The Nakalim/Strategy

Faithful to the Lost, the Nakalim seek to recover their ancient wisdom and bring back their departed gods.

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**Strategy**

The Nakalim are best understood as a "science-oriented" faction, but in a negative, rather than positive sense. In order to excel with them, you have to spend a great deal of care and focus on your science gain, whereas for most other factions, you can passively put a bit of work into it, and then let it take care of itself.

The reason for this is that — moreso than any other faction, they're at an extreme risk of being **bottlenecked** by low science gain. For example, you might discover a wonderful, game-changing weapon in a curiosity site (say, orichalcix missiles) ... but to make earnest, fleetwide use of this, you need the technology to mine orichalcix - for most factions, this might be a 12-15 turn pivot on their science goals, but on a poorly prepared Nakalim faction, it could be hundreds of turns away (i.e. flatly impossible). That's a bit of a contrived example, but it's a really cut-and-dry case of "you can't do something awesome because of tech limitations". The ones that will genuinely sink you are smaller and more subtle - they'll be the lack of certain industry buildings, planetary colonization techs, ship designs, and anything that gives unique capabilities (wormhole usage, hero buying, government change). Bit by bit you'll just be weaker than your opponents, and fall behind.

A helpful thing for the Nakalim is that, in all other respects but science, they're a faction with excellent  FIDSI production. With a modest effort, they can unlock a 15% bonus, empire-wide, to all Food, Dust, Industry, and Influence, and in the lategame, they can boost this to 30%. Furthermore, their influence gain, thanks to their  Temple improvements, is a contender for "best in the game". If they keep their science gain up, they'll generally have the means to act on this new knowledge fairly easily, which is a stark contrast with i.e. the Sophons, who frequently will discover new construction options (ships, buildings, etc), but struggle to have the industrial output to put them to use.

## Implications of "Forgotten Lore"

The Nakalim start with the first two tiers of technology already researched. Rather than treating this as a "passive down-payment" on your tech gain, you need to specifically exploit the unique capabilities this gives you.

One critical combo it gives you access to is the tools to explore curiosities, typically netting a nice gain of strategic/luxury resource loots, as well as access to the market in order to sell these loots, and the technology to issue buyouts. Do this. Your starting hero, Morya Kupas, is an excellent explorer hero; she's a  Seeker with the  Nakalim skill tree, so she has access within the first four levels to both a skill that boosts off-hyperlane movement (+1 vision on each level), and a Nakalim skill that boosts vision by +6. However - you also have the market, and you've got the tech to equip hyperium probes (and engines) on her ship immediately at the start of the game. Do this as soon as it's possible - within the first few turns of the game, you'll have a hero with a colossal vision range, and you'll be able to fly around exploring curiosities, selling your finds for dust, and buying out improvements. You can use these to rapidly ramp up your home system, and your first few expansions.

You will also "debase" the value of these commodities on the market, so that other factions get considerably weaker payoffs from running the same strategy, once they have access.

### Implications of having excellent early exploration

Because your prowess at exploration hits **extremely** early, you have some affordance to scope out the lay of the land before committing to initial settlement. Scope out the nearby constellation, and see if there are some "exceptionally good" systems nearby; many factions have to settle for a reasonably good system within a few jumps of their home to not waste time, but you've got decent odds of finding some excellent 4 or 5 planet systems nearby — either before an enemy detects them at all, or at that critical juncture where an opponent is too heavily invested in another system to try and reach for it. Not coincidentally; you have a fairly fast colony ship (in part due to immediate availability of hyperium drives, and two engine slots). Bully your way into ownership of the "exceptionally good" systems near you. Also; sneak your way into ownership of the "exceptionally good" systems that are towards the "no-man's-land" part of the galaxy, in addition to those that are near your rivals; you'll be able to get there first, and set up settlements before they get the tech to reach out there.

## Curiosity Searching

Search every curiosity you can. You're looking for nice bits of loot to sell, but you're also looking for weapon/protection modules. Your initial technology choices are extremely weighty, consequential decisions, and one huge payoff from searching curiosities is if you manage to find some decent weapons/armor/shields that greatly reduce your imperative to drill into the military tech tree. Before you've built up your science gain, it's really difficult to make progress on your first few technologies, and one of the best things that can happen to you is having an entire quadrant of technologies that you don't have to dig into until quite late.

For example, one difficult choice you're forced to make is between getting your ship upgrades, themselves (not available via any other means), and getting the weapons to go on them. If you're able to find decent equipment in curiosity searches, this settles that decision, and lets you research the ship upgrades with confidence. It's worth researching Evaporation Inhibitors, to boost the chances of getting something good, and it's frequently worth even researching Ultra-Deep Habitats later on, once your core Tier-3 technology needs are met.

