Aurora Challenge: You are Xenophobic High Supreme Imperial Commander God Number One. All must bow before you.
Start a new game:
1: 0 starting NPRs
2: 100% NPR generation Chance
3: 100% difficulty setting
4: 100 million loyal subjects.
5: Research should be set as TN with 100,000 research points and random tech.
6: No starting ships or PDC bases.
6: Choose a government and use whatever starting facilities come with it.
7: Build and explore until alien contact.
8: Cease all explorations.
8: Exterminate or assimilate new alien race at all costs.
9: Add 100% to the difficulty level and save. So after conquering the first aliens you would be at 200% difficulty.
10: Continue exploring and conquering and after each one add another 100% to the difficulty level (don't forget to save).
11:
12: Profit.
How far can you go? After conquering 9 alien civilizations you would be at 1000% difficulty. That would be a tough one I think. Since I usually play at 200-300% I really don't know. I am starting a new game right now. If anyone wants to try also, make sure and post your results.
Note: It is important to extinguish the aliens asap because if not they will start exploring and unlocking new aliens. That WILL eventually snowball and your game becomes a nightmare of 5 second increments and slow turn processing. you can always turn off the 50% NPR generation temporarily if your having troubling dealing with a particular civilization. Playing this way you can easily go for 100's of years and still have pretty quick turn processing. I would say that SM generating a small pirate faction and occasionally wiping out your civilian fleets would be permissible if you want to speed up your turns.
Sincerely,
Auroras R' Fun
My old campaign has fallen victim to slowdown, and I'm looking for a challenge, so I'm going to take a stab at this. And there's only one race who will fit a challenge of this sort.
So begins the story of the
Zuul Imperium. I picked Military Theocracy for government type mostly for flavor reasons (this gives me one research lab, which kind of fits the Zuul but may be something I come to regret). Theme.. let's go with Warhammer 40k empire; I've never used it but I'm expecting a lot of aggressive and arrogant ship names. I'm going with a Sol start for simplicity; I will assume that a few Zuul stumbled on a cheerfully oblivious pre-TNE Earth and ate all the humans. Galactic conquest is off to a good start!
You don't specify Precursors or Star Swarm; I considered leaving them out if the goal is just to tear apart the galaxy in an orgy of conquest, but decided to leave them in for more violence. Also the precursors at least may be a valuable opportunity to offset a slow research start. You don't specify other settings either, so I left maintenance on but turned off inexperienced fleets, real stars, and orbital motion.
70 Construction factories. This is going to be a slow start.
Expect future updates, unless people complain about them being annoying.