More Awesome Than You!

I made the mistake of pissing off the Grox early in the space stage and, now, have to deal with repeated attacks on my colonies and home world.  My region of space was peaceful until I decided to explore and made my way towards the galactic center.  I had battled the Grox a few times while defending allies but had never had any of my worlds attacked, yet.  Apparently, I was already on the Grox shit list for destroying their space ships during these previous battles.  I made matters worse by not turning off my watchamacallit, the thing that shoots enemies in space, and destroyed more Grox ships.  I made contact with the Grox but there were no options to remedy the situation as the relationship was already too damaged.  So, I said screw the Grox and decided to try to make it to the galactic center by hopping from star system to star system while using energy and health packs along the way.  I failed as my range was too limited to reach the core with interstellar drive 4 and as I ran out of health packs.  Returning to my system in shame, I soon found that I made a big mistake by engaging the Grox.  My home world and colonies were repeatedly attacked and I found myself constantly responding to the attacks and rebuilding damaged colonies.  This is becoming a big annoyance as I can't explore the galaxy for fear of my spice colonies being destroyed.

I don't really care about the attacks on my home world for two reasons:  The home world will never be completely destroyed as it respawns and the home world isn't a good source of spice.  I prefer the Grox to attack my home world as I can ignore the attack and attend to business elsewhere.  Colonies are a different story.  I'm always successful in fighting off the Grox with just my ship and the uber turret.  I don't bring allied ships as they are usually destroyed and I don't want the penalty with their species for not taking care of their ships.  I'm tired of these attacks; they are a distraction from other fun aspects of the game and replacing the colony structures is becoming expensive and time consuming.

So, where do I go from here?  I only see a few options but none of them appear feasible for my current game.  I could try to take on the time-consuming task of destroying the Grox empire but their empire is huge.  It surrounds the entire galactic core.  I can't think of an efficient way to take on their empire by my lonesome.  I tried and failed to get some help by making alliances with empires close to the Grox empire and asking them to attack someone for me.  Each empire refused to attack the Grox. 

The other option is to ally with the Grox in future games.  In my current game, the relationship is too low to ever ally with the Grox.  However, even this solution has problems as allying with the Grox causes all other empires to hate your species.  The final option, again not feasible for my current game, is to never ever piss off the Grox.  By that I mean, don't aid allies when they are attacked by the Grox, make sure to turn off the space whatchamacallits when in Grox territory so that Grox ships aren't accidently destroyed, and maybe smooze a bit with the Grox without making an alliance.

Does anybody have any ideas I could use for my current game?  I finally made it to the center of the galaxy by getting interstellar drive 5, buying a gazillion mega health and energy packs, and hopping through Grox territory.  My problem is I'm bored with all the attacks on my colonies.

By the time you're ready for a go at the core, you're probably done with that race anyway.  Certainly I didn't care what happened to my worlds when I made my trip to the Core.

The Grox hate everyone at the start of the game.  I destroyed a lot of Grox ships, and I didn't find that they attacked my worlds more than anyone else's.  If you really, really think it's a problem, you could try using some version of the Happy Ray on the Grox.  I wouldn't bother trying to ally, but enough to make them leave off attacking you.  Assuming that it isn't just normal attacks.

Certainly when I made my trip to the core, I didn't get more than the normal Grox attacks afterward.

Wiping them out is a not a reasonable alternative.  They have literally thousands of worlds, and many of them are hard to reach.  I suspect it's outright impossible, actually.

It does sound like you've pretty much done with your current game anyway.  I wouldn't sweat leaving the Grox alone in any future games, though.

 - Gus

I'm not done with this race yet as there are a few aspects of the game I would like try.  For example, I finally have enough money to focus on other aspects of the game like changing archetypes.  I just don't have the time as I'm being attacked constantly by the Grox.


My worlds were never attacked by the Grox until I officially made contact.  Perhaps I was just lucky up until that point.  After making contact, the Grox attack at least every 30 minutes, usually less.  I'm annoyed as I have to drop whatever I'm doing, travel to the colony, fight the Grox, repair the damage, etc. 

I've never tried the happy ray on any species.  I'll give it a go but I wonder how much it will help; my current relationship with the Grox is at negative 290.


I think there is a badge that can be earned for defeating the Grox.  I assume there is a way; I just don't how to do it efficiently.

ETA:  The badge is called "Badge Outta Heck".  I found an article about defeating the Grox; it still appears to be a time consuming process however one chooses to go about it.

http://spore.wikia.com/wiki/Badge_Outta_Heck

That's an interesting article.  It doesn't say anything I didn't already know, really, except that it can be done.  I took a few Grox colonies on the way the Core when I didn't see a convenient planet to drop a colony for repair and recharge, and what I experienced was in line with what he said.

