In no particular order:

1. GoGo Inflight is unreasonably slow at this stage. I’m writing this from the plane and it’s about the same speed it has been since the start which is to say, it has fallen relatively behind in usability. I’m not trying to watch a video or anything, just browsing web.
2. Apple’s usability has declined since the death of Steve Jobs. The more I use the iPhone 6 the more convinced I am that he would never have approved this design. The off button being on the side is really annoying for a variety of reasons. 
3. While I love my Surface Pro 4, it is not always easy to recommend it due to the amount of tweaking it takes to make it work right. It’s most a series of poor choices in the defaults and some tuning issues with SkyLake.
4. I’ve been playing the MOO beta.  It’s still in early access so it’s not fair to judge it.  But I will be curious to see how those who poo-poo’d GalCiv III treat MOO.
5. I can’t believe how little I care about the 2016 election. There is just no winning. Frankly, all of the candidates are awful.  Trump is ghastly. Hillary is a monster. Bernie has clearly never worked a real job. Cruz is probably an actual psychopath and Rubio looks like a deer in the headlights.
6. I’ve decided I don’t like getting old.
7. People getting obsessed with their particular piece of computer hardware astounds me.  They’d probably consider me a hardware whore then. I swap out NVIDIA and AMD cards in my machines daily. 
8. My current go-to card is an NVIDIA 980. Why? because there’s no AMD card I can find with 3 freaking display ports on it. All my 390s have DVI. Seriously, what high end gamer is using DVI still? DVI needs to die.
9. On my recent media tour, every game site I visited relied on a VGA connector (not even DVI).  It’s 2016, it’s at least use HDMI.
10. Why is it taking so long for Display Port 1.3 parts to come out? 4K monitors are wonderful. Everyone should get one – as soon as Display Port 1.3 comes out.  Look for that.
11. I recently got a Dell 5k monitor. It is absolutely amazing.  Windows 10 actually works fine on it.  High DPI on Windows is viable.
12. I ran through my games to see who handled 5K well.  Civ V needs a UI update.  GalCiv II’s UI scales but it tries to stretch horizontally which looks ridiculous. Sorcerer King is perfect – detects display, uses Super high DPI UI all automatically. Sins of a Solar Empire is unplayable. Ashes of the Singularity works great but you currently have to manually increase the UI scaling which is annoying (hopefully fixed by release). GalCiv III works great but it needs an even larger UI option.  Supreme Commander FA actually did ok. 
13. All the traveling I’ve done lately has made me miss my family to crushing level.
14. I now use an ad blocker. Why? Because too many sites have ads that suck down all my battery. I don’t mind the ads, but ads that use 30% of my CPU on a Skylake processor isn’t acceptable. Fix your problem and I’ll turn off my ad blocker. And yes, I have turned off Flash.
15. I was never cut out to be a manager. I’m just too mean. It’s a weird thing. I really like people. I’m an extrovert. But as a manager I have terrible people skills. I apologize to anyone who has to deal with me. I know how hard it is, I have to deal with me 24/7.
16. I recently discovered I have Aphantasia. That is, I can’t picture things in my mind. This has always been the case, it’s just that I assumed everyone was like this. When I discovered this, I was skeptical that other people could actually conjure up a vision of an apple or a person in their mind. “You’re suggesting you hallucinate on demand?” I scoffed.  Apparently, I’m the freak.
17. I’m ready for a 10 core CPU, Intel.  I swear, given how much Ashes of the Singularity does to push the hardware, the game should ship with every high resolution monitor, 6 core or more CPU, video card, etc. 
18. I am spending more and more time on Reddit and less and less time on Twitter.  I feel like I have to walk on egg shells on Twitter now or their SJW gestapo will obliterate my account.  That’s being overly dramatic. But I’ve been pretty disgusted seeing people who spent years siccing their dogs on isolated people onlne now in involved in “stopping online harassment.”
19. I’m surprised at how primitive Siri remains.  I would have expected to be able to ask her “What time is my flight today” and for her to know.  Google Now not only reminded me of my flight but told me how long it would take to get to the airport due to an accident on the freeway. 
20. I’m pretty excited about Vulkan (new graphics API) but it seems like people should be giving MS more kudos.  DIrectX 12 is actually pretty damn impressive.

