This is what the galaxy looked like before the Jagged Knife struck - North is the top right corner.

Post Knifing, the galaxy breaks down as follows:

Jagged Knife: 120 colonies, centered mid, west, and southwest with stragglers in the east and south. They have begun producing some beefy heavy fighters using my stolen beam tech, but are mainly focusing on upgrading their worlds and building the economy required to run such a massive empire. They are no pushovers in ground combat either, only my terror drones keep me at parity in the soldiering department.

Korath Clan: 42 colonies, centered mid-south with outlier toxic worlds west, north, and east. Lost 20 colonies to the Knife, which included the heart of their empire (even Kora II!) and the prong that bordered Korx space. They are at war with all the good races and holding their own, but do not appear to have researched invasion tech yet. Korath planets are spitting out ships like crazy, and they have many 18 attack fleets split between missiles and guns (super dominator corvettes). However, they keep suiciding these fleets into a massively fortified Torian mining starbase in their territory. Once it gets to around 1/4 hp, I'll have to send a constructor over there to steal their efforts. They are also in possession of at least three influence resources, which makes me very glad of my 100% loyalty bonus.

Torian Confederation: 46 colonies, split between east and west, with stragglers mid and northwest. Lost a full 30 worlds to the Knife, completing the split I began by taking their home area. Still the economic leader, but desperately trying to catch up militarily. They have realized that 14 ship fleets are not impressive if your ships are crappy, and are finally producing heavy fighters. My fighters now have to repair more often, but my frigates don't care. They also have figured out they are no match for my robot armies on the ground, and are building planetary defense structures everywhere. This is doubly irritating, as my preferred invasion tactic against them was to spy-bomb the target planet's morale structures, then brainwash the populace into fighting for me. Those who survived were given the honor of uploading their minds into superior Yor chassis. Not only do planetary defense structures actually work in the mod, but they give a morale bonus and cannot be disabled by spies. Damn. Fortunately for me, I have MANY robot legions.

Yor Collective: 44 colonies, centered galactic north with outliers far north, mid and northwest. Lost 23 planets to the shanking, including all my mid-galaxy Torian acquisitions. While this has seriously set back my efforts at conquest, all is not lost. I am about to clean those bug-eyed meatsacks out of my space in the northwest, and their long period of military ineptitude has given my warship crews considerable experience in tactics, strategy... and hitpoints. (some of my tiny fighters have 35-40 hp!) I have declared unending conflict with the Jagged Knife, and on my first reconquest gained something potentially empire-changing. Fear me, knifelings, for I have stolen your concept of transferable value tokens! The Yor Collective will now be constructing Trade Centers for the exchange of these value tokens in an inevitably superior manner to your crude fleshbag trading. Cue mechanical cackling (h4h4h4).

Altarian Resistance: 38 colonies, centered midwest with many scattered extreme worlds. Lost only 15 worlds to the Knife, but many of their scattered worlds are in Korath space, under siege, and slowly succumbing to Korath cultural power. Despite this, they are in a relatively strong position with their core worlds intact, solid research, and generally good relations with other races plus a treaty with the Drengin of all people.

Iconian Refuge: 23 colonies, centered mid-south with a some outliers mid, south, and southwest. Expansion sharply curtailed by the Jagged Knife, who took all but two of their worlds bordering the Korx and all their eastern extreme worlds. Technically at war with the Korath, but the few weak fleets they have sent have been quickly swatted. They are lucky the Korath hate starbases with an unholy passion. If they manage to culturally absorb the several Thalan worlds in their influence they may become a more major player.

Dominion of Korx: 14 colonies, centered southwest. Despite the Jagged Knife homeworld being Korx II, only lost 6 worlds while everyone near them was mugged. They are solidly neutral super diplomats, and everyone loves the Korx (and Korx-brand cola!). Yor scouts have reported sightings of Korx troop transports, and if they take advantage of the windfall of undefended Jagged Knife planets surrounding them they could come out substantially stronger than they were.

Arcean Empire: 16 colonies, centered galactic west. Lost a good 7 world chunk of their eastern border with the Korx to the Jagged Knife. Do not appear to have built a military yet, but they also don't seem to need one. From the limited information available from Yor data tapping, they have decent economic and productive capability but would need to go to war to become a major power.

Drengin Empire: 14 colonies, galactic far west. Lost 7 worlds, a full third of their empire, to the thugs. Oddly, they do not yet have a military and appear to be on surprisingly good terms with the rest of the galaxy, including Altarian and Thalan treaties. Not much else going on there, I've only just gotten a scout over to that part of the galaxy.

