It has been a while since Zero Year Wins (ZYWs) were mentioned in this thread, so here is a run-down of what they are, and how to achieve them. This strategy will allow you to achieve a victory in 15-30 minutes, on any difficulty level, and score from 15-40k points, depending on your difficulty setting and skill. Here is a basic template for playing this sort of game.
Advanced Race Customization (ARC) – in the raceconfig.xml file there are a few things you can modify while still being Metaverse legal. The two important things to change for the ZYW strategy are the homestar and super ability fields. You can use Wordpad or Notepad to edit the file.
ARC setup: Altarians
homestar: Iconis
super ability: super annihilator (value = 10)
Having Iconis will give you a PQ14 homeworld to start with.
Galaxy setup: Rare everything except anomalies which are abundant. Tiny map, one opponent, 8 minor races, disable surrenders, tech-trading on, blind exploration off, super-abilities enabled.
Race setup: economy – 4 pts (+30%)
research – 4 pts (+20%)
morale – 2 pts (+15%)
technologist party (federalist party is ok too)
Your race setup overview should look something like this:
To get a decent ZYW score you need at least one research bonus tile. To get a high score, at least one 300% bonus tile is vital.
Turn 1: Set production slider to 100% and tax slider to highest tax rate possible where your party can still win an election. The starting tax rate should be 69% if you follow this general setup. Set secondary sliders to 100% research and 0% military and social. You’ll be rush-buying everything, so only research production is needed. Always use the longest-term lease. Research Xeno Research. Rush-buy a lab on your best research bonus tile. Start your colony ship & space miner moving towards the enemy homeworld. When you launch your colony ship, only put 1 million people on it, to maximize the population on your homeworld. Start picking up anomalies, while moving in a direction towards unexplored star systems so you can find the minor civs. The cash anomalies are very important, and can make a big difference. If there is an economy or tech resource nearby, rush-buy a constructor to claim it.
Turn 2: Rush-by a lab on a research bonus tile, or anywhere else if you don’t have one. Research Advanced Computing and first Miniaturization tech. Rush-buy a constructor and start it moving towards the enemy home-system. Continue moving your flagship…doing it by hand is better because you can be more efficient and discover more minor civs. Once you have encountered about 4 or 5 minor civs, putting your flagship on auto-survey works just fine.
Turn 3: Rush-buy the Tech Capitol. Research Planetary Improvements and Xeno Economics. Continue moving your ships as before. Your homeworld should look something like this on turn 3:
Turns 4 - 8: Rush-buy upgrades to any non-upgraded research structure (and rush-buy 1 more new one if you need more research), and start rush-buying economic structures. Research propulsion techs up to Impulse at the very least, and weapons techs up to Beam Weapons at the very least. (Depends on your game setup/situation which order you do these in). You may want to rush-buy a cargo-hulled fast fighter to take out enemy ships early on.
Turns 9 – 13: In this order, research Spore, Universal Translator & Xeno Communications, Diplomatic Relations, Trade, Interstellar Republic, Star Democracy, Star Federation, & lastly techs to upgrade economic structures. You can get all the way up to Galactic Stock Exchanges if you are having a good game. The inherent econ bonuses from the government techs will increase your economy score. Continue to rush-buy economic structures and rush-buy Economic Capital as soon as you get Trade. Rush-buy the political capital on your homeworld, and up the tax rate to 79%. As soon as you have your first election, up the tax rate to 100% and ignore morale completely. It becomes irrelevant at that point.
Diplomacy: This is vitally important, as you would almost always run out of money without being able to sell tech to the minor civs. Always keep your treasury above -500 for as long as possible. You can also get research treaties with the minors to increase your tech score a bit. You cannot get economic treaties during the first game year, so don’t bother trying.
Endgame: Move your miner, colony, & constructor next to the enemy home-planets as close as possible. When your constructor reaches the enemy home-system, build a base (it doesn’t matter which kind). Make sure your spore ship design has at least 1 point of weapons to take out any enemy planetary defenders. Upgrade your colony and miner to spore ships as soon as you can, and the closer they are to an influence-generating feature (planet or base), the faster it will upgrade. The base you built will cut 1 or 2 turns off the upgrade time. Take the enemy planets as quickly as possible. If they have managed to make other colonies, you can rush-buy spore ships from their original home-planets. Rush-buy economic structures on every planet every turn until you run out of money.
Alternate tactics: If you encounter a planet of PQ8 or higher and can colonize it within the first 4 turns, then do so. Rush-buy a couple research structures, then start rush-buying econ structures. If this planet is significantly closer to the enemy home-system, you may want a Starport to build more spore ships or fighters later. You can use the ZYW strategy with Planetary Invasion instead of Spore, but it is a bit slower and therefore not as optimal for scoring.
Using these tactics you should be able to win the game by turn 13 or a couple turns later. Any game completed before April 8th will trip a cheat flag and not count for Metaverse scoring, so you shouldn’t finish any sooner.
Overall, the most important idea behind this strategy is to compress as much score-building actions into the least amount of turns. Sometimes I can increase the score a slight bit more by extending 1-3 more turns. It depends on your financial situation.
At the end of the game your homeworld will look something like this:
Questions? There’s a good amount of detail so let me know if I left something out.
Experiment with other races and configurations, and find out what suits you best. For a while, I played with Yor/Super-Breeder, and used Planetary Invasion.
My best ZYW game so far:
So do the Kzin eat their prisoners alive or are they cooked first? Because I figure with a little marinade . . .
Freshly killed and still bleeding.
Sentient species taste better...
