Let me start of in saying that I'm sorry for lack of pictures and even a lot of detail accounts as I hadn't planned on making this game into an AAR and am not at the computer that even holds the game.
Build: ToA Beta3a
Race: Iconians
Difficulty: Normal (just testing the Beta)
Map: Large
All set to abundant, tech trading on, no minor civs.
I was located in the top corner of the galaxy, terrans to my left, dregin to my right. The Yor were in the bottom corner, arceans right corner, torians left corner. I was faced with the dilemma of either worrying about a influence push by the terrans or a military push by the dregin.
Things started off fairly smooth. I tried to get my military up and running early to stave off a war with the dregin all while making sure my border planets with the terran had a high population and high influence.
Most of the time in the game was snagging a few research/factory/econ techs to supplement my fairly lack of a good assortment myself.
By the time I had large hulls, every planet had been colonized (even extreeme planets) and now was the time to worry about pushing people back. I had a mere 1/5 of the galaxy to my name, the yor, dregin and torians had dominated the land grab scene and the yor/dregin had acquired some with early wars I provoked to keep the from looking at me.
Now that the scientists worked out the bugs in the terror stars, we sent 6 constructors to a uninhabited system w/in our borders and made a terror star to run a trial on. All tests worked as planned, just in time too as the Dread Lords just arrived. I think we should properly greet them
3 fleets of 3 ships each escorted 6 constructors across the galaxy and into Yor territory to destroy the Dread Lords once and for all. After they were mere cosmic dust (and our first Star was en route south toward the Yor border as well, we decided to right the wrongs that we and the dread lords were part of...the Yor.
A few fleets watched our border with the Yor to make sure no toasters got to our planets, while 2 Star's and 3 escort fleets did their rounds turning the massive Yor territory to dust. We decided to play the humanitarian (does that really fit when we are talking about sentient robots?) and not commit genocide. The Yor always wanted their space after all. They went to the trouble of creating some technology that slowed all ships that get close to their planets to a crawl to increase the travel time to get to them. We decided to take that 1 step further. We allowed them to keep 1 system in the far reaches of the known galaxy to themselves, but we made sure there wasn't a star nor a planet within 2 sectors of them. Remember....they wanted to be isolationists...
All this time I had Alliances with the Terrans, Arceans and the Torians with full intent on dealing with the Dregin presence once my objectives were complete. I often had to "call off my dogs" as you will and have them all call for peace with the Yor so that their ships wouldn't be taken down in the wake of a star's destruction. Well, the Dregin seemed to think it was time to expand again and fired a volley at the Arceans...starting the war with them with me as well. We may have to create a 3rd force at our Dregin border to hold off their advance while the Star forces come in and decimate them as well. In the Yor war, not 1 Iconian perished.
Terror Stars, we have a new target. Escort fleets, refit with the newest line of Phasors, remove those Sentry Droids and toss on more organic plating....we have Dregin to obliterate!!!!