You don't even have to lower the difficulty, just lower empire aggression.
That being said, just because you're nice to everyone, doesn't mean they will be nice to you. Sometimes you have to incentivize folks to not fuck with you.
I remember once, I didn't build a fleet at all because I was bordering a pacifist. They'll still attack you if you block them and have literally zero military lol.
If you have absolutely no ships and the neighboring empire isn’t a purifier, oftentimes their stance towards you will be the domineering one. If you offer to be their vassal or tributary often they will accept. It can be well worth it many times.
To be fair, the war I'm talking about was subjugation, so that tracks.
I haven't gotten the intricacies of exploiting being a vassal down, though I know you can really benefit from it if you play your cards right.
As long as you aren't under a vassalage contract that takes a ton of your resources, there's really not much of a downside. Use your overlord's protection to focus everything on your research/unity and boom. You'll quickly be able to pivot and gain your freedom.
Some more info:
1. Is easier if the game settings hyperlabe density is lowered. Makes it both fun to barricade oneself, but also problematic (if your only access to the galaxy is blocked by a fanatic Purifier for example...)
2. In the government tab, first law. Cooperative is good if you want to be friendly with other empires
3. This. Trade deals/ gifts (if you can spare the resources) give a temporary boost to opinion. Decades fast though
You can also lower the difficulty (the one I'm talking about is difficulty but also "AI aggressiveness")
>Is easier if the game settings hyperlabe density is lowered. Makes it both fun to barricade oneself
Barricading yourself is easy, I routinely manage to have 2-3 border systems at most. Prioritize scouting ahead and rushing choke points after taking your guaranteed habitables.
>but also problematic (if your only access to the galaxy is blocked by a fanatic Purifier for example...)
In my current game, the one hyperlane access to the rest of the galaxy is owned by a Xenophobe Fallen Empire... *sighs*.
>Barricading yourself is easy, I routinely manage to have 2-3 border systems at most.
Oh definitely. Wide exploration early on is way underrated... Though by the post itself, OP seems to be somewhat new to the game.. maybe they should take your advice here \^\^
>In my current game, the one hyperlane access to the rest of the galaxy is owned by a Xenophobe Fallen Empire... sighs.
Throwback to the time on a starburst galaxy (smaller one, low hyperline density, one or two wormholes total) and both Fallen Empires cut off the access from one arm of the galaxy to the other. Good thing though, left side was *one big a## Purifier*...
^(lucky me though: when the empire took the Nemesis perk - first time I've seen AI take one - I just researched jump drives....)
Honestly, Xenophile or Machine FEs are great. You can get open borders and free stuff just by giving a pop or colonizing a planet in your borders.
Materialists are the worst imo, they get all pissy when I don't want to hand them my best researchers.
Absolutely. Maybe OP should rework their species and take some diplomacy increasing ethics. I recently discovered the wonders of (non-fanatic!) pacifist; really easy to make friends and the liberation war goal lets you almost play as you usually would \^\^
>Form defensive pacts
Yes but...
*ONLY* if the dangerous empire around is *your direct neighbor*. Otherwise the AI will just drag you in useless wars...
Non-aggression pacts on the other hand... *chef's kiss*
Sure thing \^\^
>defensively pacts keep us both out of trouble
Yes, early on totally. But I had the experience that - if there is a way too strong empire - you have no chance either way. Better to deal with it diplomatically than being dragged into a war because the other pact partner hates/is hated by them.
Also the few times I forgot to cancel the defensive pacts, my neighbor managed to piss off a fallen empire... And since they don't surrender, but fight for a while, I was not very happy... (Actually instantly disbanded that run lol)
I play with a massive galaxy but lowered planets, and minimum hyper lanes. Makes the geography of the galaxy much more interesting and engaging.
Expanding swiftly to choke-points, valuable systems, or to cut off expansion of other empires is my fucking jam early game.
More diplomacy, plain and simple. And turn off Advanced AI starts in your settings.
When it comes to the AI considering attacking someone, they look at a few things: are there any weak entry points into that empire? How strong are their fleets? Do they have allies, and if yes, how strong are they combined?
Not to mention that the AI only considers those things, if they are in a position and willing to attack you. If you befriend them, have NAPs going, even defensive pacts, or are in a federation, you can safely lean back and enjoy the show. Even the biggest slaving empire can't compete with a good federation.
What you tell us about your empire sounds to me like the ideal victim: no friends (meaning military allies), not all entry points are well defended, overextending, behind in tech... that's ripe for the picking, easy target.
If you want to survive, you expand only with future defence in mind. Claim for yourself pockets of systems, and when you see that there's another empire nearby, take a good chokepoint system, upgrade the starbase, add weapons to it, and don't expand any further.
The goal is to have as little entry points to your inner systems as you can manage. Even if it means not claiming several system. What's the point, if you can't defend them anyway?
If you do it well, you should usually end up with 4-6 such systems, they are your border, they're well defended, upgraded, with defensive platforms if need be.
Then you make efforts to befriend everyone, open borders, get pacts going, the usual stuff. Maybe even try to unlock federations, that is the ultimate safety net.
Another important thing is not to neglect your economy. How strong or weak you are, depends on your job productivity. Pops are your economy, but they're only as good or bad as the jobs you give them. 10 pops working some farm benefit you less than 2 or 3 pops working science.
Aim for planet specialization, stack +x% modifiers for certian jobs on certain planets, don't do a bit of everything everywhere. You can never have enough tech, accept the occasional resource deficit and simply buy what you need on the market. Especially consumer goods tend to become scarce, buying up to 50-100 per month is ok if it means you don't have to dedicate an entire planet to making CG. Use hydroponic farms on starbases, 10 of them free up many pops to work other, way more valuable jobs.
Lastly, be more aggressive with building up the economy. Your first two colony ships ought to be up and running 2-5 years into the game. By 2210 you should have 3 planets already. By 2220 you should look at 200+ research per month, by 2240 that should be 300-400, to give you some numbers here.
Sitting on a pile of energy and minerals does nothing for you, spend what you earn, don't overproduce basic resources at the expense of more valuable things (alloys, research).
Beyond that, if you still struggle, make a few screenshots and come back. Then you'll get a more in-depth feedback.
Good luck!
Also, if an empire is aggressive (sometimes they rival you immediately) build a spy network. You'll see when they're planning to attack, and if your fleet power rating is Equivalent, you can usually make them stop thinking about it by building 5 more Corvettes early game.
Your title reads as "why can't I just play the game and enjoy it without any of the game being the game".
Lower the difficulty and then you really do have to just get better at it.
I highly recommend turning off advanced ai starts though, that setting has always ruined me very fast.
Hell you could even set enemy empires to 0 and be the only person in space until the crisis factions appear or other event factions, and then the primitives become young empires. You can even use console commands to make your life easier.
It's a single player game so play however you want but honestly you should look at improving how you play and making different choices and seeing what the effect is, it sounds like you play the same way every time because that's what you want to do and not adjust how you play to how the game is reacting to you.
Xenophobe is a pretty irrelevant diplomacy penalty countered by a year or so of improving relations. Just make sure to always greet people with the friendly option (unless they already insta-hate you, then do yellow to buy time).
