I've recently began playing the old Dread Lords campaign in DA, after finishing my Altarian sandbox. I noticed that, due to lack of pictures and the incredibly essay-like and over-detailed text, the Altarian AAR wasn't going to be very interesting. Even I wouldn't care about a textbook Rare-setting game which ended with by backstabbing my allies and culturally conquering them all, if it were that dull.

Here's a more interesting AAR, with pictures. It's the 4th mission in the Dread Lords campaign(provided you don't lose the first 3), "Siege". It is also the first appearance of the Dread Lords, who are still operating from Karion, the planet on which they were freed from the pocket universe by those blasted Drengin last mission.

Here's my bonus set:

Terran Alliance, Galactic Civilizations 2: Dark Avatar v1.80G
Economics - 4pt
Research - 4pt
Morale - 1 pt
Pop Growth - 1 pt
Political Party: Technologists
+ Terran inherent bonuses

It's not a wide spread, but it's excellent for it's purpose - fast research and funding it. FYI, for this game, I'll be using 'left', 'right', 'top/above' and 'bottom/below' as well as 'West', 'East', 'North' and 'South' to describe description, because I was using both zoom-out and the mini-map for navigation. The difficulty was set to 'Painful'.

The mission began with me, the Terran Alliance, controlling a 3-planet system at the far right corner. The planets are Celes(Class 10), Locke(Class 9) and Sabin(Class 7). Celes had a 100% Manufacturing tile, Locke had a Precursor Library, and Sabin also had a 100% Manufacturing tile. My treasury began at 30000 bc and I got 1 free Colony Ship, 1 free Survey Ship, and 3 free Constructors to start with. The Altarians and Arceans were to the left and below me and the Yor and Drengin were far to the left. The objective was to knock the Drengins off the planet Tiniath and rescue the Torian leader, thus making the Torians my ally. I was supposed to avoid engaging the Dread Lords, but I totally ignored this instruction in the name of curiosity and fun.

The beginning was fairly simple. I built/bought all the factories and labs I'd be needing and sent my Colony Ship to the star system that would turn out to be Markus. Once there, it colonized Markus 1, a Class 10. My Survey Ship was set on auto-survey and got busy hunting anomalies north of Locke. I used the 3 Constructors to build an economic starbase in my base-system. When my factories were nearly done, I bought them and turned up military production to the max to build 3 Colonizers. I pointed one towards the system that would turn out to be Andersona, sent another one to Markus 2, and sent the last one to a star system in the center of the galaxy: Primus. Once my Colonizers were all complete, I set off wildly researching to obtain better infrastructure technology.

When my first Colonizer was passing through the Markus system en route to Andersona when it made contact with an amazingly ugly red ship.



It was a Dread Lord Scout. And it was not just armed, but was also amazingly quick. Fearing that destruction would be unavoidable, I commanded my Colonizer to make an emergency landing on Markus 2(Class 8). I was sure the Altarian Colony Ship and Arcean Scouts in the area were doomed, but I was wrong. The scout didn't fire a single shot! Instead, it looked around harmlessly and zipped off into the cold depths of space. As a result of this confusion, the Altarian Colony Ship took the Class 11 planet at Andersona.

So I now turned my 2 remaining Colonizers towards the Primus system, hoping to get there before anyone else did. When they arrived within 2 parsecs of the Class 12 Primus 1, a pair of Drengin Scouts and a Drengin Colony Ship appeared out of nowhere and snatched the planet! With no use for my Colonizers now, I simply let them fly back to Markus 2 and dump their population there.

By now, my fast and expensive research progress had gained me Enhanced Factories, Banking Centers and Research Academies + RCCs for my planets. I turned up social production and began building stuff as fast as I could, so that I could get my economy up and begin researching better weapons and starship drives. My plan was to eventually align Evil to get the Psyonic Beam and not bother about further weaponry for a while.

Then, my Survey Ship, which had traveled farther up the map in it's ongoing anomaly hunt, picked up another Dread Lord ship coming in fast from the north. It was a Troop Transport, with only 10 Dread Knight troops on board. At the speed it was going, it would reach Locke in 2 turns. As my population still hadn't maxed out and I hadn't yet researched invasion techs, the situation was desperate. Once the Dread Lords got a foothold, it would not be easy to extricate them from my current state. So I designed a ship to tackle the threat, aptly called 'Desperation'. I had to buy it, since there wasn't enough time to build it.





The little fighter saved the day. But I had to turn my Survey Ship off of Auto-Survey and use it to guard the northern passage should further threats appear.

A little while later, another Dread ship appeared near Markus 2, where my Colonizers were parked. It was no lightly-armed transport this time. No, it was a battleship, with 448 Beam Attack and 14 Shield Defense.



It was unstoppable. My Colonizers fled the planet, not carrying any population on board. The battleship gave chase, and the Colonizers' humble Ion Drives simply couldn't propel it away from the overkill monster fast enough.



Both of them got destroyed. As there were no other ships coming in from the north, I moved my Survey Ship down to keep tabs on the beast from a safe distance. But, by some bizarre chance, the Dread ship caught sight of my Survey Ship too, and a wild chase ensued. Instead of running frantically and randomly like before, this time I came up with a plan to shake the battleship off: I'd fly to the Altarian base world and let them take on the bug in a suicidal act, while I break off with my Survey Ship and make a dash to safety. If there was such a thing.



Nevertheless, the plan worked. My Survey Ship escaped. But the Altarian and Arcean forces were both obliterated by the battleship, after which it disappeared into Yor territory, and was never seen again.

Meanwhile, back at my base system, I had stopped social production to build a few 'Snipe' fighters, which were to detect and kill Dread transports. However, soon after the battleship chase had ended, another Dread Lords ship - a Fighter - appeared from the east and flew straight into my base system, killed 2 of my 3 my Snipes, blasted my econ starbase, and then took off in pursuit of my last Snipe. The Snipe was thankfully able to break sensor lock somehow, and the Fighter was last seen flying back east to where it had come from. I then realized where it had come from and was now going - Primus 1. The Dread Lords had captured this world from the Drengin and now had an outpost dangerously close to Allied territory.

Thankfully, the Drengin had done a bad job at building this planet, and the Dread Lords hadn't cared to build it themselves. With only 1 Basic Factoriy on a minor bonus tile, Primus 1 wasn't going to build Dread ships very fast. Especially when I nabbed this factory with a spy.

After that incident, I had forgot about my own pending social production and went on a wild researching streak until I had Psyonic Beam and Phasors 4, Warp Drive, and Force Fields. My last surviving Snipe managed to come back to Locke and destroyed another Transport. However, a single Snipe wasn't enough and, on one occasion, a Dread Lords Transport managed to invade Markus 1. Thankfully, 5 Dread Knights failed to overcome my 6000 troops and Markus 1 was saved.

Once this required technology had been researched(which was surprisingly fast), I built some true transport-snipers - called Mega Defenders. The first one was TAS Fortitude, which arrived just in time to see combat with another incoming Transport.



This was the dawn of my fight back against the Dread Lords, who I would knock back to Karion before proceeding to pound the Drengin.

Sorry, but I won't be able to post all of this mission today. The rest of it will be posted ASAP. The Altarian game's AAR, however, I'll leave hanging, since after the Yor war, it was simply all about building military ships, making allies using the Spin-Control Center, building starbases, and watching planets flip.