Unbidden seem really weak (2024)

So these guys popped up on the other side of the galaxy about 120 years into my game. Had no way of getting there so I decided to simply consolidate power on my side, purge some vile xenos and send my divine armada to purge the extradimensional heretics when I'm ready.

The unbidden spread at a fairly alarming rate for the first few decades but stopped when controlling about 30% of the other side of the galaxy about 180 years in.

210 years into the game i was finally done "enlightening" the xenos on my side of the galaxy and sent a 120k strength armada with about 50k vassal forces in tow to do some proper purging. After jumping past a few sectors containing 2k strength stations that didn't seem to do anything i finally reached the portal. It was defended by a laughable 20k force and a couple of those 2k stations i saw before.

Steamrolled everything with next to no losses and "saved" the galaxy.

Seemed a bit anti climactic. ^^

I suppose they can't make them too broken in case they pop up next to a player 120 years into the game, but these guys had been reking plebs for close to a century and had next to nothing to show for it. They may have more forces purging plebs in other systems but at this point it's just a mop up job, considering they can no longer get new ships.

They spawned in one of my games about 100 years in, I had barely the fleet to counter them as they were on my door step. 5 fleets of 17k stacks against my puny fleet of 30k...

Needless to say my isolationist policy worked against me and my planets fell one by one.

Spawned after 140 years. I was unable to reach their portal because it was a middle of a federation. I finally find a way to reach them and my 25k fleet and 5k vassals were welcomed by four or five 17k stacks. We were crushed.
Took me 30 years to find a strategy to reach their portal and destroyed it. They crush 1/5 of the galaxy and left a big wall between me and other empires.

Fairly challenging for me.

I thinks difficulty is all about spawn point and roleplay to not DoW everything on the path to portal.

doomdude1 said:

The Unbidden spawn with about 60k ships in the first system they appear in. After that, when they "conquer" a system they proceed to spawn a 19k fleet in it and expand further.

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Not sure where all those fleets went in that case. Either they disappeared or they are sitting around various systems and ignoring the fact I cut off their only way of reinforcing their numbers.

I agree to an extent. I have only had them appear in two of my games and each time I felt underwhelmed.

The first time they spawned halfway across the galaxy but never expanded outside their starting area, at least that is what I think happened. I'm 90% certain that they spawned inside / behind a Fallen Empire I hadn't met. I had no visual on the system itself and they spent the next 200 or so years doing nothing. An enclave popped up here and there across the galaxy (somehow) but never more than a single system. I never saw a fleet and the rest of the galaxy was unconcerned. They appeared in ~2360ish.

The second time was a bit more tense, but still felt like a dud. The Unbidden popped up right in the middle of my Empire while I was in the midst of upgrading my fleet and unable to respond. This time they expanded a bit and ate some of my colonies but when I finally finished the fleet refits my 60k stack slaughtered them, barely taking any losses. Even when I engaged multiple fleets at once I didn't have problems. I might have inadvertently hard-countered them with destroyers armed with kinetic artillery (a happy accident of the ship designer). Seriously long range weapons seem to wreak them. Regardless I never felt threatened. This took place in ~2330ish and my tech was pretty decent, although I wasn't the one with jump drives who summoned them (dang vassals summoning inter-dimensional demons and then not helping me).

TogoBestWaifu said:

Not sure where all those fleets went in that case. Either they disappeared or they are sitting around various systems and ignoring the fact I cut off their only way of reinforcing their numbers.

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They react when you attack their portal, but in my game I had a small Unbidden world, so they might not react in time in larger ones. My guess is, since it's that far into the game, that they managed to grind to a standstill with the surrounding empires and you just came in to steal the day.

Simple Strategy is to have 3 fleets, have 1 enter the system opposite to where their portal is and stay on passive mode while their fleets move to engage you, after they are about to be engaged bring in your second fleet to buff your 1st fleet, after all the fleets are in combat bring your 3rd fleet closest to where the portal is, while your 1st and 2nd fleets take their doom stacks, your 3rd fleet is bombing their portal.

My only failure was that I took to long planning this and they ate the life on a pre-ftl world.

LDRevolution said:

Simple Strategy is to have 3 fleets, have 1 enter the system opposite to where their portal is and stay on passive mode while their fleets move to engage you, after they are about to be engaged bring in your second fleet to buff your 1st fleet, after all the fleets are in combat bring your 3rd fleet closest to where the portal is, while your 1st and 2nd fleets take their doom stacks, your 3rd fleet is bombing their portal.

My only failure was that I took to long planning this and they ate the life on a pre-ftl world.

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Sometimes the simple solution is the right one.

Unbidden spawned right at the edge of my empire about 120-130 years in. They defeated one of my AI-designed Battleship fleets (with useless bombers) and took a colony. I upgraded my Battleships with torpedoes and smacked them into oblivion in a single battle. Would have used lasers but since torps ignore shields and the Unbidden only have shields, I think it was a good bet.

Now I am so paranoid I design every frickin ship myself.