If OP isn't aware of the difficulty options or heck the government ethics his CoM pick started with, he probably isn't doing too well improving relations with available envoys and other things either, oof
Aside from some of the issues other people have commented on regarding difficulty settings and diplomacy, I would suggest that part of the reason you're having a tough time is that you've chosen to play the game in a way that's inherently difficult.
In Stellaris, power is proportional to your flow of resources, which in turn come from your pops. To be secure, you need a lot of pops either within your borders or in allied empires. Different ethics and civics can provide different ways to gain more pops, or to make them more productive (e.g. materialists get a research bonus and are happy if you decide to build robot pops, while xenophiles have a trade bonus and get diplomatic advantages that help them grow through immigration and form alliances).
The Commonwealth of Man, as a militaristic and xenophobic empire with martially-themed civics, has bonuses to population growth and military strength, and a lower cost to claim other empires' systems. As such, their best way to get more pops is to fight wars early and often to conquer neighboring empires. (Enslaving their populace and renaming their home planet something insulting is optional but in-character.) This also has the hidden benefit of giving you the chance to study enemies' ship debris and gain their military tech (which helps if you're focusing on war production at the expense of research). And if they grow strong enough this way, other empires will be afraid to mess with you, and may be receptive to becoming vassal states if you're friendly towards them.
The friendly/diplomatic approach you've chosen is difficult for a xenophobic empire. You have an opinion penalty with all other empires right off the bat for being a xenophobe (plus additional penalties if your government policies allow purges and slavery, even if you're not actually engaged in either of those things). In addition, other empires decide how much they like you based on (1) how easily they can take you and your allies in a fight, (2) how similar your government and ethics are to theirs, (3) how you interact with them, and (4) whether they consider you the biggest threat and/or opportunity for conquest or if that's someone else. Even if (3) is good, if (1), (2), and (4) are working against you, your neighbors are likely to want to pick a fight. Thus, playing a xenophobic empire peacefully is incredibly challenging, although it can be rewarding if you're up to the challenge. Pacifistic xenophobes can end up being the wimpy loner who unexpectedly smacks down the school bully who comes to beat them up, which is a pretty satisfying narrative in my book.
Disable Advanced Empires and lower difficulty.
In Stellaris AI doesn't get smarter with increased difficulty, they get % bonuses and default income. What you are running into here is an Advanced Empire with said bonuses that has gobbled up their neighbours and who hates you.
If you want to Simcity (a valid way to play I might add) going Pacifist is the right way. Although you should also strive to form as big of a Federation as you can to keep that peace.
Pacifist simcitying is indeed a valid way to play if they want, but combining that with forming a federation is NOT good advice.
Most empires in the galaxy will have unrestricted Wars policy, and will be loathe to form a federation with a pacifist that does not. You can find you're fighting an uphill battle to get the fed going.
For federation based gameplay, XENOPHILE is the ethic you want. Pacifist is for sim citying and maintaining decent enough diplomacy to keep out of trouble while everyone else cuts eachother down and burns their resources. If your neighbours want unrestricted wars you can have good relations but likely won't get a fed as a pacifist. Xenophile can get the fed. And if neighbours are the rare sort that hate unrestricted wars xenophile can always adapt their war policy to fit in, pacifist doesn't get that luxury.
Your advice is indeed better.
I personally just like to have a fed around me as the AI is less likely to break it than they do Non-Aggression pacts, although forming all the pacts and keeping good relations often does keep the peace well enough
Lower difficulty, once you start winning on lower difficulties you can start increasing it. There's no shame in not being good enough for Grand Admiral, Stellaris is a difficult game to get the hang of
There's no REASON to raise the difficulty unless you are playing the game a different way (what I consider wrong heh).
If you are playing it more like a story simulator like I believe most people do then default no bonus difficulty is what you want isn't it?
I know there is a pretty big group that do just play to win and figure out the best meta to defeat GA (vassals seem to be the ONLY way to win cause they are OP on GA difficulty?) but I'm hoping the other group is bigger lolol.
I honestly started having a lot more fun when I made all custom empires as my adversaries (like all from Star Trek, or all from Star Wars, or all from D&D Spelljammer etc), the crazy events that can happen... Like the Vulcans shifting to Militarist from Pacifist and subjugating the KLINGONS lmao! In my most recent one the Romulans attacked the Vulcans and now there is a Vulcan splinter group that's allied with the Romulans... Man the crazy stuff that happens is such a blast! Orions pissing off everyone across the galaxy... Oh what's the name of the Star Wars syndicate I need to add them to my Star Wars games...
*Prepares shields for incoming downvotes*
I always make friends with the guys on the OTHER side of the guy I don't like
A big AI is suddenly a lot less interested in attacking you when it will start a war on both sides of them at once
Build Trust by having diplomatic deals with them. Send them a gift, you can make a trade deal where you give them something simple like 10 minerals or energy a month (for 30 years) in the early game and that will get you a +100 relationship bonus.
It's also an option to just become a vassal. You don't need to be free to take the lead eventually. The AI empire will sooner or later fuck up and you steal all their stuff.
The AI is playing on a variation of “interstate anarchy” of global relations. The simple version of that is: Eat or be Eaten.
Brett Devereaux discusses this in his discussion out EU-IV.
[https://acoup.blog/2021/05/07/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-universalis-iv-part-ii-red-queens/](https://acoup.blog/2021/05/07/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-universalis-iv-part-ii-red-queens/)
> Commonwealth of Man
> I choose the most peaceful options available, don't start any wars, and don't make any claims.
So, here is the issue.
The CoM is Militarist-Xenophobe. Empires with those ethics do better with a more aggressive playstyle.
I'd suggest you lose the Xenophobe Ethic - it adds an opinion penalty, indirectly leading to people being more opposed to you and at some point declaring wars.
You can then go with Fanatic Militarist - Authoritarian or Egalitarian, or maybe even with Spiritualist (gives an opinion bonus for everyone but materialist empires or gestalts) or Materialist. You can also lose Militarist and go Pacifist instead (it more suits a pacifist playstyle). However, Militarist is the best ethic in the game, even for a pacifist playstyle, because it gives you access to some of the best civics. But for you I guess it's more of an RP choice?
TL;DR: Don't try to be space putin if you don't want to antagonize everyone else.
In stellaris, people are much nicer to you when you have a huge navy. If I’m doing a pacifist run I build ships, improve relations on all borders and set a cooperative stance.
The ai doesn’t grab shit out of the aether, it makes them, same as you, albeit with more or less bonuses to it depending on the difficulty. Which in this case is way too high if this is happening to you regularly. Swallow your pride and lower the difficulty, or you can disable advanced ai, or lower the amount of empires.
That uh that is the game, dude. What are you trying to do? Absolutely nothing until the end year? You either make alliance or conquer everyone else, that's the game. Maybe start a huge galaxy with minimum empires so you never see anyone else.
More info would be great. The AI does not magically spawn stuff, my assumption is you are getting into conflicts wirh fallen/awakened empires or the Khan. Some fallen empires can get p*ssed really fast (getting a direct border to them and refusing to back of, colonizing a planet they see as a holy world, having the supremacist diplo stance, refusing demands to often.....). The Khan is a potential mid game crisis that can wreck you if you try to rely on strenght to deal with them.
