Xenophobia challenge
Gus Smedstad:
EDIT: Revised rules.
Play on Hard.
You must declare war on any alien race you contact. You may not trade, perform missions, or otherwise interact with an alien race except as targets. It's permissible to skulk in the shadows, avoiding contact with known aliens, until you're read to strike.
You may colonize one uninhabited planet. All other planets must be captured from alien races. It's permissible to plant more cities on a captured planet, but the planet must be taken from an enemy race. If you completely exterminate an alien outpost, you may place a new colony on the ruins of the nuked city.
Your goal is to get the Empire 5 Badge.
You may not take the Terraforming tutorial mission.
Saving and reloading in order to refresh the cooldown time on special abilities is also prohibited.
Green (Easy) rules:
You may place monoliths if you like. You may accept alien surrenders.
You may accept alliances proposed by aliens, provided you did not curry favor with them in any way. No missions for aliens, and no bribes.
Once allied with a Battle Thrall, you may trade with them and otherwise interact with them normally.
It is suggested but not required that you expand to spinward (counterclockwise).
Black (Harder) rules:
You may not place monoliths. You may not accept alien surrenders or offers of alliance. Everyone must die.
Alien colonies must be exterminated, not captured. Including homeworlds. Once all alien intelligence has been eliminated from a world, you may found a new colony of your own there.
This precludes use of the Zealot power. Destructive powers such as the Scientist power are acceptable.
It is suggested but not required that you expand to anti-spinward (clockwise).
OCD versions:
The goal is not to reach Empire 5, but to circle the galaxy until you return your to your homeworld. No alien empires are permitted except those taken as Thralls in the Green rules.
- Gus
Dopp:
I thought the terraforming tutorial comes before the 'trade spice' mission? It's also possible to accept the SETI mission and then re-enter the missions dialogue, discard it and begin the terraforming tutorial.
Gus Smedstad:
No, I just ran through that section again, and the sequence is:
1. Check out alien wreck.
2. Check out destroyed alien homeworld.
3. Plant your first colony.
4. Contact an alien race.
5. Trade with an alien race.
Just to be clear, if it is possible to dump the Trade mission, doing any further tutorial missions is prohibited for this challenge. The idea is to force you to go through the terraforming steps the hard way. It's an interesting limitation that the Heat and Cold adjustments don't come up right away, let alone the free adjustments.
- Gus
J. M. Pescado:
You don't need to dump the trade mission in order to terraform: You will be offered this as a mission if you ask them for a mission and they ask you what you want to do. As for "terraforming the hard way", don't bother. There's no point. Without the ability to buy the tools at 50% off, the tools are so massively overpriced that they in no way justify the cost of getting them.
The sequence is "check out alien wreck, check out out destroyed alien homeworld, plant colony, receive mission of your choice". There's no forced mission for contact/trade, and, in fact, as a habitual thing, I actively avoid contact to begin with because once you establish contact, aliens immediately begin expanding into your space and taking your systems. Since you are planning to go on a bloodthirsty rampage and never colonize anyway, the same tools also unlock through the same-levelled Empire badges, which is your goal anyway. This is basically how I got the tools in my Kohr-Ah-style game.
Without the option to colonize, your only income source of worth is going to be through destroying enemy colonies anyway. Each enemy colony destroyed will yield up some 50K in cash. Destroy everything that isn't a homeworld for the loot, invade and take homeworlds, then start monolithing.
Gus Smedstad:
A Kohr-Ah style game is exactly the intent, perfect description. In fact I used my Marauder model for my run at the idea.
I don't agree about the terraforming tools being not cost effective. They're $150K each, for $450K invested in a colony for terraforming, plus $450K in Colony paks (since we can't get those at a discount either), plus $750K in buildings yields 6 spice / minute. Total investment is $1,650K, of which you get a discount of $450K - 27% - if you deal with aliens. If you choose a decent color and get $20k / spice, that's $120k / minute, or 13 minutes to recoup your original investment. After that, the profit is tremendous.
I think anyone who has played Space for any length of time knows colonies are worthwhile in terms of income, and tacking on the cost of terraforming, even at full price, doesn't change that.
I assume by monolithing, you mean dropping them in order to present more targets. Even that doesn't make much sense in the context of the challenge. You're the Kohr-Ah. You hate and fear all other sentient life. Making more is something the Kzer-Za might do, but the Kohr-Ah? Never. So, to be perfectly clear, monoliths are prohibited.
It's too bad you can't make battle thralls. Sure, the alien empires will sue for peace if you destroy enough worlds, but that's not the same as utter surrender. I suppose if we turn a blind eye to it, the Kzer-Za variant would run like this: you are permitted friendly relations with aliens provided you've gone to war with them and gotten the "peace, peace!" dialog after doing enough invading. The big problem is that you have to curry favor afterward by doing missions or something, because all you get is "neutral" after whacking them around, not "groveling in fear." Doing favors for aliens seems out of character for either Urquan faction.
- Gus
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