Hi and welcome! In this text I’ll share my limited experience with this wonderful game and we’ll embark on an adventure of adversity, with a hint of playfulness and a lot of discussion on strategy and my reasoning in tackling the various challenges faced. This is a kind of narrative journal talking about my progression through an Impossible difficulty run while discussing strategies and observations around all the relevant topics. Below, there is a table of contents to help you navigate through this.

I am not a veteran of this game, but I have played many 4X games in my time, including Master of Orion 2. I literally first played this game just over a week ago, on 26th March 2023. As such, please consider this more a shared experience of a playthrough than a ‘guide’, although I will share my strategies and reasoning in a ‘guide-like’ manner and it may be of interest to others or offer some insights or alternatives.

My first game was on Normal, to learn the game, and the second on Severe to try to find the right challenge point. I learned by playing and there are probably still things I have no idea about (like what are all the implications of Affinity in Custom Race creation – maybe someone can tell me). Both of these games I ended prematurely, on Turn 112 and Turn 153 respectively, as I was outpacing the AI too dramatically (4 or 5x their progression on the rankings graphs). So, it was time for Impossible. As of the writing of this I am on Turn 229 of my Impossible playthrough and having a BLAST! I will update as the game progresses further.

I include these settings so you, my fellow Galactic Emperors, have a clear idea of the context and also in case you may wish to replicate this experience.

I chose 2x map size and Gigantic because the previous game (Gigantic 1.25x) didn’t feel expansive enough. The AI managed the larger distances very well. If anything, it only disadvantaged me. In taking the screenshot below, I literally *just* noticed the AI Aggression slider. Sigh. Well, even on Normal they broke ‘Pleased’ good relations to attack, so that’s aggressive enough for me! It did say difficulty level would affect aggression also, so that’s probably why. I chose Viceroy instead of Emperor. It leaves a bit of room to grow and I wasn’t looking for Dark Souls in Space, just yet.

I always enjoy custom races because I can try out different strategies and I feel more invested when I’ve designed the race myself.
-50% POP Growth was a selection I was very nervous about. In my previous plays I noted it was easy to boost with Cloning Facility and the techs associated with the Strategic Resources (e.g. Antimatter Personal Replicators and Neutronium Rejuvenation). Still, I thought the developers putting a whopping -7 points on this selection meant it would be a significant hindrance. It was. It really was. I struggled enormously with miserably low POP for the majority of the critical growth phases of my empire. But, -7 points opened a lot of other possibilities.

-0.5 Production, Research, Culture, BC per POP. (Total of -10 points.) These I think are quickly off-set with Space Cultures choices and especially later on with more techs and other bonuses. Still, it hurt early game.

Hive Mind is my preferred balance of point expenditure. It grants a welcome 10% blanket research boost and delayed POP assimilation is not that important to me.

Ground Combat -10% is just a free point as far as I’m concerned.

Ship Attack +25% I did not choose this in previous games. In fact I took a penalty. I made this choice to off-set AutoFire penalties and grant me an edge in combat because I expected to be outpaced in technology.

Subterranean is immensely powerful late game and again I expected to have fewer colonies than the AI and therefore needed them to be more effective. I also hoped this would off-set some of the penalty from the -50% POP growth, assuming that more room to grow might help in the population calculations.

Large and Rich homeworld are not normally something I would pick, but I feared the more difficult start may leave me with poor quality planets nearby. The richness bonus helps to off-set the -0.5 production per POP. I normally favor empire-wide bonuses and long-term bonuses, but I feel that the Homeworld is so important that this choice was worth it. It will be my primary Production facility for most of the game – fueling our expansion, building our early and mid-game military. As a large planet I have 9 infrastructure, allowing a maxed Ship tree and 3 from the Building tree for 3 bonus buildings. 12 buildings means I can ultimately make the homeworld both a production powerhouse AND an early Technological Capital, which I feel is essential to keeping up in the technology race. There is still space left over for Med-Bay facility and Cloning to remain and help future emigration.

Uncreative. I don’t rely on breakthroughs and most research will be quick. Long research choices will be powered through by using the Collective Transcendence racial ability (to blast deep into important tech trees).

Elusive. Turned out to be unnecessary. Maybe. I chose it in case I get ahead in tech and don’t want the AI to steal away my advantage. They didn’t try, or at least I didn’t notice. Perhaps it made other races easier targets. I’ll have to try without it to see if it was actually a benefit.

