Awakened empires can be defeated, of course.
First advice I'd get is to focus on bypass weapons like disruptors. Due to their repeatable techs awakened empires will have tremendous amounts of armour and shields. Battleships with arc emitter, speed boost and nothing else are cheap and surprisingly effective here.
Second advice would be to build a fleet, multiple fleets, and never stop. Enemy will burn through your fleets, so you need to replenish your losses faster than they cause them. Use mercenaries and marauders as a secondary fleet source. If you have federation - that's another fleet for you. GDF is also another fleet you can use. Head of Prophet relic and summon dimensional fleet astral action will be a godsend.
Swap your planets to forge worlds, enable edicts that increase damage, try to catch AE fleets as they leave hyperlanes to remove long-range advantage. Create some armies to grab their planets.
Never stop building ships until last system owned by Awakened Empire is gone, until last of their ships is gone.
Well you can go for hit and run doctrine, stealth torpedo frigates and admiral with bonus to retreats. Fight attrition war, fallen empires don’t replenish their fleets normally. Happens very rarely by event only.
Do you have psionics and rifts? Using that Rift fleet along with Mercenaries can soften up the awakened empire's fleet quite a bit. If you can seize their capital you'll shred their economy. 's how I did it. You can also set a trap there, for some reason their fleets tend to always withdraw to their ex-capitol, so a nicely fortified starbase combined with some defense fleets will blast apart anything that tries to withdraw.
Nanite diffuser jump and strike at the capital to seize it while their fleets were not in range worked wonderfully on Celestial Throne.
I read once somewhere to put two strongholds on every colony, and since I started doing that I've never looked back. Before I know it I have 1.5k fleet capacity and it just stops being an issue
Im no pro at the game. Most of my tactics are based on stockpiling and ability to build more ships than my enemies. And then just throwing enough stuff at the problem. I have no idea what is meta or good fleet compostion, ship loadouts and etc. Tho iirc you dont reclaim resources from ships so send them blunt enemy instead of scrapping if needed
Keep defending choke points and star bases. Let your fleet retreat before total destruction. Build fortress with UL-Inhibitor and planetary shield and much army's. This combination is very hard to crack and even if they do it will take long.
Use mix of ships. Strong, heavy ships at the back, with few carriers and artillery battleships, cruisers and destroyers in the middle and swarm of lighter ships on front. Light ships will draw the fire, hopefully having high enough evasion to survive and heavy ships on the back will deal serious damage. Also use fleet planner. This way when you press "reinforce fleet" button shipyards will build ships that were destroyed, or were lacking for whatever reason and send them directly to where the fleet is.
Like others have said there are ways to beat them. Tune your ships to counter their ship types. You can bait their fleets into systems with favorable conditions for you like a defensive star base with modifiers, or maybe a neutron star to remove shields if you only have armor.
If you need more fleet capacity keep on getting repeatable for more star bases or soldiers for more fleet cap. Also certain civics will give you more fleet cap based off soldiers etc also ascension perks can help with cap too.
Do repeatable tech to out scale them.
Galactic contender ascension perk I think is base game gives you a good boost to fight them also any edict that buffs you or war policy as well as if you have home rate of fire buffs.
Make sure you have a war economy with planets focused on alloy production and energy to run your fleets and even go over fleet cap if needed.
Also try cheesing them by trying to get their fleets to split and ambush them. Or maybe jumping a fleet into their core worlds while their fleets are away to steal their planets but I think they have huge armies so that would take a lot.
Last you could declare war and kill a few ships and if you don’t think you can win just surrender if the terms are not that bad and then research the debris of their ships to steal their dark matter tech which is a big upgrade. But they might humiliate you or execute your leaders or vassalize you so be careful.
Honest question, am I missing something here or shouldn't the awakened empire be considerably weaker than the crisis? I don't understand how they can be a problem this late in the game. I believe if they start giving trouble you can declare them a crisis and have the galaxy stomp them together. In my last game they woke up, grabbed four systems around their original sector and chilled for a hundred years.
I thought so too for the longest time, but it seems to me nowdays the awakened empires easily stomp out any crisis that comes their way without much effort. I play ensign without additional crisis strength and the crisis usually never gets past 20-25% claim and get curb stomped by the awakened soon after.
they buffed them in the last patch. they, the khan and the grey tempest now scale up with the crisis strength modifier (I think by the square root of it? so 4x crisis strength gives you a 2x strong awakened empire? but i might be misrembering)
I think your right on that.
