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Litanies of a dying planet

and why committing war crimes in space is AOK!

By NeiPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Before we get into this I would like to address something, I am left wing as they come but there is a distinction between fiction and reality when it comes to the grey areas of morality, and gaming should be devoid of those grey areas because it is fictional. Also being a fan of Grim Dark literature, I appreciate the oppressive bleakness that gave me influences to write this.

So what does this have to do with gaming you ask? Simple! You see I am an admirer of 4X games like Hearts of Iron 4, Civilization, Stellaris and my all time favourite, Galactic Civilizations 2 which I got for free, 3 years ago. Although it not as good as Stellaris, I appreciate the turn based aspects like you would with Civ and I would forever create games that would last me hours, days even. When I start playing Gal Civ, I always play as the Terran Alliance under the guise of our lady, Jenna Casey! Because I always imagined humanity uniting as one to travel the cold, distant stars seeking new life. However this is where the Warhammer fan in me comes out and enjoys committing atrocities among the xeno races with no absolute remorse for my actions. I mean an example of this would be this one game where I would face The Drengin, The Corath, The Altarians and of course, The Yor and during my 3rd day of the playthrough, I had successful built what is called "The Death Star" and how this one megastructure can wipe out an entire system with just a click of the mouse and then the sun gets destroyed, taking out the other planets. Or if I want to take planets over without the need of going full exterminatus, I tend to go for the more "biological" approach and gas them from the stars above before I land my marines on the planet, killing billions without a care. Now remember prior to this I said I was left wing and this sounds very "fascistic" to someone who will look and be like "thats not very leftist of you" but again, this is fictional and I do not hold these views in real life as I would in the games, not even towards people with differing views. Hence I ignore the grey morality in games, no matter how you view the themes or message behind them.

Fast forward to 18/01/2021, I had finished playing a game I got free from the Epic games store called "Crying Suns" which actually was a very good game in my honest opinion and it piqued me in such a way that really raised my expectations. Albeit is just a rogue lite strategic adventure with a interesting mechanics and it holds up to my love of gritty, oppressive Sci-fi. After Crying Suns, Epic Games decided gave out free copies of SW BF2 from EA but lets be honest, EA games are trash and Star Wars games and media died a long time ago. However moving on, I care not for Star Wars because I saw something that made me happy.

Galactic Civilizations 3 was coming to Epic Store, for free!

Me and my friend (who is right wing) both decided to get it on that day and decided to set up a game that would take us 2 weekends to complete it. Upon playing this game, something was different. The UI was different, the map was no longer isometric, rather hex based and it has a lot of motion when contacting over races which was different to the 2nd game. So here is the details of the game. I was the Terran Resistance which is lead by my fave girl, Ms. Jenna Casey and I was going full Militant mode and my friend went with the Yor going into constructive m0de. He decided that we allied up and see how it works out. We was pitted against the Drengin, the Slyne and the Altarians which actually looked a lot better than what they did on the 2nd game. My friend called Akari Malara (who lead the Altarians) best girl.

So after many weeks (in game) building up our tech, the Drengin decided to act up and start declaring war with the Yor and at the time, my friends fleet was very weak and this is where my hours of playing Gal Civ 2 came into effect and I got my favourite bombardment upgrade being biological warfare handy. I went to Drengi and Kona (the Drengin homeworlds) and decided to gas them before using my mass of legions to conquer them and then wiping them all out, with a combination of over 20,000,000,000 casualties combined. Mostly civilians. The Altarians then declare war on me which lead to a bit of a stalemate. The Slyne then declared war and we was fighting 2 enemies on the same front. The good thing about Gal Civ 3 is when allying up with someone is that you can progress each other by trading tech which helps them out in the long run.

So I decided to give up 2 of my conquered planets that belonged to the Altarians to my friend in order to cuck the Slyne from expanding and my mighty battlefleets destroyed any Slyne mining rings, cutting them off of any resources allowing the Yor to send their smaller fleets and transport ships to Slyne Omega and as followed. Gas then deploying 8 legions, wiping out the Slyne and taking over their territory. So at this point, Altarians had declared war on the Yor and my friend didn't want to war with them but however he was out of funds and begged me to give him 1000 credits. Sadly I had none but I gave him the rest of my 500 credits which helped him win Altaria by using the same tactics I been using. You guessed it haha.

After 2 weekends, over 50,000,000,000 killed and a lot of worlds conquered, I thoroughly enjoyed that little run and I would love to play more with my friend. However I have some gripe with Gal Civ 3. The fact that it lacked building Death Stars and there was a bug encountered made it a mixed bag for me but however the fact that it was still Gal Civ to me and all the attrocities caused by me with no remorse was truly a wonderful time. Me and him plan to do another run but I am going to an Altarian military run. I guess you could say old habits never die huh?

AVE VICTORIA!

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About the Creator

Nei

I am me. Please do not percieve me as such.

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