Yup liking this alot-your factual AARs are almost as exciting as some of the fiction I read on here mr

KUTGW!!

KUTGW is keep up the good work my friend and yeah loving this 

Yeh im lovin it to..keep it going.

A mega event occurs, more or less spelling the final end of all economic problems.

Why the 'final end'? Surely this is only a temporary mega event?

I have returned!

Part 3: The outbreak of war

Not too surprisingly, it was the Torians that started the game's first war, attacking the minor-Yor.

The Drengin weren't far behind, starting the first of at least three wars they would fight with the Altarians - who still had no military at all.

This was going to be a problem, as I was working hard on building relations with the Altarians. My choice of technology to trade them was no coincidence - the Altarians needed to build up fast if I was to ally with them, as otherwise they'd be a frequent victim of aggressive powers like the Drengin and Torians.

As the wars broke out, galactic trade was also on the rise. Most major races had multiple trading partners now:

My own trade routes:

The Iconian Crisis

As one of the above screenshots shows, my relations with the Iconians had now degraded to "Hostile". There were a few major causes for the problem - they had attempted to extort money from me, and influence issues at the Scottlingas system continued. By now, I had decided to try and outright annex the Iconian planets there with an influence starbase, but it was clear that the overall situation could only end in war. I didn't want to fire the first shot, so I took steps to try and provoke the Iconians into war:

The fact that the Iconians are listed here as being more powerful then I was is entirely due to numbers: while they did have a larger fleet, it consisted of highly primitive ships. My fighter, the Phoenix Class visible in several screenshots, was not all that more advanced, but it was easily a match for the Iconians, and as a significantly faster ship would have an additional edge over their pitifully slow ships.

However, at least according to the media, the war wasn't around the corner just yet.

Random events and wonders during this time included:

Albireo I was a low-PQ planet, so this wasn't as much of a help as it might have been, but it was still quite nice.

The Korx had, fittingly enough, wasted little time in establishing themselves as the economic giant of the galaxy. At this point they were ranked even higher then the Torians in that area.

Carinoids II continued to be the home for my various wonders and trade goods.

This wave of xenophobia cooled relations with the Iconians some by pushing our influence back from each others' border. It's not hard to understand why this might have happened "in-game" - wars continued to erupt:

The Torian-Korx war was the first I know of to involve actual combat - several invasions occurred. While the Korx still had no fleet at all, their soldiering skill was superior to that of the Torians, and they conquered several outlying Torian planets in their space.

It wasn't all war in the galaxy, though, as the Drengin and Altarians made peace after just two months, apparently without a shot being fired on either side.

Actually, things cooled down around this point.

Part 4: Allying with the aliens, redux

With the end of the Drengin-Altarian war, the only race engaged in wars of aggression was now the Torians. Still, tensions remained high between the Alliance and its Drengin and Iconian rivals, so I figured the time was right to start seeking some allies. The Torians were too powerful to realistically court, so that left the Altarians and Korx, both of whom were still largely lacking a military.

In order to both toughen them up and strengthen our relations, I gifted them my second-best laser technologies.

This bumped the Korx, at least, to "close", though it would take a few weeks before I could contact them again to formalize the alliance.

In addition to foreign relations, this offers a good picture of where everyone was in terms of overall power. The Altarians and Korx did have the potential for strong economies, but they hadn't yet reached it.

The overall turn of the galaxy towards more peaceful times was fittingly marked by the end of the ongoing xenophobia event:

The Altarians finally built a few warships. The Korx still had none, but they did have transports, and they continued to launch ground attacks against the Torians - so far, the war remained inconclusive.

Other notable events around this time included:

The Terran government formally became an Interstellar Republic.

A group of anti-Torian powers made an unsuccessful attempt to punish them in the United Planets. Even if the Drengin influence hadn't been so bad, it's unlikely the motion would have passed, but it was worth a shot.

As 2231 began, the Torians continued to flex their muscle. I felt no sympathy for the Iconians, but it was worth keeping an eye on.

The Korx finally built their first warship...

Now that neither of them were totally defenseless, I felt it was time to propose an alliance to the Altarians and Korx.

I offered them quite a few technologies as part of the deal. A weak ally would run the risk of drawing me into their wars, so I wanted to make sure both of them could defend themselves.

Next: galactic war breaks out, I make first contact with the Krynn, and the Iconian crisis heats up.

Part 5: Let slip the squids of war!

