Stellaris: Tale of the Sol Dominion

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

From: Science Officer Alison Gray, Pallena Research Division
To: Assembly Chief Speaker Zharkov Vasilievich

Speaker,

You recall report JX-479XWQ-13 from last year concerning unexplained tremors and small quakes on some of the continents of Solaria? Well, I believe we have uncovered the source. It would appear that several islands and a portion of one underwater continent which is mysteriously not wet and has breathable air (despite being underwater, yes) are inhabited by a species of mysterious creatures. Little is known about them but they appear to be very mentally primitive - even more so than most xenos - and it would not take much effort to convert them into servants for our armies.

I leave this decision in your hands. Please inform me of how to proceed. As I see it, we have three choices. First, we can simply attempt to avoid interactions with them. The quakes do not appear to be doing any real damage and seem to just be a bit annoying to the colonists so there is no danger to simply leaving them be. Second, we can attempt to enslave this species. I do not recommend this approach as their extreme strength is likely to make them quite difficult to control.

Finally, there is the option of attempting to negotiate with them and try to acquire this species as soldiers for our armed forces.

I have attached what information we do have. Please forward your recommendation to me as soon as you are able.

Alison Gray

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

From: Assembly Chief Speaker Zharkov Vasilievich
To: Science Officer Alison Gray, Pallena Research Division

Officer Gray,

You are clear to proceed with the Shock Troop initiative. But please try and make the xenos believe they will be "valued members of the Sol Dominion's glorious armed forces". Whether it is true or not is irrelevant.

Chief Speaker Vasilievich

 

[stnylan]

I am not surprised by the Dominion seeking to make military use of hte titans - but I am slightly surprised they choose the less violent option when dealing with the forests.

 

[Nikolai]

The Dominion is strong, but seems to be on clay feet - careful movement is required.

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

Tale of the Sol Dominion

Chapter Twenty-Four: "Liberating" the Technocracy

The Dominion-Technocracy War: 2430 to 2434

In 2430, the Dominion's fleets and armies were, once more, prepared for war. Dominion intelligence believed that the Triech Technocracy's fleet was of limited strength and could be easily overwhelmed in the face of the obviously superior Dominion navy. Intelligence on the enemy's garrison forces was more sketchy, however, and the Dominion had only been able to determine that the main enemy ground strength was concentrated in the Esmyke System.

On the 12th of January 2430, the Sol Dominion declared war on the Triech Technocracy. The "official" reason for the war declaration was to take possession of a series of starbases along the Dominion-Technocracy border that were regularly used by pirates to launch raids into Dominion territory.

But no one was fooled. Almost the entire galaxy knew that this was merely a thinly veiled excuse for the Dominion to take advantage of a weak neighbor and annex more territory.

The Dominion wasted no time, immediately going on the offensive against their adversary. Against most foes, the Technocracy would have struggled but against the advanced and modern warships of the Dominion, their chances were laughable. Technocracy fleets practically melted. Battle after battle was won without a single Dominion ship being lost.

Eventually, attrition crept up and a handful of ships would be lost but their overall casualties were militarily and politically irrelevant.

The Technocracy even became so desperate that they were forced to employ a mercenary fleet from the Marauders. Not that it did them much good. A mere six months after the war had begun, the bulk of the enemy fleet had been destroyed and the Dominion only had to mop up what remained.

Over the next three and a half years, the Dominion's Spartan Legions swept across their enemy's worlds, securing planet after planet.

Across two fronts, the Technocracy found themselves facing the same terror that the Humans of Gallipoli had before them: the genetically engineered super soldiers of the Sol Dominion. Yet, unlike the people of Gallipoli, they could not mobilize the entire population to resist this invasion and planet after planet was occupied as the Dominion swept aside the defending forces.

It was only in the Esmyke system that the Dominion was truly held up. The site of the last major battle against the Technocracy-Khanate Alliance during the last war against them, the system's occupation had been what broke the Khan back in 2400. The Technocracy had clearly learned from that defeat as they had spent no small effort in fortifying the system's two colonies with shielded military complexes equipped with energy shielding to repel orbital bombardment, massive tunnel networks that ran under the surface of the planets and a gigantic fortress built into a mountainside with a single rickety bridge running across the only approach.

