The Tessellate just kicked my butt

[Slick]

It was turn 223 of a single player game with 9 other TDM AI's. I started off in a bad spot and was immediately surrounded and at war with the Space Vikings in the first year. I was ranked 10th until well after turn 100. I eventually conquered the Space Vikings and Crystlonite and used their populations to undome most of my empire. Around turn 200 I was ranked 2nd, and judging by the numbers and sizes of the Tessellate fleets, they were #1 by a large margin but I was catching up fast. I had made rank #1 a few turns ago and had several fleets of ~30 dreads out capturing planets of several empires; my largest fleet was 70 dreads. I had seen a few very large fleets from the Tessellate Baseships that scared me but I basically gave them room and worked around them. Long story short, a huge Tessellate fleet glassed my homeworld, which was highly guarded and was still my main rally point due to my initial placement. Here's the gory details:


I lost 100% of:
189 Dreads, max crystal tech, mostly trained to 20%
9 max tech BC's
24 Space Station Spaceyard Bases
1 Cargo Space Station Base
1 Max tech Warp opener Battleship
1 Max tech Warp closer Battleship
1 minelayer
17 Minesweepers, mostly max tech Dreads
12 large Troop Transports with a total of > 1000 troops
10 max tech Spaceyard Dreads
20 misc smaller ships

and my HOMEWORLD which contained
spaceport for my home system
ship training facility
fleet training facility
resource converter
and the usual other facilities


He attacked with:
101 max crystal + religious tech BASESHIPS
6 max crystal + religious tech dreads

I killed:
29 of his ships and crippled a handfull more.


Oh, I've still got a lot of firepower left, and that AI just made me blow a capillary so he's going to go down hard, but this just goes to show you what can happen when those tough TDM AI's get a chance to get established. Master Belisarius, I don't know whether to congratulate you on your AI or send you a letter bomb! Just kidding, you did a great job on that AI!!!



Black_Knyght: you were asking about tough races? Link Well, I've been playing this game since SE:III and I've never had such a bad battle against an AI before.