Why me?

Did you conquer any minor races prior to this happening?  Doing that seems to be a trigger for this event in my experience.

Thalans have an innate +33 to social and military-plus the standard techs for most trees give +30/30 social/military.  Given that, they'd only need to select a 30 or 40% bonus in the customization screen.  The research is more questionable, but all they really need is one fully upgraded resource for that.

It may help to take a look at

https://forums.galciv2.com/336227

that has plenty of valuable tips on fighting a vastly superior enemy. I couldn't add on that as I consider the people replying there more knowledgeable than me on Gal Civ II

I did infact conquer a minor...but the Thalans have conquered the Korx...so shouldn't that make them even more of a target. Also I have 3 military resources and the Korx surreneder to me when they lost to the Thalans, so that could be a contribution as well. I loaded from a few turns before, and the event hasn't triggered yet, so maybe I'll have some more time to prepare.

If you couquor a few minors you can get the non-mega event where its says "...the war is expanding". and everyone jumps on you. I don't know how many minors it takes and how much time you need between them. And why it doesn't happen for killing off majors. I have seen it happen TO AI players.

Anyway I'm not sure if this is what you got.

I used to play Civ 2 and in that game I'd always get messages from the other civs that made no sence. Like telling me I start too many wars when i always got attacked.

I got this after picking off the Drath legion very early in the game once.  The Altarians, Iconians, and Torians all ganged up on me.  Of course, they were on the other side of the galaxy, so they did a lot of wheel spinning, but not much actual attacking.

I suppose it was the non-mega event then, because it did say "the war is expanding". What is different between that one, and the mega event. Possibly because the Yor have defeated a minor race as well.

P.s. It's been many turns, and the event hasn't retrigered, so I'll probly be ok. I realized I'm the only one with planetary invation, so I don't think It would be that big of a deal if it did trigger again.

So...the even triggered again...and I was in a war with the Thalans...I have three allies now so I might be able to pull through. Before the event triggered The Thalans attacked one of my allies, so I got most of the rest of races to attack the Thalans as well..and then it triggered so now there is me and my aliies, and then everyone else is at war with me and the Thalans LoL. It is quite strange. I can win though if the Drengins and Drath focus on the Thalans.

It may also help to keep the war away from your planets: spam fortified starbases and/or military starbases combined with tons of tiny fighters at a nice distance from your planets.

And if you see one of your allies is getting crushed, consider selling military techs to them (probably the only time you should sell military techs to an AI) though of course not your very best ones. It makes a good profit and it helps your ally to put up more of a fight.

This sounds like the Drath using their superability. Except that you say it happened after they were gone.

I think ethical alingment came into play here.  The Drath and the Altarians, Iconians and Torians are all "good".

Right, it happened after I took them out.  They only had their two planets at the time.  It was really early game, with uncommon habitables.  I got the "Secret meeting . . . the war has expanded" event right at the end of the turn.  Just the game's way of throwing you a curve ball when you do some winning, I guess.  I was only at war with them for my one turn.  I sent enough fighters and transports over to wipe them out in one shot.    I've also had it happen during a complicated war scenario.  I made peace with the Torians, but was still at war with the Drath.  A month or two later there was a secret meeting and the Torians declared on me again.  Probably because of ethics.

I agree.

So interesting side note. I loaded to the save before the event triggered the second time. It presumably triggered again because I conquered the Dark Yor minor race...I guess I didn't learn. Here is whats weird though. I loaded, and conquered a different minor...and the event DIDN'T occur?!? I had been preparing to attack them beacue they had two different economy resources I desperatly wanted. So Some how conquering another minor has prolonged when the even will occur. I'm going to send out some fleets and be prepared to conquer other minors to see if I can replicate this and potentially avoid the event until I have won against the Thalans. Yes, this I know this is a lame tactic, but better than having to start over.

