The stalemate continued to drag out throughout the 2500s, between the Alkari invincible fleets and my impregnable defenses. In order to be safe, however, I had to spend heavily on defenses at all of my worlds:
I recently discovered Soil Enrichment, thus boosting the size of all my non-Hostile planets and allowing for extra factories. Even with that added boost, plus the huge addition of Hyboria and its 825 factories, I'm still spending more than 14% of my income on defensive bases. Just look at those numbers! 50 or more at pretty much every world (except Zoctan, which continued to be invisible to the AIs). I did have substantial trade income from the Mrrshans and Darloks to help out, but those maintenance costs were definitely cutting into my research efforts.
In addition to all those bases, you can see that I'm spending even MORE money on a fleet. Unlike the previous century, I've gotten into the naval building for real here in the hopes of being able to capture and stand up some additional planets when the opportunity presented itself. I had two designs I was working with: a Huge one featuring Megabolt Cannons for defending newly captured additions, and a Medium missile boat packing Merculites and Antimatter Bombs. The latter I was using for hit-and-run operations, striking the Alkari wherever their fleets were lacking. I had limited success at first, but the birds had weak shielding and unimpressive missile technology (still nothing better than Merculites themselves). When I saw that they had none of their fleets nearby their home world, I sent everything I had forward in a daring raid:
Oho! Bet THAT got their attention! 
Taking and holding Altair myself was obviously out of the question, so instead I burned it down and turned it into a spud world. (The Darloks helped quite a bit with that, periodically invading or burning it down again.) In fact, I was able to keep several different Alkari worlds in the west locked in hot potato mode, although their eastern core worlds were out of range and thus unassailable. I generally prefer to capture worlds intact if at all possible, but clearly I did not have the strength to do that in this position. I think I learned quite a bit about some of the more subtle aspects of military strategy from playing from so far behind in this game. It's certainly very different from having a superior or equally comparable fleet, as was so often the case on lower difficulty levels.
Glorious raids aside, most of the 2500s continued to be spent doing - what else? - huddling behind my defenses in the face of unbeatable Alkari fleets. At least now I had five worlds instead of three, which did help significantly. This attack at Incendius was notable for being the largest I had yet seen:
Yes, the Alkari have sent more than TEN THOUSAND ships after me. The meek need not apply for Impossible difficulty! The good news is that the 5636 and 3420 stacks are the same old designs using Graviton Beams, and useless against my bases. However, that still left the 1425 and 426 ship stacks to deal with, both of which were using Tachyon Beams. Good thing I managed to trade for Stingers with the cats before they were eliminated! I beat off this attack at the cost of a handful of bases. (Thank heavens that the Alkari never developed any bomb technology. Even a simple Fusion Bomb on one of those stacks would have meant instant defeat for me.)
As for the Mrrshans... yes, they were wiped out by the Alkari sometime around 2560 or so. I was sorry to see them go, as they had been faithful allies after the early game brush wars. Now the Alkari had nothing to stop them from taking control of the former kitty worlds in the north! Of course the Darloks were still around, and helping out a bit in the south, but clearly it was going to be up to me to start gaining ground. No more allies to be fed to the birds as meat shields.
Here's yet another inconclusive council election from 2575. Have I adequately conveyed just how long this game continued to drag out? The endless succession of votes was actually a good thing, of course, as the Alkari were still unable to transfer their dominant position into a win. Still, this is by far the latest I've ever played in Master of Orion, and we're not even close to having an ending in sight!
And so the game went on...
The good news is that I was finally beginning to approach the Alkari in technology, thanks to having more planets on hand myself and some occasional tech thefts from the birds. And, while the Population, Planets, and Total Power graphs continue to be lopsided, they are by no means as bad-looking as they were 100 turns ago. In other words, I was making progress still, but oh so slowly!
I continued to look for opportunities to invade an Alkari world and capture it intact. One such chance finally presented itself at Laan, and I managed to sweep in and grab the world:
I didn't get any significant techs in the invasion, but at the very least it cleared out some older junk which would improve my prospects for future prizes. With 319 factories at Laan, I had a very real chance of standing it up, and I congregated my whole fleet above the world to make it happen. Unfortunately, Laan was a Poor planet and therefore could only build its shield and bases at half the standard rate. As a result, I was not quite able to stand up defenses in time, and the Alkari managed to burn it down again. Nevertheless, I had almost made it work. I could sense I was getting stronger, the Alkari starting to lose their vicegrip on this galaxy. And even though I didn't manage to hold Laan, it simply reverted back to spud status, for a net gain overall to my cause.
The elimination of the cats had one upside: the opening up of their former space to colonization efforts. Fierias was somewhat out of the way from the rest of the Alkari worlds, and as a Terran size 100 planet, I decided to try my luck at building it up from scratch:
Here you can see me desperately adding factories (with max reserve spending doubling production) in the hopes of getting enough production to add bases. Also note the red star to the southeast of Fierias, where I've just bombed an Alkari colony out of existence, hehe. The birds paused for a moment to rebuild that colony, then sent an initial probe at Fierias which my Huge ships on hand defeated. When they came back the second time, however, they brought a major fleet:
The birds have shifted tacks somewhat; while they still have tons of Small ships running around, now they also have some Large gunships as well. Both the Wareagle and Warbird designs are packing Disruptors as their main weapon (ouch!), and the newer Warbird design also has the High Energy Focus special. Firing at my ships from 5 spaces away on the combat screen definitely is not a good thing! My own current Huge design was packing Tachyon Beams, designed to counter the swarms of Small designs that the Alkari had been using, so it was not the best matchup for me. Fortunately, Fierias had managed to build 22 bases to help defend itself. This could be a critical battle!
I concentrated my fire from the bases at the Warbirds, since they could hit me from long distance. I took them out rather rapidly (although not before losing several Huge ships), but that still left the Wareagles to be dealt with. Well, the silly birds had them moving at only combat speed 1, and I was able to hit them with a Warp Dissipator and freeze them in place!
My missile bases then wore them down and killed off the whole stack at no more losses. Major victory! Fierias was thus able to secure itself, and within a half dozen turns I was up to 100 bases there and complete safety. With six worlds now, and three of them very strong ones, I was beginning to turn the tide against the Alkari. Even the misfortune of drawing the Mineral Depletion event at Incendius - my RICH planet! - wasn't enough to slow me down much.
And the news just kept getting better, with a major upgrade to my missile technology. Against the Alkari waves of tiny ships it didn't much matter if I was using Stingers or Hercular missiles, but the boost in damage would be a major help against their High Energy Focus cruisers.
I continued to bomb out Alkari worlds wherever possible, but I also was on the lookout for a world to invade and capture tech. Argus seemed the best location for that, just to the east of Zoctan and south of Fierias, so I deliberately held off on bombing it to allow the birds to build some factories there. With a fleet that now stood a decent chance of holding off the Alkari, at least temporarily, I was ready to make my move. First I took out the bases, then sent in the ground pounders.
As expected, it was no contest (I had a major edge in combat technology). Now let's see what I managed to loot from the planet:
Disruptors! 
That was the top Alkari gun technology, and one of the best weapons in the entire game. Ahh, there's still more?
Inertial NULLIFIER?! 
Geeze, the Alkari do have a lot of Propulsion tech!
With those new tools at my disposal (plus drastically higher tech levels in Weapons and Propulsion, allowing for greater miniaturization), I can finally field ships equal to the Alkari for the first time all game. I have not yet reached a winning position, but the capture of Argus has been a turning point. From now on, the Alkari will be on the defensive, and *I* will be on the attack.
