This is a Campaign Guide for the 4 weeks category, the same principle from Skirmish applies where this category also does not have a set "route" as it can change WILDLY based on a lot of factors. As always please let me know if I've missed anything and/or you want to add something to this guide.
Pre-run Setup
The same applies to this run:
These are the settings that you must have ticked or unticked in the options menu before any run:
Under the Gameplay tab: Auto-Pause on Selection: Unticked Auto-Pause on Tabs: Unticked
The rest is based on your preference.
Campaign Setup
In the 'Choose your CEO' menu, next to the 'next' button there is a cogwheel that shows settings for the Campaign, it should be set as follows:
Reveal Map: Ticked Change Speed: Ticked
The rest are unticked
During the Run
One very important thing to note: DO NOT take ANY auctions, no matter how juicy the offering is, it is not worth the time hit, this will make your runs a little bit harder since your opponents will get benefits and can close the gap but from a speedrunning standpoint, this will give you a minimum of 1 min of a time save with a maximum of 10 depending on how much back and forth bidding there is. It would be far better to skip the auction (shift + click the minimize button for the auction window). Best to rely on your pre-round planning phase (contract & hiring) to get what you need.
The same advice from Skirmish applies but it is a widely different ball park. Campaign works like this:
Week 1 - 3 requires you to buy stock from the colony instead of buying out your opponent, the week ends once it reaches SOL 7, whoever has the most stock at the end wins the week Week 4 is the same as Skirmish where you buy out your opponent but this time its against 4 opponents with the added benefits from hiring employees
This leads us nicely to the next part of Campaign:
Hiring Employees - essentially this is where you are able to hire out buildings to build during the round, the defacto "planning" stage. Sometimes they may give out free buildings in the Specialists & Upgrades section but it is ultimately RNG
For Week 1, you can take your time in thinking on what to hire as the timer doesn't start until you get into game and place down your base but for every other week after that, you have to aim for, at the very least, a 1 min planning round.
My advice for this is to take note of what you have available at the start in Week 1 and adjust accordingly, remember that you also have a set budget based on your performance so some options may not be viable/greyed out.
One important piece of advice I can give you to make your life easier and do your planning fast is to remember this:
Free > Permanent > Contract
Power > Specialists > Resources
To further explain, if you can get a Free Power OR Specialist building then aim for that, if you can only hire permanently then do so but keep in mind on what you have for free as it can be wildly inefficient to have two patents, optimization or hacker arrrays, Pleasure Domes are fine however. Power is also very important as most of the time you may have to rely on Solar Panels which DOES NOT produce power at NIGHT, if you are left to fight with that then your debt will soar and may potentially lock you out of blackmarkets and can cause a huge detriment to your spending power in buying stocks or your opponents. Ideally you would want all 3 or at least 2 of the power buildings in order to complement each other. Specialists are also an important aspect in Campaign as it can potentially increase your profits both in game and in the planning phase, ideally you should have:
Optimization > Patent > Pleasure Dome > Offworld Market > Hacker Array
Optimization is VERY important as it can tip your profits by insane amounts if done properly, all the while using the smallest amount of buildings you can erect for each resource, it is also very useful when you find yourself lacking Power or any resource due to buying stocks (yes each stock bought in weeks 1-3 costs you 0.01 of your resources (Habitats consume Oxygen, Fuel and Food, The rest consumes Glass, Power, Electronics respectively) for each building you have) or if your opponent decides to sabotage you.
Patents can be whatever you feel that you need at the moment, I suggest reading up on what they do before attempting to speedrun, I personally find these to be useful: VR Patent Carbon Scrubbing Teleportation
The rest are so-so in terms of efficiency and profits but can be useful in a pinch (lack of power buildings etc)
Pleasure Dome is your best friend - if you can protect it that is. It will net you HUGE gains if you pair it with the VR Patent and a Goon Squad to protect it, even without the VR patent it will still be a big benefit.
Offworld Market is more useful in Week 4 rather than the earlier weeks but it still has a use in Week 1 - 3 if you want to buy out all the stocks as it will increase your planning profits but generally its rare to find a permanent hire Offworld Market during Week 1 - 3
Hacker Array is generally useless in my opinion, while yes it can change prices but you're gaining profits FROM ALL of your resources so there's little point in changing.
Generally, Week 1 - 3 is a matter of accomodating for bought stocks, nothing can be done to make it faster other than menuing and making sure that you win in the end, so you can take your sweet time for the 7 SOLs that it takes. Week 4 is where it all matters.
Week 4 is pretty much a Skirmish match but with future planning, by this stage you would have at least 2 or more power buildings unlocked and some specialist buildings, during planning its best to follow what I wrote earlier and aim for Free specialist buildings, if there aren't any then aim for contracting (due to it being one week (final week), you can only contract) specialist buildings over anything else because by then most of your resource buildings would have been unlocked, the only remaining ones are either patents or blackmarket benefits.
Your objective in Week 4 is different because you have to buyout 4 different companies, there will ALWAYS be one that will try to buy their stocks to about 50% making your run EVEN SLOWER as you have to pay a larger sum than their stock price, this will hit the 108k+ area and will be VERY difficult to raise without an offworld market + Pleasure Dome + Optimizations, with those three buildings you would be able to lower your time as Offworld Markets give 15k -50k per shipment in 15 - 20 seconds, the rest will be covered by your Optimized resources and Pleasure Dome/s
Closing Statement
I honestly wouldn't even call this a guide but more of an advisory guide because of how difficult it is to route this game but honestly its very fun to have on the spot judgement and decision making that I don't even pay it any mind.