 

I feel…cleansed.

 

And the plane has landed.

Click on the thumbnail to see the detail you get when running at high resolution.  While 5K seems like a crazy resolution, even 4K monitors are already selling relatively inexpensively.

 

This second image is interesting because the resolution is high enough to see that each drone isn’t just some little dot but rather a full blown unit complete with hover pods and antena.

Greetings!

Yesterday we released 0.92 which had a ton of improvements, fixes, balance tweaks, etc.(http://steamcommunity.com/app/228880/discussions/1/412448792372191389/).

So what's next?

The next public update should have the Tutorial in it. We'll be looking for your feedback on it.

After that, we'll be heading towards release. Bug fixes, minor usability improvements, safe feature additions (we're testing engineer assist for instance)..

What cool stuff is going to be in the release version?

The Ascendancy Wars campaign is the main one. It's a story driven, campaign with missions that are quite unlike the normal skirmish game.

In addition, there will be a set of scenarios that highly customized single player games for people to play. For example, one is called King of the Hill where you fortify a hill as best you can as wave after wave of ever increasingly powerful enemies attack. The goal is to see how long you last. It's pretty fun.

What happens after release?

As some of you know, Stardock is the oldest independent game studio in the industry (20+ years and counting). This fact means that this game wasn't funded by a publisher or by a Kickstarter campaign. 

Thus, for us, 1.0 is simply the beginning of Ashes of the Singularity. We already have post-release features and content that we'll be working on after the game goes 1.0. Most of these things we will be releasing for free.

A few things at the top of our list of free features includes:

* Customization of single-player scenarios
* Multiplayer-scenarios
* Modding (make your own AI personalities)
* Replays
* Observer mode
* Scenario creation (make your own scenarios) - we're working on a tutorial

On the near-term DLC front we'll also be looking at things like:

* Player requested units
* New map environments and features
* Scenario Packs 
* New construction projects

And on the longer-term road-map we have:

* The third race
* Naval combat
* Environments that require other classes of units (crawling, treads, bipedal)

Why the long-term roadmap?

I suspect I'm not the only one who has fallen in love with an RTS only to see it orphaned for whatever reason.

I think it's important for us to be transparent with you guys in knowing that this will not be happening to Ashes of the Singularity. For example, Stardock recently updated Galactic Civilizations II (which came out in 2006). We still do updates for Sins of a Solar Empire on occasion.

We only answer to you: The customer

That statement is usually an empty phrase. But in this case, it's literally true. Stardock is a privately held company. I personally own the company. All of it. I answer to no publisher. No investment group. I only answer to you and I live on these forums and elsewhere. You have direct access to me.

Hence we absolutely welcome people posting mockups and ideas on things they'd like to see in the future. 

Why the Ashes tech matters

You hear a lot about Ashes tech and there's a reason why it does really matter. How often have you seen a game that has stopped being able to be updated because it hit a technological brick wall?

We've run into the tech issue with our own Sins of a Solar Empire. It's an amazing third generation engine (single core, DirectX 9, 32-bit). But even though we (Stardock and Ironclad) would love to do a lot more with that engine, we're up against the tech wall.

Have you ever loaded up a great old game and found it wonky because of your resolution or because it can't use your hardware properly? This is why Ashes matters.

Ashes of the Singularity is the first, and so far, only strategy game that is multi-core neutral. That means, as you add more CPU cores to it, it gets faster. In 5 years, when people have 12-core systems, Ashes will be able to support map sizes that make what we have today look like a joke. 

Similarly, Ashes will run on a 5K display. I know because I'm running it on my NVIDIA 980 right now at 5K. UI scaling and all. While it seems crazy, in a few years, 4K, 5K and someday 8K monitors will be as common as 1024x768 was.


Ashes of the Singularity is crashing on me! How can it almost be done?

