First, I would like to express that it was a TEAM victory, not a solo victory by me. Winning conditions was Last alliance (max 3 players). ToddT (Bakana) and Randallw (Zardalu) both played important parts in the finals. The game ended by consent when our alliance was too powerfull to stop.
The final action of the game was a war with the Taerans (Preacherman) who had built a massive empire. I had an unstoppable fleet who started at 350 ships (mostly dreads with maxed shields, the talisman and maxed psycic weapons) which won 4 battles in a row against equally sized or larger Taeran fleets. Luck was also on my side as I got first shot in all 4 battles, and the largest battle was fought over one of my Homeworlds with additional hardware available (+ the shrines in the system).
Also Bakanas foray into the Taerans deep south was a very good move as it forced Preacher to divide his forces. His organic ships was very tough, and I do not think I could have won a battle against 2 of his fleets at once.
In the end I sent the fleet into the Taera Homesystem where the Last battle was fought on the warppoint. I won the battle and Preacher blew up the system with 4 of his (5) homeworlds
in an attempt to catch my fleet. I thought my fleet would be doomed when I saw the destroyer over the sun, but by splitting my damaged fleet, I managed to save the 100 or so ships left with full movementpoints.
Question: I do not believe I had any speed advantage on the stardestroyer, so was it just luck I got away or do stellar mainpulation always happen after movement ?
I would like to thank my fellow players and partners for a fun and educational game. Allthough it was the Talisman who won the final battles, diplomacy was just as important for the win. Both in the case of the partnership I had the whole game with the Bakana (who also founded my war effort when minerals was scarse), and the failure of the other players to take out the single religious player (I don't count Nods empire, as they never played any part in the game). Most of the game I had T/R or better with all the other 10 players, getting about 1 Mill in minerals and 500 K research points from trade
. This was very good, as I was very poor until I got stellar manip and could create a bunch of those nice 200+ % planets.
Once again:
Kudos to Tesco for running great games.
To those who yet to try one of the "sweet" games: What are you waiting for ? You are missing out on the best games in town
Primitive