Imperium 12 - mostly_harmless goes the full distance

[mostly_harmless]

Realizing I won't be able to settle any hostile worlds I hope for enough habitable worlds in the neighborhood to get a decent base.

So I cut out that little corner of mine being hemmed in by the Bugs in the south and lack of range tech in the north.
The game goes one with nothing extraordinary. Standing up my core worlds, realizing the bugs are erratic, so diplomacy is hopeless with them. So they make for a nice first target.
The rest of the galaxy is a bit weird. The Bulrathi are the major faction. Humans and Psilons only have 2 planets each with the Alkari owning 3-4 planets. Luckily I manage to get on good terms with the bears shaping up a nice alliance and trade agreement. We are both weeding out the lesser races, fighting the Bugs together as well as the Brains and the Apes.
I use the Bulrathi planets to attack and resettle Kholdan, Mentar together with a couple more worlds in the center of the galaxy and preparing the assimilation of Sol and Alkaris homeworld.

Then I have one of those moments:
One turn bears and machines fight happily together the rest of the galaxy, the next turn an election comes up and ALL races vote for the Bears!!!

Now that came unexpected. The bears fleet proves too much for our ships and we have to retreat all the way back to Kholdan and our core worlds giving up all gains in the center of the galaxy.
Here it can be seen that I managed to capture both Sol and Altair. Mentar was already retaken by the alliance and put under bears control. The same fate awaited Altair. A nice shot of the combined alliance fleets I am facing.

I am loosing Sol, Kailis & Incedius a few year later.
What follows is a long period of turtle-up tactics, with heavy tech stealing and building and testing new ship and weapon designs against the alliance.
And in 2700 I am back in the galactic center, having slowly pushed my way from world to world avoiding those Bulrathis huge designs whenever possible.


to be continued

[mostly_harmless]

Here is the galactic map of that time:

And here a snapshot of what the bears were jumping around with:

I have given up defending the hostile worlds around my core, so the tech advanced alliance could atmosphere-form them for me.

By now the year is approaching 2800 btw.
It will take more than another century to arrive at a situation were I have spread across the entire map and there is just one more world holding out. Interestingly it is one of those rich worlds close to my initial core still held by the Bugs (!).

I was executing a (very slow) clockwise sweep of the galaxy.
So in 2912 I rule.
That's what .... more than 600 turns???

mh

[Sullla]

Wow, crazy! The game actually lasted more than 700 turns! But you stuck it out and pulled off a successful victory in the end. Congratulations!

[dathon]

Wow, it's amazing how disparate our games were. The Bulrathi a major power? They never did better than 4 planets and NPG's in my game I'm also surprised that your Klackons managed to get out of the center. They managed to beat everybody else to Kailis, even though they were the farthest away.

I'm also curious how you were able to turtle for so long. Did the AI not have neutronium or anti-matter bombs, or did you manage to pilfer a missle tech?

Great job sticking to your guns and coming out on top

dathon

[mostly_harmless]

During one period I believe I had superior shield technology to render their bombs useless. Not sure though. Once the scanner tech was in that lets you check for incoming fleets, I made sure I had a defending fleet in place. Luckily they never came with those 32k swarms at me.

mh

[TheArchduke]

Woha, quite a difference to timmy´s and my game.

Kudos for sticking through till the bitter end and finally winning the game! That must have been some epic battles!

[sargon0]

Waiting for AI ATMOS! Damn, I did not think of that

[RefSteel]

...whoa! Now that's sticking it out to the bitter end! On the election loss: This is one of the little frustrations of MoO diplomacy: AIs who are at war with you will always vote against you - even if it means voting for someone with whom they are also at war! Just something to keep in mind so you can plan accordingly. We've had a lot of Final War wins in these Imperia so far (relatively speaking) but I wouldn't expect to see that in future Impossible games.