Good point Martyr about the rebels. This was not a criticism of the game, only a thought.

It does seem very effective though.

I hate to say it but I have really just focused on TEC because it takes more time than I have had to invest to learn them all well.

How exactly does it work? How often does it spawn troops and how are the planets the troops spawn on chosen?

x2

While the TEC tech is extremely powerful, so are the max Vasari and Advent. The Vasari's "Returning Armada" lets them flood the world with ships, and the Advent's... sounds sort of weak in comparison- it makes Capital ships level up faster (exp bonus) and automatically get to level 4 (so you don't need to spend credits). On the other hand, level ten Advent worships are nothing to sneer at...

Rebels aren't overwhelming if you have defenses in every system. It is expensive and if there is an enemy incursion can fall apart, but it works reasonably well. Not sure how the AI responds.

I've found uprising to be very effective. Though this comes with a few clarifications ...

I've only done it on large or very large maps, where I've been in a good diplomatic situation (peaceful relations with at least a few people near me). What I do is a fast tech up to it immediately. Almost all of my resources go into getting to it asap. While research is going on I'm taking over planets (with my mothership) and pumping out light cruisers (the most basic variety). If you play smart you can easily take over every planet around you without taking a single loss. By the time you get up to the the tech (maybe ~30 minutes in) you'll have a sizable enough fleet to hold your own, and your economy will be big enough to go in whatever direction you want.

While its true late game it might not be a big deal, early game its very likely that your opponents won't have base defenses and won't have much culture. In that scenario the rebels are fairly devastating as they focus your opponents to devote precious resources to keeping their planets safe - base defenses or keeping fleets at each planet or close enough to reach their planets or whatnot. This more than makes up for the time and research you "wasted" to get there.

The bigger the map the more effective this is (as there are more possible planets/opponents). I've had opponents who have been almost totally shut down by this and a combination of pirates (easy to arrange with economic powerhouse TEC - their other non-military ult power, for example, gives near-unlimited money on big enough maps).

Just my two cents.

I may not be understanding this correctly, but it sounds to me that a TEC/Advent alliance could cause a whole lot of mayhem by combining the worker uprising with the deliverance engine.

Remove the target's culture and a rebel uprising occurs. Start enough small fires and the target's defense may be pushed off balance enough to break a stalemate.

In my last game, I was seeing plenty of rebel attacks on planets that had no outside culture affecting them:

Basically, I had 2 of the 3 solar systems completely owned and was working on coquering the last. I was playing with a mod that made orbital improvements cheap slot-wise, so each of my planets had several media/comm things, and every phase lane in my owned star systems was my color. I also had all the culture-techs reserached (playing Vasari)

And yet, I was still regularly getting attacked by rebels. It didn't seem to be culture-related at all, just random.