As Confused states, Andromeda did start out violently. Fairly early (turn 3?) TPWSNBN (The Power Who Shall Not Be Named) suffered an attack by Punks. This messed up my opening strategy substantially, as I'm a builder and prefer to avoid wars as long as possible.
Luckily for me, very shortly thereafter, Punks went into Civil Disorder (and changed their name to PeaceMakers too). I of course didn't entirely realize this and thus wasted a lot of time building defenses and planning to expand elsewhere, rather than on acquiring Punks' space. This would come back to haunt me later.
The initial expansion wave left Confused to my east, Dragons to my SE, theCatHouse (nee aAa) to my south, Quickmire to my SW, Punks to my west, JungleBrothers to my NW, and Nojd to my north.
The Vladolators were too far away for me to really worry about, but my extensive probing had turned up some of their actions and garnered me a layout of the land. I thus contributed knowledge but no ships to the war. Still, it got me some points with both Confused and theCatHouse; both of whom I had good relations with.
By the early 20's, I was running short of growing room. Figuring that PeaceMakers were still active, I started preparing for Operation George (a pun on the George of the Jungle cartoons of my childhood)- the invasion of JungleBrothers who I was certain were inactive at this point in time. Operation George was a massive undertaking for me, as the distances from my core to his border were 2-3 turns, and core to core closer to 5. None the less, I wasn't going to turn down 30 systems free for the taking. Several turns of custom ship building and movement put me in place to take out JungleBrothers. Since they were running on automatic pilot, my losses in this war were minimal (probes, flak).
As operation George wound down, I realized that PeaceMakers were in fact inactive. Thus began Operation Flyswatter. Due to a longer period to build, and some better luck as to what they were building when they dropped, PeaceMakers were a lot harder to take out than JungleBrothers. I thus enlisted both Confused to help with their western systems and theCatHouse to pick off a few in the south since they needed the room.
When turn 32's invasion of theCatHouse by the Nojd/Confused/Dragons alliance happened, I was completely unprepared, other than having named my hypothetical invasions of them (Nojd being ?, Confused being "Enlightenment", and Dragons being "DragonSlayer"). By and large, I tried to stay out of active involvement in the war (a three on one isn't winable by the one). This isn't to say I didn't help one side or the other somewhat- Confused had some data from me where my systems were (although recent acquisitions in the former Quickmire area were often hit by them, destroying the defenses and some of my cargo ships unlucky enough to get into the way) and could thus figure out one of theCatHouse's borders. theCatHouse and I shared some data, and I decided that with Shadow and theCatHouse fighting, a three on three was feasible (I had no relations with Nojd, and minimal ones with Dragons, so I felt if I made it a four on two (by joining Confused and company), I was going to be the next three on one dog pile recipient).
This was of course the final mistake that lead to my downfall- Confused had err, confused, me enough to think that they were not a very experienced player. I felt that two known veterans (albeit two that had never won a Blind game) and an unknown could take on a newbie and two unknowns.
Nope. Thanks for playing. I ended up with a three veteran on three veteran war, with the Confused/Dragons/Nojd coalition one having the more experienced (based upon Hall of Fame points) group.
Anyway, theCatHouse staged most of his remaining forces to the 1300 world that Confused and I had agreed was mine (nothing like a handful of colonists to do the job), and I churned out what I could by way of warships in secret (offers to Confused to allow them to moniter the 1300 world had been declined several times).
Operation Enlightenment did have some success against Confused, mainly because I had a good idea of the size of many of their systems (far better than Dragons or Nojd), and via various means had confirmed eight homeworlds (mine, Shadoe, JungleBrothers, theCatHouse, Dragons, Vladolators, Kryst, and Punks), was able to guess the locations of StarEaters and Quickmire from probings of the area I'd done before but not analyized, and brute force number crunched the locations four of rest (I was misinformed on EmeraldKnights, miscomputed Confused and Chess, and totally in the dark on Nojd). This enabled me to pick off Confused's major systems while attacking other systems with smaller forces.
Dragons' did take some losses, but if memory serves, Confused took twice the losses that Dragons did. The first few turns I did pretty well. Then Shadoe's inactivity (I think they realized they had lost and quit), and my being out teched and out industried took its toll. Had Shadoe kept playing, things may have turned out a bit better, as my razing of Confused might have convinced them to agree to a cease fire.
Confused did get a major shock when my homeworld locator pointed to a system which was in fact substantially larger. Kind of embarrassing to do that, particularly since I never did figure out Confused's homeworld as a result.
My major world did take out at least one major Confused/Nojd/Dragons counter attack force, and I think a second one as well.
None the less, by turn 45 or so, I was effectively out of the game. I did manage to hang on a few turns longer, and be the last man down.
-- The Power Who Still Won't Be Named.
September 10, 1999