[douglas]

Turn 2416.7, seven years and one month after the Irideans unleashed their massive wave of star destruction, Emperor Douglas of the Irideans concedes defeat after the vast majority of his navy was annihilated by a nebula destroyer. With the destruction of the 138 ships of Alpha Fleet, which were on their way back to defend Iridean space through a newly opened warp point, the Iridean navy no longer has the force necessary to stop the rampaging Atlantean fleet.

This was a very fun and incredibly close game. There are so many things that could have made it go the other way, but I managed to miss all of them. If I had waited just one more turn to launch my massive raid, or sent only small forces, Glyn's attack force would have met total destruction at the hands of about 160 combat ships of generally superior quality the instant it entered my space. One nebula creator on sentry/create nebula orders would also have prevented his attack from achieving much. Leaving a guard on the warp point while Alpha Fleet cleared out the system it was attacking would have caught the nebula destroyer before it could go off, and Alpha Fleet would have caught up to and destroyed by far the biggest chunk of Glyn's fleet this turn.

The fact that Glyn was even able to stand up to me at all was due entirely to the limit of 300 ships per empire in this game, and the maximum of 12 intelligence projects in the queue. I had the resources to support around 2000 ships, while some of the intel reports I got indicate that Glyn was nearing the limits of his budget. When he finally got enough counter-intel to block the full 11 projects per turn (keeping one for my own defense), I still had a LOT more intelligence facilities to be built, but it would have been literally impossible to use those extra points.