Ah, Galactic Civilizations: an epic 4X game with some of the best AI characters ever made. A game I had played for hours just to win once.

And, of course, the starship editor...

Eh, I'm getting sidetracked. Need to get back to the beginning of my adventures in the Gal Cov universe. That one was really fun.

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Alright, so what do I know about this universe?

Well, for starters, a long time ago, a war took place between two great Civilizations: the Arbor and the Dread Lords. Both sides vanished for some mysterious reason (the Dread Lords were sealed away by the Arnor, who then went into exile), leaving behind their technology. The younger races quickly started to expand to fill the power vacuum, but they were limited to traveling between planets using the star gates (why nobody sued Stardock for copyright infringement was beyond me), so the cosmos were rather small for a long time. The gates' inefficiencies also meant that the local evil aliens, the Drengin, had to plan put conquests literally millennia in advance, which ended up making them very pragmatic. Overall, things were peaceful...for a given value of peace.

Then humans showed up.

See, an alien race called the Arceans gave humans a star gate, one which couldn't be turned off, presumably so that they could invade Earth. Instead of turning it on, though, mankind reverse engineered the gate and combined it with fusion technology to create hyperdrive, which rendered the star gates obsolete. Mankind then eliminated any superiority this technology would give them by giving out the hyperdrive design to everyone, and settled for becoming the univere's best diplomats.

Yeah, that all seems about right. So what to do now?

Well, first off, I need to see if the Drengin ended up letting the Dread Lords out of the pocket dimension, which was a big plot point of the second game. If so, I prepare for war, if not, stop the Drengin from letting them out in the first place.

If the Dread Lords have gotten out, I'll also need to check if the Terran Alliance had succeeded in uniting everybody could be considered good to face the Dread Lords. In canon, that actually worked, but then the Drengin cheap shorted said alliance and ruined everything. Hopefully, I could stop that.

Also, I'd probably need to start convincing some of my creations to move onto the planets I was setting up shop on in this universe- the local AI faction, the Yor Collective, were subservient to the Dread Lords, and were one of the setting's 'evil' factions. Said Dread Lords had ordered the Yor to genocide the Dread Lords' former servants, the Iconians, who were still one of the major powers in this universe, so it would probably be best if I avoided associating myself with the Yor or showing any real similarities to them. At least for now.

Of course, first, I actually needed to see what happened so far in this universe before I could act.

Fortunately, I already had access to part of the Terrans network, thank to my hacking of the colony ship, so full scale access wouldn't be a problem. Now let's get to work!

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...

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...Done!

So, let's see what's happened so far... Okay, the Dread Lords have already escaped from their can, the Drengin are fortifying their territories (and readying a fleet to screw over the good guys, in all likelihood), and it looks like the Terrans just finished managing to unite all of the 'good' factions; that is, themselves, the Arcean Empire, the Iconian Refuge, the Torian Federation, the Altarian Republic, the Thalan Contigency,...the Drath? Huh, well, that was unexpected. Who else did they get in their alliance?

...They got the Slyne and Onyx hive to join them? Those guys didn't even show up until Gal Civ 3! Oh, and apparently the Iridium Corporation is already a big thing. Better start planning for those oddities.

... How the HELL did they get the Xendar to team up with them?!

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Yeah, there were a lot of unexpected curveballs in this universe.

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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!