Taken from the Journal of Last Admiral Alexander Stewart

Preface

I write this in the hope that it will survive as a record of my thoughts and concerns as I attempt to lead our people out from under the threat of annihilation.

Chapter Zero
A Brief History of We a Mighty People

Millennia ago our people took to the stars. We expanded beyond our one world to every habitable world in our galaxy, and we were mighty. We built vast fleets of thousands of ships, and we were mighty. We conquered faster then light travel, and we were mighty. Then we encountered the enemy, and our might was test. Across our galaxy vast fleets clashed, ours and the enemies and entire planets were sundered. We came to realize the horrible price of defeat. This enemy had no interest in colonization or conversion. Every man woman and child we left behind on our colony worlds was killed; genocide on an unimaginable scale. In response we deployed every ship we had, every tactic, every experimental weapon, and we came to realize all too soon it was a war we could not win. The realization struck us that our people, our culture, our society would be destroyed forever. It was not a realization we were ready to accept. With the war all but lost we diverted all production to arks, enormous ships outfitted for cross galactic transport and loaded our people, placed into medical hibernation, onto them. Billions of us, every Elevan that could be saved was loaded onto the ark fleet, and it was launched into deep space, to find a new home for our people while our military organized a final stand, a line in the sand as it were, against the enemy. I never heard from my fellow’s, the Admirals of the High Elevan Navy again and can only accept that they fell in battle while our arks cruised through space, silent, running on automated systems, searching for a new home. That was fifty years ago. Weeks ago I, along with my remaining command staff were awakened by those same automated systems as we near a new galaxy, a new home. I can only hope to lead my people into a new era.

OOC: This will be an AAR set in a gigantic map with all abundant settings and scattered star density. I will not restart to get a better starting location or base tiles. I’ll be playing on the very fast tech rate with mega events turned off. 8 Minor races and 6 major races (Drengin Empire, Korath Clan, Arcean Empire, Yor Collective, Terran Alliance, Thanlan Empire). I’ll be playing on Tough with all enemies set to Intelligent, after all, it would be pretty embarrassing to lose on my first AAR.

I’m using a custom race, the Elevan reproduced below.

Race: Elevan
Leader: Admiral Alexander Stewart
Homeworld: Rivera

Racial Bonuses: Economics +30, Weapons +20, Defense +30, Moral +15, Luck +25, Creativity +25, Research +10. Super Breeder ability and the Industrial Party. Its my intent to eventually swap over to the all research strategy, at least for a time to gain an insurmountable tech lead before swarming out and annihilating every other race with military force, though as we all know, games rarely go according to our plans.

As a preface I’ll note that it will probably take me months to finish this, both the story and the game.

Chapter One
From the Blackness

We emerged from deep space in a density packed sector, our early scans show nearly one thousand planets in total, with at least a quarter of them capable of supporting life. Our first priority was landing on a planet so we could begin to reestablish our civilization. The command ship of the ark fleet, my ship was designed for atmospheric landing and loaded with enough supplies to feed the first few billion of us in the early months. We began unloaded our people and taking them out of stasus. Within only a few months we had nearly nine billion people at work and began construction of prefabricated city ships we could use to land people on other planets while we continued to expand on our new homeworld, Rivera.



OOC: I got exceptionally lucky. I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't going to restart for planet tiles, but I got a Precursor Mine on my start. First time I've ever gotten a 700% building. I'll take it as a good sign, even though the funding is going to be a mother.