[douglas]

The game has yet to start, but here are a list of our restrictions:

Enforced by the mod design:
No colonizing
Very little non-monster technology researchable

Artificial Restrictions:
50% intelligence
Naturalist trait (-40% planet capacity)
No offensive intelligence ops
No non-planetary space yards
Monster cloaks allowed on bases only
No Subterranean trait (+20% planet capacity)
No monster fleets except specifically against targets that have proven they can handle single ships and smaller groups.

The combination of 50% intelligence and Naturalist with 3 homeworlds and a 100000 first turn bonus led in test games to discovering monster tech level 2 (first ships) on turn 11, 3 (warp openers/closers) on turn 41, and 4 (multiplex tracking, shield-skipping weapons, shields) on turn 94. I didn't test further than that. With two space monster races in the game, a treaty between them will speed things up a little bit for the later tech levels. I, as one of the monsters, plan to keep a permanent home garrison of 10 ships at every homeworld, always consisting of the latest and greatest I've got, which will give the normal races 21 turns to expand before any monster ships set out, and will delay each improvement on monster ships by 10 turns. The ban on base/ship space yards limits the monsters to three new ships at most each turn. With 5 normal races for every monster race, a large galaxy, and no monster expansion, I think the normal races may have a chance.