Ultima vigilis speculation. (2024)

Currently, the ultima vigilis only makes existing crisis happen faster just like jump drive and so on. This has been suggested to only be a temporary thing and it will eventually become a crisis of its own.

I know the devs won’t want to spoil us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate.

What would happen?

Would we finally get to peek beyond our galaxy?

What lies beyond?

Necron123 said:

I hope it's the Prethoryn's hunters.

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I think one of the developers said they would never make the hunters.

Metallichydra said:

I think one of the developers said they would never make the hunters.

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That doesn't have to mean much.

But is there anything in the Ultima Vigilis lore that would point towards the Hunters? Not as far as I can see. And I'm honestly a bit baffled how people are making that jump.

Necron123 said:

I hope it's the Prethoryn's hunters.

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I hope it's not. It never works to build up a threat like that and then make it show up. Regardless of how they end up being presented, they would end up being a disappointment "just a 100x strength crisis".

I hope that whatever Ultima Vigilis ends up being a setup for, it is something completely different.

Me_ said:

I hope it's not. It never works to build up a threat like that and then make it show up. Regardless of how they end up being presented, they would end up being a disappointment "just a 100x strength crisis".

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Doesn't have to be. You could make a system where doing certain things would make your galaxy progressively light up more and more on their radar, causing stuff to start going wrong. Maybe the penultimate threshold would result in something like what Hungary got during mongol times, and the galaxy would get a crisis-tier army to face off against, which is just a random independently-acting, small portion of the hunters. Which, if you manage to beat, you'd need to promptly turn off anything and everything in the galaxy that is making it noticable, unless you want to get an insta game-over screen.

Methone said:

The hell is an Ultima Vigilis?

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A unique system that spawns without any hyperlanes. It has a special digsite that has some lore attached to it, and may or may not spawn a crisis early

Maxwell Tornado said:

Doesn't have to be. You could make a system where doing certain things would make your galaxy progressively light up more and more on their radar, causing stuff to start going wrong. Maybe the penultimate threshold would result in something like what Hungary got during mongol times, and the galaxy would get a crisis-tier army to face off against, which is just a random independently-acting, small portion of the hunters. Which, if you manage to beat, you'd need to promptly turn off anything and everything in the galaxy that is making it noticable, unless you want to get an insta game-over screen.

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That doesn't a very good game design idea. So the whole crisis would be a growing counter that will only stop if you stop interacting with the game? So the best solution is to start a new playthrough? Plus any "instant game over" is a no-no for a crisis. Whatever is to be added needs to be interactive. And from the lore of the hunters, they are just a bigger army, so the interaction they offer is just more war.

Way better to add an actual new crisis than hack something weird for the sake of one not-that-interesting reference.

One crisis I though about is something where the Ultima Vigilis owners choose one AI nation and secretly help it become a crisis, giving it extra resources, tech and so on. So it would be another "big army", but this time it would be an already existing empire.

tanny said:

Would we finally get to peek beyond our galaxy?

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Beyond another L-cluster setup, or some weird "off-map" mechanic (send a ship through a gateway, wait a time, they come back with a result -- ck2 used this for china interactions), I doubt it - it's not really technically feasible.

Whatever the crisis is (I hope its cyborgs, as we have Bio robo and organic covered by the existing crises, or uses new mechanics that dont rely on fleets acting as a DPS pass -- e.g. something espionage driven, the "crisis infecting" your people somehow), the responses to the Pest control statement make me think of Shepherds response to the Reapers in ME 1 and 2. So I hope we get a sub-situation or sub-mechanic about unlikely heroes or soldiers being an invaluable asset in wiping this thing out - whatever it is - if you can recruit them*.

*espionage assets are a particularly under-utilised element. Fun fact, its actually possible to mod in an operation that gets you X asset (e.g. "harvested genetic material" "Imperial Assassin squad" etc ) which can be used as a pseudo resource to trigger edicts, decisions and as a qualifier for certain options in events or situations. A highly highly under-explored area. Currently its not possible (for modders) to run espionage ops by scripts or on a non-valid scope (like a crisis country -- you need to use situations, but lack a good place in the UI to manually trigger them, sometimes - edicts costing inf/energy are my fallback in testing), but using espionage to weaken, hinder or find vulnerabilities in crises would be good -- and a possible way to offset the need to tech-rush..

Me_ said:

That doesn't a very good game design idea. So the whole crisis would be a growing counter that will only stop if you stop interacting with the game? So the best solution is to start a new playthrough? Plus any "instant game over" is a no-no for a crisis. Whatever is to be added needs to be interactive. And from the lore of the hunters, they are just a bigger army, so the interaction they offer is just more war.

Way better to add an actual new crisis than hack something weird for the sake of one not-that-interesting reference.

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I was trying to come up with something for it, just so I could say it could in fact be something other than just a massive crisis. I don't care if the hunters ever get put in the game or not.
I disagree with most of what you said, though. There's a lot of mechanics that disicentivise you from doing stuff, and you wouldn't "stop interacting with the game", you'd be trying to figure out how to keep your nation afloat without whatever is making you a big red glowing target. Lategame is damn-near post-scarcity, so unless you're constantly at war, (Which I'm not, I hate warfare in this game, I admit.) you're just kinda sitting there, waiting for the end date.
Plus, it'd be rare. You'd have to get the Prethoryn in that game first, and then there should still be some complicated requirements to get there. The kind of thing people won't figure out without either months of community effort... Though I guess that's not really possible, since Paradox games have easily viewable scripting.

Me_ said:

I hope it's not. It never works to build up a threat like that and then make it show up. Regardless of how they end up being presented, they would end up being a disappointment "just a 100x strength crisis".

I hope that whatever Ultima Vigilis ends up being a setup for, it is something completely different.

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Or turns out they are a nice race that has dedicated it's existence to remove such a threat from the universe lol.

Me_ said:

I hope it's not. It never works to build up a threat like that and then make it show up. Regardless of how they end up being presented, they would end up being a disappointment "just a 100x strength crisis".

I hope that whatever Ultima Vigilis ends up being a setup for, it is something completely different.

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They could in theory make something scary and absurd enough to be the hunters, but it would then also be impossible to defeat. Imagine ships larger than entire solar system, just jumping over the galactic map harvesting entire systems removing them from the map for example. It sure could get a "wow" the first time, and then people would quickly jump to "lame" because it would just end games, have no real interaction, etc.