I think you have to be seriously OCD to do it.

 - Gus

Yeah, I'm not that obsessed.  However, I wonder if it would be possible to have each species in my different saved games slowly work on taking the Grox out in their section of the galaxy over time.  The actions of saved games have an impact on other games, correct?  I dunno, the game just doesn't seem "finished" until I have peace in the galaxy.

ETA:  I scoured the internets the other day to see if there was a way to lower disaster rates and found this:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=926714&topic=45366923


From what I've read (it doesn't count as a cheat, therefore no joker badge) as the values are being edited outside of the game.  However, I've also read that the values are re-set each time the game is re-started.  I haven't been able to get it to work, though.  When I open the preferences directory in notepad, these particular options do not appear.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Has anyone seen the Grox's homeworld?

I've used the mini happy ray when I first met the Grox, as they were only at an orange with me, not red.  It was futile for a mini, but perhaps a full happy ray would work.

I just reached the core for the first time. I'm  a shameless cheater, so I basically ran, paused, and refilled motives. I tried contacting the Grox first. I tried giving them a gift, but the highest amount available was 100k despite the fact that I had over 12mil. I tried asking for a mission but they said they had no use for me. Fine. I returned to the homeworld to check in and then took the wormhole back to Grox territory. Suddenly, we're at war.

Here's a link to a guide on how to ally with the Grox:

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/1294.page

I haven't tried it yet, but I might with one of my throw-away games.

I tried everything I could (Happy ray, I think it was fully upgraded, embassy, bribes, etc) and I could only get the relationship score with the Grox up to -20. They start out with a -70 "We hate strangers", and all methods of relation raising are far less effective on them, with a lower cap. (Usually you can keep using the happy ray - recharging between bursts - until they have gained 50 from that alone, but the Grox capped out far earlier.)

EDIT: Huh. Didn't check Arnina's link before posting... Interesting. I'll have to try that.

Things I know of: First, apparently, the entire galaxy is actually shared, meaning all of your races are actually simultaneously in play.
Second: A ship can hold 99 planetbusters. Each one costs $2.5M when bought from a Force race, so your total cost is $250M, about 3 boatloads of cash apiece (max cash is 100M).

So, let's say you have 10 races ready to approach the core. That's 990 planetbusters. How many planets do these guys have, anyway? Have fun!

I also highly recommend the Scientist Gravitron Wave, if you don't feel like inflicting massive permanent harm to the galaxy: Each shot will cleanse a planet instantly, and you have unlimited ammo and can fire theim as fast as you can save and load your game. :P

And I think someone in those screenshots is cheating! There's no way I've heard of that a ship can have over 10K HP, even with Prime Specimen, best is 2250 with all health upgrades.

Health is about 3.3x as high in Normal as hard.  So Prime Specimen + Normal + upgrades = 7.4K.  Easy is probably even higher.

 - Gus

Pssh. Pussies! Doesn't mean shit if you can beat it on easy! At 10K health, you're pretty much indestructible! I'm used to invading homeplanets on 900 health, a minibomb, and a seatbelt! Not equipped with shields...well, then, buckle up!

Easy without the last health upgrade is about 8.5k. I'm not sure what the last one puts you at, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 10k. And yeah, you are pretty much indestructible with that much health and five allied ships.

I only play on HARD. All other settings are for wimps. Nothing you do under lesser settings is valid!

I am a wimp. And I suck. I know this.

/me waves dismissively.

None of your tactics therefore have any merit whatsoever, since they do not necessarily work in the REAL game.

I've read that the Grox occupy between 600 to 1,000 planets.  Bastards.  So let's say I decide to have each of my species in other saved games work on taking out the Grox in their section of the galaxy.  When I take out one planet in a solar system using any method of attack, will the Grox simply find another T0 planet and set-up shop?  (T0 planets are the only habitable planets for the Grox)  If this happens, the net effect of my attack would be zero.  If this is the case, I assume I would have to destroy all T0 planets first and then attack established Grox colonies.  This would be MOAR work.  I'm lazy and MOAR work doesn't appeal to me.

:P I have a hard game in progress. I've played 8 games on easy to space, 1 to the end. I've played 2 on normal to space. I started one on hard last night. (Technically, I'd played one through tribal before, but I was annoyed at the look of the creature and I saw a shinier new planet). I'm doing your challenge. Eyeless, limbless, hopping little pumpkin.

