I think I've heard almost every faction be described as being good and bad from various people, but universally Horatio is thought to be (and I agree) a low-tier faction.

Recently won on Endless, Fast, +8 AI. It was closer that it would be with another faction (and I'm pretty sure I made a mistake when I went after the strongest faction after the mid-game), but it's entirely doable.

the biggest thing to keep in mind is that you have hilariously weak ships. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/6gpevt/talking_ship_comparing_es2_faction_ships/

Other than that, I don't think they are so bad though. There is literally no reason (other than the developers hate the Horatio) for their ships to be as weak as they are, but It's far from impossible to win with them. This was only my second time playing them (and first on Endless), and I'm pretty sure I played various things sub-optimally.

My biggest tips would be:

1. Expand close to your home system. You tend to be good with food, so staying close means that the outposts turn to colonies faster. You can colonize anything, so there is less of a need to push to far outposts like other factions sometimes do. Closer outposts means faster expansions and a better economy.
   
   
2. Assimilate quickly and FAR. This is risky, but because you have Dictatorship-Ecologist, you can colonize all non-gas planets from the start. This means that you can scout far and wide.  Most factions can assimilate distant planets, but they may have colonization issues in surrounding systems. You don't have that issue, so you need to be aggressive to take advantage of it. This is also probably the only thing that Horatio have a good ship design for as their Explorer ships can have all engines/probes.
   
   
3. Gene Splice Late. There really isn't much of a reason to take the significant population hits until well-into the mid-game. (Also don't do what I did and assimilate a faction only to find that it left a system at 0 population). Make sure that your food is up (i.e. you have some horatio in minor faction systems) before splicing them. And slice in an order that is preferential.
   1. As a sub-point that ties into (2), holding back on splicing means that if you took an aggressive minor faction (i.e. one that is adjecent to an enemy), you can slice them defensively to make it less attractive. (And general tip, if you are going to lose a system sell everything before you lose it to make certain that it's crap).
4. Get out of Dictatorship. So the first two points relied on Dictatorship, but you don't want to stay there. I switched to Democracy, but Republic might be stronger. You likely won't be able to keep Ecologist without influencing an election (and I rarely spend the resources to), so keep that in mind before you switch.
   
   
5. Focus on Manpower/Troops and "drop" style combat. This is more theorycraft, as I didn't exactly try it during my game, but it matches my experience well. the Horatio are food heavy, so much so that even when they go into a miliatry focus they will have surplus manpower. Often times this is simply not the case. Further, their ships are not that strong. In my game, when I hit the Cravers (who were the strongest faction other than me), I naively thought my ships could take them.... I was wrong. However, I was able to simply jump around their various ships sieging planets and sniping various systems (including their homeworld). I used my typical focus on the titanium siege module, however I had tons of manpower lying around and even the 4/5 turns to siege down their homeworld was often too slow as they would chase my fleets away. If I had also stacked manpower modules and went for early troop upgrades, I probably could have done so more effectively. 
   1. Keep in mind that Manpower modules (like Probe modules) are built/retrofit at FULL. This means that if you have the dust you can retrofit them out and in to automatically refill them. 

If you have any of your own tips, please share.

Really glad to see someone posting about Horatio Strategy! Awesome. 

     I got Endless Space 2 today, and the first faction that I wanted to play was Horatio. I decided this by watching all of the intro videos while the game was downloading in steam. I like that he was tormented as a child, and that he faught for his empire. The narative feels specific which is important for me to feel immersed. Anyway, I'm excited to get into the game, and I think I'll always have a bias for Horatio, seeing as it's my first faction. And considering that I'll be returning to Horatio repeatedly, I think I'll get a chance to really analyze the faction in depth. I'm not done with the playthrough yet but here are my thoughts so far. 

I'm on Serious difficulty, which feels a bit too easy. I'm on turn 85-ish and I feel like I have a very substantial lead over the AI. 

Sidenote: There is this feeling I get in 4X games where all of a sudden I reach a 'tipping point' and I overtake the AI. I see it happen in Civ 5, Civ 6, and Endless Legend as well. In those games, difficulty level seems to delay the timing of the tipping point. I remember seeing mods where the difficulty increases over time. The idea there is to make the whole game feel competitive. I would welcome that type of mod for this game as well.

Perhaps I merely got lucky with the world generation, but I didnt really need a military for the first 45 turns or so. Thats a problem for me I think. Next playthrough will definitely be on Endless. 

I got this solo-quest that made me think twice about when to gene-splice. It was called something like The Ugly Plague, where Horatio were complaining about having to be in such close proximity to other lifeforms. There were two options, but the one I chose was to let the Horatio have their way and clear 3 systems of minor faction units. At the time, all I had was three systems though, so I upgraded them all to level 2 systems and stuck the minor faction units in the Starport. Luckily there was enough room for all of them so the remaining inhabitants on the planets were all Horatio. Turns out, this totally works. After the quest is complete you can just drop them back down. 

I was thinking though, "What does the existence of this quest imply?" It seems that the developers are expecting us to have minor faction units on our planets, so they are not expecting us to genesplice them into extinction. Huh. 

I built a second scout ship very early (like turn 7 or something). So I had lots of probes to shoot everywhere, and more than enough to use on Curiosities. Over the course of the Early game, I ended up getting a pretty large number of minor faction units in my systems. There are exiles, and also random events where minor faction units just show up on your planets. 

