Hmm, I won before any sort of crisis. Is a 'crisis' like the Mongol Hordes/Aztecs in CK2? I somewhat question setting the Domination condition at 40%. It seems like it should be more like 60 to 75%.
I'm glad it didn't awaken then. It only had two systems and two fleets of 100k. I say "only", even though when I won I had 3 fleets of 50k to my name.
I've never played CK2 but I think the general idea is somewhat similar. Basically a crisis is a very powerful faction that spawns sometime after your "endgame date" which you set at the beginning of the game on the screen with all the sliders. There are three 'standard' ones: the Prethoryn Swarm, which are an extragalactic hive mind that invade the galaxy from one particular direction, the Unbidden, extradimensional dudes who spawn from a porthole that opens up at a random system (followed by the Aberrant and Vehement, which are identical to the Unbidden except color), or the Contingency, an ancient AI protocol which tells you that it was designed to prevent a "class-30 singularity". There is some debate as to what a class-30 singularity is. The most interesting two theories, imo, are that it refers to the player winning the game (thus leaving the in-game universe with no purpose), and the second is that it refers to The End Of the Cycle, which is a sort of unofficial crisis that can be caused by a psionic empire doing certain things with the Shroud (which, if you don't know, is a sort of psionic entity/dimension that you can get buffs and maluses from if you unlock the psionic ascension perks). There are a series of interactions you can have and I'm not sure how to trigger it exactly but you can get a buff called Covenant: End of the Cycle which gives 100% bonus to research speed, resource collection, fleet capacity. It lasts for 50 years, at which point
Stellaris wiki said:
The Reckoning will all but end the empire that benefited from the covenant and instantly destroy all its vassals. When the Reckoning occurs, all Shroud-Marked planets will be depopulated and turned into 'Shrouded Worlds', which become uninhabitable forever. All fleets and ships under the Shroud-Marked empire's command will be instantly destroyed, all leaders are killed, and all resources from that empire's store will be drained almost completely. Having lost everything, the Shroud-Marked empire will survive only in the form of a newly colonized planet of survivors, which will start with the default name of 'Exile'. The game will pick any planet with 40% habitability or more, even if it is located within another empire's borders. If that planet is somehow Shroud-Marked, or no planet is otherwise possible, the game is instantly lost.
Every regular empire will gain a -1000 Opinion modifier with the remnant of the Shroud-Marked empire for "bringing the end", with a decay rate of 5.
Every Shroud-Marked colony will spawn a shroud manifestation. Finally, an immensely powerful Shroud entity known as "The Reckoning" - representing the combined essence of all deceased psionic individuals in the former empire that summoned it - will appear over the empire's former homeworld, and proceed to seek out the remaining life in the galaxy.
Anyway the three "normal" Crises will try to take over the whole galaxy and can only be fought, no other interactions possible. I almost always get the Contingency due to my penchant for playing as a machine empire. With Crisis Strength set for 2x, the Continengency spawns roaming fleets at 160k power, with its "hub fleets" that sit over its 4 Machine Worlds at a little under 400k.
There are also two midgame "minor" crises that I don't think you have the DLC for: the Great Khan and the Machine Uprising. The Great Khan is the unification of one of the marauder empires (again, don't know if you have the DLC to make these appear in your game) at which point it starts expanding like crazy until the Great Khan dies at which point the empire either becomes "normal" or breaks up into a group of smaller, weaker successor states.
The Machine Uprising happens (or can happen, not sure of the exact mechanics) if you have any policy other than Full AI Rights, and spawns a machine rebellion which takes like half of your inhabited planets and gets some fleets and stuff automatically. The one time I played a Spiritual Empire (which forbids Full AI Rights policy) it happened to me but it was very easy to crush the uprising and deal with the aftereffects.
For the record, I have never actually won a game of Stellaris, but only because
1) I play on Huge galaxies only so it takes a really long time to win
2) I'm still trying to figure out the optimal combination of Crisis Strength setting, lategame start year, and so on to make the game maximally interesting for the longest amount of time possible.
Son of a...
God, Paradox tutorials suck. This literally changes everything.
Yeah, I didn't even really do the tutorial at all. I found the advice about divisions on a forum somewhere. It also said you want to have your troops exercise from the beginning so you can get Army Experience which is spent on reconfiguring your divisions.
Of course, even knowing this I was still having the same problem with not being able to defeat any Soviet divisions on offense so
I'm going to search around to see what I can do to avoid the "only 2 or 3 divisions of my 22-division army actually engage the enemy" problem. If it can be avoided, it's possible that I'm just concentrating too much although I used a 20-division mechanized army as my spearhead when I crushed France so...again,
On Ironman mode as well. I don't know what the point of Fallen Empires are. Even at my height I could probably take on one of their fleets, and they did nothing all game except give me free energy one time. Which is fine, I guess, given that their immense strength would have mopped the floor with me.