Warlord. This is a great pick. Warlords’ bonus Supply Points for supporting a bigger fleet (either military or Support ships for boosting planets) are VERY welcome. The bonus to crew - it starts out at Elite level from a fully-upgraded planet, with UltraElite as a distinct possibility via events or over time - translates to +15% attack and defense over an Elite crew (I haven’t checked Veteran vs Elite, but I assume it is similar). This combines with my other boost to Ship attack to amount to a meaningful space battle advantage. Easier assault ship production doesn’t hurt either since I’ll need to dedicate a lot of planets to this eventually and it’ll be nice if they can produce them with little effort (using free production from infrastructure benefits, for example).

Trans-Dimensional is also truly amazing. Here the bonus is to Ship Defense, rounding out our advantage over our enemies. The combat speed and maneuverability bonus is not insignificant, however the real winner here is the Star Map speed bonus. I’ll employ this advantage along with pushing down the tech tree to Tachyon Drive which is unlocked by selecting the left-hand group of techs when Dark Matter becomes available. This drive has speed 7 (vs most AI who will have 6 with Hyperdrive). Now I have an advantage of 3 speed. If I can get the Galactic Navigation Archive wonder (another 2) or a good leader with a 1.5 bonus, the advantage is terrifying. Even just with +3 over the enemy, it allows me to see (with e.g. Ultrawave scanner) their destinations and get there before them to defend, to strike vulnerable systems before they can respond (unless they have an interdictor), to evade their most dangerous fleets quickly and hurt them where they are weak. I had this blurry idea when I chose this, but after reaching Turn 229 I can look back and say this was the single-most important custom race choice. It’s effect can be achieved in other ways, but this one is a guarantee. Can’t say no to that. (Also +2 speed from Adventure Space Culture.)

Collective Transcendence is just obscenely good. I like that it’s downside is significant and hinders one’s flexibility, but if you plan well you can mitigate this penalty. I used it to push deep on the Defense tree for better Shields tech than my enemies, and also the Propulsion tree for the Tachyon Drive and various Targeting Algorithms. When doing so, I try to ensure that there are other techs I can circle back to in that tree to make use of the bonus to research in that field. I make sure I don’t need other techs from other trees during the 20 turn cooldown. I cannot abide inefficient research!

Prestige was great in my first plays, but in this Impossible run it has been an utter disappointment. I was unable to hire most leaders due to cashflow trouble and a weak early game and so Prestige was only minor benefit on one or two occasions. Leaders disappeared from the pool very quickly and Prestige therefore returns nothing. If I had to pick again, I would pick one of Obsessed Builders, Warrior Code or Enlightenment.

I neglected culture a lot, so this has not advanced far considering it is Turn 229. You’ll note that I focus on long-term advantages rather than short-term (e.g. free ships). It is true that ships can set you on a faster development curve and have significant impact, but I felt I would need cumulative long-term advantages to eventually compete with the overpowered AI. By the time we both nearly complete the tech trees, I want a persistent edge.

I quickly chose Wealth’s +1 production per POP bonus to compensate my racial disadvantage and same for Megacorporations’ +2 BC per POP. My priority was actually first the Knowledge tree (first 3) because I wanted to be the first to get the Galactic Relic Collection. I build this on my home planet together with the Technological Capital (and a Science Leader) to amplify the bonus. Second priority was 3 in the Wealth tree to try to build Galactic Industrial Conglomerate on a colony planet that is large or huge and ultrarich.

I chose asteroid archaeology for more research bonus. Research is critical. Also Planetary Consciousness for Eco Level bonus. Once ecology projects or terraformings are done, bonuses to them are meaningless whereas better Eco Level will benefit me for the rest of the game and improve my most important and very best planets meaningfully.

From the Wealth tree the 4th pick is following this same strategy and the 5th pick is absolutely incredible. Strategic Resources confer phenomenal bonuses when their techs are researched and more of them is just wonderful. I expected to need this to help off-set the AI’s larger empires, but it’s just good all the way.

Of course the Adventure pick is for Travel Speed. Remember, this is integral to our Sun Tzu Art of War of being where the enemy does not expect us and making our small force as effective as a large one.

Atlantis is born! Our beautiful home in the stars. As we turn our gaze outward, we must decide on a first tech choice. I chose Robotic Factory, to benefit well from a Rich home planet and kickstart out expansion. I maxed out the slider (production triangle is cool, but I’m all about sliders so thank you devs for leaving us the choice of either) for construction to get an Outpost ship ASAP. There were 2 star systems within range and I doubted both had juicy planets. I didn’t want to tackle producing a colony ship before getting production bonuses anyway. An outpost ship will be essential to spreading out. As it turned out, one system was empty and the other had a large Swamp planet, so research had to shift to Swamp Colonization immediately for our first colony to be founded.

