This month we are releasing version 4.0 along with a new DLC called Worlds in Crisis.

Designed by Derek Paxton, the creator of the Fall from Heaven Civ IV mod, Worlds in Crisis is designed to enrich the galaxy with lots of new planet types, planet traits and plenty of new planetary events to test the player’s resolve to their chosen ideology.

For today’s journal, I’m going to do a playthrough after action report (AAR).

In the 23rd century…

It is the year 2242.   United Earth has constructed an immense shipyard orbit near the asteroid field.  Its first interstellar ship, the T.A.S. discovery, newly equipped with the FTL system called “hypderive” prepares begin its mission.

Earth in 2242

Researchers are focusing on artificial gravity

Earth is constructing a massive industrial center in central Asia.

The shipyard is constructing Earth’s first colony ship.

It doesn’t take long for the discovery to encounter something unexpected.  A massive relic to a long gone civilization.  The relic appears designed to increase the consciousness of its users.  A request is sent back to Earth to send a ship to further investigate it.

A mysterious relic of some pre-cursor civilization.

The next week the Discovery makes it to Charlotte’s Star.  There, they find a world in which the virus vs. bacteria wars had a conclusion: The viruses won.  The world is absolutely sterile from a bacteria point of view.  The viruses are harmless to humans but a world without bacteria has many other issues.  This “sterile” world would be ideal for colonizing for scientific purposes even if it would be difficult to live on (colonists would be required to constantly import and take probiotics).

A Sterile world

The first colony

The TAS Destiny, Earth’s first colony ship, reaches Charlotte III.  Filled with scientists, they find a world devoid of life but otherwise, absolutely inhabitable by humans.  The planet’s rich oxygen-nitrogen seems to defy the fact that there is no bacteria on the world (which means, where did the oxygen come from?.

Scientists are dispatched to the world to begin setting up all manners of experiments. 

Meanwhile, the TAS Discovery continues to seek out a world that human colonists might actually enjoy living on.

First Contact

Later that Summer (Earth time), the Discovery encounters an alien space probe.  Communication is impossible at this stage but we are able to translate enough to determine that they call themselves the “Korath Clan”.

The leading scientists on Earth have assured us that any civilization capable of space travel will certainly be peaceful.  We expect to become great friends with these “Korath”.

Humanity’s first contact. We are confident in becoming great friends.

Morgan’s World

Sure enough the TAS Discovery found a great world for people to live on.  This world was literally built.  Built by the same strange precursor civilization that built the relics we keep finding.

An amazing world.  But not natural.

Genetically engineered beasts of burden live on the surface

With the colonization of a third planet, United Earth becomes the Terran Alliance.  Humans are now a multi-star civilization!

To help Morgan’s world, Earth sends a massive supply ship with equipment to help speed up its growth.

Galactic Resources

Our scientific endeavors were making it clear that many of the new technologies we needed would require exotic resources.  At first, this caused a great deal of consternation because it was thought that these resources would require super-colliders to produce.  However, the four key types of resources we would need were beginning to be found naturally (even if they were still extremely rare).

Promethion comes from failed stars.  These massive gas giants almost became stars but the fusion reaction stopped almost immediately.  Promethion stars were only theoretically considered until we actually found a star with two of them.  Only trace amounts of the exotic material exist on these star/worlds but it is sufficient for our efforts.

Thulium was another theoretical exotic material that came from failed stars.  Instead of becoming gas giants like Promethion, they instead became hyper-dense dwarf planets.  The hyper dense material is extremely useful in many applications.

Anti-matter is long well understood.  However, finding it outside a lab is challenging.  However, a small dwarf blackhole near Aturus has two microscopic sources of it.

Elerium is the last and exists near nebula. Elerium is an energy whose natural state is a plasma.   Controlling these resources will be necessary to continue our technological advancement.

Promethion being harvested near Athena (previously Sir-19c)

After a year of exploration and colonization, we have encountered more civilizations.  These civilizations have begun effectively claiming these resources.  Given their rarity and importance, we are hopeful that we can trade for them if necessary.

