Chasing Don't even Think About It achievement (among others), and need to win on Endless mode using custom faction with a whopping -195 points



Basically, that's every negative you can take in the custom faction design except 3-5.



My first try was a tiny map vs 1 AI only - the sowers I pre=selected. It was a slaughter before my first few colonies even got up and running.



Critical failures - so many to list but just a few stand out

a) slow travel - my ships moved so slow that just the travel time to colonize planets was probably only reason needed why I lost



b) staggering unhappiness could over long haul be overcome, but never got that time because just about when I was about to discover wormhole tech, the AI was already pouring through and colonizing my constellation



c) AI swarm couldn't be stopped by colonies that hadn't yet been able to set themselves up to produce reasonable self sustaining industry, much less contribute towards overall empire fleet



So - for anyone that has actually won this achievement, any specific tips?



I'm already guessing don't play tiny map? Go huge, to allow more buffer time between contact? (although that may allow AI to get so huge it's too hard to beat, but for sure tiny map seems to be doomed)



Any specific AI faction that would be best played against to earn this achievement?



thanks for any help

jacozilla wrote:
Chasing Don't even Think About It achievement (among others), and need to win on Endless mode using custom faction with a whopping -195 points



Basically, that's every negative you can take in the custom faction design except 3-5.

The negative points are tough.. but you do know the classic built-in cheats right..? lol



1. AI Tech trading or dust trading is easy! (so your 1st technologies should be trading for sure) what it's like 300 research tops..? (and of course if you take "eternal war" as a negative or certain factions.. then you can't exploit this)



2. And through taking all the AI's dust every turn if you have the ability to use dust (I don't cause I play disharmony.. cause DUST makes the game really easy!) you can buy ships and research facilities.. not to mention upgrade them.. which is a huge bonus.. if you choose to play "disharmony" you can't upgrade (which makes it tough!)



3. A good stat as you probably know is..? to take "the dust" or "research" points for completed ship kills.. that can boost you 100x times over.. (I don't take these again.. cause I don't want the game too easy)



4. heroes by god when you have them.. can do amazing thing.. and the CHEAT of all cheats on heroes is "emergency shelter" that one alone.. (for battle) will keep your fleet safe and undying almost indefinitely..



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Let me be clear.. I've found (meaning knowing obviously all the built-in cheats or flaws ) knowing them.. makes the game "too easy" I can win easily.. so I've chosen to play disharmony with negative points and specifically "eternal war" and with no heroes.. then the game is incredibly tough after you've hit all the negative points or MOST OF E'M



It's so tough or boring.. I've found the solution is to cheat a little.. and I mean real cheats As in they make this "trainer" programs that will cheat basically..



And so I think the game is super tough possibly unwinnable (or just lots of work!) so I've found the balance of super negative points and disharmony and "eternal war" is to cheat to counter-act some of the toughness.. otherwise I think it's unplayable maybe unwinnable.. but super hard.. no doubt.. so hopefully this list of game exploits.. will further your advance for points.. because I'm guessing that the achievement is doable? with these game exploits/bugs/miss-programming that hasn't been fixed in years.. and maybe never will be fixed?



No matter.. I fixed it with my choice of disharmony and eternal war..

Seeded a medium size spiral 2 galaxy, with pre-picked Sowers - figured that might give me enough time to expand and with only 1 AI it let me take the eternal war negative. But it still left me with a critical failure now in hindsight, after I just got slaughtered again.



This time made it through the point of expanding and controlling all chokepoints to my half the map via the spiral-2 wormhole choke points. It was a slow painful slog with all the unhappiness, long build time, dumb science, etc negatives that you have to take in order to get to the minimum -195. Because I'd identified the slow travel negative as one of my key failures in first try above, I took that out and traded for another.



Basically, the only things I didn't take were: 2nd tier of anarchists -2 CP, no slow travel, no wasted space as I figured combat tonnage would be what kept me alive, deep roots as it's only -1 thing, 2nd or 3rd tier of humane weapons (lower dmg), and dust starved (zero dust to start).



That's it, that is all I could leave out because the only way to build -195 points is take every single negative except the handful listed above, or some combo that equates to the same thing. Since slow travel seemed to be an absolute critical game killer, I left that out. But it now turns out another game killer is even the -1 CP I took for anarchists (it gives -6 points)



So without slow travel, this time I was able to successfully expand fast enough to get to the key choke points before the AI started coming in. But after expanding and holding my half the map (but not half colonized, just controlled the entry points into my half), and slogging out two wars with the AI with brief cease fires in between - it became very apparent I had two more critical failure points to ever winning with a -195 faction:



1 - CP - With that much negative points, won't out tech the AI - in some fantasy perhaps it's possible to hold even after the early game when you get into mid game, but that assumes you make it to mid game. Problem is for sure won't be ahead of AI in early to early-mid game, and that's where I arrived. I held my own using 1 super-hero fleet with my measly 11CP that I boosted to 14 before I got slaughtered, but just fell behind in the fleet MP vs MP race. Not sure if having that one more CP would have made enough of a difference given further failure below, but it sure didn't help.



