Moments that made you cheer, cringe, laugh, or scream "WHAT!?"

CRINGE:  So my first journey into ToA.  Immense universe, evil empire.  Most planets have been colonized and now the competition really starts.  I have a large territory mostly to myself and I'm competing directly with 3 minors and the Drath.  Generally good diplomatic relations all around.  I wipe out one minor race in one round.  The next round the Drath declare war on me and harass my freighters.  I mobilize my fleet and JUST before I reach Drath zone of control, the Torians message me telling me my war with the Drath is unjustified, and that they're now going to war with me.  I mean... wasn't I the victim??    :( 

CHEER:  Same game.  Discovering my missle research was worth it as none of the other races were researching missledefence, while my defensive research was well adapted to the AI's use of beams/mass drivers.  My first wave of small & medium sized vessels went through Drath & Torians like a chainsaw through wet paper.  With each craft they sent against me, they only strengthened my forces by raising their level.   :LOL: 

"WHAT?!":  Later the same game.  I'm holding off waves of Torian fleets on my south-east, while continuing to mop up Drath (tanacious buggers).  Suddenly I get a video screen saying most races have allied against me, INCLUDING long time friends the Altarian Resistance.  Since they're across the map, all it really means is my lucrative trade routes are done.  Frustrated, I click TURN button and... they surrender!!  I never antagonized them, never declared war, and never engaged them when they stabbed me in the back... but they surrendured.  Now I have a dozen colonies on the opposite end of space, with no defences, surrounded by core worlds of the races allied against me.  Thanks alot Altarians... you good for nothing chumps.   :NOTSURE: 

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Reply #1 Top
Demolish any economy, morale, and starport structures on those worlds you got from the Altarians, then gift them in exchange for peace to the others you aren't ready to go to war against. Nab some extra cash and techs they might throw in and you just did yourself a favor  ;p 
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Reply #2 Top
Demolish any economy, morale, and starport structures on those worlds you got from the Altarians, then gift them in exchange for peace to the others you aren't ready to go to war against. Nab some extra cash and techs they might throw in and you just did yourself a favor


Nnnnnnnice. Or should I say eeeviiil. Some dark overlord I turned out to be. I'll try that soon as I get home from work. The Torians do have some techs that I want, and giving them new planets means sooner or later they'll just produce more ships I can destroy. :D
Reply #3 Top
CRINGE: Firing the very first game up, scanning through the whole exclusive tech-tree of the test-terran race i was currently stuck with only to realize the brand-spanking new Terror-Star research node was a HUGE undertaking and a LOOOOOOOONG slow process just to get one of these behemoth off a planet's orbit.

CHEER: Poufff - ready for action and heading out for a random target somewhere out there! Slick sphere, animated, the works. It really FELT dangerous and bloody cherry sloooow.

WHAT?!: Trying to fleet it up for necessary escort protection and bang, crash.

Now, i *WAS* terrorized - that's a given. ;)

Reply #4 Top
I had to laugh when the Yor willingly traded me an Arnorian Ranger for around 26000 bc. That one ship could have gone through Torian battleships like a hot knife through butter anyway, but I fleeted it and bumped its already ridiculous defences up by thirty percent. When the war finally broke out, this one fleet must have destroyed about half the Torian military on its own, and barely got scratched.
Reply #5 Top
Cheer: The first time I used a Terror Star to totally decimate a planetary system with FIVE populated planets (including their home world). Oh Man that was a rush. Take THAT Iconian Refuge.

Cringe: I was playing a game when suddenly a Mega Event distributed more than 30 spies into all of my worlds, totally wrecking my economy. I had not factored Spies into my strategies yet as I haven't figured a way to use them effectively.

Laugh: See above about the Terror Stars. Also, in the same game when I had about 10 Terror Stars all about to decimate the remainder of the planets populated by those not of my empire. All of the sudden the remaining civ surrenders.

What?!: The Dreadlords come home to roost, in the star system one over from my homeworld. To make matters worse, I had never seen them before and was blown away by beam weapons of above 400. My current tech level was producing Corvettes with 2 Lazer I weapons. I said OUCH for about 250 turns while I dug myself out of THAT hole.
Reply #6 Top
WHAT then CRINGE:

I was plaing a 'good' custom race based on the Torians. There were 2 Major races left; Terran and Drengin. The terran and I were on the east side of the map. There was a large area of space in the middle and more star systems on the left. The Drengin controlled roughly half the systems on the map....and all to the west. The Terrans and I controlled the east where I had about 3/5 ths of the systems. I could have destroyed the Terrans but I was worried about the power of the Drengins. So, I allied with the Terrans (we declared war on the Drengins) and we both started to send massive fleets across the dead space between us and the Drengins. I stopped following the traveling of our fleets for a few turns (it was a long distance) and was tweaking my planets. When I go back and look at our progress the Terran fleets had stopped and I was about a half a sector in front of them. At first I thought maybe they needed to extend their range somehow. BUT NO! When I clicked the 'turn' button I saw a massive amount of Drengin ships appear. Then I get a message from the Terrans that they allied with the Drengins and were declaring war on ME! Virtually all my ships were now trapped between the Drengin and Terran. Needless to say all my ships were destroyed in that trap!

Thats when I realized....never, EVER turn your back on ANYONE!!!!!
Reply #7 Top
The setting for this is a Drengin game on a huge galaxy with Iconians, Krynn, Yor, Torians, Korx, and Arcean. I started roughly central, with Yor immediately above me, Krynn and Korx further north. Torians to my left, Iconians down-right, Arceans left of the bottom corner. The right half of the galaxy started empty.

CRINGE: While I'm conquering the Iconians, the Krynn, who've swamped the Korx and have started to form a horseshoe around Yor territory, declare war on me. They've got the most colonies and highest mil rating of any AI (Torians are next on both counts). I've got to split my ships between north and south AND to get at the Krynn I have to go through or around Yor space.

CHEER: The Krynn turned out to be a paper tiger (no invasion tech, it seems) and I've established a pretty quick pace with conquering Iconian and Krynn worlds - the invasion rush pretty much replaced my colony rush with no downtime. This means I've been gaining new worlds at a pretty brisk pace all game, and I'm losing a couple hundred bc every turn. Then an Econ (mega?) event puts me 1k/turn in the green.

WHAT: The Iconians just. wont. die. I conquered all of their territory a couple U.P. meetings ago, but they've held on to a few extreme environment worlds in places I hadn't explored (Torian space, it turns out) ever since. I've been waiting for them to surrender to one of my enemies for a long time, but I think I've got them down to just 1 planet now, and yet somehow they're still sticking it out alone. On the bright side, I got yet another missile tech out of their second to last world (I haven't researched a weapon tech on my own since I discovered that the Iconians were researching the branch pretty aggressively, and I've stolen pretty much the entire missile tree from invading Iconian worlds.)