OSG-25 with kyrub's patch (1.40m)

(Part 1 of my turn report is on the preceding page....)

10 or 12 is the same for me, just go ahead and play your whole set.

Trying to conquer huge swaths of the galaxy in the space of 10 or 12 turns isn't really my style anyway. Better you spend the extra 2 turns getting planets and I will work on holding them all.

Raid
Wellll ... a couple things though:

1) Don't feel like you HAVE to conquer huge swaths of galaxy on your turns. You could play more conservatively and just take a couple of worlds, or just consolidate and hold what we've already got and peacefully tech away into an unbeatable position without conquering any new stars at all. We're going to win this one either way.

2) Learning/playing a different style can be a lot of fun! My tendencies really are toward being a "Pacifistic Technologist" in spite of all the fighting I've been doing in these games ... but I discovered that finding ways to wipe out AI fleets and defenses and conquer their worlds can be a lot of fun too.
 
Oh, I agree. I haven't looked at the saves in a while, but unless someone discovers planetary 15 right shortly, I don't see how we lose.

Brain lock typo done while in a hurry. That was meant to say I don't see how we fail to win quickly. It looks very much like the biggest problem we'll have in a minute is that there is no one left to fight who doesn't like us, though a double extermination might change that...

If there is no one left alive to fight at the next vote (ie Sakkra and Klackons are dead), I'm fine with just ending it then. I don't have to have another turn.
 
Worked until 8PM today (yes, my schedule is crazy) and haven't been feeling well, so I only got to 2458. I'll get the last couple turns in, with the rest of the report, tomorrow, work and health permitting.

2455: Maniac glanced over his scanner readout: The composition of the incoming Sakkra fleet, including their new Valkyrie cruisers.



"The usual Junk," he said with a grin. "Let's go get 'em!"

His first officer quavered. "But what about those Valkyries? They're almost identical to the ship you were piloting last year!"

Maniac shrugged. "But now I've got the updated version! And more importantly, most of the few little differences are extremely important. It's a repulsor cruiser mounting short-range weapons, right? That means it's weapons are only effective against ships that either can't hurt it anyway or have slower reactions than it. You know what single item has the biggest impact on ship reaction times? A battle scanner, like the one that gave us this report. Notice what piece of equipment the Valkyrie is missing that's present on every other repulsor ship in the battle? That's right! The thing doesn't even have a battle computer, while we went with the top of the line, in part for that very reason. Oh, and we're Alkari. We have faster reactions than everything in this galaxy by default. Under the circumstances, they needed to put heavy beams or missiles on that thing if they built it at all."

The first officer swallowed. "But the planet has no missile bases yet, and..."

"Relax." Maniac grinned. "We've got two repulsor cruisers of far superior designs to theirs, and over a hundred Merc fighters to punch past their beams. We're going to be fine."

The events proved his reasoning sound: Those Sakkra who survived the battle did so only by retreating. No Alkari ships were lost. Maniac's attention however turned at once to a far more dangerous battle being waged halfway across the galaxy.



More than 50 Alkari bombers and a handful of NPG fighters would be lost to the Klackons' stinger missiles and beam ships.



With the dangerous Klackons' bombers and irrelevant spore ships unable to contribute to the battle however, the Alkari soon took control of Drakka's orbital space ... just in time to protect the descending troop transports.



Their victory was decisive, and netted the last technological secrets the Klackons still from the avians: Tachyon Beam construction, and obsolete industrial waste reduction which allowed the Alkari to begin work on a design for Powered Armor (though in hindsight, Acting Head of Research Ref decided it would have been better to go for a less advanced, but quicker, Armored Exoskeleton project - he regarded Improved Industrial Techs 3 and 2, while attractive, unlikely to actually help the empire by the time they were achieved, and Tritanium Armor too time-consuming for a relatively small gain that would someday be obsolete) ... plus two techs the Klackons had apparently discovered that very year: Anti-matter torpedoes and Robotic Controls V. In place of his own robotics project, just handily completed for him, Ref selected one to develop a mark 8 battle computer, rather than the mark 7 version or class 6 ECM. Of course, he had made another decision two years before that might someday prove more important than any of these. For it was then that tech recovered from the Klackons had allowed him to complete his long-running project in planetology.



