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First, background can be found here:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3960925

Can't think of a good reason not to do this; given time constraints, will endeavor to keep this going to end. If anybody actually reads this and feels like dropping helpful hints, feel free [8D].
There will be screen shots and perhaps a bit of story to accompany them [;)].
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The following shots are illustrating the current situation. The 1st Keskudon War (the Keskudon are the large empire appearing in red on the Empire Map shot)ended four days ago at Zenox instigation. There had previously been two Keskudon attempts to end the war.

This is current economic situation, which will be rebounding now that the war is over (for now). I am thinking that in the immediate future I will go back to attacking smaller empires in order to extract tribute.

The First Keskudon War (KW I) ended in Sept. 2569 and was honestly a real cluster-**** for the Zenox. Not having fought the most powerful AI in this galaxy before, I did not know what to expect- and it showed. After a period of recovery, I launched KW II and this time I knew what I was doing- almost. I re-took all my lost planets, actually took the Keskudon homeworld and several other major colonies and was much more efficient fighting with my fleet and ground forces. However, I noticed that my War Weariness was much higher after only maybe 5 years during KW II than it was during the 12 years of KW I, so I quickly paid for peace before disaster struck. Facing a severe economic crisis, I decided to go back to invading smaller races' colonies for a quicker economic return to shore up my economy before taking on the Keskudon again. That went well for a couple of years until the Caleph declared war on me. While they were nowhere near as aggressive at planetary assaults as the Keskudon, fighting massed Caleph carriers was...interesting. Once I had lost about 50 of my ~ 300 warships and after taking several nice Caleph colonies, I paid for peace with the Caleph. That brings us to the present, and here is the current Galaxy Map.

A couple things here; in the midst of the First Keskudon War, I suffered the calamity of my Leader being taken out in a coup. The calamity was that I had had this Leader for a LONG time and he had great pluses to colony income, colony happiness, trade income, etc. The new Leader...did not. And still does not There are more than one reasons why my state cash flow is what it currently is, but if my present Leader were up to snuff, the picture would be far rosier.

The second thing: take a look at my freighters- see how I have hundreds of them? And see how I have 5 (five) passenger ships? I used to have a couple hundred: remember when I said 'I knew what I was doing-almost'? The 'almost' refers to me not remembering to upgrade my passenger ships BEFORE attacking the Keskudon the first time. They were utterly decimated, as consequently was my bonus income. No people are moving in my empire, and it is economically killing me.

This is where I stand economically in the Galaxy. Distressingly, I have been in the #5 slot for a long time. I am VERY worried about the economy.

How happy am I with the result of the Caleph War? I have increased militarily relative to the Caleph pre-war by nearly 50%. I hurt them pretty bad, but could not take them completely out yet. Why? Well, it all comes down to ground troops. Currently, I am down 25% from my peak troop level before First Keskudon War and even so one can see what kind of burden my troop maintenance is on the economy. The issue is that my colony garrisons (and particularly at my high-value colonies) have to be able to hold off any attack long enough for me to realize they are under attack and rush reinforcements if necessary. Combine that with the fact that ALL AI worlds have Planetary Shields- and that I am RPing a ban on planetary bombardments anyway- and one begins to understand the requirement for such an elevated level of troops. All the same, it IS a big galaxy, so I have begun taking garrison levels down -slowly, carefully- to give me more troops to expand with. I have not raised new troops since the beginning of the First Keskudon War.

I am pleased with my fleet and base designs, and with my learning curve on how to properly employ them in given circumstances. They ARE very expensive because I have gone for quality over quantity. Next post I will show what my ship designs are.

Fleets returning to home base for repair after the Caleph War.

It is now August 2651 in my marathon Extended AI Improvement v 1.05 Extreme/Chaos Old-start 1000-star 10x10 sector Zenox game. The Keskudon and Zenox each have one-third of the Galaxy (150 and 141 colonies respectively) and events are building rapidly to the final titanic struggle.

In the 80-some years since the end of the Third Keskudon War, the Keskudon, Caleph and Zenox empires have been gobbling up the smaller races in the Galaxy. Six years ago, the Keskudon (the Galaxy's most powerful race) attacked two of the larger medium-sized races; at present they are hanging on- barely. At first, the Zenox were going to assist the Keskudon in taking down those two races- until I remembered that the end-game is going to be Zenox-on-Keskudon and why risk the Caleph ( the Galaxy's second most powerful race) jumping in while that war was in progress?

