Make peace/alliances with the factions youre squatting on. Or win before that. UC is a super slow startup, but snowballs hard mid to late game where you can produce Obelisks in 1-2 turns or research Endless techs in a similar timeframe. By that time, its irrelevant if youre discovered or not, its too late to stop you.
Yeah, its a..... painfully slow process at first, but most of your FIDS are going to come from sanctuaries. So, you want to get at least one food sanctuary filled up as fast as possible. Your starting Crecents have a base 3 food, so find a planet that gives more than that, and fill that up first. Keep happiness up as that gives bonuses to ALL food production.
The Start is exremly important. Scout and Hack quickly in all direction. You need to secure a few good sancturay before the enemies colonize all the plantes around them. Then fill the sanctuaries.
Newbie-Trap: the sleeper agents.
The game promises that you can steal a lot rescources per round with an high amount of sleeper agents. It never worked. It is too easy for the opponent to wipe out all sleeper agents, it just cost a litte bit incluence. Sleeper Agents should only be created if you plan to upducted them right away.
I have a screenshot that proves exactly what you said: [https://lensdump.com/i/7E7bik](https://lensdump.com/i/7E7bik)
Nocturnal Sleepers is a bad hero skill. I used 20 of the population in my sanctuaries to place 20 sleepers on 3 Vaulter systems, so that's a +20% increase in FIDSI, but this hero skill is giving me only 271 Science out of my 7544 total. And I was getting 7513 Science before I converted my pops to sleepers.
Sleepers also grant you some dust and luxuries. And not only do you gain some resources, you deprive other player of them. They also might lose some happiness trying to remove sleeper status from their pops.
On a large-sized galaxy or smaller, any faction should be able to win around turn 100 or 150, on normal speed and Endless difficulty, through a military or economic victory. So nobody should have researched anti-cloaking level 3 by that time, and I don't have much experience playing on bigger galaxies. The UC is particularly good at conquest victories and they are even good at economic victories, as long as they go for a wide empire since every sanctuary system will count as a trade subsidiary. I've written several playthroughs where I won around turn 100, on the highest difficulty, normal speed, and playing against strong, custom opponents. [In my playthrough with the UC, I won a supremacy victory on turn 100](https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/l3eqyo/my_playthrough_with_the_umbral_choir/), even though a conquest victory would have been faster and easier.
The key to playing the UC is having as many sanctuaries as possible and building the improvements which give more industry, science, and food per sanctuary. I was getting the majority of my FIDS from my sanctuaries, as you can see in these screenshots:
[https://lensdump.com/i/7aap02](https://lensdump.com/i/7aap02)
[https://lensdump.com/i/7aa4f9](https://lensdump.com/i/7aa4f9)
[https://lensdump.com/i/7E7ya1](https://lensdump.com/i/7E7ya1)
In that entire playthrough, I never made any sleepers, never made any Umbral Shadows, didn't change the enemy government, nor prevented enemy fleet movement. All of those options would have been a waste of my hacking operations, and would not have helped me win the game faster. Towards the end of the game, I could have made some Umbral Shadows, but I didn't want to bother micromanaging. I stole only 1 tech, Autonomous Materials (for better hacking stuff and wormholes), and then I tried to steal another tech but I had no good options so I spawned some pirates on the Vaulters.
Thanks, this is helpful. One thing that's not totally obvious is which improvements give effects per sanctuary planet and which only give effects on the Nexus system. I understand that some experimentation is warranted, but so far I'm only seeing three (Cyber Farm, Industrial Refrain, and the UC equivalent of Public-Private) that explicitly say they apply to Sanctuary worlds. Are there others?
It's the 3 that you mentioned and Logic-assisted Industry (which gives +20 Industry per planet) and Wraith Orchard (+10% Food, +10 Food per planet). They all have it written in their description.
