My Game Experaince so far

So after a couple small games set on a very easy level, I decided to launch a large Galaxy with a 4 other races in a last man standing death match on Normal difficulty.

I start the game fast and furious, researching a few items and then going for Planetary Invasion and I launch a bunch of transports and take out one neighbor without ever building a single military ship. As I recouped my resources and prepared for my next invasion, I noticed that there are now a few Defender ships being built, so I will now need a combat vessel. I build a ship with the best stuff I got at the time and try to get an invasion under way on another planet, but I am thwarted time and time again as my neighbors are keeping me at bay.

So I decide to pull back and crank out some research again to gain a large enough advantage with my ships that I can once again get my conquest under way.

It takes a long time; my people are starting to get unhappy and my economy is struggling. So I start peppering a few social techs in my research to be able to build things to keep the peeps happy and build up the economy. It’s all working well and soon my economy and populations are humming along.

But I have been surpassed by all of my neighbor’s military wise. I have a few ships on each of my 9 planets, but they are getting old and I have to build a new generation of ships to be competitive again. But during that time all 3 of me existing neighbors attack me. I am virtually helpless. Soon my planets are being invaded as my fleet is decimated.

I assume I have lost the game at this point, but I want to play it out to the end in hopes of learning more for my next game.

So I launch into massive and desperate diplomatic measures to try and get the attacking civilizations to back off before I am eliminated. I offer up techs, money and influence points in massive amounts turn after turn. Soon it works; I get all 3 to sign peace treaties.

Surprisingly, during the war, my economy takes off to never before seen heights as I am soon making over 500bc a week due no ship maintenance and a handful of planets that were once busting at the seems with people that had survived the invasions but with reduced populations were now growing happily again.

Also amazingly, I did not lose any planets during the war.

So my coffers are busting at the seems with cash flow, my people are hovering in the 82-85% satisfaction range and I am once again cranking out techs at break neck speed. So after building a huge, armored death machine of a ship and outright buying a few for ludicrous prices I have the strongest military in the galaxy.

But 2 of my neighbors are wary of me and one is neutral towards me. But I am assuming that at least 2 of them are allies and they may be friends with the third. So attacking one may once again trigger everyone to declare war on me. I am unsure that I could withstand the brunt of all 3 races against me again and be able to mount any kind of successful offensive and to make things worse, one of the races is getting uncomfortably closer to my level of military strength.

So that’s where I am at this point and I am unsure what my next move is gonna be. But what amazes me is that I have been playing this particular game for almost a week now and I thought I was dead on one occasion and was able to mount a comeback.

For my next move, I thought about launching an influence attack and seeing if I can get a couple of planets to simply join my empire. But I really want to launch a military offensive to try and gain a couple of planets and weaken one of the 3 remaining races beyond the point of them being able to be a serious threat to me.

I have plenty of espionage going and that’s paying off with stolen techs, but I am really unsure of what I should do right now.

God, I love this game!!!