Honestly, the first 69 turns were a blur. We have met no one else among the stars, although some sightings and reports have come in from the south-east.
You can see that our empire development has gone appallingly. A mere three worlds, utterly miserable production output and few techs. Early research focuses have yielded: Swamp Colonization, Robotic Factory, Space Elevator, Deep Core Mine, Med-Bay Facility, Improved Targeting Algorithms, Offworld Support and Galactic Relic Collection (courtesy of Collective Transcendence). Space Culture has hit the 3rd tier in order to actually build the Relic Collection. Atlantis has already built the Technological Capital and is enjoying the benefits of a single support ship.

This is a big shock compared to earlier games and I felt a great struggle to get production up. Ultimately, we need asteroids and this ends up being a big focus in the near future to build up production capability on the homeworld, Atlantis. Long live Atlantis!

Just before First Contact, we find ourselves on Turn 115. Certainly slow development and an expansive galaxy have played a part in this late contact. Let’s first review our empire:
We have crawled up to 5 worlds, nearly doubled research output, but are struggling financially. We have only just acquired the 3rd Wealth tier in Space Culture which is helping with our costs, but our slow population growth means this per POP benefit is blunted. Due to constrained finances, we have managed to only recruit a measly THREE leaders. 2 Colony Leaders and 1 Ship leader. Mercifully, they are good. 2 of them are excellent for our purposes.

Rak-kax is undoubtedly the very best Ship Leader I have personally encountered in this game so far in any playthrough. KA 2120’s research is perfect for us and we will boost this at every level-up. He shall forevermore reside in our esteemed Technological Capital, Atlantis.

At Turn 115 our technological tree looks like this:
Synthetic Food was a desperate attempt to address our population catastrophe. In hindsight there is an upcoming glaring mistake here, which is in not prioritizing an advance to Autonomous Land Processing Unit. Admittedly we have had other priorities at this time, but that is a very important tech for infrastructure development and many turns are passing by without more meaningful development because that tech is missing. If you see a couple of odd tech choices here, remember that 2 free techs came with 3rd Tier of the Knowledge Space Culture.

So, the Voidwalkers have penetrated the depths of the Void. With many star systems explored, we begin to ask the question, “Are we alone in the universe?” It sure is looking that way. But wait, what’s that? An unknown frigate and surveyship surveying the outer reaches of Voidwalker space?
By Turn 136, we have properly made First Contact and tentatively forged a Trade Treaty with an empire in our likeness, the Nova Vida. Our development has begun to accelerate more rapidly as our capital has achieved all 6 Ship infrastructure developments, robotic factory (of course), a space elevator and has 2 support ships in orbit assisting. We decided to make Atlantis our economic capital as well, as financial pressures needed to be solved urgently. The Galactic Relic Collection is housed in Atlantis and our technological progress is boosted accordingly.
Just look at the population density of Nova Vida. Wow. You might be inclined to think that we are doing okay with our number of colonies. But no… we are utterly dwarfed by the progress of our First Contact race – they smash us in every category. Is our future in the stars in jeopardy? Will destiny see us enslaved, destroyed or forgotten? Hope dwindles, but there are those among us who say, “Never give up, never surrender!” (Galaxy Quest reference. Best sci-fi comedy ever. Go watch it.)

Encountering another race among the stars was the wake-up call we needed. Not all among them will be as friendly as the exquisite, mysterious and wondrous Nova Vida. The prudent among our people have made a call for arms. Our recent research as of Turn 136 has yielded Enhanced Shields and Beam Accelerators. We have the Ultrawave Scanner and are progressing with Class IV shields. I consider the use of Helium strategic resources for military to be optimal while the others will go towards population. (Neutronium population boost also benefits armor, so that’s a perfect combo.) This these selections we have good economic bonuses as well as powerful military advantages in Shields, Armor and Beam weapons. Believe it or not, in this time we have not built a single military ship. Uh-oh. What shall our first ones look like?

Our first ship was honestly a joke. A pathetic missile boat with Polaris missiles because we simply don’t have any beam tech yet. Our foolish politicians ignored the calls for more and better military, claiming how wonderful the Nova Vida are. By Turn 170 we have met the lovely Moltar Union. Despite their frightful appearances, they are apparently ‘Pleased’ with us after we freed their diplomat. We ignored our own population’s wishes out of fear of sparking a conflict with this powerful race. We are unprepared. The military generals are calling, ever louder, for us to take action.

