Every Empire in this game begins in Isolationist status, or ISO, which protects the empire for hostile actions of other empires.  Once isolanist status has been lost it cannot be regained.

Isolationist Empires cannot:

• Be attacked by ships
• go negative on happiness
• use offensive spy assignments
• build offensive ships
• train effective offensive spies
• have more than 1 colony
• control a Space Station
• have spies sent to their planet by other empires

Actions that cause you to lose Isolationist status will usually provide a warning in the web client before you complete them.

Great care should be taken before breaking Isolationist status since you will become vulnerable to most types of attacks from any empire in the game, some spy assignments are rank restricted.  Before breaking Isolationist it is recomend though not nescary to:

• Have a waste management system in place
• Build a Security Ministry
• Build an Intelligence Ministry
• Train all possible spies
• Have a Shipyard
• Have some Spaceports
• Have good happiness production

Remaining ISO

Some empires prefer to remain ISO for many reasons.  Though typically an ISO empire will focus mostly on the development of 1 planet.

Development of an ISO planet will generally be very limited due to the starting planet size of 45 plots.  This limitation can be overcome.  For advanced development an ISO empire should focus very heavilly on trying to build up the Archaelogy Ministry.  This building will be key to obtaining glyphs with the use of Excavators.  Two particularly important glyph buildings to an ISO empire are the Pantheon of Hagness and the Black Hole Generator.  As these can both provide additional plots up to a maximum size of 95 plots.

(*Note: Since the time of "the storm", max planet size has increased from 60 to 70. Now the new maximum plots for an ISO is 105, instead of 95.)