This is my starting position. Already I can tell I'm going to have some trouble, backed up into the corner as I am.
My homeworld. Not the greatest. No bonus tiles except to influence, which is nothing to sneeze at.
By the way, Super Hive makes building factories ridiculously cheap and fast. 90 bc to buy up a basic factory in one round? 2 rounds to build one? Wow.
All of my ships are renamed something appropriately mystic sounding and are sent out to do their things. Almost immediately, I can see this is going to be an interesting game: planets are quite abundant, and a lot of them are good quality.
This is when I made my first mistake: I should have gone for a production start right away instead of a research start. If I'd grabbed enough colony ships and snapped up the really good worlds nearby, it would have helped a lot later on, as you'll see. But instead I dawdled a bit, researched universal translators and some engine tech, and put my guys to work enhancing my homeworld and scouting the local system.
The first anomaly discovered by my flagship, "Starlight Explorer."
First contact was made with the Korx and the Krynn. Lots of K races this game, I guess. Oh yeah, and the Jessuin have a nice PQ 16 planet right on my doorstep. I decide to let them be for now.
The expansion proceeds rapidly, but the problem is that the Korx have decided to set up camp on my doorstep. They take over a couple of worlds I'd had my eye on before I can reach them and a couple of other small planets deep in my territory.
This rapidly causes relations to fall precipitously between us and the Korx. The Krynn, on the other hand, don't seem to mind. In fact, they like us lots. Relationships with them quickly improve.
Relationships with the Korx quickly go into the gutter. I guess it's not enough that they have a few good trade routes with us, they've got their eyes on our planets, and the thing is, my setup is such that I'm slowly gaining an influence flip over those worlds. In the meantime, however, I've let my economy sag and my military suffer. By the time I'm one year into the game, relationships with the Korx are at hostile.
But it's not until 2229 that things finally go into all-out war. What prompts this is the launching of the first Jessuin fighter and the realization that the minor race now has a more powerful military than I. The formidable force of Starlight production capabilities is diverted into the construction of attack probes: tiny hulled unmanned craft with a single gun and not much else. Planetary invasion technology is rapidly researched, and the colony world "On Walden Pond" located in the Jessuin system constructs the first Assault Shuttle, a tiny-hulled craft with a single troop pod. Two of these ships, escorted by two fleets of assault probes, will invade the Jessuin homeworld.
Casualties among the probes are massive, but they can easily be replaced, and as unmanned craft, there is no true harm done. The ground assault, on the other hand, goes differently. . .
2,000,000,000 troops landed on that planet. Half of them would be killed in the assault. But the entire population of the Jessuine are either killed or forced to surrender. In truth, however, the Jessuine welcomed our invasion: over a billion of the planet's population would defect to the Starlighters and help the invaders to capture the planet.
This places a Korx planet firmly in the Starlighter sphere of influence. The Korx claim that this is a clear sign of Starlighter aggression against the Korx and declare war. The truth is, this is merely a pretense for a war of aggression against the Starlighters, who occupy several key worlds the Korx have long desired.
The declaration of war consists of a single terse sentence: "Time to Die."
Envoys are sent to the Krynn to negotiate for an alliance: the Conclave cannot afford to fight two wars at once. The Krynn, perhaps emphathizing with a fellow hive government, agree. However, they cannot be persuaded to fight the Korx at this time. More diplomatic efforts will be needed.
In the meantime, this tiny little star nation prepares for war against one of the most powerful forces in the sector. The Korx have every advantage save one: Starlighter production facilities, and their faith that their cause is righteous and just. . .
