So, I swear to God that the computer is doing its level best to p*ss me off! Remember how I had all my trade routes running to New Iconia? And then remember how the Iconians were only in existence because of those self-same trade routes? And, now, remember if you will what the thrice-damned Thalans did? Well, those stupid Iconians did the same d@mn thing. Not but one turn after begging for help from me to save them from the savage Korx, the b*****ds roll-over and surrender to the Drath. That really hurt the old economy to have all my trade routes cancelled. Teach me to put all my eggs in one basket, too.
Well, whatever, I had been anticipating the eventual demise of the Iconians for some time, although all my scenarios involved me invading them, so I some replacement freighters in orbit around Earth just in case. Off they go to visit the Arceans, and no sooner does the first one arrive then I get one of those cut-scenes saying that the war against the Arceans will be expanded. What war? By whom? And why the hell did you idiots decide to do that *after* I send my freighters!?
It also must be the decade or what-ever of the Minor Races. Besides the pitiable Vegans arriving, the Paridians, the Independent League and the Fundamentalists all have made guest appearances. Then came the grand-daddy of them all, but that's a bit later in the tale.
Despite the set-back in my trade routes -- I had to cut my espionage spending for bit & hike taxes, but my people all love me, so they're okay with that nowadays -- things seemed to be going pretty swimmingly for the old Terrans. Having recently broken out of our little block-party with some choice colonies, we've been researching like mad some of the more expensive technologies -- stellar folding, massive construction, that sort of stuff. I want battleships! So, it was during this lull that somehow, somewhere, one of my research mining stations gets blown up. Now, I've only got two of these, so one of them getting blown to hell and gone is not cool. I scan & it's the new one I had just built a couple weeks earlier, clean on the other side of the map. By brilliant coincidently over-sight, I don't have a single military ship within a gazillion parsecs. Dang-blast it! Then I check for the culprit; I'd not received any notification of a war being declared on me & I'd made peace with the doltish Torians (even though the Korx seem to be a bit slow on getting the news, since they've offered several times to go to war against the Torians, ostensibly to aid me.) So, it turns out it was a minor race, the Akilians to be exact. Oh, they're about to become minor alright. They're then going to be followed by the LentzLandians, who took advantage of the attack to construct a mining station on *my* research resource.
So, instead of contemplating which empire to go to war with, I've decided to eliminate the minor races. Annoyingly, by destroying my starbase, the Akilians have cleverly managed to remove themselves out of range of my closest military assets. Fine. Retool the heavy cruisers and the first model of battleships (yay!) to have a bit more life-support -- the benefit of *finally* researching Supreme Miniaturization. So, off goes the HCS Vengeance (newly recommissioned) and the BB-Rs Tsunami. Once they get there, they have to wade to a veritable swarm of heavy fighters that the Akilians must have been churning out since Day 1. Most were in small squadrons, but there was one large stack of over 40 single fighters that took a couple of weeks for the Tsunami to mow through. I have to imagine that the crew of Tsunami were bored to tears by the time that all ended. Both ships move off to beat on the Akilian's homeworld (how I wish I could just bomb the living snot out of them) while waiting for the slower heavy assault transports to arrive.
Meanwhile, Cruiser Fleet Bravo is making hay of both the LentzLandians -- who seemed to have taken a page out of the Akilian's playbook, by stacking 60 single fighters onto one parsec -- and the Carinoids (the unfortunate victims of being only eight parsecs away from the LentzLandians; next time, they may want to reconsider where they put their homeworld.) Transports arrive at all said locations within a week or so of each other & the Terran Alliance soon then grows with the addition three new C18 worlds (got to love the Orbital Terraformer!)
During all this fun & games, my scouring surveyors have discovered a couple more uncolonized planets: a Class 11 radioactive and a Class 9 barren planet, one on either side of Arcean space. But the juicy news was the Class 29 radioactive planet waaaay off in the far north-eastern corner of the map, with a Class 11 heavy gravity world and a Class 8 habitable that the Drath had colonized. The two worlds by the Arceans are within striking range of my fast colony convoys, so I crank out two of those & send them on their merry way (the fast colony convoys are a large colony ship with 750 colonists, a heavy transport with 4000 more soldiers qua colonists, a fast attack frigate for defense and a fleet support vessel with a Mark III warp-bubble generator.) The juicy planet is juuust outside of striking range, so I fire off a constructor with a lot of engines on it to get there & build an economic base for the soon-to-be fledgling colony. Not much later, Alaska, Utah, Nevada and Idaho were welcomed into the Terran Alliance. Furthermore, several more mining resources were discovered near these colonies. And to prove that this old dog *can* learn new tricks, several of the newly commissioned Tsunami-class battleships are dispatched to protect all these new assets.
