Strategy Guides

**Strategy guides** are guides that help the player quickly terraform various worlds. You can also add your own tips and Q&A here.

## Beginning

The first thing to do when terraforming a world is, of course, create a new game in your world, select your faction, and select difficulty and game mode (biomass or biosphere). After that, the world is created, and the first thing to do is check out the world's statistics for a bit and establish a city after the small exploration of your world.

### Revenue

After making a new game on a world, the most important thing at the start is income; without it, it is impossible to do almost anything in the game.

There are two ways to start with a decent income: mining (reliable with important downsides) and trading routes (unreliable but with no other downsides).

#### Mining

Start by researching iron and silver mining. Build an outpost on relatively high ground away from any low-lying areas. This is important because, unlike cities, individual mines in an outpost have their own elevations and can be flooded much earlier than expected when the water level rises.

Build two silver mines. Try to get at least 40–50% of the scan bar filled before setting down either mine. Upgrade both mines to level V. You should have about 8,000 credits per minute of income after this is done.

Create a city on high ground, and build one hab unit so they have two. This will double the population of the city. This habitation is important, so if it is destroyed, there will be 100 people left in the city.

Leave the game open to try and get a paydirt event to occur on both mines, increasing income even more.

#### Trade routes

Create a city on high ground, and build one hab unit so they have two. Like last time, it is important to have two of those in your cities. Build another city on another high spot. Do the same with the other city.

At this point in the game, it's just about leaving the game open and waiting for a trade route to be created between two cities. This is very unreliable since it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

### Research and random events

While building revenue, it is important to continue working toward the main goal of researching a spaceport. Spaceports are extremely important as they increase income and population (with some pressure as a side effect). They are also necessary to access satellites, which we'll talk about later. It is also important to research larger habitations, like Hab Domes, since you want to increase the population of your world.

During the process of building income, it is desirable to let random events occur, as they can result in getting some Culture Points. Note that random events can only occur when the game is running and on the main planet screen (not in the city view or mine view).

When an option is given between credit and population boost rewards, always choose credits. It is easy to get population by means of building spaceports when you have a lot of credits, but not the other way around.

Because of random events, it is possible for habitation facilities to be destroyed. This is why it is important to have at least two habitation facilities such as Hab Units when starting. When a city is abandoned, it will lose **ALL its** culture and take away all culture points produced in that city as well as cultural income such as trade routes.

Whenever research is almost complete, it may be wise to avoid random events by going to the city screen or just exiting the game. Doing so avoids the extremely annoying "Network Overload" event, which wipes out research progress.

If you don't mind "cheating," it is possible to avoid negative outcomes of events that ***present you with a choice***, e.g., the incoming meteor event, where you have to pay to save the facility from an incoming meteor. Normally, you can either accept and pay to avoid the meteor or refuse and have the facility destroyed. However, pressing the back button on a mobile device (or the Esc key on a PC) closes the event without anything occurring. Events that do not present you with a choice, like fire, cannot be avoided using this glitch.

### Building more

After you have a large income of around 20,000 credits per minute or more, you should expect to have more money in your world. You should click the "4 GP for 4×" option when collecting credits most of the time to get four times the money you've collected while you stayed out of the game to get even more money to build more cities, research more facilities needed to terraform the world, and build new cities and outposts.

For more space for future facilities, build bigger habitations, to also get more people in your world. Don't mind the side effects of these habitations, unless if they pose a threat to your world.

Build five or more cities in your world to have sports leagues. This will **massively** increase your income.

## Mid-game

By this point in the game, the player should have more cities, a few spaceports, and a steady income from trade routes and leagues. You're almost ready for the terraforming of the planet, unless you choose to side with the Sons of Hephaestus faction.

To make things easier, have each city focus on a different aspect of the planet: a city for income, temperature, pressure, oxygen, water, and biomass management, respectively. This also allows greater synergy with governors if all of the same type of facility are in the same city.

## Terraforming

Now for the main part: terraforming your world. Once you have researched all of the facilities required to terraform a world, you can now start building facilities required to terraform the world.

### Temperature

Temperature is usually the first thing you need to do when terraforming a world. For moderately hot worlds, use the Aerostat Platform to decrease the temperature of the world, and also produce a temporary source of revenue. For moderately cold worlds, use the Borehole to increase temperature and pressure at the same time. For extremely hot or cold worlds, use the Soletta satellite to quickly heat up the world. If the temperature is already habitable for survival, you don't need to change the temperature.