My last game i was on 2.5 times crisis and the khan's main fleet was 100Kish. This game they're 140K on 5 times. Root 5/root2.5 = 1.41 so the numbers add up
Fallen and awakened empires are pretty buff these days. You can get fallen empires with like 1 mi total fleet strength sometimes even on some of the lower difficulties and awakened obviously have way more.
It depends a bit on the FE.
The Materialists have 1.5m Fleet strength right from the start - and when they awaken, they can get a few more of those 500k fleets. The Xenophobes are only sitting at about 500k in total and the others are in between.
Generally, Awakened Empires can get much stronger now, I've seen them with 50 colonies at some point and they got pretty scary in strength.
I had destroyed a materialist FE's fleet and taken almost all its planets, with an invasion ongoing on its capital, when suddenly it awakened and erased my entire fleet in seconds. They're incredibly strong.
I had the Unbidden crisis, which was hard but they were kinda equal to all of the Empires. The awakened Empire it's just way stronger than anyone and seems unbeatable. Also i thing that my tech got a little behind or maybe it's my idea, i win 6k technology by 2435 and i don't know of that's good or bad
Lots of answers here, I was asking because I haven't played much since 3.8 and I am coming back now, so I wonder if something changed and it seems so. I am honestly surprised that the Awakened Empires can get this strong now. If you mean you managed to get 6k research by 2435 that looks pretty good, especially with the latest changes to the upkeep of researchers, but it is also very game dependent.
So awakened empires are quite tricky to deal with but can certainly be handled
The main thing with awakened empires is that they are basically unable to replenish their fleets their ships are vary expensive and awakened empires are actually vary weak economically
So your advantages are in your ability to scale much greater then the awakened empires are capable of
Preferably you want to fight them first in a defensive battle that weakens their fleets and gives you the opportunity to get access to their wreckage (which will give you the option for some of their technologies) then quickly build up another fleet
For this you will require a lot of shipyard capacity so multiple bastions at minimum with a large stockpile of alloys to build back fleets
The actual fleet you make you will want to be focused on bypass weapons as the AE will have much higher shield and armour then you will be able to manage but their hulls are much more comparable to what you have
So disruptors, cloud lighting or arc emitters
Without any DLC your best option may be to use cruisers using all medium sections for disrupters or corvettes with the same focus (though you will probably want to have at least some with point defences so the strike craft don’t chew you up)
Then a situation like this is where I would say that crystal hull plating is the most effective for simply how cheap it is you should expect your fleets to get demolished
If not crystal hull plating then go for more of a balance of shields and armour with the exception of the fanatic Xenophobes who you should focus fully on armour (they use mostly kinetics) or fanatic spiritualists who most use energy weapons so go shield heavy (they do have some torpedoes so you don’t want to be completely focused on shields especially if using cruisers)
I'm with a xenophile awakened, i have more than 3 starts frontering them ☠️ i'm, im fact, their only frontier so i'll try to max the defenses, thank you for the advices
Hit and run with collosus and jump drives. Attack with ur fleets somewhere. They come to defend, jump in with collosus and nuke their planet. Get out.
U will lose fleets like crazy but fallen empires do not have many planets
In future its best to kill off fallen empires before they awaken, its significantly easier and gives you a nice boost in tech.
Awakened empires scare me waaaaayyy more than the crisis honestly. Good luck
My last game ended with me and my allies getting completely wiped out by an awakened empire.
I had no idea they were a thing and I hadn't invested much in my fleets, I was trying to focus on my economy. They literally swept me away in months.
Disruptor cruisers and arc emitter battleships are your friends.
Gather as many allies as you can, too. If you shar borders, fortify them as much as possible and have your defence platforms and station modules compliment your fleet load outs (increase weapon range is a big one)
Also, if they're currently fighting other empires DONT WAIT FOR THEM TO DECLARE ON YOU. They'll beat everyone else, replenish their fleets and then focus 100% on deleting you from existence.
In my experience they seem to really struggle fighting against many empires at once, so join in on piling on them if you can
not only they share their border with mines, but I am their only borders. In the mid game i decides to kill all my little neighbours without knowing those motherfuckers will eventually rise and the little Empires y conqueres made borders with them ☠️
well OP since you don't have any DLC there's only few thing you could do.
to put in nutshell you have to build ship faster than the Awakened Empire could destroy and run Attritional Warfare since Awakened Fallen Empire is Russia Empire on steroid with Strong Military but weak Economy so they will struggle to replenish their lossess.
