Settings:

Now, when creating your galaxy, you do need 2 main attributes. You want starlanes to be "Fast as Possible" for quick expansion and the stretched spiral galaxy is a great choice for this strategy. It allows the center empire to expand quickly and become powerful while the spiral empires lag!

Upon generation, pick the center most empire in your galaxy. The specials do not matter (even though INDUSTRIAL is by far and away the most op special there is! This run will not have industrial even though if you get it, this game goes on EZ mode!)

Your very first task will be to immediately create a research center (technology is the most important aspect in this game)
Disable automatic building:
We are ready for expansion!

The worst thing you can do is not expand quickly enough at the start of the game when there are no empires around you. IT'S YOURS FOR THE TAKING!!!

By far and away, the only ship you need to build is the battleship. It is good at combat, hardy, and most importantly, SUPPORTS GROUND INVASION!!! (This is what you see when it shoots the light beams, it is supporting your influence over a planet. VERY helpful!)


You can see I already created 2 ships posted at the edges of the empire. The OP STRAT here is to continue to create ships as you are able, and post them at the edges of your empire. ALL ABOARD THE EXPANSION TRAIN!!! One ship will quickly conquer the stars around it and allow you to build another ship farther out to conquer more stars! It's a train of ships built exclusively for expansion!

Very soon, your empire should look like this:

As you see, we are almost 4x larger than the second largest empire in the galaxy!

Now, when we come into contact with another empire, immediately declare war and create more ships on their border. With most empires, you can quickly expand and swallow them before they have the military to stop you! The other big idea is your expansion and early research center have allowed you to acquire higher technology faster than your enemies! Thus, you will be able to easily conquer galaxies around you when you are 1-2 tech levels higher than them without the need of ships.

Lets say you run into a galaxy with the same tech and some ships. What now?!?!? Here comes another strategy I like to call, The SneakyBeaky. You create ships right on their border, expand to control a few stars as their ships engage you... and then ignore their fleet! Continue to use our same expansion strategy as before while their ships are busy fighting yours earlier in the chain!!!

By now, you should be extremely powerful.You can reenable automatic ship building as you will be so technologically superior other empires will have no chance against you!


You will have to reform your government when it reaches the yellow (Which it does quite quickly compared to easy mode). But, thankfully, you will only have to do this probably twice before transcending. Just make sure you are at a good point and not at risk of degenerating into oblivion due to some empire swallowing you!!!

Now, you may run into rebellion. This is what you truly have to watch out for!
No other empires will be able to resist your expansion without ships except your own rebellions. Why?... THEY STOLE YOUR TECH!!! Thus, they should be dealt with as quickly and harshly as possible!
Go to the war room and assign all of your fleets and generals to any rebellions that pop up. They can quickly eat your from within if you do not respect them! CRUSH THOSE ANTS!

Your time has come. Upon reaching tech level 8 (and assuming there are no more rebellions to be squashed), revert to fortifying. This will speed up the final leg towards transcendence!


Enjoy your new life in Utopia! You have beaten Emperor mode on Extreme difficulty


Just remember: THE only things that can SERIOUSLY hinder your progress are expanding too slowly (whether that be a bad map choice or not using the Expansion Train!), not properly fighting other empires in the beginning (i.e. ignoring the SNEAKYBEAKY tactic), and ignoring rebellions which WILL be able to destroy you even without ships!