Against a conventional army, it would have been impregnable but against the Dominion's genetically engineered legions, it only took two months of concentrated orbital bombardment to weaken the garrison enough to take the two colonies.

But once the Esmyke system fell, the Technocracy became desperate. They knew that as things were, it would not be long until the Dominion emerged victorious and stripped them of almost half their territory and so they decided to gamble on a final strike to do as much damage as possible and retake the Esmyke system. They failed.

And the Triech Technocracy did not just fail. They failed so horribly that almost every last ship that remained in their fleet was destroyed in that single battle.

With their fleet in ruins, over half their territory occupied and the onset of the worst economic depression in their empire's history, the Triech Technocracy had no choice but to sue for peace, surrendering half their territory and nearly 1/3 of their population to the Dominion. It was the beginning of the end for the Triech Technocracy. This was was the last time they could have risen to prominence. From here on, they were doomed to a future of irrelevence and eventual destruction as an interstellar power.

With the end of the war, the Dominion had obtained several vital star systems from the Technocracy. But, more importantly, they had crippled a hated enemy forever.

Above: Dominion Territorial Gains

But with this victory, the Dominion moved ever closer to their ultimate goal. Earth would soon be within reach. And all they had to do to reach it was destroy a few more insignificant xeno empires.

Yellow: Neutral, Red: Hostile

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

 

[stnylan]

Indeed. No more real obstacles as such - merely more a matter of completing the proper paperwork and seeing the directives thus issued properly enforcement.

 

[Vlad_Dracul1989]

Time to liberate the Earth and unify the Mankind once and for all!

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

Once I reach them, certainly. There are still one or two empires between me and the Alliance so it'll be a bit. Also (and this is poorly represented in the images), rather ironically, Earth itself has seceded from the Alliance and become an independent empire. Clearly, they agree that this "Democracy" is a weak and ineffective way to run an empire.

 

[Vlad_Dracul1989]

Slaves of deranged Liberty no more. Will you move your capital to Holy Terra afterwards?

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

Tale of the Sol Dominion

Chapter Twenty-Four: Fall of the Akkano

The Akkano Wars: 2434 to 2444

With the capitulation of the Technocracy, the Dominion was now able to turn its attention to more local affairs. The Akkano Alliance had remained in existence for decades despite being pushed back to a handful of colonies by the Dominion's previous conflict with them.

Then, in early 2430, one of the Akkano's two remaining planets revolted. Protests over the government's heavy-handed approach, excessively high taxes and resentment from being governed by a distant senate on a faraway world finally boiled over into open rebellion. When the dust settled, the Alliance's only colony had slipped from their grasp, forming the Akkano League. Ironically, these rebels would have been better off remaining under the Akkano Alliance. As it was, neither empire would last 30 years.

Claiming the region was theirs by right, the Dominion declared war and invaded.

All of the Dominion's wars had lasted for years. The wars against the Akkano would last months. A brief naval engagement in the Akkano capital ended when their fleet was swept aside after a brief skirmish.

Of the two planetary invasions, only Rillis was of any note. This was the invasion conducted by the Dominion's standard and unaugmented forces and casualties proved to be quite extreme. Nearly one in three of all the forces deployed in that invasion for lost. It was another nail in the coffin of deploying normal humans in the Dominion army. After this war, nearly all unaugmented forces were phased out of the planetary invasion forces and relegated to anti-partisan duty across the empire.

The invasion of the Akkano capital, on the other hand, was almost irrelevant. It was over in less than a week, becoming the shortest planetary invasion in Dominion history as well as a mere footnote in that history.

With every inch of their territory occupied, the Akkano Alliance ceased to exist as the Dominion absorbed their territory. In an instant, one of the Dominion's oldest foes had vanished from the map.