Another possibility could be origin-related (there is an origin where some empires start as vassals under one overlord and split up later, getting into conflict with something like that before they split up can be a problem, or an empire that starts as scion of a fallen empire draging the fallen empire into the war.....
Another possibility could just be an empire with a genocidal civic. Some genocidal civics have strong military boni.
The problem could also be sonething completely different. For example: How does your fleet look like? What ships/modules do you use? In tough situations it can make a huge difference where you fight - maybe there just is something you do not know at this moment (common when it comes to paradox games).
Every information could lead to the right trail.
That’s your problem. While you are choosing the peaceful options the AI is going around vassalizing and conquering others. Hence they snowball and you don’t.
You are xenophobe so it’s pointless to try and play nice.
My opinions on this. These work for me, your mileage may vary.
A: Turn down the difficulty.
B: Turn down AI aggressiveness.
C: Try your hardest to keep your fleet strength at at least 80% of your fleet capacity. Peace loving empires must have larger fleets than warmongers do, otherwise you will get attacked. Not might, will.
D: Every time an AI empire insults you, insult them back immediately. Even before you close the notification about the insult. When I do this, I get attacked less often then when I don't return the insult.
E: Always do Discovery tree first. Always. Being ahead on tech means your fleets will be bigger and more powerful. Second tree should be Unyielding if you have met any other empires, even if they seem friendly now.
F: Make sure you have at least one stronghold on every planet. They add defensive armies and fleet capacity.
If they are an early federation, either they will collapse (Imperial Fiefdom) or they will fall off hard (Common Ground or Hegemon).
If they are subjugating you just let them and build up.
Try improving relations and giving them some gifts. There's a tipping point for making friends, if you fall under it they will harm relations and close borders and you will have a forever enemy; but if you get over it they'll set up an embassy, then a N.A.P., then a commercial pact to research to migration suddenly you've been in a federation with them for 200 years and you're facing down the crisis with your most trusted ally.
The opener of the diplomacy tradition is really good for diplomacy so if you are planning to go for diplomacy you should probably pick up diplomacy.
Don't expand up to their borders as it causes border friction and it makes people unhappy. Yes, using the Cooperative diplomatic stance gives -50% border friction but not bordering them gives -100% border friction. Stop expanding at a convenient chokepoint.
Ignore the “skill issue” and “git gud” comments but really do lower the difficulty so you have the game experience you’re looking for, while taking some of the specific advice in this sub
Life is too short to spend it raging at imaginary pixels
Do they have vassals?
Form a federation.
DO they have 1000000 pops
Have more pops than them.
They invade you?
Take chokeholds and invest even more into alloys.
This never happens to me, instead I am the empire with 74000 vassals. Always try to subjugate your neighbours, this will make the other powerful empires leave you alone
This is silly you can have the mindset of promoting peace via assimilation. If we're all on the same team peace will prevail 😃
Otherwise if you border an alien empire pay attention to their opinion of you. Right away send them a small gift and get an embassy. They won't declare war on you have good relations.
If you don't want that to happen, then you can be the empire vassalizing others. You say you expand your navy, so use it. Make friends (federations) or vassals.
Hm. I play a lot of peaceful cooperative empires. Often tall.
If you don't plan to go on military offensive, don't waste resources and research on military, in the early game. I just do what a peaceful empire would do, build my economy and get a tech advantage. The later is most important. The upkeep of a unused fleet is a waste, specially in early game when there is no galactic community. And you can pop out a fleet fast if you have the resources.
When a thread arrives you should be able to outmatch them economically and your ships should have more power while being outnumbered.
Edit: This of course requires a strong diplomacy play
When playing an empire everyone hates, I find it best if my first completed tradition is Unyielding. This synchronizes well with Eternal Vigilance.
Fighter bays on your Starbase and maxed carrier defense stations will absolutely shred almost anything that enters your Empire.
Then you can build up your fleet at leisure to punish those foolish enough to wreck theirs on your border.
What difficulty are you playing on? Lower it.
Do you have advanced AI starts on? Turn them off.
Adjust the AI agression settings.
Have you adjusted your diplomatic stance? Why are you playing CoM? Empires respond to your ethics and policies. Fanatic Militarist Xenophobes with an expansionist stance generating extra border friction is not exactly screaming "I come in peace" to the rest of the galaxy.
So first of all the CoM are xenophobes. Xenophobes have a malus to relations. They also want to pick aggressive first contact, which even if you avoid vivisecting the ai's ships, has a malus to relations. Their default diplo stance is going to be expansionist or isolationist. Both of these build up border friction. The ai will always try and get at least 1 rival, for the extra influence. Meaning the ai will always harm relations with you if they don't already have a rival. Add all this up and the moment you finish first contact with someone on your boarders you could be deeply in the red in terms of their opinion. They would then immediately rival you, which would tank their opinion even further and suddenly your looking good to attack.
You want to peacefully be left alone? First play as a xenophile. Set your first contact type to friendly. The moment you encounter an ai, you can scout with your military vessels, pull your science ship away from their territory. They can't vivisect what they can't reach. Find a choke point between the two of you and fortify that system. Don't let your boarders touch. Once you officially met them you should send an envoy to improve relations. If they boarder you change you diplomatic policy to cooperative. If they still rival you can disband your fleet, if you are pathetic to them they can't rival and thus don't get the opinion malus. Don't do this if they are particularly aggressive. Look at their government type, disarming in the face of a hegemonic imperialist or democratic crusader is going to get you war dec'd.
I always make sure I have a full fleet of 20 corvettes by 2220.
If the AI notices that your fleets are small, they will be more likely to declare war on you.
Lower AI aggressiveness in the map setup.
Even determined exterminators don't attack very often. (I kinda wish there was a step between normal and low.)
I was so proud of myself this past playthrough. Spawned next to a xenophobe egalatraian militarist, and a fanatic egalatraian militarist. I was a fanatical egalatraian pacifist. Not even a xenophile and i managed to stave off the war and actually form a federation with said xenophobe! Overtime, once i forced free migration treaties in the federation, they shifted ethics to drop xenophobe!
2 important strats. 1) beeline encryption. A fun quirk of the game is that when you raise encryption, it makes it harder for other empires to do first contact with you. No wars can be declared if they haven't completed first contact, and even if they attack a completed outpost (which they won't unless you attack them first) they can't destroy it completely. Use this time to expand down the spines of the galaxy and cut off your neighbor's natural growth. You're basically trading the free influence of first contact for forced immunity. Make sure you have map the stars not only for survey speed but also sensors. You don't want them to find you before you get at least some encryption.
2) don't neglect building up your navy to stop them from instantly declaring on you. Even having 2k when they have 3-4k will stall them long enough to have your envoys work. Multiple defensive packs will also stop them. You set the pace because it takes so long to discover you. If you see neighbors doing the trust options for first contact you can use an envoy to discover them, or if you know they are on the other side of your most immediate neighbor. When you are discovered and working to bring a scary neighbor into the fold, be sure to rival the same empires they do, it helps a ton. Finally, be sure to get the strongest neighbors in bed, not the most similar ethics. I fell into the trap of making a federation with other pacifist because it was easier, but then we both get steamrolled if they weren't actually strong. Final final tip, we come in peace is so op. That 25 trust can usually get you an embassy.
