Finally I got to the endgame of the save - took me long enough as I needed to move the defneding fleets back to the starbases and in range of planetary defenses in most plantery defense missions (of which tehre was a record amount there
)
At preciecly Turn 300 the Tinker + Phidi alliance has lost the war and the game, so no endgame
Ther reason I am still smyling though is that the only way I could survive the late-game was to resorting to the probably most commonly used exploit of SiS: scorched planet tactic. By eliminating the whole population of an enemy planet and then simply moving on to the next least defended target, the defendinf fleets are forced to play catchup, whilee loosing whole planets and not having anything to take back (no building or pops remain) - the player can also ignore the need to produce ground units, and having to bother with moral penalties of conquered planets
If I hadn't resorted to this exploit, I would have definitively lost the game despite having a well built-up empire + ally and this is very good - best game so far. I just couldn't help myself of trying the tactic in this situation again instead of going down with dignity
Thus some random variables aside, the game can get a hell-of a challange even on Normal difficulty.
Once he diplomacy update is out there are only going to be two mayor exploits left in the game as far as I can tell: the above scorched planet tactic and hiring merc ships - the combination of these two can negate even the hardest difficulty withouth effort so should be avoided so that the fun mechanics are not spoiled by them
There was mention of a planetary degradation penalty after bombing: this would till some extent negate the exploit, but only if there are several layers of habitable planets between the parties, otherwise the AI will be cripled just the same (as would the player but hte AI does not resort to this tactic)
Regarding mercs: those need an AI update which I hope will also come in the near future
All-in-all: fantastic playthrough (be sure to set raider activity to LOW) even though it just missed the endgame: next time we'll make it