Trade & Diplomacy

With the invention of the universal translator, diplomacy and trade are now possible.

We’ll give you stuff…for money

Thus far, we have met four other civilizations.

A peaceful place

As expected, any civilization capable of interstellar travel has to be peace loving. Right?  The goal of the Terran Alliance is to create a United Planets – a permanent interstellar alliance.  Only time will tell how successful this endeavor will be.

Part of the strategy to accomplish that is top open the galaxy to trade and our rich culture.

The Galaxy is more dangerous than we thought

The cute Mowlings are attacking the Trandals.  How is this possible? War is an artifact of the past. 

We can’t help. We don’t even have a single armed ship.

This event caused the Terran Alliance to begin considering the possibility that it should probably have some sort of defense forces. 

With nine colonies, the Terran Alliance didn’t possess a single ship with so much as a missile on it.

The Mowlings are not very reassuring

Nevertheless, Earth has little infrastructure in place to even consider building some sort of “space navy”.  The very idea of having ships fight in space seems like something out of science fiction. 

Protests on Earth begin as people demand we not emulate “Star Wars”.

Nevertheless, it is decided we will construct a war ship.  Besides “space rockets” we have the ancient singularity cannon we found on Morgan’s World.   Hopefully a single, heavily armed, ship will be enough of a deterrent. 

The Deterrent class destroyer. Armed with the Precursor Singularity weapon found on Morgan’s world.

We also agree to provide defensive systems to the Trandals.

Rise of the Republic

The planet Koinzell III has been dealing with mutations from Precursor nanites.

What should we do?

Most of the mutations are actually beneficial. But not all.  Because of the growing fear of falling behind technologically, it is decided that we will need to be…pragmatic in how we deal with the situation.

The crisis also forces Earth to confront the fact that the colonies are starting to become large enough that they want a more equal voice in government rather than being simply run by Earth appointed governors.

The Terran Alliance becomes an interstellar Republic

Meanwhile, Konzell III has its crisis resolved.  It is also given a new name – Mutania (don’t judge me!)

The Great Space Coaster

The lengthy construction of the TAS Deterrent was complete.  Its completion demonstrated a major problem with the strategy of the Terran Alliance -- time.  Six weeks to travel between star systems would make it worthless in being able to respond to any threat.  This resulted in the project known as “The Great Space Coaster”.

TAS Deterrent on the way to Earth from Morgan’s World

Specifically, the construction of a series of hypergates – massive gates that would create a near void between them that would increase the efficiency of Hyperdrive.

These hypergates are incredibly large

The project took almost three years to complete.

When completed, it created a highway between Morgan’s World, Earth, and Einstein (previously Charlotte).

Mutania was cut off from the hypergate system still. Worse, it was being culturally encroached on by the Trandals.

Trandal influence was beginning to dominate our far off colonies.

However, we had an ace in our sleeve.  When Mars was colonized, we found an ancient artifact known as the Echoing Heartstone.  The effect is that it greatly increases the transmissions of a target world which greatly spreads its influence.

This ancient artifact will allow us to increase the influence of Mutania.

Shortly after using it, the Trandal colony was already wanting to join the amazing, culturally exciting, Terran Alliance.

Meanwhile, to help police the the trade occurring between colonies, the Terran Alliance finally, reluctantly agreed to a “Constable force.  Each planet would be allowed to have a single, 12 x 11 meter ship.

It has…a laser beam.

You can almost see the slight bump in military might. 

The Constables were strictly for law enforcement.  The backbone of the Terran Alliance military remained its single “Deterrence” destroyer.

Meerkat Rising

Meanwhile, observers on Delta Glaldius, homeworld of the Trandals, continue to report on the destruction of the Trandal civilization.  Once a multi-star civilization, it has been reduced to fighting in its home star system where its last armed ship has been destroyed.

The Trandals are about to be destroyed by the Mowlings.

