9/10 game, but have a couple questions.
Just finished my first run (I died), wanted to share my first experiences.
I got the game when it was on sale, my friend told me it was kinda like civ 6 but not turn-based, since I had like 1000 hours in civ 6 and HOI4 I thought this would be easy. He said we could Coop but wanted me to experience the game myself first. He told me the basics and I hopped right in.
Year 2200 to year 2350ish I was in 3 or 4 defensive wars because the neighbours next door wanted to vassalise me, I held them back with a nice starbase at a choke point. After struggling with red numbers and unhappy civilians til 2400 my economy finally stabilised i decided to take out the neighbour that was annoying me, Apparently i was not supposed to do that because now the whole galaxy hated me because I was a warmonger. During this some great khan popped out in the other side of the galaxy and got assassinated shortly after and broke up into a couple tiny empires.
I decided to go full defensive because it worked so well and the galaxy hated me and i had no allies, and spent another 100 years building up defences. Most of my heaviest defence was at the south towards some fallen empire the kept demanding me to do something ridiculous like alternating my genes and passing votes in the galactic council. I opened up the L gate because the journal told me to and I thought if it needed 7 clues to open it must be good stuff inside, some dragon popped out and disappeared immediately, and inside the gate was a couple empty systems and nothing else which was kinda disappointing.
Suddenly some interdimensional invaders appeared near the northern borders of my empire without warning and smashed though my defensive line, My fleets and starbase killed probably 3 or 4 smaller fleets and got the main one from 500k to 200k. After that they run rampant inside my borders and started to bombard planets and wreaking havoc, the first 2 they got was my energy and alloy planets and i figured i was not recovering from that. During this the galactic council did absolutely nothing, and was apparently trying to nominate someone pathatic as galactic cusdotian.
So a couple questions, How do i expand after the initial land grab without making the whole galaxy hate me? Is the L gate supposed to do anything? I dedicated so much tech trying to open it. And how am i supposed to beat the blue glowing fuckers?