I have some good news and some bad news on that front. The good news is that every time the game crashes, we get a really cool crash log sent to us. For you devs out there, it's actually pretty amazing. We get the dxdiag of the system, the stack, the process list, etc. It's just nuts. In MY day, when a game crashed you would have to send out debug builds. 

Anyway, the bad news is that the vast VAST majority of crashes are being caused by third party programs inserting themselves into the game's process. This isn't an issue on DirectX 11 but on DirectX 12, it's a big deal (and very very annoying). 

We're working with Microsoft on this issue as there's not much we can do. DirectX 12 just doesn't like other programs being in the process. The most common ones are video streaming apps. After that, third-party overlays. And after that, I kid you not, malware. The data we get is anonymous so we have no way to contact the person to tell them their computer is infected. But a startling percentage of players have malware in their processes. 

If Ashes is crashing for you, check your system tray and make sure you don't have things attaching themselves. Then, run a virus scanner.

Basically, Ashes 0.92 never crashes in single player on any supported machine (I mean as in, statistically) with the above exceptions.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer, by contrast is still a challenge. 1 on 1 is doing great. 2 on 2 is doing...fine...Beyond that it gets murky. 

As you've probably guessed, it's largely based on inconsistent performance from the different players interacting with the simulation. 

Luckily, this is something that will get better as we get more data. I will be online a lot playing 3 on 3 games so look for me.

Thank you guys!

Many of you have participated in various RTS communities over the years. I know I have. I don't know specifically why this community is so excellent. It may be a demographic thing (i.e. average age or something). But whatever the reason is, thank you.

I can't even begin to tell you how much we enjoy talking to you guys. I love being able to talk candidly with other players on the various issues in the game. 

We really enjoy being able to talk to people who know the pros and cons of different RTS games whether that be Total Annihilation, Dark Reign, C&C, CoH, StarCraft, Supreme Commander, Grey Goo, Planetary Annihilation, Kohan. 

As a development community, we're a close nit group. If I get stuck or have a question I can ping the Uber guys and the designer of Grey Goo is only 30 feet from where I'm sitting. Soren Johnson (Civilization IV) sits even closer to me and Jon Shafer (Civ V) is in the next room and Chris Taylor is always willing to talk shop. We (you guys and us) are part of one of the best technology communities there is.

We look forward to talking to you over the next several years!

The Escapist is running a series on the development of the Ashes of the Singularity universe.

The first entry can be found here: [ENTRY 1]

Ashes of the Singularity takes place in the year 2178. Longtime Stardock fans will recognize that year because it is also the same year as Galactic Civilizations starts.

Galactic Civilizations imagines a future in which humans travel the galaxy in starships

 

Where Galactic Civilizations imagines a Star Trek like future in which human beings, very much like ourselves colonize new worlds and encounter alien civilizations, Ashes goes the opposite path.  It imagines a post-singularity future in which humans have begun to transcend their biology entirely and colonize worlds not through space ships but through constructs.   Post-Humans are, by our 21st century standards, practically godlike in their knowledge and capabilities.

The Escapist series will attempt to help people see how we got from here (2016) to their (2178) as well as get to see a ton of cool art concepts.

 

 

 

Through the series people will discover the technological evolution of human evolution in the Singularity universe.

Anyway, check out [ENTRY 1].

I got the Dell 5K monitor. It’s only 27 inches but it’s just gorgeous.  I hooked it up to an NVIDIA 980TI and have been playing Ashes with it.

Below is a screenshot I took that I lowered to a more reasonable resolution so you can see the extra detail you get when running at that resolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recommended!

Last night my wife and I attended a debate organized by the Michigan Review at the University of Michigan.

On one side was Breitbart editor, Milo Yiannopoulos and on the other was journalist and noted feminist, Julie Bindel.

The debate revolved around Feminism’s effect on modern society. 

 

The Venue

The room was filled to capacity.  The handful of protesters were escorted out promptly the moment they began to try to disrupt the venue.   Meanwhile, U of M’s Spectrum Center set up a “Safe Space” for those who needed comfort in the face of a world accepts other points of view.

