Hi, all. This was my third Imperium but my first in over half a year. Good to be back.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the return I would have wanted. It was more a case of
. The limitations of this Imperium seemed like they’d be fun, and perhaps they would have been with a more favourable map setup or something. However, it was absolutely freakish how little went my way in this game.
The Darloks launched into a shooting war with me very early for no reason and were serious about it; I’ve never seen the MOO AI so persistent, they followed up their victories almost like a human player would. They managed to cut me off with just four planets (five once I had some environment techs) while leaving themselves free to expand to the south, quickly becoming by far the most powerful race in the game. In most council votes they had just under half the votes all by themselves; not once did any other race vote Darlok (except me once, in an unsuccessful attempt to get them to make peace), thankfully, but they still managed to deadlock the council throughout the game.
Though they had only retros, their fleets seemed to teleport all over the map, always being able to meet my transports or fleets in force even at objectives that had been completely undefended at the time the missions in question were launched. I made a good go of protecting my existing planets for a long time – over 100 years – but simply could not get any forward momentum going. I tried to take vulnerable-looking planets in ground combat more than once, but always there was a fleet there to greet them by the time they arrived, and it was a rare day when Mrrshan troops set foot on Darlok soil. And never in sufficient numbers to be other than horribly slaughtered.
On top of all that, the random events bent me over big-time; at one point I was contending with a plague and a comet at the same time, and a little later my homeworld turned poor on me (crippling when my empire was so small and that was by far my biggest industrial world). At about the same time as the latter event, the Darloks finally managed to overwhelm my second-largest planet and conquer it; the combination of these two events pretty much put me out of it. I persisted in trying to make a dent in them for about another twenty turns, but it just got too depressing when they managed to annihilate my second-largest remaining colony (reducing me to three planets, two small and one poor). At that point, I simply gave up.
Anyway, enough whining. Better luck next time, I hope.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the return I would have wanted. It was more a case of
. The limitations of this Imperium seemed like they’d be fun, and perhaps they would have been with a more favourable map setup or something. However, it was absolutely freakish how little went my way in this game.The Darloks launched into a shooting war with me very early for no reason and were serious about it; I’ve never seen the MOO AI so persistent, they followed up their victories almost like a human player would. They managed to cut me off with just four planets (five once I had some environment techs) while leaving themselves free to expand to the south, quickly becoming by far the most powerful race in the game. In most council votes they had just under half the votes all by themselves; not once did any other race vote Darlok (except me once, in an unsuccessful attempt to get them to make peace), thankfully, but they still managed to deadlock the council throughout the game.
Though they had only retros, their fleets seemed to teleport all over the map, always being able to meet my transports or fleets in force even at objectives that had been completely undefended at the time the missions in question were launched. I made a good go of protecting my existing planets for a long time – over 100 years – but simply could not get any forward momentum going. I tried to take vulnerable-looking planets in ground combat more than once, but always there was a fleet there to greet them by the time they arrived, and it was a rare day when Mrrshan troops set foot on Darlok soil. And never in sufficient numbers to be other than horribly slaughtered.
On top of all that, the random events bent me over big-time; at one point I was contending with a plague and a comet at the same time, and a little later my homeworld turned poor on me (crippling when my empire was so small and that was by far my biggest industrial world). At about the same time as the latter event, the Darloks finally managed to overwhelm my second-largest planet and conquer it; the combination of these two events pretty much put me out of it. I persisted in trying to make a dent in them for about another twenty turns, but it just got too depressing when they managed to annihilate my second-largest remaining colony (reducing me to three planets, two small and one poor). At that point, I simply gave up.
Anyway, enough whining. Better luck next time, I hope.
