Slitherine

OK, so I just spent the last 2 days playing on a huge (biggest) map with continents against all 6 factions on easy and quick research, and we are basically in an arms/power race at this point (with me losing since I am Divine Ascension, have a 33% research disadvantage and should probably be attacking people more) and heading towards a good old fashioned stalemate. Also, 2 factions have nukes at this point. Fun!

Question: Does anyone know if the aliens come back in force once a certain stage of the game is reached? I thought that finding the ruins of a previous technological race that got destroyed at the BEGINNING of the game was a bad omen of things to come at the END of the game.

Since the tech tree has 3 "eras" to it, I was assuming (maybe incorrectly) that the game had 3 "eras" as well:

1) Fighting aliens in the first phase, (aliens get eliminated, or so we think)
2) Fighting each other in the second phase (factions jockey for position, fighting to outdo each other, completely forgetting about all those aliens we just killed...)
3) Fighting a resurgence of the aliens AND the other factions in the end game (Aliens return in force, forcing factions to change strategies in order to survive while opening themselves up to attack.)

I mean, in Avatar (and I am assuming that Avatar was somewhat inspirational for this game) the aliens all ganged up on the humans at the end in order to restore balance back to the planet by driving off the destructive human threat. So far, this has not happened in this game.

It would seem that re-introducing the aliens in the later game would not only make for a more interesting research strategy, but would break any stalemate at the end of the game. If you spent all of your research in weapons to fight against the other factions, but didn't plan on Xenomorphs coming back you will be in serious trouble when they do. Also, since the Terra Salvums have an advantage of -50% aggression against Xenomorphs, this could flip the scales in favor of Terra Salvum in the 3rd era, especially if they had a lot of Xenomorph pheropod mods to their units. It would also make up for the -25% attack power lost during the game by giving a definite advantage over the other factions in terms of surviving the alien counter attacks. Once Terra Salvum starts converting aliens to their side, while the other factions can't do this as effectively, all of a sudden the "weakest" faction could become the most powerful. At least that's how I would see it playing out.

Here comes Terra Salvum, and they have a crap load of ticked off aliens with them! (Dear God...)

Anyway, those are just my thoughts.

Yours?

Maybe all of these ideas (see below) are already in the game, and I just haven't run across them yet. If so, please excuse my ignorance! I haven't finished one of these long games yet.
(I still have to try and finish my current, rather long, game...)

I did some more reading on people's feedback for PFC on this and other forums, and several have mentioned "random events" as a way to break stalemates in certain games. I think this is a great idea, so here's what I would add:

1) Alien encounters in the "3rd Era" should be random spawns of new hives.
2) Said hives should only spawn INSIDE colonized territories, destroying whatever industry was on that hex (Cities and hexes with units on them would be excluded. Zerg style attack from below.).
3) The longer the game goes on, the more likely the spawns are to happen. (By turn or by year)
4) The more that the world gets "colonized" the more likely the spawns are to happen. (By map area % colonized)
5) The stronger the faction, the more likely the spawns are to happen in their territory. (By average of combined strength for a faction. My reasoning is that the most powerful faction poses the biggest threat to the aliens.)
6) The weaker the faction, the more numerous and more powerful Xenomorphs would appear, PER HIVE. (My reasoning is that the weakest faction is the easiest target for the aliens to hit, and hit hard.)
7) Aggression for spawned aliens would match aggression levels for the aliens set in the main game menu.
3rd Era random spawns could be "On" or "Off" in the main menu.
9) "Last man standing" could be a victory condition. (Since the humans aren't fighting each other any more, the aliens decide to back off the surviving faction and just leave them alone.)

I'm going to jack up the levels to harder ones and try the game out on those settings...

if anyone knows the answer to these "3rd era" questions let me know. (Please!)

Thanks!

+1. Sort of nostalgic of SMAC Alien Crossfire, the follow on to the original SMAC. Sure could liven things up a bit, and give the original factions a reason to be diplomatically more attuned to the possibilities of alliance which they seem quite reluctant to do now.

LOL! My ignorance is revealed. =) I never played SMAC Alien Crossfire, but sounds good to me.

Devs should check Armageddon DLC for Warlock Master of the Arcane.

That's exactly how late game spawns should work.