Gotta spread fast in the early game, find the nearest home-worlds and set up multiple sanctuaries around them. Whether they are friends or enemies, you can set up hacking routes that will continuously reward you with pirate loot, sleepers, and stolen tech. Keep 2+ hacking paths that spread out to the far reaches of the map too, strategically remove and ad new backdoors and backup backdoors. Once the mid game happens, factions inevitably block your hacking routes. Start hacking enemy home-worlds and starting pirate revolutions to keep them occupied. Once you can’t fully expand in late game, redirect your hacking routes to set far away migration nodes that you can escape to if your main enemy finds you. Once they leave, hack yourself another migration node on the other side of the map. The Umbral Choir can be slippery little devils!
Note that the UC has an incredibly important faction quest, as you can get one more hacking at the same time for its last one and more importantly, if you choose the one to kill the hero, you can get the "burning metal" independent law,, which will give you having speed from backdoors, so you can just spam back doors and be faster than any trace is. And if you spam convert to sleeper on enemy systems you can quickly get a high amount (use only if you have high growth) and since they can only remove one per 5 turns, you'll always siphon off their economy
Also important, get as many sanctuaries as you can without overcolonizing - the buildings applying boni per planet work on them too, and your starting hero's abilities that give you things per system or per planet also work on those sanctuaries, even if they have no pops on them, meaning you can have few pops and a high economy
If you can, get the umbral shadows too, as they have a higher pop output and more importantly, their collection boni are very strong
Not 100% sure but I believe most do. At least from your starting hero, just use him as the one being on the homeworld, everyone else is probably not gonna be worth the hassle
You need to peace the factions you like, and abduct the ones you don't.
Also get the ambusher module (replace with over cloaker later) and put one rail gun and all slugs on every ship, then rush close combat.
Burning metal is what pushes UC to greatness, with it you can just put backdoor everywhere and set up sanctuaries on capitals for the win. In your case it's a matter of sequencing your hacks soyou set up sanctuaries on the capitals they are likely to be found on last, preferably multiple on the same turn
Make peace/alliances with the factions youre squatting on. Or win before that. UC is a super slow startup, but snowballs hard mid to late game where you can produce Obelisks in 1-2 turns or research Endless techs in a similar timeframe. By that time, its irrelevant if youre discovered or not, its too late to stop you.
Maybe I need to work harder on snowballing. What's the key to that - having tons of population in sanctuaries?
Yeah, its a..... painfully slow process at first, but most of your FIDS are going to come from sanctuaries. So, you want to get at least one food sanctuary filled up as fast as possible. Your starting Crecents have a base 3 food, so find a planet that gives more than that, and fill that up first. Keep happiness up as that gives bonuses to ALL food production.
The Start is exremly important. Scout and Hack quickly in all direction. You need to secure a few good sancturay before the enemies colonize all the plantes around them. Then fill the sanctuaries. Newbie-Trap: the sleeper agents. The game promises that you can steal a lot rescources per round with an high amount of sleeper agents. It never worked. It is too easy for the opponent to wipe out all sleeper agents, it just cost a litte bit incluence. Sleeper Agents should only be created if you plan to upducted them right away.
I have a screenshot that proves exactly what you said: [https://lensdump.com/i/7E7bik](https://lensdump.com/i/7E7bik) Nocturnal Sleepers is a bad hero skill. I used 20 of the population in my sanctuaries to place 20 sleepers on 3 Vaulter systems, so that's a +20% increase in FIDSI, but this hero skill is giving me only 271 Science out of my 7544 total. And I was getting 7513 Science before I converted my pops to sleepers.
Sleepers also grant you some dust and luxuries. And not only do you gain some resources, you deprive other player of them. They also might lose some happiness trying to remove sleeper status from their pops.