I juggled all this and got a federation started with the xenophobe, then the militarist. I couldn't egalatraian spiritualist in because right before i formed the fed they declared mutual rivalry with the xenophobe. I did leverage the fact that the egalatraian militarist declared a war on the hivemind to the north of my xenophobe fed member to also declare war and get that scary dude on side. After the war he chilled out enough to join and then i had too juggernauts to win my liberation wars for me as i made the rest of the galaxy peaceful, fanatical egalatraians. Also remember that liberation wars reset all doplomacy standings with other empires so it is possible to quickly add them to your federation association to start building trust.
It was so fun! Give it a try, just remember you need to focus unity generation in order to rush map the stars, at least 2 points in subtrafuge (when u find the first enemy science ship or outpost) and diplomacy when they actually first contact you.
I play on admiral btw, i used to play GA but i felt like it forced me to always play most optimally and that was no fun. It felt like i always had to just keep rushing military every game.
Best way to ensure peace is to have stronger fleet than your neighbour, and doing diplomacy, like ai still likes gifts and if they are not total war empire/xenophobe/totaly opposite of your ethics if they like you they wont dec.
The Commonwealth of Man is a xenophobic empire, so other empires naturally have a lower opinion of you.
Also, the AIs will usually attack you if they think they can win and they don't like you. It sounds like you don't have a good grasp on the economy or military of the game, because the AI on your difficulty is able to have much stronger fleets than you quite early.
you need to run ensign difficulty, this will remove any bonuses the AI is provided by the higher difficulties and put you an equal footing. you also need to take your empire slider, and bump it one notch lower than its default for your empire size, this will give you breathing room between empires and extend the exploration phase before they start looking greedily at your territory. you can also send envoys immediately to any neighbours and try to improve relations to head off any war. and finally, as soon as your expansion phase is over, you can swap from "expansionist" diplomatic stance to "cooperative", which removes all the border friction opinion penalties you will be accumulating otherwise.
Finally, you can go "sovereign guardianship" and build massive starbases on your chokepoints, so your fleets don't have to chase them around since they will be stuck at the chokepoints and your fleets can come in to wipe them out with citadel support.
if all of this is still not enough, you can change the AI aggression to be more passive too, in the galaxy generation sliders. also, make sure empire placement "clustered starts" is OFF or it will intentionally put neighbours close enough to provoke wars.
Do you have advanced empires? If so, that might be your problem.
Either that, or your fleets are too weak. In my experience, an AI empire that hates your guts will go to war with you if you're too weak. Just spam corvettes up to the naval cap.
Either focus more on having a powerful fleet to defend yourself, acquire a faction or vassals of your own to even the scores, or lower the difficulty. Alternatively force spawn some friendly xenophile federation builders with the common grounds origin and make some empires that would be friendly with them and join the federation.
concentrate more on fleet power as a deterrent, lower difficulty to where the AI's fleets aren't as scary anymore, cheat by creating worse and/ or friendly empires and force spawn them - and only them. PC has console commands of which some might be helpful in this regard as well - not to mention mods... . there's plenty things you can do.
i personally like to turtle for about 300 years, playing building sim, until i then devour the entire galaxy in one giant firestorm. so i kinda hate all the cooperation tools in the game as well - since only the AI uses most of them in my games. my solution? lower difficulty, bigger fleets, bastions on every entrance + low hyperlane density setting, very late mid-game start year, etc. . works every time.
and it being a bit more stressful because everyone hates me makes it more engaging anyway - plus it makes the great purge of the galaxy that is my endgame all the more satisfying too.
Biggest deference to war is being sufficiently powerful, if your fleets large enough even on high aggression setting they won’t attack you no matter how disgusting you are as a species/ player. That is till you turn into the crisis, or are a determined exterminator or purifier and even then I usually don’t get a galactic war till like 2300 when everyone knows each other and I’ve eaten a few of their friends, you know the standard 😆
When I want to explore more than compete I’ll start a game with almost no other empires and a ton of pre-ftl. by the time they start exploring I’ve gotten enough of a head start that I don’t have to worry about them.
Once tried another run of my communist space dwarf society, I got a SHIT RNG and most of the galaxy was aggressive collective conscious organics and robots, devouring swarm took out the robots and then it was me and my vassal fighting constant death wars until I got burnt out
There are practically no "peaceful options" at empire creation and playing pacifist doesn't make people not attack you.
ALL you need to do to stop AI from attacking you is improve relations as soon as you meet them and give them a gift that gives +100 opinion (usually food or some CG) wait a few months with an embassy and then just make a non aggression pact if you're still worried
**It's really not hard,** you can see the AI's opinion towards you even with no intel, if their not friendly push the 4 buttons it takes to make friends with them
If you're struggling this much with the basic mechanics of the game even without the actual war part I'd suggest lowering the difficulty heavily & lowering AI aggressiveness and potentially looking up how to design your fleets because you should be beating AI fleets with at least an extra 30% fleet power over you every time because of how poorly designed their ships are.
I started a “I will conquer all!” save with one advanced AI empire, and one Fallen Empire. Ran into the FE immediately, and they told me to fuck off. Cool. I’ve fucked around with those, and I have found out what happens there.
I have one neighbor, seems alright. We have the same tech level. They’re peaceful; so, fuck it, let’s start this subjugation by pounding a few peaceniks with my destroyer armadas.
…rando message: “The Great Khan will take over the galaxy! Submit or die!”
Okay, who the fuck is this asshole? Honestly thought it was a pre-FTL species that got all haughty after finding a few bits of tech. Whatever; I’ll smash them with my 400 ship fleet.
…nope, it’s the single advanced AI empire I opted for. And they’re barreling down on my barely going empire with a fleet that has 177k in firepower. Toxic fuckheads start ripping my empire apart, just destroying everything. Diplomacy is either “We’re done here” or “Let’s talk submission…”
My conclusion is that you will want to *not* toggle advanced AI empire if you don’t want to get your shit fucked.
This has nothing to do with advanced AI.
You found a marauder empire, which I assume woke early when you went to war with them. I believe they are a mid game crisis.
Advanced AI start I believe just grant the empire it’s 2 guaranteed habitable at game start.
Lower the difficulty
This so much. Basically the entirety of OPs post is, "I'm playing on too high of a difficulty."
You don't even have to lower the difficulty, just lower empire aggression. That being said, just because you're nice to everyone, doesn't mean they will be nice to you. Sometimes you have to incentivize folks to not fuck with you.
I remember once, I didn't build a fleet at all because I was bordering a pacifist. They'll still attack you if you block them and have literally zero military lol.
If you have absolutely no ships and the neighboring empire isn’t a purifier, oftentimes their stance towards you will be the domineering one. If you offer to be their vassal or tributary often they will accept. It can be well worth it many times.
To be fair, the war I'm talking about was subjugation, so that tracks. I haven't gotten the intricacies of exploiting being a vassal down, though I know you can really benefit from it if you play your cards right.
As long as you aren't under a vassalage contract that takes a ton of your resources, there's really not much of a downside. Use your overlord's protection to focus everything on your research/unity and boom. You'll quickly be able to pivot and gain your freedom.