Thalan Empire: 12 colonies, galactic far south with outliers to the north in Iconian space. The Knife picked off the few outlying worlds they had that bordered the Korx, along with an entire three planet system in their core cluster. I have no idea how they managed that. The Thalans' only hope is that the Korath turn their attention to the Iconians soon so they can scavenge some of the scraps before the Iconians absorb them. However, with no military and meager economic power this seems unlikely.

The Meklar: 10 colonies, galactic mid east. This not-so-minor minor was the recipient of all Torian technology relatively recently. As they are good-aligned, they are at war with the Korath, but they are not in any real danger because they are in the middle of Torian territory. Meklar fighter craft are half decent, and they have a good number of troop transports - they may end up picking off some of the more isolated Korath worlds.

The Silicoid: 8 colonies, scattered mid galaxy. These little rock bastards snatched a few too many barren worlds from under the probes of Yor colony ships. There will be a reckoning as soon as I have sufficient robot legions - and they have yet to research weapons, unaware of the impending metal fury. Also, doom - lots of doom.

The Elerian: 5 colonies, galactic southwest. Also stole all the Torian's tech - those water schools must not be very secure. Located slightly south between the Korx and Arceans, they have the same opportunity as the Korx to pick off undefended Knife worlds. I suspect they are less likely to do so, however. Despite their small size they are an unappealing target due to their technological prowess.

The Bulrathi: 7 colonies, scattered galactic east. This minor holds many of the high grav worlds in the east, and has no weapons yet. A potential target of opportunity, but low priority.

The Drath Legion: 4 colonies, galactic mid east. Lost two of their already scarce worlds to the Jagged Knife. Choked out of early expansion by the Bulrathi and Meklar, the few outlying colonies they managed to secure were quickly surrounded and culturally absorbed by the Torians. They are now evil due to an event, and despite their having the worst position in the game (including minors!) I think I will let them live for a while to see if they can bootstrap back into it.

The Alkari and Tolmekian Federation: conquered by the Yor Collective, who only communicate by laser (not the intelligible way).

congrats if you made it through all that

TL,DR: pretty pictures of what the galaxy looks like afterwards - so many orange dots!

You know, it would make an amazing story if you managed to conquer most, if not all, of the Jagged Knife planets like I have in one game.

Lovely write-up.  I made every planetary defense type improvement immune from spying to prevent a sneaky player from simply using agents to nullify the PD bonus.  I didn't even consider the morale aspect.  It does warm my heart to see the AI fortifying their worlds with Planetary Defense and the Omega Defense System, though.  With the improved farming techs and structures in v3.1, it becomes much more difficult to conquer high-pop fortified planets.

Glad you're enjoying it and cranking out epic stories for us.

Glad you liked my robot ramblings - they sure amused me while I was writing them.

The Thalan colony rush is strong, but their combination of slow pop growth and bad diplomacy renders them vulnerable to the player simply buying their worlds (with super diplomat, you can even do it for influence alone). This usually will stifle their expansion enough to blunt the threat they pose long term.

I'll throw my vote in for the Korx - I'd be interested to see if/how your playstyle with them differs from mine.

I've started up a new game (TA, Immense galaxy), playing as a Torian variant called the Free Torians. Essentially, they're fugitives from the second Drengin conquest of Toria (in the Dread Lords campaign) who have reemerged with the conclusion of the Dread Lords war to restart Torian civilization. I'm up against 9 AIs and an assortment of "smart" minors, including minor versions of the Drath and Korx.

Things are pretty early, but they've already picked up fast, as the Korath have declared war on both me and the Iconians. From what I can tell so far, they're nowhere nearby, but as the possessor of the game's strongest military so far they're going to be a lurking menace "out there" for a long while yet. I've also been set back by starting in a tiny cluster of just four planets, so we'll see how that turns out.

Here's the galaxy so far. As you can see, it's largely still a mystery.

The large cluster that I've been settling to the "east" is crawling with minor races - including the Scottlingas, Dark Yor, Lentzlandians, and the Korx remnants - as well as a previously unknown major civilization, the Shylen Alliance (custom race of evil-aligned Super Manipulators). They're suspected of having instigated the Korath War, but seem to be quite weak themselves with only 7 planets.

The cluster to my north has been colonized by myself and the Iconians, though their homeworld is probably elsewhere. Serving as a buffer between us are the surviving Drath, with 5 planets and decent technology among the most formidable of the "minors".

