Their first priority is to find populated systems, and the +3 movement helps with that. The first thing I almost always do is give my starting Leechers an extra Engine (swopping out an Essence Drain module). When I have 2 or more planets in my home system AND a ready source of essence, I will almost always build to 2 population in my home system before building my first Ark, and it's almost always a coloniser Ark not a war Ark. I have the opposite approach from you in a few areas. Don't know if these will be tips so much as just things I do. Hey, another long-time Vodyani player here. It's worth it, since your population effects are quite big.

Buy it from the marketplace, if you have to. My last tip is make sure you are using a luxury resource in order to double your population effects. Some people may recommend that you use your initial hero as a fleet admiral, since Guardian heroes can significantly increase the damage of your fleet, but I prefer to increase the movement speed of my fleets with Seeker heroes.

If you can't get a Seeker hero, then get a Sophon, Vodyani, or Hissho hero because they have a racial trait that boosts fleet movement. Later on, you should choose a Seeker hero to be your fleet admiral. After you defeated those pirates, I would always assign the hero to govern your home system. I often avoid systems that have one of those planet types, even if they're 4 planets on 1 system, which I would consider to be a large system.Īt the beginning, your faction quest tell you to defeat some pirates and you can do that with your initial Explorer ship and your hero, as long as they're both at maximum health. And be very careful when you decide to research the colonization techs for Lava, Barren, and Toxic because they have very low approval values and can severely reduce your empire approval.

Your first research should always be Xenolinguistics so you can build Xeno-Industrial Infrastructure. So, yes, I often avoid getting the Attacker and Protector ship hulls because my Explorer hull has 2 attack modules, 1 defense, and 1 support, so it's pretty decent and I used my Arks for invading. Everything else is pretty close to what I typically research. But, in this playthrough, I found a module similar to the OpEx Gear from a curiosity and that's why I didn't bother researching it. I'll make one small note: in the military tree, I would normally research Improved Fleet Management, for the OpEx Gear support module, which improves my manpower deployment limit, instead of the Survival Suits, which I mostly got for the anti-cloaking module. If you want to see which techs I never researched, this is my tech tree on turn 87: The ship hull size has a much bigger impact on the strength of your ships than the military modules it has equipped so, if you want to have a strong military, unlock the Hunter and the Carrier hull types as soon as you can, even if that means delaying the techs from the top side of the tech tree (the Military section). Industry is the most important resource in the game so, if you're going to focus on any side of the tech tree, you should focus on the techs from the right side (the Economy and Trade section). Some other person asked me for some tips on playing the Vodyani, so I'll copy them here:

I also focus on essence modules for my first Ark, but I prefer to make one of my Arks specialize in invasions, with many manpower deployment modules, so that I can quickly occupy any nearby systems with 4/5planets or important luxury/strategic resources.

In my previously mentioned session, I barely did any leeching and I still won a supremacy victory on turn 87.

I generally prefer to invade my opponents, so I can cripple their economy and not worry about them becoming a problem later in the game.

But keep in mind that I was playing on Endless difficulty against AI's with custom builds and no mods. In my playthrough with the Vodyani, I had a lower score than several AI factions until turn 63 (on normal speed) which is when I had the highest score in the galaxy, so I wouldn't worry about score too much.

Endless space 2 ships vodyani