YES! After 9hours and 43 minutes of gametime, i am the ruler of the solar system!

All enemy colonies have been locked down and the Vasari Empire is victorious!

I now have the shiny "Actually HAL, i can do that" achivement, after beating 5 random  hard AIs on a random medium-huge map

Here is a little recap of the almost 10hour gaming session(well spent 10hours IMO):

Built a cap ship factory and 3 scouts, decided to try a Kortul Devastator as my first cap ship this time.

Scouting the system reveals 3 possible chokepoints into my empire only 3 spacelanes out from my home planet in all directions, great!

Seems i got a good random map in my favor this time too; 2 extra terran and 2 volcanic, 2 ice, and 3 asteroid planets within the "chokepoint route" i am planning to fortify. ( I just have to add here that i am a turtle player, i like to fortify and research/develop before going offensive)

So this planet/spacelane setup is gona suit me well

Well, my first impression of a Kortul as first cap ship is awesome!

With the "Power Surge" ability i find out that even the terran planets with heavy militia poses little risk , shield recharge rate  keeps my Kortul well within safe shield/hull hitpoints during those encounters.

I decide to bypass a ice and a volcanic planet for now, to rush to the chokepoints.

By this time, i built me a few Kanrak Assailants, using them to help my cap ship speed up the killing process at those terran planets.

From here on, i decided to try something new, and researched starbases and deployed one at each chokepoint really early in game, this tactic seems to have given me quite an amount of "stalling" time while i was building up.

Fast forward a few hours:

Have an alliance with one of the enemy AIs now, both me and him supply each other with lovely lovely pacts, everything from resource pacts to hitpoint pacts.

I even get him to send in a fleet to wipe out the pirate base defenses, but offcourse, once all defenses are down, i swoop in and colonize the pirate base for myself , ninja-style! 

I am on the offensive now, big main fleet, but since its so far into the game, the enemy AIs also have some serious fleets, making for many epic fleet battles, slowly i am pushing them back

In the end i won the game, the satisfaction i felt was amazing after devoting so many hours into a single game of Sins [e digicons]:'([/e]

I have just played this game for about a month or so, but really enjoying it.

I dont really know  why i came here and posted this, just felt like i wanted to share my experience from a great game session

I want to say THANK YOU to the designers of the game, this is by far one of, if not THE best strategic game i played in a long time!

Diplomacy, epic battles, cool-looking ships, this game has it all.

(PS: i love the new pirate changes in newest patch)