Speed run 18 years to win the game

[Es78]

So after I have beaten the game with all races in base game and 2 from DLC´s on hardest difficulty i thought. Let´s make a new challange.
I know this can be manipulated and there is no way to check it. So it will be question of trust.
But how fast can you beat the game on normal difficulty ?
Standard settings except
300 stars (Evryone can join in)
PreWarp
Tech trading off (It can be exploited)
12 random AI´s
Random start location.
The rest is just standard settings
I did it in 40 years with the Dhayut and won in 2794.01.03. Start date year is 2754. This was my first attempt and with a bit of luck I think I could knock of another 5 years. But getting down to 30 years, i doubt it.

I picked the Dhayut for the spy bonus and extra ability to get the crusial techs i needed from pirates, for a fast expansion.
The challange can be done in a days time if you focus on it.

Who will you pick ?
Are you up for the challange ?
What strategies will you use ?

[Nightskies]

Maximum exploiting aside from tech trading, I presume?

Hmm. The Dhayut is a natural choice. Excellent early jump drives, strong troops, easy racial victory conditions for a speed run... Gizurean might also be good.

[Es78]

Did´t do any save/reloading before battles.
But yearh my leader did get fired quite alot of times
And if you wanna do this, do quell rebeliush planets, by raisning the taxes. To those that do not know what i am talking about.
When you counqor a new planet the loyality will be at 0% and will give you a massive deffecit. If you how ever raise the taxes by alot and get them to rebel, there louality will raise by 30% each time and there by increasing the planets income.
However it comes with a tradeoff. You will loose alot of population. Though this will cost you in the population score. So an alright and fair method.

[Nightskies]

2786.01.30: Dhayut Military Dictatorship. I picked this for the armor tech and huge troop discount. 2 research labs in the home system, no resource shortages.

Wasted time rushing tourism- I severely underestimated how bad tourism is with a Military Dictatorship. Could have cut off a couple of years without this.

To avoid getting the attention of pirates, I started by just building research labs and a spaceport, disbanding the armored unit. Built a resort and repeatedly scuttled freighters to get build cost to fund crash research and save up for later. 100% research funding- no growth funding. Disassembled the free Dhayut ships for tech. Didn't build anything else until the Warp Bubble.

At this point, got about 15 explorers and trained a handful of troops while building the Armor Barracks to start making armor. Once I had identified a handful of out-of-system luxuries, I built a small fleet (8 or so) of constructors and got to work on mining bases, and when the pirates showed up, paid them off immediately, bribing as needed. 0 warships. While tourism was at least somewhat useful before this point, private expenses in shipbuilding emptied their pockets, with the Dhayut's limited growth rate. Tourism was really the wrong choice for the Military Dictatorship.

As soon as I identified another empire, Gizureans, my spies found their capital a mere 76M away. I built a few transports and two fleets of 6 Laser Cannon frigates with two assault pods each. While they resisted with superior weapons, they had only just made a few mixed-weapon warships and only had a modest garrison. Deflector shields and standard armor were more than enough. Their forced rebellions failed to kill a single troop, pulling off troops as they got worn down, as they heal quickly on transports.

While I used spies to snag a few techs, only one tech later proved to be helpful. Tech stealing wasn't impactful- there just wasn't enough time and spies to really benefit from it. They were far more useful in stealing territory and galaxy maps, and I had to buy them back with exploration information.

While producing armor non-stop, I invaded a Gizurean independent, a Boskaran independent, and Authoria (an Ackdarian independent pre-gen world). There was a Teekan empire close by, but their capital sat in an Ion Storm, making them inaccessible. The next empire target would be Quameno. 215 M away, I needed the Velocity Drive. Once acquired, I had a 3rd 6-frigate fleet now with Maxos and Corvidian shields. I sent spies to take their Novacore reactor. They proved a harder nut to crack with a more robust garrison, and I resorted to a raiding assault using both the invasion fleet and frigates to soften the target for invasion.

Right after conquering the 1-colony Quameno, a Zenox declared war, soon followed up by the Ikkuro. The Ikkuro sent some ships to mining stations, but I ignored the attacks and kept a trio of 4-frigate fleets on standby to defend colonies. They were on the opposite side of the empire from where the invasion fleet sat, now over the former Quameno capital. Meanwhile, I had finished switching pirate protection to NAPs, had an abysmal -70 reputation, and while I knew where the Zenox were, they were a lot tougher to find through spies.

Here, I had a bigger choice to make. Go for the Haakonish, which had a mere 1.4 billion population at their capital, wait to find the Zenox world, go halfway across the galaxy to the Ikkuro capital, or go for the Ancient Slave Colony. I chose the nearby 2 billion pop slave colony. While taking it didn't require raiders, they were a stubborn lot, and even at near full assimilation, they had negative happiness. They needed a garrison. By the time this finished, I found the Zenox capital but only had a few armor and troops I could attack with.