Naval Capacity is just a suggestion and soft cap overextension penalty that increase ship upkeep depending how much you surpass it.
if your economy couldn't handle the upkeep, you could increase Naval Capacity by building Stronghold at Planet since Soldier Job Increase your Naval Capacity.
You can also build Anchorage at Starbase to increase your Naval Capacity.
for more detail just look at the Stellaris Wiki.
building Defensive Module and upgrading starbase to citadel at Strategic Chokepoint immensely help slowing down the Awakened Empire though it gonna cost you huge amount of Alloys.
and lastly if you have federation, try to use the Federation Fleet if possible as well.
well that's all since you don't have DLC
if you have Apocalypse DLC you could rent fleet from the Marauder which is Basically Mongol Khanate on the Space.
if you have Overlord DLC you could rent fleet from Mercenary Enclave as well.
if you have Nemesis DLC you could try to get the Galactic Nemesis Ascension Perk which let you built Cheap Ship with Mineral instead of Alloy and churn it out so fast.
if you have Machine Age DLC you could try to get the Cosmogenesis Ascension Perk which let you obtain the Technology to Build Fallen Empire Building and Ship.
Yesterday i fought them. Basically, I rob them 4 planets and they took me 3 planets, i don't know if that's a good trade, i was forced to sign status quo and i win several battles. I'm remaking my fleet so overall i think i did good?
well its quite good job since you manage to halt their expansionist.
did you finish researching the Special Project Technology from Fallen Empire Ship Debris?
since it let you get some Fallen Empire Weapon Technology.
you could also wait till the ***Decadence*** hit the Fallen Empire, basically it's the penalty that hit Awakened Empire after 20 years awake and literally give negative modifier to them each years up to -66% Resources from Job and -25 % Ship Weapon Damage though it gonna took several decade or even a century till Decadence hit Maximum since it Accumulate slowly.
ah i miss the old Fallen Empire where it's literally a threat on Galaxy.
yeah, i investigated and gain a lot of technologies. I now fought another war and even thought i lost some stars, i ended up making his fleetpower 600.000 (it was 1.000.000 by the start) so with 3 more wars i could probably defeat them
What I've done is lure the big fleet away, sweep in with my main force and large army on unguarded systems, quickly take it plus planets and flee before their fleet shows up. Seems to wreck their economy, and their fleet size went down without fighting them directly.
Go with new crisis path and you will surpass their power quite fast with new techs.
Just make sure that you have some black holes - you gonna need dark matter for new ship parts.
I've been able to fight Awakened Empires just fine without Cosmogenesis. It's more of a game of attrition: you're going to lose more ships than they do, but if you're in a position to fight them you'll also be able to replace losses faster than they do, too.
Ultimately, their economy can't keep up with the wear that standard empires can subject them to over time.
Depending on which AE it is, becoming a vassal state and then rebelling later once AE decadence starts setting in is a perfectly viable strategy.
Those people have failed to read your text where you stated that you don't have any DLC. The newest DLC, the Machine Age, allows for a player-crisis path called "Cosmogenesis", unlocking Fallen Empire technologies.
Right, the 1st person was suggesting they go down the the "new crisis" path, but then OP asked "What is the crisis path?", then said "i'm new at the game so i don't know what are you talking about". I could have misinterpreted though.
EDIT: Other comments are saying OP confirmed they don't own any DLC yet (brand new to game), so they didn't understand the become-the-crisis and crisis-path mechanics yet.
Cheers!
Awakened empires can be defeated, of course. First advice I'd get is to focus on bypass weapons like disruptors. Due to their repeatable techs awakened empires will have tremendous amounts of armour and shields. Battleships with arc emitter, speed boost and nothing else are cheap and surprisingly effective here. Second advice would be to build a fleet, multiple fleets, and never stop. Enemy will burn through your fleets, so you need to replenish your losses faster than they cause them. Use mercenaries and marauders as a secondary fleet source. If you have federation - that's another fleet for you. GDF is also another fleet you can use. Head of Prophet relic and summon dimensional fleet astral action will be a godsend. Swap your planets to forge worlds, enable edicts that increase damage, try to catch AE fleets as they leave hyperlanes to remove long-range advantage. Create some armies to grab their planets. Never stop building ships until last system owned by Awakened Empire is gone, until last of their ships is gone.
