Tolle Story. Die Situation mit der Föderation wo sich alle hassen kenne ich nur zu gut.
So the War in Heaven wound up destroying the galaxy is the single most petty blaze of stupidity I’ve ever seen.
Let me explain. Story time, so long post incoming.
I was the Star League, a fanatic Xenophobe/military republic of humans that’s a hair’s breadth away from fanatic purifier. Everyone hates me, and I’m constantly getting attacked by up to three separate alien coalitions a time. I have no friends, no room to breathe. The only reason I’m still alive despite my viscous neighbors is because my fleet is slightly bigger, and I’ve been successful in picking my foes off one by one instead of altogether. Needless to say, the xenos doubly dislike how I keep thrashing them. I’m in a tie in first place power between three other empires; it’s a very hard game to be top dog in this galaxy.
So there I am, bloodied, my capital bombed to hell and trying to fix it ,when I get told that some fanatic xenophile fallen empire on the other side of the galaxy have awoken. There was an empire out there? Yep. Turns out my first contact with them was from an Awakened Empire. Then another Fallen Empire I’ve never heard of wakes up, a bunch of jingoistic reclaimers. Both of the Awakened Empires are overwhelming in every sense of the word, and they want vassal slaves. Everyone signs up with one of them. In a galaxy of a thousand stars of some 30 empires, all but three choose to pick a side. Being the biggest of the three free powers, I become leader of the league of non-aligned powers (which I call “The Confederated Suns”). It’s just me, a bunch of gross slaver bugs who just barely tied with me for #1 free power, and some pacifists who’ve been boxed in by poor hyperlane RNG since the start of the game.
The War is Heaven was upon us.
Naturally, all I did was sit back, pump out ships, and watched the bigger Fallen Empires and their pets duke it out. I actually never saw a single battle, but after maybe a decade, the xenophiles were all dead, and about half the galaxy was free. After a huge lag spike, all these freed little guys decide to toss in their lot with the Confederated Suns, and now I have a huge federation, for what it’s worth. That’s when the Jingoistis Reclaimers attacked one of my federation buddies. Because I’d just been pumping out ships for the better part of two decades, I had the ships, but due to a derp on my part, my navy was stuck on the opposite side of the galaxy, and there was no way through to fight the Awakand Empire, because hyperlanes. The shortest way through was by going straight through a spiritual fallen empire. So I did.
Let me repeat that. I destroyed an ancient empire and their entire way of life just to make way for a super highway. I had become the vogans, but I had to do anything to win this war and end the War in Heaven.
Because I managed to catch the Awakened Empire after it had stupidly split its doomstack, I managed to actually win the way. We made them liberate two of their battle thralls, which meant two more people joined my federation. Which is when the problems started. “Empire X wants to kick Empire Y from Federation.” Eh, what’s this? No, don’t do that. That’s stupid. Reject. “Empire X is Angry and wants to kick Empire Z from federation.” “Empire Z wants to kick Empire Q from federation.” It was like this every day. Someone wanted to kick someone else from the federation. But my federation controlled nearly half the galaxy, and I was its heart, soul, and military. While these were filthy xenos, they belonged to the Confederated Suns, which was the baby of the Star League.
Eventually I realized that if you just don’t respond to one of those votes, you autodecline, so I just did that. I like to imagine that I just replaced my Federation diplomat with big sign reading “NO.” I wasn’t letting internal squabbling tear my federation apart. But it turns out, the “said no to our federation proposal” modifier stacks. And stacks. And soon the empire that loved you to death has a -700 relation is trying to kick you from the federation. And because everyone loves you for saving the galaxy, and also destroyed the infant Unbidden in your spare time, they won’t kick you. But everyone was trying to kick everyone else, and while most of those failed, some of them worked.
Soon everyone in my federation, the only one in the galaxy, hate each other like we’re all fanatic purifiers, but they also hate each other too much to agree to to kick anyone out. It’s like I’ve turned the entire galaxy into a bitter, sexless marriage! Meanwhile I’m doing everything I can to keep my federation together. I am pumping out ships until my navy consisted of about 4/5ths the entire firepower in the galaxy, I’m colonizing like mad, and I’m fighting wars because the only thing my federation can agree to is that we love to kill people who aren’t in our federation. Hell, I exterminated the remnants of the Awakened Empire purely as a team-building exercise. While I was losing a few members of the federation at the edges of the galaxy, I was holding things together. I liked to imagine that my xenophobic empire was doing it just so that they could continue to play Galactic Peacekeepers to the filthy xenos, and thus have a sort of “soft” galactic domination. It’s why I always encouraged new empires to join my federation, since because I was still technically the “League of Non-Aligned Powers” even after the end of the War in Heaven, every newly independent nations got to join my federation by event, which I as the Star League had final say in deciding. But everyone in my federation is starting to hate me, to hate each other, and we’re all closing our borders to each other. It’s like an inter-federation cold war.
Which is when the Prethoryn Scourge showed up. I got the mod that lets multiple crises happen. Meh, I can handle it. After 50 years of fleet building, my navy is pretty much invincible. Let me just move my ships over to the edge… of… the galaxy. Oh right, that giant empire that rules that part of space was part of my federation before politicking managed to get them kicked. Now they hate my guts, and won’t let my ships through. There’s about a solid 1/5th of the galaxy under their rule or, more to the point, belonged to smaller countries you can’t get do without going thru the big one first, because hyperlanes.
So now I’m just sitting here in horror, with my giant, impotent fleet, as the Prethoryn have free reign to devour a 1/5th of a galaxy, free reign to snowball out of control and totally overpower me one their done destroying their part of the galaxy. All because everyone in my federation hates each other, and kicked out the only empire with hyperlanes to that entire corner of the galaxy, an empire which blames me personally for screwing them over, so they won’t give me access to go fight the Prethoryn while they’re still babies.
I can’t help but think that this has been on helluva ride, and I hope we go out with a bang! And if you think about it, this is all my fault. My hubris that I could softly rule the galaxy ended up dooming us all, and that’s freakin’ fantastic. Stellaris might have its problem, but sometimes it can just be so damn fun.
tl;dr League of Non-Aligned Powers survives War in Heaven, everyone hates everyone else, kick out one nation who controls the roads to a large part of the galaxy, which is where the prethoryn happen be invading from, meaning the Prethoryn Scourge can snowball out of control without anyone being able to stop it, all because the League of Non-Aligned Powers is addicted to backstabbing pettiness. I look forward to the final showdown. Very fun game,
