You have a defence ring?
Well there's your problem...

The Jagged Knife event is definitely sparked by how people play. I've only had it happen once in my dozens of games. Only the one single time I was taking a very conservative approach after my first war (which did get me up to size with the other remaining civilisations but woefully behind in technology) the Jagged Knife struck.
It was a downright godsent. Sure I needed to retake most of my good planets, but heck, FREE TECHNOLOGIES, awesome! Naturally I proceeded with taking as many other JK planets that were still left (though the AI that game was rather agressively retaking it's own planets).

Don't play holding yourself back, be a bit more agressive and this stuff will most likely never happen again... (Or just use it to your advantage, as displayed above, it can quickly bring you up to pace with the other races because the JK copies their technologies...)

That sounds so cool it never has happened to me and it does sound like such a bummer, but it also sounds really cool. Particularly how the first poster, andreashansen, described it. Funny, too.

Sort of a pointless thread though. The OP needs two new skills: Learn to save his games. Learn to play without Mega events.

It seems the developers have found a way to keep customers from noticing this game has no multiplayer capabilities at all, (in the true sense of the word.) Even Arnor, from what I understand, is just choose who you want to play a metaverse game "against" and then after both players have finished their "own" game the winner is the one with the highest score. I hope I'm wrong about that because everyone can do that right now without having a programmer tell the code to tell us how our scores compare.

If mega events are going to be realistic they need to be realistic. A futuristic space traveling society is not going to all of a sudden loose planets, even a bunch of minor ones, to a very sudden uprising. Give the player some sort of information that something weird is going on some turns before everyone in the civilization gets assimilated. And add an objective to complete to prevent or diminish the impact; dependent on how well the objective is met.

Devs, people who play games are used to rules. And manuals. This is a space strategy game so customers get frustrated when they are playing according to 4x space strategy "rules" (which were laid down by the Master of Orion series, like it or not) and all of a sudden the laws of physics governing their existence in the game change; (so to speak.) People invest time from their real lives in games. When something this outrageous happens and your customers have spent time out of their actual lives to play your game it doesn't leave them with a good feeling about how they have spent their time. It was a waste.

One of the reasons people play first person shooters is they feel like they accomplish something. They know how to accomplish something within the game. I'm not saying it is the main reason.

Players are also used to an instruction book with the game. Basically people who are upset with what's going on are upset because they don't know what is required of them to win or accomplish their goals. They are doing great and think they have the hang of it and all of a sudden BOOM!! They realize it was all for nothing.

Dev's if you don't want to fix mega events according to your customer's suggestions then don't call them mega events. Your customer's see the "mega event" check box as a game option to include random events that can be devastating or good to all civs in the game. Not just aimed at the way a player plays. Without a manual how are new customers supposed to know what you mean when in previous 4x strategy games they are used to it being different from what you've done. Just change the words to "Advanced Play." And have some sort of instructions in the forums or, heaven forbid, a manual that explains this option is aimed at making the player squirm until they decide to devote as much of their real lives to it as they need to in order to beat it. There are people that expect a manual, even in electronic format with the download or on the CD or DVD. People go to the games forums and vent when they are frustrated and stuff is wrong.

From my limited view of the world those who totally hate this game state it is a messed up version of MOO2 or compared to something else that is similar. This game is not MOO2. It's much better. The rules have been changed and a new precedent has been set but for some the word isn't getting around. Documentation would fix this, I believe. Those who rant on the forums like the game and want it fixed because it is messed up from their perspective, or they feel cheated out of time and money and want the whole world to know it. I would think those who are upset enough to not play anymore don't even bother to post and just sell the game on the internet.

Some of the mega events are cool, though. Hell, I forget to save sometimes. I usually set the auto-save slider to save every 5 turns or so in case something bad happens.

Etrius

I'll just add my 2p:

I love the Jagged Knife event, in theory--it can really shake things up and take away the sometimes boring inevitability of a win from a good turtling strategy.

However, I totally agree with others who have posted that it's a more-or-less broken event. For any experienced player, the event is basically a planet conquest + tech stealing bonanza. The Jagged Knife couldn't defend themselves to save their own lives, and after you've finished trouncing them (taking back your planets plus lots of other juicy ones you've been eyeing for ages and could only dream of conquering before the Jagged Knife just handed them to you), they're so weak that you can demand a ludicrous peace settlement worth even more planets and techs. They need to be a lot stronger to be interesting. Basically, they need ships right from the start; without them, war against the Jagged Knife is just a game-imbalancing turkey shoot.

I also agree that it would be great if you could spy on them (and minor races in general).

I like some mega-events better than others, so I tend to leave them enabled. I like the auto-save to be a bit more spaced, so I generaly set it at 12 turns. But CTRL+S is your friend.

If you make a habit of *always* quick-saving before you end a turn, you'll have 3 choices of where to step back to if you need them. Sometimes, I've been able to duck out of a yucky event (my least favorite is the Speed Limit). Sometimes it seems like the game state on my last quick-save is almost guaranteed to cause a particular mega-event. And I don't want the devs to explain why--understading everything almost always drains away fun.

I keep my Autosave set for 2 turns. Thus I can load the most recent one in case an event turns up or go back 4 turns if I think I made some big tactical mistake or something.

The Jagged Knife can be a huge hassle, but it can also surprisingly be a great opportunity. If they take a large number of planets from your neighbors as well, and you gear up to produces lots of transports, you can easily get back what you lost and also take additional planets. Without decaring war on any of the major civilizations, you can start grabbing planets that used to belong to them.

Sentient species taste better...

