First off let me say that I've been a long time Gal Civ player and have really enjoyed every version of the game and appreciated the effort and the obvious care and attention given to it by the programmers and developers. I cut my teeth on games like these with Master of Orion 2 and consider this game a sort of spiritual successor and one that I've come to enjoy and spent too many hours just sitting in front of the screen feeling that "one more turn" itch.
So with that in mind let me just say that I was really enjoying my first game as the Altarans (I'm usually a Terran/Drengin player) and was well on my way to an influence victory. Had just fought a long tedious serious of wars that cemented my power forever by bringing the Drengin to heel and swallowing up the Torins who were trying to be my friend while sneaking in an Asension victory. During the war the Dread Lords were acting as spoilers and thorns in the side attacking convoys of troop transports, behind the line raids on Mining facilities and starbases so when the Altarans finally won the wars, attention was turned to wiping the filthy Dread Lords from existence.
A long brutal siege that saw many of my battlewagons broken or crippled but finally the Dread lord world was mine. The galactic map was awash in brilliant Altaran Blue. Now I could hunker down, research some more social oriented technologies and enjoy the end game.
Then comes a random event. I usually enjoy these. Some are interesting, some don't effect me and some do but can be handled. But when the Jagged Knife Event occurred I was horrified to see 29 of my 80 colonies gone in one second, fleets kicked out, and influence plunged right down the middle of my empire basically cutting it in two.
I spent endless turns retaking my worlds. My population plummetted as I loaded what seemed like endless hordes onto my troop transports. Not only did these Jagged Knife scum have the awesome power of bypassing my miltary and taking worlds that were above 80% in contentment they also magically took on all my attributes so whereas before my troops were top notch they were now facing an enemy holding on to my worlds with the same soldiering ability and advantages.
It turned into a meat grinder that only made the endgame drag on and on and on. In other words that giant sucking sound I heard was all the fun of a nice long enjoyable game going down the drain. Maybe it's silly to suggest or ask but is there a way for these random events to be suppressed or become keyed to the context of the game. If it is obvious endgame time (only one opponent left and influence ticking at 70%) WHY then generate a random event that now added literally hours of game play I didn't want. After all not only was I retaking worlds that were mine almost since the first few turns but also had to rebuild them from scratch since they sold off or destroyed most of my infrastructure. How was I supposed to remember this was an economy specilalized world, etc? it turned the game into something it usually isn't for me. Tedium.
Also special events should make some kind of sense. To magically create a mini-empire from 1/3 of my worlds, give them my attributes and annhilate infrastructure that has been in place forever is not fun, its not challenging, its merely annoying. If you had an event where a mini-empire is carved from every uncolonized world no matter its condition (i.e. toxic, radiation, etc.) that would make more sense that a magical reshuffling that makes absolutely no sense in-game. There is no reason why this association would ascend to take 29 worlds, many of them in my empire since its founding, kick out military units, overcome armies and steal decades of technology in one turn.
Sorry guys this is one random event that really just did not do it for me. I can't shut off the random events because I enjoy most of them but this one is one of those events that made me want to stop playing an otherwise aswesome session. More care needs to be looked at when crafting the whens and hows these events occur.
Sorry for the length on my first post.
