digitalentropy

Well, after playing my first lengthy war game, I still ended up with a psuedo-diplomatic victory. I was Demonic, with all the evil alignment buildings and I had the second largest military in the game. The other races were Torian, Thalian (largest military), Altarian, Arcean & Drath (who were my first ally, got wiped out early and gave me all two of their planets). I had about 10 planets while the rest all had around four. Aside from paying me tribute, they all wanted to be my Ally! One

Right, not with the Yor though, I haven't won ANY kind of games with them. I fumble with the addition of ship/fleet management and trying to decide on what techs I should aim for between social/military mainly it seems after watching my own patterns in a few quick test games. As for other races, I play 5 random currently so I never know who's going to show up (although Krynn are almost in all of my games). I guess, as you mentioned, it's in my best interest to at least kiss up

The Krynn Consulate wiped the floor with me this afternoon rather early in the game. I was checking out available techs in the trade window for the other races and it almost seemed like they started with way advanced stuff or just got it a lot faster than I could. I'm probably just not kissing up to the other guys enough while I build up my military presence (it would explain why they were all cool/wary to me and I had a -/-- military rating with them). I gotta say though, military victory is a

Alright, so should I skip techs and go right for conquering or work on my civ first and just fill in any tech-holes when I start taking planets?

This morning I amped the game up to "Tough" difficulty. I'm playing as the Yor and really, regardless of my game settings, I just cannot conquer the galaxy. I have a strong 200+ military rating start that drops like a ROCK within a few turns once everyone else starts building their fleets (of course, I'm only building defenders at that point). I assume I'm aiming for too many non-military techs (I notice some other races don't even pick up Xeno communications) to try and get my civ set-up

I'm going to be restarting a game soon as the Yor, on the largest map setting, 9 opponents (only normal difficulty for now), with rare inhabitable planets/systems & tight clusters. I also have 8 minor races enabled. I'm just wondering how to survive when I do get that spot all the way in the opposite corner of the galaxy from everyone, if I have 0-1 minor races nearby to trade with and might, at best, have 3 planets starting out (including Iconia & Iconia V) available to me. I'm aiming f