Since the multiplayer is currently not in a good state I decided to try my craver design from multiplayer and test it against endless difficoulty AI.

The end result was a wonder victory at turn 63. (me and 4 endless AI's.) Now how did that happen? Growth my friend, food growth. Lots and lots of food.











Basically what you need is the cravers 25% FIDS bonus then you get 30% growth bonus and keep focus on growing your planets. It also helps a lot with optimistic ++ and also influence so you have more planets early generating dust. You need master of illusion for faster colony ships and builder +++ for faster food buildings. You will impair yourself in fleets but your tech and production will more than keep up even with the endless AI. Notice also i use +3 industry anomality and +2 movement in my game. This is because of the snowball effect that exist in all turn based games, 1 turn faster settlement or one turn faster build unit will multiply itself exponentially in worth over turns. Just think about it logically if you manage to do everything 1 turn faster you have one more turn of say a 100+ system empire doing production in the future. Also notice i have 30% bonus to dust and a +10 influence area. This is so more planets from turn 0 can generate full dust income and what do i use the dust income for? I buy the food exploits. This shaves of 3-4 turns and accelerate every single planet several turns ahead in the game.



With happiness bonuses you will have allmost 100% food bonus.



with this i easily could have had some 1500+ population in my game now. (I had 1430 in turn 63 without really trying last 30 turns.)







I have added an excel spreedsheet with normal speed and 20 first population for beginning, early game and mid game and the savegame zip has turn 0 15 35 and 63.

endless savegame.zip

endless savegame.zip



Beginning: Food exploit. Tech for tundra as you need tech ASAP. Exeption is if you find ocean planet or any planet with high tech you can settle down turn 1 or turn 2. Also retrofit your scout to only an engine so you can get one out while producing your 2nd or 3rd colony ship.



Early game: get all the food techs then prepair for meeting AI. Settle all high food planets first and also science planets. Get happiness ASAP as you will very soon start striking if not on endless difficoulty.



Mid game: get population increasing techs so you keep growing. Terraform when available. Start using colony ships to grow the slowest growing planets or the ones with so high population that it takes longer than one or two turns to grow it. Basically if your building a colony ship in a 1 turn growth planet and sending it to a say 5-6 turn growth planet you are trading industry (45 industry on fast) for food (several hundreds of food.)



So imho the best investment you do in this game is a colony ship in late game. It can net you over 1000% from production if say you produce for 45 industry and settle in a population growth that would have cost 4500 food.

Thats really cool, ill have to try this myself. Iv'e actually tried to make my own version of the Hissho, since past attempts to use the default Hissho ended with me dead after 150 turns. I wont lie, I'm a newbie at this but for me, this custom Hissho has actually done me some good, and im actually still seeing ho my current game ends. I would love it you guys could give me your opinion on my newbie creation



( the last things on the traits is wasted space 2/2 )
Custom Hissho.zip

MagnusTheConquer I dont have endless space in front of me here on this laptop. I could discuss your traits if you could tell me them in the thread. It would be my honor. Warrior starts can be very good so a combination of early growth and good millitary stats so you can get a very quick conquest should do the trick for hisso. Obviously it will be map dependant what traits you will use as some with an enemy far away needs other traits than one with a close by enemy.

Big Fleets 2/2 +25

Black Thumbs 1/3 -10

Businessmen 1/3 +8

Cloning 1/3 +5

Deadly Weapons 3/3 +15

deep roots 1/2 -1

dust starved 1 -1

fast travelers 1/2 +5

masters of destruction 1/2 +10

naive 1 / 2 +5

power masters 2/2 +6

sloppy Sawbones 1/2 -2

Snipers 1/3 +7

Space Cadets 1/3 -5

Stellar Guardians 2/2 +10

Terraformed Planet 1 +4

Unskilled Builders 1/3 -5

Wasted space 2/2 -16

That's great combo will have to try it. I was looking for something new and this looks really good and will help me learn a few more things about ES mechanics





I tried this build works nice, I still have to learn it as I made a lot of mistakes. Only thing is I cannot ditch the feeling that the 63 turn win is luck dependent, but I might be doing something wrong.

"Big Fleets 2/2 +25" Dont need this you need the points to grow and produce more fleets.

Black Thumbs 1/3 -10 " big no no you need to grow even if you will conquer population you need first to build the ships.

Businessmen 1/3 +8 " ok but no real focus? go all in for buisness or not at all. Have a plan to your faction.

Cloning 1/3 +5 " cloning + is allways good but if your going to conquer planets i think its not so needed.

Deadly Weapons 3/3 +15 " yes you should go deadly or anything to give you the early edge you need to win population. Especially dmg is good since it also helps invasion i assume.

deep roots 1/2 -1 " dont ever do deep roots if you are trying to invade.

dust starved 1 -1 " not good idea imho. You should have 20 dust for a hero first turn.

fast travelers 1/2 +5 " if your going to do fast travel make it +2 or else it will probably not matter much in the game.

masters of destruction 1/2 +10 " this is a must. Good you pick this trait.

naive 1 / 2 +5 " also good but consider what type of game you will usually see..if you have high millitary your neighbour will fear you and will not allow open borders. imho its hard to have a good diplomacy game as a millitary player. Not saying its not possible just saying you should be aware of that fact.

power masters 2/2 +6 " why?

sloppy Sawbones 1/2 -2 " yes good

Snipers 1/3 +7 " Yes you need this for your millitary wins.

Space Cadets 1/3 -5 " No no no.

Stellar Guardians 2/2 +10 Yes this is so awesome trait. I wish more people would understand the power of stellar guardian. You will have much bigger dust income with this.

Terraformed Planet 1 +4 " Ok..your strategy not saying its bad.

Unskilled Builders 1/3 -5 " No no..you need 30% bonus so you can get food exploit cheaper

Wasted space 2/2 -16 " I guess wasted space is ok since you have plenty bonus in your ships allready.