Campaigns within reason – Adani12345
I don’t know if it has happened before: there are messages in a campaign that make your job significantly easier if you react to them smartly.
For Kra’hen e.g. you can submit that there has been a breakthrough in research and that the current development is ready ahead of time. You note the date and restore the previous save a day earlier. You have to stop the current development and start the most expensive research instead. You develop a more powerful spaceship or tank type – perhaps the Megatank – and it’s almost ready. If you only have a heavy corvette for ships, you stop developing the megatank and start developing the cruiser. You saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years. The production of the cruiser and the MK5 engine can start at once, so that no one can catch up.
If you feel it is necessary to develop tanks, then by reloading a save from a few months ago and giving double money for research, it will be ready. You will be refueled sooner and you can upgrade the ion tower for it, without double money.
With Kra’hen, the seer is when he shows all fleets. By reloading the previous save and taking forward the more advanced radar development – this way you can find out more information about the opponents. With combined radar, you should already be able to see how many ships and tanks the enemy has; with deep space radar also how fast. If you have a close neighbor whose fleet isn’t very strong, you can still go there and destroy it. By slowing down the enemy empire in its development, if e.g. there is a neighbor very close. In this case, it may be worth not exploring ahead of time. There are times when he puts random planets on the map. This is good because if someone colonizes it, you will see it. In this case, taking the development of the tanks in advance, as soon as you see that the planet has become colorful, you can go and book with 3 tanks. You can keep the tanks by leaving them there, if you don’t have a strong enough tank yet, then destroying the main building will give you a little pocket money for the house. Your opponent has lost his planet and his colonizer prize. You have to make a game save before that, because the radar won’t work if you go further. So if the enemy fleet is nearby and catches up, then there is trouble. Ideally, enter this when you have already developed the corvette and the MK3 engine and have already developed at least the tracked tank turret. In fact, you are currently developing the anti-gravity tank. Then you need to manufacture a couple of tracked tanks and upgrade the laser turret with a range extender, if you don’t already have one.
If you don’t need a lot of development, then develop it and then start developing the tank turrets. There were times when I occupied seven or so planets from different species before they were discovered. Also, when the main building is built, you will have a radar. There may be another enemy planet nearby, but all of them can be captured with 3 tanks that are not protected by anti-space cannons or fortresses. The tanks cannot be recaptured if left behind, 3 tracked tanks with laser turrets can easily wipe out 12 plain tracked tanks with a range extender. If you have an anti-gravity tank and there is a high mountain on the target planet, one will be enough to go up the mountain and then it will be protected during the entire midgame, by which time it will also have anti-gravity tanks (of course, the heavy tower must be developed in the meantime).
I was at war with almost everyone at that time, but since they didn’t know my position, they couldn’t attack back, only my occupied planets. You have to be careful to be faster than him in space and if the enemy fleet starts chasing you, then go home with a big detour. You can’t get planet information by spying, or buy it for money, if no one has discovered you yet. With “All Fleets Visible”, if you wipe out the Solarions or Shinari fleet, and there is another empire nearby, there is a good chance that you have already wiped out one of your potential opponents. Your neighbor will then find you and wipe you off the map. It’s best if Toluen is your neighbor, they won’t be stronger than you even if they crush two stronger empires. As long as you don’t have a cremation beam, Toluen is not an opponent.
In Shinari Empire, it can happen towards the end of the game that people want to buy food from you. Your 3 planets are also named. Tell them no and they promise more money. Then say yes and fill the planets with hydrofarms. Money will fall, not weakly. But a spy should be sent out to sniff if he gets suspicious, because your tanks will be hacked. They fix it for $2 per tank, though, and it’s still well worth it. If the spy doesn’t notice the hacking, then go to the next ground battle with a tank, sacrificing it will reveal the hacking.
At the beginning, they buy 4 wheeled tanks from you for 60,000. If you’re lucky, you can buy it on the trade screen and you’re done. But you have 2 tanks by default, you have to build a tank factory and manufacture two more, then buy 2 tanks instead. It brings in plenty of value for money.
It is also only Shinari Empire that an empire asks for help because a virus has been released and the research centers must be shot down. And then terrorists have to be liquidated. It’s worth doing, give him back his planet, otherwise you’ll definitely get a declaration of war from them: “…our friends XY empire won’t like it”. They give ships as gifts, which are not worth much in battle, but you can sell them for about 400 thousand. If you sell them, they will send you new ones several times instead. I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature, but it brings a nice sum.
Hexa editor
What else is possible, although I don’t think it makes sense: you can use the hexa editor in ig2nt.exe. It contains the production time and price for every ship and tank. Rewrite e.g. the Destroyer for $1, and you get back the corresponding construction time, as well as the price of the colonizer. This way you can colonize right from the start. Endre tried it: unfortunately, the other empires can also produce destroyers so cheaply. Instead of the usual 5-6 destroyers, 23 attack.
You can easily win without cheating, especially on an easy level. You can’t even lose there, the other races don’t do anything, let alone attack you. But you can always win even on difficult and impossible levels, although especially on the latter, the AI already cheats, and it has such an advantage that you have to play tricks with legal cheating: save-reload.
You can also cheat with Cheat Engine or any memory manipulator trainer. You cannot overwrite the money value, it is protected, the game may freeze. You don’t need that. You have to rewrite the number of planets, because it is not protected information. You look at the data of your home planet: note/write down how many inhabitants it has and search for that value and rewrite it in the memory to, say, 2 million. It goes back to the game, you set the transmitter to exploiter. You wait a month. You get a lot of money, write back the population or they will riot.