Idea: Apocalyptic near endgame mega-events

Thank you Stardock, for the great game! So far I'm good ways through my first game on an immense map. The Krynn have attacked me without provocation! Fortunately, my ships outclass theirs.

I wanted to suggest an idea perhaps for future expansions, if this hasn't been considered already. How about apocalyptic mega-events that happen at latter stages in the game, just to make things interesting? I supposed I'm somewhat inspired by the Civ 4 mod, Fall From the Heaven II scenario. Here are some ideas:

A "Return of the Dreadlords" scenario or some other powerful malevolent alien race that arrives through an artificial wormhole. The only way to stop this menace would be to unite all the alien races and somehow close the wormhole. Perhaps some clues or harbingers of doom of what's to come can be included too.

An "invasion of the bodysnatchers" scenario. Some parasitic alien species takes control of several colonies and fleets from each race and rapidly expands throughout the galaxy (perhaps the Xor might be immune to this). Again, facing this menace would require unity from all races. It need not be a parasitic alien doing this. It could also be a cybernetic/robotic takeover (e.g. the Borg or the Cylons) or some doomsday "New Order" cult that captures the hearts and minds of a significant amount of the alien population.

Any thoughts?

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Yes we do need space monsters and advance races popping in on the scene. They had this in GC2 and it was great but like in GC2 it could happen at any time in the game. Which I liked.

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I have to agree with this.

I can remember being only 2 planets away from winning a huge map in GC2 and the Jagged Knife tuned up and stole about a third of my colonies including a couple of mega production centres and then started knocking out huge great ships in about 3-4 turns a pop.

Was harder to sort them out than the rest of the galaxy combined had been (of course because of all MY loverly worlds and techs).

But it was epic.

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The space monster idea sounds interesting. How about this? An extremely powerful alien space monster or alien probe (like the "Vger" probe in Star Trek I perhaps) appears and starts randomly devouring planets and solar systems. Attacking it with fleets will only slow it down a little. The only way to stop it is to construct a device which is assembled from several ancient Precursor artifacts. Legend has it that the Precursors used the device to defeat the threat before. Afterwards, they disassembled the device and hid the parts throughout the galaxy so that its destructive power won't fall into the wrong hands someday.

The challenge is to find the artifacts, secure their control, and construct the device. When the artifacts are found in other race's territories, you'd either have to build alliances/agreements or use outright military conquest to acquire them. To makes things more nasty, perhaps a doomsday cult could emerge among colonies in various races that worship the space monster/probe and welcome an apocalyptic end, thinking of it as kind of an ascension (kind of like the Heaven's Gate UFO cult, I suppose). This cult will try to control planets, fleets and thwart your attempts to acquire the artifacts.

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