So I just got defeated in the campaign mission. It's the one where you have to get a technological victory, and you've got 3 allies: Alterians, Torians, and Arceans. There is one Dread Lord planet at the top of the map.

So I started as usual; I colonized 3 other worlds in addition to my starting planets. Then, the dread lords start coming and wiping everything out. One planet is taken over relatively quickly. You can't have any ships or starbases or trade routes whatsoever, because they're destroyed by the fast and powerful dread lord fleets. I tried just going for it, maxing out research and going up the technology tree, but it was really expensive and I probably had 300-400 more turns to go by the end.

The same thing was happening to a lesser extent in the previous mission; to pass it, I made combat transports that could travel 13 spaces a week; since the planets I needed to conquer were relatively undefended by the time I arrived (thanks to the dread lords) I passed by just making 3 of those really fast ships (and nothing else).

But in this mission, you have to spend a lot of time researching. So how do you defend yourself from the Dread Lords? I can think of some strategies right now, but they'd take so long just to "test out." One is to try to conquer the dread lords planet immediately. Is that even possible? Or, am I really supposed to research ship and combat technologies to try to take the dread lords on, while at the same time researching the tech victory tree?

Thanks for any advice.