As 2231 continued, relations with the Iconians steadily worsened. I'm honestly not quite certain why things remained so hostile, but by this point I had abandoned all hope of a diplomatic solution. The Iconian military was slightly weaker then mine, meaning that it was unlikely they'd fire the first shot, but as my civilization was now leaning Good, I was reluctant to start anything either.

In retrospect, given the relatively small territory the Iconians controlled, a peaceful solution might have been possible after all - trying to culturally convert them. But while their planets in the Scottlingas system had been threatening to defect for a while, the effort need to convert most of their other worlds would be massive, and I didn't feel like it was worth it.

Before the Iconian war began, though, first contact occurred with another major race. While I'd had occasional reports on the activities of the Krynn, at this point I still had no actual knowledge of them. On February 22nd, however, the TAS Enterprise, still surveying out along the borders of known space, ran into a Krynn constructor.

Though larger and more advanced then my Terrans, the Krynn were immediately friendly, and, despite their treaty with the Iconians, were not a major concern in my region of space.

But they were a threat to several minor races. Until now, the minors had been largely ignored except by the Drengin and Torians throwing their weight around, but over a period of two weeks, multiple wars broke out.

While I had never even encountered most of these races, the Iconian attack on my feeble trading partners the Carinoids provided the roleplayer in me the pretext that I had been looking for to start the inevitable conflict. Combined with the fact that I had finally (danged tech inflation!) developed second-generation weapons in the form of Particle Beams I, and the time had arrived to strike.

I wasn't going to go it alone, though. My allies were out - the Altarians were too well-disposed towards the Iconians and too far away, and the Korx were too militarily weak and still fighting the Torians. But there was another potential player right in the thick of things:

All those techs they had stolen had given the Scottlingas one heck of a military. Combine that with their missile weapons - unique among those races I had met - and dislike of the Iconians, and they seemed like the perfect partner to join the war.

Which left only the formalities.

Nice to see one of the political parties living up to its name - despite forming the primary opposition, about half of the War Party still voted in favor of my declaration of war. I could have just opened fire on the Iconians at the Scottlingas System, but I'm playing the good guy here, remember?

War was beginning

My war aims were relatively simple. Though I had gained a slight edge over them, I was in no position to push for the complete conquest of the Iconians. My goals were therefore threefold:

1. Push the Iconian influence completely out of the Scottlingas system. I wasn't going to try and conquer the planets while there was such a high chance of their peaceful defection, but I did aim to take out all of their defenders and starbases in the area.
2. Conquer the Iconian colonies in the southern cluster I shared with them, the Korx, and the Carinoids.
3. Cripple the Iconian military while taking relatively little losses of my own - the arms race we'd been having had become tiresome, and dealing enough damage to the Iconians would hopefully end it for good.

I also wanted to save the Carinoids if I could, as they were ostensibly why I had declared war to begin with, but it wasn't really a priority.

One immediate setback occurred, however, thanks to a UP law I had all but forgotten about:

It didn't hurt that much, but one of my fleets was kicked out of Iconian space.

The Scottlingas, being a minor, were not affected, though, and the action was quick to start.

Though they took several casualties, the Scottlingas fighter swarm cleared the Iconian defenders from their home system.

My ships fought their first encounter on this turn as well

Not exactly what one might call a thrilling space battle.

I also made some more diplomatic maneuvers, ending the Torian-Korx war...

In retrospect, this was a mistake, as had the Torians chosen to restart the war I would have either been dragged into it or, more likely, be forced to sever my alliance with the Korx. Luckily, they apparently felt they had enough on their plate conquering the Akilians and Yor.

...and selling my soul to the Korx in exchange for saving 35 weeks of research on a technology vital to the war effort:

Question to my readers, such as they are: I took quite a few space battle screenshots (for both myself and AI-AI battles I watched, actually, though the former are much more visually interesting) during this war. On the one hand, I'd like to show them, but on the other, I still don't know how to post thumbnails, so they'd take up a lot of space. How do you feel about it?

This has been a great read thus far, hope to see it continue. Having been playing a lot of Civilization V recently, this AAR really helps me appreciate how much more diplomatic manoeuvring you do in Gal Civ 2.

What difficulty is this game on?

Great stuff!

By the way, I know the AAR forums aren't very busy lately, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone who is reading this would provide some feedback.