## Implications of  "Temple of the Lost"

The Nakalim have a very cheap "planetary specialization" that gives them a huge amount of  influence, right at the start of the game. You usually can't use this very well, on Sobra itself, because during the **very** early part of the game, you're aiming to bring an initial colony or two up to snuff with your food production, but shortly thereafter, you're likely to have some mediocre (or unique) planets which you don't really care about the / production of. These are the perfect candidates for temple planets.

With this large influence gain, you've got a few capabilities most factions don't have — the biggest one is being able to convert minors. You can find them, because you're an excellent explorer faction, but you can also convert them, because you've got an enormous amount of influence gain, and unlike another key faction with terrific early-game influence gain (the Unfallen), you have no "vining" requirement to convert a minor faction.

Another side benefit is being able to support powerful laws — unlike most other factions, if you become the Vault Keeper role holder for the Academy, you will likely be able to support even the highest-tier laws afforded by a party, such as the "Work, not Shirk" law that gives +8 /in a republic, even, potentially, as early as the first Academy competition. (Unfortunately, you usually do want to go for the Spear during the early part of the game, but it's valuable to know that you can get the full benefit of the fallback option.)

## Academy Competitions

One key benefit of being the Nakalim, and having their early-game strengths, is that you're very well-positioned to win early Academy competitions. You have excellent  gain, you have (via selling curiosity loot) excellent  gains, and thanks to the market you've got somewhat of an edge on / access.

Both the Spear and Vault Keeper roles are excellent for you, with preference likely going to the Spear as long as it remains an "overwhelming force" you can't defend against.

## Science

As mentioned at the start of this guide, the crippling weakness of the Nakalim is science gain. They must overcome this as hard as possible, because without this, they will get bottlenecked by the midgame in some crippling fashion.

**A critical thing to understand is their primary weakness is flat science**, rather than science in general. They have access to most of the science buildings in the game that give a % modifier, and those % modifiers work in full, for them. Besides their 50% malus, the biggest and hardest hit they take is the removal of most "flat" sources of science available - most science buildings give a N /yield, and most planets (especially cold ones) do the same thing. For most factions, this results in a nice cool pile of ~ 200-400ish  science on a system, which is then multiplied by whatever % boosts a system has. The critical hit the Nakalim take is that they'll usually have 30-50  on a system, and that's all that gets boosted by the % modifiers (to add insult to injury, they then get their 50% malus at the end, but the real damage comes from the small initial pool that's getting boosted, which is often a 60-90% drop compared to other factions).

So flat science gains of any kind are priceless for them.

### Sources of Flat Science

#### Bluecap

The easiest and most straightforward aid is to go for  Bluecap Mushrooms as your system development resource, every chance you get. Each instance of this is 60 , and three of them on a system are 180 ; more than you can get from any buildings you can construct on the system (a statement which is emphatically untrue for any other faction).

Of the other two science-related luxury resources, the effect from  Ionic Crystals is pretty underwhelming, whereas the effect from Proto-Spores is terrific. If you ever get lucky and have access to the latter, jump on it.

#### Heroes

You do **not** have access to the hero marketplace from the start of the game, but you do have the finances to buy heroes, and it's worthwhile to snag that technology early (perhaps even first, to capitalize on being able to afford hiring them). Any heroes that give flat science gains are priceless for the Nakalim, and special mention must be made for Technologist heroes, who in the mid-game can give huge amounts of flat science on cold systems. Prior to the mid-game, your best bets include Counselor heroes,  Seeker heroes, and any variety of individual heroes who have some kind of science boost. (Beware, though, of hero abilities which give + /gains — these do not work, and notably, one of the heroes that gives such a boost is even a Nakalim hero: Panako Nakatug).

#### Minor Factions

Minor factions can be one of your biggest sources of flat science gain. Some of them have assimilation bonuses which give solid amounts (like either bonus from the Galvran), and many of them give individual amounts per population, which is notable for being one of the only sources of per-pop science that works for the Nakalim (for example, the +5  from Pulsos on an Anomaly).

#### Behemoths

Behemoths equipped with Stellar Node Study modules from the Behemoth Analyzers and Behemoth Advanced Climatology technologies are a good source of flat . A single Scientific Behemoth orbiting a Special Node equipped with 3 Stellar Node Study 1 modules, a configuration immediately available to the Nakalim from the start, will not only generate a total of 240 , but also reduce the  cost of technologies by 6%. If using Behemoths to provide , researching Mission Flexibility early can allow two more Stellar Node Study modules to be equipped for a total of 400  and 10% technology cost reduction per Behemoth.

