I decided that this time, I was going to go through the game without losing any of the races. Picking the Evucks as a starting race I had expected to temporarily gimp someone who was easily made happy, and bring my starting race up to passable terms. Since the latest patch, there really isn’t an easy way to get money *or* influence and this pretty much ruined the strategy from the word go. So instead, I abused the new smuggling system and made everyone as spacefaring as possible within short order and spread the joys of paying people to mine resources they want anyway. Within a month of paying for the scrubs to tap their own resources, I proceed to set up The Great Trading Empire to ensure everyone was well-funded and on track to liking each other. At least, the ones who were willing to initiate trade routes and make friends.
Everyone was on pretty positive terms with me for giving them space technology in secret, so the only people I couldn’t really deal with were the Evucks. This worked pretty well for getting space trading together until such a time came when I really wasn’t able to do anything. Since it was a peaceful mission, and since looting pirates was no longer an option I actually sat and did dispatch missions for about ten or so years while waiting for people to like each other. At this point the game became a chore, the “federation point” system artificially stretched out the amount of sitting doing dispatch missions and the occasional artifact retrieval since the universe was stable under limited micromanagement and people were in their high sixties amongst one another.
Skylaxians and the Andor were the first two to enter the federation; since they were the first ones who decided to play ball under the 'federation point' system. Later the Peltians were annexed in to a three-prong Federation which consisted mostly of Pacifists-with-too-many-guns, Furballs and They Who Research.
At that point the Skylaxians had a tech pool of 24k, the Evucks were the next best race at 800. I found out that the Andors were the Pluralists this time around, which meant that I got to spend some of the highly limited Imperial Budget on doling out mass improvements. Everyone in the galaxy had well-positive economies to further the reaches of Dragon-Based Capitalism.
Since the Burlust are effectively unlikeable, I spent time trying to get people to like them by doing dispatch jobs for money and turning around to the Boarines to spread goodwill between the Skylaxians and the Burlust. All of those Imperial Handouts from the Andor had solved the infighting quarrel that Specimen 3008 was obsessed over for so long, and they became a Useful Species. I started alternating between doing dispatch missions for the money (and to wait for federation points to appear, since the only war going on was people nitpicking at the Burlust impotently and I planned on keeping their goodwill) and having the Boarines write their Spacebook social media posters.
“All I have to do is get them on the bus, and the last war troubles are done with.”
I grew accustomed to pressing auto-pilot whenever an artifact appeared out in space, since recovery was quite trivial and all that remained to build the Great Empire of Galactic Banking was to simply sit on my thumbs until people felt like being rich. Upon retrieving this one particular artifact, it became known to me how the Evucks had managed to wipe out most of the race:
A case of brandy with a computer virus.
Auto-resolve (which I clicked quickly, then realized something was amiss immediately) had decided SIXTEEN HOURS passed on a simple retrieval mission. So the brandy would be about, oh, 166 years old by the time it was openable.
During the 166 year period spent with my space ship set to the “Icecube Cold” temperature, the continued Burlust aggression finally ends in them declaring war on every imaginable force in the galaxy until they eventually die out twenty some-odd years later. My period of pretending to be a frozen comet meant that there was nobody to continually break aggression attempts against them, which was perhaps unavoidable as it got to the period of costing twenty seven MILLION credits to break aggression between the Acutians and the Burlust before the Great Dragon Nap. As happens when one fights a war on four fronts against nations with powerhouse economies and epic level research abilities, you tend to die. Horribly.
Thoraxians decided to go on a warpath after the loss of the Burlust, for reasons unbeknownst to history they started declaring wars and became the new gimp-stick of the galaxy. This comes as more of a surprise as they were previously quite reputable trade partners with the rest of empire; I can only assume that the queen changed moods and decided to extracize the Galactic Bank from their hive and this lead to much aggression from the capitalist roboticists who rather love hugging money on Tuesday nights. They were the second to fall during the time of the Great Dragon Nap.
When I next took a peek at my computer (I alt-tabbed out on occasion, though I could hear the continual CRASH-BOOM sounds of the game desperately trying to crunch the universe at maximum speed for such a ridiculous period of time), the Skylaxians had taken over the Thoraxian homeworld and surrounded it with 260-MILLION points of space defensive power. It seems like the Federation was doing well for itself in my absense, as they continued to crush everyone who had any amount of militancy to them. Which is weird, because the Andors are supposed to be peace-loving, yet they had a considerably ridiculous military of their own as well.
The next time I checked in on the environment, it was the year 3112, and pirate factions formed under Dread Pirate Murodch. This never became anything to worry about, as ten pirate bases had little-to-no impact on the ridiculously powerful galactic economy.
By 3169 it was common to have space power in the billions, leading to the simulation glitching out and making the computer too slow to run everything. With about 300 months to go before the Hydral returns, the remaining members of the universe seemed to be alright with each other. That is until, for no discernable reason, everyone decided that the Boarines sucked and it was time to organize the galaxy’s largest bacon roast known to… Well, let’s just blame the amoral capitalists for suggesting it and everyone else for really enjoying space bacon.
By 3180 Boarines have been entirely converted in to bacon, and only 80 or so months before the Hydral returns. I suppose they were now useless anyway, aside from having built up an impressive amount of space outposts over time. Now that the Burlusts were dead there were no remaining people that I needed to sideline diplomacy with, so their mechanical use had expired. Still, I’m not sure why people decided they had to go as they were pretty chill with everyone when I was a non-popsickle.
3180. The year I finally wake up and get to sip that damned brandy. Drunkenly I return to colonized space and take a peek at how things went while I was out on my simple recovery mission. I immediately notice that there are OH GOD F**K amounts of ships everywhere, and also notice in the technology tree that every ultimate level tech has been researched. Basically, I missed the Singularity happening and leading everyone in to a future of technological and economic success.
So I have way more than enough Macguffin Points, but have gotten zero bank interest on my chunk of cashmonies. I had to go buy a stack of Scientists and spend half a year learning this mystery known as Time Traveling that has been invented in my absense. I suppose singularity-level intelligence has its uses, as the InfiniCash this provided was enough to purchase the remaining races in to the federation. I have no idea why nobody thought to expand the federation in over a hundred years of its continued survival and proof of worth, though the last two races were more than thrilled with the concept of finally being invited to join by their Dragon Overlord.
So, that is the tale of the 166 year old brandy crate. A tale of auto-resolve trolling me, and how federation points in that build didn’t really add any gameplay. Still, it did result in a victory in the end with only three races being exterminated. Though technically some of them “surrendered”, so I suppose the Boarines are still around being grown in farms to fuel the Singularity’s eternal need for bacon.
