Spore: Over 5 Billion Served

Did something truly awful last night while conducting my star-spanning race of Purple Shifters along the arm of the galaxy where Fortune stranded them.  After terraforming my two-zillionth rock into a paradisiacal wonderland (I’m fond of cooling down inner orbit planets in binary systems;  it makes for some spectacular sunrises), it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what would happen if you used those same terraforming tools in reverse, on a planet that was already habitable.  And, um…  occupied.  So I dropped into orbit above a T3 planet with a pre-spacefaring civilization, trained my Heat Ray on it until the climate destabilized, then watched in horrified fascination as the entire ecosystem collapsed tier by tier.   In the end, after every last plant and animal had gone extinct, about 60% of the planetary crust returned to a molten state, consuming all the charred, ashen remains of the now-lifeless cities in one giant slow-broiling conflagration of bubbling death.

Presumably that wouldn’t work on another spacefaring species, since colonies can survive quite nicely on T-Zero worlds (although in theory it should always work on a homeworld, where the cities have no advanced technological insulation.)   Also not sure whether any attempt to manipulate the T-rating of another species’ planet would automatically result in a local declaration of war.  Seems logical that it would.  But then again, you could be trying to improve the T-rating for them.  And they’re always calling you up whining and trying to get you stop all their eco-disasters.  That certainly counts as manipulation.

It’s also not quite as quick and impressive as just hitting the offending species with a planet buster and blowing their whole freaking world to Kingdom Come.  But it’s way cheaper, and infinitely more demoralizing for them.  You know, if you spend your time considering that sort of thing.