Just as I was thinking that maybe it was for the best that the minor races started acting up like they did, as it obviated my need to make a painful decision on whom to take on next. The Korx have become the new military menace: once the Torians lost their ascension starbase, they fell back to their normal, feckless ways. However, the Korx are bringing in a fair amount of trade to my worlds, so I'm a bit leery of beating on them. The Krynn seem to be fraying around the edges, taking a beating from the Arcean, the Drath and the Korx, so they're beginning to look like they're next up to bat. That's when the Jagged Knife showed (remember earlier when I said there was more minor race action to come? Yeah, this would be it.)
Now, I don't like the Jagged Knife. Never have, never will (and from what I've read on the forums, I'm hardly alone.) The jag-offs swiped seven of my colonies, including my awesome research colony of South Dakota (last reported of producing just shy of 900 RPs! Not too shabby for a C12.) I should have anticipated something like this would occur, as I had just expended the last of my immediately available transports on consolidating those annoying minor races. Worse, two of the colonies they took over were the two on either side of Arcean space that I had just colonized a couple weeks earlier!
Fantastic. Every one switches gears from economic production (starbase constructors, mining ships, freighters) to military production. California is still pumping out the battleships (with the Innovation Complex, Hyperion Starbase and a Navigation Center, that extra boost to speed I like to bequeath to my best military assets), most everyone else starts making transports. New Jersey -- a C14 radioactive world with a population of 20 billion -- is always cranky. I know it's because of their high population density, but I have a plan for them: the assault carrier. My assault carriers are a battleship hull with 16 advanced troop transport pods. Nothing like hitting a system with 16,000 legions of troops in one ship. It doesn't move very fast, but with the Navigation Center and some of the other techs I've traded for, sans engines they'll still move 9 parsecs a week. Most planets can't even dream of having 16 billion people uprooted in one fell swoop; usually, they have to make the rounds to several worlds, taking 2-6 billion a pop, before setting off to harm someone. The rest of the colonies are either making heavy assault transports (4k troops) or heavy assault shuttles (1k troops). Both models have recently been able to benefit from the development of stellar folding, so I can get those ships where they need to go in a hurry (the shuttles have a base move 22 parsecs a week and my prime colonies can produce one of them every third week, which is pretty close to the amount of time it takes them to replace the 1000 people deployed on the previous shuttle.)
As I'm readying the deployment of these invasion fleets, I start to line up my targets. Initially, I was strictly looking at getting back my colonies, starting with South Dakota, followed by North Dakota, Minnesota, Florida and Montana. I'd worry about Idaho and Utah a bit later. That's when it dawned on me that the Jagged Knife situation was actually a blessing in disguise! Since they took a lot of planets -- 53 of them if I remember correctly -- minus the 7 of mine, that leaves 46 of what had been the other empire's planets, now free for the taking! All without pissing anyone off, except the Jagged Knife & they're already on The List. With my heart pounding in anticipation, I quickly check on Thala. Blast it! Still Krynnian. Frickin' stupid Jagged Knife... Fine, what-ever. All the old Iconian planets are under their sway, along with many deep in the heart of the Korx and Krynn territories. Some are pretty nice, C15+. All will be made mine.
And so the war against the Jagged Knife is launched. Three invasion fleets: Red, Blue and Green. Planets fall to my relentless assault and riches begin to flow into the Alliance coffers like never before! The one accomplishment the Iconians had ever been able to reach was the construction of Diplomatic Translators (which annoyed me no small amount when that happened since I was 2-3 weeks away from finishing mine. Guess I should have been spying on them...) Well, that was mine after taking New Iconia from the Jagged Knife.
And so this is how things stand. The Terran Alliance is flourishing, able to capitalize on the Jagged Knife at the expense of everyone else. With all this new-found wealth, I was able to get the Torians and the Korx to lay off the Arceans for a while (I want those Advanced Navigation Centers! So they better bloody well be researching that, or else!) The invasion fleets are doing well, with a constant stream of heavy assault transports and shuttles arriving from the main colonies (ferried by my fleet support vessels sporting Mark III warp-bubbles). In fact, they've gone so far as to take over a couple planets in the heart of Altarian space (which is in the far south-western corner of the map.) R&D is focusing on weapons & defenses, so the Tsunami-class battleships have been supplanted by the Iminami-class, and then again by the Typhoon-class. Unlike the battleships, which are still too expensive to upgrade, the older Valiant and Vengeance-class cruisers are slowly being uprated to the new Vindicative-class while the Stalwart-class frigates are being recommissioned as the Resolute-class planetary defense frigates. And now my beady eye turns toward the ever-alluring, oft-elusive Thala... Tonight, methinks, the Krynn are in for a *big* surprise!
