Hah, after heading in the last 30 years or so with about a 20k point lead on the fallen empires. One of them woke up. It must have been due the increase in fleet size due to a driven assimilator machine uprising in one of our federation members. While being amazing diplomats, scientists, and engineers my birds apparently are terrible at reading the fine print of legal documents. In signing a galactic peace treaty in one fell swoop we went from a 20k lead to being 20k behind, due to leaving our federation which included everyone left minus the 2 fallen empires, and a machine intelligence and the fallen empire gaining 35k points due to me being a subject empire.
Right after that the Unbidden arrived. I mostly dealt with them, though the awakened empire had a fleet cluster chasing them on the other side of the galaxy when they went through a worm hole. They didn’t finish them off though so after I cleaned up the portal and the fleets in my area I had to head over there and finish off the rest. The second Fallen Empire woke up at this time to be Guardian of the Galaxy, but the threat was defeated before they were able to do anything.
Down to 10 years until the end of the game, and I can’t get them to let me free, so I decide to declare war. I was wondering if they would lose the score points from me being a subject, but only if I win the war I guess. So ends the Confederated Helvan States.
I seemed to do a bit better this game with building up, but I still feel like I’m not expanding enough early game. I was able to grab some choke points and close off some sections to be developed later. i had the strongest economy at the end, but it was fragile. Anything disrupting my trade route would send my energy income crashing. Between killing off the Khan and vassalizing their people and killing off the unbidden it was a pretty fun game. I wonder if I would have made it to 2500 in the lead if we didn’t sign that damn treaty.