Looking toward the future

So yellow is pretty much kaput. He's got a handful of stars left which I think will be snatched up by light green and red. My fleets are pretty beat up after the giant attack and are taking a while to reinforce from my inner stars. Dark blue has a single fleet left without any stars and is heading to one of my stars where he's going to be met with a resistance enough to wipe him off the game board. To be fair, they were his to start with - I decided mid way through my yellow attack to grab 3 dark blue stars!

So this is another of those periods where it's all about tactics and deliberation.

I've had some interesting messages in the past 24 hours. People are getting nervous about Pink's reign of terror. I am too. His science is very advanced and if he were to cut us off (which I think he's gearing up to do), he'd race into the lead with weapon strength, which is arguably the most important technology at this stage in the game.

Pink came through with the techs he was holding back. I think I know why he was hesitant for a while. It may have been something to do with me suppling the AI player with weapon strength, received from Pink of all people! lol! It was a bit underhanded of me but I decided that it would be untraced and would help to slow down Pink's march. I have no idea what Pink was "verifying" but whatever it was, he decided to continue with the trade anyway. Let's hope he doesn't read this blog - this game makes me paranoid!

If you look at the map, there are really only three contenders at this stage of the game. Pink, light green and myself. Red has been a great little puppy dog companion for me this game and I think he knew from the start he had no chance. He's told me himself, he's been looking to grab a second or third place and the way he's going to achieve that is to stick with one of the big guns. It really didn't make a lot of sense for him to attack me, he'd probably be signing his own death warrant as I'd have no reason to keep him with me after that. My rate of growth has been consistently higher than his and he knew that.

Do I really want to get into a turf war with light green? I think we'd be at each other's throats, throwing resources at each other while Pink had free range in the galaxy. I think we both need to set our sights southwards. But first, I have light blue to contend with. I'd best start moving my fleets.