Session 2: What are you working on there?

My overenthusiastic Torian engineers had continued building a colony ship on my home world without my knowledge. In other words, I forgot to tell them to stop constructing them.
Looking around to see if I might put it to good use anywhere but that rubbish little class two planet, I found a class sixteen one. It was basically the mirror opposite of the class two being positioned as it was at the far reaches of the Drengin Empire. Perhaps it was I who could claim a planet in their territory!
It was not to be unfortunately as the Drengin claimed both the class two planet in my space and the class fifteen one in their own. So my unwanted colony ship remained unused for the time being.

It was not from the Drengin, but from the Krynn that the first bullying came with them demanding an ungodly amount of money and threatening death if I did not comply.
I rejected them without thinking much about it seeing as they were at the other side of the galaxy but immediately after I began to question my decision.
I was still completely defenceless and for all I knew they might have the means to travel across the galaxy and wipe me out.

And so my research finally switched to military projects. But it was the Drengin I studied for weaknesses. I reasoned that any kind of military would warn the Krynn against attacking me, but that I had best be equipped to deal with the closer threat.
Seeing that the Drengin were focussing their research on rail gun weaponry I began to research armour for my ships. The Drengin had not yet developed any kind of armour for themselves so I chose at random to pursue the Laser line of weaponry.
From this research was born my first combat spaceship, armed with two mark five lasers and two titanium mark two armours. The purpose of this ship was merely to defend my planets not to invade and so advanced engine types, life support and the like were superfluous to requirements.
I admit that I may have been a bit overzealous in designing the look of the ship but that should make up for the fact that it's a bit rubbish in the grand scheme of things. When I finally sat back and admired my work, I knew it could be named but one thing.


As soon as the design of the Krueger was complete all my planets began producing them at an unchecked rate until it began taking noticible chunks from my budget. But by that point, I was easily on par with all other races in the military stakes. For the first time ever.

My research bounced from economic technology to scientific and to technology that allowed me to improve the quality of my planets. My colonies, all four of them, had run out of building space and so those planetary improvements had become something of a requirement.
Not only that, but my crazy engineers on Toria had built yet another colony ship without me asking for it. This time Im placing the blame squarely with them.
So now I had two colony ships taking up space in my home planets starport. I didn't have the heart to dismantle them. Not after my Torians had put so much hard work into them, bless their little cotton socks.
And so only one option remained. I would attempt to discover the means of colonising planets with a toxic atmosphere since there were two such planets nearby anyway. Besides, that technology lay along the very line of research I was pursuing.
As it turned out, one of the toxic planets was taken by the Iconian Refuge (I got the one in Drengin space) and so I was forced to spend time researching radioactive world colonisation to make use of the second colony ship.
There are different levels of hostile world colonisation research and I got the bare minimum before sending my colonists to their new homes. After all my economy was strong and with my species Super Breeder ability, they would develop into profitable planets in no time. I hoped.

Incredibly, I had been coming first in the list of the most powerful civilizations. Another first time for me.
But after all the faffing about with advanced colonising I had slipped behind technologically. Nevertheless, I have a strong military, a strong economy and a fairly good research rate with which I should be able to catch up in no time.

Being the ruler of a civilization isn't all about research, money and war though. Sometimes hard ethical decisions must be made.
There was the time when I spent a fair amount of money to rescue some miners from their own sillyness. There was the time I chose to rescue as many citizens as possible from an erupting volcano rather than let them die. There was also a time when a drug was discovered that made my soldiers stronger but halved their lifespan. The latter was the one instance where I chose the neutral path and made the drug voluntary.


And so the Torian Confederation continues to flourish despite their unfortunate placement in the galaxy. Im not sure how to go about actually winning the game but Im just happy enough to have survived this long even if it is as one of the smallest civilizations.
That said, I had to zoom out considerably to fit my peoples empire into the following screenshot. That pleases me.

