Recently, I loaded up an old saved game of the "Dread Lords on Parade" scenario in DL. Although this scenario is frequently a bust as AIs gang up on and crush the DLs before they become a threat, I recalled them as being a real menace here, so I gave it a try. Things are going nicely (as far as the DLs being a threat), although I've got them on the defensive. However, there's been a few weird events I've been wondering about:
1. The Arceans had the misfortune to start right next to the DLs, who began in the east corner of the galaxy. The Arcean secondary homeworld (Hammer II) has been occupied by the DLs for almost the entire game and several other Arcean planets were also conquered. However, although the Arceans have almost no military left, the DLs can't finish them off. Specifically, I've seen Arcea repulse five different DL invasion attempts, losing only about a billion population each time. Given that 10 DLs have singlehandedly conquered my planets in the campaign (they never invaded me here) and the Arcean soldiering doesn't seem that good, I can't help but wonder what's going on here. At the very least, the failed invasions should be doing a lot more damage.
2. The Korx have been by far the strongest AI throughout the game, and I've been getting warnings from just about every race concerning them. Yet the Korx seem extremely unaggressive. I thought at first it was because the presence of the DLs was giving them an artificially low military score, but as of this moment, the Korx have a military rating of 110, over twenty points higher then the second-best race, and nearly three times that of the weakest race. I finally bribed them into war with both the Iconians and Drath (just to make things interesting) for the shockingly low price of 200 bc and the Laser III tech (in comparison, the Korx had Photon Torpedoes). I suspect that were this a normal sandbox game, the Korx would have been at war long since. Does the mere presence of Dread Lords on a map make wars less frequent?
3. Both of the minor races in the game have made peace with the Dread Lords. I've seen this happen before, and whether it's a bug or not, it's a regular feature of my run-ins with the DLs. However, one of the minors, the Carinoids, are actually trading with the DLs - they have trade routes running to Hammer II and Amalda (the DL HW). Is this normal? I suppose if they're at peace, it's possible, but it seems very weird (although it's a great roleplaying excuse for invading the Carinoids, which I've planned to for a while).
Anyone else seen any of this come up in their games involving the DLs? In particular, I'd like opinions on how the Arceans are doing so well against DL invasions.
