Spore update

Last week, I loaded up Spore to find all my game files had been corrupted. Needless to sat, this was a painful revelation. The Thare, my cell to space game, was gone. Though I was able to recoup my creations, I had to restart completely. I evolved my new race, the Lucardae, from cell to space and began my conquest again. Because of my previous failures with the Thare, I was able to move much more quickly with the Lucardae. I found the key to conquest was keeping all races allied with me, except the one I was currently at war with and my terraforming tools became my best weapons. Turning on my allies isn't very ethical but my desire to rule the galaxy cannot be denied. Unfortunately, terraforming takes a homeworld down to only three colonies, so I had to adapt my plans as taking an enemies homeworld intact creates an enormous amount of wealth.
I found Earth and colonized Ganymede within the Sol system. I plan to expand beyond there but I want the destroy Earth achievment without actually destoying Earth. This is easy enough to accomplish. I found that by saving the game prior to Earths destruction and then restarting at the save, gives me the achievement and an intact Earth as well.
The Grox have not yet been an issue. I have expanded to approximately 30 systems and though I have made contact with the Grox, they do not seem intent on attacking me. I am too busy isolating empires that exist only with my empires borders to bother with the core anyway. I plan to conquer an entire arm of the galaxy before taking on the Grox anyway.
The strategy at that point is to terraform a Grox planet to T1 and repeat the process as I approach the core. I do not plan on loading up on health regens and making a run on the core. I want to clear a path there and eventually crowd out the Grox completely. It's going to be a long process but it's my goal and one that I believe can be achieved. Most of the other people who express a desire to reach the core all seem to ignore the conquest over the Grox option, so it would seem to be my choice based simply on that.
The Lucardae are a Shaman race which gives me the return ticket superpower. I may try a completely militaristic and aggressive race next. I don't remember what the superpower is but I assume it will be compatible with a game of pure conquest. The Thare were very aggressive once they reached the space stage and I have encountered them in my current game. The game remembers their expansionist ways and is acting accordingly. While I have currently allied with them, I believe I will have to eradicate them soon or they will become too large for me to deal with in an efficient manner.