However, the Zenox only had a single troop for a garrison. They did have a strong recovered ancient ship with heavy railguns that popped a frigate on its own, but it couldn't overwhelm nearly 20 frigates by itself. The Zenox barely had a 4-ship fleet- the Quameno put up a bigger fight. With that, the time to win came, and I switched that first Gizurean capital to slavery, meeting the win condition at 32 years.

The racial conditions really need to be easy- that alone accounts for 25% out of 60% for victory. So the only choices are Boskara, Dhayut, or Gizurean. I think an economic race might make up for it through the peaceful integration of independents- with some luck, the Teekan might be able to do it. I think this play could have shaved off a few years with earlier troop production and splitting forces, along with skipping tourism. I don't think the Velocity drive was essential, either- thanks to the small galaxy size.

The AI at normal settings is very weak, and it's exceedingly easy to overwhelm them rapidly with a rush strategy. I'm sure a significantly faster time can be done, not even accounting for good luck.

[Nightskies]

To be clear, I am hoping that a better time than this is made, especially if it uses different strategies, which is then detailed (or at least summarized).

[Nightskies]

New best time by "HugsAndSnuggles" on the Steam forums: 2784.04.02
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/ ... 458446442/

It was achieved with Humans. He maximized taxes, forgone warships, initiated contact with pirates to steal tech, and focused on capitals instead of any independents.

[Es78]

A really nice time. Now to get under 30 years.
Just did one with Gizurean. It failed misserable. The AI was to far away but i had tons on independent. But they simply give to low a score. But the galaxy and start location would have been awesome on the hardest difficulty.

[Es78]

New record 29 years. Won in 2783.01.05

I did it with the Gizureans.

I started with Republic to get the administartion center on my home world. It´s great for some extra pop growth and extra income in the long run.
I rushed Stable warp field and research lab. After those tech i went straight for Shock forces and after that troop transports.
When i got the shock forces, i had a rebelion and changed my goverment to Cell Hegemony and started on a non stop building armor and later on added Robotic forces (First time ever i used those)
When i had my first small army, I got two small independt desserts worlds under my control, Rushed space stations on them and after that i used them to feed my homeworld for extra growth.
When i had sufficient forces i invaded 2 empires home worlds and a Boskara independt world with roughly 2000 mill inhabitants.
Then the time came with 14 fully loaded trasnport ship to take down Boskara empire (Larg pop and strong ground forces) Won a swift victory over them.
At this time i had built a fleet of escorts to fufill to race victory conditions. Build the most military ships and capture the most ships.
They were send towards a Teekan empire where they managed to capture a ship and wipe out the rest of the fleet, securing 100% in race victory conditions.
Shortly after my invasion fleet arrived and conqoured there homeworld secouring the victory.

[Nightskies]

22 years by HugsAndSnuggles: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/ ... 458446442/

[arvcran2]

This format would be an excellent candidate for a Youtube playthrough!

[Es78]

18 Years with Boskara

I will say it´s hard to do it much faster, unless you do alot of save scumming or find some amazing combo of race and goverment.
But i had a really excelent start. As the 4th resource on my home planet (Took some years to discover) was Zentabia Fluid (36%) it gave me a huge economic boost.
I started out as Monarchy to get Planetary Palace (Republic might have been better) And then change to Hive mind right at start up.
I took Hivemind over Military Dictatorship to get the extra pop growth (long term better troop production) and there decrease in coroption. Could have gone for some research goverment but i wanted that troop recruitment.

I build non stop troops and after i got the Zentabia Fluid. I was also able to boost allmost all research from the start of each tech. Also managed to build exploration ships in a quite fast rate and the needed construction ships. In order to boost the private exonomy.
Went straight for Warp bubbles, research lab and then Medical bays. After that straight for Troop transport and then shock troops and did get Battelfield sabotage as the game finished.
Managed to get Hyperdrive Tech from a ship repair.
I also managed to find 5 quite good ancient ships that i repaied and made a combat fleet out of.
After this i went on to conqour the Mortalen empire and then the Quameno empire. The last was actually a bit tough and wouldent have been possible without my fleet.
On my way doing this i did get two Boskara independt and 2 other minor independt worlds. Was actually the last minor independt world that gave me the victory. Due to the fast rush i did´t have to go for a 3rd empire. Though i could have gone for a major empire with 3-6 months more game time. (Did it after the win)

What could have improved this game time even more.
Did´t do alot of trader scrapping
Did´t get lucky with a general
Did´t have many research stations only 4-5 up to end game.
Did´t have the option to steel alot of tech

But the Zentabia Fluid was such a hugh advanatage and never seen it on my home world before, though i have played this alot. This run is going to be hard to beat, unless you really dive into save scumming spy rolls and scrapping trade ships.
End army strenght was 10 Troop transporters with 5765 combat strenght. And a troop transports that never got to join in with 2 more armor brigades on it.

[Nightskies]

Did you enslave all the pops?

[Es78]

No i only did it in the end one 1 planet to tjek the race victory condition.
Had a positive cashflow throught most of the game, due to my way to good homeworld.
Also the time from taking the first planets untill the game was won was minimal. So i accepted a bad cashflow in the end.