What's the Worst that could happen?

[Suicide Junkie]

Much more rare and probably quite interesting would be your biggest stalemates.

In CB#1, I once had a big defense net of satellites and ships on the enemy side of a warppoint. An Alliance force attacked with 30 ships, which at the time was about a quarter of both our militaries (small quadrant).

Roughly 30 on 30 at the start. I had way too many missile ships, and the Alliance force had way too many point defense ships
After that turn was finally processed, we both had 25 ships left in the sector... according to the supply drain, my forces had fired almost a thousand missiles, and had run right out of ammo.

The enemy fleet had suffered some damage to most of their attack ships, and had to fall back a turn later.
My forces had to fall back for repairs as well as for desperate resupply as soon as the enemy had backed off.

[Kamog]

Well, I've been defeated many times but not in a single, huge dramatic battle or event. Usually I'm expanding my empire and doing well and then I get into a war with the Tessellates or some other powerful empire. Then slowly, my empire gets whittled away in numerous battles as I gradually get overpowered and I lose a planet here, a planet there, and getting into a downward spiral until finally I'm down to a couple of planets and a few ships. If I choose to continue playing, well, in several more turns I'm wiped out.

[Starhawk]

I don't know if you could count this as a military defeat but during one game I had a trinary sytem, two stars were aready fully sphereworldized and fully populated with a total of about 128 BILLION folks.

I had a defense fleet (which I thought had cloak detector III but it was really a II) and 11 construction vessels building a 3rd sphereworld.
Add to that a transport fleet and colony ship with a total of 18 BILLION people and your talking about a major investment in resources and people.

Well that all went to hell in five seconds when the next turn all that was there was a blackhole.....I thought I would literally cry lol.

[El_Phil]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Bottle ships: The scourge of the spaceways! At least, if you're in a thimble!

With their deadly payload of messages those bottle ships are a lethal opponent to be sure.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Yes! Fear the papercut!

[El_Phil]

And the really rude words in the message. I've never seen such language!

[Combat Wombat]

Well in the Invasion! Official 0.41 game I had closed all but one of the warp points to my territory so I started to grow week on updating defenses because I thought I was fiarly safe but then one day Sivran the Space Monster opened 3 warp points into 3 of my home systems. I lost 5/10 homeworlds and countless colonies before with the help of 2 large allies I was able to beat him back. He even killed the colony on my ringworld

Then there were the CarrierBattles games I played against SJ where all of my plans were usually excecuted 1 turn to late and on multiple occasions he destroyed whole fleets of my ships without me giving much of a fight.

[Suicide Junkie]

And at least once, you were only half a turn too late, CW.

Both of his carriers were in the sector for the combat, but they hadn't yet regrouped. One started in the middle, and one started on the edge of the combat map, while my carrier + ships came through the warppoint and were able to fight the defenders one at a time.

[Hunpecked]

Kamog writes: "Well, I've been defeated many times but not in a single, huge dramatic battle or event."

Me, too. My greatest victory was annihilating an AI fleet of 20-odd CR/CL with a comparable fleet of my own. The greatest defeat (so far!) was losing a planet and 12 LC. To date my overall AI campaigns have proceeded a planet or two and/or a few ships at a time. I haven't stuck with an AI game long enough to get really decisive stuff like sun killers, warp openers, sphere worlds, and super-fleets of dreadnoughts.

[Starhawk]

Get some TDM AIs they're lots of fun I've got my super dreads and more with that AI and have been rather enjoying myself.