Now that the Akkano Alliance had been subdued, only the rebel splinter state of the Akkano League remained. It would not remain for long. It was not even a month later and the Dominion was back on the attack. Within days, they had shattered what little military strength the League possessed.

Once the Dominion's legions made planetfall, the massive gulf between the League garrison and the Dominion's genetically engineered super soldiers became painfully clear. The entire invasion would take less than a week to conclude. By its end, nearly 20 million League soldiers had been killed. Dominion casualties were less than 2,000.

With that, the last remnants of the Akkano came to an end as the League surrendered unconditionally.

But the recent war with the Technocracy had led the Dominion leadership to a most painful conclusion. The ISS Ravensburg had long served as the flagship of the Dominion Fleet but now it was practically obsolete. Its weapons were outdated and weak, the defense system was outstripped by even the most basic destroyers and the justifications for maintaining such an ancient vessel as an active part of the navy were fading by the day.

And so, a decision was made to take the Ravensburg out of service. It would be removed from the fleet and stripped of its weapon systems. The ship would then be transported to New Terra and anchored in orbit where it would serve as a floating museum: a monument to the glory and greatness of the Dominion's past.

As the ship prepared to depart, the atmosphere was a somber one as the fleet and crew said goodbye to a ship that had served in more wars and destroyed more enemies of the Dominion than half the human population of the Dominion.

With the discovery of a number of advanced genetic engineering technologies, the Dominion began looking into ways to modify the genetic code of the various Dominion species across the Empire. It was decided to test the program on one of the Dominion's slave species before allowing it to be utilized against humans. The Tebazoids had started to become an annoyance across several core worlds. Organized protests, slaves vanishing from their assigned areas and even minor revolts had been reported across several colonies. They would be the subject of the first test.

How the Dominion managed to modify every Tebazoid in the empire in only 8 months is not known. What is known is that their genetic code was altered in such a way that it stripped them of their ability to protest or act without an overseers say-so. The Tebazoids are now little more than tools for humanity to use. Even more so than they were before.

With the success of that project confirmed, the next species to be modified was humanity. The galaxy's superior species was now to become even more superior. Our strength, our reaction time, our intelligence, even our psychological desire to utilize resources we did not need were all modified to make a superior human species.

But, in the midst of this golden age of genetic purity came news of a darker nature. The inhabitants of Tridentium, a distant and freezing colony world, had been experimenting with illegal genetic modifications to try and overcome their physical reactions to the environment. Unfortunately, the modifications appear to be highly unstable and the mental state of the modified portion of the population is highly suspect.

As the campaign against the Akkano ended, news from a foreign sector of space was reported. The Najklax Star State, an isolationist empire that had long since cut all ties to the galaxy had seemingly ceased to exist. Information was quite hard to come by but it seemed that a civil war between different factions of the Najklax royal family had turned deadly. The current working theory is that this civil war led to an exchange of planetside nuclear weapons on the majority of their colonies which led to the collapse of the Star State. All we know for sure is that the vast majority of the space formerly inhabited by that empire is now unclaimed and a small number of one system powers now exist in former Najklax territory.

With the destruction of yet more failing states, the Dominion stands ascendant. Next, the Triech Technocracy must be destroyed. They were weakened during the previous conflict but the time will soon come to finish them for good.

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

Note: The rest of the tradition trees are basically irrelevant for anything outside of unlocking Ascension Perks so I won't be showing anything but those Perks from here on.

 

[Nikolai]

Nerve stapling, eh? Nasty stuff. I always think of the drones in SMAC when I hear the term.

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

Tale of the Sol Dominion

Chapter Twenty-Five: Destroying the Technocracy

The Second Dominion-Technocracy War: 2444 to 2454

After a brief period of peace, the Dominion was back on the warpath once again. The threat of the Triech Technocracy had to be removed for good.

Before, the Dominion had taken care to appear to merely be aggressively defending their borders. This time, they didn't even both to present the illusion of a defensive attack. The Dominion simply declared war with the overt goal of conquering their enemy and began to invade.

