Stellaris: the 27-year war

Before the storm

Just before a week's planned holiday in the South Island my Stellaris game as the United Nations of Earth reached an interesting precipice, just as the timer hit 2400AD. Instead of the end-game crisis, I got the dreaded 'giants in the playground' warning, where two formerly dormant precursor races, the Zaanami Vestige and the Juvan Forerunners, both decided to awaken from their isolationism and return to the galaxy to do terrible things to one another and the galaxy more generally. Their fleets are of course legion, way outnumbering anything in my almighty conquering UNE navies.

I was actually pretty good pals with the Juvans on the other side of the galaxy, given I'd donated the genetic data records of an extinct race to them so they could attempt to preserve and research them. But it's the Zaanami I'm neighbours with - their territory is a mere four jump lanes from Sol, and they definitely don't like me. To keep the peace I've not claimed the two systems bordering their empire, but when things kick off between the Juvans and the Zaanami I can tell things might go badly with a super-powerful enemy that close to my homeworld.

The UNE is taking precautions in case they're not completely futile. All UNE fleets are converging on Sol to combine into the largest possible concentrations of naval power, just in case they might be able to foot it with the Zaanami. My three most important core worlds, Earth, Vishnu (Alpha Centauri III) and Anchor (Sirius III), are working out which important facilities they can afford to deconstruct to build Planetary Shield Generators, to go along with the umpteen static defence installations that will also need to be built. And obviously it's also time to get the UNE shipyards cranking out anything that can fly and shoot a weapon to max out fleet size.

Who knows, maybe they'll let me stay neutral given the size of my empire? Wish me luck...

 

Victory is ours

So the United Nations of Earth did eventually decide to join the war of the Ancients in Stellaris, taking the side of the Juvan Forerunners against our near neighbours the Zaanami Vestige. The Juvans & Zaanami had been duking it out for 12 years already and the rest of the galaxy had all taken sides, but I'd stayed out until an annoying galactic storm had subsided, making warfare easier. The Zaanami fleets were daunting, at least four separate battlegroups with over 100k strength each, and my UNE navy had three fleets with around 70k each.

The enemy wreaked havoc in my far-flung colonies, splitting its forces and landing invasion armies in plenty of my colony worlds, but didn't attempt to breach my core systems. I left the Juvans to tackle the big guns and invade the Zaanami homeworlds, and instead focused my fleets and armies on retaking the invaded worlds one by one, and hunting down smaller fragments of Zaanami navies. With high-risk science ship sorties I was able to examine Zaanami wrecks and glean the dark matter technology to give an impressive boost to my navy drives and sensors, and after a long and laborious programme of fleet upgrades it was finally time to take the fight to the enemy.

It was hard to keep an eye on all the myriad enemy battlegroups, and at one point the Zaanami managed to take the starport in Alpha Centauri briefly and even infiltrate one of their fleets into the Sol system itself. But the numerical advantage of the Juvans plus the UNE forces and their allies eventually told, and with a brutal campaign of ground force invasions to root out invading forces and liberate the taken colonies, the Zaanami were finally defeated in 2451, 27 years after the UNE joined the war and 39 years after the 'giants in the playground' war between the ancient empires began.