Pre-game: Since I lead the Hall of Fame, Howard decides to handicap me by giving me the worst position in the game (according to the balancing code).
So when my Transports hit every system they could reach in one turn from the homeworld, the result was more than meager:
N # X Y S R 6 6 -4.51 -7.84 17.75 2.38 21 21 -1.80 0.63 3.59 1.16 25 25 -5.67 1.19 3.43 1.76Horrified by these great aspects I began to research DRIVE, and was really fast in very short order (Drive 2 in turn 10, 4.15 in turn 20).
I established friendly communications with my neighbors, we even set up an alliance (Naturals, Fossils and me) but that alliance got it's first big blow when I was bombed out of a system in turn 9 by Naturals claiming that the system was too near his homeworld (26.69 LY too near in these early stages??).
Later I met Ordos, who proved to be much more talkative, and with whom the plan of eradicating steelers, a race that was hostile and uncommunicative, was formed. When we hit steeler's homeworld in turn 22, another race showed up, too, Supermodels, who was at war with everyone, inducing heavy losses on Ordos - now renamed Sumer - and me (and most of all, himself). Luckily, three ships survived, one was mine and two were Sumer's.
Major diplomatic chaos broke out here, since Supermodels had huge mobile forces, chief among which were some mass 180 ships of speed > 20. Edain stopped communications, then, and wass eaten by me in a single round of combat (I was desperate for space). When Supermodels invades Edain space (in the hopes of eradicating Edain), he is one turn too late. He leaves the former Edain territory, without shots being fired - he invades Insectoids instead.
Insectoids asks Sumer for help. Sumer asks me. I want that nice 1800+ system of Supermodels. Therefore, we plan an attack on Supermodels. With superior speed I invade Supermodels and, to my surprise, wipe him out nearly completely with a bunch of fighters. Everyone is stunned by this surprise, Sumer wants and gets Supermodels' homeworld, not having fired a single shot in the whole conflict.
With my fleets that far away from home, I decide to let them go on rampage, wiping out Bloodguards in the process.
Meanwhile, Sumer brings to my attention a struggle on the other side of Bloodguards: Cinnoids has problems with Smerfs. Since Sumer is allied with Cinnoids, and Smerfs lies much easier to be settled, we decide that Smerfs esse delendam. I get communications with Cinnoids, a move with grave consequences, but I didn't know this at that time. Cinnoids brought Ophiuchi into the scheme, a race that would even begin to settle my newly acquired systems within Supermodels and Bloodguards former space - when we found out that Ophiuchi was giving away vital information to Smerfs, and trying to double cross us, Cinnoids and I decided to wipe him out.
Since this was a one turn move with no preparation, we were not overly successful, several worlds survived. With this attack the first PR war started with the "Hope of Ophiuchi" going on a 1000 turn flight through hyperspace. Luckily, it would not come that far. When Ophiuchi finally was gone, the Smerfs war was resumed, since Smerfs began to rampage again.
Within this campaign the first rumors of a huge counteralliance against Cinnoids and me reached us - the fruits of Ophiuchi's constant raving against us. Sumer had apparently gone unnoticed since he had been too slow to attack Ophiuchi.
The driving forces behind all this were rumored to be MutantCamels, Blind_Galaxians and most of all Noga. To reduce the danger, I blitzkrieged MutantCamels so that he surrendered after one turn of battle, pledging himself to my cause while vowing to destroy Blind_Galaxian who had been delaying an attack on me too long. He had lost about half of his domain.
The turn after this, Noga attacked Cinnoids and destroyed half of him. In an attempt to save Cinnoids, who also pledged himself to my cause, I began the second PR war, declaring war openly and for all to hear on Noga. My earliest allies, Fossils and Naturals also were in on the attack. Except that Naturals never attacked, yet he took the largest systems for himself.
Rumors abounded.
I made peace with Noga who pledged himself to my cause (do you recognize this sentence by now?) to be ready if something did not go the way I wanted it. When proof came that Naturals was planning an alliance against me and Cinnoids, a long and bloody war erupted, along with the 3rd PR war.
In this war, Sumer, Cinnoids, MutantCamels, Insectoids, Noga and I were on the one side, Blind_Galaxians, Naturals and Resurgent on the other. So, this should have been a quick and easy war, yet Sumer did not do much, MutantCamels stopped playing in the middle of it, Insectoids died, and Noga began to show similar attitudes as Naturals had just a few turns before. On the other hand, Resurgent and Blind_Galaxians also died soon.
After a few turns, it was down to Naturals vs. Txkl, with Naturals having made peace with all other races. By about turn 70, only 4 major races were left: Txkl, Cinnoids, Noga and Sumer.
At this time, Howard the GM wrote that he wanted to see another war. The remaining races thought about who should attack whom, and one of the proposals was that Sumer and Cinnoids (the 2nd and the 3rd in ranking) should attack Txkl and Noga. Sumer and Cinnoids attacked Txkl, and did so very successfully until Txkl was at about half size, when Txkl got around to negotiate peace with both races again.
Then Cinnoids and Txkl destroyed Noga because of his doing nothing in the previous war. When this was over, the ranking was 1. Cinnoids, 2. Txkl, 3. Sumer. Then Sumer backstabbed Cinnoids, severely damaging him, but he was being wiped out in the process. The "process" being very long because of Sumer's ability to defend himself with huge fleets concentrated on his best systems.
After this, Cinnoids surprise-attacked Txkl, severely damaging himself - when I looked at my turn-report I first wasn't aware that I had been attacked at all ... >:-) The war that followed, showed that the defence that I had put up since that attack in the seventies held on nearly every system, while my attack ships scrapped enemy defences in short order.
Since I did not want Ophiuchi to be the last survivor, I set everyone to peace but him, and told Howard that he should lose that Ophiuchi ship in hyperspace, which he promptly moved through to it's destination where it was destroyed by a small 6.6 mass ship ...
So now, in turn 93, Athena lives happily ever after, Naturals having 6 probes left and Cinnoids had been granted his homeworld.
Blind Galaxy game Athena Report for Txkl, Turn 93
Status of Players
N D W S C M P I # R & M T
Txkl 27.87 78.14 107.06 3.00 186562.69 121365.89 94366.3 500 - 9670 28005.60 1768136.96
Naturals 10.00 10.95 8.49 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.0 0 P 6 6.00 8.30
Cinnoids 32.77 40.61 44.85 4.06 1000.00 1000.00 336.9 1 P 21 156.84 5256.10
Last update: June 9, 1999