Rome wasn't built in a day, but in sci-fi strategy game Stellaris Nexus, you can found, expand and fritter away a whole intergalactic empire in around an hour. In the case of my multiplayer hands-on, that empire was the Ix'Idar, a race of burrowing insect critters with a unique resource - pheromones. Boldly disregarding the PR's gentle advice that I start with an easier-to-master race, I set out to swarm the galaxy and immediately found myself at the bottom of the victory or "Succession" point scoreboard, with one player picking off my planets by means of espionage, while others stomped my fleets of stargrubs flat in no-nonsense space combat.
I did manage to briefly take possession of the titular Nexus, a throneworld which awards beaucoup Succession points to its owner, but it turns out fixating on the Nexus is a great way to set yourself up for a midgame dogpile - you pour resources into capturing it, sacrifice half your fleet to the first invader, then lose it all to the second. With my initially bountiful dominions rudely shrunk to a smattering of isolated planets, I took the coward's way out of the press event and said I had to be going because I had other work to attend to. I didn't at all! I just wanted to go and cry in the toilet. Alas for the Ix'Idar - not so much "lions led by donkeys" as an antfarm in the hands of a wilful toddler.
