Yes, I am, and I am serene.
I've sometimes wondered what would happen if The Conqueror collided with AIW. Well, we'll see 
I'm having fun, and what more could one reasonably demand from entertainment?
I fully expect to win the third game, though, but then again, I always expect to win strategy games vs. the AI, so expectations aside, I have high hopes that my expectations will be foiled with another loss despite my best efforts or, if I should not be so lucky, that it'll be a hard fought victory.
7 is fairly easy to win once you know what's going on, but 8, 9, and especially 10 have much more potential for enduring challenge. The game's overall balance is currently tilted more in the player direction than usual due to recent changes that are still shaking out. And 10 is still currently winnable. I hope to fix that bug soon.
Larger and larger AI sledgehammers aside, there's also a lot of game setup options that allow adding extra chaos to increase the number of "oh no!" moments for the player. Anyway, plenty of !!fun!! to be had, if the core experience is agreeable.
Right, the third attempt that was ongoing when I wrote the previous has now been won after an epic 24 hours and 12 minutes at 638 AIP and 32 planets controlled. The main reason for taking so long was my slow turtling approach as I kept expecting the AI to do something dastardly, which it did not do, in the end. Though it is entirely possible that the
reason it never did anything I evaluated as truly dastardly is exactly because of the painstakingly slow expansion and humongous fortification efforts I undertook preventing it from doing so.
Either that, or, more likely, you've only enabled truly dastardly AI acts on higher difficulty settings than 7.
Much was learned about basic mechanics, and while I really liked the way the AI probed for weaknesses with its threatfleet, the only thing that was remotely challenging - apart from the time I decided it would be a fun idea to trigger and destroy two raid engines on adjacent planets in one go rather than dealing with them one at a time - were the exo shadow frigate nemesis fleets, that had reached something like 2x120 frigates in the last wave and were best defeated with my full navy in support of my homeworld defenses.
By contrast, the cross planet attacks, that I'd read about before starting playing and which sounded dangerous, turned out to be pitiful. At a time when the AI was throwing 7-11k regular waves against me and hundreds of shadow frigates in the exo raids, it was still only adding a negligible amount of 2400 ships to the cross planet attacks.
My assumption is that this is because regular waves were dominated in magnitude by the AIP, while the CPAs were dominated in magnitude by the difficulty setting, but still, it felt remarkably strange that after the first 8h or so I could pretty much ignore them.
It strikes me that my reaction is probably pretty much as you expected, insofar as you had any expectations at all - bump head against game mechanics, analyse them, defeat them, move on, and win.
So, final verdict after first victory? A fun game, and one I can see myself playing on and off for the next several years, just like other enduring favourites that I do not play all the time, but play intensely every few months.
I do want to learn more, as way too many things were countered simply by funneling everything to my homeworld death trap of bonus starbases from alt-champion, all the modular forts, superfortress and all other fun Zenith Trader unlocks, a few extra forts, area mines, turret-Vs, counter snipers, etc. everything funneled down an area-mine lane of death.
So I'll definitely play a fourth game now with higher difficulty setting or more minor stuff enabled to add difficulty. The received-wisdom "stay at minimum AIP on the highest difficulty settings" doesn't really appeal to me - as you know, I like to
conquer, and the more the merrier, so any advice on what would be a reasonable setting for me next?
7.3, 7.6, 8.0 (what on Earth is going on with the fractional difficulty increases?) - or would you advise me to go higher?
Fallen Spire - it says it adds a whole new way to play, more campaign oriented, which sounds interesting. Does it also up the difficulty?
There are so very, very, many settings to tinker with, whether it be AI plots or minor factions - any particular you can advise when what I really want is a setting that a) allows me to conquer a lot so long as I am superior at defensive strategy rather than pretty much requiring a minimal-but-powerful-for-the-size realm, b) makes the AI threatfleet or other aggression methods more strategically dangerous, either by increased prowess or by increased uncertainty rather than merely by increased magnitude?
I simply don't have the time, alas, to try out everything, so if there are some settings you particularly love, are proud of, admire the deviousness of, or think could accomplish those goals, I'm all ears.
EDIT: It strikes me that I am seriously derailing this thread from its original topic, but your post practically begged for a followup; My apologies if such thread derailment is frowned upon in your forum.