## Relics

 Relics have two key uses for the Nakalim. The first is as a source of  Science; each one gives +50  on your empire. This isn't affected by the 50% malus on your systems, which is great, but it's also not affected by any of the % bonuses you can build on your systems, which is sad. Relics are a huge help to your science gain, and can help keep you competitive during the early/mid game, but they will not carry you into the lategame. You need other, major sources of science.

Relics can also boost your empire's /// gain, via a global modifier. You should erect the necessary temples (they don't even need anyone working them, they just need to exist), and slot these relics as soon as possible.

Relics can also be assigned to individual leaders to give them an additional boost, but this is much more situational, and generally better suited to either slotting into your best systems, or to a key fleet commander, during the mid-to-late game. They can be rapidly re-assigned, so don't hesitate to take advantage of this in a pinch.

**Don't rush to get relics**. Relics are invisible to all other factions other than other Nakalim players, and they don't expire — curiosities are first-come, only-served, but relics will happily sit there as long as you need (the extreme exception to this rule is if other Nakalim players are around - then, suddenly, relics are in hot contention and you do want to rush for them). So unless another Nakalim threatens to take them, never spend your hero's precious time, which could be spent exploring curiosities, on the 4-turn slog of extracting a relic. The best ships assigned to the job of extracting relics tend to be those free T1 quest ships that spawn from curiosities, or excess ships from minor factions. They spawn far afield, typically aren't worth using in your military past the early-game, and aren't worth much money to sell.

## Salvaged Science

One of the better ways to get science as the Nakalim is to equip protector ships with modules that salvage  from destroyed enemy ships.

There are several  modules throughout the game which yield , , or  when you destroy enemy ships. A key thing most players overlook is the "lawyer's read" on what these do. There are a few "Battle Tactics" which most players will be familiar with, such as the "Take Trophies" tactic, which gives 30  and 10 , per destroyed enemy , at the end of the battle. For example, if you destroyed 6 "attacker" class ships, you'd get 180  and 60 , which is ... *rather underwhelming*.

The assumption most players make is to look at these low payouts and write off the whole mechanic. What they're missing is that: each *individual*  module has the same payout as that sort of tactic card would have. They're not a flat rule applied to the fleet; they tally up. *The payout is multiplied by the number of modules present in your fleet.*

Your "Protector" class ships have a large number of utility slots - 3 before the upgrade, and 6 after. Because of this, you can field quite a few of these modules and still have decent engines. To run that same calculation, let's say you beat a fleet of 6 attackers, and in your fleet, you have 4 of your own attackers, and 2 protectors with 5 of the "white/non-strategic-requiring" modules that give 20  / . Well, 10 \* 20 means you're really getting 200  / , so destroying a mere 6  would give you 1200 . That's with just 2 protectors outfitted like this. 5 would give 3000 . A six-ship fleet is a very early-game battle, and these numbers are basically multiple turns worth of science. The gist of it is that unlike many game rewards, which diminish as they're spread over a larger group (like xp rewards in e.g. Endless Legend), this is something that scales linearly with the number of units receiving the reward, so there's quite an upside to doing very lopsided fights, like taking on small pirate fleets with a 12-14  fleet of your own. Later in the game, larger fleet battles can yield tens of thousands of science (I believe this reward is given even if you lose the ship giving it). There is also a  module which gives 40  rather than 20, which can be found via probing curiosities.

This also gives you an incentive to i.e. "farm pirates" rather than wiping them out.

This is an interesting strategy for the Nakalim, because, from a long-term perspective, science ends up being a bit of a liability for them - a fear for them is getting leapfrogged in a long, drawn out war of attrition, and having their opponents eventually bring superior weapons and production to bear. As a result, there's sort of a strategic imperative to strike decisively before you lose your edge. Getting substantial science gains from every fight turns attrition from being a gradual downward spiral into something they can thrive off of. Furthermore - for a variety of subtle reasons including an unusually strong attacker ship, and a tendency towards an industrial advantage, they often can shoulder the burden of having "weakened" protectors, in a way that some other factions with lots of utility modules can't. (Sophons, for example, have an attacker with low firepower, and struggle with industry for a moderate part of the game). Science also has an outsized value if you've got great industry production; a dust bounty (from a dust salvage module) can only really boost one system by buying a building, but science can boost all of them if it unlocks a new building they can erect quickly.

This synergizes really well with a general theme on the Nakalim; where you want to be an early-game bully that aggressively goes after nearby factions and harasses them. Taking fleet battles with them, itself, can be turned into a profitable endeavor.