particular on the military tree. But becuse The Guardians belonged to an old and different universe, they will have to catch-up with the other factions tecnologies' which are unknown to them (ie. Defense and Diplomacy).


The Guardians week point is their curiosity, they are an IA built to learn and the more they discover Non-Endless technology the more they will loose influence and new internal parties who "love" the other factions will appear, and will oppose to their extermination what will prevent them to finalize their main goal: supremacy.

Note: A second more benign objective culd be added in case the above happens.


The Guardians as a Human Player

Would be a different game-play as the one we know so far. The player will start with eyes in all systems where a relic exists. They'll be able to start working on their technology tree and in the harvesting of Dust (which will be used as production points). Moreover they will benefit from all the relic's bonuses. At these stage they won't have ships, but can send probes to other systems where to build hidden outposts that will benefit from a fraction of the potential system's output.

If the system is occupied by other major factions, the player will work in the shadows and won't be seen by the new comer. This is because the Guardians want to be able to learn some of the unique technologies of that faction by hacking the factions' network (beware, the other functions will notice  that something is wrong and will develope counter-hacking technologies)

The game will have a count-down (in terms of turns) and when the trigger is set the real awakening of The Guardians will take place in the blink of a turn all systems where the relics are will be fully colonized by The Guardians and the other factions will automatically loose them. Moreover, all Guardian's systems will be connected with Endless technology that will allow them to travel between them in ie. 1 turn.


Only after the awakening the Guardians will be able to built ships. They will be built faster but will have a quantity cap allover the empire (that can be extended with new technologies), while their ships will be powerfull their fleets will hold less ships in it.

During a first round of turns (duration to be defined), The Guardians will have the upper hand in space combat due to their advanced technology, but the other factions will have access to new technologies that will end up to balance combat again.


The Guardians can't have allies and they will have to face all of the other factions. Their advance military science and much much better understanding of dust will be their key advantages.


The Guardians as IA player

Your faction will play as usual, but some missions will let you understand that the "awakening" is comming and some technologies will get you ready. Every faction will have different understanding/Knowledge of the Endless and thus the anti-Guardian technologies might be different.

When the count-down reaches the deadline, your faction will loose the systems with Endless Relics (which you definitevely want to recover because they offer the best outputs). 

Note: or the systems to be lost could be randomly set (ie. because they had dormant relics).

When the trigger is set all on-going wars will be set to truce for ten turns. As leader of your faction you can opt to seek peace and alliances with the other functions or to attack them hoping to arrive strong enough to the final combat with The Guardians.


Conclusion.

It is an ambitious idea and far from perfect. Look forward to hear your comments and ideas to change it and make it better :-)