2786.01.30: Dhayut Military Dictatorship. I picked this for the armor tech and huge troop discount. 2 research labs in the home system, no resource shortages.
Wasted time rushing tourism- I severely underestimated how bad tourism is with a Military Dictatorship. Could have cut off a couple of years without this.
To avoid getting the attention of pirates, I started by just building research labs and a spaceport, disbanding the armored unit. Built a resort and repeatedly scuttled freighters to get build cost to fund crash research and save up for later. 100% research funding- no growth funding. Disassembled the free Dhayut ships for tech. Didn't build anything else until the Warp Bubble.
At this point, got about 15 explorers and trained a handful of troops while building the Armor Barracks to start making armor. Once I had identified a handful of out-of-system luxuries, I built a small fleet (8 or so) of constructors and got to work on mining bases, and when the pirates showed up, paid them off immediately, bribing as needed. 0 warships. While tourism was at least somewhat useful before this point, private expenses in shipbuilding emptied their pockets, with the Dhayut's limited growth rate. Tourism was really the wrong choice for the Military Dictatorship.
As soon as I identified another empire, Gizureans, my spies found their capital a mere 76M away. I built a few transports and two fleets of 6 Laser Cannon frigates with two assault pods each. While they resisted with superior weapons, they had only just made a few mixed-weapon warships and only had a modest garrison. Deflector shields and standard armor were more than enough. Their forced rebellions failed to kill a single troop, pulling off troops as they got worn down, as they heal quickly on transports.
While I used spies to snag a few techs, only one tech later proved to be helpful. Tech stealing wasn't impactful- there just wasn't enough time and spies to really benefit from it. They were far more useful in stealing territory and galaxy maps, and I had to buy them back with exploration information.
While producing armor non-stop, I invaded a Gizurean independent, a Boskaran independent, and Authoria (an Ackdarian independent pre-gen world). There was a Teekan empire close by, but their capital sat in an Ion Storm, making them inaccessible. The next empire target would be Quameno. 215 M away, I needed the Velocity Drive. Once acquired, I had a 3rd 6-frigate fleet now with Maxos and Corvidian shields. I sent spies to take their Novacore reactor. They proved a harder nut to crack with a more robust garrison, and I resorted to a raiding assault using both the invasion fleet and frigates to soften the target for invasion.
Right after conquering the 1-colony Quameno, a Zenox declared war, soon followed up by the Ikkuro. The Ikkuro sent some ships to mining stations, but I ignored the attacks and kept a trio of 4-frigate fleets on standby to defend colonies. They were on the opposite side of the empire from where the invasion fleet sat, now over the former Quameno capital. Meanwhile, I had finished switching pirate protection to NAPs, had an abysmal -70 reputation, and while I knew where the Zenox were, they were a lot tougher to find through spies.
Here, I had a bigger choice to make. Go for the Haakonish, which had a mere 1.4 billion population at their capital, wait to find the Zenox world, go halfway across the galaxy to the Ikkuro capital, or go for the Ancient Slave Colony. I chose the nearby 2 billion pop slave colony. While taking it didn't require raiders, they were a stubborn lot, and even at near full assimilation, they had negative happiness. They needed a garrison. By the time this finished, I found the Zenox capital but only had a few armor and troops I could attack with.
However, the Zenox only had a single troop for a garrison. They did have a strong recovered ancient ship with heavy railguns that popped a frigate on its own, but it couldn't overwhelm nearly 20 frigates by itself. The Zenox barely had a 4-ship fleet- the Quameno put up a bigger fight. With that, the time to win came, and I switched that first Gizurean capital to slavery, meeting the win condition at 32 years.
The racial conditions really need to be easy- that alone accounts for 25% out of 60% for victory. So the only choices are Boskara, Dhayut, or Gizurean. I think an economic race might make up for it through the peaceful integration of independents- with some luck, the Teekan might be able to do it. I think this play could have shaved off a few years with earlier troop production and splitting forces, along with skipping tourism. I don't think the Velocity drive was essential, either- thanks to the small galaxy size.
The AI at normal settings is very weak, and it's exceedingly easy to overwhelm them rapidly with a rush strategy. I'm sure a significantly faster time can be done, not even accounting for good luck.
