Hi, it's a game still in progress, but the first one I don't find the AI to be completly stupid. It's as my last 2 games on Painful, but decided against playing with Spore ships and abundant everything, but chose a Super Breeder, and medium settings for planets and habitable planets, also for the first time some minor races as well and 5 opponents on a medium map, with tech rate at "slow" compared to my usual "fast" and anomimalies at "rare" compared to my usual "abundant"
So this was kinda odd, not being able to colony-rush 10+ planets as I usually do, funded by anomalies and later on to simply taking every planet easily by a single spore ship as I did in my 2 ar 2 Painful-games. Anyway, here's some kind of story I made up for my race this time, which is kinda fun because I don't simply own the other AIs in any aspect, but instead they somewhat outpace me and don't simply wait to get overrun by me ...

Also, please excuse the certain many mistakes, I try to correct as many as I find, but english isn't my native language...

After milleniums of war and blodshed, of fractricide and great alliances, of great victories and staggering losses, after all other races were defeated, we were the survivers, we were the only ones, we were the Chosen ones. Our race finally could expand at our natural speed and eventually we populated every habitable planet in our galaxy and some that weren't. we had giant colonies in space and each somewhat sizeful chunk of stone in space was used as well. Cautious scientiest estimated that our number went into the Sextillions, but there were no means to count us anymore. And there were no signs of a slowdown in our population growth. We had buildings that went up into the troposphere and we had giant cities deep within the crusts of our planets.
Yet, we were a happy race, a great race, we were the survivers.

Eventually one of our greatest astronoms, the genius AMA, discovered a galaxy which would grant us perfect living conditions: he proved beyond any doubt that it must be uninhabitated, yet to offer a countless number of habitable planets. And he showed us plans how to build starships that could travel the distances between the galaxies.
It was decided to build those starships and a thousand years later we had built ten of those starships, of the size of a big planet which each could house a few billion of us and get us to this new galaxy, sleeping in hibernation. So the great diaspore begun…and AMA came with us to lead us to a new existance, to a new galaxy, just for us.

We don't know what happened, but when we woke up our starship was almost complete wreckage, no sight of the 9 other ships and we could only save very little of our supplies and technologies.
But we were alive and on a habitable planet. Our great leader AMA had no doubt we arrived at our target and so we were keen to populate this galaxy, rich of planets, rich of ressources and to be populated by us with no competition of other races, with no wars and no blodshed. Or so we thought…

Under the lead of our great leader, of our godlike AMA, we called ourselves from now on the Amatons and called our new homestar "Muenchen"…in a melancholic remembering of one of our greatest towns in our old galaxy (oh how joyful this town was: it grew over the whole surface of its planet, it habitated over 200 trillion individuums and was wonderful, colourful, giant…how could we have left that behind….)

We sent one of our few remaining ships to discover the surrounding of our planet and we discovered a small, somewhat habitable planet right in our system. A promising start of our expansion, altough this planet would hardly be abel to house more than a few billion of us ever. At our kinds natural growth rate we would overpopulate such a planet in no time. We needed better, bigger, more living space! Anyway. We colonized this planet right away, to give our growth some beathing room.

To our horror we found no habitable planet at all in the nearest systems. And the planets we found were not habitable for us since we lost all our advances technologies to make use even of the worst planets.
Finally, we found a planet that was habitable, altough just slightly better than the other planet in our system. We hastily built a basic ship that could transfere a few of us to this planet, since we already reached the current limits of population of our new homeplanet.

Expecting a virgin planet, we were not ready for another shock - the shock of discovering ancient artifacts on this planet, which clearly proved that there once was live. Yet..our scientiests believed those were valuable ressources for a re-discovering of all the lost sciences and that whoever may have lived in this galaxy would be completly extinct by now.

Weeks passed, months passed during which we discovered no new planet in our surrounding which we could take possession of.
Finally…we discovered a wonderful planet…but it was populated by pre-spacefaring race. Our greatest fears came to live. Was this galaxy in the possession of another race already? Were there more races, mighty races? Would they get us to the brink of extinction here also? They WILL hate us for what we are. They WILL fight us. They WILL destroy our planets. They WILL make us fight. We WILL have to fight.

From one moment to another our culture changed. Away from our self-wanted peace, back to the forced-upon-us need to defend ourselves. To kill or get killed. We didn't want to, but this galaxy forced us to it. It was THEIR fault. We would not suffer again. Not again.

So all our efforts in science and production went into the military. A military we had to build from scratch, since we never expected to need something like this again.
We built a basic military transporter and ferried soldiers to that other race's planet. They were no match for us, never knew what came over them. Yet, it was their own fault, not ours. They shouldn't have been here.
We took no prisoners, showed no mercy. It was them or us. It always is.

We took their planet. We took their posessions, their factories and houses. It was a great planet, a wonderful planet, room for many of us…but not for long. We were so happy that we soon reached also this planets boundaries.

We continued to explore the galaxy but again couldnt find another habitable planet in the surrounding.

Finally we discovered 2 planets almost at the same time, which seemed to be populated by the same race. They were a few lightyears apart so this race must know how to travel in space already. Were they the adversary who would attemp to kill us? Were they powerful? Were they too powerful? Were they already planning for a war against us? They WERE planning to attack for us, no doubt, we could feel it. we knew it. We knew we had to strike them first. Before they overrun us. Before they come for us.

So our military built-up continued. We built our first real military ships, built to defend. Built to fight the war this galaxy had forced us in.
Our scouts meanwhile had discovered that this race called themselves the "Iconian refugee" which apparently had colonized several planets but from broadcasts we received and decoded they seemed to be a peaceful race. But they wouldn't fool us. We let others fool us way too often in the past. We knew they were in screcy already working on destroying us, altough they didn't seem to have recognized us yet. But this was only a make-up, a hiding of their real plans to crush us.
When they finally met one of our ships by accident, they sent greatings to us, but we didn't care anymore. it was too late. They wouldn't fool us. We wouldn't allow them to catch us unguarded. Our first 2 warships and more trooptransporters were on their way. They pushed us into a war we didn't want. They would have to pay the price for that. Because we wouldn't let history repeat itself. It was their own fault. They shouldn't have been here. They should have left us alone. It was them or us. It always is.