I had the pleasure to hang out with Milo and Julie and the moderator for a couple hours before the event in the green room.

The moderator, a professor of political science, showed class and dignity throughout.  She and I had a brief conversation on how modern culture has come to believe there are only a couple of different ways a society might organize itself when, in fact, even as late as the early 20th century there were still many different (And to us today, alien) philosophies on the way human civilization should function.

In case there was any doubt, both Milo and Julie are passionate believes in their particular world views. These events aren’t some sort of shtick they turn on for the audience. The intellectual debate on nature vs. nurture in determining sexual dimorphism, the growing intolerance towards wrong-think and even discussions on what the underlying motivations of the so-called social justice warriors were discussed in the green room.

Every seat filled (other than mine, as I took this pic)

Cookies

On a side note: Thank you to whomever made the delicious cookies.  Milo and Julie had to abstain for their own dietary reasons but I, heroically, consumed them. All of them.

One other note: Below are not quotes. They are my own representations of the debate to the best of my ability.

 

Debate Topic #1: The Wage Gap

 

Moderator: Statistics regarding the wage cap indicate that women make 79 cents for every dollar men make. However, this gap only really starts to become prevalent at people enter their 30s. What say you?

 

Julie:  Contrary to what the MRA people will tell you, the pay gap is real and even when job types and age are accounted for, there is still a significant gap.  A recent study of legal firms showed that lawyers with similar experience showed dramatic differences in pay based on gender.

 

Milo: The fact is, women make different choices.  A fact many people are unwilling to acknowledge is that men work harder than women on average. Women take longer vacations. Women take more sick days and women just don’t put in the hours and yes, some women make different life choices such as having a family. As for the law firm example, women are often not willing to do the 80 hour workweeks it takes to become say a partner at a law firm.

 

Debate Topic #2: Affirmative action

Julie: Most feminists hate affirmative action. I hate affirmative action. But what choice do we have to get men to hire people who don’t look like them?  How else can we get men to hire a qualified female candidate instead of their friends?  Even today, women are routinely passed up for promotions and other opportunities simply because of their sex.

 

Milo: What objective data measurement would be good enough to satisfy feminists that affirmative action is no longer needed? Women now make up the majority of college graduates.  They make up the majority of college students. What is the measurement they’re looking for to know when they no longer need special treatment?

And if we’re talking about quotas for jobs, why don’t feminists ever worry about getting those road construction jobs? Or the coal mining jobs? 97% of job related deaths are men.

 

Debate Topic #3: Rape Culture

Julie:  I have been to trials where the prosecutor has fallen asleep during a rape case. I’ve seen judges make inappropriate jokes regarding the clothing of the victim.  MRAs routinely peddle statistics that men, not women are the victims of domestic abuse. How many men die each year to domestic abuse? 2 women die a week in the UK from domestic abuse.  The UK only recently passed laws making marital rape illegal.    Our society is still based on the premise that women are sex objects for men and everything flows from there.

 

Milo:  There is no rape culture in the West. The closest thing we have to that is the rape culture that politicians, the feminists voted in, are importing from the Middle East.  Feminists have to re-define rape to be a spectrum in order to hide the fact that actual rape has been on the decline for decades. Now, an unwanted kiss or a touch on the elbow is counted as “sexual assault”.  This sort of thinking does a disservice to actual victims because these hysterical feminists are calling everything “sexual assault” resulting in skepticism when someone who experiences actual sexual assault tries to come forward.

 

 

Debate Topic #4: Does Feminism have a free speech problem?

Julie: Real feminists support free speech. We want an open exchange of ideas. Feminism means something specific which is the dismantling of the patriarchy, a system put in place by men to keep women oppressed.  Feminism isn’t about individual choices. One does not condone the patriarchy in certain places simply because that’s their culture. Feminism is a liberation movement.  These social justice warrior types who claim to be feminists are simply pampered, middle class white women who simply want to justify their own poor individual choices. They’re not feminists. Feminists welcome open debate.