Up to ~turn 100, was able to hold my own pretty well - rarely lost a ship from my hero fleet and due to taking vaulter affinity, I could sling my one hero fleet around to defend any of the 3 main entry wormholes. But it was becoming clear that even my hero fleet was starting to lose the mp vs mp race. Initially my 6k hero fleet could take on the 7-8k aI fleets, but once they started tipping over that, every win with my hero fleet would cost me 3-5 ships.



With all the slow build time negatives you are forced to take, that is too brutal an attrition war with the AI to ever win. But really what did me in was below:



2 - Lack of 3 good hero commander and 3 fully stocked hero fleets.



-Until about turn 100, the AI and I were locked in conventional non-cosmic string warfare. e.g. only way it could get at me was through one of the 3 chokepoints I controlled. with my 1 main hero fleet and a couple replacement ship fleets I rarely had to use since I could vault my on hero fleet to each point of contact.



-But when cosmic strings was discovered by the AI, that's it - game over. After the two brief wars and cease fires, the third war at turn 120 was the beginning of the end. The AI came at me with a gigantic tsunami of ships from every direction - launching via cosmic strings at planets in my rear areas, sides, cul de sacs, etc. It would send huge fleets, small fleets, sometimes a lone scout - just too many to lock down from preventing landing on my systems and blockading them.



While my few fleets bled to death against waves coming at my choke points, his 15+ other fleets were raiding into my rear area systems just by directly launching at them, so there was no stopping them short of having more fleets. But this is where the lack of heroes comes in- even if I did have 15 other fleets, something I'd wager is impossible of anyone no matter how good by turn 120 with this kind of handicap to start - they would not stand a chance and not be a match against the AI.



My non hero fleets were about 3k combat power. Against 8-9k AI non-hero fleets. End of story right there.



So my two take aways from this failure is: in addition to slow travel needing be avoided just so you can colonize fast enough to actually even have a chance to dig in, apparently i need to re-roll the start game lottery until I end up with 3 pilot/commander or pilot/something. It was really nice to start with the 2 administrators I got plus the 1 pilot in this game - but the administrators weren't what killed me, it was lack of more than 1 decent fleet to fight the AI with.



From the -195 build, looks like only way I can remove the CP reduction is take even more ineffective fleet weapons dmg, and then try re-rolling a start map to get 3 good pilots or even semi-decent pilot+anything else heroes.



I like this is a serious challenge so that's pretty cool. But it sure does make me want to carry a grudge against the AI. Will have to play some normal games for awhile to crush the AI to get my motivation back to try this again later.



(note - all of the above was despite rolling what looked like a pretty darn good map start - good number of terran/jungle and large planets, rich resources, etc in my neck of the galaxy. Total props to anyone that did this achievement, it seems the toughest one of all - in terms of actual toughness, not some bizarre game mechanic like the kill fighter/bombers one I've already ranted about in other thread)

Kudos if you can pull this off legitimately, but if I remember correctly, it is easily achievable by setting the opponent faction to negative trait customs.

Indeed, when I got this achievement I simply took the -195 faction for myself and my AI opponent. I also think I had more than one, as the quarreling makes it easier for you to duck away.

Nowadays I think though I could pull it off with a normal faction on the enemy side. There is a lot you can do when building ships, and properly built ships are MUCH stronger than just building them some working way.

1. Fight an enemy AI faction that has -230 points (give or take, the lowest figure you can get for them)

2. Be really good at the game (that 40 point difference doesn't make up for the fact that at endless difficulty they have a 90% discount on everything, they are literally cheating by being 10x better at everything).



Although I admit I got it a couple of patches ago before the weapon/defenses rebalance, back when you wanted your ship equipped with nothing but long range lasers (you had to manually change it to lasers) and could easily overcome a "stronger" AI with your well designed ships

Well, it took a bit and admittedly some RNG luck rolling my way with 2 pilots in my first three heroes, but finally achieved this challenge legitimately (e.g. Taking all -195 points myself, but playing against normal faction opponent, not a negative custom faction)



The two absolute keys in my victory were vaulter affinity, and early pilots.