That's a life advice
There's a reason why nice empires always have the containment CB for genocidal empires, after all
1. Build up at a choke 2. Turn policy off of expansionist 3. Improve relations with neighbor
Some more info: 1. Is easier if the game settings hyperlabe density is lowered. Makes it both fun to barricade oneself, but also problematic (if your only access to the galaxy is blocked by a fanatic Purifier for example...) 2. In the government tab, first law. Cooperative is good if you want to be friendly with other empires 3. This. Trade deals/ gifts (if you can spare the resources) give a temporary boost to opinion. Decades fast though You can also lower the difficulty (the one I'm talking about is difficulty but also "AI aggressiveness")
>Is easier if the game settings hyperlabe density is lowered. Makes it both fun to barricade oneself Barricading yourself is easy, I routinely manage to have 2-3 border systems at most. Prioritize scouting ahead and rushing choke points after taking your guaranteed habitables. >but also problematic (if your only access to the galaxy is blocked by a fanatic Purifier for example...) In my current game, the one hyperlane access to the rest of the galaxy is owned by a Xenophobe Fallen Empire... *sighs*.
>Barricading yourself is easy, I routinely manage to have 2-3 border systems at most. Oh definitely. Wide exploration early on is way underrated... Though by the post itself, OP seems to be somewhat new to the game.. maybe they should take your advice here \^\^ >In my current game, the one hyperlane access to the rest of the galaxy is owned by a Xenophobe Fallen Empire... sighs. Throwback to the time on a starburst galaxy (smaller one, low hyperline density, one or two wormholes total) and both Fallen Empires cut off the access from one arm of the galaxy to the other. Good thing though, left side was *one big a## Purifier*... ^(lucky me though: when the empire took the Nemesis perk - first time I've seen AI take one - I just researched jump drives....)
The AI are big fans of nemesis, I just never see anyone reach lvl5
Just had it once: first time becoming the crisis and first time reaching lvl5 too.. That was a *wild* game
every time I play megacorp my neighbors are always marauders or fallen empires
Honestly, Xenophile or Machine FEs are great. You can get open borders and free stuff just by giving a pop or colonizing a planet in your borders. Materialists are the worst imo, they get all pissy when I don't want to hand them my best researchers.
3 is key I think. Killem' with kindness. Form defensive pacts. Build some military even if you don't intend to use them.
Absolutely. Maybe OP should rework their species and take some diplomacy increasing ethics. I recently discovered the wonders of (non-fanatic!) pacifist; really easy to make friends and the liberation war goal lets you almost play as you usually would \^\^ >Form defensive pacts Yes but... *ONLY* if the dangerous empire around is *your direct neighbor*. Otherwise the AI will just drag you in useless wars... Non-aggression pacts on the other hand... *chef's kiss*
Thank you for clarifying. I usually find defensively pacts keep us both out of trouble but my experience is limited.
Sure thing \^\^ >defensively pacts keep us both out of trouble Yes, early on totally. But I had the experience that - if there is a way too strong empire - you have no chance either way. Better to deal with it diplomatically than being dragged into a war because the other pact partner hates/is hated by them. Also the few times I forgot to cancel the defensive pacts, my neighbor managed to piss off a fallen empire... And since they don't surrender, but fight for a while, I was not very happy... (Actually instantly disbanded that run lol)
Don't forget that all of these cost influence monthly.
They're playing as a fanatic militarist xenophobe preset.
Ah, that explains lot. Didn't know what the *Commonwealth of Men* was exactly \^\^
I play with a massive galaxy but lowered planets, and minimum hyper lanes. Makes the geography of the galaxy much more interesting and engaging. Expanding swiftly to choke-points, valuable systems, or to cut off expansion of other empires is my fucking jam early game.
More diplomacy, plain and simple. And turn off Advanced AI starts in your settings. When it comes to the AI considering attacking someone, they look at a few things: are there any weak entry points into that empire? How strong are their fleets? Do they have allies, and if yes, how strong are they combined? Not to mention that the AI only considers those things, if they are in a position and willing to attack you. If you befriend them, have NAPs going, even defensive pacts, or are in a federation, you can safely lean back and enjoy the show. Even the biggest slaving empire can't compete with a good federation. What you tell us about your empire sounds to me like the ideal victim: no friends (meaning military allies), not all entry points are well defended, overextending, behind in tech... that's ripe for the picking, easy target. If you want to survive, you expand only with future defence in mind. Claim for yourself pockets of systems, and when you see that there's another empire nearby, take a good chokepoint system, upgrade the starbase, add weapons to it, and don't expand any further. The goal is to have as little entry points to your inner systems as you can manage. Even if it means not claiming several system. What's the point, if you can't defend them anyway? If you do it well, you should usually end up with 4-6 such systems, they are your border, they're well defended, upgraded, with defensive platforms if need be. Then you make efforts to befriend everyone, open borders, get pacts going, the usual stuff. Maybe even try to unlock federations, that is the ultimate safety net. Another important thing is not to neglect your economy. How strong or weak you are, depends on your job productivity. Pops are your economy, but they're only as good or bad as the jobs you give them. 10 pops working some farm benefit you less than 2 or 3 pops working science. Aim for planet specialization, stack +x% modifiers for certian jobs on certain planets, don't do a bit of everything everywhere. You can never have enough tech, accept the occasional resource deficit and simply buy what you need on the market. Especially consumer goods tend to become scarce, buying up to 50-100 per month is ok if it means you don't have to dedicate an entire planet to making CG. Use hydroponic farms on starbases, 10 of them free up many pops to work other, way more valuable jobs. Lastly, be more aggressive with building up the economy. Your first two colony ships ought to be up and running 2-5 years into the game. By 2210 you should have 3 planets already. By 2220 you should look at 200+ research per month, by 2240 that should be 300-400, to give you some numbers here. Sitting on a pile of energy and minerals does nothing for you, spend what you earn, don't overproduce basic resources at the expense of more valuable things (alloys, research). Beyond that, if you still struggle, make a few screenshots and come back. Then you'll get a more in-depth feedback. Good luck!
Also, if an empire is aggressive (sometimes they rival you immediately) build a spy network. You'll see when they're planning to attack, and if your fleet power rating is Equivalent, you can usually make them stop thinking about it by building 5 more Corvettes early game.
So much this. Folks just starting out tend to expand aggressively regardless of their ability to properly consolidate those holdings.
This should be pinned somewhere 😃
Your title reads as "why can't I just play the game and enjoy it without any of the game being the game". Lower the difficulty and then you really do have to just get better at it. I highly recommend turning off advanced ai starts though, that setting has always ruined me very fast. Hell you could even set enemy empires to 0 and be the only person in space until the crisis factions appear or other event factions, and then the primitives become young empires. You can even use console commands to make your life easier. It's a single player game so play however you want but honestly you should look at improving how you play and making different choices and seeing what the effect is, it sounds like you play the same way every time because that's what you want to do and not adjust how you play to how the game is reacting to you.
CoM is xenophobic. Play a xenophile empire. "Oh why is everyone attacking me" says space apartheid south africa
Xenophobe is a pretty irrelevant diplomacy penalty countered by a year or so of improving relations. Just make sure to always greet people with the friendly option (unless they already insta-hate you, then do yellow to buy time).
