Torian Brick Wall...what would you do?

Hmm. If you prefer to play this nicely, then increase research to help with the tech race, but build a lot of constructors to put cultural palaces in your own border sectors to prevent culture flips on your side and to possibly snag a system of theirs eventually. In fact, make all the resource bases not in Torian planet sectors culture palaces as well! Also use the mass of constructors to buff out trade route starbases to maximize trade revenue and put full defense modules on eventually.

Relations should eventually improve to close with a lot of trade routes, so unless alignment problems come along later, there is little reason to fear war. This sets up either an alliance victory by letting the relations warm up enough, or a tech victory eventually. The culture bases may force the Torians to build more ships and more influence buildings to counteract them, so that will take money out of their research budget. There is also the chance that those culture bases will kick in and flip a couple of planets, which will further give you an edge and possibly another way to victory once the dominoes start falling. (On smaller maps, every lost planet really hurts overall influence. In a 9 system game, losing even two could cause enough influence loss to start a chain reaction over the long haul.)

Attack their strongest system. The benfit of being human is you can plan and place a devestating force consolidated at one point of attack. I would prefer to capture the system versus destroying it with a terror star.

1. Protect your border star bases with capital ships.
2. Form a fleet of combat transports and capital ships at one of your planets near the point of attack.
3. After fleet is large enough start moving it toawards the target system. They may detect you coming and may start the war premature, so be ready...
4. Your back planets should be building more capital ships, move them to the front as you get closer to war to provide a mobile defense, I would also include scout ships for more sensor range. The Torians do not assault systems very well so if you keep a mobile defense instead of ships parked on your planet you should be able to search and destoy evertything coming your way.

When you capture their strongest system, now you have pushed them over the edge. Your stronger their weaker, make peace if you wish or kepp pressing the military conquest.

Remember losing the trade routes with you will be devestating to their economy as well.

Destroy their starbases if you can as well and swoop them up with constructors.

I kinda ruled out alliance victory because, as of yet...I've never been able to get to "close" with only 2 races left. But then again, I totally screwed my win in that game by going to war pre-maturely.

I've decided to take your advice, 30 military - 10 social - 60 research.

I'm going to max out research as best I can and build cultural starbases and see what happens.

Thanks for the input!

In one single turn:

Take out their resource starbases, immediately build maxed out starbases of your own and the sue for peace giving them a few trade goods.

Another possibility:

Wait for a new minor civ to appear. The Torians will eventually declare war. Give/sell ships to the new minor civ.

I tend to believe in what I've coined the "Alpha Strike" tactic, where I stage as many of my ships as I can spare across as many of their planets as I can. When I'm ready for war, I literally take out every single thing I can in that one turn. With any luck, you will snag a few of their planets, and leave their military in such a shambles they'll be hard pressed to strike back.

After the alpha strike, depending on how well it went, you can sue for peace, and re-enforce your ships. Or if it went well, persist in the war and wipe them out. Just realize if you sue for peace, you'll only really get away with that once....maybe twice, before you have to grind it out till the end.

I've been able to get an alliance victory with 3 races left where I was already allied to one. Just had to give stuff to the other until they became Close. Trade alone wouldn't do it.

Planets are important if you go for military, but resources should not be forgotten. Take out morale, economics, and military all at once.

You should have a good idea if you can win a war based on current technology and military. If it doesn't look winnable, donate some stuff to them and go for Tech victory.

NUKE THEM ALL

-switch your spending to 100% military
-have every planet build a combat transport
-have every planet build AM missiles until you have enough missiles to clear each enemy system orbit twice
-build a dreadnaught for each enemy system
-position all your material outside enemy sectors, but as close to each system as possible, then move in so so you're within invading distance to all systems
-when you're ready, steamroll the Torians in one bloody turn.

ALSO

see if you can trade the AI for some hard to get to planets ... possibly trade him some of your own planets (make sure they have enough combat transports to fit your whole population on, and trade them just before you are ready to attack; when traded all your transports get kicked out of the system with the systems whole population onboard - troops ready to take that system right back)

BuzuBuzu...that last idea was very cool.

Cheeeeezy...but cool!

Tech victory: a viable option even if they're ahead, as the computer can't win by tech (at least until the expansion pack). In previous versions you could even wait until an AI got Final Frontier and then simply acquire it from them (possibly by taking a few planets) and win. As it is you can still get Beyond Human from them, most likely... but Tech Victory is usually as easy as securing your position and hitting turn a lot.

Cultural victory: very easy if you know the location of all the influence resources. You can "buy" any of the AI's starbases for the nominal fee of a really good tech and about 100 bc's for 100 months. It ain't cheap, but if you get all the blue cubes you've essentially won if you keep your military graph high enough. You can also be a jerk and just alpha-strike all their influence resources starbases and take them for yourself, or position attack ships near said starbases and sell them to someone they're at war with, and have constructors convieniently nearby... but buying the starbases can be nicer because you don't need to go to war and you get all the improvements they built on the SB.

Military victory: as forceinfinity said, just alpha-strike the AI, there's not much they can do about it unless they're WAY ahead or you're playing high enough that they notice the "buildup" and declare war on you first.

Alliance victory: Ally with whoever you can, alpha-strike the other guys. edit: oh, for any sort of big military action it helps to buy up (or take by force) any of the military resources you know about.
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Death is only the begining of teh path to enlightment. Open their eyes with terror stars!

How good are your relations? I'd consider giving them a whole lot of stuff, and then forming an alliance.