Fortunately it's the shortest recession ever and taxes are back to normal.

Because of the increased cultural influence, Vizzard I revolts against the Yor and signs up with the Terran Alliance:

It's not a bad planet, but there's not a lot I can do with it at the moment.

However, Vizzard III (which is currently held by the Drengin) is now sympathetic to my cause and there are reports of civil unrest.  I guess some people there like diet soda after all.

Also, I've learned that the Drengin have no fewer than 37 of those Super Dominator squadrons:

I think that I can smash them with my superior firepower, but not all at once.  As it happens, they're divided - 21 down the bottom right there, one at the top, and about fifteen or sixteen just hanging about near Banfield III.

I faced off against the 21 squadrons with 10 of my own.  You can see below that although most of my squadrons survived, they lost at least two fighters apiece.  I managed to scrape together three fully operational squadrons from what was left:

The Drengin on the other hand, are all space dust.  All 21 squadrons, gone.

While I'm luring the other squadrons to their doom, I'm presented with another ethical choice:

Undead soldiers don't pay taxes, so if they die (and if the Drengin do invade, you can be sure that we'll send the zombies out in front) we're not losing hard-working citizens.  They're corpses, and though their suffering may be great, I have to weigh that against the unknown but likely greater suffering that the Drengin are likely to visit upon us if they do manage to land troops on one of our colonies.

The remaining corvette squadrons are taken care of:

Of my 11 squadrons that engaged the 13 remaining Drengin squadrons, I still have all of them, although as you can tell, some of them lost a fighter or two.

I've spent credits on buying Research Academies so that I don't need to divert funding to Social.  Yes, it's a little wasteful considering I'm going to be researching Invention Matrix after this, but I need a little boost to get there.

I decide to try and negotiate my way out of this war.  The Drengin are willing to cut me a better deal for peace now:

You see now that I've managed to saw down their military strength, I can actually build my own forces up to a level that matches the Drengin.  Granted, they will gain a whole load of corvettes the next time they declare war, but I've just shown that a superior number of corvettes can be beaten by massed firepower.  So the swelling of military power that it creates won't bother me, I know that I can crush them.

And if Lord Kona thinks that he can bully me for more credits, let's just say that it will not end well for him.

Shortly after the peace deal is done, I get an unexpected bonus:

Now I have the Vizzard system all to myself.  It's mine.  Mine!  My own precious.

Due to a sudden economic boom, I'm now making a little over eleven hundred billion credits a week.

However culture soon begins to wane, a sign that the reign of the xenophiles is at an end.

The latest meeting of the United Planets suggests taxation of starbases in foreign sectors:

It's annoying having all those starbases crowding your space.  Hopefully this measure should compensate sector owners for having to put up with yet another economic starbase right in the middle of a busy sector.

I am faced with another difficult ethical choice:

If they really need that food, they can pay the going rate for it.  They're not my people.  And if the Drengin fall on hard times because of this, well that's too bad.  If they weren't out ravaging the galaxy, maybe there would be plenty of food to go around.

Apparently the Drengin weren't finished with the war thing:

Enough of these games?  But I love these games.  You know, the ones where I pretend that I'm too peace-loving to blow up the star that your homeworld orbits.  Oh, I may not have the technology to do it now, but be assured that I will settle for nothing less than your complete and utter destruction!

Em, also, can I have my 743 billion credits back?

He hung up again.  I think it was something I said.

Unfortunately for me, since our last encounter, the Drengin have likely snagged themselves a military resource or two.  Their Weapons rating is now sitting at 99%, which makes fighting them directly a really bad idea.

I have been able to locate one of their mining starbases sitting on a military resource:

(it's on the bottom right there, just above the minimap)

The output of this one mining base isn't enough to account for the increase in Drengin strength, however.

There's a more pressing issue as well.  That military base is just beyond the range of my fighters.  Assuming I can even fight my way through waves of Drengin defenders, there's no way I can actually reach it.  I will need to research life support technology (not that I can add and life support modules to my current fighter design) and hope for some luck in finding the other military resource.

Even assuming I can accomplish all that, I will need to keep knocking out these mining starbases to keep the playing field level.  I can't just camp out in the middle of Drengin space and expect to survive.

Somebody had some extra time this weekend.

Fabulous.

Why is it that my games never seem so epic when I'm playing?

Well to be fair, I did set the event frequency on 'Frequent' and that seems to make things more dramatic.  Just look at how often I had ethical choices to make (I think the frequency of those are tied to the event frequency).