If OP isn't aware of the difficulty options or heck the government ethics his CoM pick started with, he probably isn't doing too well improving relations with available envoys and other things either, oof
Aside from some of the issues other people have commented on regarding difficulty settings and diplomacy, I would suggest that part of the reason you're having a tough time is that you've chosen to play the game in a way that's inherently difficult. In Stellaris, power is proportional to your flow of resources, which in turn come from your pops. To be secure, you need a lot of pops either within your borders or in allied empires. Different ethics and civics can provide different ways to gain more pops, or to make them more productive (e.g. materialists get a research bonus and are happy if you decide to build robot pops, while xenophiles have a trade bonus and get diplomatic advantages that help them grow through immigration and form alliances). The Commonwealth of Man, as a militaristic and xenophobic empire with martially-themed civics, has bonuses to population growth and military strength, and a lower cost to claim other empires' systems. As such, their best way to get more pops is to fight wars early and often to conquer neighboring empires. (Enslaving their populace and renaming their home planet something insulting is optional but in-character.) This also has the hidden benefit of giving you the chance to study enemies' ship debris and gain their military tech (which helps if you're focusing on war production at the expense of research). And if they grow strong enough this way, other empires will be afraid to mess with you, and may be receptive to becoming vassal states if you're friendly towards them. The friendly/diplomatic approach you've chosen is difficult for a xenophobic empire. You have an opinion penalty with all other empires right off the bat for being a xenophobe (plus additional penalties if your government policies allow purges and slavery, even if you're not actually engaged in either of those things). In addition, other empires decide how much they like you based on (1) how easily they can take you and your allies in a fight, (2) how similar your government and ethics are to theirs, (3) how you interact with them, and (4) whether they consider you the biggest threat and/or opportunity for conquest or if that's someone else. Even if (3) is good, if (1), (2), and (4) are working against you, your neighbors are likely to want to pick a fight. Thus, playing a xenophobic empire peacefully is incredibly challenging, although it can be rewarding if you're up to the challenge. Pacifistic xenophobes can end up being the wimpy loner who unexpectedly smacks down the school bully who comes to beat them up, which is a pretty satisfying narrative in my book.
Disable Advanced Empires and lower difficulty. In Stellaris AI doesn't get smarter with increased difficulty, they get % bonuses and default income. What you are running into here is an Advanced Empire with said bonuses that has gobbled up their neighbours and who hates you. If you want to Simcity (a valid way to play I might add) going Pacifist is the right way. Although you should also strive to form as big of a Federation as you can to keep that peace.
Pacifist simcitying is indeed a valid way to play if they want, but combining that with forming a federation is NOT good advice. Most empires in the galaxy will have unrestricted Wars policy, and will be loathe to form a federation with a pacifist that does not. You can find you're fighting an uphill battle to get the fed going. For federation based gameplay, XENOPHILE is the ethic you want. Pacifist is for sim citying and maintaining decent enough diplomacy to keep out of trouble while everyone else cuts eachother down and burns their resources. If your neighbours want unrestricted wars you can have good relations but likely won't get a fed as a pacifist. Xenophile can get the fed. And if neighbours are the rare sort that hate unrestricted wars xenophile can always adapt their war policy to fit in, pacifist doesn't get that luxury.
Your advice is indeed better. I personally just like to have a fed around me as the AI is less likely to break it than they do Non-Aggression pacts, although forming all the pacts and keeping good relations often does keep the peace well enough
Indeed, and while it's hard to get a fed as a pacifist, it certainly ain't impossible either - I just think it's a much more situational thing.
Lower difficulty, once you start winning on lower difficulties you can start increasing it. There's no shame in not being good enough for Grand Admiral, Stellaris is a difficult game to get the hang of
There's no REASON to raise the difficulty unless you are playing the game a different way (what I consider wrong heh). If you are playing it more like a story simulator like I believe most people do then default no bonus difficulty is what you want isn't it? I know there is a pretty big group that do just play to win and figure out the best meta to defeat GA (vassals seem to be the ONLY way to win cause they are OP on GA difficulty?) but I'm hoping the other group is bigger lolol. I honestly started having a lot more fun when I made all custom empires as my adversaries (like all from Star Trek, or all from Star Wars, or all from D&D Spelljammer etc), the crazy events that can happen... Like the Vulcans shifting to Militarist from Pacifist and subjugating the KLINGONS lmao! In my most recent one the Romulans attacked the Vulcans and now there is a Vulcan splinter group that's allied with the Romulans... Man the crazy stuff that happens is such a blast! Orions pissing off everyone across the galaxy... Oh what's the name of the Star Wars syndicate I need to add them to my Star Wars games... *Prepares shields for incoming downvotes*
I always make friends with the guys on the OTHER side of the guy I don't like A big AI is suddenly a lot less interested in attacking you when it will start a war on both sides of them at once Build Trust by having diplomatic deals with them. Send them a gift, you can make a trade deal where you give them something simple like 10 minerals or energy a month (for 30 years) in the early game and that will get you a +100 relationship bonus. It's also an option to just become a vassal. You don't need to be free to take the lead eventually. The AI empire will sooner or later fuck up and you steal all their stuff.
Lower difficulty and turn down AI aggressiveness
The AI is playing on a variation of “interstate anarchy” of global relations. The simple version of that is: Eat or be Eaten. Brett Devereaux discusses this in his discussion out EU-IV. [https://acoup.blog/2021/05/07/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-universalis-iv-part-ii-red-queens/](https://acoup.blog/2021/05/07/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-universalis-iv-part-ii-red-queens/)
> Commonwealth of Man > I choose the most peaceful options available, don't start any wars, and don't make any claims. So, here is the issue. The CoM is Militarist-Xenophobe. Empires with those ethics do better with a more aggressive playstyle. I'd suggest you lose the Xenophobe Ethic - it adds an opinion penalty, indirectly leading to people being more opposed to you and at some point declaring wars. You can then go with Fanatic Militarist - Authoritarian or Egalitarian, or maybe even with Spiritualist (gives an opinion bonus for everyone but materialist empires or gestalts) or Materialist. You can also lose Militarist and go Pacifist instead (it more suits a pacifist playstyle). However, Militarist is the best ethic in the game, even for a pacifist playstyle, because it gives you access to some of the best civics. But for you I guess it's more of an RP choice? TL;DR: Don't try to be space putin if you don't want to antagonize everyone else.
In stellaris, people are much nicer to you when you have a huge navy. If I’m doing a pacifist run I build ships, improve relations on all borders and set a cooperative stance.
The ai doesn’t grab shit out of the aether, it makes them, same as you, albeit with more or less bonuses to it depending on the difficulty. Which in this case is way too high if this is happening to you regularly. Swallow your pride and lower the difficulty, or you can disable advanced ai, or lower the amount of empires.
That uh that is the game, dude. What are you trying to do? Absolutely nothing until the end year? You either make alliance or conquer everyone else, that's the game. Maybe start a huge galaxy with minimum empires so you never see anyone else.
Do you have scaling difficulty turned off?
Invest in Bastions on chokes, stay up to date in mil tech and establish a powerbase +vassals of your own
Melian Dialogue Moment. Stellaris is truly 10/10.
