Well, here's what happened to me. The Altarians were in first place and I had climbed (over the broken bodies of Yor and minor races) to second. So of course they declared war on me. I didn't have a big navy but I had been researching the pieces for a great new design (prototype missile + Harpoon, prototype elerium beam, 1 of each defense and two Ion engines on a sesame seed - um, on a medium hull). They were already at war with the Krynn (WWI-style meatgrinder) so I traded some techs and brought the Thalans in too, cranked up the industrial machine and set it to build twenty frigates (medium hull; I had lots of elerium and anti-matter) plus lots of a standard destroyer design (small hull).
I finished off the Yor and continued through that space to a group of three Altarian planets in two systems. Took the first single planet then waited for my transports to come up. While my sensor barge (I call them Sensor PLATforms - SPLATs - because that's what they do if you shoot at them) was crawling forward the sneaky AI came through the zone I couldn't see into, retook the planet and dropped garrison ships on all three. Then he built a new shipyard just out of my range and blew up the mining starbase that let me get to the first system. Cue screams of rage and disbelief.
Grrrrrrrrr. Long wait while I bring up more warships, more transports, constructors to rebuild the mining base. Then, once I had what I needed - and my SPLAT had come up so I could see - I rolled over all three.
I did notice the AI counter-invading (though not enough), making fleets of 4 or 5 large hulls, and using enough engines to get his big ships up to a speed of 9. I hadn't realized how much I was depending on the AI to only move at a speed of 3 while I moved at 10...
So well played, electronic admiral; well played. I did take you down in the end (took 5 planets and he accepted a peace deal) but you kept me snarled up for a long time with very small forces of your own, and 'playing for time' is a very human thing to do.
