Maximum Defence with Minimum Donation Points on Unification Wars

The empire building continues on your Unification Wars empire. So you have done your restarts, be it Collective or Marauder, and now armed with a fist full of artifacts, you have made the trades needed to get a handful of donation points. These are hard-earned points and you want to spend them wisely.

Generally, most would either opt to get the pair of extractors so that they help generate more artifacts for you to trade for more donation points, or get paid status and swap to a paid account race such as Marauder (if you were doing Collective restarts), Guardian or Viral. Suppose you do not want to do that and what you really want is to get a strong system structure with a good main system and 9 darks protecting it.

First step you do is to restart as Collective. As Collective, you start off with a titan and you are able to make 7 dark systems for a total of 8 systems. That done, obtain paid status if you have not already done so, purchase the DNA Restructure I project and change to Marauder. At this point, it would be extremely useful to have well off friends or a wealthy lord as you will need some help to finish the missions to obtain the second dark systems. After the first dark system is obtained, you will receive a titan system. This needs to be destroyed immediately before proceeding further or you will risk not getting the second dark system. Once done, you are all set to move on. You may choose to remain a Marauder which is a fine race to play offering strong offensive capabilities as well as the fastest build rate in the game. Alternatively, you may purchase a second DNA Restructure I project and switch to whatever race you choose to be.

If you have the luxury of time, as Collective, it would be advisable to complete all the missions for the rewards and to level all the dark systems but not the titan system. Collectives have, in my opinion, the best artifact rewards of all the races and I think it would be a shame not to get them all. Why not level the titan, you may ask. The main reason is that both Collective and subsequently Marauder missions will give plenty of planets on the innermost system, namely your titan. If you have leveled the titan, you would not be able to get rid of the planets, you would have wasted all those turns and time getting the titan leveled in the first place, and it would also affect your efficiency in leveling your remaining systems if you choose to explore.

Total cost of this if you stay as Marauder:
DNA Restructure I (9.95 donation points) + 7 days paid account (2.98 donation points) = 12.93 donation points

If you choose to change to another race:
2 x DNA Restructure I (9.95 donation points x 2) + 7 days paid account (2.98 donation points) = 22.88 donation points

Note: This is a revised post from my original post in Tinker's Sojourn.