In a do over I would have pushed for beam weapons and built lasers immediately. Instead, we built some trash Tungsten Gun ships with autofire that were quickly outstripped by high-blocking enemy shields and high defenses that the inaccurate Tungsten Gun simply fails against. Anyway, these ended up being used just as scout vessels or cannon fodder.

Turn 183. Behold, life in the universe! It is TEEMING with life! Advanced life. Expansionist life. Bringers of death.
We suddenly feel very small. Why? Look at our red Empire graph line. We are the runt of the galaxy. By this time our glorious civilization should be dwarfing our opponents, but no… we are just waiting for someone to turn a greedy eye on us and end our dreams of the stars.
After all this time, the only decent ship we have is one we found in old ruins, the Punisher, which we immediately put Rak-kax at the helm of.
Long have we seemed to ignore the warnings of our military leaders. Negligent, they say! Foolish! But, behind the scenes…
…our technology progresses deep into the Defense and Propulsion research trees. Most of our ship support points are fueling our fleet of 6 massive Support ships augmenting our colonies. 2 colony ships are venturing out and our military fleet comprises nothing but 2 trash scout frigates, 1 pathetic missile boat and 1 glorious flagship found among the ruins of the stars. How long can we afford to wait? Not long, as it turns out.

Within 4 turns, the vile Humans declare war and immediately seize our northern colony, Biotania. To our shock and horror, Moltar Union, hitherto ‘Pleased’ with us as reliable trade partners, follow suit on the very next turn. Suddenly, we are at odds with two of the most powerful species in the galaxy, with scores of military ships among them. Faced with such overwhelming opposition, there is no time for panic or despair. With resolve, we clench our fists, with righteous fury we think of poor Biotania, seized by the opportunistic Humans. We say, “By Grabthar’s Hammer, you shall be avenged!”

Our immediate response is a shift to war economy. Our two primary manufacturing worlds begin building Corvettes, a frigate-class piece of… rust. Thankfully, they have potent shields and excellent maneuverability defenses. Their miserable guns are enough to finish off weakened small vessels and we rely on the Punisher to break the backs of the enemy fleet. Dear god, they have Titans already. Those, we run away from.

Here’s a Corvette:
That speed, at least, is a thing of beauty. Add a good leader on top of that 165% defense and you have some very annoying target practice for the enemy. The adamantium armor was a lucky find, but honestly, if you are taking hits to the armor there is already a problem. By the time the enemy uses shield-piercing weapons, we hope to have potent Neutronium-enhanced armor. Anyway, let’s rather not let them get a shot in. Also, let’s quickly forget about this Corvette, an embarrassment of a vessel.

By Turn 194, we have pumped out 4 Vipers and 1 Solaris.

The Solaris was to test out the effectiveness of Fighter Bays and try out the Positron Torpedo tech we found in ruins. The ship hangs back, launches these goodies and rotates between turns, sometimes with Overloaded Shields to absorb enemy missiles on fresh shields while patiently waiting for the Fighters and Torpedoes to get the job done. Honestly, it’s a miserable strategy. Most enemies flee when it doesn’t look good and they have plenty of time to do so. I built 2 of these eventually and frankly it was 2 too many.

The Viper, on the other hand, is perfection. We inadvertently discovered a most effective strategy and incredibly powerful yet simplistic ship design. The Viper has high defense, solid attack (particularly when led by a proficient leader) and our shield tech is slightly ahead of the enemy (not for long, they reach VII very soon, but we still have an edge with Helium-boosted enhanced shields and we are making our way to IX shields. The laser is, in my humble opinion, the best weapon for mid-game (and maybe even late game, depending how far things go) because is the only one before Plasma Cannons that can have the AutoFire mod. It also enjoys no range dissipation and continuous. With all these you have accuracy, max damage at high range (with heavy mount), 3x shots and you can overload weapons for x2 damage with beam weapons. Add on top of this the bonus damage from Helium-boosted Beam Accelerators and the damage output on this simple weapon is mind-boggling. A few viper destroyers will shred enemy Cruisers and Battleships with ease. Titans need more firepower if you don’t want to wait around for their counterattack (and believe me, you don’t). The Punisher is helping us with that for now. An improvement to the Viper would be to split the lasers into two, so you don’t overkill the enemy and you can spread that damage to a second target. (You can split more, but… action economy. I don’t want a repetitive strain injury.)

