If you want a real challenge. Choose cravers, impossible difficultly, and insane pirates. Leave everything else as default. Try to survive to turn 500.

mokaiba wrote:
If you want a real challenge. Choose cravers, impossible difficultly, and insane pirates. Leave everything else as default. Try to survive to turn 500.

Cravers are designed to eat ships for breakfast & to use them to raise econ / tech.





Not really a challenge, more of a snooze-fest: focus on beams / kinetic + missile defense [sincepiratesdon'tusethese?] and keep chomping whilst turtling, count on the pirates hampering the other AI just as much.

Fairly sure I found another way to dupe pop. ~ instead of double ship / build completion, I finished a build while moving all of the population to one planet (to fill it up) ~ wham, instant full tanks!



Three things:



#1 The position was pointless. None of the AI could get through the wormhole [meaningtheybasicallydidn'texistforthechallenge~couldhavebeen7oninsane] and the size/resource spread you chose with the spiral shape = obviously slow growth

#2 I'd be tempted to econ it + hopscotch to the eastern 5 usable systems, making that my base ~ there's simply not enough resources around to justify slogging through 5 crappy systems (with long connections) to complete the chain. The only reason I settled where I did was my ships (even with engines) wouldn't have reached east in time, so I dumped them closer. Add 5 turns, and I'd have settled near the wormhole instead

#3 Sophons don't do rush starts, really... even with x2 resource 6 planet systems







Anyhow, save attached ~ freely admit that I think I unwittingly duped population here on turn 21ish. Given how easy it was to do... let's just say I'm not taking these challenges seriously until post-patch.



Score: 194

Pop: 26 >Duped< (so, yeah.. if you're claiming to get >26... you accidentally duped, methinks?)







Edit:



Went back to a save & checked it out. It might have just been pop+1 and farming boost [tech] kicking in while the game auto-spread the population. Not sure.
Challenge 2 - 26 pop accidental exploit.zip

Actually the map layout is more interesting than I thought. (Warp drives, northeast, I'm just sayin...)



I would definitely be interested in advice on how to build econ on my start. I rushed Lava colonization for lack of anything better. But when I play the next 30 turns I'm going to rush weapons and see what UE thinks of Sophon beams.
davea-t60.zip

mokaiba wrote:
If you want a real challenge. Choose cravers, impossible difficultly, and insane pirates. Leave everything else as default. Try to survive to turn 500.

It would be interesting to have more of these challenges with common start points and frequent saves. I don't think I could do yours, I am not good enough, but it would be great if you started a challenge like this.

davea wrote:
Actually the map layout is more interesting than I thought. (Warp drives, northeast, I'm just sayin...)



I would definitely be interested in advice on how to build econ on my start. I rushed Lava colonization for lack of anything better. But when I play the next 30 turns I'm going to rush weapons and see what UE thinks of Sophon beams.

30 turns isn't enough time to rush weapons tech + atmospheric filtration on this map as your starting resources are so paltry.



~ Remember that it took until turn 60 using the Hss to take a single planet off an easier AI in the first challenge. Sophon really don't have the same fleet bonuses here.

Uploaded to zippy as per usual:

http://www24.zippyshare.com/v/70625269/file.html

No debt ever

Food of 306

Industry 151

Science 295 (with +40 next turn)

Population of 31

5 systems colonized, with home system completely colonized (although I had 4 colony ships moving to new systems at that moment)- the home system itself is now able to pump out 2 colony ships per turn.

2 heros, 1 admin of lvl 4, the other miltary (or atleast will be)

Score of 213.



Edit: this was my first attempt on the map- don't hate!

Here is the next 30-turn challenge. The first one is here:



https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/8097-30-turn-challenge-help-me-learn



On forums for other games I have been involved in, sometimes players share a game in order to learn. I consider myself an "OK" player but I usually play on normal difficulty and win 50/50 of the time. So obviously I can learn more.



The attached zip file has a save game at turn 0 of a small map, 4 empires, Sophon, hard difficulty. I have also attached my result after 30 turns. This is a pretty poor position but it should make an interesting learning experience. I would like to compare results. If you got better than me, I'd like to understand your strategy. If I got better than you, I'll explain what I was trying to do. I only played the start position once; I could do a little better if I used the knowledge from the first playthrough to guide a second playthrough from the same start. But that would be cheating :-).



My results at the end of turn 30: score=168, total population=15, food=47, industry=106, science=99. I will post more about why these results seem so poor, after a few people have tried the map. Also, although the game does not prevent you, please "play fair" by keeping your dust count above zero.



The attached zip has a save game "sh2-t0" which is at turn 0, and a save game "davea-t30" which is at turn 30.

4x_Fan wrote:
Pop 31 ~ not sure how you got there, I'd like to take a look.

Hyperscale farms on home system.

4x_Fan wrote:
Cravers are designed to eat ships for breakfast & to use them to raise econ / tech.





Not really a challenge, more of a snooze-fest: focus on beams / kinetic + missile defense [sincepiratesdon'tusethese?] and keep chomping whilst turtling, count on the pirates hampering the other AI just as much.

try it first. I also forgot to write use slow. You'll be lucky to still have 3 systems at turn 500.



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/7741-challenge-sophon-try-to-win-in-500-turns-or-less

Sebbers wrote:
Hyperscale farms on home system.

My 26 pop attempt also used hyperscale [the+4ones?] farms, rushed.

4x_Fan wrote:
My 26 pop attempt also used hyperscale [the+4ones?] farms, rushed.

I got them very early in the game, maybe (edt)5th tech to research.

Sebbers wrote:


Population of 31

Lol wow - how did you get your home system to 27 pop in 30 turns without cheating? Mine is at 12 with same food upgrades as you.



My first attempt - Pop 21, food 210, ind 148, sci 294, dust 49.



Edit : ah got the farms much earlier than me.
SOPHONS - Turn 30 fluffya.zip

Hmm not sure how you did it Sebbers - I rushed for hyperscale farms this go but still ended with 25 or 26 total pop with 14 on my home system. Can't get anywhere near 27 atm. I didn't use my free colony ship on my home system - suprised if just that makes such a huge difference.



edit : tried using my first colony on home system, rushing to hyperscale and doing nothing except building up pop on that one system and ended with 17 on it and literally nothing else. I must be missing something.

Don't know how you manage to get so high so quickly, guess I'm not a rushing type of player or maybe a "slow" starter or I'm doing it terribly wrong...



Turn 30 - Points: 148

Pop 18, Food 171, Industry 95, Science 210, Dust 6 (), FIDS 539

Systems 3 (on my way to the 4th), Planets 6, 2 Heroes on Systems



Turn 60 - Points: 747

Pop 55, Food 499, Industry 499, Science 829, Dust 43 (-5 per turn at that time, seeing if I need to adjust tax in upcoming turns), FIDS 2217

Systems 6, Planets, 17, 3 Heroes on Systems
Eterean - Sophons - Turn 30.zip
Eterean - Sophons Turn 60.zip

Eterean wrote:
Don't know how you manage to get so high so quickly ... Pop 18

That is exactly the goal of this thread! You are doing better than me. I plan to dig through their save games and find out what they did. If I can't understand, I will ask. The reason I chose 30 turns is to focus on the early game, with a short enough number of turns that we can still see what they did (approximately) from the save game. An actual replay would be nicer, but the game doesn't support that today.



BTW, I ran this game up to turn 100 or so. I have killed the Hissho and I am working my way through UE. Ground combat is so slow, it really kills the momentum for me. I will probably study the save games here and replay from the start using their initial builds, so I can have a better economy to take out UE.