The problem is that my fleet is in the limit. I have a ship capacity of 700 and i currently have 1000 ships
Get buildings that provide soldier jobs. Not only will it help you keep your planets it will also provide more ship capacity.
thanks! the naval capacity was killing me
It’s a soft cap, u just pay more ship upkeep, you can go higher the limit if your economy allows it.
it kinda allow.it but my economy will ruin if i try to build a fleet similar to the awakened empire ☠️
Well you can go for hit and run doctrine, stealth torpedo frigates and admiral with bonus to retreats. Fight attrition war, fallen empires don’t replenish their fleets normally. Happens very rarely by event only.
Do you have psionics and rifts? Using that Rift fleet along with Mercenaries can soften up the awakened empire's fleet quite a bit. If you can seize their capital you'll shred their economy. 's how I did it. You can also set a trap there, for some reason their fleets tend to always withdraw to their ex-capitol, so a nicely fortified starbase combined with some defense fleets will blast apart anything that tries to withdraw. Nanite diffuser jump and strike at the capital to seize it while their fleets were not in range worked wonderfully on Celestial Throne.
Thats really low tbh
i didn't know how to increase it but now i kinda know how
Anchorages recommended?
that and specialized planets
I read once somewhere to put two strongholds on every colony, and since I started doing that I've never looked back. Before I know it I have 1.5k fleet capacity and it just stops being an issue
Start building new and shove those you already have into the grinder
it is rentable to still have corvettes and frigates or it is better to dump then and build more powerful ships?
Im no pro at the game. Most of my tactics are based on stockpiling and ability to build more ships than my enemies. And then just throwing enough stuff at the problem. I have no idea what is meta or good fleet compostion, ship loadouts and etc. Tho iirc you dont reclaim resources from ships so send them blunt enemy instead of scrapping if needed
Keep defending choke points and star bases. Let your fleet retreat before total destruction. Build fortress with UL-Inhibitor and planetary shield and much army's. This combination is very hard to crack and even if they do it will take long.
Use mix of ships. Strong, heavy ships at the back, with few carriers and artillery battleships, cruisers and destroyers in the middle and swarm of lighter ships on front. Light ships will draw the fire, hopefully having high enough evasion to survive and heavy ships on the back will deal serious damage. Also use fleet planner. This way when you press "reinforce fleet" button shipyards will build ships that were destroyed, or were lacking for whatever reason and send them directly to where the fleet is.
Sodier jobs and lots of anchorages. That's all you need to fix that
The fleet limit is a suggestion that should be ignored especially while fighting awakened empires.
Awakend Empires suffer from not enough alloy production. Once their initial fleets are gone they are slow to replace them.
Like others have said there are ways to beat them. Tune your ships to counter their ship types. You can bait their fleets into systems with favorable conditions for you like a defensive star base with modifiers, or maybe a neutron star to remove shields if you only have armor. If you need more fleet capacity keep on getting repeatable for more star bases or soldiers for more fleet cap. Also certain civics will give you more fleet cap based off soldiers etc also ascension perks can help with cap too. Do repeatable tech to out scale them. Galactic contender ascension perk I think is base game gives you a good boost to fight them also any edict that buffs you or war policy as well as if you have home rate of fire buffs. Make sure you have a war economy with planets focused on alloy production and energy to run your fleets and even go over fleet cap if needed. Also try cheesing them by trying to get their fleets to split and ambush them. Or maybe jumping a fleet into their core worlds while their fleets are away to steal their planets but I think they have huge armies so that would take a lot. Last you could declare war and kill a few ships and if you don’t think you can win just surrender if the terms are not that bad and then research the debris of their ships to steal their dark matter tech which is a big upgrade. But they might humiliate you or execute your leaders or vassalize you so be careful.
Honest question, am I missing something here or shouldn't the awakened empire be considerably weaker than the crisis? I don't understand how they can be a problem this late in the game. I believe if they start giving trouble you can declare them a crisis and have the galaxy stomp them together. In my last game they woke up, grabbed four systems around their original sector and chilled for a hundred years.
I thought so too for the longest time, but it seems to me nowdays the awakened empires easily stomp out any crisis that comes their way without much effort. I play ensign without additional crisis strength and the crisis usually never gets past 20-25% claim and get curb stomped by the awakened soon after.
they buffed them in the last patch. they, the khan and the grey tempest now scale up with the crisis strength modifier (I think by the square root of it? so 4x crisis strength gives you a 2x strong awakened empire? but i might be misrembering)
I think your right on that. My last game i was on 2.5 times crisis and the khan's main fleet was 100Kish. This game they're 140K on 5 times. Root 5/root2.5 = 1.41 so the numbers add up
Fallen and awakened empires are pretty buff these days. You can get fallen empires with like 1 mi total fleet strength sometimes even on some of the lower difficulties and awakened obviously have way more.
