Hey all,

Sometimes I wish that this game didn't have any other victory types than Score or Supremacy, then Horatio might be a viable top-tier race. I'm playing Endless speed (600 turn) and Endless difficulty on Exceptional-size Twin Elliptical galaxy with 6 AI + myself, so 7 civs total.  This was my first time ever playing on Endless difficulty.  

I had a Conquest Victory at turn 171 (40 Star Systems colonized) and an overall score of 4858, but I decided to continue to play more turns just to see how out of control Horatio can really get.  

Turn 206 was the turn I completed all Science Technologies.  I was producing 263274 Science per turn.  

Some other big highlights at turn 206, I had:

93 Star Systems colonized with 16 of those systems having 40 population or more, and an additional 4 of those had 50+ population (highest was 56 pop).  91 of the 93 were System Dev 4, and I had 93/93, so zero over-colonization penalty.

16 heros (highest hero was lvl 39, lowest hero was lvl 9, most of my heros were in the teens and 20's)

2397 total population (with 19 splyced population types, and 2 more population types on the way to being splyced with 28 Hissho and 21 Sophon out of 40 pop required for next splyce) and 2332 of those population were Horatio.  My Horatio were producing 15Food, 12Ind, 9Sci, 8Dust, 2Infl, +50 to attackers on ground battle, +5 Manpower Defense per turn, +5 approval, and +2 approval on hot.

14 minors assimilated

3 Trading Companies at lvl 20, 20, and 22, with 24 Bullion and 24 Luxury Freighters for each trading company,

106240 total manpower with 68k in reserve

206 battles won  

An overall score of 12214.  

Strategics per turn:  Titanium 94.2, Hyperium 75.5, Adamantium 112.2, Antimatter 128.2, Orichalchix 119.7, Quadrinix 97.7

Luxuries per turn: (I had a respectable smattering of all other luxuries as well, except for two:  Jadonyx and Proto-orchids)

SD2:  Redsang 153.3

SD3:  Gossamer 109.3, Void Stone 120.2

SD4:  Drift Buds 129.7, Dustwater 106.8, Endless Foundaries 127.9

At turn 206, my closest AI competitor was the Sophons with 2574 overall score, and I had eliminated 3 major Civ AI's:  Empire, Riftborn, and Lumeris.  

At turn 242, I fielded my first "Ultra fleet" with 1,339,420 offense, 27585 defense, and 697k health, 14k Manpower, and 19 Movement speed.  

How I did it:

I splyced like a madman, so I prioritized Food and Approval for Ecstatic systems above all else, because the more population you can make, the faster you can splyce, and the faster you can splyce, the better your Horatio are, and eventually this begins to snowball out of control in a good way.  Science and Industry were prioritized equally after Food/Approval.  I splyced early and as often as possible.

Turn 1, I brought out my Hero, upgraded him with an engine and probes, and made him my primary explorer while my explorer ship served as Curiosity duty.  I picked Toys for Boys law for the approval bonus and the +75% to Food from Ecstatic (I only kept Toys for Boys active until I splyced Z'Vali and Kalgeros, then my Approval was fine without help from Laws).  For Technology choices, I went Xenolinguistics first, and then Baryonic Shielding, Pev-Scale Accelerators, and Evaporation Inhibitors - This was important, because revealing lvl 3 Curiosities told me where I should be expanding next.  As soon as Xeno was done, I made the building in my capitol, and then produced two EMPTY explorer ships, and then upgraded them both with Dust to 1 Engine and 6 probes, so then I had a veritable fleet of Curiosity scanners.  After Evap Inhibitors, I went back into Economy and Trade, up to Impactless Sites.  Getting Impactless Sites is multi-folded strategy:  1) I need System Dev 2 for Spaceports, and Spaceports are how you splyce like a madman, because all you need is 1 pop type in each star system, so as soon as you get your 2nd pop of that type, you send that pop to another star system with the Spaceports.  If you juggle your non-Horatio population through multiple star systems, you can have multiple star systems producing the same pop at the same time, making splycing happen fast.  2)  Galactic Commodities Exchange lets me sell all the Strategic and Luxury stuff that I'm NOT currently using for Dust, and Impactless Sites lets me buy Heros and Mercs.  I happened to spawn on a Constellation with +15% Science with the Empire AI, and the Empire AI was blocking my path to expanding into the middle Constellation, so my first priority was getting control of that Constellation and defeat the Empire AI.  So at turn 50ish, I sold all my Titanium, Hyperium, Antimatter, and Adamantine I had picked up from Curiosities, and made a fleet of Mercs, and right after Impactless sites, I invested a few turns in picking up Efficient Shielding, N-Way Fusion, Autonomous Construction and built a couple of attackers and that brought my fleet Command Points to 11 for a small investment.  I think I was ready to attack at turn 55ish, and I attacked with two 11/11 fleets with heros attached to both, plus a few smaller fleets I got from assimilating minors.  At turn 62, I had Lumeris (from the Adjacent Constellation) declare war on me, but I quickly bought the rest of the Mercs available and spawned them on top of the star system they were attacking, I joined my 3rd hero to that fleet, and held off their attack.  At turn 90ish, I had Riftborn mass expanding their whole Constellation and into my Constellation, right into my base actually, WHILE I was still fighting with the Empire and Lumeris, so I had to pump the breaks a bit on Empire/Lumeris and attack the Riftborn.  I declared war, and Riftborn absolutely stomped my beat-up mercs.  So I transitioned to carriers around turn 100 and eventually cleared them out by about turn 130-140ish.  

