In the game I just finished a rather odd occurance happened that was rather surprising in that this is the first time I have every had it happen. Playing as the Terrans I was facing the Drengi along a fairly stable line until suddenly they started colonizing worlds that required one of the heavy research techs...but according to their tech ability they had only researched as far as extreme colonization. Inconvient for me at the time but due to the fact that they were doing this around ares where I had Influence starbases made them flip over to me on a more or less regular basis. When they flipped I found that nothing had been built other than the initial colony and that every tile that was usable was sitting vacant even if I didn't have the tech to do anything other than hold the planet. Later still the Korx started a war that was hopeless for them to win against me, the Altarians, and the Torians...the Drengi took advantage and began gobbling up resources as they became available until the Korx homeworld was captured by my fleets. The odd part was that up until this point the Drengi had been openly hostile without going to war with me and suddenly they popped up asking for an alliance and were even willing to give me a couple of planets and BC to sweeten the deal...True I did go from 0 military ships to over 50 medium size ships in less than 6 months game time but it was still very odd. Not complaining mind you just very curious because it turned what was shaping up to be a very long campaign into a relativly short one.