The single ship completed in 2454 had been a radiated colony base strapped to an impulse engine in a destroyer hull. It colonized the rich world of Regulus in 2455. And as Ref's next tech - seeing that the entire planetology tree, with Complete Terraforming already in hand, held only three more possibilities - he had selected a Universal Antidote, in lieu of obsolete terraforming or the very Bio Terminators about which Governor Raiddinn had warned the empire. If the antidote project was completed in time, even those terminators would be rather non-threatening.

Sadly, he reflected, progress was going to be slow. His nephew had cut tech funding to the bone again - though promised the change would be brief - while a few planets worked on robotic controls, transports were launched from more than half of the empire's worlds ... and the empire began another massive ship-building spree.

2456: Wing Commander Marshall frowned at his comm screen. He'd been trying to raise the emperor without success ever since his fleet took control of Gienah. He tried others around the empire, but none of them seemed to have heard from the emperor either - not even Special Agent McCaaaaaw, who was performing what Maniac considered unauthorized missions in Psilon space. "Eh," the agent reported, "the emperor told me to basically just do whatever I want, and I noticed we actually have better computer tech than the Psilons at this point, so I figured I'd help with our infrastructure a bit."



"Industrial tech 4 might not seem like that big an improvement until you remember we just got robotics 5 last year. This'll make for a 20% savings on a lot of factories. I didn't see the point in framing anyone though. Klackons? Meklar? Whatever. I just escaped without leaving evidence of any kind."

Maniac frowned deeply. "I'm just glad you didn't get caught. Why are you even wasting time in that part of space?"

Mcaaaaaw just shrugged. "I've got plenty of agents in your sector already. You wouldn't be planning to head for Seidon any time soon, for instance, would you?"

The Wing Commander narrowed his eyes. "You know perfectly well it's my next target. We've lost over 50 bombers at each Klackon world we've taken so far, and that one has almost as many bases as two of them combined."

"Oh, good," Special Agent McCaaaaaw answered cheerfully. "Oh. And not anymore."



"Facing thirteen fewer bases should improve your fighters' survival considerably, don't you think? They also seem to have followed my policy of just escaping unseen instead of framing anybody. I mean, at this point, who cares who the Klackons like or don't like - you know what I mean?"

Maniac thanked him, his mood much improved, then cut the transmission and tried the diplomatic corps at the homeworld. Surely they, at least, would know something! He reported to them that the transports had arrived safely and wiped out Gienah's defenses, claiming the world for the Alkari.

"We guessed that already," they told him. "QX-537 sent a calling card again to thank us for killing 'loathsome Klackons.' Too bad we can't find the emperor to let him know."

Slowly, Maniac shook his head. Had the emperor been abducted? The diplomats seemed unconcerned, but perhaps they were just in the habit of hiding their true emotions. Or perhaps they just supposed Emperor Steel was on a year-long bender someplace; with him, it was a distinct possibility. At least the shipyards were still functioning - well over 500 ships had been produced and were already on their way toward the front - but when he tried to reach them, all their supervisors would say was a variation on the theme: "He's fine; we're getting orders from him all the time. No time to talk; we're really busy."

2457: Another Klackon world lit up the viewscreen of Maniac's Tempest. The newer repulsor cruisers had been scrapped for parts when more design space was "needed" and they were found to be out of position for supporting the rest of the fleet, with the (slightly) older Tempests in exactly the right spots. A new generation of StormWing repulsor cruisers was apparently being planned, but none had yet been assembled when the fleet reached Selia: The most heavily-defended alien world the Alkari had yet faced.



