Dread Lords in DA

No one should be able to at all, actually. If the AIs can, then that is a bug.

I am trading with the Dreadlords, and they do not attack my planets, asteroid fields, starbases or ships. They are stomping all the minors, and the Altarians at the moment.

If you're still learning the game you should really turn off mega-events. When did they spawn? I've never had them turn up early in a game, and when they turn up late they're kind of pathetic. They start out defenseless, so you just send a transport, invade, and get a free high PQ planet.

I had the same thing happen to me...

I just finished a game, basically winning on influence, as the Terrans. The DL showed up late game, and within a few turns had a ship on their homeworld with a ?? for missile attack. When the ship launched, it had a 850 attack, with no defenses and 117HP. They started after all the other races first, and made peace with them, which I though was odd also, until they got to me. I tried to speak to them, when the message came up that said that "the galaxy was two small for the two of us," and the game responded that a meeting would be setup in a few week, stating that this would happen because of being a supper diplomat.

Regardless to say, the meeting never happened, and with this one ship, they started taking out all my infrastructure, trade routes, starbases, ships, etc. I was playing on a small galaxy, so moving around to all the infrastructure elements, was quite easy for them.

It was later in the game so I built what I thought would be a ship that would destroy this ship, and finish them off for good. I build a large hull, attack 125 beam and with cash I had, bought three of them, launched two and put them in a fleet. Lets just say that things did not go as planned. I lost both ships, but the DL ship was down to 1 HP. So I launch the final ship, and attacked. What happened floored me. Not only did I not destroy the DL ship, but it destroyed my ship, and was completely back to full HP, assume that the XP it received by destroying my three ships, was enough for it to level. At this point I tried reloading the saved game a half dozen times using different tactics using these three ships, against the one DL ship, and every time I failed, so I just continued the game from that point forward.

Needless to say, since the DLs had destroyed all of the other races fleets before getting to me, and the fact that I could not even touch the DLs largest ship, I took to invading the rest of the races as fast as possible, it was a race to the finish, the DLs were taking out my infrastructure, while I took out the other races, and the game was own on influence, with the DLs still running wild.

This was my first game of DA, after playing DL, and I have to admit, the twist in late game of the DLs showing up made it very exciting and actually made me continue playing even after I though I was over the "hump".

That being said, I am torn between not wanting to change a thing, because it forced a change in stratagy late in the game, vs wanting to be able to stop the DLs, using the military that was, IMO, far superior, to anything else in the galaxy, save the DLs super ship.

They clearly are in the game I'm playing. Two or three of the AIs have signed peace treaties with them. In fact, I have a save of the game in which it happens if anyone's interested.

I'm not a newbie to GalCiv, just to DA. I won my first game playing at Normal vs the Drengins and their hordes of ships. In the second game, the first event to happen was a pirate infestation. They stomped everything except the mines of every player in the galaxy. This happened quite early in the game - I was still only producing ships with attack ratings of 1, while the pirates had fleets with attack ratings of over 80. They crushed everything produced. I quickly realized that we were all totally paralyzed, so I set military and social spending to 0, running 100% research. I was able to crank tech until I could build ships to compete with the pirates but before the pirate threat was even eliminated the Dread Lords arrived with their monstrously powerful ships. My best ships at that point had attack ratings around the mid-20s. So, I am currently completely and utterly unable to deal with the DL militarily. In my first attempt to play this game out, the DL took the homeworld of a minor race that I had my eye on and then left it defenseless, so I invaded with my fleet containing a spore ship and took it. Of course, that PO'd them to no end and they whupped me. In the 2nd try I scooted in to grab that world before the DL could get to it, which kept me from having to declare war on them, but they soon declared war on me and again I was history. I suppose I could try not taking that world and see if I could set up some trade with them in the hopes of staying peaceful, but it seems not right that the AIs can sign peace treaties with them while I cannot.

That sounds very similar to stuff I've experienced just in the past week or so. In my last game of DL before purchasing DA, I had a Terran frigate get its hit points re-upped like you describe above. I had spend my whole wad in the area to whittle it down to what should have been 1 HP (fodder for my one remaining fleet), but after the final battle the frigate got an experience boost and a full recharge. Aaargh! I submitted a bug report on that one and Jessie has been working it. Unfortunately I had no save game to submit to reproduce it.

As for the DL in DA, your description sounds very much like what happened in my game, except I am only just barely into mid-game and my ships are nowhere near the power of yours. The DL can swat my best ships away like a bug. This doesn't seem to be in the best interest of good gameplay to me. I didn't mind having a pirate infestation which took out all the infrastructure just prior to the DL showing up, as the pirates are not expansionist. Once you kill their ships they're gone. But the DL takes worlds and operates like an ultra-powerful empire and is simply suppressing all activity of the AIs they were at war with. My last strategy was similar to yours in that, since the DL were taking out all the Yor defenders, I found I could rush build spore ships and grab chunks of their territory very easily. Problem is, when I did that the DL eventually just took all of those new planets away from me as easily as if they were clubbing baby seals. If I can't find a way to stay at peace with them while I build up, this particular game looks completely hopeless.

Have you checked to see if the Dread Lords picked fights with the Pirates!? In a game I played in the DA beta, the pirate event happened just before the Dread Lord event. I was surprised to find out that the Dread Lords and pirates were actually fighting each other. Thats significant because, there would be a chance that any sector that the Dread Lords have moved around in is likely to be clean of pirates, and 'might' provide a safer sector to send your ships to build up your fleets to deal with the pirates, and then worry about the Dread Lords later.

When the Axis of the Nazis and Imperial Japan took over much of the world the Allied nations continued to struggle until they were triumphant!

How bizarre. As I've said, I never get those kind of events until very late in the game (that's based on 11 games of DA played thus far on "tough" difficulty). When the Dread Lords spawn late it's just a "free planet" event, basically, since they don't start out with anything ship wise so they immediately get rolled.

I have no advice for you, but I don't think the Dread Lords are supposed to be spawning too early in the game. What really needs to happen is they should show up in late game lulls and spawn with some ships. That way they'd make for an interesting challenge in late game but couldn't show up and destroy an early game that clearly didn't need to be made any more complicated than it already was.

It was my understanding that mega events were supposed to be triggered by "stagnant" game conditions, I wonder if something you're doing (or not doing) is inadvertently causing them to pop up early? If so it's clearly something that needs correcting.

Except in my case it'd be more like the Axis powers vs Monaco.  

The is a way to talk to the Dread Lords...

I did once. Apparently, before they built alot of ships, they were afraid of the drengin empire (they had an average military but the DL planet was in their influence).

So they contacted me (for reference, the image showing is the icon for the empire) and asked for my help. since I had the diplomacy super ability I was able to take quite a few techs from them just before I began the invasion. So, imo, they were afraid of something and contacted a few of your adversaries and the ai just made peace whatever way they could...

still, if a DEV tells us it's a bug to talk to them/they contact any empire, don't worry about future games, it's not happening to many people

p.s. I hope it's gonna be investigated for a future patch