 

Milo: Julie’s brand of feminism is out of date.  When people talk about feminism they aren’t talking about the feminism of the 70s. They are talking about the feminism that uses terminologies like “micro aggressions” and promotes “Safe spaces”.  Feminists exist in a state of quantum uncertainty – both aggressor and victim simultaneously. They engage in deplorable hateful behavior and cry victim the moment even a faction of that hate rebounds on them.  Feminists are working to stifle speech on universities, the media and on the Internet.  

Thankfully, people are catching on to these feminists and finally saying no. 

 

Closing Remarks

Both Milo and Julie had passionate and well thought out closing remarks that contained a lot of humor mixed with keen intellect.  Even if I disagreed with most of what Julie had to say, I found her arguments impressive and well grounded.  Sometimes, as they say in debates,  there are disagreements at the axiom level. 

Hopefully I have done an adequate job of representing the words and positions of each of the debaters in this article. Feel free to correct me in the comments.

 

The little unit to the left may not be pretty but I made it. 

 

Combined with the map editor:

 

 

And scripting language:

 

 

And I can create my own custom games with their own victory conditions and the like.

 

Over the coming months and well, years, this system will become richer and richer. 

 

My wife and I recently came across a show that referenced a person who had the inability to visualize images in their minds. 

My immediate reaciton was, “Of course they can’t, nobody can.  We call those hallucinations.”  I thought it was absurd to suggest that people could just conjure up an image in their minds. 

Turn out, I’m the defective one: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/science/aphantasia-minds-eye-blind.html?_r=0

So in my case (which for 45 years I assumed was the same for everyone else), I can’t close my eyes and visualize say an apple.  If I see someone and close my eyes I won’t recall anything I just saw.  I couldn’t identify their shirt.   Unless I explicitly memorize it, I won’t remember a visual detail (like what my son’s glasses look like – I have no idea). 

To me, you close your eyes, it’s dark.  Sort of “Duh, of course.” 

I was aware that I could not easily recognize people.  Put one of my friends at the mall here and I wouldn’t recognize them easily.  But until the show we watched, I had no idea that people could actually visualize an image in their mind.  For me, it’s pretty mind blowing.

It never ceases to amaze me that someone online will direct something vile my way and expect me to just turn the other cheek simply because I’m “powerful” (whatever that means).

What they don’t understand is me shining a spotlight on them is about as kiddie gloves as I can get. 

And frankly, they’re lucky to get the kiddie gloves.  I know ignoring them doesn’t work.  Being polite doesn’t work.  Social Justice Warriors aren’t interested in truth or fairness.  They are only interested in raising their own standard amongst their own kind.  And I’m under no obligation to be a prop in their quest simply because I could crush them.  My advice is:  Leave me out of your reindeer games.

The Tragedy of the Torian civilization

by Brad Wardell

 

The First Enslavement

Once upon a time there was an aquatic world filled with kind, gentle people.   Their pre-industrial civilization was discovered over 100,000 years ago by a Drengin automated probe.  Despite being over 20 light years from the Drengin home world, the Drengin were intent to  conquer it.  The Drengin constructed a stargate and using automated probes, towed it to the Toria.  The process took over 70,000 years.

To put this in perspective, when the Drengin stargate reached the Torian home system, Neanderthals still walked the earth.  Once engaged, the stargate allowed Drengin forces to make the 20 light year trip from Drengi to Toriain less than a month.   Conquest was swift.

While peaceful by nature, the Torians fought back. Over many many generations, the Torians used every advantage their aquatic world provided over the Drengin, whose own world has almost no standing water.  Eventually, merely a few centuries ago, the Drengin abandoned the world and the Torians destroyed the Drengin stargate.

The Second Enslavement

The young humans of Earth introduced the Torians to the new technology of Hyperdrive.  Hyperdrive works essentially the same as a Stargate except it can be equipped directly to a ship, negating the need for the massive stationary constructs.  The Torians quickly expanded creating the Torian Confederation.