Another factor at work here is the slight imbalance in some of the racial tech trees.  The Drengin for example, get Medium Hull Building and therefore frigates before Technology Progression II, I don't get it until afterwards.  It encourages the human player (if they're playing the Terrans) to build up their research capability in order to keep up.

However if I'm being honest, it's been tough keeping up.  And it's a little annoying finishing off those lengthy Technology Progression techs without getting so much as a single bonus, having to slog through another tech just to get something.  I think that at the very least a new Super Project would be nice.

Yet another minor race bites the dust:

Also, I have delayed looking into Medium Hull Building for the moment, having snagged General Life Support.  I'm now looking into Enhanced Miniaturisation, because although I can now just about reach the mining starbase, it would be nice to be able to reach further into Drengin territory to look for that other starbase.

I've sent two squadrons in to take out the base, it's all I can spare right now:

The Drengin have already started moving their ships to take out the mining starbase on my morale resource (again) so if I'm lucky I will meet limited resistance.  If not, then I'm about to get my butt kicked.

I'm presented with another ethical dilemma:

A hundred and some change bc is a small price to pay right now, if my people can be spared from this natural disaster.  It's true that they may end up dying anyway when the Drengin start invading, but in the meantime I need them.  Even if most of them hate me for taxing them to the hilt.

While my attack squadrons make their way to the target, the Drengin continue to assault the mining starbase with their greatly improved offensive capabilities:

Normally a battle against these fighters would have gone more in my favour.

  I'm able to mop up the remaining two fighters, but as things stand, I won't be able to hold the base for much longer.

As more Drengin forces close in on the mining starbase at Quendor, my ships escape the sector, leaving the mining starbase unmanned:

It's too bad I can't rig the thing to blow up when they drop out of hyperspace.

Although this will leave Quendor II unprotected in the event of a ground invasion, recent intelligence reports have revealed that the Drengin only have two troop transports available, and neither of them have been spotted near this sector.  Hopefully when the Drengin realise there's nothing else to shoot at, they will move on and terrorise the Thalans.

My efforts to destroy the Drengin starbase are thwarted:

Their first attack took out the five-fighter squadron.  I attempt to evade the Drengin fleet, but it's no good.  They come after my backup squadron and blow it to pieces:

Obviously, I could send more ships in, spread them out so that they can't all be taken out but... well look, the Drengin have lots of ships.  They now have a speed advantage over my ships, a logistics advantage, and one hell of an offensive advantage.  And I think I made them angry, too.

Of course the game is far from lost at this point, but I'm all out of brilliant plans to save my empire.  Buying time while my scientists work isn't going to cut it, because I would need to research all the way up to Photonic Torpedoes (or a similar level of one of the other Advanced Space Weapons branches) in order to equal the firepower the Drengin currently possess.  You've already seen that the Drengin aren't all that interested in peace.  The Altarians really haven't got juiced up enough from that artifact to even swat a fly, and the only other race that might have been able to stop the Drengin has decided to ally with them.

You know, not that this isn't an interesting AAR, but if I was considering trying your mod, this would not push me towards doing it. Why are the Drengin so insanely overpowered? Every game you've reported on so far, they've steamrollered the galaxy. You mentioned earlier that the Arcean tech tree is not finished - is that true for most of the races, or what?

I have to agree with Qrtxian. This is a great AAR, but it clearly shows an imbalance in your mod. But I'm sure, you will iron this out eventually.

BTW, have you considered using multiple pre-reqs for techs? It may not look pretty to have a tech shown two, three or more times in the tech tree, but it works. 

Another question:

Will each race retain their own unique technologies?

Because I really like's the Iconian's Self-Healing Hulls.

Well actually, the last game I played, the Drengin did become really powerful, but I beat them with science.  And Terror Stars.  Since that game I fixed the ridiculously early access to the psyonic beam in the Drengin tech tree and balanced the weapons a bit more evenly.  However, the Drengin are always going to be in a good military position during the early game.  With default War party political party and natural abilities, as well as the Terran AI, they're born to rule the galaxy.

The settings for this game were different than what I'm used to.  I didn't get a good break in this game, didn't have a lot of high-quality planets to finance my research, and I made a few mistakes.  For example, I signed a peace treaty with the Thalans when what I should have done was research Planetary Invasion and take their planets for my own.  When I was winning against the Drengin through attrition, I shouldn't have stopped.  I should have noticed and taken out those military resources much earlier.

As far as the tech trees go, yeah there are a few that aren't finished.  What works in one tech tree for one race doesn't necessarily work for the others.  It's only by playing test games like these and analysing each race's position that I can start improving things.  One of the reasons I have a Terran tech tree custom race to play against is so that when I make changes to the Teran tech tree, I don't make them too powerful.

