how where the humans defeated?

From what I can tell, the Progenitors (Humans) started to use the NEST against the Commanders to great affect.

The Commanders seemingly could do nothing to stop it, the Progenitor armies were able to invade and retake planets with just one NEST and wipe out many Commanders with little effort.

However its hinted that the remaining Loyalist Commanders (The Commanders that chose to side with the Progenitors) rebelled when the weapon was revealed.

the stroy of this game....we need a video intro! it would be the best intro aver created!

to answer the OP directly... they were being attacked by a ruthless alien invasion, that they had fought for a long time during an event called 'the century war' and did not choose to build AI commanders for a very long time. however at some point it became clear that had something not been done, humans would have lost and became extinct anyway, and so built the commanders that resulted in them winning the century war.

if your wondering where me and the other guy that pointed this all out found this info, try reading the planet descriptions sometime in the galactic war screen, it's very informative xD

especially the one about the planet wide survivor contest... I lol'ed so much at that one.

We all connected to some virtual reality WOW or Second Life and forgot to breed, you know Likes on facebook will not make babies ever, leaving universe to the machines.

Humans probably still exists on some forgotten planet, forever connected to wow or lol clone. All is endlessly maintained my machines who choose to serve human or had nothing better to do. Or we can serve as entertaining purpose having our erratic and cruel behavior, something like reality show combined with matrix.

Anybody else read about that tough guy who punched through a aliens exosuit, and was the first to find out what they really looked like?

That to me suggests, we might not even be dealing with aliens at all.

I just think it reminds me of SMNC announcer chat, some of the funny lore musings in planet descriptions. That much, makes it interesting to read while you play. It definitely makes the game interesting. Regardless of adamant details.

Mother Earth unleased her full powers, abandoned Earth is no more, artificial intelligent got to the point were they evolvd over time in the depth of space.

Humans left the universe in search for a more complete meaning to life, leaves all questions untold.

3 billion years later artificial intelligent reach a key Evolve point, questing the meaning of Machine!

My fantasy. They were never defeated, rather they left for some higer purpose, in search for questions.
so the story begins anew

saw some more planets, including the one about the guy punching a zxiphid through it's armour (LOL) and while that defenitely shows it was aliens (it said it's 'insectoid armour' meaning they weren't even humanoid) I saw another planet that was even more interesting. basically it's description read that it was 'the last planet to be evacuated for project kadota' (or whatever the project name was, lol)

but the point is... I'm now not 100% convinced humans really are extinct... obviously this depends heavily on whatever this project ends up being... but as it sounds like the project was a success (otherwise they would not have evacuated for it) it could be that humans are either turned into something else (like they all went machine) or left the galaxy completely or went through time.

put simply... with what I have seen so far, I'm not sure we can completely write off the human race 100%. there defenitely not present in this galaxy, sure, but they may not be completely gone. especially since we don't know just how much time has elapsed between the 'project' and the 'reawakening'

Thank AIs for the GW update or we wouldn't have the lore to piece together the pieces.

Woop woop

According to what I've gathered from the planet flavor text in the Galactic War (along with many others), the Commanders were created by the humans (Progenitors) to aid them, along with human commanders, in the "Century War" against the Xyphid (however you spell it) Hegemony, which is a RACE OF ALIEN INSECTOIDS. LATER, in the "Pro-Comm War", the MLA (Machine Liberation Army) went up against any commanders who stayed loyal to the Progenitors, apparently they were divided roughly evenly. For some reason, it looks like the war ended with the MLA making the humans more or less extinct at the cost of incurring whatever sleep for whatever reason to TDZ.

Edit: How wrong the latter half is.

Commander Tryphon would then go on to lead the MLA in its war against the Progenitor Coalition during the Pro-Com war.

Looking forward to seeing more pieces of the lore being stitched together.

I think, form what I've read, that Humanity survived the Pro-Com war, however where they went afterwards is a mystery.

If after three billion years of machine evolution, with a starting point of extremely advanced if not sentient AI, all we're left with is the commanders we have now... That's really crap.

Is it possible that this NEST weapon or device also had a unintended side effect on humanity's own technology?

Like, if the device could remotely brain kill the commanders (Or possibly knock them down ling enough until they awoke now) but had another devastating effect that either destroyed humanity's own technology, or humanity it's self?

Could be an effect like what one episode of stargate, where the NEST also causes problems with power plants, blows up Stargates that turn on, or creates over the long term, degradation of the brain.

In their effort to stop the MLA the Progenitor Coalition could have accidentally extinguished every human in the war zone, possibly even permanently if it was used through the still present metal worlds, turning the last remnants of human civilisation into beacons of death....so we hide or fled the galaxy in order to preserve our race.

But over time the commanders recovered from this attack, or possibly even managed to adapt their own body's to resist the effects, resulting in widespread memory loss, and the formation of the current factions.

Whatever NEST is, it was effective enough and portable to be able to use on the move, but the effect of the NEST was so horrific (By the commanders standards) that it resulted in many Loyalist Commanders abandoning the Progenitors and joining the MLA.

The NESTs must be like, non-essential stationary ticklers, that, my friend, sounds horrifying in every way.

The commanders never rebelled, they executed their orders perfectly. Unfortunately each faction had their own commanders and they all succeed in destroying the enemy's human population.

If there were any humans left to tell them to stop, they would do so immediately.

Or would they?

Well assuming the surviving humans had the proper authorization codes. Unfortunately such humans are the highest priority target for enemy attacks.

Humans never became significant. They were one of billions of sentient species that killed themselves off through destroying their own habitat. They never made it off their own planet, and nobody cares about them in the future. Robots turned out to be much more intelligent, and if I may say so myself, better looking.