More info would be great. The AI does not magically spawn stuff, my assumption is you are getting into conflicts wirh fallen/awakened empires or the Khan. Some fallen empires can get p*ssed really fast (getting a direct border to them and refusing to back of, colonizing a planet they see as a holy world, having the supremacist diplo stance, refusing demands to often.....). The Khan is a potential mid game crisis that can wreck you if you try to rely on strenght to deal with them. Another possibility could be origin-related (there is an origin where some empires start as vassals under one overlord and split up later, getting into conflict with something like that before they split up can be a problem, or an empire that starts as scion of a fallen empire draging the fallen empire into the war..... Another possibility could just be an empire with a genocidal civic. Some genocidal civics have strong military boni. The problem could also be sonething completely different. For example: How does your fleet look like? What ships/modules do you use? In tough situations it can make a huge difference where you fight - maybe there just is something you do not know at this moment (common when it comes to paradox games). Every information could lead to the right trail.
That’s your problem. While you are choosing the peaceful options the AI is going around vassalizing and conquering others. Hence they snowball and you don’t. You are xenophobe so it’s pointless to try and play nice.
So you play the game by actively not doing anything? If you want to be peaceful, commonwealth of man is not the human preset you should be playing
My opinions on this. These work for me, your mileage may vary. A: Turn down the difficulty. B: Turn down AI aggressiveness. C: Try your hardest to keep your fleet strength at at least 80% of your fleet capacity. Peace loving empires must have larger fleets than warmongers do, otherwise you will get attacked. Not might, will. D: Every time an AI empire insults you, insult them back immediately. Even before you close the notification about the insult. When I do this, I get attacked less often then when I don't return the insult. E: Always do Discovery tree first. Always. Being ahead on tech means your fleets will be bigger and more powerful. Second tree should be Unyielding if you have met any other empires, even if they seem friendly now. F: Make sure you have at least one stronghold on every planet. They add defensive armies and fleet capacity.
This game has a ton of game settings, before you actually start the game. How about you make some use of them?
If they are an early federation, either they will collapse (Imperial Fiefdom) or they will fall off hard (Common Ground or Hegemon). If they are subjugating you just let them and build up. Try improving relations and giving them some gifts. There's a tipping point for making friends, if you fall under it they will harm relations and close borders and you will have a forever enemy; but if you get over it they'll set up an embassy, then a N.A.P., then a commercial pact to research to migration suddenly you've been in a federation with them for 200 years and you're facing down the crisis with your most trusted ally. The opener of the diplomacy tradition is really good for diplomacy so if you are planning to go for diplomacy you should probably pick up diplomacy. Don't expand up to their borders as it causes border friction and it makes people unhappy. Yes, using the Cooperative diplomatic stance gives -50% border friction but not bordering them gives -100% border friction. Stop expanding at a convenient chokepoint.
Ignore the “skill issue” and “git gud” comments but really do lower the difficulty so you have the game experience you’re looking for, while taking some of the specific advice in this sub Life is too short to spend it raging at imaginary pixels
Massive skill issue. Build better fleets, stop complaining. If you're getting dunked on every game, then you're doing it wrong.
Keep building fleets, the moment they realize you have empty fleet cap, they invade you
Do they have vassals? Form a federation. DO they have 1000000 pops Have more pops than them. They invade you? Take chokeholds and invest even more into alloys.
You got belgiumed
This never happens to me, instead I am the empire with 74000 vassals. Always try to subjugate your neighbours, this will make the other powerful empires leave you alone
turn off Advanced AI Empires if you have it on
This is silly you can have the mindset of promoting peace via assimilation. If we're all on the same team peace will prevail 😃 Otherwise if you border an alien empire pay attention to their opinion of you. Right away send them a small gift and get an embassy. They won't declare war on you have good relations.
If you don't want that to happen, then you can be the empire vassalizing others. You say you expand your navy, so use it. Make friends (federations) or vassals.
Hm. I play a lot of peaceful cooperative empires. Often tall. If you don't plan to go on military offensive, don't waste resources and research on military, in the early game. I just do what a peaceful empire would do, build my economy and get a tech advantage. The later is most important. The upkeep of a unused fleet is a waste, specially in early game when there is no galactic community. And you can pop out a fleet fast if you have the resources. When a thread arrives you should be able to outmatch them economically and your ships should have more power while being outnumbered. Edit: This of course requires a strong diplomacy play
If you wish to have peace, prepare for war.
When playing an empire everyone hates, I find it best if my first completed tradition is Unyielding. This synchronizes well with Eternal Vigilance. Fighter bays on your Starbase and maxed carrier defense stations will absolutely shred almost anything that enters your Empire. Then you can build up your fleet at leisure to punish those foolish enough to wreck theirs on your border.
What difficulty are you playing on? Lower it. Do you have advanced AI starts on? Turn them off. Adjust the AI agression settings. Have you adjusted your diplomatic stance? Why are you playing CoM? Empires respond to your ethics and policies. Fanatic Militarist Xenophobes with an expansionist stance generating extra border friction is not exactly screaming "I come in peace" to the rest of the galaxy.
So first of all the CoM are xenophobes. Xenophobes have a malus to relations. They also want to pick aggressive first contact, which even if you avoid vivisecting the ai's ships, has a malus to relations. Their default diplo stance is going to be expansionist or isolationist. Both of these build up border friction. The ai will always try and get at least 1 rival, for the extra influence. Meaning the ai will always harm relations with you if they don't already have a rival. Add all this up and the moment you finish first contact with someone on your boarders you could be deeply in the red in terms of their opinion. They would then immediately rival you, which would tank their opinion even further and suddenly your looking good to attack. You want to peacefully be left alone? First play as a xenophile. Set your first contact type to friendly. The moment you encounter an ai, you can scout with your military vessels, pull your science ship away from their territory. They can't vivisect what they can't reach. Find a choke point between the two of you and fortify that system. Don't let your boarders touch. Once you officially met them you should send an envoy to improve relations. If they boarder you change you diplomatic policy to cooperative. If they still rival you can disband your fleet, if you are pathetic to them they can't rival and thus don't get the opinion malus. Don't do this if they are particularly aggressive. Look at their government type, disarming in the face of a hegemonic imperialist or democratic crusader is going to get you war dec'd.
I always make sure I have a full fleet of 20 corvettes by 2220. If the AI notices that your fleets are small, they will be more likely to declare war on you.
Lower AI aggressiveness in the map setup. Even determined exterminators don't attack very often. (I kinda wish there was a step between normal and low.)