I've also encountered two separate clusters settled by the hated Drengin - who, unfortunately, appear to be among the leading powers of the galaxy - and a survey ship sent through a wormhole has discovered the borders of Terran space, though no contact has been made so far. The remaining four major races are a total mystery at present (I think they're the Thalan, Altarians, Yor, and Krynn, but I'm not actually sure).

More to come soon - I have a feeling this won't be a quiet game.

Is the Jagged knife event pretty much assumed to happen in TA?  Seems pretty common from the write-ups.  

I love Chainsaw's "robot ramblings"!    

@Neilo - The thought that a game could be lost is a relatively new concept, isn't it?  We had taken for granted that we'd be the victors in any scenario for so long.  The possibility of losing makes it a much more interesting ride.  Good luck on your retake.

Losing my Iconian game not once, but twice, was pretty cool. But as they say, third time's a charm.

Attacking the Drengin was the key to winning for my Iconian game.  Not that it's over, but I'm now on top for everything except military.  I no longer need the SCC, so I've abandoned it and taken my ships into the fray.  The Drengin took some time to subdue, but chasing my small fleets around was their undoing.  They landed a few punches and when they did, it took my fleets down wholesale.  Most of the time, they missed and I built up while taking their planets.

I gave them peace for some tech when they were no longer a threat and went to war with the Krynn.  That lasted a while, but they eventually succumbed.  I gave them peace for free once they were down to 2 planets.  They still had a sizable navy out there, but finances would force them to downsize.

I allied with the relatively weak Drath.  The Drath went to war with the Drengin and dragged me back in.  By that time, the Drengin were just an annoyance and I wiped them out in a few weeks.  Sometime in all of that, the Korx took the Torians out.

The Drath went to war with the Krynn and Korx at the same time.  Of course, I honored my alliance and declared war as well.  The Krynn had lost one of their planets along the way and I sent a transport to their last one, quickly ending that one.

The Korx are another story.  Their area is pretty big and their military looks great on paper.  My fleets are all huge hulled missile beasts with one blank huge hull in each fleet to absorb experience.  (I'll eventually use the blanks as single ship hunter-killers.)  I have 9 fleets of 7 ships each.  More are being built back on New Iconia.

The Korx have yet to kill even one of my ships.  I've zoomed around their empire and engaged them at will.  I'm a little surprised that even though they have beam stats of > 1000, not one of my ships has fallen to them.  The Drengin and Krynn were usually taking a ship per contact, even at their weakest.

I've just taken the Korx Hyperian Logistics and Shrinker worlds.  A little reorganizing/upgrading will be in order soon.

I'm looking forward to using my hunter-killers in the coming Thalan war.  They're the top military power and have been for a long time.  Relations have been stuck at hostile, but they haven't pulled the trigger on me yet.  If they hold off until the Korx are no longer a threat, I'll send my fleets to their border and start it up. 

Holy cow.  That's insane.

Really good read! 

Well, the Free Torians game has turned out interesting, all right... but not for the reasons I was expecting.

See, the whole Korath War thing turned out to be pretty much a no-show. They continued to be manipulated into attacking other races (most of which I had never met), presumably by the Shylen. But my Torians never saw any trace of them, and it soon became clear that my speculation they were far away was correct. And so things were just rolling along smoothly...

...until April 2229, when some disgruntled worker gunned down Lord Kona at a routine trade conference.

Now, as a Torian, I can't say I wholly disapproved of this. But the end result - a declaration of war from the Drengin Empire, the most powerful civilization in the galaxy? That I wasn't happy about. And if things weren't bad enough, a few weeks down the line I got a message from the hitherto-unknown Krynn - as it turns out, the second most powerful civilization in the galaxy - saying that I was at war with their friends and needed to be dealt with.

It's now three years into the war, and the Krynn remain a total mystery. I have yet to see any trace of their ships or planets, and I can't even place race-wide spies on them (makes sense, I guess). All I've heard from them is various threats about their continual research of manufacturing techs. The Drengin are another story, though. Thus far we've mainly skirmished at various outposts and outlying ships. They blew up one of my defenseless colony ships as it flew through the edge of their territory (fiends!) I retaliated by blockading their trade routes to the Shylen homeworld. That sort of thing. Recently, though, the fighting has picked up (but more on that below).

The rest of the galaxy hasn't been peaceful in the meantime. I've made contact with most everyone besides the Thalan and Altarians, and most of them are busy with wars of their own. Worst off are the miserable Yor Collective, now at war with five races and still counting. It started off as a mere dispute with the Terrans, but more and more have joined the dogpile for reasons of their own: the Iconians, out to settle an old score; the Drengi-Kryseth Axis, out to carve off their own piece of a dying civilization; the Thalan, out to... get whatever it is that time-traveling space bugs want (obviously, it would help if I knew anything about their civilization). The Yor are still fighting, but their odds aren't good.

