The Jagged Knife must die

Don't get me wrong, I think that the Jagged Knife is a PITB, but it is a Mega event. I don't see them any more or less of a pain than any other. And if you want to draw a parallel to another game mechanic, what about planets defecting to another civilization? That is free and potentially just as damaging.

I guess I respect your not liking the event but I don't personally see it as game breaking the way you do.

At least with defections you can build special buildings and influence starbases.

"Game breaker" was too harsh. "Transform me into a whiney sissy girl who can't stop complaining and who wants to quit but doesn't" is slightly more accurate.

BTW I'm presently playing an Immense game with the following events

LOL. Glad you can laugh at your own missfortunes.

Personally I only like the large and above maps. They are really the only ones that allow the full drama to play out. and I love the Mega events also. I have to admit that the Dreadlords had me cursing up a storm the first time they came to visit, I am liking the fact that this isn't chess. The best laid plans will often go awry.

My current game, I am playing Thalians for the first time. I have three other Civs on the board and one of them (Krynn) control 70% of the Galaxy. So you can imagine that it is an uphill battle. So just at the point where I am starting to get the upper hand, along come the Dreadlords. And then the economy takes a nose dive.

But I am not complaining. Not much anyway. LOL.

I've only played a few games of TotA, and I just met the Jagged Knife for the first time. I had expanded more rapidly than my opponants, and was hit very hard. It made me mad, but it did draw me deeper into the game - and ultimately, it secured my victory, since it allowed me to take a huge number of planets by force without anoying anyone.

that is an excellent side effect. You can take planets that were formerly owned by another race without cost or penalty (other than the troops necessary to invade).

Over all, I don't see the Jagged Knife as that bad. ::watches for the lightning bolt to hit::

I find that it hurts the AI a whole lot worse than it hits the player. Mostly because the AI immediately forgets that it once owned those planets. It will eventually go to war with the JK, but only after a long itme, giving the player a chance to recoup his/her own planets plus any others that seem attractive. I once got a PQ 26 manufacturing capital fully built-out with ICs that way. Plus, the JK are always totally broke, they will never come back at you. And once you've been at war with them for a couple of months and taken all of the planets that you really want, they will usually accept a peace settlement in return for all of their techs and some more of their planets, as well. I'm always like "Yes!! Kick A**!!" when the JK show up, because I know that in a few weeks I will own half of the galaxy.

The worst is when they pop up during the initial colonization phase. I once lost about half of a 50 planet empire that way, and they took all the developed planets. Counting my capital, I had exactly ONE planet with more than a billion people on it. It's safe to say my economy tanked for quite some time after that   

Well a fully synchronized phase cannon bolt anyway.

WIllthemailboy's comment is part of what I mean. It's an annoyance that can be a

Actually, I find the Mega event where all empires are all of the sudden infested with Spies to be at least as negative as the Jagged Knife.

Generally I don't have much use for Espionage and so I only keep a very few spies around (just for safety). So when my empire gets swamped with 30+ it takes me a LONG time to recover. And I have seen myself lose position just because of that fact.

But then these are mega events, meant to change the course of the galaxy. So what do we expect? A picknic?

Hate to necro - but I had the most annoying encounter with the Jagged Knife a few minutes ago. I've got 70-80% of a small map (I like quick games and usually turn off culture victory), and the rest will be a bother to get so I get up the tech tree towards tech victory. The turn I complete Beyond Mortality, JK decide it'd be a great time to take over half my empire, and about a quarter of the NPC's planets. I even get the "Someone's almost got tech victory!" message for JK. Just by luck the big research planets weren't touched, so it was only 30 turns before Tech victory was complete, and I still had a better military than any of the remaining AI's..

GRR! Jagged knife are annoying, but only when they take your planets hehe. I can remember I was playing as the Yor. things were going well.. the organics were being crushed quite steadily. I was embroiled in several wars and my military production was vital, my empire was spread across in various places of the galaxy due to conquest.. then, BAM jagged knife appears. 20 planets gone. i was annoyed at first, then I got enraged as I realised the computer had heartlessly gone across the galaxy selecting my highest planet quality worlds and specialised ship building planets, its like it knew which planets to take to damage my chances the most!!! It took less than half of my worlds, but all the others were research and population planets, basically I were boned. To add insult to injury, every time I conquered one back, the JK bastards had demolished EVERYTHING on the surface except the starport, leading me to have to rebuild my specialised planets

This being said though, they can work in your favour. If none of your planets defect, the event is a godsend!

I got hit by the JK in my last Gigantic game - about 3/4 of the way through the game.  It was a period of peace, where I was cranking technology and planning to drop the hammer on the few remaining civs.  I had about 1/3 of the galaxy (15 planets) and the Krynn had 15.  I was a bit concerned about the Krynn, because we were matched (though my weapons were a few steps ahead).  All of the sudden the JK takes 5 planets from both me and the Krynn, and the take a couple from the Altar. Res.  The galaxy was plunged into chaos.  I regrouped and rush-built some transports.  When I had two ready near my most important stolen planets, I attacked.  I used info. warfare and re-took 4 of the 5 stolen p's.  The last one came back shortly after.

The beauty of it was that the Krynn didn't seem to be able to take back theirs, nor could the Alt. Res.  So here's this event that I can handle but the other super power can't.  This clearly tipped the advantage in my favour.  Especially because _I_ could then rush in and take a few of the Krynn's PQ12s:)

My last game, I was the Drengin in a large galaxy at the painful level. I had finally mastered the colony rush, and, to some extent, the Drengin tech tree. I expanded nicely, built up a decent military, went to war with two other races, and held my own. All of a sudden, I get the pirate mega event. They destroy my entire fleet and all of my star bases. I couldn't even build a ship since the pirates would destroy it instantly. Instead of panicking, I spent time researching some advanced engine techs and the psionic beam. In the meantime, While I was doing the research, I didn't build any ships. Once I had the techs in place, I designed a custom Battle Axe with speed and weapons. As I build them, I moved them away from the pirates into empty space and formed a couple of fleets. Then I started pushing back. I got my fleets to engage the pirates, and began building ships at a furious rate. I started making headway, and then...

