Dread Lords are kicking my arse

Yes, there's defininetly one thing you could be doing that would all but gurantee you victory withing three weeks, but I kinda want to go take a shower, so I won't share with you my secret.... sorry pal.

build up your military fast! Start researching weapons and try to take at two or three more planets.

i read something along the lines of this, it was by a Red Raven fella. it's called 'Listen to the stroy of the Alantians' i think, gay name but you might find something useful in there.

never leave the dread lords unattended, i did that once, i was lucky though, they weren't so bad coz i killed them just as they started to attack people.

Listen when i say that you DO need to read the recent post i sent out, it is under 'DO NOT PASS THIS BY! READ THIS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE!'. i'm not joking, read it.

That's what they do. They start out with nothing, just their initial colony and 20 of them. Find them and squash them ASAP; they won't put up much of a fight, and you'll have yourself a nice pq planet as well. If you ignore them- well, you know what happens.

Starbase defenses are useless except early in the game.

It is probably too late for you to try to take them on yourself. Bribe any and all other races still in the game to declare war on the DL, especially any race that will draw them away from you. Give whatever it takes; you need this to happen. Build a couple/few transports, and escorts on planets that are away from their ships. Make them fast- you may be able to outrun them. Fleet them in someplace fairly remote. Choose a couple of planets that you think you can take in one turn. Send your fleet(s) there, taking as roundabout route as is necessary to avoid the DL. Invade, and you should have enough influence to win.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Thank you all for those replies.

I think I have a few options there. I'll first try to make some AI attack the dread lords or load a previous (and pretty old) save game to kick those bastards early on.

Well, you could also research all the Invasion techs, then try to sneak full blown transports in. You may have to try and entice or destroy some ships out of orbit. Then when you do invade, pick whatever will give you the best chance of winning, even if it means detroying most of the planet, as that isn't your concern at this point. I don't think they invade, so you only need to take the one planet.

NO the Dread lords will most certainly invade! They will only send a few at a time, but their attack bonus is so high that the will easily take all but the most populated planets.

I agree with the advice of trying to sneak some fast moving transports to any planets (if the DL have more than one) Chances are you haven't researched very far up the tech tree so out right confrontation may not be your best option. IF you can take a few of their planets and aquire some high level tech then you might be able to take them on.

Also, avoid the star base defense/offense options it will take too long to upgrade everything. I suggest either investing your research into engines, invasion, or miniaturizing. All of those will help you build some 'quick strike" transports.

Thanks for thoses additional tips.

I did it. I won by first metaverse game .

Here is what I did. There were only 3 AI left with the additional dread lords. I went all the way driver military with huge scale ships designs. I manage to conquers an other AI with cultural domination by keeping up with building constructors and influence starbases like mad. At one point, I was building 4 constructors per turn on average. Than I switch everything to a custom made ship with 45 dmg of mass driver. I built some transport and I prepared myself for the final attack on the dread lords planet when all of a sudden, a video started playing with a flashy cultural theme. I won with culture at last.

That was a nice and long first game on the metaverse. I'm now fully addicted