When the Dread Lords returned in 2225, the Torians were amongst the first to answer the Terran Alliance call to form a coalition to defeat them.  However, at their seeming moment of triumph, the Drengin Empire, which had stayed out of the conflict, struck quickly conquering the Torian Confederation and reoccupying the now developed world of Toria.

For the past 15 years, the world of Toria has been been plundered by the Drengin Empire.

Liberation

The lost fleet of the Terran Alliance has recently returned from the pocket universe that the Dread Lords had been trapped in.  Gone for 16 years, they carry with them artifacts of immense power that they have used to swiftly push back the Drengin Empire from Arcea and relieve the embattled forces of the Altarians.   Now they have arrived at Toria and the Drengin have fallen back.  A new government, the Torian Regime has been hastily set up as the Torian begin to try to rebuild. 

The occupation has left the Torian people fractured and somewhat xenophobic with many extremist movements now gaining influence over the traumatized population.

This is the story of the Torian Regime’s growth in the contentious Arcturus sector.

Never Again

 

The Torians were always seen as a threat to the Drengin because unlike the other races, Torians had no problem colonizing water worlds in large numbers.

The planet Elata, a world that had been ignored by the other powers because it is a water world makes a fine starting point for the Torian Regime.

 

The Arcean Empire are present but without a universal translator, the Torians were unable to communicate.  The Regime quickly made diplomacy a major effort.

Early exploration also showed that this region of space was rich in rare resources. Resources that would aid the Torians in re-establishing themselves as a major power.

The Torian science corp. made it their business for the Torians to catch up and with any luck surpass the other powers in the sector.

 

By early 2246, the Torian Regime had build a working relationship with the Arcean Empire.  Both had suffered at the hands of the Drengin.  While the Drengin held only contempt for the Torians, they had a grudging respect for the Arceans whose world was not fully conquered by the Drengin.

 

The Torians quickly laid claim to nearby resources

As the Torians began to scout further from their worlds they found more and more resources that were simply beyond their reach.  The Torians required considerable special, by alien standards, efforts to travel in space due to their aquatic nature.

Ultimately the decision to make a new, deep range, construction vessel to tap into the remaining unclaimed resources was given approval and the new construction ship, the Nourisher class was designed.

The Nourisher contained an aquatic pod to allow Torians to travel deeper into the sector

 

Forgivenss or Vengeance

 

Lord Kona, the only remaining military leader from the original 2178 space race alumni, has not lost any of his malice.

The Drengin presence in this sector meant only one thing: Military research.

The Torians would never allow themselves to be conquered again

 

Return of the Korx

During the early years of the space race, the mercenary Korx were a power broker.  Their dominance of the galactic economy came to an end when the Drengin exterminated them.  Using biological warfare, the Drengin commited multiple acts of genocide.  First, against the Drath Legion and second, against the Korx.

Not all of the Korx were on the home world when the Drengin attacked.   With the Drengin’s grip on the galaxy loosening, they have reappeared as keepers of the Baazaar.

The Korx, recognizing the Torians as a potential good customer, paid for their first mercenary.

Silvainout, one of the most famous pilots in the galaxy, fought heroically for the Drath Legion. With no civilization to defend, he now puts is services up for hire. Services the Torians are eager to make use of.

The other mercenary is Prince Viturian, the son of the owner of what was once the largest bank in the galaxy.

With such military geniuses, the Torians began to look towards Drengin space and revenge…

The Drengin were not that close to Torian space.  Moreover, the powerful Iridium Corporation was nearby.

To strengthen ties with the Corporation, a trade mission was sent.

 

With friendly relations with the corporate overlords of the Iridium set, it was time to begin planning how to invade the relatively weak Drengin presence in this sector.

 

Mobilization

The Torians reproduce faster than any other civilization. And while few will admit this openly, it means that Torians are a little more expendable in war.  This is one of the reasons the Torians have always favored swarms of small fighters instead of a handful of large capital ships.

The potent and deadly

 

Meanwhile, the starbase, “Vengeance I” quietly awaits the arrival of the fleet to take out the Drengin military.