Part 7: End of the war

The beginning of October 2231 saw another major clash with the Iconians at their southern colonies - specifically, the heavily defended world of Banfield II.

The victory by my newest fleet left the planet open to invasion, and Terran troops quickly landed.

The invasion was a success, although it did (once again) destroy most of the Iconian infrastructure. This was not a major issue, however - the Iconians had been virtually driven out of the Carinoids Cluster altogether, leaving me free to build up their former colonies at my leisure.

Meanwhile, I continued to take measures to cripple the Drengin without striking at them directly, by bribing the other giant of the game, the Krynn, to declare war. I still had no idea where the Krynn were, but my best guess put them close enough to the Drengin to do some damage.

Amusingly, the Drengin promptly showed up to ask me for help.

Under other circumstances, I might have said yes: making the Drengin more favorably disposed would go even further towards permanently removing them as a threat. But I was still peeved over having to sever my alliance with the Altarians, so I had no qualms about leaving them to suffer the consequences.

And in the last major bit of news this month, my first medium-size capital ship came online.

The end of the Iconian War

By the end of October, all of my primary war aims had been achieved. The Iconian colonies in the Carinoids Cluster had all fallen, either to myself or the Korx. The Scottlingas system was totally under my influence. The Iconian military had been severely weakened. I had even more-or-less saved the Carinoids by leaving the Iconians without the range to reach them. Furthermore, I now had other problems to deal with. The Torians continued to eclipse everyone else in power, and were coming closer then any AI I'd ever seen to winning an ascension victory. And while the Korx were my ally, they had begun to rapidly out-expand me: while I had focused on military techs, they had gotten just about every form of extreme colonization possible, and were now colonizing into my space.

It seemed like time to sue for peace.

However, the Iconians were clearly weakened, and I wanted to exploit that as much as possible. The "total victory" option was still off the table, but I intended to take as many of their planets as I could before it slowed me down too much, and this led to a costly defeat. Still intending on taking Kievi II, I sent Task Force 21 to clear out the defenders that had reestablished themselves in orbit.

Unfortunately, I had grossly underestimated the strength of the new Iconian ships. Task Force 21 was utterly destroyed.

The Iconians took the opportunity to launch another counterstrike against the Scottlingas system. A kamikaze fleet appeared from out of the fog of war and destroyed the defender on the Scottlingas homeworld before being wiped out. Foolishly, the Scottlingas failed to rebuild it, and an invasion fleet appeared from the same fog-of-war patch. Luckily, Task Force 16 was in the area - though a light fleet, it was enough to deal with the Iconian escorts.

The invasion was thwarted.

And then came the galactic plague.

The plague was the final blow to any plans I had to continue the war. Thanks to the TA "tech inflation", it was taking a very long time to research the military techs I was using to stay ahead of the Iconians. I now had to drop those in favor of researching a cure for the plague, which meant it was time to talk peace.

The Scottlingas remained at war - I wasn't going to offer the Iconians any concessions just to end that conflict, and the Scottlingas themselves weren't interested. I did make sure to get the Korx out of it, though - apart from anything else, I didn't want them to profit from the declining Iconians any further, ally or not.

A look at local space after the war. The Iconians have been pushed completely out of the Carinoids Cluster. The Korx, meanwhile, have begun expanding into my space with their new extreme colonization techs. To the "north", a series of military starbases are under construction as part of a plan for the TAS Enterprise to explore Torian space, still almost entirely a mystery.

The galaxy as a whole. Only about a quarter has been explored, and two major races, two "major minors", and three other minor races are still out there, waiting to make contact. Luckily, I now had the time for exploration.

2231 concluded with the meeting of the United Planets. Boosting the speed of constructors is always something I'm in favor of, and luckily the vote went in our favor (although had I known, I'd have rather voted with the Krynn and Iconians).

Although mentioning it chronologically would have upset the flow of things somewhat, this was a notable and disturbing event, given that I still planned to re-ally with the Altarians. Clearly, I would have to keep an eye on the Krynn.

This is a great read! Can't wait to see more developing.

Thanks, everyone!

Part 8: I'm running out of pithy titles

As 2232 dawned, most of the galaxy remained focused on finding a cure to the ongoing Galactic Plague. The key word here, of course, being most.

Way to keep your priorities straight there, Eidden.

The Altarians, meanwhile, already had the cure.

I considered the possibility of a trade, but I knew that if I managed to research it on my own, I'd be able to trade it to various races in exchange for some decent rewards. With tech brokering off, that wouldn't be a possibility if I got it from someone else.

