With this gameplay example, I went out to prove that good isn't the only one who can win a diplomatic victory. I was deciding to play an evil race that is the sort that schemes in the shadows while manipulating others to do their bidding. I was considering being Drath or evil Humans for this, but I decided on the custom race.
I named myself the Khorvanian Confederacy with Khorvaire as my homeworld, black (actually extremely dark blue) as my race color, and my abilities geared towards diplomacy, research, and economy.
I started out by designing a custom colony ship loaded with engines and range extenders, and then mass producing this vessel in the initial colony rush. My home planet turned out really good, a Class 13 with a 300% research bonus tile, a 100% manufacturing tile, and a 100% approval rating tile. I quickly queued up production of labs, market centers, and factories. In the meantime, I began researching military techs, focusing on mass drivers and armor at first.
I also built a bunch of fast scouts and with the help of the influence on the minimap, quickly found my evil homies: the Korx, the Drengin, and the Yor. I also stumbled across the Altarians and Torians, and the Iconians and Drath soon found me.
I took the evil option at every turn, becomning feared throughout the galaxy (or at least my empire) as a destroyer. This would have repercussions later on.
By this point, my strategy of mass producing colony ships and buildings had left me damn near broke. I had planned for this, and sold my military tech to my fellow evil races. I made a point of giving them small monetary or tech gifts (when I could afford) and upped my espionage on them so that I wouldn't get my hard-won relations ruined by a "OMG! You've killed their leader!!!" random event.
I found out that the Torians were well-researched in the missile line of weapons. At great cost, I bought these techs off them, so now I have missile and mass driver tech. I also got a lot of logistics tech, and defended my empire for now with tiny ships armed with one weapon grouped together in swarms. It wasn't very powerful, but it kept opportunistic alien bastards from trying to collect rent from me. I also managed to grab Medium Scale Building pretty early on, and got Trade and started sending freighters to the other evils.
I had invested a good amount in espionage on the three powerful good/neutral civs (the Altarians, Arceans, and Torians) and had looked at their ships and what techs they had/didn't have on the trade screen. The Altarians built mainly small vessels with beam weapons and no defenses. The Arceans had managed to grab Medium Scale Building early on and were making frigate ships with lots of defenses along with like 2 mass driver attack. The Torians made lots of small and tiny fighters with the missiles that I had bought off them earlier.
I tailored each of the evil races to fight one enemy: I gave the Korx shield technology and mass drivers to fight the Altarians, the Yor beam weapons and armor to fight the Arceans, and the Drengin missiles and missile defenses to blow up the Torians.
The first target on my hit list was the Altarians, whom I was going to get the Korx to fight. In GalCiv2, its really hard to get people to fight for you. I built lots of empty starbases with no modules and colonized nearly worthless planets (class 3-4) to give to the AI, gave myself insane diplomatic ability, and became friends with them. I was able to manage it, but it left me just about broke every time I did it.
But something I didn't foresee happened. The Korx, whom I'd made into Altarian-slayers, declared war on the Drath. I tried to get them to make peace and redirect their attention to the Altarians, but they wouldn't listen. I supplied them with ships and money, and the war ended with the Korx in possession of a lot of Drath worlds, but their Altarian-killing fleets were now too weak to do their job.
I ended up giving the Yor shield techs and getting them to fight the Altarians. I was doubtful at first, but they did surprisingly well, and had soon destroyed the Altarian fleet. I joined in on the war at this point, and me and the Yor slaughtered the Altarians, who in the end surrendered to the Arceans. My next target. Smart choice, Altarian dumbasses.
I had given Medium Scale Building and a few logistics and miniaturization techs to my friends, and almost had Large Scale Building (if you dedicate yourself, its really easy to get to Huge Scale Building really fast). I also had like five trade routes by now, and all other evil races were friendly with me. The goodie-goodies all hated me and so did the neutrals. Tough shit for them. They wouldn't attack me with my big bad Drengin and Yor buddies to back me up.
I thought the Yor, who were now building frigates, might still be strong enough to take down the Arceans, after their success in the Altarian War. I saved up and bribed them, and the war began. But not the way I imagined it. The Yor got bogged down very quickly, and I had underestimated the Arceans. Unfazed, I bribed the Korx to join in, and was perparing to do so myself, when a sideshow opened up.
The Thalans were like the weakest civ and they were the Arceans' next door neighbors. I had my invasion fleet parked near their space so the Arceans wouldn't get suspicious. The Thalans however, got angry and declared war. They pounced on my invasion fleet (oh, bugger), but the Thalan navy was pitifully weak and couldn't destroy my fleet. I turned it against their homeworld and conquered it. I then quickly swept up their core worlds, and the Thalans couldn't even beat my tiny navy. However, they managed to sneak an invasion transport on an undefended world of mine, but they got a really bad roll, so they bungled even that attack they should have won easily. I mopped up all but two worlds, and the Thalans surrendered to the Torians (annoying!).
Back to the Arcean war. The combined Yor and Korx forces weren't able to conquer the Arceans, in fact, they were now on the defensive! The Arcean military was powerful, very powerful. And then of course, with my big friends apparantly wrapped up, the Arceans, who I'd always had bad relations with, declare war on me too.
The war took a long time as my fleet was unprepared and still recovering from the little Thalan campaign. But with the Drengin supplying me ships, and the Yor and Korx beside me, we eventually managed to beat down the Arceans, and they signed a peace treaty. Not good enough for us. I rebuild, and launch the attack again. The Korx join in again, but the exhausted Yor stay out of this fight. But its too late for the Arceans; they are just too weak and they have no allies, no one supplying them with war materials. The Arceans are soon conquered, and what are left surrender to the Korx.