By Turn 199, the Moltar Union are flooding our space with their monstrous warships. We managed to beat back the Human fleets a little bit, but now we are really having to scramble to intercept the Moltar. If not for our significant speed advantage, we would be overwhelmed. Instead, we can be wherever we are needed just in time and in the necessary force concentrations. They outnumber us, and yet we are seemingly legion!

Those Titans are pretty nasty though. We have to coalesce all of our forces to deal with them. Our 4 Vipers, Punisher and 2 Solaris is somehow enough to protect our space, splitting to engage smaller spread out enemies and merging to face off against enemy Titans. An enemy Titan traveling with multiple other vessels is still an engagement we avoid, but they often split up and then we can pounce. You will note that our Research is now humming along nicely (currently with 100% boost from the Collective Transcendence racial ability) and a couple of Data Cores found in ruins. Note also how we prioritized Helium resources, and now have the Space Culture perk that increases them (Interstellar Geology). 9 Helium is massively boosting our shields and beam attacks into devastating blows. Who knew a miserable early tech like Lasers could be turned into the stuff of nightmares? Despite our huge economic setbacks and have fallen behind in those areas, despite a weaker tech tree overall (but high spikes towards critical techs that are making us a surprisingly fearsome foe), we have found hope. It is a grueling slog fighting this enemy, but we are managing. These cheap ships are saving our future as a species. “By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings!”

Let’s look at the Turn 199 rankings:
Still not looking great. Can looks be deceiving?

Turn 210.
By this time we are successfully holding off the enemies from further plundering our empire. We have yet to save our poor Biotania, but we have made the Moltar and Humans pay a high and bloody price for their viciousness. Countless of their vessels litter the dark void of space and our colonies have built imperial garrisons and are churning out assault vessels to retake our world and take the fight to the enemy. Our fleet has grown to 5 vipers and now includes an Archon as well – essentially a cruiser version of the Viper. Our enhanced IX shields are a considerable aegis, but most often they don’t even come into play and enemy fleets are torn to shreds before they can even respond (thank you Rak-tax and your high initiative).

Turn 220. By now, we have begun to conquer Human worlds. Oh my, how sweet is the revenge. The magnificent Nova Vida have agreed to an alliance of our houses. (By marriage, I hope.) After we voted for them in the Galactic Council and showered them with gifts (ok, a measly 10%, but hey, a desert-world race appreciates the little things - maybe we sent them mineral water...) they were delighted to forge an alliance. Our eastern flank is now secure. We are trading away our useless Dark Matter for profit and importing Anti-matter to fuel our power plants. With an alliance, the Nova Vida have revealed the locations of various Helium sources in and around their empire. We can’t quite reach most of them yet… Expert Logistics just became a priority.

Turn 229. The Moltar and Humans both recently had the audacity to offer us peace in exchange for paying them tribute. It seems their large empires have fooled them as to who is winning this war and they turn a blind eye to the devastation we have wrought upon their fleets. Admittedly, they are unfazed and continue to pump out replacement fleets at an alarming rate, even when we smash their orbital stations they are back up and running within a turn or handful of turns and we don’t have the fleet numbers to stand guard over every world. We have gobbled up 6 Human outlying colonies (easy pickings for our relatively low numbers of assault ships and limited military vessels sporting Bomb Racks).
Our empire has begun to take off. A critical mass, if you will. In addition to this powerful economic base, we are conquering worlds that add much-needed population to our employ. Our nimble fleets have bought us the time we needed and we hope to achieve a meteoric rize to the level of the other galactic empires.
Judging by the graph, we are catching up significantly now. The Sulak are not keeping pace, but they, too, are Subterranean and have much room to grow into. Our beautiful allies are easily maintaining a lead on us. As enchanting as they are, some among our number remember with bitterness the Humans and the Moltar. Surely, the heavenly Nova Vida would not resort to such betrayal?

What lies in our future? Are we destined to forever live in the shadow of the Nova Vida, as an almost vassal state, a peasant empire when stacked up against their nobility? Will our military advantage disappear as the other empires fill out the tech tree before we do or they fully tap into their resources? Will the jealous among our race call for war on the Nova Vida when they threaten to rule the galaxy or will we remain loyal and grateful for their guidance and kindness in our vulnerable years? They even gifted us a military ship, after all.

The galaxy is yet young, with many worlds still to be conquered, created and optimized. Is an intergalactic war on the horizon? Let us find out…

Thank you, dear readers, spacefarers and Galactic Emperors for accompanying us on this journey. Please feel free to ask questions, share experiences or make suggestions for the future of our Empire.