Sponsor: RefSteel
Opening Date: Monday, September 13, 2009
Duration: Four Weeks
Map Generation: Random (unedited except to turn off events)

Race: Meklar
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Medium
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Events: None (turned off in the save file)

Scenario: For ages, the peoples of the world now called Meklon suffered from internal wars, between nations and between races, much like the wars no doubt brewing now across the galaxy. The color of a beings's hair or skin, the color of one's eyes, the size of one's body, each at one time or another was imagined to demonstrate true natural superiority. Those times have passed on Meklon, and soon enough, they must pass across the galaxy: The people who proved superior to all others on the planet's surface were not those of any single race, but those who banded together across racial boundaries to pursue and embrace advanced technology. By incorporating their high-tech cybernetic tools and factory interfaces into their bodies, the original Meklar people soon conquered every other nation on the surface of their world, and assimilated their enemies into their own society by transforming them too into cybernetic bio-machines subservient to the great collective machine intelligence, RBO-23. Now the time has come to spread the lessons of these wars across the galaxy: To assimilate the worlds of all other species into the great machine-collective begun on Meklar and now extending into the vastness of space! Though willing, with some reluctance, to spread our own population to distant worlds in case of need, the true purpose of the Meklar is to bring others into the great collective, and -- world by alien world -- assimilate all the peoples of the galaxy!

Variant: None (apart from avoiding known exploits, as usual) - this is our first Imperium in almost a year to be played on Impossible difficulty, and we may need all the tricks in our bag. Nevertheless, for those who wish to try and go above and beyond, and make the game more challenging, we have...

Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so. If you want to be scored, you need to document (by recording the information someplace; we're pretty laid back about scoring here, so you don't have to worry about "proving" anything) your final result, the number of colonies you form via colony ship, your final planet count, and the date of your victory (if any). Score for the game will be calculated as follows:

• Completing the game: +500 (win or lose; diplomatic losses qualify if you accept the ruling, and you still get 500 points for hanging on to the bitter end if your Meklar are exterminated from the galaxy!)
• Each year remaining before 2600 when (and if!) you achieve a victory: +1
• Each planet you control at the end of the game: +5
• Each colony you build yourself: -25 (for founding with a colony ship; there's no penalty for conquering!)
• Tie-breaker: Ties will be broken in order of earliest to latest victories, followed by latest to earliest defeats (resigning from the game counts as a defeat on the date of resignation, and qualifies for planet count scoring, but does not count as "completing the game")

Notes: To cut down on one of the major random elements in the game, I've turned off events by editing the savefile (thanks to sargon0 for explaining how to do this!) without acquiring spoiler information. Thus, you don't have to turn off events; none will occur anyway.

Finally, though I tried to make sure this game would at least be playable for players new to Impossible difficulty, don't expect a walk in the park here, especially if you decide to take risks to maximize your scoring. Though much depends, as always, on the choices you and the various AIs make, I believe I can safely say that this one qualifies as an Extreme Imperium!

Closing Date: Monday, October 12, 2009. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, October 13, your local time.

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