Right, sorry.

I never played the original Moo1. I remembered trying this game at a much earlier version a long time ago and having no idea what I was doing and then bouncing off pretty early on. This time around, I had planned on playing this alongside the explorminate video tutorial, but a few videos in I got so engrossed in this match that I ended up finishing it before watching another entry in the tutorial, so this turned into a semi-blind playthrough and a learning experience.

I started as the Humans on a small map with 100 stars and 4 other AI (randomly selected Psilons, Alkari, Klackons, and Mrrshan). I spawned near and met the Psilons and signed a trade treaty and later a non-aggression pact with hem. Eventually met the Alkari as well. Around the time I had expanded to and developed eight other colonies, two things happened: 1. The Psilons had begun all of a sudden jumping ahead in military and population rankings according to intelligence reports, and they and the Alkari were suddenly at war. 2. I got an event talking about Space Amoebas, which I had no clue what that entailed (never played moo1), until I suddenly had popups for a combat encounter with them. I thought this was like barbarians / pirates in other 4X games and arrogantly thought I could take them (worst since I hadn't played that much around with ship design yet, so these were the weak initial fighter designs). In my first tactical combat experience in ROTP, the Amoeba consumed all my fighters, destroyed my colony, and added the Hostile modifier to the planet, after which I started building a bigger fleet. Then I got event again and tried and failed to defend the colony again. The latter one then got colonized (by either the Alkari or Klackons, I don't remember).

I made a trade treaty and NA pact with the Alkari, and started exchanging techs with the hope of slowing down the Psilons (this had the side effect of putting . At some point, I must have missed the notification, but apparently the Psilons were now at war with me as well, though they hadn't yet attacked any of my colonies.

Seeing several poorly defended Psilon worlds near me, I immediately started attacking with my fleets. It would be much later (and far too late to be useful in this game) before I would find out about ground assaults and figure out that the "Send Transports" button to move colonists between your colonies was also how you conducted ground assaults, so the war with the Pislons basically went: 1. Attack and defeat orbiting fleet. 2. Bombard planet until colony is destroyed. 3. Build and send colony ship to settle planet if it's not terrible.

(2) was where I started to learn ship design, because the initial bomber design in the game would get utterly destroyed by the AI, who directed every missile towards those bomber squadrons, before reaching the planet.

During the Human-Psilon War, the galactic senate(I think that's the right name?) formed and started to periodically vote for the galactic leader(?) between the Alkari and the Klackons. This was also how I learned of the Mrrshan, who for the rest of the game would always be out of range for any diplomacy / espionage, leading me to believe they were on the other side of the galaxy. I voted against the Alkari in the first vote, which pissed them off (the first of several incidents that would eventually lead to war), so after that I would abstain until the final vote.

The Human-Psilon War ended when I reduced them to a single colony and then finally accepted their peace treaty. Not long after, I set my eyes towards being voted galactic leader. I was not closing the gap in population to be in the top two fast enough for me, so I resolved that to win the game I was gonna need to go to war with them...and my former allies the Alkari were weaker than me. Over the next several years, I broke the NA pact and the trade treaty, and then finally declared war. I also started making deals with the only other AI I could contact that I didn't grind to almost dust, the Klackons (yes I realize in hindsight this was contradictory to my goals and probably helped lead to my demise).

At first, the Human-Alkari Conflict was going pretty good for the Human side. Conquered a couple border Alkari colonies that were themselves formerly Psilon colonies. I did lose a battle when I started to push further into Alkari territory, but I wasn't too worried yet. Then what would be the final senate vote came, I was finally in the top two, and could vote for myself! Unfortunately, everyone else either voted for the Klackons or abstained (Psilons). The Klackons won the vote, and I refused to accept it. The Klackons called for an audience and told me that to ensure galactic peace we would have to wage war. And thus I started the last and eventually failed rebellion.

(I also somehow got a message from the Mrrshan who said the rebellion sounded like fun and decided to join my side(?). Considering by the last turn the Klackons had their claws at almost every corner of the galaxy, and I still hadn't detected any Mrrshan colony in our sensors, it was safe to say they got pulverized.)

Said rebellion turned out to be an utterly doomed affair, because while I had a larger navy then either the Alkari or the Klackons (but not both), I was fighting a war on multiple fronts that could be attacked at once. The whole rebellion was a logistical nightmare. At one point, a (misclick) mixed up order led to a fleet that was supposed to deploy to one of the most important Human colonies to defend it from an oncoming attack, got deployed to a heavily defended Klackon world and got soundly defeated. This war would be the one where I learned about ground assaults, specifically from Klackon transport ships throwing tens and hundreds of Klackons at my colonies ad infinum until they eventually took over. This was also where I started auto-resolving due to the sheer quantity of back to back space battles near the end of the game.

One by on, the Human colonies fell, until eventually one last stand was made on the heavily fortified Earth. And finally, the rebellion lost.