Single-Player Setup
- Brian Clair
The single-player setup window lets you setup a new game, load an existing game, or play the quick Tutorial missions.
Tutorials
The tutorials tab lists all of the playable learning scenarios and your completion status or each. Mouseover each item for more information on what each mission covers.
New Game
Screen Overview
1 | Map List: Displays a list of the available maps (updates based on filter). |
2 | Map Size Filters: Click on these buttons to filter via the number of planets in a map. |
3 | Map Information: Displays the maximum number of players and planets on the map, plus some descriptive information. |
4 | Setup Game: Continues to the game setup screen based on the selected map. |
Game Settings
Once you’ve selected the map you’d like to play, you’ll be taken to the game setup screens. The first lets you customize the Players who you’ll play with/against. Let’s go over the window in more detail below:
Screen Overview
1 | Auto-Teams: Lets you quickly setup team games by clicking one of the numbered buttons. The game will automatically split players into the number of teams chosen. You can drag and drop players between teams too. |
2 | Human/AI Icon: Indicates if the player is Human or an AI. |
3 | Customize / Player: Clicking on the icon opens the Player Customization window. To the right is the player’s name (if human) or AI difficulty + type. |
4 | Race Selection: Determines which race each player uses. TEC is recommended for new players. |
5 | Faction: Based on race selection, determines which faction the player represents. Refer to the tooltip for more details! |
6 | AI Difficulty / Type: The first icon lets you toggle through each AI difficulty level by left clicking. Each player can be set to their own difficulty and type of AI. The second icon determines AI type - where it focuses most; Aggressive is the most difficult to play against. Right-click to toggle in the reverse direction. |
7 | Game Options Menu: See below. |
8 | Start Game: Begins the game with the settings you’ve selected. |
Player Customization
Furthermore, you can customize how each player’s units will look by assigning their player colors and if they use minimal or full color schemes.
Screen Overview
1 | Selected Icon / Name: Based on your choice of #4 below. Your player’s name comes from your Steam/Epic account name/nickname. |
2 | Race / Faction - Displays the race and faction you selected for this player (unless Random). |
3 | Preview Image: Gives you a preview of how your units will look in-game based on the selections you’ve made on the right. Also, click on Minimal Color to switch to Full Color mode on your units. |
4 | Icon Selection: This image will appear above your units and planets in the game. |
5 | Color 1: Select one of the available colors as your primary unit color. |
6 | Color 2: Select one of the available colors as your secondary unit color. |
7 | Portrait: Select one of the portraits on the right to represent you in-game. |
Game Options
The Options tab will display some basic information about your chosen map and also let you customize various aspects of the game.
Screen Overview
1 | Map Information: Displays the maximum number of players and planets on the map, plus some descriptive information. |
2 | Game Speed: Determines the overall game speed - left click to increase; right-click to decrease. Each click adjusts speed by +/- 25%. |
3 | Orbiting Planets: Defaults to Yes. When enabled, some planets will orbit their parent star slowly over time, resulting in changes between planet connections. More on this later. |
4 | Home Planet Victory: Defaults to Yes. When enabled, a player will lose the game if their home planet is destroyed (and home planets cannot be moved). |
5 | Colonization Victory: Defaults to No. When enabled, the player who controls 70% of the gravity wells in the game via colonization will win. |
6 | Orbiting Planet Speed: Determines how quickly planets orbit around their parent star (or moons around their planets). Only applies when Orbiting Planets is enabled. |
7 | Research Rates: Let’s you customize how quickly research is completed by giving a buff/debuff to research speed. |
8 | Ship Build Rates: Adjusts the build speed for all ships in the game. |
9 | Ship Speed: Applies a modifier to all units' maximum sublight travel speed. |
10 | Income Rates: Modifies the amounts of credits, metal and crystal your empire generates per second. |
11 | Start Game: Accepts your selections and starts the game! |
Your choices here affect all the players in the game, not just you. Be mindful of this when picking your AI opponents difficulty levels.
More on Victory Conditions
As a general rule, you can always win the game by defeating all of the other players. However, this can be very tedious because - with no other options enabled - you would need to eradicate every capital planet and colony ship of your enemies.
The home planet and colonization victory types help to resolve the game much, much faster. The home planet victory prevents players from moving their capitals between owned worlds and makes it so that if you lose your home planet, you lose the game. The colonization victory awards the win to the player who owns roughly 60% of the galaxy’s gravity wells.
There is, of course, an exception to one of these rules - the Vasari Exodus faction. The Vasari Exodus have the unique ability to ‘go mobile’ by migrating fully back to their ships. As part of this, they are able to move their capital to one of their capital ships (or titan). Additionally, the Exodus have the ability to strip mine and destroy any planet under their control, thus denying it to their enemies. Both of these abilities require lots of research to unlock and generally aren’t obtainable until the mid-late game.
(c) Copyright Stardock Entertainment. All rights reserved.