The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Playing ISG on 25% research

Draguul War (continued)

The End of the Draguul, turn 345-352:

The Draguul are on borrowed time, Fleso system is captured with Drid and Brabsi destroyed, leaving only Lau, Benja and the newly discovered Tatlairs soon to follow suit... The khan makes no attempt at surrender... And thus ends the Draguul Empire.

Meanwhile the Kaek look on in apparant disinterest...

Map Turn 352:





"We do not seek war, but if a fight is want you want then we'll happily oblige" Erik the Truthsayer to Khan Sla.

"Khan Sla was a fool who sacrificed his people on the Alter of his own Ambition" Erik the Truthsayer.


End Note: It hadn't occured at the time that Nordheim could have demanded the Surrender of the Draguul, maybe Erik didn't think it was such a good idea (the Khan was furious after all) but as it would have meant the surrender of the Kaek as well this may have shortened the game somewhat.... but I guess we'll never know.

 

Empire overview Turn 352.

The Fleet:

Norheim do not necesarily have that many warships as a good deal of the expended SSP is spent on 74 support ships.
There are currently active 8FRs, 10DSs, 20CRs +1 refit, 6 BSs + 4 refit or building and 1 TT, making a total of 50 warships of all types including 8 captured alien Vessels (there were quite a few others but these have been refitted since capture, sometimes the source is reflected in the ship name).

Main Weapons for most ships are the Neutron Beam with occasionally a few Disrupters or Wurzite cannons, some ships are also equipped with Polaris or Nuclear missiles( phasing out) generally the smaller or older vessels.
A few ships have Combat Jump capability.
Essentially most upgrade refts have concentrated on manouverability, improving firepower, point defence, shields and system enhancements, however most of these improvements are still to be implemented fleetwide.

Shield max is tek level V for all ships, this will not change.

The Colonies and Systems:
There are currently 13 systems with 32 colony's and at least another dozen worlds yet to be added within these systems, mostly using planet construction on gas giants and asteroid belts or Terraforming existing worlds not yet colonised.
Many colony's are still developing with mostly only medium sized or smaller planets having reached full development in the older systems, which means there is still much to be done.

Map Turn 352 Galactic Overview:



Technology:
Maximum tek is as follows: Defences 7, Weapons 9, Economics 6, Propulsion 6, Planet Engineering 6 and Construction 8.
Nordheim now has Jump Gates a recent development, as well as Plasma beams and Gauss Coil guns but these are too expensive at present to be considered for any other then the largest ships.

Wonders:
Nordheim has now built all the Galactic Wonders.

Diplomacy:

At the present time diplomatic relations are not particular good largely because of events occuring outside of the Draguul war associated with minor civs that are now in Nordheim space.
However its thought that nordheim is now strong enough to prevail if the situation should deteriorate further.

Diplomacy Turn 352:



Intell Operations:

Operatives have been sent to the Palaceans and Nova to gather intell but this will take sometime.

On turn 360 the agent investigating the Palaceans reports back providing a huge amount of intell:



From this its clear that much of what was previously suspected is true regarding Tek etc, a mission is sent the influence Dexana (-4 opinion), the only Palacean leader who can be influenced, and this will eventually be succesfull.

The Sulak Empire is finally absorbed by the Palaceans...

This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountain down.

On turn 363 the intell mission to Nova bears fruit:



From this its clear that most Nova worlds have been terraformed and that the Palaceans did not aquire their high tech weapons from them, but possibly from the Moltar or Sulak (by War) or by finding ancient Tek elsewhere, since none of the Weapon/Defence teks of 7/8/9 that they have were actively researched.

More to Follow...

 

Cerixx Sentinals War Turn 366-367.

Some 15 turns have passed since the end of the Draguul War and 5 more colony's have been added within existing systems, as well as many new additions and upgrades for the fleet, its now possible to fit a Plasma cannon in its basic form to a Frigate due to improvements in miniturisation, Combat Jump is now standard for most new designs.
Missiles are no longer equipped in new or refitted ships.

There are now 10 more Cruisers and a new Titan available and in service

A new vessel the "Dark Star" class cruiser (mostly by refitting max structure captured alien cruisers) is now in general service and Plasma/Wurzite cannons have become standard for the next generation ships, with some exceptions:



The start of the War.

A Cerixx fleet of 3 BSs and 3DSs attack a lone new generation Nordheim DS at Gliudub, the DS retreats after causing some damage:



More to Follow...

 

The End of the Cerixx War and the Final Galactic Council Vote, Turn 368-371.

Nordheim has previously establised colony's at Vrop where a small Fleet was also based for just such an occasion as War with the Cerixx, this fleet is used to attack the Cerixx systems at Wu, Arbitros and Ankia, succesfully capturing all colony's in those systems.
Many other Cerixx systems and outposts are also attacked and there's a good deal of skirmishing resulting in the almost total destruction of the Cerixx Fleet...



On Turn 371 Norheim demands the Cerixx surrender, it is accepted...

Marshall Tyraak: "Wow, you make a strong case, it seems we really arn't that good at defending ourselves when the laws are not stacked in our favour"

Erik the Truthsayer: "Maybe you should think about getting yourself a better Lawyer"


The Galactic Council Vote Turn 371-2.
This time the vote is decisive and even if the Kaek had not voted for Nordheim they would still have achieved Victory.




The End... or is it!

 

Sorry for not replying sooner I've been on sabbatical... Well its the second game I played in full at these settings with all the latest updates, and I can say the first game was totally different without quite the same impact and much more peacefull at least for the Humans (it went on for about 400 turns as well).
As to random events not all are good or can even be taken advatage off largely because the funds were not available, some like Adamantium you cant reject when designing a ship either but can be bypassed with Kenetic weapons in anycase, the point is I've never really relied on defensive Tek and ussually aim to improve fire power for a quick kill.
In this game I had researched Helium 3 but failed to take advantage of it quick enough so went into battle with a vanilla fleet initially, but was close.
Hyperdrive was an important find, but if it didn't turn up I think I could have done without it... prioritys would have been different though, but as I was largely playing a passive/agressive game once the Palaceans turned up (who were friendly in the first game), in what was quite a small area of space I think it would it would have been manaegable.

The game is quite different from its origins, the Natural Law DLC radically changed the behaviour of several of the factions in particular the Moltar and Draguul...
The Moltar used to be my go to "Allies" since their quite tough and most of time got picked on by multiple races, so I would send them ships credits and even military aid if it was appropriate... but this is no longer really possible.
The same could be said of the Draguul their particular evolutions can be highly detrimental to them...

The new galaxys in particular the spiral version is a game changer in itself, this was very true for the Draguul in this game, who once the Kaek surrendered to them had nowhere to go without a substantial increase in tek level.

During this game only the Android Evolution was used for Nordheim and very early, it was possible to go for the Achilles defence system maybe even by the Palcean war, but I've never found it necesary though there were some very tough battles in this game.

Anyway glad you enjoyed the AAR