Several Sakkra worlds had held more missile bases, but their merculite missiles had been unable to keep pace with Alkari fighters, while Klackon stingers could outrun any ship in space, launched from bases with far superior armor and more than twice as many layers of shields.

The wing commander was unimpressed. His fleet of bombers - including dozens of the deadly new Pelicans - would lose some of their number, but the Klackon fleet was harmless, and the bases were soon destroyed. When the transports arrived and took the planet, the whole galaxy learned of it right away ... on the evening news.



The Alkari had crossed the planets threshold to galactic domination ... and they weren't done yet.

With the planet was finally secured, Marshall had a chance at last to review the reports that came in while he was in hyperspace. Mostly, they were reports of hapless alien attacks on well-defended Alkari colonies, but it appeared as well that Special Agent McCaaaaaw had abandoned his Psilon games for the moment ... and moved into Meklar space.



Class 7 battle computers would be a welcome addition to the promised StormWings, and would even help Alkari bases hit the agile Dagger bombers that remained by far the greatest threat the Klackons could field, but Maniac suspected that McCaaaaaw had selected it mainly just to further improve his hacking skills. Conspicuously absent was any report on the location of Emperor Steel ... though apparently his uncle had gone to the homeworld in search of him personally.

2458: "Where have you been?!" Ref's sheer exasperation nearly eclipsed his vast relief. "The entire empire's been looking for you, practically."

Emperor Steel tittered slightly, his face lit up with an expression of pure, beatific glee. "I've just been with my favorite uncle is all! I'm sure he would have told someone if I'd let him away for a moment." He giggled again, joyfully.

"Your favorite..." Ref groaned. "I've been out on our deep space research lab this whole time. You were nowhere nearby!"

The emperor giggled again. "I have a new favorite uncle!"

"But..." Carefully, Ref tried to explain. "I'm your father's only brother - and no sisters for that matter - and your mom was an only child...."

Oblivious, Emperor Steel went on, "I love my Uncle Al!"

And so, as the light dawned, Ref looked up at the sign for the galaxy's most-loved family-friendly shipyard and weapons emporium. "Design your own star cruisers and doom fighters!" read the sign. And for years on end, Emperor Steel had done exactly that.



The NPG and Merc fighters had all hit the scrap heap ... in favor of the emperor's new designs. As Uncle Al himself had said, "Want a gift for the Wing Commander who has everything ... including hundreds of merculite fighters you're about to scrap? Try naming a new fighter after him ... and fitting it with stinger missiles instead!" With T(hunder)-Bolt fighters taking the place of NPGs by fielding megabolts instead and Pelican bombers more than twice as powerful as the old F-bombs ... to say nothing of the state-of-the-art StormWing cruisers ... the Alkari domination of the spacelanes was complete. And yet....

"Ooooooh!" Emperor Steel cooed suddenly. "It looks like our scanners picked up Orion this year! I'll bet we can design a brand NEW fighter that can take THAT out too, with some of our new tech!"

There was indeed new tech to use: In addition to the Mark 7 computers stolen by McCaaaaaw the year before, Alkari forces had turned up Trilithium Crystals, permitting way more ship range than the Alkari would ever need, when the Klackon labs responsible for its research fell to them ... along with the rest of the artifacts world of Cygni!



Yet more fleets and transports still were on their way into Klackon space. The epic battle across two worlds - including Kholdan itself - that would define the entire Klackon war was about to begin.



The emperor was so busy designing new ships, he didn't even notice.

(To be concluded....)
 