As the race for the cure continued, other events took place:

The Federalist Party, riding high on low taxes and more-or-less victory in the Iconian War, swept the Terran elections.

The Carinoids also underwent an election, with good news for them...

...but were subsequently attacked by the Korx.

With the development of medium-scale capital ships (even poorly-armed ones), the Korx continued to become more powerful, and they were starting to flex their muscles. They'd come a long way since their early days as defenseless traders. The nature of the alliance was shifting...

The end of the plague

Research on the cure was completed on February 1st, two weeks ahead of schedule.

I now faced the decision of whether or not to give it to other races. I decided to give it to the Krynn outright: as one of the galaxy's leading non-Torian powers, I knew that they would be a good race to have on my side, and this could boost relations.

I sold the cure to the nearby minor races, though I didn't get much for it.

Both the Korx and Torians had beaten me to the cure, which made this subsequent message from the latter extremely strange. I had no compunctions about accepting his offer, of course - entirely apart from their superior position in the current game, the Torians had tried to cheat me this way before, so it seemed a fitting comeuppance.

My last trade was the one I thought the most about. On the one hand, I didn't want to help out the Iconians. On the other, I really wanted their Diplomatic Translators. Ultimately, it came down to roleplaying my alignment - as a Good Guy, I wasn't going to deliberately let even my enemies fall victim to a plague, at least not while there was something to get in return.

As the plague came to an end, life in the galaxy returned to normal - in other words, an increasingly nasty set of wars. The Drengin, hard-pressed by the Torian-Krynn coalition, came to me for aid once again. This time, I accepted - I still wasn't feeling friendly towards them, but they were no longer a serious threat, and somebody had to stop the Torian menace.

The Korx continued their minor wars with a brief attack on the Scottlingas. The Scottlingas were important enough to me that I negotiated an ending towards this one quickly, though.

March also saw a major diplomatic victory as I succeeded in reestablishing my alliance with the Altarians, and got a new technology in the bargain.

The tech thieves of the Scottlingas struck again before the month was out. This made an important difference to their ongoing war with the Iconians - in addition to everything else they gained, the Scottlingas now had Planetary Invasion technology for the first time.

Though I was feeling pretty satisfied with my position right now, the media didn't share that rosy view. This wasn't a serious problem - it was hard to do as much research when most of the previous year had been occupied with a major war.

These are the voyages...

At the end of 2231, I had assigned my survey ship, the TAS Enterprise, to explore into Torian space, building a series of starbases to give it enough support. I still knew very little of the galaxy beyond my local corner, and it was time to make contact with some of the other races out there.

The Enterprise reached the Torian border around February, but it wasn't until two months later that it made first contact with a new civilization.

The Drath, overall, were not an impressive civilization, though they were at least superior to the pathetic Korath (by now, I had achieved a high level of intelligence on the Krynn, which let me learn that there had only ever been three Korath planets). They were small and technologically backwards, though they had at least managed to get Plague Cure on their own.

But they did have one significant advantage - battleships. Although I couldn't get them to part with Large Scale Building for love or money, I did manage to get the lead-up tech.

Trading diplomatic techs like this hurt, but I didn't want to give them weapons or colonization tech, and there wasn't much else to trade.

Back in known space, the Korx, after several months of idleness, had begun their attack on the Carinoids, destroying the various unarmed ships and starbases in the system. I wasn't happy, but there wasn't much to do about it either.

Note the Drengin-colored Korx ship in the upper right. The Korx had begun supporting their fellow evil race against the coalition forces.

The Korx fleet still wasn't incredibly impressive - compare their latest frigate to this older Torian design - but it was more then enough for the Carinoids.

Back in Torian space, the Enterprise continued to explore, and ran straight into a battle between the Torians and Yor - I had met my first "major-minor".

To call the Yor unimpressive would be a severe understatement, but in their defense, they'd been at war with the Torians for over two years. I had a feeling they wouldn't last much longer, so I quickly soaked them for cash.

And in final news for this period, the Altarians and I built several wonders.

Final outlook in summer 2232, including diplomatic relations...

As you can see, the Altarians and Drengin have once again made peace.

Local...

...and galactic boundaries...

...And some overall stats.

Next: the end of the Drengin?

I hate running against incomplete AARs (though at least this one is still updating)...   The SUSPENSE!!!