Today I played GalCiv2. Today I raged.
FFFFFUUUUU-
Well, thats new to me. in all the games I've played, either I beat them to that, or didn't have tech victory on because I was trying something else (or was messing around with my overpowered custom race of supreme tech advantage with orange and blue triangular ships.)
Certainly seen plenty of the other failure screens, though.
I was too busy fighting a desperate battle to destroy their suns to notice that they were even going for a tech victory.
I'd spent the early portion of the game thinking "Pff, I'll just give these peacemongerers all of my techs in exchange for money, it's not like they're going to be any threat to anyone." After all, I was playing as an ethically neutral civ focussed mainly on influence starbases, what reason would they ever have to attack me?
What's that, everyone who surrenders EVER gives everything they own to the Altarians, you say? What's that, out of nowhere they're a galactic superpower with a military rating SIX TIMES higher than the leading competitor,
which isn't even me, you say? What's that, they're allies with the warlike Drath who pay them off to attack me, you say?
So I end up fighting an uphill battle against this enormous, technologically advanced civilization with the cutting edge in military power, enormous armies, more planets than I can count and enough industrial might to put the whole rest of the galaxy to shame, even when I've convinced everyone else to go to war with them.
Finally, with all of this going on for about 10 days real time, I manage to start turning things in my favour... I can't possibly hope to beat them in terms of sheer power, but if I focus all of my military into a concentrated area I can bring in Terror Stars to stop them from immediately reconquering any planets.
It takes a long time but it looks like my strategy might pay off and let me claw my way to victory, or at least hold out for the fifty, ONLY FIFTY, turns turns I needed to hit an ascension victory.
Lol, no. Tech victory to them, they become gods, I lose.
RAGE!