Krakr_mpf

I am replaying the same scenario. This time I had Pirates with Frigates when no one had large ship capability. They also had awesome beam wpn & def capability. that event managed to happen after a civ surrendered to me rather than their enemy & me colonizing the other previously uncolonizable planets, giving me 7 with which to research my way into kicking some ass since they have no troop ships. I continued making crap mass driver type cruisers in orders to weed them down. Long story short, when

I am replaying the same scenario. This time I had Pirates with Frigates when no one had large ship capability. They also had awesome beam wpn & def capability. that event managed to happen after a civ surrendered to me rather than their enemy & me colonizing the other previously uncolonizable planets, giving me 7 with which to research my way into kicking some ass since they have no troop ships. I continued making crap mass driver type cruisers in orders to weed them down. Long story short, when

Thanks for your input. It is indeed the barebones and not the expansion I'm playing. I was forced to scrap that game. It was not the campaign, just a random map so I could get the feel of the game before attempting the campaign. The difficulty was simply beginner. I think that the AI should check what stage of development the civilizations are in before springing something like that on you though. It was completely game ending.

Minor update: The homeworld is impossible to invade due to it being protected, and my fleet being destroyed. So I've wasted many hours for absolutely nothing except a burning sense of rage. I'm thoroughly disgusted. There is no way to uninstall "the Dread Lords" in the gold edition, so I imagine this otherwise excellent game will find itself in the crapper along with all the other garbage games I've got. I'll give it one more shot, but I imagine I'll have similar results.

I've been rather pleased with the game so far, but I'm puzzled as to how the Dread Lords expansion is a good thing? I read 1 post in which they appeared to the player, made peace and traded rediculously high level tech for a song. That's not such a bad thing, but it's rather a cheesy way to get ahead. I'm sure you could achieve similar results with a trainer or something if you were so inclined. In my instance, they appeared very early in the game and commenced to destroy *everything* and