https://youtu.be/BN0uhO08oVQ

If you would prefer to read the guide, here are my notes that I used for this video:

General thoughts on infecting units:

You need at least ten infection points to either spawn in or evolve a unit**.**

you gain 1 point per unit tier killed

+ you get more points if u kill infected units twice in battle like syndicate runner

Cannot infect mechanic, ethereal, or mineral units

You don't always spawn or evolve exactly at 10 pts threshold

It's kinda random but you don't lose any pts

The spawned pustule gets the movement of the infected unit after battle so sometimes it starts with 32 then back to 40 nxt turn

Satonir's Recommendations:

Those who played against a good tempo xenoplague often say it is goddamn broken and nothing can be done to counter it

Those people are right

But I would never put xenoplague is the best secret tech

xenoplague will give you strong units for free

but for that you have to exterminate all biological and cibernetic life on your way

Its good if you start on a map where dwellings are Growth or those mutants

but if the map gave you Psyfish and Autonom, hard times are coming. Off course, nothing catastrophic, as you can always go into using racial units, using xenoplague mechanics as supportive, but in this case you are not about to dream of a good tempo

also in order to push the tempo you strongly have to sharpen xenoplague like a knife.

This is the only algorithm I can recommend:

1. pick amazons

2. Star union scholar, Energy cache, APC, Decadent/Party animal

3. when the game starts take the first quest and if the target is well-placed, go complete it. If not or once you finished the quest, immediately wage war upon a biological/ciborg dwelling that has its armies near your capital.

4. manual every fight on first turns in order to get as many pustules as possible.

5. Once you have two stacks and a second hero split your forces and continue devouring all what is living with double speed

6. Put most resources you get into cityspamming when game starts - a good economy is the only thing that will protect us from spending all energy we find somewhere on maintaining numbers of our gigantic army of plague.

this is our military tech tree. The main branch of it is off course the secret tech, in which we do our best to reach plague lords asap

weapons branch is for making our lords unstoppable machines of death

they do not need any defensive mods unless you are in very special cases. That's why we just give them 3 biochemical mods and watch them burn it all

researching amazon units in this tech tree is the lowest priority. The main reason I usually do that is that harrier is the best mount for :amazons: hero

all things not pointed on the picture are totally situational

society tree is needed for all about applying 3 doctrines that will make us unstoppable: Ecological warfare, Biomatter preparation training, Advanced Wildlife Militarization. All else is completely situational. Biomatter preparation training gets better with the more heroes are in a single stack.

This is what you are about to have on turn 30-40 (standard settings) when you are lucky and you did everything right:

Winslaya's Recommendations:

Starting with the xenoplague close combat equipment loadout allows you to start applying infection on turn 1.

Star Union Scholar is a must, as you will need to almost exclusively focus your military research into your ST if you are using this strategy. The good news is that Xenoplague has a lot of fun mechanics and tricks

Biomatter Preparation Training = 30% less points needed for evolution and spawning

Ecological Warfare = applies poison on melee and bio ranged attacks, making it easier to apply infection

Advanced Wildlife Militarization = boost to xenoplague units as they are also animals

Hero Skill: Animal Discipline

Parasitic Infection

Saving the organic stacks for when you can easily apply infection with operation and/or your other units pays off fairly quickly (around turn 7?) That is, using mods to apply infection

In the meantime it is good to do some scouting, so that you can make a general plan for where to send your stacks

While I was told that the game always prioritizes evolutions over spawning in pustules, I had a couple times where a destroyer didn’t evolve and I got a new pustule

Sleeper xenomones gives a whole stack infection. I prefer skipping sleeper pheromones and going for Hyper Accelerated Evolution, which turns a pustule into a destroyer (and uses a fair bit of operational points)

Parasitic strike is a solid source of infection

Plague pods can apply infection from a couple hexes away (instead of on melee), and can be useful for healing xenoplague units too!

Melee mod greatly increases melee damage output, but is fairly redundant on xenoplague units (pustule, destroyer + lord). I tend to put on t2 melee units. I know ninjew like putting them on aspirants (works well with against all odds)

Waging wars can be a good way to get xenoplague points (Most colony militias tend to have a lot of easy to beat organic units; kirko and amazon only have organic militia units)

When a pustule or destroyers evolves, they lose their experience.