Not having played drengin too much, it seems like they could pop out & stab aggressively, then offer peace in exchange for $stuff... maybe even some of the captured worlds starting to fail if peace isn't enough to get what they want. A diplomacy penalty would be ineffective since getting attacked by a weaker party is self negating when their military strength drops below yours enough & - skill in diplomacy becomes ++Much stronger military, their tightrope is just to keep their pop happy enough to let them continue funding military maintenance costs (remember that in GC2, tax rates & morale were tied).
That's all well and good from a gameplay point of view, but from a lore perspective it doesn't make sense for any non-evil civ to trust the Drengin. It doesn't even make sense for evil races to trust the Drengin, but the risks are probably less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Israel_relations
I feel that No further words are needed, but rather than risk goodwinning things I could write for pages about angel/viking relationsa that blossomed into the grouping of allies that is western europe today or us/england relations.
on the ~"doesn't make sense for races to trust the drengin" topic
But since you bring up a few series of doors.... More to come after the timeline below:
-
- 2178: The Great Space Race: The six major species rush to establish interstellar colonies.
- 2190:
- The Altarian Prophecy surfaces, a 100,000-year-old document that predicted that Altarians would meet their “cousins” and then learn of their origins.
- The Status Quo Treaty, which allows the “United Planets” to act as an arbitrator on disputed colonization, signed by the six major races.
- 2225:
- The Dread Lord war embroils the galaxy.
- The Dread Lords are defeated but Coalition forces (Terrans, Altarians, Torians, and Arceans) are gravely weakened.
- 2226:
- The Drengin and Yor launch a surprise invasion of the Coalition and quickly defeat them.
- The First Fleet of the Terran Alliance escapes to the pocket universe that the Dread Lords had escaped.
- Arcea is occupied.
- Toria is occupied.
- The Drath homeworld is destroyed by the Drengin.
- 2227:
- The Korath, the shock troops of the Drengin Empire, exterminate the majority of the galactic Korx population.
- Civil war erupts between the Drengin and the Korath (told in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar).
- The Yor wipe out Altarian, Arcean, and Torian colonies across the galaxy.
- 2230:
- The Terran Second Fleet is joined by the Odyssey Deep Space Task Force.
- The Second Fleet [Terrans] is also able to join forces with the last Arnor, who aids in the construction of a powerful weapon. The Terror Star, mostly based on Precursor technology, is able to warp space and thus destabilize the integrity of a star, which in turn wipes out the star system.
- The Terror Star is used to destroy the last Dread Lord stronghold, which robs the Korath of their secret support structure.
- The Thalan destroy the Terror Star and the plans to create additional ones.
- 2233:
- The Second Fleet fights a losing rear-guard action in an attempt to save as many human colonies as possible. The Yor meticulously wipe out Terran colonies.
- 2235:
- The Second Fleet splinters into two: Patriots and Mutineers. The Patriots claim to represent the Terran Alliance. The Mutineers, hateful toward aliens and the Thalan in particular, begin to terrorize any aliens who might be considered a threat.
- 2242:
- The Terran First Fleet returns from the pocket universe, armed with terrible weapons that demolish the Drengin fleet surprised by its arrival.
With that said. A lot happens during the first 52 years there (who knows how much damage the drengin/korx offshoot did), and the the terrans wildly surpass the superweapon described in their famous works of fiction a hundred and some years prior by blowing up a freaking star! In GalCivII, things were more simplified due to the folks at stardock being able to build off earlier code now, thus allowing the differentiated tech trees & tech briefings among other things.
As a result of that new tech/code The Yor are nonbiological & they refer to different areas of their own society in ways not dissimilar to the potentially very hostile wording they use towards biological races simply by acknowledging facts in their communications when relevance is felt, but years prior they decided things had gone too far when terrans blew up a freaking star and started purging galactic terrorist strongholds until the terrorist problem, begins solving itself. Rather than attempt to ascribe black & white morality outright Blue & Orange morality we now have the tech tree flavor/briefing text to explain the bacon/necktie axis(see link) previously attributed to good & evil because some races were simply closer to the human neutral point on the various incarnations of the bacon/necktie axis.
In GalCiv III, the yor are wildly off center on that axis, but have strengths that grant a massive stronghold in a tourism fueled influence victory (some of the treaty options appear likely to stab tourism income in reply to war). The iridium are close to neutral on it, and are able to use diplomacy/trade towards either influence or war.