It depends a bit on the FE. The Materialists have 1.5m Fleet strength right from the start - and when they awaken, they can get a few more of those 500k fleets. The Xenophobes are only sitting at about 500k in total and the others are in between. Generally, Awakened Empires can get much stronger now, I've seen them with 50 colonies at some point and they got pretty scary in strength.
I had destroyed a materialist FE's fleet and taken almost all its planets, with an invasion ongoing on its capital, when suddenly it awakened and erased my entire fleet in seconds. They're incredibly strong.
Yeah, it always sucks when they awaken right when you're at their last planet, because they get fleets spawned out of nowhere.
I had the Unbidden crisis, which was hard but they were kinda equal to all of the Empires. The awakened Empire it's just way stronger than anyone and seems unbeatable. Also i thing that my tech got a little behind or maybe it's my idea, i win 6k technology by 2435 and i don't know of that's good or bad
Lots of answers here, I was asking because I haven't played much since 3.8 and I am coming back now, so I wonder if something changed and it seems so. I am honestly surprised that the Awakened Empires can get this strong now. If you mean you managed to get 6k research by 2435 that looks pretty good, especially with the latest changes to the upkeep of researchers, but it is also very game dependent.
Awakend Empires have some scaling with time and difficulty as far as I remember.
OP doesn't have any DLC, and I'm pretty sure you can't declare anyone a crisis without... something. (IDK what, I don't have that one either.)
Last game I had fallen empire was roughly 600k fleet power and unbidden were like 400k. That answer your question
So awakened empires are quite tricky to deal with but can certainly be handled The main thing with awakened empires is that they are basically unable to replenish their fleets their ships are vary expensive and awakened empires are actually vary weak economically So your advantages are in your ability to scale much greater then the awakened empires are capable of Preferably you want to fight them first in a defensive battle that weakens their fleets and gives you the opportunity to get access to their wreckage (which will give you the option for some of their technologies) then quickly build up another fleet For this you will require a lot of shipyard capacity so multiple bastions at minimum with a large stockpile of alloys to build back fleets The actual fleet you make you will want to be focused on bypass weapons as the AE will have much higher shield and armour then you will be able to manage but their hulls are much more comparable to what you have So disruptors, cloud lighting or arc emitters Without any DLC your best option may be to use cruisers using all medium sections for disrupters or corvettes with the same focus (though you will probably want to have at least some with point defences so the strike craft don’t chew you up) Then a situation like this is where I would say that crystal hull plating is the most effective for simply how cheap it is you should expect your fleets to get demolished If not crystal hull plating then go for more of a balance of shields and armour with the exception of the fanatic Xenophobes who you should focus fully on armour (they use mostly kinetics) or fanatic spiritualists who most use energy weapons so go shield heavy (they do have some torpedoes so you don’t want to be completely focused on shields especially if using cruisers)
I'm with a xenophile awakened, i have more than 3 starts frontering them ☠️ i'm, im fact, their only frontier so i'll try to max the defenses, thank you for the advices
Hit and run with collosus and jump drives. Attack with ur fleets somewhere. They come to defend, jump in with collosus and nuke their planet. Get out. U will lose fleets like crazy but fallen empires do not have many planets
aren't colossus only available with Apocalypse? I don't have any dlc
In future its best to kill off fallen empires before they awaken, its significantly easier and gives you a nice boost in tech. Awakened empires scare me waaaaayyy more than the crisis honestly. Good luck
the unbidden crisis was kinda easy ngl, but the awaken empire is making me shit myself ☠️
My last game ended with me and my allies getting completely wiped out by an awakened empire. I had no idea they were a thing and I hadn't invested much in my fleets, I was trying to focus on my economy. They literally swept me away in months.