Ok, so this really sets the stage for the discussion of when to gene splice. On one hand, there is at least one quest that (presumably) only triggers when you haven't spliced your minor factions to extincion. On the other hand, I'd like to have a good smattering of splices by the midgame, because if I can just crank out Horatio that have a huge list of bonuses, I'd rather be producing those than mediocre minor faction units. Also, the population cost of splicing increases, so you'll still have minor faction units hangin around til the midgame. Perhaps this is skewed by the difficulty level I am playing on, so I'll have to take another look on Endless difficutly. 

I think that's probably good for now. I'll continue to come back and post my thoughts on this faction. I'm eager to hear another Horatio players thoughts. 

Ok, I wanted to come back and say that I very much second the issue of Horatio ships being weak. I got attacked by Reavers and boy oh boy am I outmatched. It seems that perhaps I made some errors in the early game with putting military on the back burner. But then again, my tech level is as good (if not better than theirs), I have the same number of ships (if not more), and the battle plays I am selecting seem intelligable enough. I really think its coming down to that gnarly difference in stats. Of course, economies win wars, so I think I'll be ok. But the grind for making ships has changed my politics and has slowed down my economic development. Things are looking pretty dicey for the Horatio. 

Pretty much agree with everything here. The ships really are the major problem. Their hunters can do some nifty stuff with their utility modules, but the attackers and protectors really suck, making early game a real slog if anyone tries to war you. The theme of flexible ships is cool in principle, but being able to do cutesy things doesn't really matter when a Craver fleet is bearing down on you. Basically, if you want to survive, you'll need to get to hunter tech fairly fast. If you get rushed, you're probably dead, hence why they feel less viable in MP. One thing you can do is create attackers that are orbital defenders, with no engine, using it for weapons instead. It's not ideal.

I'll just add some extra thoughts to your own.

Splicing: I tend to splice based on the food output of the colony early game, and then just go splice happy in the mid-late game. This often means sending minor populations to food rich worlds (usually my capital) where they can grow and be replaced fast. Getting the early food unique building is a must for everyone, but especially good for Horatio early game. It's a trade off splicing early - you'll be slowing yourself down even more, but the payoff can be great depending on how quickly you can get your pop back up to speed. The best thing to do is to judge how well things are going before you splice. If you're relatively isolated/got some good rolls on the galaxy generation, splice away. If you're next to an aggressive opponent, hold off until you feel safe. One reason to hold off is that the starting populations you have are basically in the splicing bag, so you might want to wait until you've spliced more difficult targets such as major factions, before getting anything else. It's worth experimenting with what works for you.

Go Republic, stay ecologist: Democracy can be tempting with the extra happiness, but happiness is pretty easy to come back for Horatio. +2 on hot, +1 from Z'vali splice, then +3 for a Kalgeros splice (which is often easy due to the frequent random event that spawns 2 of them on a planet) means that you should be all good for approval. If you are really struggling in mid game, Senator Bob law will almost always put you at ecstatic. Republic is great because of the election influence it gives you and the bonus to laws. The special ecologist laws give you 4% science and then 4% industry per spliced pop, when on Republic. Five spliced pop isn't uncommon for that time in the game, and a 20% science and industry boost is massive. Twinned with Brains over Bucks, and you're looking at ~50% science boost on all systems. You can push this even further on anomaly rich systems with the first ecologist law. As these are all percentage bonuses, in the most important resources, Horatio potentially scale better than anyone else. Again, it's just a matter of living long enough to get there.

Manpower dumping - Glad you brought this up, as it's something I've just started doing. Kitting out protectors with 2 engines, and manpower slots and just troop dumping on systems is really good. If you don't take the planet, it doesn't really matter, destroying infrastructure is a good payoff so use premptive bombing. If you do take the system, splice whatever pop was there, and if they retake it, just shrug. You got a huge resource boost for nearly no cost.

Priorities - prioritise splicing populations that give you science and industry. Mavros, Pulsos, Remnant are the highest priority splices. If you see them anywhere, take them even if it means declaring war on them. Next in line are happiness producers - Z'vali and Kalgeros - although these are easy to come by. Next comes food - Haroshem, Ameoba, Unfallen - as you use it to produce influence as well, so it's 2 for the price of 1. Everything else after that. The best things for you to splice are Riftborn, Vodyani, and Cravers, although good luck getting hold of them, especially Vodyani. This should play a role in your diplomacy. If any of these factions are far away enough that you won't feel repercussions, do a quick raid to get hold of the pop. Don't start a war with someone in striking distance though. All three of these factions will crush you if you are equal on tech.

Finally, try to play tall rather than wide. Despite the happiness, you don't have the military to control a vast empire, and your planets support more and better population than anyone else. People like wide because of the increase in trade routes, but since the nerf, they are less of a factor. Horatio heroes provide a boost to luxury resources, giving you all the luxuries you need to upgrade systems, so the only good reasons to strike out is 1: If a good opportunity presents itself or 2: You need a luxury or strategic resource. 8 systems is usually enough in the late game - pushing to 10-12 if you need it. Science victory is the go to victory type, followed by Wonder victory if you have the resources for it.

All in all, Horatio can be late game monsters, but struggle hard in the early game, and that's something you'll have to grapple with. Do your best to defend and not to annoy other factions. Grow lots, research lots, and things will go well for you.

i main vodyani, so i don't have a lot of experience managing minor pops. what is the ideal way to manage minor pops in LARGE map, max minor civs, supremacy only (ie, its going to be a VERY long game)?

i understand that with other factions, you create farming systems to unlock good 20/50count pop bonuses, and then spread diversity throughout your systems. However, with Horatio, i dont know how much this applies. if you create a farming system, you lose out on the strong FIDS your spliced horatio will eventually have on that system. do you splice to extinction? etc etc.

i main vodyani, so i dont know the basics of minor pop management. if you guys can point me to a guide, even better. thanks!