Good day to you all!



First of all - I'm sure, that this topic was discussed somewhere, but I failed to find it (after 10 pages I decided to give it a try).



I'd like to suggest you a random hostile civilization (HC) that has a small change of appearing in the sector and if it happens starts mindlessly consuming worlds and multiplying, just like Tyranids in Warhammer or Flood in Halo. This HC is of course AI-controlled and has advantages in food creation, no "happiness" bar, etc.



Let's say, we have 4 players in the game. When 75% of all systems are colonized, there is e.g. 1% chance every turn that unknown organic civilization will appear on the furthest and last colonized system. This lifeform outnumbers and outguns all factions in the game minimum two to one. Players have to stop it or they all are going to die.



Why? It stimulates creation of alliances, trading and makes old enemies work together. And imagine all the fun when alliance breaks up.

Well, I find your idea quite intriguing. Usual game session with 4 players gets you bored almost after the hundredth turn, so "Unknown agressive lifeform" should do the trick. Kinda reminds me of Shadows from Babylon 5. Don't know why really.

While the idea of an space organic race of an overdone trope.



Most games colonize 75% the systems within 40-50 turns, and long before everyone is fighting for space or has even met everyone.



So why not just pump up the pirate threat and allow them to colonize planets?

you either have the rate that they appear too low in which they are almost never seen, and thusly not planned for so when they do show up, its just effectively an instant "you lose". There is nothing in the AI requiring them to work with you or form alliances unless you hard code it in their programming to ally players when the space invasion starts...which also becomes predictable and isnt really the point of an event like this which is supposed to add new freshness to a game.



Alternately you have them show up everytime and the game becomes about just planning for their arrival or gaming the colonization system to prevent their arrival at all with the proposed mechanics.

i really enjoyed a game where i flung a colony ship in the middle of an empty constellation and colonised just before the pirates got to me, then they invaded and took my system, i went back to playing in my constellation, halfway through the game the weakest empire suddenly died, turns out that the pirates took everything from them, and had a swarm of fleets and now a whole constellation of their own



fighting a pirate empire is awesome, i wouldnt mind seeing them intergrated some way other than someone loosing

DarkNexus wrote:
i really enjoyed a game where i flung a colony ship in the middle of an empty constellation and colonised just before the pirates got to me, then they invaded and took my system, i went back to playing in my constellation, halfway through the game the weakest empire suddenly died, turns out that the pirates took everything from them, and had a swarm of fleets and now a whole constellation of their own



fighting a pirate empire is awesome, i wouldnt mind seeing them intergrated some way other than someone loosing

Something similar happened in only my second game. Multiple pirate fleets showed up due to a random event and started conquering systems, which then spawned large numbers of new pirate fleets. While fighting the AI factions, I always had to keep half an eye out for pirates attacking everything in range. Made for a very interesting game. I'd love to see the game setup options expanded to allow a pirate faction in the game.