The Darloks sailed right into the teeth of my defenses, my most heavily fortified world, and wiped it out without breaking a sweat. At this point, they could march uncontested to any of my worlds and wipe it out (as long as they had the range to do so). Here's what the galactic map looked like at this rather grim juncture:
The empty green star in the middle of the map indicates where Esper used to be. Yes, I have a gaping hole in the center of my territory, heh. I pulled my main fleet back from the Alkari front and prepared to carry out some hit-and-run operations. Whatever I could do to try and wear down that monster SoD. My best hope at this point was that I would be able to make a stand somewhere down the road after discovering and constructing Class X Planetary Shields. Maybe.
And then, the great break of fortune. Despite having colony ships along for the ride, the Darloks opted NOT to settle at Esper. And even though they had won a resounding victory, the Darlok fleet turned around and headed back to their closest planet! 
The only thing that I can guess is that they lacked the range to reach any of my other planets. (They could reach Mobas, but that was a Radiated environment, and the AI tends to ignore worlds it can't land on.) Of course, that doesn't explain why they didn't just use one of those four colony ships at Esper, but I certainly wasn't about to complain! I quickly built a new colony at Esper and began the rebuilding process, helped out significantly by population migrants and reserve spending.
My shield breakthrough finished a couple turns later, leading to an enormous sigh of relief:
I actually discovered this tech on the same turn as Terraforming +50, so I had a lot of spending to do on Defense, Ecology, and Industry! Every planet even remotely in range of attack built the shield first, then followed with the terraforming and new factory construction. That meant I was busy for the next half-dozen or so turns on infrastructure stuff pretty much everywhere, but my position was strengthened immensely as a result. I now had 14 points of shielding for my bases; not enough to stop Fusion Bombs, but enough to render obsolete the 500+ Merculite-carrying Hornets that the Darloks were using. With Class VII Deflectors as the next project, I'd be taking another important step forward towards security from the Darlok SoD. I continued to give Force Fields a major priority.
At the next election (in 2450), I came within a hair of winning:
27 out of 41 votes is 65.8%; I needed 28 to win. Missed it by that much! In fact, if I had discovered Terraforming +50 a few turns earlier (or if Esper hadn't been obliterated), I probably would have taken this vote. Oh well. I continued to draw support from both the Humans and Mrrshans, and our side now enjoyed almost a 2:1 advantage in population over the opposing side. Prospects for the next election looked good (especially with Advanced Soil Enrichment as my next Planetology project), so long as I could hold off the Darlok fleet.
Speaking of that fleet, I was keeping a very close eye on it at all times. After returning to the Darlok base at Rigel, I was afraid it would come after me for another fight. Fortunately, however, the Humans drew the short straw instead:
The SoD is on its way back here from unmercifully raping some poor planet. (The colony ships in this fleet are only warp 1 and thus are thankfully limiting the damage it can do with long transit times.) Now for the uber-bad news: look closely at that screenshot again. The Darloks had been piling up several thousand of their Spider bombers; they were at 4000 or so when they moved out against the Humans. Well, something screwy obviously happened on that trip, because by the time they came back they had the 32000 you see above. 
Negative Fleet Bug alert! And I get to enjoy it during my first game ever of Impossible, lovely. Blessed to live in interesting times indeed. I've heard a lot of talk about this bug from others, but no concrete strategy for how to deal with it. Umm... for the moment, I just kept on stacking up bases and hoped that one of the other races would look like a more appealing target. Break out the four-leaf clovers, because I'm going to need some luck.
Unfortunately, I drew the Assassination event a few turns later, and even worse it came against the Humans, my one friend in the galaxy. Argh! Well I guess having it come against the Darloks would be even worse, but this was still not at all a good thing. Take a look at just how sad my diplomatic situation had become:
No, I still don't even have contact with the Mrrshans, heh. The only way to get out of this position would be to take it to the Darloks, who most of the other races also hated, thereby taking advantage of "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy. But with the Darloks having that mega-fleet, I wasn't exactly anxious to tangle with them. Instead of allying with the weaker races to combat the Darloks, therefore, I continued my game-long policy of wiping them out in order to increase my own population further.
After all, if the Humans were already Furious with me, they couldn't get any madder as a result of this:
Yep, just a wee bit of an edge in gropo tech there (+30). The Humans had some improved deflector shields (Class V and VI) that I looted, along with the VERY nice prize of Complete Eco Restoration, their top Planetology tech! I assimilated three of their planets in short order, after which the galactic map looked like this:
I'm not likely to pull any votes from the other races at the next election, but with the map looking like this, does it even matter? I've got Terraforming +50, Atmospheric and Advanced Soil techs, and all my planets are just enormous. Close to a dozen at size 200 or more. Very nice.
Oh, and the one remaining element of suspense in this game. When the Darlok fleet returned from wiping out one of the Human worlds, it sat in orbit for a turn or two, then set out again: after another HUMAN world at the top of the map! 
That was the real clincher right there. My worlds were not only safe, the game would be over before that SoD could return and menace them again.
I had pulled ahead at everything except fleet strength by 2475, thanks to that silly bug. I even have a lead at technology, although not nearly as much as I'd like (given that I'm researching at 12,000RP each turn and most of these AIs have only a handful of worlds!) The Population stat is my favorite though. There was reason to be optimistic about the upcoming vote.
And here's my fleet. I barely got to put the Pulsons into use (they only popped maybe a half-dozen turns before the end) but I was building them by the score every turn. The limited ones I did get into the field were pretty devastating against the backwards ships and missile bases being fielded by the Alkari and Humans.
On the 2474 turn before the election, I took advantage of the fact that the Darlok fleet was away up in the north to attack and demolish one of their colonies:
Dastardly, to be sure, but so was wiping out Esper. While the cat's away, the mice will play. 
And with some VERY limited support from the Mrrshans, I voted myself the winner in 2475 for a Conquest victory! The Humans, Alkari, and Silicoids all had only 1 vote each at the time of the final election (all of which were cast against me, heh).
So now I have my first win at Impossible, yay! Of course I was playing one of the strongest races and had what I'd consider to be a good start, but it was still no cakewalk. I was sweating bullets when that Darlok fleet came after me, let me tell you! Anyway, I'm looking forward to more entertaining games ahead. Not sure if I'll chronicle them all as I've been doing, but certainly I'll try to put something together for the most interesting ones. Thanks for reading.