Usually having the Jagged Knife event for me means ill double my empire without pissing anyone off. I always keep transport ships ready for war, so when they take over my planets those transports are kicked out and i can retake some planets in the same turn. But some of those reports here are scary, i mean, 37 planets and 27 are yours? Thats like ruining one single empire in the galaxy.
"Mega event: replace the player for one AI".

I have to agree with the Kzinti. I typically consider who's suffered the most from the Jagged Knife planet grab before I revert to a saved game. If I've suffer few lossses of fodder planets then I let it play out and gobble up the JK without much worry. While I'm not a fan of this mega event, I find the event with restricts movement to 5 in much more debilitating in the long term especially on larger maps.

Hidar

I just got the JK event. I was playing rather aggressively in the TA beta and it popped up. I thought it was supposed to be more likely if you played conservatively. Regardless, I would just echo some other posters in wishing that JK could be essentially another major race. They now control the most planets, have the best technology and the best ships, yet I can't spy on them and they hardly do anything aggressively. I have to think that if one of the proper major civilization had as much bloody power they'd be wiping the floor with me.

I think JK event comes when u r too powerfull...happened with me too....
I do get economic properity event when my economy is in shambles....

You think this is a gay mega event??? Seriously???

The gayest one (as of yet) is the damn "sub-space tears detected! oh noes!" event, which makes NOBODY able to move ships faster than 5 parsecs/week. That one, is by far, thee GAYEST of them all.

The absolute coolest of them all is the one which another race (usually friendly) has its leader killed by a disgruntled worker and then it goes to war with you, regardless of anything. That one is a lot of fun.

Thankfully, the Jagged Knife actually makes taking over others easy - just make sure you have transports researched so you can take back your planets, and take over others.

I wish there was a setting on Mega Events that allowed you to turn off certain ones, like the god damn gay 5 parsecs /week shit.

There was also another mega event where all evil races were kicked from the game and replaced by a minor race. Heh.

A gay mega event? Stardock folks seem to like silliness, but I've never noticed them really camping it up, and the only flaming is from us folks in the peanut gallery.

But your trash talk does suggest a possible new event: Pangalactic Random Sex Changes. It could be the opposite of the mysterious horniness radiation that speeds pop growth. Pop growth comes to a virtual halt until folks figure out their new breeding arrangements. The Yor would be exempt on account of being non-biological.

p.s. I really hate the speed limit too.

The one thing I hate about the Jagged Knife event is in TotA, they can do a lot of damage to your worlds before you retake them. Nothing is worse than retaking your prime research or manufacturing worlds only to find that the Jagged Knife in their infinite wisdom built a Harvester on a 300% Manufacturing Square, or a Central Mine on a Research Square. Neither of those can be removed though any means, including Invasion Tactics.

You need to develop a more varied vocabulary of epithets. How tiresome and juvenile the use of "gay" is.   

Sentient species taste better...

Yeah, why use gay when you can say fruity?

I hate them (Mega events) as well - loath them, there are fewer more crazy creations on this Planet. However I support their inclusion 100%, it gives depth and variety to the game to appeal to a wider audience.

If you get caught with one and forgot to turn off the Mega Event option at the start config of the game, reload the last saved game you have, be it auto save or manual save. It will not reappear.

Regards
Zy

Just one suggestion - maybe you should just insert a warning window or something in the selection screen or make it truly obvious, that mega events can have serious disbalancing effects on gameplay. Maybe mega-events option disabled by standard and a message window upon activation that states how mega-events function and that they can also get seriously to the disadvantage of the player but otherwise provide an interesting challenge to those who like challenges. That would prevent newbies to get totally frustrated because they just checked the mega-event-box because "mega events" sounds kinda cool. (like i did, gladly i read here that others were f***ed up really hard by these events and disabled it for my following games ^^ )

The last time I had this event I lost half my worlds. I only had 4 high PQ planets anyway. The rest were low-PQ econ planets that I backfilled or flipped. I ended up with 1 or 4 high production worlds left. It was a pain in the butt, but also very enjoyable.

I made peace with my enemy (I even had to give him several great techs to do it), and concentrated on building up my forces. Then I started taking back my worlds one at a time. Eventually, I did it. I even got some of the ones they took off the AI, and I didn't have to take a rep hit or get into a prolonged war with a major player to do it.

Despite their power, most mega events are only temporary set backs. The small number of times they cause defeat is far outweighed by the number of times they enrich the game. Once you know what you're doing at these kind of games, they can get a bit boring. When the game throws a spanner in the works like that it forces you to adapt.

I couldn't live without them now. I hope there are lots of new ones in TotA.

Yep. Even though I hate the speed limit, I got it a couple of games ago and played through. Things took way to long on my gigantic map, but I made good use of the space I no longer needed for engines. I worked the engine techs up to Hyperwarp I to get all the bonuses and ended up having the fastest ships around b/c the AIs never added engines and never caught up with the tech.

This event can certainly screw you up, but you can also use it to your advantage under the right circumstances.

If you already got a decent military...esp. lots of troop transporters you can get to their planets QUICKLY you can "simply" take those planets (even though at probably massive losses).

If you play on a high difficulty where you happen to have a quite large tech deficit compared to your AI opponents you can use that to get a lot of high-techs that will save you massive research time.

And you can use it to gain planets that once belonged to the other AIs which would have been much harder to get - maybe even included some GAs or trade goods.

But you do need to be able to respond quickly and retake those worlds asap before the JK can build up sincerly.

I had this event once in a game - was at suicidal difficulty where I did "ok". At first I too was shocked about this event - because they too took my best worlds. But then I did all of the above and in the aftermath it was the best thing that could have happened to me with all the tech and the grteat worlds taht once belonged to my enemies.

I wrote an AAR about that game if you care