The warm relationship the humans have with the Mowlings made many believe that there was no need to build up a military.  Hopefully, this would prove to be a wise decision.  Instead, the humans focused on building their diplomatic corp.  The dream of a united galaxy built on mutual respect remained the focus.

With the Trandals on their knees, the Mowlings look at the Drath

The Mowlings expect our support…and we find we must give it to them.

The Shock came from an unexpected area

Needless to say, no one on Earth expected the peace loving Korath Clan to be the ones who would declare war on us.  What we did to offend them we’ll never know.

Is this the face of an evil civilization?

The TAS Deterrent would need to be sent out.  In the meantime, Earth’s engineering had not been idle even if its weapon program was non-existent.

Yorktown class.

Equipped mostly with reverse engineered mass-drivers from the Precursor tech, it was not a powerful ship in terms of weapons and defenses.  But it was big and it could take a beating.

Meanwhile, the Deterrent was being deployed to Korath space.  Perhaps a  show of force would make them rethinnk their attitude.

TAS Deterrent in 22244

An imperfect alliance?

Looking at the Terran Alliance in 2244 reveals a complex situation.

We are friendly with 4 of the 5 other powers.

Our economy has been heavily boosted by trade and tourism and we maintain a healthy tax rate of only 25%.

Morgan’s World is the jewel of our civilization (though it needs more cities)

The TAS Hornet heads to Einsten to protect the sector.

Our area of space is well populated

We control the blue area.  The Drath are the orange-ish.  The Mowlings ae the red.

The Mowlings are war like but we now have a non-aggression pact with them.

The goal now was to create a partial universal alliance.  The Korath would not be a part of that.

The Korath’s equivalent to the Constable class is no match for the Deterrent Class.

The TAS Detrerrent punishes the Korath

The Trandals are gone

And the TAS Deterrent visits the homeworld of the Korath

While it only has the single Precursor weapon we found, its flak cannons are home-grown and sufficient to block the opening barrages of the Korath.

By contrast, the Deterrent’s Precursor Singularity driver delivers 15 megajoules of damage every strike making short work of the Korath destroyer.

The Deterrence annihilates the Korath space navy.  While much larger in number, they are no match for the Deterrence.

The challenge with uniting everyone is that the Drath are at war with everyone.  We have close relations with the Drath and friendly relations with the Altarians and the Mowlings.

The Ascension Dilemma

One way or another, the universe was going to change soon.  The Altarians had collected 9 Precursor ascension crystals.  Our scientists believe that this Precursor civilization “ascended” to a higher level of existence and built these devices to do the same.  The problem for us is, what would the ascended Altarians do to everyone left?  We either needed to ally with everyone or destroy the Altarians or accept our diminished role as a species.

The Altarians are about to ascend!

What we need to is to ally with everyone.  This would mean that we needed to push pressure on the Korath.

The Korath surrender

The Surrender ceremony is held on Kora with the Deterrence in orbit.

The Last Alliance

So as 2245 nears, Earth faces a real challenge:

1. It has an alliance with the Altarians.  However, they will ascend in a couple of years.
2. It has good relations with the Drath and the Mowlings but not close enough to ally and they are at war with each other which the Mowlings are slowly losing.
3. The Mowlings and Drath don’t fully trust us because we are friends with both.

If one of them were destroyed, this would remove the barrier for alliance.  However, will that happen before the Altarians ascend?

The TAS’s fledgling space navy consisting of Enterprise, Yorktown, Wasp, Hornet and of course Deterrence could be given to the Drath which would help them finish off the Mowlings.  However, doing so would leave us defenseless.

The Mowlings ultimately surrender to the Drath but in the surrender they make the Terran Alliance their inheritors.

We are now the proud owners of Moop.

With any luck we can ally with the Drath and end this before our alliance with the Altarians forces us to go to war with the Drath.

Just in time

The key was investing so many diplomats to the Drath but it was enough!

And so an a permanent alliance of the 3 major powers would usher a new era of peace.

In time, the United Planets would integrate more fully with each of the species becoming specialists according to their natural gifts.  Other galaxies would now be open to exploring.