Spoiler Grand Imperial Senate Chamber, Alkari homeworld, 2458 :
The assembled leaders of the Alkari Imperial Senate cursed under their collective breath. All the documentation was before them, and the conclusion could not be denied. They had dealt with crazy emperors before - in fact, at least one of them was still incredibly popular with his people after 46 of their homeworld's (relatively short) years. They had dealt with perpetually angry ones - even quite effective ones in spite of directing their anger at everyone and everything. But they'd never had to deal with one who refused to even show up for work! "He can design all the starships he wants," announced the Squalker of the Birdhouse, "but no longer with Imperial funds! We need an emperor who will at least perform his imperial duties from time to time!"

Acting Head of Research Ref proposed that Sector Governor Raiddinn (whose duties had expanded considerably with the war) be given the post, but the Sector Governor demured, pleading the importance of his duties getting infrastructure up and running on the empire's many new worlds. And the Squalker looked directly at the avian responsible for the nomination in the first place. "People are still cheering about the way you started us on the war path, Emperor Ref."

Shouts of acclaim rose from all the Senate seats - well, in fact mostly sighs of relief that there would be a new emperor after all ... but they sounded sort of like shouts of acclaim. And when they realized their approval was needed for the new emperor to actually be seated, they did make the proper noises, dutifully. Ref fidgeted in consternation. "But I don't want to be emperor! We're at war! I hate fighting wars! If you make me emperor, I'll stop building ships, start doing research, increase Raiddinn's funding for his infrastructure projects, and give place to a successor in two years!"

To Ref's unending confusion, the shouts of acclaim in response to that speech were genuine.
2459: "Good to have you back at the helm," Maniac called from his Tempest flagship. Though five Storm Wings were in play to help defend Sakkra worlds, the Wing Commander's assault fleet was advancing the battle front faster than even the latest repulsor cruisers could fly. "I have to say though, there was something endearing about your nephew. Might have to do with the new Stinger fighters he added to my fleet!"

"I like the name he gave 'em," Ref agreed. "I'm still catching up on our empire's logistics. Where do you just drop out of hyperspace?"

"Oh, nowhere special," Marshall answered.



"Just the Klackon homeworld. You have no idea how much help these new stinger boats are going to be. Get 'em in good enough numbers, and they can handle almost anything as well as anything else in the fleet."

"Until we face someone with better shields or we get better bombs, you may very well be right. All right, looks like you guys are moving in. I'll shut up while you handle the assault."

Maniac shrugged. "Nah, I've got it. There are less than a thousand ships out here to direct. I can handle that while we're talking, no problem. Anyway, it's quick. There go the bases. Okay, transports coming in."



"See? No problem. Oh. Hang on a second." Maniac glanced away from Ref's holoimage at the report coming in on his interfleet comm screen. "Yup. Looks like we just took Exis too. You knew I'd split the fleet, right? Had to, with Cygni so far from Seidon, and then ... well, I figured with the new Stinger boats to help out, no reason we couldn't take two Klackon worlds at the same time." He grinned. "Oh. And apparently your nephew sent a bunch transports over to Xendalla. Mind if I head over there to help 'em land?"

"Xendalla?" RefSteel frowned. "Hang on." His holoimage looked down to consult its [Registered Trademark of Major Alkari Personal Communications Device Corporation]. "Aha!" He looked back up at Wing Commander Marshall with a grin. "Absolutely; go protect the transports. But go ahead and take one of the Maniacs up instead of that old Tempest. I could use some more reserves for infrastructure and defenses at key locations, and the Tempests are now superceded. A Storm Wing will rendezvous en route to your destination: You had to divert far enough to reach Kholdan that they're finally about to catch up with your fleet!"

What Emperor Ref didn't tell Maniac was the reason Xendalla's name had rung a bell: It had just sent a fleet of transports to Gienah, when Steel's inattentiveness to ... well, everything ... had finally left a gap in which a small Klackon fleet was able to sneak in above that world. The Wing Commander had personally ordered a raft of fighters to be sent there in plenty of time, but without direct word from the emperor, the local fleets had been laxing in following his orders, and they were accidentally changed by a (now ex-)lieutenant trying to optimize fleet distribution for no reason (and doing it wrong). Ref was scrambling to get anti-transport defenses into place in time.

