Need some expert advice; I introduced my nephew to GalCiv3 maybe 3 to 4 days ago. He got addicted quickly and was setting up races, building ships and having a good time. He even found the command console, so he was able to try new thoughts and such. He wanted to play a game against me so we hooked him up with his own version of GalCiv3 with all DLCs and another computer and it was on.

Now, I'll admit I haven't played in about a year but the following does not sound right to me:

We started the game on large, normal, all races, all minors. I got lucky and settled 4 planets quickly with the worse being a 7 best being a 14. He wasn't so lucky with only 2 planets by move 20 or so. We explored the map, doing what normally happens in the game until we'd finally made contact with one another before move 52. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Suddenly I notice that a lot of AI planets are getting bought up. By him... He has gone from 2 to 8 almost in less then 10 turns- He starts complaing no one will trade with him, so since I have traded for most of the AI's tech I agree to trade with him. We pull up the screen, and I was surprised to see he had about 400,000 gold at this point... Before move 70... I wanted to know how he managed that- he claimed he used the Mercenary's- specifically the survey ship that gives 100 gold an anomaly. I thought about it, and explained I didn't believe for a second that was mathematically possible- after which I sell him some tech for 40,000

The game continues- with him loosing all his money in the next 12 turns, I float him a 10,000 gift and as we move into the age of war things start to get hot with war being declared left and right. He starts getting his ass kicked and I hear him say he is striking back- my turn comes up, and I get the notice that a couple of my colonies are sitting idle. I open them up to find my infrastructure is gone... All that was left where the colony capitals.

Now, since you guys are more active and current on this game then I am, what do you think happened?