Meanwhile, the Minor Race Cluster to the "east" of New Toria has dissolved into an orgy of violence. The Shylen, who turned out to be tough customers after all, are in the process of rolling up the Dark Yor and Scottlingas. The Dark Yor are already all but destroyed; the Scottlingas are putting up more of a fight but have lost one planet and their mobile fleet. The Lentzlandians, meanwhile, have joined me in the war against the Drengin, though with just twelve ships in their fleet I fear their contributions will be few. The only ones staying out of this mess are the Korx, who, true to their nature, are trading quietly amid the violence. They might also be egging it on, if their construction of a Mercenary Academy and the fact that someone paid off the Shylen to attack the Iconians mean anything. I can't help but feel a grudging respect for the faceless scoundrels - they've managed to establish themselves far better off then major race Korx usually do in my games - and have followed their lead in, thanks to trading, building my own Mercenary Academy and Fortified Freighter Command.

As for my Torians, we've secured an economic treaty and alliance with the Iconians, and are also "Close" with the Terrans, though the monkeys' backwards nature and habit of demanding tribute have made me much less willing to sign an alliance with them. We still control just 10 planets, but now possess the third-best research ability (trailing the Iconians and Krynn) and second-best manufacturing (trailing the Krynn) in the galaxy.

But things may be about to take a worse turn. Recent weeks have seen a number of successes against the Drengin, as Torian fleets wiped out one of their "Vengeances" from the earlier assassination event and thwarted their attempt to ascend (rumors of similar efforts by the Krynn remain unconfirmed), while our own long-range starbase repulsed a Drengin squadron. But a month ago, a fleet of raiders heading up the Drengin-Shylen trade route spotted an armada of 54 Super Dominator Corvettes en route to the Lentzlandians Homeworld. Once they're through with the Lentzlandians defenses (which undoubtedly won't take long), it's no mystery who they'll be heading for next, and I've got no solid way of stopping them.

Stay tuned, Torian-fans...

Wow ChainsawSchmalz, the Jagged Knife are evil aligned rebels right?

Does that kind of galactic wide revolution happen often in the expansions? It would be an interesting challenge to fight against!

Well, my Iconian game became a slog after the Korx war.  My economy was so strong that nothing could touch my territory.

I had given up on spending down to below the 20k mark and let my economy take the penalty.  Even so, I had over a million gold when I downgraded my entire navy to unarmed hulls.  Once I did that, the Thalans declared war on me.

I upgraded my navy back to warships and went after the Thalans.  My first attack on them took their hyperion logistics planet.  That lowered their fleet capability to 6 huge hulls each and increased mine to 9.  I never even used my "Hunter-Killer" ships since even my rookie fleets could take on anything on the map.  The Thalans were everywhere so I built ships wherever I needed them.  I wiped them out before the game would let me speak to them again.

I then downgraded my navy back to unarmed hulls and baited the Altarians with transports parked close to most of their planets.  I tried to extort money from them, but I'm not sure if that counts in diplo.  The extortion attempts were never completed.  I set up a trade embargo and waited for them to declare war.  It took a few turns, but they finally did.

My transports were close, so it didn't take long to clear them out.  It was just the 1 week to upgrade my navy back to fighters, erase their fleets and send the troops in.  

The Drath were my ally and were the last empire left.  I know it's just an AI, but it was still distasteful to me to end the alliance and attack. I might turn the alliance victory back on for my next game to avoid that.

Here's the resulting metaverse submission...

After a break, I might try my hand at "good" alignment for a change.  I might reset an old character for that or set up a new one.

Wow, the Jagged Knife are actually doing stuff?

The one time I let them live (they took only two low-PQ planets, which resulted in them forming a buffer between me and the hostile Drengin and Torians), they eventually started sending me freighters, but fleets? I find myself impressed.

The robot roleplaying is still awesome.

I think I played too much today....

REPORT 2:  Korx

Here's my map for the current game, complete with labels so you know who is where:

I ran into the humans, meh.  Ran into the Yor...Ahhh, these guys are more my speed.  They are ambitious and straight to the point.  "we have claimed this plane-...no, this start sys-...Umm...Galaxy.  Yes, we have claimed this entire galaxy!" indeed.  Not sneaky like those drath or ponies.  I like them.