2460: "So much for that," Ref murmured, placing the final check mark on the endless to-do list he'd created for cleaning up his nephew's various messes.



With all the incoming transports disposed of, he was ready to hand over the reins of power. Maniac had already wiped out Xendalla's space defenses, and the battle on the ground was not in doubt.



He'd arranged defenses for most of his worlds, and set up the few still lacking them to complete shields and bases quickly. He'd even rebuilt the planetary reserves his nephew had squandered on star fleets.



Of course, there was still quite a significant fleet left for his successor to play with should he feel so inclined.



He had even left a design slot open so the next emperor could start putting together a new ship without having to scrap an existing one (or at least before he did so).

The galaxy belonged to the Alkari, and there was every reason to believe they would win the next High Council election with their own votes alone, and make their conquest official. The next-largest empire controlled seven planets ... to their 26.



Ref sighed with contentment, and glanced one last time at the "emergency" communique from his nephew: Yet another copy of a design he had chosen from Uncle Al's Emporium.



He shook his head, smiling indulgently. "Yeah, I guess a few thousand of those could take the Guardian," he mused. "But I wouldn't waste the energy."

With a shrug, he shut down the comm screen and headed for the door. On the main console, he left a parting word: "I'm off. Do what you like with this. You own the galaxy!"
 

Attachments

  • OSG-25-2460-Save6.zip
    8.2 KB · Views: 83
Some final notes:

1) Yes, the only turn in which I failed to conquer at least(!) one alien world was 2451. And yes, that was 12 planets conquered in 10 turns.

2) No, this would not have been possible without the fleet and empire Zed left for me. Not only did he had to build his fleet from scratch, he had less powerful cloning tech (normal vs. advanced) than I did for most of his turns, had significantly fewer large planets from which to build ships and grow/send population, and had lower tech both for ground combat and for ship design than I did.

3) I did leave some Sakkra and Klackons for Raiddinn to conquer if he wants. Both can be exterminated quickly if desired, hopefully causing enough dissatisfaction on the parts of other races to earn some war declarations (if you want to fight other wars). If that doesn't work, we have a trade treaty or two you could break....

4) The Klackon fleet would only really be threatening if they assembled all of it without losing any more ships and also built a bunch more of the Lancer destroyers (Stinger missile boats) and/or Dagger Fusion Bombers from their lone remaining world ... AND sent them all to a relatively unprotected planet. The Sakkra fleet would only be threatening if it finds a way to a planet with zero bases. (Or I guess Sssla in the nebula if you scrap most of the bases it has already.)

5) Have fun! This game was won long ago, so feel free to just play around with things.
 
I didn't feel like going all out on the RPing since these turns were pretty much entirely quiet other than me putting both the 1PEs out of the game.

2460 - Emperor Raiddinn takes over the helm again. Angry as ever, mostly angry that there is no more fight left in his opponents.

I made a few changes to economic spending, mostly to get people cloned more quickly. No big deal, really. The only people I can fight are the ones where they only have one planet remaining. I could put both of them out of the race and probably get one of the remaining AIs to declare war on me. Maybe I will do that, just so I can have more people to throttle.

I put a little spending into missile bases as well.

In a bid to make sure we win on population in the next election, I will go ahead and put the Klackons out of the race.

Towards the end of the year, one of our spies infiltrated the Meklar Empire and stole Bio Terminators. The field options were Planetology, Construction, and Weapons. I was hoping for Atmospheric Terraforming.

2461 - Not much going on, just more production management. Late in this year we got the same spy success again, this time we did get Atmospheric
Terraforming. The Darloks ask us for an Alliance, which I reject.

2462 - We researched Range 9 fuel cells this year. Yay for miniaturization. We start researching my personal favorite tech, High Energy Focus.

