Hey, I just wanted a place to talk about what's been going on in my games and since I didn't see a specific thread for that, I made my own. Feel free to post your own stories of your civilzations glorious path to galactic domination or less glorious path to oppression and subservience to the Snathi.
I'm only playing my second game of GalCivII. The first game was the default reccommended stuff in a small galaxy and me and the Altarians and Torians squashed the Yor, the Drengin, and the Arceans before I so much as tooled up a second generation frigate. I aborted several other games on the Normal difficulty setting, because I am a big wimp. In fact, I almost gave up on the game I am playing now because I was behind technologically and my nearest neighbors were the Drengin and Yor, and both were hostile to my fledgling good civilzation. But I didn't give up and here we are.
I decided to take a big leap and play a huge galaxy with all the other major civs present. I also decided to try playing the Drath, for whom I feel a peculiar affection, perhaps because of Lord of the Drath's endearingly hangdog expression. At first I thought I was doing well. I managed to colonize six worlds in five star systems in a fairly short period of time. The Class 17 world of Oredtes II was a paradise and Poseidon IV had a Precursor Mine! I thought I was set. And then I met the Drengin.
I later learned that their animosity toward me was based not only on my default status as a Good Race, but also because I was rank 7 and they were rank 8, putting my Drath directly in the way of their goal of being declared the Cutest Lizard-Monkeys in the Galaxy. The point is that at first they seemed intimidating, not least because they were friends with every civ they had come into contact with, including the powerful Yor Collective. Fortunately, the Yor were busy skirmishing with the equally powerful yet much more benevolent Torian Confederation. I wound up at war with the Terrans, who I'm sure bankrolled a large chunk of the Drengin offensive into Drath space, and who would never quite get over this hostility. I was scrambling to catch up in research so that I could face their state of the art missile frigates. And just when they had smashed my counter-offensive and I was pushing up production to strengthen my defenses, I found my first Lucky Ranger.
I am very glad I chose to purchase "Lucky" as one of my racial bonuses.
The Ranger, renamed Fortunate One, was slow, but it singlehandedly destroyed the entire Drengin armada of over thirty attack ships. The end result of the war is that I invaded Drengi and the Drengin surrended their remaining four or five worlds to the Terrans. I was still behind in technology and the Terrans hated me, but on the other hand I had made great gains in soldiering technology.
Skip ahead about five years.
The Humans and the Drath have been in an uneasy peace for several years. I managed to take all but one of the former Drengin worlds from them in an earlier war. I am now ranked fifth in the Galaxy and am allied with the Torian Confederation, the second most powerful Empire. I finally made contact with the distant Altarian Republic, for years the leader of the Galactic community. Myself and all the other civs combined would have difficulty overcoming even one of their votes in the United Planets, and the force of their two voices combined was completely insurmountable. I resented this, of course, but at least they were on my side.
The Korx couldn't play nice, so they surrendered their worlds, located on the other side of the Terran systems, to me, on the understanding that I would protect their people from reprisals from all the civs against whom they had committed atrocities. Tensions started to build. I opportunistically joined the Torian Confederation's war against the Yor, taking two of their worlds for my own. In an unrelated event, I acquired my sixth Ranger.
The Yor surrendered to the Terrans. Their influence crowded my new Korx holdings, and my new Yor planets were far within their sphere of influence. I built an influence Starbase to counter it. Tensions mounted.
One thing to understand is that the Terrans were well liked by every other civilization in the galaxy. They were even Close with my friends the Torians and were good friends with the Altarians. The difference was that they hadn't made alliances with anyone. I was allied with the Torians and, for kicks, with the Paulos. Soon I was also allied with the Arceans, the Thalans, and the Iconian Refuge, all three of which were jockeying for Least Likely to Succeed. The Terrans stood alone.
And then they declared war on me.
That's pretty much where things stand, galactically speaking, at present. Some months after War was declared and even the tiny Paulos declared war on the Terrans, I made an alliance with the Altarians. Several months after that, the Altarians declared war on the Terrans. My fleets have yet to actually encounter any Terran ships, but with the entire galaxy turned against them, it's really only a matter of forcing them into a surrender. I'm not saying it will be that easy; in this game, anything could happen. I'm just saying that the Terrans were friends with the Drengin; they consistently threatened me and attempted to extort money when I was weak; and they brutally subjugated my friends the Carinoids and Scottlingas. I admit it: I have a soft spot for Minor Races. My point is that the Terrans are bullies and deserve everything that's coming to them. And I’m looking forward to winning my second game by hard earned Diplomatic Victory.
There. Gosh, I hope that wasn't too long and boring.