The war with the Arceans left my fleet weak, my treasury empty, and my economy exhausted. The worlds I conquered from the Arceans have uberly-high maintenance costs, and I save my economy only by demolishing buildings on them, which also means I don't have to pay maintenance for them.
As if things aren't bad enough, the Fundamentalists break away, and the F***ing Iconians and Drath supply them with ships, and my agents inform me that the Iconians are destablizing me. I crank up propoganda spending to keep my people happy.
However, my friends, the Yor and Korx, supply me with just enough ships and money to reconquer the Fundamentalists.
On the other side of the galaxy, the Torians go to war and whip some Drath ass, and I learn that the Iconians and Torians have made an alliance. The Iconian military is big but its ships are mostly obsolete and underarmed and they don't have much in the way of technology. The Torians, on the other hand, are really far down the missile path, have Large Scale Building and good engine technologies, and have equipped their ships with special Good defenses.
Me and my allies rebuild, and I prepare for war with new ships specially designed to fight the Torians: large-sized vessels brimming with psyonic beams and missile defenses, and I put one Vigilant-class scout {Cargo hull covered in sensors) in each fleet of them. I also design special transports: Huge hulls with troop mods, lots of missile defense, and powerful missile and psyonic beam weapons. Its a pretty formidable armada overall.
The Drengin, who surprisingly have not gone to war yet, are also well prepared for war with the large fleet designed specifically for fighting the Torians (missiles and point defense). The Yor and Korx are still rebuilding their navies, but are useful as a source of income: I sell them my obsolete ships, older techs, and crappy planets.
I've had alliance technology for a long time, but never made them so I wouldn't have to go to war alongside my "allies." Now, I alliance with the Drengin, Korx, and Yor and start the war. Pitted against us evil bastards are the Torians and Iconians, with the Drath (who by some miracle are still in the game after losing wars to the Korx and Torians) giving them ships and money. All my allies join in, but at first only the Drengin contribute much to the campaign. The Korx try to send in their big fleet, and although it beats back the relatively primitive Iconians, it is ripped to pieces by the Torians.
The Drengin do better than the Korx, but the Torians fight back ferociously, and after overrunning a few outer Torian colonies they are unable to go any farther. Now its all up to me. Whoopty do.
My new fleet goes in and easily slaughters the Iconians and defeats the Torians too, and I conquer a bunch of Iconian worlds. The Iconians are effectively neutralized as a major threat. However, my losses slowly start to mount and by the time my fleet reaches its target, the Torian homeworlds, it is too weak, is defeated by the Torian defense fleet, and I retreat the few survivors back to my systems. The Yor help by giving me some ships (actually pretty decent ones) and a little bit of cash.
The Torians launch an offensive against the Korx and conquer a bunch of their colonies. However, me and the Drengin arrive and just barely fight back the Torians. Then the Torian fleet comes for me. Some Iconians ships, (most of them transports) tag along to get their revenge against me. The Iconians, however, are pitiful soldiers and I easily repulse all of their invasions. The Torians on the other hand are strong warriors and there are swarms of them. They overrun some relatively unimportant planets and 3 of my key worlds. They also attack my undefended stabases (since they were far from the front lines I hadn't fortified them properly) and blow them up. Fortunately, the Drengin come to save me, and the Korx and Yor keep me supplied with just enough free ships to reclaim my conquered worlds.
Well, I'm back where I started, but now my economy is a shambles. I can't afford big fleets of these Large and Huge-hulled ships. So I try a new design and strategy. I would fight a sort of guerilla war in space. I designed small and medium ships loaded with engines and weapons, and sent them to hunt Torian mini-freighters, who are trading with the Iconians and Drath.
The Torians have ships big enough to easily destroy these little pirate vessels, but they couldn't ever catch them. I kept them widely scattered, and since I had the Eyes of the Universe I could always see them before they saw me and escape. Besides hounding their trade routes, my ships looked for weakly held planets and unfortified starbases and took them out. I went in and destroyed constructors and transports, and their escorts could do nothing about. I was laughing my head off; the Torians were tearing their hair out in frustration (or they would, if they had hair.)
On some of the pirate raiders I put transport modules, and used them to invade undefended planets. And if a planet had ships in orbit, I used my raider fleets to destroy them.
My strategy paid off. The Torian economy was wrecked, billions of troops were killed in space, their starbases were gone, and I'd even captured a few worlds in the process. This had all been accomplished with minimal losses (maybe 8 to a dozen vessels) but had crippled the Torian war effort. Meanwhile, my allies wore down the Torians with constant attacks. Although their losses were heavy, so were the Torians'.
Not to discredit them, the Torians put up one hell of a fight. But they couldn't take my commando-style raids and my allies Russian-style all-out attacks. Soon we had driven them down to only a handful of planets. And still they wouldn't surrender. You've got to respect them for that.
The war was basically over: the Torians had only 3 planets (but they were well defended and all 3 had withstood attacks before) and the Iconians had 2. My allies, the Drengin and Korx, declared war on the Drath, who had been supplying the Torians with ships this whole time, and wiped out their pitiful fleet. The Drath, wedged in the corner, were completely helpless, and I joined in, and a few rounds later, the game was won: the Iconians, Torians, and Drath were all dead. The Evil Alliance had prevailed!