2463 - News tells me Centauri is going Supernova. I guess I will put them on research. On second thought, they just maxxed 1075 factories so they put themselves entirely on research without me having to do anything.

2464 - We put the Klackons out of the running in this year. Everybody went straight to Neutral and the Meklars sent a tiny fleet at Xendalla.
Late this year, the Sakkras contacted us for a peace offering. I declined it. I have a fleet coming for their last planet anyway.

2465 - Still going pretty much full environmental, max population then max factories, and protect everything. Atmospheric Terraforming is getting us tons more people across the galaxy.

2466 - We developed Scatter Pack 7 missiles this year. There were 5 options on the list. Gauss Autocannon and Neutronium Bomb were the two that stood out at me. Gauss is my favorite weapon in the game, but if we want to bite into some of these super shields we might want the bomb, so I chose that.

Late in this year, we got another tech hit on the Meklars. I went for Construction because I like Armored Exoskeleton over Hard Beam. I framed
the Psilons for it over the Darloks.

2467 - We landed troops on the last Sakkra world, we took it easily. Everybody is now in Troubled relations with us.

2468 & 2469 - Literally nothing going on.

2470 - We developed Shield 7 this year, and we are researching Planetary 15 now. It was either that or regular shields 9. We are close to hitting in at least 3 more fields, including the High Energy focus that I love and won't get to use this game.

Still nobody has declared war on us yet. I have had most planets building 1 base per turn and the rest tech for the most part, so nearly all the planets have 15 - 25 missile bases on them.

I took most everything off of missile building across the empire, the only ones left making defenses should be the two new planets that are still working on shields. Fleets are still in orbit over both worlds so they aren't nearly defenseless.

- I passed 5 more turns and nothing happened till the election, at which time we had 59 out of 81 votes, very nearly 73% of the galactic total. Far more than enough to elect ourselves without help.

I will provide the save in case somebody else wants to pass the remaining 5 turns according to the regular turn order.

- Edit - I hosted the file here http://www.lifetimeprogress.net/files/SAVE5.GAM

Raid
 
Up to Archduke. I don't see that we have anything left to prove from looking at the save.

We've really played a masterful game for the last 100 years or so, considering we were in a hole from wich we really shouldn't have recovered in most games.

The Darloks have one planet and are totally irrelevant, Meklars are really far behind in tech, and even the Psilons have nothing that can harm us other than Bio Terminator, and we nearly have Universal antidote, so they'd need a zillion ships to pull that off. We'd just glass everyone with our Neutronium Bombs, which is going to complete shortly. Short of actively trying, we can not lose anymore, and we've now won 4 times, so I'd rather start a new game at this point.
 
How about playing as the Psilons with some really stupid restriction like not being able to have more than 10 ships at once?

Raid
 
I have 2 ideas that I suggested to Ref a while back that he liked.

1) Large, Impossible, Bulrathi. No sending transports to enemy inhabited worlds (have to glass and repopulate), thus removing most of our racial advantage (we still get it in defense, mind you). Further, we're poor in computers, making keeping up in tech a challenge.

2)Medium, Hard, Darloks. We can only invade a planet after we have incited a rebellion on it (and should start the invasion the turn we incite the rebellion), even if we are already at war with that race. Other spying could either be allowed or not depending on what everyone thinks.
 
I would prefer something with a little more strategic depth.

Those don't strike me as allowing ways to use skill to overcome the drawback.

Raid
 
That makes no sense to me, but what do I know? I can tell you I won't play the 10 ship thing. That game can be defined as such: Sit back, pray you have decent missiles and planetary shields, build thousands of bases over hundreds of years, wait for insanely miniaturized advanced damage control dreads with big time bombs...

Not really seeing how skill works there, but maybe you can explain what I'm missing?
 
The game wouldn't have to be on Impossible difficulty which would make it harder for small forces to conquer planets given that the opponent won't have 1/3 population in missile bases.