 

Fire, Pain, Death

If the Torians had a human calendar, they might notice, with some irony, that the war began on January 1, 2247. 

 

 

The Drengin military on the world was much more powerful, but with any luck, the attack would take them by surprise.

It would be a very very close battle. The Mercenaries were the key.

But as good as the Mercenaries were, the Torian ships were…not so good.   Soon, only the Mercenaries remained.  The Mercenaries, however, outclassed the Drengin ships dramatically.

 

The Prince’s heavily armed ship was small but the Drengin’s weapons struggled to get through its armor.

Alone now and outgunned, the Prince accepted his fate.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

 

The Torian battle fleet was annihilated.

News of the defeat spread and the aggression of the Torians combined with their military weakness caused other races, including the Arcean Empire to declare war.

The Torians quickly sent their top negotiators to visit the Baazar in the hope of hiring new Mercenaries.  That was when the horror became clear:

 

The Korx are selling to all comers. 

Many of the Mercenaries were already hired.  This was unexpected to the Torians who had naively thought they were the only customers of the Korx.  The Korx had made them feel so special and unique.

“You are unique,” Izon the Korx said. “Just like everyone else.”

With the Krynn and Drengin bearing down on the Torians, their only hope were the mercenaries.  Thankfully, the early investment in resource gathering had paid off.

The massive capital ship, The Pursuit, was happy to accept the credits.

The Krynn quickly learned the power of The Pursuit.

Unfortunately, the Krynn had many of their Raider class destroyers to spare.   A fleet of 6 approached Elata

The massive Krynn fleet arrived with only The Pursuit as a serious threat.  If you look closely, you can see the tiny interceptors of the home guard…

The Pursuit put up an amazing fight but ultimately could not stand up to the onslaught.

Soon, the Krynn had eliminated the Torian spacefaring capability.

For the moment, it appeared the Krynn might leave the Torians alone.

Then something worse happened.

The Drengin constructed a military starbase near Torian space to extend their range.

 

In desperation, the Torians began selling ancient relics of their civilization to fund hiring more mercenaries.

The diplomats hoped there might be someone who could help.  But everyone was at war except, of course, the Iconians.

The Iconians weren’t at war and they certainly had no love for the Krynn.

With the help of the Iconians the Torians had a chance.

However, bringing so much instability to the region upset the powerful Iridium corporation. War was bad for business.

The Irium were angry with our meddling in the region but were willing to accept financial support.

However, the humans were not willing to be bought.

 

The Drengin invasion fleet

With the reinforcing of Elata, the Drengin fleet backed off. For now.

The Iridium finally make their long expected move.

 

Invaders enter the region.  The Torians had enough military to repel one attack but have 3 targets. 

 

The Last Stand

The Torians were back to their last colony in the sector.   Defenseless. Its shipyards destroyed. No money for mercenaries.  No allies to help. The Iconians hade made peace with the Krynn.

The Iconians had made peace with the Krynn and returned to their traditional neutral stance.

Unopposed, the Drengin conquest fleet arrived

Invasion

Death

Epilogue

Vengeance cuts both ways.  The Torian regime’s lust for revenge on the Drengin Empire caused it to not look closely at the relationships had established with the other powers.  While the Torians were collecting resources to hire mercenaries, the Drengin were forming friendships of trade, treaties and good will with its neighbors.  When the Torians attacked the Drengin, it destabilized the region.  The Terran Alliance stepped back, withholding its protection.  The Irridium corporation were unimpressed with the loss to their business and the Krynn Syndicate, always willing to fight for money proved to be regime’s downfall.

 

The Mercenaries of the Korx made a good showing – for all sides.  But as powerful as they are, they are only one tool of many available to civilizations to execute on their policies.  The Torians foolishly believed that the Mercenaries could be exploited to with them a war single handedly (and the person running the war didn’t realize how much the AI had improved since 1.5 but that’s a different issue). 

Galactic Civilizations III: Mercenaries is released on February 18. Visit www.galciv.com to learn more.