Decided to show off a bit of the game I'm in right now. It's been shaping up interestingly.
Dwaaaaarves Iiiiiiiin Spaaaaaace! You can see the core of the empire here. I built out a solid area to work in and then went for habitats and megastructures. We have a very large population now, and quite mixed with races from all over the galaxy. You can still see the remnants of one of the Marauder clans off to the west. The Eastern one was up against the galactic center, but got wiped out at some point while I wasn't looking.
Here you can see the galaxy over all. The Scourge has taken the entire NW corner of the map. Before they arrived most of that was owned by the sliver of teal just north of the brown and red empires to the west. The red empire to the north was also considerably larger before they arrived, and there were a few small splinter & vessel states in the area that no longer exist. Also of note, there used to be an Awaken Empire up there but they proved to be nothing more than a speed bump against the swarm.
There are, essentially, two major factions in this empire (not counting the swarm). My Grand Alliance is the vast swath of purple taking up most of the South & East. I've focused more on helping my allies expand rather than build out myself so I'm much smaller than most of them, though still the most powerful by far. The Sanguine Coalition is the red group on that map, excepting the far SW bit which is actually a FE that seems quite content to let the swarm devour everything while they sit in their little hideout.
There is also that green bit to the north of me, a Hivemind. I was at peace with them for a very long time, until my SE neighbors finally joined the Alliance. They had been warring off and on with the Hivemind most of the game and getting the worst of it every time. Once they had a very powerful set of friends, we quickly waged several wars to not only gain back all of their lost territory but took a large chunk of hivemind territory in the last war. The arrival of the Scourge ended all that before another war broke out.
Far to the West is an isolationist empire (the brown one) that has held out alone for quite some time. The Scourge has only recently started doing any actual damage to their empire. We can only hope that they can hold out a bit longer, as we have no real way of getting ships that far over to help.
I expect, should we defeat the Scourge, that we'll win the game shortly after the crisis ends.
One of two enclaves I have outside my core Empire. This one was a pair of worlds taken from the hivemind in the war right before the Scourge arrived. My initial plan was to use it as a base of operations (I installed a Gateway on the system with a Gaia world) to carve out a nice little area and help the next war against them. Once we'd pacified the area I was planning on setting the area free as a vassal state. With the arrival of the Scourge this has become a staging point for the northern fleets. The Gateway has proven instrumental in allowing me and my allies a way to quickly get fleets up there. The stations there also have Shipyards and provide a lot of the reinforcements on their own.
There is nothing of note in this system. It was a pirate stronghold for much of the game, unclaimed by the weak empire that bordered it and not useful enough for anyone else to claim. But when the Scourge arrived I saw an opportunity, and sent out a small fleet to clean out the system and claim it. Then I built up a formidable Citadel here and installed a Gateway. This the Bastion against the Scourge, and the first real line of defense between it and any of our actual systems. It is surrounded by a fragmented set of nations that splintered off from their home empire, leaving several 1-2 system empires. A few of those have joined us, the others are now vassals to various other powers. The home empire, the Concordant Of Dir, is part of the other Federation. A more worrying aspect, I suppose, if the galaxy wasn't in Crisis right now.
It is the jump off point for our Western Fleets, and should the Scourge get down this far should be a fairly defensible point as I can pump reinforcements in quickly using the Gateway. It's defensive systems are also all specifically tailored to be strong against the Scourge ships.
This is the line I am holding against the Scourge. They push, we push back. Sometimes we send fleets deep into their territory to strike at weakly defended systems. Sometimes they push forward and we have to push back. Sometimes we can't for a while, and entire planets are infected and their people destroyed.
We have Cleansed many worlds with our Neutron Sweeper Colossus. We expect to cleanse many more.
For now, we are holding. As our technology and those of our allies continues to improve we fare better and better against the invaders. I hope that someday this threat will be destroyed.
But for now, we are the Dwarves. We come from the Mountainhome, and we will not stand idly by while this threat consumes our Galaxy!