What most likely happens is that no one actually attempts it.  Difficult is good, but tedious is not.

That's not my experience.  If I respond promptly to enemy attacks, generally I don't lose anything.  The only planets I've actually lost have been T0 outposts.  A single city plus no buildings does get smashed pretty quickly.  And I'm speaking not just of ordinary play, but a game where I pissed everyone off because I was playing by the rules of this challenge.

Returning to the Battle Thralls: I stopped exterminating things when I hit Empire 5 and started working on other badges.  Not that my xenophobic Primes had suddenly developed a liking for other races, but because I wanted to get the Zealot Hero acheivement, and straight conquest wasn't getting me the points.  Anyway, I had an alien empire I had never contacted offer me an alliance.  +30 for "we like new acquaintances," +10 for "Gracious Greeter," and +51 for "You scare the shit out of us," aka "we value your friendship."

Alliances with no concessions to lesser lifeforms seems within the spirit.

I'm going to edit my original post to reflect new rules.

 - Gus

I'm fine with both ideas, actually, but I was trying to avoid loopholes.

If you're allowed unlimited colonization, some weenie might achieve the Empire 5 badge while only exterminating races that were convenient to eliminate.  I was hoping the "only one new colony" rule would force the player to actually prosecute wars with the proper amount of bloodthirst.

The intent is definitely the anhillation of all non Ur-Quan, but how do you enforce that rule?  "All aliens must be exterminated as soon as possible" is fuzzy and open to interpretation.

I rarely burn more than 3 to get T3.  Actually, T2's are perfectly acceptable, since you can maximize economic output from cities once you get T2 provided you ignore turrets.  Turrets are nice to have, but not vital for defense.  The main drawback is that T2 only stores 10 spice, or 20 with a storage unit.

Yes, $150K is a lot of money, but you do get it back relatively quickly.

True, I was just saying that in general, losing the alien discount isn't prohibitive.  The alien discount is highly desirable when not playing this challenge, but it's not a deal breaker.

True, I didn't specify it in the original rules.  Consider it a loophole that's closed.

Good point.  I was just thinking about slaves acquired in battle.  The Space stage doesn't really have the "cower mode" from the Creature stage, requiring surrender at gunpoint still leaves you with a significant negative relationship score, and they'll continue to attack you.  Gaining a species as a battle thrall after vaporizing their colonies requires behavior that's out of character.

 - Gus

As has come up in two other threads, there are people (including me) getting the missing Cell creature problem post patch without any mods at all.  I had to revert to the 1.1.0.338 build.

 - Gus

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

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

These guys are inspired by the vicious critters from Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained.



 - Gus

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

For the obvious reason: I forgot to save at either of the points you mentioned.  But yeah, saving was just dumb all the way around.  I wish I could blame fatigue (it was 2 AM), but the reality was it was stupidity.

I'm not really doing this for the benes, since I find Space pretty easy on Hard these days, no matter what my abilities are.  I'm doing it mainly to have a new goal.

 - Gus

Yeah, I just tried for this and screwed myself.

I managed Red -> Red -> Green, though going from Red to Green is not particularly easy in Tribal.  The suggestion you had earlier of killing a tribe member or two and then bribing doesn't work; you take a bigger hit from killing tribe members than you gain from the bribe.  I tried letting them decay naturally from Neutral to Unhappy and then bribing, but didn't seem to be making much progress.  Still, I managed it by converting all 5 tribes.

Then I started on a map with just one economic city.  I grabbed most of the spice geysers on my continent, but by the time I was ready to launch an assault, one of the military cities had taken it.  So there was nothing left but military and religious cities.

Then I did the dumb thing.  I saved the game.  Little did I know the consequences, but I didn't want to sit through Tribal again.

There's no option to restart, so I disbanded everything and sold all my buildings.  Soon enough I was wiped out.  I've never lost a Civ stage, and I expected it would restart me from the map start.

Uh, no.  It restarted from the last save game.  Which was already too late.  Crap.  I don't really want to go through all that again.

 - Gus

This is what I'm getting as well, post-patch.  No more cell stages.

 - Gus

I'm really screwed now.

I "completed" the game as a Diplomat, and started a new Cell stage with the idea that I'd try Piscado's Red / Reg / Green / Blue approach, to see how practical it was.  And the game never showed me a cell.  The meteorite cracked open, and there was nothing there.  There was nothing to move, and I never transitioned to the point where you can see stuff floating in the water.

I tried reverting at that point, but the old EXE crashes with a pure virtual call if you try and run it with new data files.

So that's it.  Until they patch it again, I'm done with Spore.

