I was playing a game of Stellaris on my computer today and as I was conquering an authoritarian regime to turn them into my vassal, I found myself at war with a horde similar to Genghis Khan, Hitler, or Putin. I pushed them back to the point where they had only one planet left, and thought that was enough. That system was not accessible to me because one of their vassal states (think Belarus to modern Russia) had closed their borders to me and we were not technically at war.n They came back stronger to the point where I didn’t have enough military strength left to defeat them sufficiently. They then came back stronger than before, and got me to the point where I then became vassalized. I know need to regroup and fight for my independence. I hope I will be able to grow back fast enough. I have lost most of my mineral production because they took so many of my systems, so this is going to be very difficult.
This literally just happened in this game of Stellaris. It has a lot of great lessons to teach, and I think anyone interested in politics should play it.