Here's how I do Mass Expansion on Horatio:

As far as gung-ho mass-expanding in turns 100+ as Horatio, it really comes down to maximizing your Food/Approval/Population via Terraforming, pumping luxury resources, and getting out of Dictatorship and grabbing the law New Colony Rule. Republic is really good, but I prefer Democracy because having 3 Heros on your Senate and 6 laws active is cruise control for awesome; the +1 approval per pop helps against over-colonization penalties too, but Republic or Democracy both work, so it's dealer's choice. As soon as you get into Democracy/Republic, put official support into Industrialists so that you can unlock New Colony Rule, and do WHATEVER it takes to get your System Dev 3 and 4 Luxuries so high that you're able to upgrade multiple star systems in the same turn. You need to be producing a massive amount of food to do this as well, and by massive, I'm talking multiple star systems producing 2000+ food, and this requires Food System Improvements, Terraforming, and Planet Specialization: +1/+2/+3 Food on Fertile.

This is very risky stuff, but the rewards are great if you can pull it off.  You should try to "time" your mass-expansion process as soon as you get SysDev4, because this doesn't work without Autonomous Administration.  

Activate New Colony Rule and make sure that you have multiple star systems producing 2000+ food per turn.  Outposts will drain your current star systems of food, and you don't want to be losing Population during this time, you want your pop to still keep going up and up because you're still splycing during this time too.  And the more food you send the outpost, the faster it will turn into a colony.  As soon as any outpost turns into a colony, send them 3-10 Horatio from systems that can afford it.  This ensures that your new outpost gets a bit of a kickstart and ensures that it won't rebel because your Horatio *should* each be +5 approval and +2 approval on Hot when you do this, so make sure you've already splyced Kalgeros and Z'Vali by now.    

Make 1-3 Colonizers every turn - base how many Colonizers you make per turn off of how many Systems you can upgrade to System Dev 3 & 4 each turn.

Pump your Luxury Resources for System Dev 3 & 4 via Laws, Heros, and Buildings so that they can upgrade 1-3 Star systems per turn.  If you cannot make this happen, your expansion process is going to go slower.

When your New Colony pops, you get 25 approval for 10 turns, and during those 10 turns, that star system's FIDSI is going to suck until the 5 Horatio show up, so use this time to build System Dev 2, 3, and 4 (6 turns) and build an Autonomous Administration (~1-4 turns).  

During this mass-expansion process, it will not be uncommon to have 10-15 different +25 approvals on your systems, and this helps deal with the overcolonization penalty.  On average, I think I had -150 to -220 approval for overcolonization penalty, but +350 to +500 in approval from New Colony Rule, but every turn I was turning Systems SysDev3 and SysDev4 and then immediately making that Autonomous Administration.    

Terraform Terraform Terraform. I got Climate Engineering at turn 107, and that's when I put the foot on the gas for Terraforming and never let up.  Terraforming is absolutely KEY to getting those big juicy population counts and massive FIDSI amounts.  Always shoot for Atolls for hot planets and Forests for cold planets.  Don't bother with Oceans, you get more Industry from Forests and more Science from Oceans.  Once your population gets close to maximum, put a Super Bio-Fuel Factory in that System, then your excess Food becomes Industry, and once you've built everything you want to build, you can use all that Industry on 50% Science or Dust, or building up your fleet.

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I think I'm going to try for another Conquest win, except this time I'll try to do it sooner than 171 turns.  I lost a lot of time messing around with fighting the AI in the early and mid game because I had 3 of them right next to me.  

Not bad but there's a couple things I must point out. 

1) Its one thing to play against the AI, its another to play against real live Humans via Multiplayer. Call it an obvious observation but your plan probably wouldn't work against Humans who would have experience in throwing a major wrench by going with early game aggression and knowing how to fight compared to the AI. If you're left alone, your plan works but if you're forced to deviate resources towards Military and have the risk of losing expansions/established colonies to aggressors, your plan can go down in flames.