And it seems like when my back was turned, my spies gave ALL the terran techs to some minor race on my fringes.  Why they didn't just wire them to ME, I will never understand.  And those Jessuins REFUSED to bargain with me.

And then I colonized ALL the barren worlds in sight.

And then...My scientists, in some kind of dare, I assume...Researched ZOMBIES for crying out loud.  Actual.  Freakin.  ZOMBIES.  Apparently there was some sort of poofy moral problem some scientists had with the zombies, saying that their lives would be full of suffering or something.  Well, I read the damn owner's manual, and right there under c2.28 ("do not leave with small children"), I read that zombies cannot think.  Ergo, they cannot suffer.  Ergo, those flimsy contradictory scientists need to shut up and get me some more zombies!  Revive ALL the Zombies!  And the zombies of our enemies too!  We'll make that puny Terran "umbrella corp" look like amateurs!  ALL THE ZOMBIES!!

Then...The Tekk imperative started to scare me.  They grabbed a 25 CLASS WORLD.  With high gravity.  And then, just a few turns before I could get to it, they got a Restaurant of Eternity.  Why robots need a restaurant I do not understand, but either way, it boosted their influence to terrifying levels.  Combined with a sudden spike in Xenophilia...Some of my worlds looked VERY vulnerable indeed.  So I bought all the embassies money could buy, and tried to fight the encroaching cultural bombardment.  On the other hand...They are friendly towards me, and they are right next to both the ponies and the drath (the drath hate me for some reason), so they could be useful allies, or useful tools of war in the future.  I was going to research weapons at this point.....but considering that these machine people are eating up more TV time than my commercials...I think I need influence, STAT...

At our annual UP meeting, it was proposed to share technologies among all the races.  I thought 2 would be more than enough.  ...everyone else wanted 3.  I got assaulted with an ENDLESS barrage of new tech.  On one hand I was not amused, since I was now forced to choose my alignment (evil), when I really wanted to postpone that until later so I could continue to milk my citizens under the guise of "free market" and "economic freedom" and be able to say "Well, we're not ACTUALLY evil!  Look!  We haven't decided yet!".  On the plus side, though, I got up to laser 4 for free, AND republic tech (my morale is at 100% somehow, so why the heck not?), PLUS medium class ships, PLUS planetary invasion and bombardment, AND a ton of colonizing tech (including barren worlds 2).  ....I think this was a great deal for me.

Oh, and apparently the Altarians have pre-judged me.  They suddenly popped up on the screen going "HAH!  TAKE THAT!  WE HAVE SECRET POLICE!".  So I offer them 150 BC, more than anyone else, since I'm in such a good mood.  Then, my military advisor came running in going "WHY ARE YOU GIVING MONEY TO OUR ENEMIES!"  To which I replied with a very sincere "I beg your pardon?  And stop dirtying my carpet, it's terran made, you know".  And then I looked at the foreign relations screen, and Yes, apparently, the Altarians have been at war with us since BEFORE we met.  Why am I the last one to know these kinds of things?  I mean...REALLY?

I got a call from the york, asking for "peacekeeping money".  I knew it was probably to pay for their war against the ponies (I think the Drath put them up to it.   They just announced that someone VERY powerful had asked them to clean up the Yor and Drengin), and since I don't like the drath and the amount was very funny (777), I gave it to them.  ...And then I decided to offer them an economic treaty, and got their econ treaty AND research treaty AND 800-somthing bc for it.  Honestly, not too bad.  On later reflection, I think I should have shared my econ treaty for the Tekk to win them over more.....But the tekk are VERY scary right now, so...I don't know.

Oh, and the koopa finally came calling......and the first thing out of their mouth is "You're puny.  Give us Korx 2 and we won't squash you.  Are we not merciful?".  ...There is a difference between being ambitious, and being rude.  I did NOT give them my world, nor did I give them any gift money.  I haven't even run into their influence zone yet, so they're probably REALLY far away.  They don't scare me yet.

Lastly, I started improving worlds and preparing some ships in case of trouble.  The drath are looking punier by the second, and as soon as I get some half decent engines, and get my one pony-vulnerable world well defended, I think I might bribe the Tekk to fight the ponies, distracting them as I go in and start a war-...I mean...Uhh..."aggressively purchase" some of the Drath worlds.

---

Ok, out game mode here...I tried REALLY colony rushing for the first time and HOLY COW.  I was a bit in trouble for a while in terms of morale...but now I have tons of worlds, tons of tax money, and 100% morale.  And despite a low tax rate and only 3-4 trade routes, I am raking it over 400 BC a turn.  Just...WOW.  I had no idea it was that effective.