From what I can tell, until you get to space there's not much difference between easy and hard. More nests seem to be aggressive in creature. No big deal if you are going predator. Maybe more epic creatures, though I had an easy game that seemed swamped with them as well, so that may be a random thing. Tribal is the same...more tribes start out aggressive. This is easily fixed by gifting, or by just running over and pummeling them before they have a chance to get big. Now, I haven't played civ but I'd suspect the only real difference is, again, the anger factor. Sit tight and earn money so you can load your city with houses and then pummel with vehicles, or gift them into neutrality. No biggie.

On my hard game, the plan is to see if I can't ally the Grox. I'm not you, and I know I won't be able to fight them off with hard-level health.

Dunno if more creatures on Hard are aggressive (it seemed about the same as for my normal game) but I didn't run into any rogue creatures on normal, and found four on hard. My wimpy herbivore could just stand back and let its friends do all the work when there turned out to be three hostile groups right next to the nest~  ;D

Wouldn't allying with the Grox just have you having to fight off everyone *else* instead?

Yes, but their ships are weak little nothings compared to the Grox. It's possible that you could get others (at least others around your homeworld) to the highest possible relationships and then have them just thrown into a low neutral by allying with the Grox. I'd have to see what happens to the fuzzy pumpkins. If not, if they still are thrown into a negative state, that's what the big guns are for. By the time you hit center you should be at the maximum level and have the big guns.

I get a lot of rogues in my easy games.

No: The colony spread behavior only works so fast, and the Grox will not be able to recolonize if you attack using planetbusters, because the planet will have been turned into rubble. Eventually, the entire galactic core will consist of nothing but destroyed planets.

Here is the link for the Space stage timing mods:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=926714&topic=45391909 (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=926714&topic=45391909)

There are four to choose from: Lite, Medium, Heavy and Extreme. Each one has different times for Pirates, Grox, and Eco-Disasters (I haven't read through the entire thread -reading five others to get to it was enough- but if it is not mentioned than: The times are approximations not actual 'breaks'. The timing of stuff seems to be purely random but based on a minimum.)

What if you use the Staff of Life to bring up all their planets to T3? Will they be able to bring those planets back to T0 and rebuild? I have this method where I drop in on Grox planets and get rid of their colonies with the Staff of Life (and an infinite uses mod) instead of blowing the planet up, which is freaking expensive.

I have no idea. The galaxy is really fucking huge and the galactic core is a longass way away.

But with the no Galactic Core limit mod, you will have the exact same interstellar range as always. So it should not be that hard. I'm working on a way to reduce the time it takes of the Staff of Life to turn a planet to T3. So if I succeed in that, we should be able to remove the Grox once and for all.


Also, from the above two lines from a particular property listing, does it mean the Grox empire stretch across 2400 star systems, within a radius of 105 units from the galactic core.

If this is the case, it would take a while to remove all Grox from the galaxy.

Regards,
Karthik

Which is totally not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that I am over HERE (points at spot on galactic map), while they are over THERE (points at center map). While these places look relatively close together, zooming in so that I can actually CLICK on something reveals that they are NOT. This distance, not specifically affected by the "Galactic Core Limit", is the REAL obstacle to my encountering any Grox. The enormous BIGNESS of it all renders the Grox an irrelevant and distant concern at this point in time.

Assuming you can destroy a planet every minute, it will take about 1.6 days of continuous bombardment at this rate to kill them all. At $2.5M per planetbuster, the total cost for this mission is 6 billion buckazoids, or about 6 wagonloads of cash. Better Planet Bazaar will make spending this much money somewhat more feasible. Otherwise you will need to load up about 25 ships with planetbusters to accomplish this holy war.

Attempting to perform a similar task with Graviton Wave or Fanatical Frenzy will necessitate saving and reloading the game after each act of destruction, probably increasing your time per planet destroyed to 2-3 minutes. The Grox may not realize that they are under attack if this method is used: At least with Fanatical Frenzy, races subjected to it recognize it only as a violation of Galactic Code, rather than an attack against them. While normal races react negatively to violations of galactic code, thus having the same effect as directly attacking them, the Grox actually like code violations and thus may not react to being attacked in such a manner. Average time to terraform a planet is about 5 minutes, probably longer when being attacked while doing it. It is unknown how resilient a Grox T0 colony is to conventional bombing, but a conventional bombardment can destroy a 3-city maxed colony in about 2 minutes.

I have that mod too, no interstellar space travel limit and unlimited Staff of Life. I can take out a Grox planet in 2 seconds with the Staff of Life; just get in, drop the SOL and get out. I am cheating and pausing every once in a while to use the "refillmotives" cheat though. In 5 minutes, I can take out like 10 Grox planets. Does anyone know if they can rebuild? It would suck to waste all that time destroying all the Grox, just to have them start building up their empire again. There should be a mod that prevents them from building another colony once one is destroyed.

