United Empire is a faction focused around war and dust, but just because they’re good at it, doesn’t mean it has to be their sole purpose. I have played 10 games, which doesn’t sound like much, but considering the fact that most races in this game are kinda similar. Those ten games are actually over two hundred games, because I have 300 hours in Endless Space 1 as of right now. I may not be the most experienced person out there, but I am also one of the few that wrote a guide for a clearly dead game. So, here’s my 1 – 2 punch guide to United Empire.
 
 

Forming the Empire

When you start a game, you’re welcomed with a single colony with a terran planet, size medium, a scout ship and a colony ship. This is going to apply to most races, but what you are going to do is start building food exploitation on your planet. Go into your planet and select the green option. This will increase food production on your planet that scales with your population. Having high population in the early game is important. Bah! It is always important. You get the green stuff and you get more population units, because your empire needs to grow. Obvious stuff.
 
What you’re going to do next is click on your scout and give it the order to “scout out systems”. You’ll find that option in the left-down corner of your screen. The scout will now search for systems within the available sector or sectors. Then you are going to direct your colony ship into other stars in search of colonizable planets. And then you are going to the tech tree and enter the western tech tree and start researching the first available technology that touches the subject of increased food production. It is green.
 
Now, what are you doing? What you’re doing is expanding your empire. During the first few turns of your game you will need to grow as quickly as possible whilst remaining logical within your actions. Right after researching food production tech, you will start researching the southern tech tree and gain the ability to colonize arid and tundra planets.
 
Your first colony ship, the one you start with should colonize a planet that is a jungle, a terran or an ocean planet. After gaining access to tundra and arid colonization, you should colonize a tundra or arid planet. IF AVAILABLE. Now… NOTE.
 
Sometimes your starting sector could be really bad and it may not posses any planets which you could colonize. It could be filled with lava, desert, etc. etc. What you should do in that case is…
 
Start quickly researching Casimir Effect Application or some ♥♥♥♥. The tech in the southern sector which will allow you to leave your sector AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You should do this quickly. It is important that you expand, and if you can’t expand within your sector, LEAVE YOUR SECTOR.
 
 
 

Brooding the Empire

During the early game you are going to need all FIDS. FIDS being Food, Industry, Dust and Science production. In order to do that, you will need to research all basic production technologies within the western and easter sector. Research the +1 science per population unit technology containing said improvement and build it on systems with already installed food and industry improvements. This will increase your science production tremendously, and YOU WILL NEED THIS IMPROVEMENT IN EVERY GAME YOU’LL PLAY. Dust production is also important. Remember to properly manipulate your taxes. Keep your population at ecstatic level of satisfaction ͡( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) whilst keeping your empire from becoming bankrupt. The game will warn you if you are going to go bankrupt, then just raise taxes and survive.
 
You should keep your population happy, because then it gets passive bonuses to science, dust, industry and food production. Food being the most important. A happy society will grow rapidly, allowing you to harness the greatest amounts of stuff from them inhabiting a system.
 
 
 

Militarizing the Empire

In case you feel threatened within the early game, remember that United Empire is a fairly good war faction. But just because it gets passive bonuses to building militaristic tendencies within their society that doesn’t mean you are going to win every engagment just of your charisma or something. You will need to learn how to build ships.
 
So, this is how you build ships.
 
Pack the early game ships with kinetic or beam long range weapons till they reach maximum capacity. Send them out and nuke fleets at the start of every fight, allowing you to trade fleets at extreme values. Spamming weapons on ships is the easiest way to create menacing fleets. These ships are cheap, numerous and deadly. They can be squishy, but very often your enemies will not fire back, because their AI is dumb. And even if they do fire back, you deal 10 times more damage, because idiot AI decided to invest 33% of ship’s weight into an engine that does nothing in combat, 40% into shields that you are going to ignore, because you fire kinetics, and only the rest is some bs rockets that are not going to destroy your entire fleet, because they are mid range.
 
And investing into anything but mid range or melee range feels kinda dumb, unless its late game. In that case, you figure it out.
 
 
Remember to hire a hero to lead your fleet, heroes in this game are super broken and they can somehow double the damage output of your fleets simply by good management.
 
Strange.
 
 
 

Growing the Empire

This is the mid game part of the game. After colonizing your initial section of the map, you are going to start growing outwards towards other sectors. Increasing the size of your empire is going to lead to different things depending on what you’re dealing with.
 
Alien ships of pirates are going to raid your distant settlements, causing you to lose money. Shoot them down with your fleets. Remember to colonize in a way that is going to leave the least amount of entrances into your empire. Hold chokepoints, because other empires will attempt to murder you if you look at them funny. Remember that uncolonized systems will spawn pirates, so colonize systems within your wake or face your destiny.
 
Another thing that may happen is the fact that your civilians will get unhappy. They are going to live within a wide empire that is not very nice for their mental health and so their FIDS output will become smaller out of the fact that they will be unhappy. To counter that, research happiness improvements like Endless Markets… Corporeal Form… Colonial Rights… Etc. etc. Then install those on your systems. Feel free to buy those out, because they are cheap improvements that give you a lot of benefits necessary to swiftly start up a new colony.
 