Also, something like heavy fusion + repulsor beam + automated repair could be a pretty good early game strategy for such a game.

Not like hoping for good missiles and planetary shields isn't a common strategy in impossible level games where you play bad races AND seriously handicap yourself, anyway.

Besides, if we were playing 10 ship Psilons on hard, we should theoretically be a leader in tech at pretty much every step if we got off to a good start, which would make 10 ship fleets stretch a lot farther.

Raid
 
Psilons on hard? Assuming we got or could get Adv. Space Scanner, I think we could win with no ships other than unarmed scouts and colony ships :lol: Now THAT I might be interested in trying.

Alternatively, we could use Alt+Galaxy if we didn't get Adv. Space Scanner.
 
Thanks for finishing things up, Raiddinn!

I may not have a vote in this one since I'm not sure how much time I'll have in the foreseeable future anyway, but I'm not really interested in the 10-ship rule, as we've done something quite like that already: Six ship limit for Klackons on Hard, in Imperium 30.
Spoiler information drawn from results of Imperium 30 :
It can sometimes slow the game down a lot, but as Maniac observed doesn't otherwise have much practical effect on strategy. (Just ship design.) In fact...
Psilons on hard? Assuming we got or could get Adv. Space Scanner, I think we could win with no ships other than unarmed scouts and colony ships :lol:
Now THAT I might be interested in trying.
...codehappy did exactly that in the Klackon game ... and won by domination in 2425. (Never got as far as Advanced Scanners.) The patch AI will expand better than the AIs did there, but even so.... There were a total of six reports, including mine, all of them pretty easy victories. Wrapping up his game, Cold Steel wrote, "All in all, the restriction on ships didn't make much of a difference. Early on a few well-armed Large ships got the job done, and later Huge ships filled the same role. (I'm fond of Huge ships anyway.) "
No Invasions Bulrathi on the other hand takes away not only a big part of the bears' advantage but a critical means of acquiring technology from the AI (while another is limited by our CPU tech weakness). Planning around that would be challenging indeed, especially against the patch AI, and would certainly require significant skill to overcome. (This is assuming we play on Impossible. It takes a really, really severe handicap to make Hard difficulty challenging for the group of players we've got assembled here.)

The Darlok set-up Maniac described has the advantage of coming with a fun story. (We're not aggressors! Oh, no, no, no! We just liberate those poor freedom-loving aliens who rebel against their oppressive overlords!) Along with the 'loks native relations troubles, this one also features lesser versions of the Bulrathi handicaps mentioned: Either we lose (most) of our racial advantage by performing no tech espionage at all, or we regularly have to make a strategic choice between using it to steal tech and attempting to "encourage the oppressed to throw off their shackles" and allow invasion. And of course the unpredictability (and one-per-year-maximum number for each race) of incited rebellions will slow down our galactic conquest. All that said, this one should be significantly less difficult than the Bulrathi variant, I believe.
 
I wish I had been around in those Klackon 6 ship days. Too bad.

Anyway, I guess I can't vote for that if it just happened.

Kinda makes me want to play a game and beat the Guardian with just 1 Large ship.

Out of the two other options presented, I have to say the Darlok one is the one that is probably closest to being fun.

Raid
 
I'm all for doing the Darlok idea then, but it would be better for me, and perhaps Ref too if we waited a couple of weeks before starting. I'll post a thread about it at RB in a couple of days then.
 
Wow guys, this thread is a great read! I'm at page 3, slowly going through it. I don't even know if the game is over yet, I assume so!

Looks like you all had a lot of fun doing this. I'll watch at Realms Beyond for the next round.

A question about the diplo victory in 2375 - what was the reason behind that? Did Saurak sneak by Kelvan in planet count?
 
The year to me is not different from any other, but I do know that the lizards started getting massive terraforming technology and the atmospheric terraforming and stuff and they had a lot of people.

Raid
 
Top Bottom