It's called a "planetbuster". Not even the Grox can live on a pile of rubble.

But that's too expensive and will make everyone else hate me. Even that "Planetbusters don't cause hate" mod doesn't work for me for some reason. If I make the planets T3, can the Grox bring them back down to T0 or not? If they can't, that's just as effective as blowing up the planet.

AFAIK, computer players can't terraform.

Only those within 10pc will witness the act and hate you. Since you are all the way in a distant arm of the galaxy, and the only people who will witness the atrocity are the Grox, because you are kinda DEMOLISHING THE BOWELS OF GROX SPACE, no one will care!

As for expensive...you are amassing a coalition of 6-25 of your own races in a massive effort to eliminate an empire of some 2.4K planets from the galaxy. No matter WHAT you do, it's going to be expensive! Either it will cost you a fortune in cash, a fortune in time, or, most likely, BOTH! Get used to it!

Except the Grox who won't know whether to love you because you're using planet busters or hate you because you're using it on them.

I haven't actually met the Grox yet, but I am wondering if I should. If the 'normal' path to the galactic core involves fighting one's way through Grox space, and if the Grox can mount retaliatory attacks on your homeworlds halfway across the galaxy, and if the typical Grox attack is powerful enough to destroy the most heavily defended colony, and if you can't make peace with the Grox afterwards, and if all you get afterwards is a lousy staff with 42 charges, then what's the point? You'll be fighting off Grox attacks forever and you can't even 'sort of' ignore them like you can with pirates. It sounds like attempting to follow the game's tutorials (specifically the 'explore galactic core' one) condemns your race to eventual extinction at the hands of the Grox.

There's also that minor problem the Galactic Core being a MILLION BAJILLION KAJILLION MILES AWAY. Even the most generous starting position does not exactly put it anywhere close to reasonable range!

And the Grox seem to have more advanced interstellar drives than everyone else, because they can show up a bajillion kajillion miles away from their nearest world to thump one of your colonies.

True, true. And I wasn't aware of the 10pc thing, that's helpful. I think I'll just go with getting all their planets to T3 though, then they'll actually be inhabitable for my allies, who can work to get rid of the Grox WITH me. Or at least slow them down when they're trying to get to my colonies.

You don't have to fight your way through.  Before you head off to Grox space, load up on mega energy and health packs.  You will need these to stay alive.  When you get to Grox space the Grox will fire on you.  Turn-off your auto turrets so you don't accidently fire back and start a war.  Also, ditch any ally ships you have so they don't fire on the Grox.  Then, hop from star system to star system until you reach the galatic core.  I tried this with one of my races and the Grox did not attack any of my colonies because I avoided starting a war.

Wow, didn't know that. I destroy everything I meet as a matter of course. The fact that the Grox are officially more awesome than me (by being basically invincible) is a bit stupid. If the Grox can have 2,400 planets, I want a REAL galactic armada, some REAL planetary defenses, a REAL spice harvesting system, and a REALLY BIG ship to take them on with.

Good hints (in retrospect :)), Arnina.  I'll have to remember to do that when my next space race is ready for the run to the core.  Unfortunately, my first (stronger) race is going to have to fight their way through.

I was at war with the Grox when I made the core run.  I just took a colony pack with me and stopped at every empty system along the way to drop a colony and heal/recharge, buy another colony and move on my way.

I've run two races up to  Hero rank, the Drakomir and the Ninjaclastes.  THe Drakomir [Scientists]were my first race to reach Space, and when Spodists declared war on them for failing to tithe properly, I used the Graviton Wave in a dastardly planet-stealing scheme that had a couple other races declare war on the not-yet-properly-prepared Drakomir. After skirmishing for awhile, I got tired of fighting off intermittent attacks and had the Drakomir set out on a core expedition.At the time, all they had was interstellar drive 3, so they kept getting blocked by the large gap in their spiral arm. Couldn't even make it past with 4.  Pretty much nothing interesting happened to the Drakomir Empire during the expeditions.

Switched to the Ninjaclastes (Warriors),  with whom I studiously avoided any  Galactic Code Breaches. Got Insterstellar Drive 4 and the Wormhole Key, gathered up a group of allied ships (which was probably a mistake), loaded up on AOE health and the Max Energy , and ran for the core. Made it, but by bringing along friends, the AOE Heal would only work planetside. Combined with the Auto-Targeting, I was at War with the Grox in short order.

