Okay, so it seemed like a pretty lucky diplomatic victory, but in reality this game was already won. I led in total power, I owned a ridiculous number of planets with terraforming+40 not yet maxed out and insanely productive bugs, and I would have a clear veto well before the next election. I was in position to start an offensive of my own, and once I started taking factory-filled Meklar worlds, the variant would no longer represent a major handicap: Meklar factories can employ a lot of bugs. Just to prove the point (and to see the rest of the galaxy in which we were playing) I went back and loaded my 2399 save, and voted for the Meklar instead of myself.
By 2407, I was out to 18 systems, and led everyone I knew in every category but fleet strength - and edged out my Meklar enemies even in that category. Had not General SAN-174 confined his emperor to a padded room after he lost the real election, this wouldn't have ended well for the Meklar. I went on to take Misha (with lots of factories and tech intact) in 2413, lost essentially my entire combat fleet to a misclick a few years later, but was nonetheless going strong when I met the Humans in 2318. Two years and two toxic colonies later (with another about to be built the following year) the newsdroid announced that leaders were preparing to merge with my empire. Fusion Drives hit in 2424, and that was what I was waiting for: I assembled a new fleet. Here's what the galaxy looked like at that point:
I faced Alexander in the next year's election, but had nearly half the vote myself, and was well on my way to assembling my new warp-4 starfleet. Four years later...
...with severe overkill on ground troops since the Meklar had sent a bunch of transports away for some reason, I nearly cleaned out their tech tree in the course of conquering their homeworld. I now had lots and lots of factories of course, with even more to come at Tyr in a couple of years (along with their last and best tech - BC5, whose research I'd been neglecting ever since discovering they had it available to steal) - ready to be operated (thanks to the IRC3 I lifted at Meklar) with almost no cleanup costs going forward (as I'd nearly finished researching Advanced Eco Restoration).
As a bit of comic relief, Toranor decided to have an industrial accident in 2434, in spite of having zero industry of any kind throughout the entire game.
Also visible here are all the planets whose industry was so kindly provided for me by the AI (from whom I captured most of the planets on this screen, of course) as of 2435. Just to give you an idea of how thoroughly over the game was by this point, here's the map from the same year.
Yeah. After Alexander failed to appear as my 2400 opponent (and therefore couldn't steal the election) the rest was a walk, as expected, even with a couple breaks going against me (I did play this out to a lazy conquest with just about 75% of the vote in 2450, but would rather see it booked as the diplo win I originally took in 2400). Early expansion, research, growth curve management, and (yes) diplomacy won this one for me - though it might have been an uphill fight if I hadn't aggressively worked to reclaim Ryoun and Beta Ceti before the turn of the century. Even with my early win (and in part because of it - I actually quite like this kind of diplomatic victory) This was definitely a fun variant, and the map layout made for a good early challenge in spite of playing Klackons on Possible difficulty (my, how my perspective has changed since the first Imperia!) - my thanks to the sponsor for a very enjoyable game!
And thanks as well to Megafrost, who (perhaps unintentionally) inspired me to consider a report from the AI's perspective with a comment on my Imperium 12 report more than two months ago! I definitely enjoyed writing this one!
_______________
Back to the Front Page