So... the Pindare Empire's (Caleph) Operations Map has been obtained, and the plans made. The Zenox will hit 13 of 15 systems, invading 7 of 17 colonies simultaneously. I say 'Crusade Against the Caleph) because there are also two smaller Caleph-race empires in the same general area of the Galaxy as the Pindare Empire, but they are militarily insignificant and can be safely dealt with after the coming conflagration.

It is said that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy- that was certainly true in this case...

Battle of Vrilya, Galactic Concordat- 18 August 2652

The Concordat Battlefleet departed the Vrilya system in late December 2651- by 27 February 2652, all fleets reported that they were in their IPs or 'initial positions', in this case somewhere in the outer reaches of each of the 13 Caleph systems that were to be attacked. And it was at this point that everything went to hell in handbasket.

As the orders were being issued to engage, blockade or invade the enemy it was immediately noticed that the Caleph defending ships in all the targeted systems were sallying out to the Fleet IPs... in other words, ALL the fleets were being engaged by the Caleph in the outer realms of 13 systems. Put another way, 14 separate attacks were being pre-emptively disrupted simultaneously. Most astonishingly, this was taking place without a declaration of war being issued. High Command's first impulse was to order all attacks that could to go forward; until it was reported that enemy fleet opposition was heavy and growing as ships were arriving in-system from elsewhere. This in turn gave rise to a sense of panic that far too many Concordat ships would be lost, and that realization was translated into an all-Fleet recall back to the Vrilya system. The Home-world, the Capital, one of the best-defended systems in the Concordat and the traditional home base for the Fleet.

Some fleets were able to extricate themselves from battle more easily than others: for example, the six troop transports of 5th Invasion Fleet were all destroyed, while 12th Fleet lost three of 18 ships whilst disengaging. All the same, High Command had begun to relax upon seeing that the situation had not devolved into a complete rout... UNTIL it was noticed that two large Caleph fleets were apparently following the Fleet back to- the Capital system. By this time the High Command had regained it's wits- yes a large (nearly a hundred ships) enemy force was approaching the Home-world, however- a Large Space Port , four Defense Bases and nearly three hundred ships would be defending Vrilya. In addition, all of the surviving troop transports were loaded with troops and also headed back to the Vrilya system, where they would be available to reinforce should there be completely unexpected ground assault on the Capital. Even so, there was a great deal of tension at the High Command on Vrilya...

In the end, while there were a couple of moments where things looked less than optimal, the Battle of Vrilya at least played out as hoped and expected. The fleets went into Patrol around Vrilya or the orbiting bases; the Caleph ships, attacking the Concordat ships, entered in close to the planet and the bases, rendering their ability to quickly escape null and void. It was a slaughter, with the vast majority of the Caleph ships destroyed, a few captured. The final tally: the Concordat lost 3x Capitals, 4x Cruisers, 4x Destroyers, 8x Frigates and 9x Troop Transports destroyed. Early on in this fiasco it was feared that losses would be far higher. The Caleph did manage to attack and take one medium-sized colony, and there were two other colonies that were battling revolts- in at least one case sparked by Caleph Espionage agent for certain.

At no time during these events was a Declaration of War issued by either side.

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The Battle of Vrilya described above was the largest battle I have ever played in DWU: a total of over 400 ships involved, checking on two revolts until I was satisfied that they would end well for me; controlling 300+ ships divided into 14 tactical fleets; jumping the troop transports (which die like dogs) out of harms way once it was apparent that there would be no ground assault on the Capital, etc. Coming as it as unexpectedly did on the heels of a phenomenon I had never before witnessed in-game, and over 300 years into the scenario, well... lets just say that this rated as the most fun I have ever had in a space-themed (possibly any-themed) game against AI. EVAR. And I still have the Caleph to deal with, and the Keskudon.

Sounds fun, indeed [:)]

The Second Pindare(Caleph) War is not a year old yet. The Caleph are the orange systems near the center of the map, and at the very top.

I obtained the Galaxy's sole source of Korrabian Spice only within the last 5 years, and wow did that make a difference! It erased 936K from my negative Cashflow.

Check out Vrilya's output.