GalCiv2 Forums
Ok i have to come across as stupid but how do you guys manage a zero year win against the AI's? The best i ever managed was a three year victory and that was pushing it.
So if you could please give away your secrets so the rest of us mere mortals can try for one too please 
I believe it is set up on a tiny map with one opponent
This is a quote from KzintiPatriarch on another thread when I asked how to win on suicidal:
"Lately at least, there are two dominant strategies which people have been using. The ZYW (Zero Year Win) and "Swindle".
The first is a superfast rush to destroy the enemy AI within the first year...13 turns being optimal for scoring, and usually using Spore.
And the latter is basically an all-diplomacy strat that exploits some unsual holes and idiosyncracies in diplomacy coding to make the AIs give everything they own to you. The AI is completely incapable of dealing with either strategy and has virtualy 0% chance to win. So if you just want to simply win and score points these two are likely the best. If you want a game thats actually a challenge, avoid them! 
If you want details on either of these, I'm sure we'll be able to answer any questions you may have."
They have a ZYW club. Look for those guys. I'm 99% sure there is a thread on this.
The thread is Year Zero Club
Wyndstar reportedly did an AAR on it. KzintiPatriarch did a step by step breakdown of one at the ToE site and I did a "recipe" for the 100k+ ones in our empire forums. All use different approachs, but also have related themes.
There are several ways of going about it. Most use DA and the Spore Super Ability. You put yourself in tremendous debt and spore the enemy.
I and a few others have also done it using traditional warfare. I'm not sure if I'm alone in having done one in DL though. I haven't heard of any others yet. If anyone else has, I'd imagine Mumblefratz might be the one.
In all cases, it's an all out attack, disregarding your own survival, both militarily and economically. As far as I know, all successful larger maps have been done using rare habitable planets and with the enemy in close proximity.
Most are done against a single enemy, but there have been some with up to three opponents. Neilo comes to mind there.
Wyndstar and JustinSane have done 0yr DL games. Mumble never has, not his style at all. It would be completely against his Ordering of the Universe
Just to blow my own horn a little but i have done many (~10 or so) ZYW's with PI. Its a little longer, i think i may have got a May win but never a April win let alone April 8. I thought the extra pop might help score but the late finish negated that. I havent tried a PI win since we all switched from Tiny to Gigantic maps for the ZYW, but a April 8th win, if possible still might be a decent score, though the sacrifice to tech would just about assure said game would not break 100K.
I have also now had an April 8th win against two AI and late April / early May wins against 3 AI. All in a Gigantic map. 4 AI's is somewhat harder, IIRC i only actually submitted one 4 AI ZYW...was for about 76K. Bad game, July finish i think.
I think just about everything one needs to know would be in either the ZYW club thread or in Motti's thread in our private empire forum also at ToE.com.
Oh, and ToE.com is the Empire site for the Tyranny of Evil. We have many threads there open to the public, but the juicy stuff is in our private empire members only area.
Hey MetalSwarm, I have a detailed write-up for the gigantic map ZYWs, which score 90 - 100k+. Let me know if you are interested and I'll send it to you. 
I've done it with Planetary Invasion too, but Spore is definitely optimal.
I cant remember exactly what I wrote back then, but that was a good while ago, and compared to my current tactics isnt that great. Things have been refined.
Sentient species taste better...
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