If a minor race has resources, dont conquer them completely... simply destroy the mining resource starbase, and drop your own Constructor on it... do it for both of them. What is the minor going to do about? Absolutely nothing, minors cannot build transports and take your planets over. They may have some ships, but they should never be considered an actual threat, only Majors. Later on, you can sue the minor for peace and take everything it has.

Or, give the minor a PQ4 planet, then take their homeworld, that way you don't get nailed with 'destroying a race'.

I didn't think about giving them a crappy planet. I think I'll give that a try (In my next game, only one minor left in this one...thanks largely to me )

Fixed.

Those PQ4's grow up to be 13-16's in DA/TA.  The 5's only become 8's.

That's right, forgot about that. So give em a crappier PQ5. I remember now, with Alteria, PQ4 Wisp became a PQ21, which was larger than Alteria itself (which was at PQ19).

Except Wisp is PQ3. 

So could you give them a PQ 4 planet, Conquer their other planet, and then then wait for that planet to become PQ 21, and then give them another PQ 4 and strike again taking the new PQ 21...then rinse, wash, repeat? or does the planet become PQ4 again once you take it?

It'll become 13-16 (TA introduces this variation to my knowledge-I always saw them become 16 in DA) via terraforming, and then there's two +3 buildings in TA, plus the ever-popular (actually, it's not that popular, really) +PQ % ability.

But it's faster to do it yourself, really.  Just give them a PQ5 if you're going to do it that way.

[Also, Wisp (PQ3) generally grows up to be PQ18, before any of the above listed bonuses.]

In the neither her nor there range, in my current game I have found the only PQ 1 planet I've ever seen.

I am, of course, colonizing it - it's a moral necessity!

Jonnan

The planet will stay at whatever PQ it was when you took it. If you are going to wait for the minor to get the polanet to its full potential you'll be waiting for a long time. At beast you'd have to give it the terraforming techs, and then you'll still have to wait for it to build. I don't know if the minors ever pick ethical sides, but if its a neutral, you may want to give it Good and Evil tech so it will have it fully terraformed. But then, if you had that tech and were neutral it would be done already.

I always have at least 10 PQ1's in a game and i colonize them all. I had a recent thread on my "third" colony rush. Thoase really do become some of the best planets in the game. For me  they are most commonly PQ 16 - 19. WIth a good midgame economy you can rush build a munufacturing center or stock exchange everty turn. If you play as the Thalans you can rush buy an Idustrial Center.

Fire your ambassador.  He obviously wasn't doing his job.

If you really were Teh Underdog in that situation, nobody's going to scream at you for reloading.  Maybe the code has a > or a < that's pointing the wrong way, or perhaps the mega-event doesn't even check to see that you are the number one threat, it just detects that a number of years have passed without incident and decides that a war would be cool.

Actually that sounds like fun.. did you attempt to hold the enemy off? Or try to cause as much damage as possible until defeat. By the way, there are ways to make it almost impossible for the AI to be able to take a planet, of course if you were too much overpowered, it would just be a matter of time.

Well I reloaded the first time it triggered because I didn't understand why the event happened to me. The second time I loaded to test out prolonging the event which actually worked for a little bit. I was able to hold them off when it finnally triggered again because of three reasons. 1) the Thalans, though they were the most powerful,  hadn't researched planetary invasion. They had declared war on an ally of mine before the event fired, so I was able to moblize and not only fend them off, but start pushing them back. This is due in large part because I paid off my allies and other races to attack them when they attacked my ally. 2) I had allied with the Yor, who had the second strongest military. 3) the Drengin didn't DoW me for some reason. I suppose beacuse the had some trade with me.

--I went ahead and became evil since the other races veiwed me as evil any way. which also helped. It is now a little past mid game. I have taken about 80% of the Thalans planets (about 60 of them lol *I'm playing of immense*) The Drath are also almost defeated. They were the only other empire I shared a boarder with that DoW. As for the others, the Yor and Arceans took care of the other people that declared war on me (they are my allies). I'm pretty sure the rest of the game is going to be mop up now as I trump everyone in every category.