Year: 2409.4 - Joachim surrenders
For many many turns, Joachim's fleets readily outdid mine so I turned to a way to get past him--Stellar Manip. I worried it would be too late but it seemed he was being cautious. I had already seen he was fielding battleships while I had LCs.
. Even without bats, and not too big of a racial difference in fighting, I was getting pasted pretty well. When I lost a fleet trained at 20% and ships at various levels of training, I knew there was only one way out.
I didn't say so back at the other Messages but, if you can believe it, my first opener off the line (100 sectors) couldn't reach from ANY of my colonies accross space to any of his systems! I thought that was the end as I then needed to get the next level (200 sectors) and I never had more than 155k in research the whole game till the Last 3 turns.
I think I was ready to counter any "Riot Run" you may have put together, Joachim. When your "Hail Mary" crushed my defensive point, I shifted my the forward third of my empire to getting ready for it. What was on my side was you had no panels and I did. So, I started putting mines over every planet...I knew you could sweep 100 with the fleet you had but this would keep it from breaking up and spreading out. Second, I built the heck out of platforms. The critical places had, when I stopped, about 5 or 6 small platforms and 3 or 4 medium platforms. Engine killers, etc. I was going to make it as painful as possible for you to run around. Even the 3 fac places had 1 long-reaching medium platform on them. Thirdly, I put troops on just about any planet that wasn't doing something. Only 2 planets ever rioted...and that was in the system you sat in for a while.
One of the good things about the Balance Mod and getting stellar manip...I started building Monolith facs in all the places in the rear. At the end of the game, I had around 1.4 million minerals and about 300k in rads and orgs. As the surrender came around, I had 55 dreadnoughts at various levels of completion (and about 20 other kinds of support ships). That and about 400 ships in service.
You played a heck of a game! A thrill ride...coming close the the most thrilling game I ever played, the one where each of us (MarkW and I) had openers and closers and were ripping each other up. And, as usual, you must have expanded and handled your empire much better than I did as I was second most of the time up till I had spent several turns in your "back country" after opening holes.
My hat off to you, sir
!