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Is there anything that indicates if you are running the risk of having a Civil War or a Defecting Fleet?
I am playing the Zenox and have a diabolical reputation and a huge fleet and a huge army.
At this point I am just cleaning up the galaxy. But it takes a long time since I have Kaldos Hyperdrives.
But frequently I have been getting Civil War and Fleet Defection events.
These are so utterly lame and debilitating that I reloaded until it stopped. That was yesterday.
But today it has now happened two more times.

I have played the game since November of last year and up until this current game have NEVER seen either of these two events before.

Words cannot express how utterly contemptible I find this game mechanic. I literally had over half my empire defect once. The other time 15 warships with 100 troops defected to the Guardians. En route.

What is going on? Surely the game is punishing me for something, right? For having low race victory conditions? For being diabolical with a race that is normally not warlike? Any reason whatsoever? Please?

At any rate, out-of-the-blue turds like this are definitely ruining my current game to the point it is unplayable. I am abandonning this game to start a new one. But if there is some behind the scenes element that is causing the game to do this, I want to know so I can avoid it. Also, remedies would be nice.

Finally, I demand an apology from the developers for wasting two evenings worth of precious me-time by implementing such a horrid, malicious, underhanded, and petty game mechanic. I expect the apology to come with chocolate. But no coconut. I hate coconut. Sign the petition below.

Check your colony happiness. If you view your colonies and see all sad face smiley's, then you are at risk of having a civil war.

Diabolical reputation: Happiness penalty
Lots of war: (Could be) a happiness penalty
Lots of conquered new planets: Happiness penalty on those as long as you are at war with the dominant race.

Result: An unhappy population that might do all sorts of things to oppose you.

Solutions:
Use a low or even zero tax rate on the unhappy planets.
Kill some pirate bases to increase your reputation (but something is telling me that your are bombing or even destroying worlds, in that case a diabolical reputation is unavoidable)
Switch to "Way of darkness" if you have found that government. If not a Monarchy might help a bit.
Research the entertainment systems tech tree. Build the wonders if you can.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
I expect the apology to come with chocolate. But no coconut. I hate coconut. Sign the petition below.

Got it. Consider your petition against coconut signed. It's vile. Unless it's in coconut milk form and in a curry. Then it's acceptable. All other forms of coconut must be abolished for the good of humanity.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
Is there anything that indicates if you are running the risk of having a Civil War or a Defecting Fleet?
I am playing the Zenox and have a diabolical reputation and a huge fleet and a huge army.
At this point I am just cleaning up the galaxy. But it takes a long time since I have Kaldos Hyperdrives.

Check your "war weariness" - from what I've seen, it will cause fleet defections and planet rebellion regardless of your colony happiness.

You may need to cease warring with everyone for a while, to reset your war weariness. Note, that I say "everyone", as war weariness if binary - you're at war or not. If another faction declares war on you just before you terminate a war with your main opponent, you're still at war and "war weariness" continues to escalate.

Forgive my omission of an important fact:
My colonies are all happy. All my tax rates are 0% except my home world.
My war weariness was mild. I actually ended my one single war and reloaded with the same atrocious event happening regardless (except it was my other huge 15 ship fleet). Thus the incredible rage. I can not imagine why this is happening except for the thin straws I grasped to in the op.

I repeat: according to the game, war weariness and colony happiness are NOT the problem. So what is?

You've got me, then. I can't think of anything else. Possibly a spy mission from another faction?

Probably best to enter a query in tech support, along with a save-game file to demonstrate the issue. Hopefully Elliot will be able to look at it... though given the stability problems with 1.7.0.14 and the lack of response - I wouldn't hold my breath.

Oooh, could be a spy mission, but yeah go the tech support route.

Thanks for the feedback. When I get an hour to kill at home then i will try to get the save game to right before the event crashes. I might also just wait for the next release and check the bug fix notes first. Last time I reported a bug it had already been fixed in the latest update.

I doubt it is a spy mission. What mission would cause you to lose your fleet or colonies?

One more note: when switching gov types to an evil gov like military dictatorship, sometimes colonies go independent. This is not what civil war does. Half or more of your colonies just start a new empire.