It bugs me that it isn't finished, but there are a lot of racial tech trees to get through, and when I change things it can radically alter the balance of power in the galaxy.  There was that time I made the Torians so dominant in manufacturing that I had to dial back their improvements.

Yeah.  In some cases I have improved what they had to begin with.  The Yor have an early-game propulsion tech called Stellar Streams.  It used to be quite expensive to research, but I brought the cost down and gave them a unique drive to go with it.

Whatever on the tech tree, I don't have time to try tons of them, but this is a great AAR.  

It's been fun to do.  And not just to showcase the mod, but GC2 itself.  I remember that I loved reading this when TA was released, so I wanted to take a sort of light-hearted, slightly evil approach to this AAR.

This is something I tackled in my mod.  No more spacer techs.  Even if you just get a little bonus, it's better than nothing.  In your case, a Super Project would make lots of sense.

The issue (for lack of a better word; this isn't meant to sound like complaining) isn't really that the Drengin sound unbeatable. It's that every game you've reported on seems to turn into a death struggle with them and them alone. Why don't the other races ever seem to have a chance to shine?

Well I think that it's likely a combination of factors.

The Drengin tech tree used to suffer from the same issues as the Altarian and Terran tech trees - horrible basic improvements all at once, leading to a catastrophic economy.  Now that I've fixed it, they're very good at squeezing taxes out of their citizens, putting together their military, and conquering the galaxy.  Let's not forget that they have a research advantage when working on weapons techs.

So the other races (apart from the Yor) don't have as much chance to shine because they either haven't had as much recent work done on streamlining their tech tree (improving the collection of techs they will have at a particular stage of the game) or because they don't have a military edge like the Drengin do.

The last two games have been harder because while I have trimmed the available starbase modules so it's harder to hold onto them, some unique mining modules are now seen by the AI and installed properly when a constructor arrives.  For the Drengin, that's a major boost.  That one mining base was adding +32 to their Weapons.

I've decided, having worked out a few tech tree links, to put today's mod changes to the test.  I know that you may be used to reading AARs that have some continuity, however in the situation that this game has run into, it's usually when I would concede and have a go at a fresh start.

Not that I'm especially sore about losing, it's just that test games take enough time as it is.  I'm interested in the long-term viability of the AI civs, not how many wins I can notch up.  Although I should probably keep a note of how many stars I've blown up.

Test Game 2

Mod version: release 5A

Galaxy Setup:

Going to keep random events on Frequent.  All other settings are the same as well.

Race customisation:

You can see here I've traded 20 points of military production ability to get +20 to weapons.  Given that there are now three races in the game with War Party picked (the Arceans as well as the Yor and Drengin) I had a choice between picking War Party myself, or this.

 Opponent selection:

So, same stooges again.

Loading...

So this homeworld doesn't have a manufacturing bonus tile.  However, check a look at the starting position:

That second asteroid field will add a significant bit of production to Earth once it's mined.

I've located a barely habitable class 4 planet here in the Cordelia system with my colony ship, while the survey ship has found a class 7 extreme world.  Well, it could be worse.  I could have accidentally stumbled upon Ceti Alpha V.

After the first five weeks of exploration, my colony ship encounters a red line:

Well either it has stumbled upon the galactic equivalent of London and won't be able to legally stop there, or it's found the edge of Drengin space.

I guess we'll have to see if a traffic warden comes by to ticket my ship.

My colony ship discovers another barely habitable world, Caprica IV:

While it would be an idea to spite the Drengin by taking this planet before they can get to it, I think I'll keep going in case I'm passing up something better.

It's actually my first colony ship off the production line that finds a good planet to settle on:

Altros III has a modest manufacturing bonus tile. It's also a ringed planet so if I set up some labs here I'd get a nice 10% bonus to research output.

For the moment I just need some scouts to search out the nearby worlds, so I buy a Starport on Altros III and get started.

I have made contact with the Iconians but of course, no Universal Translator yet.

My wandering colony ship finds this recently-colonised Drengin planet:

However, my survey ship has finally turned up something worth looking at:

This system is in the top left corner of the map.  I wasn't going to check the corner right away, good thing that I did or I would have missed these.

While exploring the far side of Drenging space though, my colony ship comes across a very nice find:

Ha, in your face Lord Kona!

I quickly colonise Hadrian I:

It's another ringed planet, this one with a research bonus tile.  Not bad at all.

Since it's on the other side of Drengin space I decide it's best to have a starport, even if for the moment I will just be building a few scouts to go explore some more.

What happened?

Why did you lose?