Oh, just finished the campaign early today. Deception really isn't that hard, I had more trouble (and fun) on Apocalypse. You just gotta bee-line for the planet to the right of the Yor starting world. The Dreadlords camped out in front of there with their ships to try and stop me but I just made a couple ultra-speed transports go in from multiple directions as a reponse and took it easily.

I believe the full campaign goes like this if you never lose: An Unexpected Visitor, Ixith, Darkness Rising, Siege, Achilles Heal, Apocalypse, Exploitation, Deception, Salvation, Escape. All in all, the campaign isn't quite as fun as the randomly generated games. I'm not exactly sure what happens to the plot line if you fail one of the missions.

There are 17 missions in the campaign including the alternate missions.

I think I've been approaching this wrong. I play on normal, except Apoc, I had to break down and play on cakewalk (and it was still hard!). My approach is to grab as many planets as I can and screw over the AI allies. Thereafter, with one or two combat ships, I try to hold off transports until I can get large cap ships, nano ripper, miniaturization, etc. Is it better just to sit back and let the AI duke it out?