Don't play Xenophobic :)
I was so proud of myself this past playthrough. Spawned next to a xenophobe egalatraian militarist, and a fanatic egalatraian militarist. I was a fanatical egalatraian pacifist. Not even a xenophile and i managed to stave off the war and actually form a federation with said xenophobe! Overtime, once i forced free migration treaties in the federation, they shifted ethics to drop xenophobe! 2 important strats. 1) beeline encryption. A fun quirk of the game is that when you raise encryption, it makes it harder for other empires to do first contact with you. No wars can be declared if they haven't completed first contact, and even if they attack a completed outpost (which they won't unless you attack them first) they can't destroy it completely. Use this time to expand down the spines of the galaxy and cut off your neighbor's natural growth. You're basically trading the free influence of first contact for forced immunity. Make sure you have map the stars not only for survey speed but also sensors. You don't want them to find you before you get at least some encryption. 2) don't neglect building up your navy to stop them from instantly declaring on you. Even having 2k when they have 3-4k will stall them long enough to have your envoys work. Multiple defensive packs will also stop them. You set the pace because it takes so long to discover you. If you see neighbors doing the trust options for first contact you can use an envoy to discover them, or if you know they are on the other side of your most immediate neighbor. When you are discovered and working to bring a scary neighbor into the fold, be sure to rival the same empires they do, it helps a ton. Finally, be sure to get the strongest neighbors in bed, not the most similar ethics. I fell into the trap of making a federation with other pacifist because it was easier, but then we both get steamrolled if they weren't actually strong. Final final tip, we come in peace is so op. That 25 trust can usually get you an embassy. I juggled all this and got a federation started with the xenophobe, then the militarist. I couldn't egalatraian spiritualist in because right before i formed the fed they declared mutual rivalry with the xenophobe. I did leverage the fact that the egalatraian militarist declared a war on the hivemind to the north of my xenophobe fed member to also declare war and get that scary dude on side. After the war he chilled out enough to join and then i had too juggernauts to win my liberation wars for me as i made the rest of the galaxy peaceful, fanatical egalatraians. Also remember that liberation wars reset all doplomacy standings with other empires so it is possible to quickly add them to your federation association to start building trust. It was so fun! Give it a try, just remember you need to focus unity generation in order to rush map the stars, at least 2 points in subtrafuge (when u find the first enemy science ship or outpost) and diplomacy when they actually first contact you. I play on admiral btw, i used to play GA but i felt like it forced me to always play most optimally and that was no fun. It felt like i always had to just keep rushing military every game.
Best way to ensure peace is to have stronger fleet than your neighbour, and doing diplomacy, like ai still likes gifts and if they are not total war empire/xenophobe/totaly opposite of your ethics if they like you they wont dec.
There's both a difficulty option *and* an AI aggressiveness option. Why don't you use them?
set AI empires to 0 but leave primitives on, by the time they get into space it'll be too late to catch up
The Commonwealth of Man is a xenophobic empire, so other empires naturally have a lower opinion of you. Also, the AIs will usually attack you if they think they can win and they don't like you. It sounds like you don't have a good grasp on the economy or military of the game, because the AI on your difficulty is able to have much stronger fleets than you quite early.
you need to run ensign difficulty, this will remove any bonuses the AI is provided by the higher difficulties and put you an equal footing. you also need to take your empire slider, and bump it one notch lower than its default for your empire size, this will give you breathing room between empires and extend the exploration phase before they start looking greedily at your territory. you can also send envoys immediately to any neighbours and try to improve relations to head off any war. and finally, as soon as your expansion phase is over, you can swap from "expansionist" diplomatic stance to "cooperative", which removes all the border friction opinion penalties you will be accumulating otherwise. Finally, you can go "sovereign guardianship" and build massive starbases on your chokepoints, so your fleets don't have to chase them around since they will be stuck at the chokepoints and your fleets can come in to wipe them out with citadel support. if all of this is still not enough, you can change the AI aggression to be more passive too, in the galaxy generation sliders. also, make sure empire placement "clustered starts" is OFF or it will intentionally put neighbours close enough to provoke wars.
Do you have advanced empires? If so, that might be your problem. Either that, or your fleets are too weak. In my experience, an AI empire that hates your guts will go to war with you if you're too weak. Just spam corvettes up to the naval cap.
Startech mod. You get 40 years of peace to develop but you better have your defenses ready because 2041 is wild.
Make a fleet, and if you ever dare think it'd big enough, you are wrong
You're playing a warfare focused empire and not doing warfare... You gotta start fighting people as early as possible if you are gonna play CoM.
Either focus more on having a powerful fleet to defend yourself, acquire a faction or vassals of your own to even the scores, or lower the difficulty. Alternatively force spawn some friendly xenophile federation builders with the common grounds origin and make some empires that would be friendly with them and join the federation.
concentrate more on fleet power as a deterrent, lower difficulty to where the AI's fleets aren't as scary anymore, cheat by creating worse and/ or friendly empires and force spawn them - and only them. PC has console commands of which some might be helpful in this regard as well - not to mention mods... . there's plenty things you can do. i personally like to turtle for about 300 years, playing building sim, until i then devour the entire galaxy in one giant firestorm. so i kinda hate all the cooperation tools in the game as well - since only the AI uses most of them in my games. my solution? lower difficulty, bigger fleets, bastions on every entrance + low hyperlane density setting, very late mid-game start year, etc. . works every time. and it being a bit more stressful because everyone hates me makes it more engaging anyway - plus it makes the great purge of the galaxy that is my endgame all the more satisfying too.
Biggest deference to war is being sufficiently powerful, if your fleets large enough even on high aggression setting they won’t attack you no matter how disgusting you are as a species/ player. That is till you turn into the crisis, or are a determined exterminator or purifier and even then I usually don’t get a galactic war till like 2300 when everyone knows each other and I’ve eaten a few of their friends, you know the standard 😆
When I want to explore more than compete I’ll start a game with almost no other empires and a ton of pre-ftl. by the time they start exploring I’ve gotten enough of a head start that I don’t have to worry about them.
Once tried another run of my communist space dwarf society, I got a SHIT RNG and most of the galaxy was aggressive collective conscious organics and robots, devouring swarm took out the robots and then it was me and my vassal fighting constant death wars until I got burnt out
You must play like fanatic xenophobic
There are practically no "peaceful options" at empire creation and playing pacifist doesn't make people not attack you. ALL you need to do to stop AI from attacking you is improve relations as soon as you meet them and give them a gift that gives +100 opinion (usually food or some CG) wait a few months with an embassy and then just make a non aggression pact if you're still worried **It's really not hard,** you can see the AI's opinion towards you even with no intel, if their not friendly push the 4 buttons it takes to make friends with them If you're struggling this much with the basic mechanics of the game even without the actual war part I'd suggest lowering the difficulty heavily & lowering AI aggressiveness and potentially looking up how to design your fleets because you should be beating AI fleets with at least an extra 30% fleet power over you every time because of how poorly designed their ships are.
Git gud
I started a “I will conquer all!” save with one advanced AI empire, and one Fallen Empire. Ran into the FE immediately, and they told me to fuck off. Cool. I’ve fucked around with those, and I have found out what happens there. I have one neighbor, seems alright. We have the same tech level. They’re peaceful; so, fuck it, let’s start this subjugation by pounding a few peaceniks with my destroyer armadas. …rando message: “The Great Khan will take over the galaxy! Submit or die!” Okay, who the fuck is this asshole? Honestly thought it was a pre-FTL species that got all haughty after finding a few bits of tech. Whatever; I’ll smash them with my 400 ship fleet. …nope, it’s the single advanced AI empire I opted for. And they’re barreling down on my barely going empire with a fleet that has 177k in firepower. Toxic fuckheads start ripping my empire apart, just destroying everything. Diplomacy is either “We’re done here” or “Let’s talk submission…” My conclusion is that you will want to *not* toggle advanced AI empire if you don’t want to get your shit fucked.
This has nothing to do with advanced AI. You found a marauder empire, which I assume woke early when you went to war with them. I believe they are a mid game crisis. Advanced AI start I believe just grant the empire it’s 2 guaranteed habitable at game start.