u/Abhorsensr

I know I could just be getting extremely unlucky but the past 8-12 games I've started I've been sandwiched between 1-3 hive minds or aggressive machine empires and I'm only playing on the second difficulty with advanced neighbors off and scaling difficulty set to mid game. Haven't had a single game get past mid game since the update that changed fleets to be smaller and the only thing I've really changed lately has been that I started playing medium instead of large for performance. The empires I'm playing atm have been custom made and are admittedly not very powerful, one is an archaeology build with pretty neutral politics (not xenophile/phobes and pretty agreeable policies like having open borders and spending time improving relations) and the other is a psionic slaver empire I made based on the og sith/rakata from Star wars legends. Obviously maintaining friends as the evil empire is more difficult but it's doable and doesn't seem to matter, I'm still consistently either getting stomped early or just as I'm gaining steam I get ping ponged between defensive wars with the various neighboring gestalt consciousnesses around me until the economy death spirals because I've had to leverage so many resources on the market to buy alloys or rare resources. I'm utilizing choke points and making fortresses on my borders but that only kind of works as a deterrent because it's also a massive drain on my economy early on which just leaves me vulnerable. I have also followed the advice of some YouTuber (either ep30 or aspec can't remember which) and been taking commerce first and the trade is useful but I might switch back to taking either discovery, expansion, or harmony as my go to first pick because I'm hitting a wall here. Anyone else experiencing this or am I just hitting an unlikely bit of probability and getting stuck with aggressive and large empires that can consistently out produce and out tech me every new game? Should I just zerg rush the first hive mind or machine empire who spawns next to me no matter what to guarantee I don't have to fight them when they have 1.5-2X my fleet power after the first 50 years, is that even possible with a tier 1 or 2 fleet of 10-18 corvettes? Should I just treat this like a rogue like and restart every time I start a game with less than ideal starting conditions?