Gonna update this post as I play today.
I started by telling Acutians I've changed my mind and I don't want them to attack Evucks after all. Can't do the same with Burlusts, because... uh... their leaders are busy in a gigantic bar fight. :/ Fortunately they ran out of armadas in previous wars and their economy doesn't let them to build more ships anytime soon. I'll have to watch out for Thoraxians.
So what's the long term plan? Who lives and who dies? To form Federation I need 2 races that aren't in any AFA. Currently I've got only Evucks. There are Burlusts, Acutians and Thoraxians, but I'll have to kill 2 of them to dissolve alliance and allow me to use 3rd. Thoraxians won't create Federation, they'll only join existing one, so they have to die. Note: If there are only 2 races left, one of them will have 4+ planets and thus form Fear Empire. I can avoid that by cracking 2 planets, but I need some influence over at least one race to create Fed. Repairing their attitude will take too long and many things can go wrong in the meantime.
So I've decided I'll help Evucks form Fear Empire. Kill off Thoraxians, kill off Burlusts. Let Acutians live, hopefully with positive attitude towards me. Evucks are pretty bad at ground combat, so if I gather enough Burlust prisoners, I can bring them back to game after ToS dissolves. I should be able to use Acutians to form Fed with Burlusts and continue to kill Evucks.
So... that's plan A.
Taking care of 2 things now:
- Make sure Evucks don't die.
- Make sure Acutians don't die (they only have 14m people!)
Oh, there are some Andor prisoners on Burlust planet. Not giving me high hopes... I could also use pirate bases... 1 Burlust (probably will have a lot of Burlust prisoners anyway), 1 Evuck (same as above, though I don't need them), 1 Peltian (... what did I say about high hopes?).
Oh hey, Evucks' assasins! I see you! Probably gonna fight them anyway. Evucks don't have to like me... especially since I decided to kill them eventually. Shhhhh, don't tell them yet! Now I'm helping.
Remember peaceful Thoraxian queens? I bribed them before ToS formed, now they changed moods. Warlike. Everything's back to normal, guys! No worries!
Okay, so I somewhat ruined Thoraxians' economy, so they won't have too many ships and thus won't invade in numbers I can't deal with. I poisoned Burlust on planet with Andor prisoners. Surprisingly Evucks understood what I meant and launched attack on exactly this planet. I'll see if they let Andors live... That would be super useful! My influence over Acutians is dropping rapidly, just because ToS hates me (even though I have high influence over every race in ToS).
Yeah, Evucks captured planet with Andors, but didn't release them. And I can't incite resistance or arrange prison break, because... they're Andors and they won't fight for themselves.
Evucks captured another Burlusts' planet. One more to go. Except, I'll let that one hold on for a while, since I only have 100 Burlust prisoners. I'd prefer more to be sure I can make it work. With only 1 planet, their economy allows them to build armadas - which means more prisoners.
Acutians are causing problems. I have waaaay negative influence over them now, thanks to ToS. Gotta be quicker about that.
I poisoned Thoraxians planets, their economy got ruined on it's own even more. Now I only have to destroy their current armadas and this should trigger opportunistic attacks from evucks.
There were some shenanigans with Evucks' science outpost. I captured it to speed up learning crucial techs. But then Acutians kept attaking it and I didn't want to loose influence with them. And Evucks attacked it and I didn't want them to lose armadas. So I gifted this outpost to Acutians bot influence boost and more influence every time someone (hopefully pirates) attack it and I come in to defend. That's still not enough influence with Acutians though.
Evucks are attacking Thoraxians now. According to plan.
I didn't think through this plan. When Evucks captured Thoraxians' planet they formed Fear Empire as expected. That meant all races were in AFAs, so I lost. I thought there needs to be just 1 alliance to end game. Mistakes were made.