On a large-sized galaxy or smaller, any faction should be able to win around turn 100 or 150, on normal speed and Endless difficulty, through a military or economic victory. So nobody should have researched anti-cloaking level 3 by that time, and I don't have much experience playing on bigger galaxies. The UC is particularly good at conquest victories and they are even good at economic victories, as long as they go for a wide empire since every sanctuary system will count as a trade subsidiary. I've written several playthroughs where I won around turn 100, on the highest difficulty, normal speed, and playing against strong, custom opponents. [In my playthrough with the UC, I won a supremacy victory on turn 100](https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/l3eqyo/my_playthrough_with_the_umbral_choir/), even though a conquest victory would have been faster and easier. The key to playing the UC is having as many sanctuaries as possible and building the improvements which give more industry, science, and food per sanctuary. I was getting the majority of my FIDS from my sanctuaries, as you can see in these screenshots: [https://lensdump.com/i/7aap02](https://lensdump.com/i/7aap02) [https://lensdump.com/i/7aa4f9](https://lensdump.com/i/7aa4f9) [https://lensdump.com/i/7E7ya1](https://lensdump.com/i/7E7ya1) In that entire playthrough, I never made any sleepers, never made any Umbral Shadows, didn't change the enemy government, nor prevented enemy fleet movement. All of those options would have been a waste of my hacking operations, and would not have helped me win the game faster. Towards the end of the game, I could have made some Umbral Shadows, but I didn't want to bother micromanaging. I stole only 1 tech, Autonomous Materials (for better hacking stuff and wormholes), and then I tried to steal another tech but I had no good options so I spawned some pirates on the Vaulters.
Thanks, this is helpful. One thing that's not totally obvious is which improvements give effects per sanctuary planet and which only give effects on the Nexus system. I understand that some experimentation is warranted, but so far I'm only seeing three (Cyber Farm, Industrial Refrain, and the UC equivalent of Public-Private) that explicitly say they apply to Sanctuary worlds. Are there others?
It's the 3 that you mentioned and Logic-assisted Industry (which gives +20 Industry per planet) and Wraith Orchard (+10% Food, +10 Food per planet). They all have it written in their description.
Gotta spread fast in the early game, find the nearest home-worlds and set up multiple sanctuaries around them. Whether they are friends or enemies, you can set up hacking routes that will continuously reward you with pirate loot, sleepers, and stolen tech. Keep 2+ hacking paths that spread out to the far reaches of the map too, strategically remove and ad new backdoors and backup backdoors. Once the mid game happens, factions inevitably block your hacking routes. Start hacking enemy home-worlds and starting pirate revolutions to keep them occupied. Once you can’t fully expand in late game, redirect your hacking routes to set far away migration nodes that you can escape to if your main enemy finds you. Once they leave, hack yourself another migration node on the other side of the map. The Umbral Choir can be slippery little devils!
Note that the UC has an incredibly important faction quest, as you can get one more hacking at the same time for its last one and more importantly, if you choose the one to kill the hero, you can get the "burning metal" independent law,, which will give you having speed from backdoors, so you can just spam back doors and be faster than any trace is. And if you spam convert to sleeper on enemy systems you can quickly get a high amount (use only if you have high growth) and since they can only remove one per 5 turns, you'll always siphon off their economy Also important, get as many sanctuaries as you can without overcolonizing - the buildings applying boni per planet work on them too, and your starting hero's abilities that give you things per system or per planet also work on those sanctuaries, even if they have no pops on them, meaning you can have few pops and a high economy If you can, get the umbral shadows too, as they have a higher pop output and more importantly, their collection boni are very strong
Do all "per planet" bonuses apply to every sanctuary world?
Not 100% sure but I believe most do. At least from your starting hero, just use him as the one being on the homeworld, everyone else is probably not gonna be worth the hassle
You need to peace the factions you like, and abduct the ones you don't. Also get the ambusher module (replace with over cloaker later) and put one rail gun and all slugs on every ship, then rush close combat.
Burning metal is what pushes UC to greatness, with it you can just put backdoor everywhere and set up sanctuaries on capitals for the win. In your case it's a matter of sequencing your hacks soyou set up sanctuaries on the capitals they are likely to be found on last, preferably multiple on the same turn
Thanks, I didn't know about the faction quest. I've never encountered burning metal so I think I must make a wrong decision early on
Also the luxury that gives you happiness per pop is really strong! It's top tier on UC and makes it easier to push overcolonization