I was playing MoO2 as a custom hyper-research race. I colonized only the best planets, so my empire was a strung out series of distant single colonies. The Mrrshan and Bulrathi explosively colonized everything they could find, and I found myself a surrounded by two massive empires that shortly went to war with another as I quietly researched.
A few turns into their war, the Mrrshan attacked a newly set up colony of mine. They bombed it off the map and went home.
I built a battleship and a few cruisers. My forces were mostly missile destroyers specced to kill that pesky Guardian and Loknar's unique ship. I was vastly outnumbered.
It wasn't even a fight. A fight implies they somehow had a chance of winning. I brutalized them. I killed a fleet of cruisers and destroyers with a single cruiser. My battleship cruised to their homeworld and blockaded it while I obliterated all their colonies. Then I bombed their homeworld to a single population unit. I didn't accept their frantic pleas for peace and instead am waiting til they get a second population so I can do it again.
Go ahead, fuck with the quiet nerdy fragile bugs.
After that the Bulrathi declared war on me also (because apparently stupidity is contagious.) Since apparently turning another space faring empire into an endangered species that is perpetually pruned down to replacement levels wasn't a clear enough message, I captured their capital world after annihilating their fleet.
Then I made that planet start building transports and ships. I sent out armies and fleets of turncoat Bulrathi to each world they owned, butchering their defenders and exterminating their populace with pogroms and starvation, then I shipped new, loyal Bulrathi to populate these stolen worlds. I fought them down to a single world, a backwater, nameless shithole with a pop of 3, then I permanently blockaded it with Bulrathi crews and Bulrathi troops. I let this nascent holdout of what they once were remain as a reminder of their mistake and the sheer malevolence which I would defend my empire with.
MoO2 btw