The Arceans ascended to a state past that of our consciousness and so, I lost the game with the nasty words "How can we fight an enemy we can't see or perceive?".
Goddamnit Lord Vega. Protected by those nasty Rhinellans (a custom race i made out of the Turian super ability, human tech line and Paulos face - they were meant to be Queenslanders who had genetically altered themselves to have traits of the Cane Toads), the single biggest civilisation in the galaxy, no other race dared lift a finger to the tiny, economically and militarily weak Arceans. This meant that if I wanted to stop the Arceans winning, I had to go through the biggest, baddest civ in the match to even
try and stop the Arceans.
I massed my forces at the Arcean-Drengin border. Emperor Iso of the Iconians tells me that "something must be done about those Rhinellans, they're too strong". Yes yes Iso, I realise you're suggesting
I do the heavy lifting, despite you being more capable, and being the only civ with a stronger military than the Rhinellans.
Even for me, a small civilisation of a mere ten to fifteen planets, rolling the Arceans alone would take my outmoded fighters a matter of five turns for their first planet, and little more for the remaining ones. In reality, all I needed to do was knock out their unprotected Ascension Starbases, which would be doable by even my most pitiful fighter.
However, I had made one critical error.
Most of the Arcean civ was out of range from a friendly planet. That said, I could still conquer their most proximal planet to me, which would give me a foothold with which to range out to the other planets.
So I declared war.
Immediately, the Rhinellans broke their alliance with me, and came to the aid of the Arceans. I baulked at the screen for a few seconds.
The Thalan Empire, the Iconian Refuge and the Myrmecians (an ant race I made) then formed a coalition and all collectively attacked the Drengin Empire, an ally of mine.
As there was no way known I could fight the Rhinellans, Arceans, Thalans, Iconians and Myrmecians alone, I had to terminate the alliance with the Drengin. It was looking fairly grim against the Rhinellans until I unlocked a few key techs that gave me a boost in firepower.
I then got a very, very nice random event - engineers on one of my planets uncovered an old Ranger class starship, and with a bit of elbow grease got it up and running, calling it the Lucky Ranger.
The Lucky Ranger flew its maiden voyage out of Mars, along with four aged, outmoded M7 Phoenix class fighters (hideously weak compared to the Ranger, with something like 8hp, 0/0/2 0/2/0 offenses/defenses vs the Ranger's 180hp, 0/0/150 0/0/85 offense/defenses. For reference, I had just finished building an incredibly heavily built up starbase, as heavy as it would allow, and it had about 20/20/20 20/20/20 offense/defense and 65hp.) and one aged M3 Thunder.
The Thunder and the four Phoenixes screamed through Rhinellan space, accompanying the titanic Lucky Ranger as it edged closer and closer to the nearest foothold I could get in Rhinellan space to the Arceans: the planet Patroklos II. Two billion human soldiers were aboard troop transports safely in Drengin space, away from prowling Rhinellan Heavy Fighters and Rhinellan Frigates.
Meanwhile, the Drengin were fighting hard - their Super Dominator ability, normally underwhelming, came in handy against the coalition as they got a swathe of Corvette-class starships to fight off their foes. This was fairly mid-game, so Super Dominator was only just beginning to become weak.
The Iconians were fighting the brunt of the battles against the Drengin, and it was telling - a mid-year report from spies stated that the Iconians were suffering "death of a thousand cuts" - while incredibly powerful, the sustained war was draining the Iconian coffers, harming its economy and hampering research.
The Lucky Ranger came up against a swarm of Rhinellan frigates - six of them, that due to logistics could only encounter in groups of three. The Phoenixes were annihilated almost instantly, while the Lucky Ranger and the Thunder plowed on. It was quite hilarious to see the Ranger's ECM effortlessly deflect Rhinellan stingers, while firing off a gazillion missiles of its own, while the Thunder pewpewed about once every few seconds, and took no hits.
After all six frigates were defeated, I was able to advance on the orbiting ships of Patroklos II. Thunder and Lucky Ranger effortlessly wiped the Rhinellan Defenders from the planet's surface, paving the way for a ground invasion.
Two billion humans broadcast messages of information warfare, before descending onto the surface, where every Rhinellman, Rhinellwoman and any other able bodied frogmen things picked up a gun and fought. It helped that around a billion Rhinellans turned traitor and joined the Terran army, but we took Patroklos II and were preparing to set up for the invasion of Arcea when six billion Rhinellan troops swarmed Patroklos II before I could muster any orbital defense.
At this time, it was looking grim. Without Patroklos II, I had no means of assaulting Arcea. There was only twenty turns before the Arceans won, all because of the damn Rhinellans, who would lose the moment the Arceans ascended!
Then came this message.
That's right. An evil civ surrendering to a neutral civ. The Drengin were losing too many planets, so they handed them over to the next evilest person left, which was me.
A pity, because the Arceans ascended before i got another transport up and running, and so I lost.
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2372274 times)