When building a new colony remember to prioritize food and industry output. These two are responsible for growing your colony. Science and dust are necessary for the growth of your empire, and small outposts during their early stages may ignore those aspects at first.
 
If you are feeling overwhelmed by micromanagement. Enter empire management section by clicking a button in the top left corner and then select AI manager for your system. You should find that option. Just look around the UI in the empire management window. Select proper AI and it will manage your systems. Be wary though. You may use this system as a noob, but in the end you will have to learn micromanaging your colonies, because it is more efficient and focused than letting an AI do it. You wanna end up like a normal difficulty bot? Learn to manage.
 
 
Colonizing tougher planets like lava, gas or barren is going to make your population unhappy. Remember to terraform planets if available, although it probably won’t be, so, just get ready for being hated. Another thing is that many planets may have random anomalies on them. Some of those anomalies can be beneficial, but some of them are extremely damaging and the people living on the planets with them will hate you for making them live where they are. Remember to research proper technologies in the southern science tree to remove these. Feel free to use dust to accelerate the process. It’s important to keep your people happy.
 
 
 

Terraforming your Empire

Planets have various stats and reactions with improvements. Terran, Ocean and Jungle planets give out a lot of food, allowing you to quickly grow your population. Arctic and Barren give out huge science stats, but lack in other aspects. Lava and Tundra have plenty of industry. Arid and Desert have a lot of dust. Gas giants specialize in their set stats.
 
Remember that the more unfriendly the planet, the more specialized it is. Planets like Terran have their stats spread out, so your population there will produce a fair amount of everything. Planets like Hydrogen Gas Giant are going to have 20 dust production and 0 in everything else. So, these are super specialized. You may use this to your advantage.
 
Terraforming planets causes them to change types and with it, their stats. As United Empire you should usually gravitate towards dust production, because United Empire does dust well. But me being a nerd, I terraform planets into Arctic, because United Empire lacks science output, so I get more by changing their planets into Arctic.
 
Terraforming is a highly expensive process that is going to occur during the later stages of the game. It is necessary to be mastered in order to utilize your empire to its full potential, but remember to first properly install food, science, industry and dust production before tackling the more advanced challenges of terraforming.
 
AI manager is going to automatically transform your planets into terran, ocean and jungle when possible and logical.
 
Remember to switch planet exploitation when terraforming your planet.
 
A tundra with industrial exploitation is perfection.
 
But when you terraform it to arctic, remember to switch to scientific exploitation. Because then you get more value.
 
 
 

Sealing your Empire

When entering later stages of the game, you need to visualize what you are going to be. Sure, you can easily win a game just by beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of the enemy player… Ehem, AI. Good luck finding players in this game, lol. So… What are the victory conditions? If you play turn-based strategy games like this one, you may know.
 
Science… When going around the tech trees you may notice that top science projects have this weird stat called “-30% towards scientifc victory technology cost”… Or something like that. In the eastern tech tree there is a technology that if researched will end the game. Acquiring high science output will allow you do research it. In order to acquire high science output, get arctic or barren planets into your empire via terraforming, research science technologies… Get proper industry to install them. Increase your population…
 
Build your empire.
 
COLONIZE SYSTEMS
 
BUILD POPULATION AND IMPROVEMENTS VIA INDUSTRY AND FOOD
 
VIA SCIENCE AND DUST DEVELOP FURTHER YOUR EMPIRE
 
TURN SYSTEMS INTO MASSIVE BASES OF FIDS
 
USE FIDS TO REACH HIGH DUST VALUES (Economic Victory, just make dust), RESEARCH HIGH TECHNOLOGIES (scientific victory or military development) AND BUILD GREAT FLEETS VIA MASSIVE INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT (military victory, kick the ♥♥♥♥ out of the enemy). If you have a lot of unclaimed territory, claim it. The more systems you have, the better. Just remember to develop logically. It’s important to have functioning systems, not only numerous systems. Only colonize if you are handling the situation economy and happiness wise. If you don’t, wait till you do, then develop.
 
If you own enough systems (more than half) you achieve CONQUEST VICTORY. Owning more than half the galaxy will cause you to become the winner of the game.
 
 
 

And have fun…

The amount of mechanics within the Endless Space 1 are numerous and I can’t possibly describe them all in a concerete guide like this one. Sure, I could add you to friends and tell you everything one by one, but where is the fun in that? You bought this videogame to have fun in it by being creative and smart. Then go do that.
 
I have described you my basic ideals about the game, but purposefully left more complex things undiscovered to you in order to have you learn them on your own. Go form your own strategy, don’t be afraid to take a race you have choosen towards unexplored territories. Be creative.
 
And that’s it.
 
That’s the secret to having fun in this game, hope you do.
 
 

 
 
Here we come to an end for ENDLESS™ Space – Definitive Edition United Empire Faction Information Guide hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!