Within months, the Dominion had caught the enemy fleet with its pants down. They had been attempting to conquer a series of unguarded Dominion star systems along a distant approach when the Dominion 3rd and 5th fleets caught them. The battle that followed was nothing short of a slaughter. By the time it ended, the entire Technocracy fleet (excluding six corvettes and a single cruiser) had been destroyed.

With the enemy fleet destroyed, the Dominion could now occupy the enemy worlds with ease. Or so they thought. It was quickly discovered that the Technocracy had heavily fortified each and every single planet left under their control so heavily that even the Dominion's genetically superior legions would struggle to break through their defenses. In order to soften up the defenses of most of these worlds, it proved necessary to literally flatten the planets from orbit. As a result, a war that had been estimated to take a few months at most ended up lasting for nearly ten years.

During the war, the Archon was heavily criticized by both the public and a significant portion of the armed forces for not taking the Technocracy seriously enough, diverting two fleets back to their peacetime stations once the enemy fleet was wiped out and reducing the border garrison on several fronts. As a result, during the election for a new Archon, he was unanimously defeated.

The ex-Archon was replaced by Admiral Meng He, the commander of the Dominion 1st Fleet and the officer responsible for the destruction of the Technocracy fleet rampaging through several fringe systems during the early years of the war.

But despite the defenses, failed guerilla warfare on multiple worlds, massive tunnel networks and heavily fortified and isolated strongholds, the Triech Technocracy's remaining colonies were eventually forced to surrender.

By 2454, the Dominion had occupied all but a few irrelevant fringe systems and the Technocracy was powerless to resist. Their total annexation soon followed with units of the notorious "Xeno Restriction Force" deployed across the newly conquered territories along with a number of planetary garrison forces to ensure these new worlds stayed properly compliant.

With the fall of the Triech Technocracy, the Sol Dominion's power was now even more unquestionable than it had been before. They were unquestionably the greatest power in the galaxy and none but the so-called "Fallen Empires" could even come close to matching the Dominion's unparalleled strength. Even if every single other galactic power apart from the Fallen Empires were to band together against the Dominion, it is unlikely they would prevail. The only thing left for the galaxy's greatest nation to do was reduce the rest of them to rubble and claim their world for humanity.

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

So, I'm actually thinking of ending this AAR pretty soon. We've gotten to the point where there is literally no challenge left in this game aside from the FEs who will probably get squished eventually since none of them seem to feel like attacking me overmuch.

I wasn't kidding when I said that every other standard empire left alive could all band together and try to destroy me and I'd probably still win. Looking at the "power bars" for all the other empires, and literally everyone else is pathetic compared to me and the FEs are only superior. So really it's just a matter of time.

And even the endgame crisis will probably not shake things up enough for continuing to be worth it. I own half the galaxy (if not slightly more) at this point so I have so much power this just isn't much point in continuing on. I will probably post my last round of research and which species I genetically engineered since the last bit of nerve stapling but I'm thinking after that I'll write a summary of sorts outlining how things went from then on and what big events unfolded in the future.

 

[DarkPhoenix Gaming]

 

[Vilhelm]

So, I'm actually thinking of ending this AAR pretty soon. We've gotten to the point where there is literally no challenge left in this game aside from the FEs who will probably get squished eventually since none of them seem to feel like attacking me overmuch.

I wasn't kidding when I said that every other standard empire left alive could all band together and try to destroy me and I'd probably still win. Looking at the "power bars" for all the other empires, and literally everyone else is pathetic compared to me and the FEs are only superior. So really it's just a matter of time.

And even the endgame crisis will probably not shake things up enough for continuing to be worth it. I own half the galaxy (if not slightly more) at this point so I have so much power this just isn't much point in continuing on. I will probably post my last round of research and which species I genetically engineered since the last bit of nerve stapling but I'm thinking after that I'll write a summary of sorts outlining how things went from then on and what big events unfolded in the future.

I had that same thing happen to me last time I played Stellaris. I got so powerful that challenging anyone aside from the FEs would be just boring. It's also good timing since there's new content coming out in a few days.