The Jagged Knife appear, and I lose 20% of my empire. I was ready to quit the game, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided to take advantage of the event. I continued beating back the pirates, rebuilding my star bases, and building transports. I declared war on the Jagged Knife and began capturing my and other races planets. Before too long, I had a huge empire built up. The remaining two races were hostile toward me for the remainder of the game but unable to attack due to my huge and powerful military.

To close the game out, I teched my way to victory. On top of the two mega events, it was my first successful game on painful and with the Drengin.

The beauty of ToA, is the unique tech trees. It took me several tries as the Drengin to figure out how to beset use their tech tree. I've now switched to the Korath Klan since they're tech tree is both similar and different. It is different enough though to have to change the strategy.

I now look at mega events differently. They do change the complexity of the game, but they also offer opportunities if you are mentally prepared to take them.

      The Korath, with their spore ships and later dark influence, own the Jagged Knife.  It does require a bit of micromanagement to replace the population, but its alot cheaper to build small spore ships than transports.  When this happened to me, by the time I had captured most of the Jagged Knife, the rest of the galaxy was rapidly flipping.  (Mind control center works extremely well here.)  Medium ships with fast engines and psyonic beams easily eliminated the defenders.

 

I curse the Jagged Knife, it's like they always know which of your worlds is the most important and then they revolt. Secondly, most of the Jagged Knife worlds come from my worlds! WHY?!   

 

I guess because you like playing good and go against evil races? IIRC the JK are the evil scum of your empire that doesn't feel represented well enough by you goody-two-shoes

 

Couple of days ago I had the oppposite event happen, the Fundamentalists appeared and took only planets of evil races.

Too bad for the Drengin that they were the only evil race around at that time...

 

 Actually, I never play as good. It hurts you too much in the beginning to get there. I tend to stay neutral or occassionally evil, but 95 percent of the time I am neutral. I just hate the JK so much because it is indeed like they KNOW which worlds to take. I even lost about over half of my empire. I got so mad that I quit the game because they basically took all of my most important worlds besides my capital and I couldn't take them back without damaging the worlds severely. I curse the Jagged Knife.

Pissed me off also. Was playing an imense map (think that was just un der the largest map) map and had some 90 worlds and controlled maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of the universe. JK came in and took 48 of my planets and another 40 combined from the other empires. More then half they took was from ME. Pissed me off. Anywho just traded a bit for a few techs they aquired (I had higher tech then any other empire by a fair bit being a research monger), then just left my defenders sitting outside the world incase and built a very quick vast fleet of troop ships (4k troops in each with 4 engines each) and paid cash for most since when they happened I just raided the other empires cash stocks (was at war with 2 a few turns back and signed peace treaties for a total over 150k which put me over 250k in cash. Took back 1/3 of my worlds in next turn and most of the others few turns after but damn is it annoying especially since they COULD have been selling all my higher tech to the other races and if they built ships before I retook my lands they would be on my level.

My problem with the jagged knife versus other mega-events is not that they're a game breaker, but that they'e an immersion breaker. It is *so* arbitrary, and obviously so that it reminds you you're in a game, not running an actual empire.

Most of the other just aren't that kind of problem for me.

Jonnan

I was playing a gigantic map earlier today as a custom race. I struggled for over 100 turns to colonise planets before the AI and build up enough ships to not get stomped, then suddenly every planet I had over PQ 10 (except my homeworld) turned to the Jagged Knife.. totally fucking me over, I didnt have planetary invasion at this point (tech rate was on slow) and I hadn't saved for ages... rage quit.

I agree with Jonnan001 that the JK are an arbitrary thing, if your planets were that close to revolt surely your empires goverment would be able to tell, giving you some warning.

Least we could have a counter for Jagged Knife take overs like a counter espionage building doing the trick against them also or influence starbases and planetary approval ratings above 90% or something. Just to much of an annoyance to have all of a sudden half or more of your worlds owned by the JK and not a darned thing you can do about it or to have prevented it.

 

Also it seems to be far more unfair to the player since now I've been hit a few times and each time I lose a much higher precentage of my planets then the AI civs. I  generally have more planets then most the AI civs but I lose 50-70% of my planets while AI civs lose maybe 5-25% max.

I think that maybe, for the next patch, we should request greater control over the mega events like when you select or unselect the mega events, you get a window saying which events you want enabled or disabled (ex: pirates, disease, Dread Lords, that really annoying one that limits you to 5 tiles / turn for ships - which I consider a real annoyance, etc.)

I hate that max speed fo 5 parsecs mega event as I tend to a later stages like building big ships with alot of engines to get around and terrorize enemies very quickly

They piss me off! The edge ruin the whole game.. fine planets can defect through influence but without any early warning and in an instant is plain unrealistic. Im here because they took my enriched world which was my main research planet in my empire. To think with with all the power and knowledge my civilization had-and some weak jagged noobs just take over is as silly as the easter bunny and tooth fairy. Its like cats and dogs taking over planet earth. Im so annoyed that i don't want to go back and continue playing. 

I just had The Edge steal my super planet.  I was lucky to find a planet with a +29 on it early.  They took it and I didnt even have planetary invasion trained.  Along with 10 other of my planets.

 

At the same time I have roving pirates with 2 ships that can insta-pop any ship I build at my shipyards.  Annoying but very fun.