Vaulter affinity was incredibly key - it was all that let my vastly inferior fleets - both in numbers and tech - concentrate enough force rapidly enough to hold off doomsday long enough to start overcoming the net total of all the negatives you start with (unhappiness, super slow economy, slow build times, etc)



Like any other game, by turn 150 you know you are eventually going to win. The challenge here was just surviving to get there. And vaulter affinity in my opinion is so powerful because of the ability to no longer worry about strategic disperal of your fleets, it is at least 75% reason why finally won this achievement



Other 25% is easily pilots. With two initial pilots plus the semi ok admin/commander i used as first colony boy and then substitute fleet commander, it gave me two fleets that with vaulter affinity meant i could fort up and hold out forever on 2 points of contact since pilots give such strong defense/ offense buffs



With only 1 pilot, you are doomed because even with wormhole choke points, on endless mode the AI will always attack you concurrently on more than one point of contact.



With 2 pilots early game plus the semi ok admin/commander, it gave me two fleets that could survive against larger mp fleets with better tech ships, and the 3rd commander fleet that could finish off wounded fleets my pilots didnt outright destroy.



Unlike normal endless mode games, i had to accept as a given to win this achievement that i would lose some systems, so i spread out as fast as my slow-impaired negatives would allow, and colonized a few systems whose only purpose was to serve as fodder for the AI to attack and be points of contact to war over.



Personally, if the AI programming was better, would never have won. a human player would never, ever concede to a cease fire when you know you'te bleeding the other player dry, but i managed to get critical cease fires after holding out for the 10 turn minimum after each war.



So basic formula seems to be for winning this achievement in current game mechanics state without cheesing it vis custom negative point AI to play against is:



1. Pick the -195 points that suits you, which basically means all but a handful. But absolutely dont take the slow speed ships negative beyond the first tier. Found out hard way that slow expansion is auto kiss of doom and the slow ships on tier 2 pr 3 of this negative makes colony ship transit so slow you are still barely colonizing core worlds before first war is delcared and then its game over



2. Wont say its impossible but sure looks like for most pretty good to good players you'll need to RNG at least two early pilots. Otherwise all the tactics in the world isnt going to save your incredibly inferior fleets vs the AI carpet of doom.



3. I think its possible wthout vaulter affinity, but having it makes defending your empire through the critical early and mid game so much easier, i can say for sure a player of my skill level cant do it wthout vaulter affinity.



4. Be aggressive and war early. The AI is coming for you regardless, so might as well give em the middle finger early. Expand, grab the key choke points needed and then fort up. As noted above, AI is too dumb and after 10 turns of war as lomg as you dont conquer a planet, will agree to cease fire. So goal is just survive the bouts of 10-15 turn wars and then settle for cease fire to get your empire past the early and early-mid game sluggishness of all that loaded down negatives



5. Once survivng till that mid-mid game or at most late mid game, it seemed like any other game - inevitable victory is foreseen, just the usual go through motions of wiping out the enemy fleets and core worlds with the usual tidal wave as you get stronger and stronger while AI gets weaker and weaker.



6. Ive done this twice now, with solo 1v1 and medium map 4 empires and i found the 4 empires a bit easier. Neither eas easy, just saying of the two, having multiple AI seemed to give me a tiny bit more breather as they warred with each other too.



Overall, i found this to be one of the few really difficult challenges with ES. If playing endless mode has gotten boring because victory against AI is so easy, id rcommend trying this achievement, or maybe work up to it via 50, 100, and 150 point negatives first.



Its really added a lot more freshness to my ES playing time and am currently usually playng with a 75 point negative faction as my default for all games despite being done with this challenge.

When I made this achievement it involved finding the "perfect" map, hand-picking my opponent and still losing several times while min-maxing every single turn. Needless to say I only did it once and usually never do it "for fun" (because its not for me). With the introduction of using customized races for enemy AI this has become kind of a cakewalk IMO.

MTB-Fritz wrote:
When I made this achievement it involved finding the "perfect" map, hand-picking my opponent and still losing several times while min-maxing every single turn. Needless to say I only did it once and usually never do it "for fun" (because its not for me). With the introduction of using customized races for enemy AI this has become kind of a cakewalk IMO.

Admittedly after my first 3-4 tries at this, I was tempted to do the custom negative race for enemy AI route, but I stuck with it and finally got my win the normal or I suppose hard way.



It's not an auto win that's for sure. Even with my bag of tips, I've tried replaying the -195 scenario at least half dozen times after my win and it's like 33% at best (2 wins, 4 losses). As I said, for me the core factor seems to be a bit of rng on the pilots.



For general fun I'm sticking to about -75 points to handicap myself and make it a challenge, but -195 is seriously difficult and 66% or more a loss. Anytime I start to feel endless is just too easy and boring though I'll try the -195 scenario again and kinda refreshes the usual play.

Hello, Just a quick question, I play this game game on Fast game mode, I have tried to get this achievement a couple of times but it never actually rewards me with it. Do i need to play on normal speed or is there something else I'm not allowed to do?