Apollo Achievement Guide

Overview

The purpose of this guide is to provide information to help players beat the game on Apollo difficulty, for players who do not have the time or interest to come up with a strategy on their own. In other words, this guide has a reusable strategy and set of rules that won’t work for every game, but should be very helpful in getting the Apollo achievement.

Usage

The information in this guide has been tested on/is relevant for the following game settings…

Difficulty: Apollo
Pace: Standard
Map Size: Standard

Planet Type: Terran, Archipelago
Biome: Frigid, Lush, Primordial

Turn counts are on Standard game pace!

The strategies in this guide have been developed using the Rising Tide expansion and should work in the recent patch that adds the black market. The strategy will very likely not work with two sponsors in particular, North Sea Alliance and Chungsu, because it relies almost exclusively on land cities.

Looking for a Good Start

The key to this strategy is recognizing and capitalizing on a few necessary conditions:

1) A good spawn location with 2-3 natural expansions nearby which contain Titanium.
2) Relative isolation, no immediate neighbors that will compete for territory.
3) The aliens should not be in a place where they are blocking expansion. If they are between the enemy and yourself, they can actually help isolate you.
4) No ocean cities and no cities on the coast.

Now if you are thinking, “that sounds perfect, anyone can win the game if those things are true!” You would be right, and that is the point of this guide.

The strategy works for most factions, even if the faction bonus is pretty useless. For example I have tested the strategy with PAC, and her bonus, while interesting on paper, isn’t very useful until late in the game, and can be considered a “win more” bonus. The techs early game which can be used to build wonders often do not provide any affinity XP.

The strategy works for any victory condition except domination. You can pick whatever affinity best suits your starting location resources.

Rules

• Build no cities on the coast or adjacent to the coast. Don’t build cities that can be attacked by patrol boats or any of their upgrades. If you are on the coast, restart.
• If you get a neighbor, restart. There is no point in trying to compete with a neighbor.
• Build all expansions adjacent to titanium if possible.
• Go for Progenitor ruins and devices if possible, they can give affinity and a chance to build extremely overpowered wonders.
• Don’t lose explorers to alien aggression! If you lose an explorer you might want to restart.
• Basically if something bad happens in the first 30 turns, restart.

Opening

Starting Items: Tectonic Scanner (to scout titanium and therefore expand locations), Worker
Starting Tech Order: Engineering, Ecology, Pioneering
Starting Build Order: Old Earth Relic, Explorer, Explorer, Recycler, Laboratory, Ultrasonic Fence, Trade Depot, Trade Convoy
Starting Virtues: Beeline for the free colonist, then +Production for buildings, +Science when healthy, +worker tile improvement speed and use the bonus virtue to take 25% border growth.
Starting Personality Traits: +Health as needed (and it usually is)

Strategy Details

The AI spawns with a massive army and there is no point trying to fight them. Because of the size of their army, they immediately start to lose respect for you because you don’t spawn with an army. They also lose respect for you because they have more cities than you do, because they spawn with a colonist. About half the AIs in the game will very quickly declare war on you, which means that some trade routes can be unsafe. Any coastal cities will be obliterated by a massive carpet of naval units. The AI seems to be reluctant to travel long distances over land, and once you earn some respect they may sue for a white peace (often with 0 war score on both sides).

Don’t help the AI win the game! The only agreements that you should agree to are those that increase enemy military unit production. As long as you don’t have any oceanic or coastal cities, this bonus is actually on average detrimental to the AI. The more production the AI spends fighting other factions, the longer it takes on average for any one AI to reach one of the victory conditions. Domination is unlikely, because the AI is reluctant to attack isolated land cities, as mentioned. You can pick up the +Production for military units personality trait so that other factions will try to make the same agreement with you. Otherwise agreements are not needed, and diplomatic capital can be spent on units or buildings as needed.

Keep energy levels positive, and have some energy in reserve to buy key quest buildings, such as a command center or institute (command center can be used go get an extra spy and institute can be used to research Exodus/Emancipation gate techs for free). Otherwise focus on science, food, and health. Culture is nice for keeping health positive, and once health has stabilized it is useful for getting extra science or production.

At the end of the game your explorers should still be alive and finishing expeditions! Your endgame wonder should be finished by around turn 220 and then it’s another 10-30 turns to win the game. If you get unlucky the AI will rush a contact victory and win faster than this. It’s a risk, so if you see the AI solve the transcendental equation and discover the signal on the same turn early in the game, you can just restart.

In the midgame you should have enough science and affinity to catch up to or even surpass the AI’s military upgrades. If you need to research a technology that takes a very long time and you don’t have buildings to make, you can spend the production on some military units to further deter the AI from attacking you. Nearly every AI in the game will have 0 fear of you for the entire game, even if you have a massive army, because the AI army is probably twice the size anyways, quadruple the size if you count naval units, for any given faction, except maybe the black sheep that got lost their capital at the start.

In the endgame you want to try to shave as many turns as you can off the construction of your wonder or the researching of the techs needed. If you have to use all your cities to research science (or if you are playing Al Falah) then that’s what you should do.

In conclusion, this strategy is to make it inconvenient for the AI to attack you, then proceed to rush to the endgame and win. Stay away from the water, except to explore. Always expand on titanium, keep your explorers safe, and if you don’t like where you are in the first 30 turns or so, just restart! You can get the achievement in no time.