Rather than try to make my way back, I decided to get my ship blown up to make my way back to the homeworld.  I headed for the nearest planet to the core, and attempted to destroy all installations on it. I succeeded.  And as it turns out, that was the Grox Homeworld. I then let the ship be destroyed and flipped back to the homeworld.

A while later, the Ninjaclastes swept through the spiral arm where the Drakomir lived, Allied with them, and slew all the Drakomirs' enemies, and I started playing them again. Soon enough, the  Galactic code violation was forgotten, and I ran them up the ranks, kitted them out, and sent them to the core.

With the Drakomir, I turned off the autocannon  in Grox Space. I also bribed them a bit, and performed one mission for them. The Grox were neatly in the "Don't Like, but Don't Hate" category. When I made the actual core run, they fired at me all the way, but I made it to the core without them actually declaring war. I then terraformed the former Grox Homeworld to T3,  and dropped  three colonies and the standard colony accessories on it, fully expecting the Grox to take it back in short order.

More recently, I decided I wanted to go for the Quietus Star achievement. I had the Drakomir trade spice to reach the fifty million sporebucks  necessary, and hunted down another Warrior Race for the weaponry discount (Their previous weaponry  contact had been exterminated for getting angry about not  being paid tribute they never asked for, and being walking bananas)  On this trip, I realized it's possible to get to the core without taking a single shot from the grox, even if they hates you.

As long as you never actuallly reach a star system once you enter a forbidden zone, the ships they send after you will never catch up with you. And you can change your destination before you reach a star. Fly towards a star. Pause just before you reach it with "P". Check the distance for your next leg. Then unpause and click on the next star before you arrive. Repeat. I got three quarters of the way into Grox Space without taking a single point of damage from the Grox until I slipped up while trying to navigate around a starless void. If you ever stop moving in the forbidden zone, the ships will catch up with you, and you'll be taking fire then on until you leave.

At any rate, after much travail, the Drakomir ship made it back to their colony  on the former Grox Homeworld,  which was still churning along fine. I rested up a bit, and then set about achieving Quietus Star.

(http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/5233/quietusstarrn6.jpg)

In the Core, only the Grox can hear you break the Galactic Code.

(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/5981/groxlikedf0.jpg)

And they like it.  Admittedly, they might have liked it more if I hadn't used their worlds as targets.

Also ran across some Tribal Worlds in Grox Space. Unsure if they'd always been there and thus been non-Grox systems in Grox space, or had sprung up after I destroyed the Grox Planet in the system.

Does using the Staff of Life break galactic code? Because it certainly destroys all Grox colonies on a planet. I haven't tried it on a non-Grox inhabited world yet though.

No, it doesn't. In fact, if you use it on an alien race's world, you'll get a reasonable "Helping Our Planet" relationship bonus for doing so.

On my first run through Grox space I did notice a few non-Grox worlds slipped in among the very large Grox empire. A couple of them may have had pre-space civilisations on them, all I noticed was that I could pause on one or two of them and not get attacked. (Though most were close enough to Grox space that they'd come over and get me if I just sat around in space.)

The Grox are obnoxious, but they give us Sporians a meaning for our madness so I guess we can keep 'em around... at least until we figure out how to wipe them from the face of the galaxy ^^

I made a real deal with the Grox...    I didn't made a screenshot by myself, but I found a picture somewhere on the web. Take a look.
(http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/7592/groxalliedyw7.th.jpg) (http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/7592/groxalliedyw7.jpg)(http://img394.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif) (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

Note : you'll have to be Omnipotent. If you're not, Grox will hit you even if you become Omnipotent !

I didn't use an ambassy, 'cause the Grox always shoot on it before ally. I gived them a 500.000 § gift, and I destroyed 6 planets. I used so many fireworks, and I accept 5 missions.
When you ally with Grox, they give you a spaceship, the best UFO of the galaxy. Oh, and all relations score with all empires of the galaxy will be down to -200, and you'll receive a special badge, "Dance with the Devil".

To destroy the Grox, you'll have to terraform all their planets to T1 (they can't live if the T-Score of a planet isn't T0), use many many Planet Busters, or destroy their cities.
The Grox Empire have 600 to 1000 planets, but some players count 2400. Good luck ! You'll receive another special badge, "

Don't declare war on them and then they'll leave you alone. Turn off your auto-firing weapons before heading to the center of the Galaxy and run in as fast as you can without stopping. Even when you're at war with them, they'll only attack your planets one at a time and provided you don't show up to defend the planet, they don't do much in the way of damage if you've got an uber turret - they might take out a Colony but you can just place another one and replace your regular turrets periodically. They seem to like destroying the spice storage for some reason.