EDIT: I thought of a workaround.  I deleted my entire AppData directory, and started the pre-patch .EXE.  Now I can start Cell creatures again, but the game doesn't classify any of the stuff I made under "my creations."  It's in the "everything" pool instead, even though it's in My Spore Creations folder.

 - Gus

I just discovered that with the patch, transiting a black hole causes the game to lock up.  Cool.

And yeah, I did delete the GraphicsCache.package.

 - Gus

Diplomat is actually pretty strong.  It's fairly easy to take on T2's and T3's if the turrets and defending ships are all stunned.  And unlike the Zealot power, there's no relationship hit.

 - Gus

I used to command a wimpy empire, pushed around by every Spodist in my spiral arm.  Then I got J.M. Pescado's Free Book on how to be a real man, and now I've invaded several enemy homeworlds without calling in allied mercenaries!

Really, just knowing that ship strength depends on the number of colonies in the empire has been very helpful.  Whittling away at the weak T0 colonies makes the T2s and T3s much easier when their time comes.  Choosing tag-alongs from the big empires has greatly improved their survival rate.  While it's true they aren't very useful for taking enemy planets, they do make short work of the interceptors that show up whenever you enter enemy territory.

It's true that the way to win is to concentrate on bombing and ignore just about everything else, particularly turrets.  Though taking out defending ships is worthwhile if you can do so quickly and without much effort.

 - Gus

I was using the .358 version from GameFixes (no, not the version with the trojan,that's been pulled).  I just grabbed the version you mentioned and it's doing the same thing.

 - Gus

That seems doable, though there's a possibility the B (Economic) cities will all be wiped out before you can take one and convert, particularly if you start with the weakest archetype, Religious.

 - Gus

I just ran my first Space game with the cracked patch, and the missions refused to update properly.  They all behaved as if they were minimized, with nothing more than the bare details showing in the tracking boxes.  I had to open the "lockbox" menu and view the details there, which is really clumsy compared to just seeing the target planet / star name on the main screen.

 - Gus

Darn, I wish I could see those.  I've tried in IE and Safari, and each time all I get is the sound once the clip starts playing.

 - Gus

If past experience is any guide, the first Spore expansion will add a new, incredibly tedious stage between Civ and Space.

 - Gus

The real question is how to play differently?

Activities are basically do missions, plant colonies, terraform, crush enemy empires, explore, and maybe collect artifacts.  I've done all of that.  Well, except try to collect complete sets of artifacts, and that's pretty dull and chance-dependent.

I've done the peaceful thing, though Spodists will be a huge income drain if you don't kill them sooner or later.  They'll always demand tribute.

Being a complete xenophobic warmonger doesn't seem viable.  Unless maybe you have the uber-skills of Pescado.  Me, I need alien mercs and few upgrades to take on T2s and T3s, which means making some alliances.  Besides, killing everyone just isn't my style.  Even though I should have done that with the pure-Red carnivore race I just finished.

I've done the hard to do things, like reach the Core and find Earth.  I haven't nuked Earth, but that's not that interesting anyway.

 - Gus

I've run two races up to Ulimate ("hero") now, one on Normal and one on Hard, and I'm feeling like I've seen just about everything the game has to offer.  Even Space is feeling very repetitive.

Space seems to go like this for me:

Look for a nearby world with good color spice.
Plant colony, up it to T1 and start it producing.
Talk to neighbors, run a few missions to get them to Allied status, start trade routes.
Crank first colony up to T3.  When money runs short, run more missions while waiting for spice.
Found a second colony on another, decent color spice world.  Crank that up to T3.
Eliminate nearby Spodist empires.  Force empires can stay, they're not as cranky.
Upgrade any decent planets from the newly captured empire.

By this time, I'm pretty far up the completion guage.  Maybe 2-3 ranks from "Ultimate."  It's not much effort to finish, just plant a few more colonies, maybe buy a few from the neighbors just to get the badge points.

The various personality traits / bonuses seem to have about zero effect on play.  Except maybe the +50% health from Prime Specimen.  I don't bother with the special abilities like Raider Rally.

At this point, it's like the Sims - it requires some restrictive rules like the Devolution Challenge to make it interesting.

 - Gus

It appears the game refuses to aware the achievement for finishing Civ in under an hour.  I blitzed this afternoon in 40 minutes using Economic on Hard - still the easiest way - and didn't get the award.

 - Gus

Health is about 3.3x as high in Normal as hard.  So Prime Specimen + Normal + upgrades = 7.4K.  Easy is probably even higher.

 - Gus

The building cap on the secondary cities is low, and hence the vehicle cap.  I think you may indeed be hosed.  I think in your position I'd start over.

 - Gus

For the inveterate terraformer: the Valley Forge.


 - Gus