Trani - Mar 03 08:30 -Tick 306 Cycle 15

Victory in jephardy as Darrow returns and mobilises.

When I checked the game at 10:30 last night I got a shock. This is how things looked at that point. Darrow re-appeared and immediately began moving against the stars I had captured. I fired off a rapid "Hey I didnt know you were coming back" message to the silent communication void and immediately gave orders to withdraw my General and Saboteur. This would be something to reflect on and plan around in the morning and neither had enough strength to hold the initial bridgehead. I wasnt prepared to lose 15 tokens worth of specialists.

Which brings us to the morning. Now I have to solve this problem.

Strategy

• My broad strategy remains unchanged, defeat Darrow, nibble Inerz and win. The situation is more difficult now though because I'm much more exposed to a 2/3/4v1. Inerz and Gilgamesz have longer to rally than they did because even if they ally when I'm halfway through Darrow I will have to deal with those threats whilst holding Darrow whereas against an AI I could just withdraw from that front to combat Inerz.
• The combination of my hubris and a pressing war against Ktoc meant Northern Command had ships in all sorts of strange places. My first act was tidying up Northern Command's waypoints to get good flows of ships to the front lines via the extensive warp gate network I built in the latter stages of the war on Ktoc.
• Strategically my high level plan to defeat Darrow involves a massive attack from multiple fronts using heavy hitting Specialists and my higher Weapons technology to obliterate his eastern flank. It's not the most nuanced plan ever, but sometimes a sledgehammer is the right tool for the job.
• I've reinstated some of the waypoints in Southern Command to resume flowing ships to the wormhole. Time is the priority here, the faster Darrow falls the better.

Diplomacy

• One advantage of Darrow returning is I now have a good excuse for not joining the fight against Inerz/Gilgamesz. I was at the early stages of attacking Darrow and he's annoyed about it and is fighting me is both the truth and an 
• I haven't actually heard from Darrow.
• Ktoc has 900 surviving ships and 1 star. He's been sharing tokens/credits with me and I've told him any stars he can take from Darrow will be his. I'll leave him a path to take a couple. I mostly don't want to have to deal with these ships unless I need to.
• Gilgamesz is less active the last few cycles, checking just once/twice per cycle. To try balance things up in the West I've told Inerz this. Hopefully this allows the under-strength and under-scienced Inerz to punch above their weight and hold out longer.

Tactics

• So obviously the first tactical move I made was ensuring I kept my Saboteur/General alive. 
• Next planning the attack. I'm thinking I'll have 3 attacks each utilizing specialists. 
• A Since the General is going to take some time to get back I'm going to just put General Bison on defensive duty. Saboteurs pair really well with Colonels anyway due to the same movement speed so Saboteur Horse will get a new companion - Colonel Crab and they will attack the Warp Gate that was my initial springpoint into Darrow with the aim of seizing the Bacia Asteroid Field.
• B Colonel Cockroach and Saboteur Slug, fresh from defeating Dust will attack and seize the other Asteroid Field. 
• C Colonel Octopus and Infiltrator Cat (or possibly a new saboteur) will attack together.
• All in all it will take around 10-11 hours for everything to be in position to start this attack. That's a full cycle and a long time in a game like this, but Darrow has considerable forces 5800 ships to my 9940, and those stars are well defended. I need to attack together and I need to attack hard. I'd rather sacrifice one cycle and hit him with a hammerblow than bite away and lose a tonne of ships. I'm burning Weapons research at the moment and flooding ships to the front line.