Session 3: The Dawn of War

I knew the time would come. My Torians lived in fear of it every day. The Drengin empire at last went to war with me and so began the first era of conflict for my peaceful civilization and all because the Drengi wanted to relive the good old days when we were their slaves. My scout and flagship were the first victims as they just so happened to be travelling around the planet Drengi itself.

I had been producing Kruegers on all my planets so unusually for me, I was not totally unprepared but I knew my ships would be outclassed by whatever the Drengin threw at me. I needed help.
And so I turned to the two mightiest civilizations in the galaxy, the Krynn Consulate and the Thalan Empire for aid. Their empires were vast and if anyone could take on the Drengin, it was them.
To convince the Krynn to help out in the conflict I had to give them nearly all my colonising technology. I didn't want to hand them tools of destruction although they probably didn't need them anyway.
The Thalan Empire on the other hand, were willing to go to war for just the exchange of the extreme colonisation technology. Clearly they had been waiting for an excuse to expand their boundaries.

But not everyone wanted tit for tat. The noble Altarian Resistance gave many heavy fighting ships to my grateful Torians and they asked nothing in return. Admittedly most of them had to be disbanded because of their expense but this was an act of kindness my Torians will not soon forget.

I can't say who was responcible, but the Iconian Refuge were destroyed and surrendered their remaining ships and planets mainly to the Krynn who were already the undisputed masters of the galaxy. At least for the moment the Krynn were on my side.

And so three of us went into battle with the Drengin and they sent everything they had against the weakest link in this triple war effort. Me.
My Kruegers were not as badly outclassed as I had feared though and two of them could take down a Drengin Heavy Fighter with luck.
You must understand that I have never put up any kind of successful military resistance in a game of Galactic Civilizations. So by the time I actually began to push the Drengin back I was staring wide eyed at the screen, cigarette hanging from mouth and was poised like a cat ready to pounce.
Sure I lost two planets before I had them on the run but that was balanced out by that old class two planet deciding that joining my brave Torian nation was preferable to remaining a part of the evil Drengin empire.
Some might say that the people of the planet (Octavia I) saw which way the war was swinging and simply sided with the winner. But I like to think that the peaceful nature and rich culture of my lovely Torians won them over. We Torians are not a vengeful people, but it was gratifying.

This victory had not come easily to the Torians though. My people had been taxed hard to pay for the cost of all those Kruegers and we even had to deal with pirates for funds at one point. A great shame to be sure. But with the Drengin beaten back, we could move onwards and upwards.
The Drengin actually came to us requesting a ceasefire and being peaceful creatures, we Torians would have accepted gladly but they refused to give us back the planets they had stolen. And so we refused their offer at least until such time as we had reclaim what had been ours.
Reclaiming our lost worlds meant doing the appropriate research since everyone refused point blank to trade Planetary Invasion.
And so while my Kruegers kept an eye out for any Drengin military vessels and destroyed the occasional starbase and troop transport, designs for the Torian Burst invasion ship were drawn up.


Having never actually invaded a planet before, I was a little unprepared for how many Torian Bursts I would actually need. To reclaim Ratha III alone required six of them and even then we were forced once again to lower ourselves by using gas in our second invasion.
But reclaim it we did and the people were infinitely greatful with approval immediately at 92% despite the unfortunate side effects of the gas still lingering.

I thought I would be reporting the destruction of my Torian civilization. Instead Im reporting the downfall of the Drengin.
They only hold a handful of planets now, one of them rightfully mine. The Thalan made peace with them and although the Krynn still decimate their empire, Im sure they will live through it to see the error of their ways.

But what for my Torians now? Well first on the list is to reclaim my lost planet but then I have absolutely no idea how to proceed.
I have begun to focus my research in areas of culture so that we might convince more planets that the Torian way really is best. As the screenshot shows, military might will prove quite futile against the gargantuan empires of the Krynn and Thalan. Besides, it just isn't the Torian way.

It happens

I think you just weren't aggressive enough. The Torians maybe peacefull, but they aren't pushovers   

Anyway, good AAR.

I think what might also help is to "turn off surrenders".