The following is my AAR for a game currently in progress.
Game: Dark Avatar
Difficulty: Challenging
Misc Map Info: Largest Size, Abundant Planets, Abundant Habitable Planets, Rare Anomalies (I like to keep them somewhat unusual), Fast Research, Tech Victory Enabled (But I hope that no one uses it).
My Civilization: The Federation of Planets
Stats: Increased Reproduction (I believe the third tier of that ability), Highest Tier of Research and Economic Production (If I recall correctly), and I might have put stats into social prodution - I forget. My Political Orientation is Economic (cause I love having money to spend). MY important starting techs are Stellar Cartography and that's about it. The others are mostly filler. I selected the option to optimize colonization for my civilization, allowing my access to acquatic worlds earlier.
Goal: Using brute economic force, push through a diplomatic strategy of alliances with any and all civilizations that will accept them. My hope is to avoid large scale warfare completely and avoid any military conflicts as much as possible. I hope to acquire a diplomatic or influence victory. I also want to get by in a game with minimal military strength.
I plan to update the AAR once every year, usually after the United Planets vote.
Let's begin:
Our civilizations originated on "Blue Star," a world named after the first Hyperdrive equiped starship in the fleet. We're small, but the galaxy is large, and we plan to repay our debt to the Terrans for the gift of hyperdrive.
Blue Star is a small world, Type 10, 8 billion people living on it, and a reasonable income. Per the norm we have a construction ship, colony ship, and flagship. The universal translator will be our first technology - though some argue other technologies might be more useful in the long run.
Universal translators are soon completed, and we move on to Ion Drives. Around the same time our first planet is colonized: the distant Cheli II, which we rename Blue Star R1 (short for Blue Star Ring 1 - an indication of how close it is to the homeworld).
Expansion continues basically unabated. Soon we control a third planet around the star Otho. We have completed a mining starbase, and our flagship moves to investigate our first anomaly. Within three weeks of that missions commencement, we complete research on galactic warfare, assuring ourselves of a means to defend our holdings should it become necessary. Even so we aren't remarkably powerful... yet.
We discover a minor stash of valuables. Since we're spending more than we're making, every little thing is appreciated. Even so, I can't help but wonder where the economy will be in a few months. Will we ever be able to pay our way to victory? Also, we aren't researching anything because social spending is through the roof. The way the leaders see it, we're better off with developed planets to fuel technological development than we are with high technology and no planets.
We encounter two civilizations soon after: The relatively aggressive Yor Empire, and the Thalans (who we hope to ally with at the soonest possible convenience).
Two weeks later we find this:
And a week later another civilization!
But we're not idling (despite being markedly lower on funds than anyone should want to be). Instead, we manage to reach a class 17 world before the Thalans (who are nearer it). We decide to name this world "Blue Star 2" in honor of its quality, and also because it is distant enough from the homeworld to deserve it's own ring of worlds, much like as Blue Star R1 is to Blue Star.
Just as I was hoping for some peace and quiet to mark this period of expansion, a strange sight appears in our space:
I can only assume that Arcean Flagship was sucked through a wormhole and deposited somewhere on the other side of the Thalan Empire. No matter though - Stellar Cartography had already revealed to us the extent of the Arcean Empire, seeing one of their ships here is not yet a matter for concern. Militarily, they're only marginally stronger than us, and economically we're beginning to pull out of the rut we'd been in (evidenced by that pesky -57 BC underneath the researching summary).
Or Perhaps I spoke too soon. the development of Blue Star 2 forced us to raise taxes and lower production in order to buy, outright, that starport. Now we're even deeper in deficit than before:
Freakin Jessuins - they're always trying to teach kids in private schools... no wait, that's another group. The Jessuins are a minor species and don't conern us (as yet). Perhaps we'll establish trade routes with them?
We've pulled out of debt and the populations growing. Hopefully those xeno trade centers will be up and running soon - guaranteeing us a booming early game economy. Then again, maybe they won't. It's hard to tell at this point with expansion still a matter of profound importance. At least we're keeping pace with the other civilizations...
The United Planets vote. We vote against armed transports since those would require more costly components and take us space that could be relegated to additional troop modules. Plus, armed transports could - in theory - break through planetary defense fleets. On the other hand, we're well aware that keeping transports cheap will merely encourage the enemy to invade.
For those of you interested, we won the vote with a little help from the Yor Collective. This plays into our fears, as the Yor have a penchant for aggressive expansion.
And the new year dawns. The Yor grasp the covetted third place spot with superior research to us. The Thalans and Arceans both pull far ahead - giving us cause to worry. Without espionage to reveal the inner working of their Empire's to us, we are unable to guess what magnitude of military power they could leverage against us. On the other hand, the economy is growing and approval is relatively stable. Plus, Xeno trade centers are almost done. With the increased revenues from those centers, perhaps we can improve our factories and construct a rudimentary military? One thing is certain though: We must continue to expand or we will die.
