Info: playing version 1.2

I was having a lot of trouble with the apocalypse mission under normal difficulty. The prior mission I had developed a strategy that didn’t work here. I actually didn’t fight the dread lord in the last mission. All I did was research tech
and sell it off to the others and they wound up invading and removing the dread lords.

I tried to do almost the same thing during the apocalypse.

I controlled 6 planets in the lower right. There was another planet in the corner that I missed early on and the altarians took it. So I had a rectangle of space in the right corner. I had to rush just to get these before everyone else.

Everything remained quiet for a long time. I think there was some fighting on the left of the map but it didn’t involve me.
I was a technologist and I tried to put my efforts into research. I therefore had to research the actual science line to
build better research centers. I also had to increase production with factories just to be able to build research centers.

I tried to keep my populations growing and I did eventually have the highest pop by far. I was actually highest in almost everything. Then things went bad. I had been selling all my tech almost as quick as I got it. All the money went into speeding
up production. I eventually saw a few dread lord ships running around. They quickly started to kill anything that moved.
Soon all the trade freighters were gone and any race that had a ship anywhere on the map was losing it. If they saw a ship they immediately attacked it. I stopped building any ships and pushed the tech. I was hoping one of the other races would use some of the new tech to actually build a fleet and fight. The difficulty was on normal so they were all too stupid to wage war. Soon the dread lords decided to take my uppermost planet. It was on the far right of the map at about the middle.

I thought at the time that the dread lord were only attacking me. They seemed to pass several planets to get to mine.
The early troop landings were only 10 men teams. After 2-3 landings, they had the planet. I had been researching gun tech
as the dread lords don’t use armor. They had missile ships with missile defense and some beam weapons I think. I also began to see shields on some ships. Actually I think I started researching beam weapons up to phasors and gave it to my allies, then I saw dread lords with shields and started researching guns. I also researched point defense (anti-missile) which was a total waste. I followed that to the maximum research, but it didn’t help. I did have one ship in my fleet that used a medium hull and I had several anti missile modules on it. That particular ship lasted throughout the game.

I read the forum and learned that using small (tiny) ships was better than large ships (another wasted line of research). I built on a tiny frame. I had some really heavy guns that I believe one of the other races stole from the dreadlords. I think that some of the planets outside of the dreadlord home base (upper right) were taken by the dread lords and lost to other races. Eventually I saw these gun tech tings in the diplomacy screen. I had to trade like 8 other tech to get them. They were one less than the maximum in railgun tech. Damage was 9 I think. I could fit 2 on a tiny hull with engines that could move at13 and eventually 17. I had most of the miniaturization research done and built the hyperion miniaturization bonus thing. My logistics could handle a fleet of about 21 points.

I only had one good production planet. It could make a fighter in one turn.

By this time, the dread lords had taken a second planet from me. They had a swarm of 3ship fleets on the whole map. I built a wonder that allows you to see all ships on the minimap. The dreadlords were everywhere. I needed to put together at least 6 ships in a fleet to face a 2-3 ship dreadlord fleet. Every battle, I could only hope to break even on ship losses. Kill3 lose 3. I eventually kept running around ahead of the fleets and striking and reinforcing my main fleet. The dread lords took forever before they decide to make a troop transport and invade any new planets. All my planets were undefended. I had researched all the soldier tech (shock troops) and I had planet defense (25%) on each planet, but no ships in orbit. I had a design for an interceptor that I used to attack any undefended troop transport (one gun and all engine). I could also use this ship to attract the many fleets away from my main fleet, so I had time to reinforce and only fight one fleet at a time.

Several hours later, I had taken back my 2 planets. I still only had 1-2 fleets of about 6 small ships each. I had switched my economy to military and did not research anything new ( maybe 1 logistic thing). My government was (star-republic?) whatever the last advance was. The senate became a problem. When switching to the republic type system, I had to build at least one 'happy' building on each planet. I also had to lower the tax rate a bit. Happiness was in the 40's. I lost the senate race (losing my tech bonus for the technologist party)

About this time, The race in the upper right decided to quit and give all its planets to me. (maybe it was korax?) they had a whitish color I think. This helped because I didn’t have the range to reach the dread lords without redesigning ships. I kept pushing the dread lord fleets back into the corner. I killed every mining outpost. I kept re-designing ships to meet specific needs. (way too many designs). I had very long range interceptors and long range builders to quickly stop any dread lord attempt to take any mines across the board.

The whole world was generally at peace up to this point. I had traded tech to everyone and asked them to make peace and every race was together in the fight with the dread lords. Then near the end, everybody started to attack each other. I didn’t care and let them all fight it out. I was just outside the final 4 planets. I made some long range(17) troop transports. and brought the fleet into range.

I struck at 2 planets. They only had one ship in orbit each. I landed my men and use a mass driver attack to be sure.
I then needed to get 2 more transports into position and some fleet reinforcements. When the transports were just outside of range, I got a popup message telling me that 'they' know what I am doing, and if the difficulty were set to 'intelligent' or better, the game would attack my transports. (I had left the transports unescorted). Then in the middle of this, someone signs a peace treaty with the dreadlords. I was unable to attack without senate approval and the senate hated me. So the whole war was stopped. I tried to have a revolution and change the govt but the senate votes on that too, and they said no.

So I had to wait 14 turns till the next election. I lowered the tax rate, raise morale, and won the senate. The next time I attacked, the senate voted with me and I took the last 2 planets. (In the preceding 14 turns, while waiting for the vote, the dread lords had flown 3 transports and 2 fleets past me toward the homeworld.)

About 12-18hours over 3 days.

I didn’t think I could turn it around, but it was very satisfying. It probably would have went easy if I built small ships from the start, but I was still able to push back a flood of dreadlords with just 2 planets making ships, and using only one fleet with continuous reinforcements.