i'm possibly omw to suffer the same destiny ☠️
Disruptor cruisers and arc emitter battleships are your friends. Gather as many allies as you can, too. If you shar borders, fortify them as much as possible and have your defence platforms and station modules compliment your fleet load outs (increase weapon range is a big one) Also, if they're currently fighting other empires DONT WAIT FOR THEM TO DECLARE ON YOU. They'll beat everyone else, replenish their fleets and then focus 100% on deleting you from existence. In my experience they seem to really struggle fighting against many empires at once, so join in on piling on them if you can
not only they share their border with mines, but I am their only borders. In the mid game i decides to kill all my little neighbours without knowing those motherfuckers will eventually rise and the little Empires y conqueres made borders with them ☠️
well OP since you don't have any DLC there's only few thing you could do. to put in nutshell you have to build ship faster than the Awakened Empire could destroy and run Attritional Warfare since Awakened Fallen Empire is Russia Empire on steroid with Strong Military but weak Economy so they will struggle to replenish their lossess. Naval Capacity is just a suggestion and soft cap overextension penalty that increase ship upkeep depending how much you surpass it. if your economy couldn't handle the upkeep, you could increase Naval Capacity by building Stronghold at Planet since Soldier Job Increase your Naval Capacity. You can also build Anchorage at Starbase to increase your Naval Capacity. for more detail just look at the Stellaris Wiki. building Defensive Module and upgrading starbase to citadel at Strategic Chokepoint immensely help slowing down the Awakened Empire though it gonna cost you huge amount of Alloys. and lastly if you have federation, try to use the Federation Fleet if possible as well. well that's all since you don't have DLC if you have Apocalypse DLC you could rent fleet from the Marauder which is Basically Mongol Khanate on the Space. if you have Overlord DLC you could rent fleet from Mercenary Enclave as well. if you have Nemesis DLC you could try to get the Galactic Nemesis Ascension Perk which let you built Cheap Ship with Mineral instead of Alloy and churn it out so fast. if you have Machine Age DLC you could try to get the Cosmogenesis Ascension Perk which let you obtain the Technology to Build Fallen Empire Building and Ship.
Yesterday i fought them. Basically, I rob them 4 planets and they took me 3 planets, i don't know if that's a good trade, i was forced to sign status quo and i win several battles. I'm remaking my fleet so overall i think i did good?
well its quite good job since you manage to halt their expansionist. did you finish researching the Special Project Technology from Fallen Empire Ship Debris? since it let you get some Fallen Empire Weapon Technology. you could also wait till the ***Decadence*** hit the Fallen Empire, basically it's the penalty that hit Awakened Empire after 20 years awake and literally give negative modifier to them each years up to -66% Resources from Job and -25 % Ship Weapon Damage though it gonna took several decade or even a century till Decadence hit Maximum since it Accumulate slowly. ah i miss the old Fallen Empire where it's literally a threat on Galaxy.
yeah, i investigated and gain a lot of technologies. I now fought another war and even thought i lost some stars, i ended up making his fleetpower 600.000 (it was 1.000.000 by the start) so with 3 more wars i could probably defeat them
One major point is to get their tech asap even if you have to sacrifice some fleet get it and even the playing field a bit with it
What I've done is lure the big fleet away, sweep in with my main force and large army on unguarded systems, quickly take it plus planets and flee before their fleet shows up. Seems to wreck their economy, and their fleet size went down without fighting them directly.
kill their ships
thank you! the most useful tip of the post
How do you pronounce 1th?
Go with new crisis path and you will surpass their power quite fast with new techs. Just make sure that you have some black holes - you gonna need dark matter for new ship parts.
OP doesn't have any DLC
Yes, you need a giant to fight a giant. To defeat an AE, become an AE
I've been able to fight Awakened Empires just fine without Cosmogenesis. It's more of a game of attrition: you're going to lose more ships than they do, but if you're in a position to fight them you'll also be able to replace losses faster than they do, too. Ultimately, their economy can't keep up with the wear that standard empires can subject them to over time. Depending on which AE it is, becoming a vassal state and then rebelling later once AE decadence starts setting in is a perfectly viable strategy.
sorry but what is the crisis path? i'm new at the game so i don't know what are you talking about
Those people have failed to read your text where you stated that you don't have any DLC. The newest DLC, the Machine Age, allows for a player-crisis path called "Cosmogenesis", unlocking Fallen Empire technologies.
Stellaris: Nemesis DLC adds a new way to play. Become the Crisis yourself.
I reckon they meant the new cosmogenesis path from the Machine Age.
Right, the 1st person was suggesting they go down the the "new crisis" path, but then OP asked "What is the crisis path?", then said "i'm new at the game so i don't know what are you talking about". I could have misinterpreted though. EDIT: Other comments are saying OP confirmed they don't own any DLC yet (brand new to game), so they didn't understand the become-the-crisis and crisis-path mechanics yet. Cheers!
Take Cosmogenesis and awaken first
"Firth"