I'm currently winning my first Darlok game on impossible after several starts with disastrous diplo right off the bat. The key in this current game of mine was that the runaway AI, the Alkari, were already engaged in 3 wars with mostly erratic neighbors by the time the council vote came up, and I hadn't even met most of the other races, which allowed me to not only survive the first couple of council votes, but even vote for the Alkari safely and thus get on their good side, making sure that their unstoppable fleets were redirected elsewhere while I played catch-up.
I've found that, if you can get a reprieve from early AI dogpiling or lost council votes as the Darloks until, say, after 2425, then you can really have the game in the bag. The Darloks are a very "swingy" race--either you will do terribly with them due to bad diplo, or you will easily dominate once you steal some good techs and get your industrial base set up. When stealing techs, you can also use the opportunity quite often to frame others, thus setting intra-AI wars in motion and distracting them with fighting each other.
I have a feeling that the Darloks would dominate on the special asteroid mapscript that makes a lot of stars asteroid belts and postpones the council vote until someone captures Orion. The Darloks start the weakest and end the strongest, and the longer you can put off that council vote, the better. Even if you have to face one AI opponent in an early war, it is tough, but nearly always doable (unless they are a runaway Alkari or Psilon with a huge tech lead). Facing more than one, much less a final war, is where things start to become hopeless...
Other "swingy" races: the Bulrathi (very powerful situationally, while sometimes their advantages will go unused). And the Silicoids (great if there are hostile mineral rich planets nearby, not so great if the nearby planets are small, habitable, poor ones, in which case the Silicoids are just flat-out worse).
I wonder, which races are the least "swingy"? With which races does one tend to have the most even of chances with from game to game (whether those chances are good or bad). I'd say the humans have pretty evenly good chances in any game due to good diplo, which lets the strategic situation evolve more on your own terms according to whatever timetable happens to work best for you in that particular game (you might need more or less time to catch up in any given game). The Meklar are more consistent too, by virtue of the fact that their relative economic success is not as contingent upon having just the right sorts of planets nearby and planetology / propulsion tech in one's tree to snag a lot of planets early on. (Ref's Meklon gambit of deleting the starting colony ship is the perfect example of this. You know that you can at least be guaranteed in any game of having at least 1 superworld at Meklon). The Klackons, Psilons, and Sakkra I would consider to be a lower tier of "dependable and good." On the other hand, the Mrrshans have pretty evenly bad chances in any game, I'd say.
I've found that, if you can get a reprieve from early AI dogpiling or lost council votes as the Darloks until, say, after 2425, then you can really have the game in the bag. The Darloks are a very "swingy" race--either you will do terribly with them due to bad diplo, or you will easily dominate once you steal some good techs and get your industrial base set up. When stealing techs, you can also use the opportunity quite often to frame others, thus setting intra-AI wars in motion and distracting them with fighting each other.
I have a feeling that the Darloks would dominate on the special asteroid mapscript that makes a lot of stars asteroid belts and postpones the council vote until someone captures Orion. The Darloks start the weakest and end the strongest, and the longer you can put off that council vote, the better. Even if you have to face one AI opponent in an early war, it is tough, but nearly always doable (unless they are a runaway Alkari or Psilon with a huge tech lead). Facing more than one, much less a final war, is where things start to become hopeless...
Other "swingy" races: the Bulrathi (very powerful situationally, while sometimes their advantages will go unused). And the Silicoids (great if there are hostile mineral rich planets nearby, not so great if the nearby planets are small, habitable, poor ones, in which case the Silicoids are just flat-out worse).
I wonder, which races are the least "swingy"? With which races does one tend to have the most even of chances with from game to game (whether those chances are good or bad). I'd say the humans have pretty evenly good chances in any game due to good diplo, which lets the strategic situation evolve more on your own terms according to whatever timetable happens to work best for you in that particular game (you might need more or less time to catch up in any given game). The Meklar are more consistent too, by virtue of the fact that their relative economic success is not as contingent upon having just the right sorts of planets nearby and planetology / propulsion tech in one's tree to snag a lot of planets early on. (Ref's Meklon gambit of deleting the starting colony ship is the perfect example of this. You know that you can at least be guaranteed in any game of having at least 1 superworld at Meklon). The Klackons, Psilons, and Sakkra I would consider to be a lower tier of "dependable and good." On the other hand, the Mrrshans have pretty evenly bad chances in any game, I'd say.