### Pressure

Pressure is usually the second thing when terraforming a world. Spaceports are the best in increasing pressure, since they also increase revenue and popualtion. AtmoGen Suites can help with the process, as they also produce oxygen as a side effect. For decreasing pressure on any high-pressure worlds, use many Hydrogen Processors to quickly decrease the pressure. They also add water and heat as a side effect, so counter it by using facilities to do so.

### Oxygen

During pressure increase, consider adding oxygen to the atmosphere so that humans and everything else that needs oxygen can breathe freely. For pressure decrease, add the oxygen after the atmosphere is thinned. If the oxygen is higher than needed, remove the atmosphere to remove the oxygen, and remake the atmosphere to reintroduce the oxygen in the atmosphere, but in a lower level than before.

### Water

Water is important for the survival of many lifeforms. Adequate sea level can make plant life thrive in your world.

Water is dangerous to your cities and outposts, especially the low-lying ones. As the sea level of your world increases, the water will get closer to your cities and outposts. If it's too close to the water, the city or outpost will be threatened to be flooded by the rising sea levels. If the water creeps closer to the city, it will start to evacuate to move to higher ground. After that, the water will flood the city. For outposts, the water slowly destroys your mines, before it drowns the entire outpost with water.

Be careful with rising sea levels, as they can flood entire cities and outposts, with the effects listed above. Always build cities and outposts in high ground to prevent flooding. There is an elevation stat in your cities to know how high it is from the sea level.

Some worlds have high sea levels that limit construction space. Decrease the sea level quickly to habitable levels by using Ice Launchers. Then you can build more cities in the exposed land from the drained oceans.

Some worlds have lots of ice or vapor that is usually undetected. If you heat up or cool down the world, the water will flood everything and cover the entire world. The best way to prevent this by using ice launchers to mostly get rid of the ice or vapor so that is does not pose a threat to your world.

### Biomass

Biomass is essential so that humans can live freely on the surface of your world. When the population grows, it's possible for humans to consume biomass, so build the Sky Farm satellite, or add more biomass facilities.

### Building the biosphere

Start building your biosphere by introducing microorganisms in your world. Add the "Nitrogen-Fixing" trait so that your future plants can support your microorganisms.

Next, add plants and algae, especially terrestrial ones, to the surface of your world. They will support your future herbivores. Terrestrial plants are important to the habitability of your world. You need a certain amount of plant species to reach it to the goal.

After adding some plants and algae, and making sure that the world is habitable to animals, it's time for herbivores to be introduced in the biosphere. They will be supported by the future carnivores.

Finally, add carnivores, so that they can support the herbivores. Your biosphere is now complete. You may add more species if you want.

## Late game

*Note that this section is not applicable to beginner mode.*

By this point in the game, you should have many cities, a terraformed world, and hundreds of millions of credits. At this point, you may consider building the artificial satellites, and colonizing its moons.

### Stabilizing the world

When the conditions are just right for humans to live freely on the surface, disable the facilities that are running to terraform your world. For the other facilities (such as big habs and spaceports), counter their effects by building facilites to do so.

### Natural satellites

It is important to colonize the moons of your world first so that more people can live in your world. They can also have some other purposes, like the further exploration of your world and its moons.

### Artificial satellites

The Lagrange Academy is an excellent first choice and very useful in practically any situation. It lets you greatly reduce building, upgrading and research times (helpful for everyone), greatly increase income (helpful for everyone and especially Horizon Corporation), greatly increase population growth (helpful for UNSA), and greatly increase habitation space (helpful for Sons of Hephaestus).

If playing as the UNSA, the Sky Farm is practically a must because of the massive population required for a UNSA victory along with the large biomass consumption. It allows to skip water and biomass habitable levels for habitability.

The Soletta is not exactly essential and can be dangerous when not used carefully as it can very quickly change the world's water levels. It is only mainly useful in extremely hot and extremely cold planets to quickly make their temperature habitable.

The Space Elevator not extremely useful but doesn't hurt if you have the credits to spare. It is more useful in expert mode where income is harder to come by: spaceports and coral reefs provide no income and there are dangerous expert-only events.

Finally, the Orbital Surveyor is simply unnecessary. Mining in general is not great, especially in late game.

### Independence and victory

Once you got the 20 culture points to achieve independence on your world, spend all of them toward independence. After this, complete your faction's secondary goals (paradise habitability for the Daughters of Gaia faction, 5% of starting conditions for the Sons of Hephaestus faction, 500 million population for the UNSA, 1 billion credits for the Horizon Corporation, and all tech researched for the Far-Future Institute).

**Victory! You have just completed terraforming a world. You can either continue on your terraformed world, or you can colonize and terraform new worlds if you want.**