Welcome to Realms Beyond, SpaceOWL! And I'm happy to see all of you reading along!
I picked up my save again for 25 more turns and after getting my bearings ("Why is there an unexplored star right next to my home system? Oh, right...") I executed what I'd consider a pretty successful land grab, overtaking the Sakkras in number of planets and roughly pulling even in population. It's not quite RefSteel-quality, but this paste-up summarizes my expansion.
The Sakkras gave me quite a scare down at Talas just one turn before my colship arrived:
But it turned out to be a still-unarmed colony ship.
I started researching the Tundra colony base in 2350 with a round of seed spending from the whole empire. Poor Gion then continued with the "trickle" spending while Fierias kept cranking out all those colships and Obaca (and the rest of the empire) built up industry. Once I got enough spending into the research project so that Gion alone couldn't reap the full bonus, I had Obaca join it. When it reached the percentages in 2360, I moved tech spending to the less developed planets while Fierias and Obaca pre-built colony ships that would be converted to tundra colships once the tech arrived. It finally popped in 2365 with the first tundra colship finishing only one turn later. My next choices for planetology were Inferno and Toxic Colony Base. With quite a bunch of toxic planets around, the latter was the clear winner. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I will get the final barren world:
There's also an escorted Sakkra colony ship moving north probably to Rayden, so I'm amassing some fighters there. I hope it works out better than last time...
As you might guess from these pictures, the Alkaris and Sakkras are allied (in a on-again-off-again way). We like to complain about AI alliance cheese here, but I feel that they've earned it through honest pointy-stick diplomacy because both have been at war with the Bulrathis and Meklars the entire time. It's awfully nice of them to leave me alone this entire time. They also both have alliances with the Psilons. I did not get contact with any other races besides sending some lost scouts home, but relations with the Sakkras are at neutral and at relaxed with the Alkaris. That's most likely because they asked me for an increased trade deal of 100 BC in 2361.
After this round of colony ships, I finished the last factories on Obaca which then took up tech spending. Meanwhile, poor Gion was finally allowed to build factories. My farmer's gambit worked far better than it had any right to, with the Alkaris as neighbours, but I decided to finally open up weapons tech and to research the Inertial Stabilizer. That will make my fighters a bit harder to hit and hopefully open up better engines (fingers crossed!). My weapon choices were Hyper-V Missiles and Gatling Laser. The Gatling Laser would be useful against Alkari fighter swarms, but after my successful land grab, I picked the missiles as the more defensive option. In hindsight, I should have thought about how long it will take me to get up missile bases on the frontier... so far nothing bad has happened though.
I finished the battle computer in 2372 which added Improved Robotic Controls 3 and Battle Computer 3 - robotic controls was another obvious choice, but I didn't start research into it yet. Reduced Waste 80% finished one year later (for all the good that does) which left me with IIT8 as the only next choice - can't complain about that. Meanwhile, I checked what techs my neighbours had to offer. The Alkaris didn't want any of my techs for a pretty long time, but are finally offering the Gatling Laser, but I didn't want it badly enough. The Sakkras at first offered only an ECM Jammer (boo!) but have finally expanded their selection:
The IIT9 is tempting, but with IIT8 in my tree, I didn't trade for it either.
That's all for now! Here's a picture of the Alkaris about to meet the Guardian:
Bar graphs:
Planets and population are looking nice. If I can hold on to them.
And finally a map without my ugly paste job:
I picked up my save again for 25 more turns and after getting my bearings ("Why is there an unexplored star right next to my home system? Oh, right...") I executed what I'd consider a pretty successful land grab, overtaking the Sakkras in number of planets and roughly pulling even in population. It's not quite RefSteel-quality, but this paste-up summarizes my expansion.
The Sakkras gave me quite a scare down at Talas just one turn before my colship arrived:
But it turned out to be a still-unarmed colony ship.
I started researching the Tundra colony base in 2350 with a round of seed spending from the whole empire. Poor Gion then continued with the "trickle" spending while Fierias kept cranking out all those colships and Obaca (and the rest of the empire) built up industry. Once I got enough spending into the research project so that Gion alone couldn't reap the full bonus, I had Obaca join it. When it reached the percentages in 2360, I moved tech spending to the less developed planets while Fierias and Obaca pre-built colony ships that would be converted to tundra colships once the tech arrived. It finally popped in 2365 with the first tundra colship finishing only one turn later. My next choices for planetology were Inferno and Toxic Colony Base. With quite a bunch of toxic planets around, the latter was the clear winner. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I will get the final barren world:
There's also an escorted Sakkra colony ship moving north probably to Rayden, so I'm amassing some fighters there. I hope it works out better than last time...
As you might guess from these pictures, the Alkaris and Sakkras are allied (in a on-again-off-again way). We like to complain about AI alliance cheese here, but I feel that they've earned it through honest pointy-stick diplomacy because both have been at war with the Bulrathis and Meklars the entire time. It's awfully nice of them to leave me alone this entire time. They also both have alliances with the Psilons. I did not get contact with any other races besides sending some lost scouts home, but relations with the Sakkras are at neutral and at relaxed with the Alkaris. That's most likely because they asked me for an increased trade deal of 100 BC in 2361.
After this round of colony ships, I finished the last factories on Obaca which then took up tech spending. Meanwhile, poor Gion was finally allowed to build factories. My farmer's gambit worked far better than it had any right to, with the Alkaris as neighbours, but I decided to finally open up weapons tech and to research the Inertial Stabilizer. That will make my fighters a bit harder to hit and hopefully open up better engines (fingers crossed!). My weapon choices were Hyper-V Missiles and Gatling Laser. The Gatling Laser would be useful against Alkari fighter swarms, but after my successful land grab, I picked the missiles as the more defensive option. In hindsight, I should have thought about how long it will take me to get up missile bases on the frontier... so far nothing bad has happened though.
I finished the battle computer in 2372 which added Improved Robotic Controls 3 and Battle Computer 3 - robotic controls was another obvious choice, but I didn't start research into it yet. Reduced Waste 80% finished one year later (for all the good that does) which left me with IIT8 as the only next choice - can't complain about that. Meanwhile, I checked what techs my neighbours had to offer. The Alkaris didn't want any of my techs for a pretty long time, but are finally offering the Gatling Laser, but I didn't want it badly enough. The Sakkras at first offered only an ECM Jammer (boo!) but have finally expanded their selection:
The IIT9 is tempting, but with IIT8 in my tree, I didn't trade for it either.
That's all for now! Here's a picture of the Alkaris about to meet the Guardian:
Bar graphs:
Planets and population are looking nice. If I can hold on to them.
And finally a map without my ugly paste job:
Hopefully your land grab will stay grabbed.
) today. Actually, a bit further because I wanted to see Toxic Colony Base pop and it was stubborn. I probably won't have time to type up a report until Saturday, but the most important points are:
Good luck dealing with the immense hordes of reptiles!
Lots of pop and IRC3? 
Thanks for sharing your game with us, RFS-81.