2) Vanilla Horatio is one thing. Custom Gene Hunter is another thing entirely. What I mean by that is that Gene Hunter can be taken to a whole new level with a Custom Faction built around it. Which Visual Affinity you go with is entirely up to you but one interesting recipe to try is to pair it with Riftborn. Your primary population doesn't take food but is instead built via production(as is all your outposts(just like Riftborn so you can expand like a mad dog and not be the wiser)). Any and all food production goes to your minor population and they're the only ones that propagate via Food so if you come across minor factions, assimilate them ASAP and then gene splice at the first opportunity.  As for what population trait to give your custom faction, the most broken and OP form of Gene Hunter is taking the Craver population trait(Extreme Foremen) and pairing it with Planet Menders(Sower Trait). Having that secondary trait cuts your Extreme Foremen depletion malus in half but it only gets better. You then start with Sowers minor population instead of Z'vali or other +Loyalty/Happiness factions so that you can completely eliminate the malus Extreme Foremen has when you assimilate Sowers in the first 10 or so turns. Therefore your custom faction will produce 2.5 times the base planet yield on all planets your population happens to be on without fear of that planet being exhausted since its been spliced out via Gene Hunter affinity.

What other faction traits you go with is entirely up to you but one thing I've come to find is that giving them Growth Plan III(+30% Food) and Crowded Planets II(+2 population cap) can really create systems that generate so much Food its insane. Although your Riftborn Visual population wouldn't benefit directly from Growth Plan III(they don't grow naturally), your Minor Population will, hence why its perfect. Furthermore, Gene Hunter adds a 5% Food consumption malus to your Major Population. Yet Riftborn don't require Food so is it really a malus? You'll want to have Ecology involved later on in the Riftborn Quest line since doing so will allow you to add +3 Influence to your custom population. Therefore you won't need to assimilate United Empire, Baghba or Illo to get the Influence you need.

I've come to really like this set-up though:

Gameplay Affinity: Gene Hunter(Horatio)

Visual Affinity: Imperial(United Empire)

Government: Republic or Federation

Planet start: Atoll

Political ideology: Science with Automatist(buffs Industry with Science events)

Population trait: Extreme Foremen + Planet Menders

Population Collection: Peer Reviewed(Sophon)

Faction Traits:

Price of Perfection II <- +20% Ship cost, +10% Weapon Damage

Stay at Home <- +100% Overcolonization Penalty, -5% Bandwidth for each colony over limit

Sowers starting minor population

Deadly Weapons II(+20% Weapon Damage)

Big Fleets II(+2 CP, -25% Ship upkeep)

Fast Travelers II(+2 Movement)

+ 2 Techs of your choosing 

or 

Ace Senators(-50% Influence cost on Laws and Election actions)

Luxury Connoiseurs(-25% Luxury cost on System Development)

Comes to 90/95 Faction points but despite coming under the limit, you'll find that the constraint on expanding via Stay at Home won't put you at a disadvantage. Frankly I go with the latter option of Ace Senators and Luxury Connoiseurs because if you opt for Federation Government instead of a Republic, Ace Senators can reduce influencing the election by 50%(on top of cutting law costs by 50%) while Luxury Connoiseurs stacks with Federation Government's bonus towards System Development(45% reduction combined). I just opt for Republic because I like the stronger laws. You start off with Science in power since it gives you a 10% Technology cost reduction and allows you to implement Dirty Hands Act to cut system improvement cost by 10%(15% in Republic). Then when the first Election comes around, push to try and have Industrial join Science in the Senate. Automatist trait on your population along with early game Exploration and having an Industrial Hero helps get Industry into the Senate(unlikely they'll be leading it though). That way Dmitri will join Petra(your choice in the Imperial quest line) so that you get +2 Colony limit(if in Federation) and Titan of Industry buffs later on in the game(Petra grants the Seeker Movement bonus as well). With Industry in the Senate, you can employ Mineral Misers Act to boost Strategic output while giving systems +10%(15% in Republic) Production per Strategic on system(obviously some systems benefit more than others from this). Later on you'll add Work not Shirk for more production, Star Boogie if you want more Fleet Mobility or Mine's Bigger to get +33% Weapon Damage(+50% in Republic) on your fleets. Fleet Fortitude is also an option if you want to bolster your Ship's HP by 30%(40% in Republic).

The beauty of United Empire though is that their Quest Line is relatively easy and straight forward with the first quest giving you a free 10% bonus to Weapon Damage, giving your ships a solid edge over your competition. Although you must keep your population as is(switching to Sheredyn or Mezari completely overwrites your custom population, hence custom UE visual never works with AI...), you gain +10% Industry from it(stacks with Mineral Misers Law, Titan of Industry and System Development buffs).

Oh and one more thing: Get a system with 5 Hot Planets that are plentiful with Strategic Deposits and plop a Craver Governor on it. Then put 4 Economic Behemoths in orbit with 5 Restoration Modules each respectively(-40 Depletion points in total) and then activate the Craver's unique hero skill that increases system production by an additional 200%(hence 4.5 multiplier). Don't be shocked if you push 100k Industry from that system. Alternatively you can try this on a Cold system to generate gobs of science.