I made it to week 429 before my GC froze. I saved and exited and when I did so, the game made an auto save. When I load my save, the game is still frozen, obviously. But when I load the auto save, the game loads a ground battle between two ai factions. I obviously can’t play anything during the ground battle, and auto-resolve and retreat are not permitted, no units spawn and the whole map is blurred by fog of war.

Could the galactic conquest freezes be related to AI battles?

Is there a way to auto resolve or force a retreat using the console?

Note: It ran fine until I advanced the tech level from 1 to 2 at like month 380.

The defenders are the criminal underworld. I don’t know who the attackers are.

Could there be a hero or unit type that tries to force the player into a ground battle?