For pirate lairs, 4 basic ships are enough for me most of the time unless the lair gains more manpower from magic.

I just go there with the fleet, give the first upgrade to infantry and then use guerrilla tactics, while not the fastest it works almost every time.

For combat, from MP experience going all out beams and choosing "Get lucky" always is the best tactic.

eXistenZ wrote:

Do you mean with basic the explorers, or do you alter them?

Not really looking for MP tactics at the moment, but i'll keep it in mind

Meant 3 attackers and 1 support

For expansion, it really depends on your playstyle (among other things). I'm more of a defensive player so I tend to pick out a few strategically located or resource-rich systems (the more easily colonizable planets the better) and try to max those. Try to colonize most if not all of the planets in your owned systems since FIDS production should be the priority in most games (unless you're leaning towards a specific victory condition, i.e Science Victory = Prioritise Science Production) as it helps with basically everything. Just beware public order penalties when colonizing certain planet types too quickly. There's certainly more to colonization but as you play you'll figure out a pattern that works with you best. 

For techs that also depends on what you're ultimately going for. I tend to have a pattern that I've found to be a good all-around build and it's basically

Tech Stage 1: 

Economy and Trade 

- Xeno Linguistics 

- Plasma Metallurgy 

Science and Exploration 

- Xenobiology 

- Rare Earth Foams (Order may change based on the colonizable planets in-home system)

Empire Development 

- Planetary Landscaping 

- Off-world Agribusiness 

Military 

- N-Way Fusion 

Tech Stage 2:

Economy and Trade

- Multi-Thread Management 

- Astrofinance (If I'm surrounded by low resource systems I'll sometimes add Galatic Commodities as the third tech from this stage)

Science and Exploration 

- Baryonic Shielding 

- Machine Bacteria 

- Pev-Scale Accelerators 

- Eukaryotic Sap (Order between bottom 3 may change based on colonizable planets in owned systems) 

Empire Development 

- Botanical Scanning 

- Xenology (Sometimes I add Efficient Shielding as the third or second tech if there is a rival empire nearby or pirates hassling me) 

Military

- Autonomous Construction 

- High-Energy Magnetics 

- Unstable Isotope 

Then I unlock the rest of the technologies in the order that best suits what I'm going for at the time (or continue onto Tech Stage 3, in which I have another order where I unlock the techs by). 

As for dealing with minor factions. Typically as the UE you should have enough excess influence points to just straight up assimilate them. 

You have combat just about right. I typically build certain weapon modules for certain factions, like as Vodyani I like to use just beams b/c "role-playing" 

thats indeed the setup I go for mostly. I just finished my Mezari game with a science victory after about 130 turns.

-Is it normal to have so few heroes? I'm used to Endless Legend where I put a cultist in every city and  a necrophage as commander for every army. here however I only had 5 heroes in total, as there were almost no available on the market

-I find that several minor factions planets have already been turned to planet specializations when I acquire them. is that a good thing? I havent specialised planet yets.

-How do you deal with overpopulation when pretty much all your slots are filled?

-Am i correct that effective Siege ships consist of manpower and siege modules?  Are titanium slugs the only early avalaible siege module?

eXistenZ wrote:

thats indeed the setup I go for mostly. I just finished my Mezari game with a science victory after about 130 turns.

-Is it normal to have so few heroes? I'm used to Endless Legend where I put a cultist in every city and  a necrophage as commander for every army. here however I only had 5 heroes in total, as there were almost no available on the market

-I find that several minor factions planets have already been turned to planet specializations when I acquire them. is that a good thing? I havent specialised planet yets.

-How do you deal with overpopulation when pretty much all your slots are filled?

-Am i correct that effective Siege ships consist of manpower and siege modules?  Are titanium slugs the only early avalaible siege module?

1. It is normal, because Federation government relies heavily on heroes and it will be crazy broken if not for the scarcity of heroes.

2. It is a good thing because they are already giving you some bonuses and later you can change a specialization.

3. As UE your only option is to either use a spaceport which is unlocked by upgrading your system to lvl 2 (that can be done in the Economy Screen after unlocking tier 2 in economy and trade tech tree) or to research N-Way Fusion and to use Chain Gang Programm it provides.

4. For now manpower is not very good for sieging. The most effective way is to make sieging ships out of your colonizer hulls. You should either make them 1 engine + 2 sieging modules or make them 3 sieging modules and attach a "booster" ship (look technology Eukaryotic Sap) to your sieging fleet. However the devs stated that they are reworking manpower in the upcoming DLC/Update to make it more relevant. 

mamarider wrote:

4. For now manpower is not very good for sieging. The most effective way is to make sieging ships out of your colonizer hulls. You should either make them 1 engine + 2 sieging modules or make them 3 sieging modules and attach a "booster" ship (look technology Eukaryotic Sap) to your sieging fleet. However the devs stated that they are reworking manpower in the upcoming DLC/Update to make it more relevant. 

Isn't it better to use the upgraded support hulls? In most cases, you get more support slots and they can defend themselves from random pirate attacks

Completely forgot about them, yeah ofc they are better. It must be because I haven't used them as Empire almost ever, because their ships are already pretty damn good.

Btw I find it confusing how all support hulls have the trait that makes them targeted more likely. For example sometimes I want just a "booster" ship or a flotilla shielder and I don't want them to be focused, but they are thanks to that hull trait.

Im still having issues with pirates, and especially pirate lairs that tend to pop up in the most inconvenient places and quickly rise to level 3, making them have 600 defense. It takes ages to siege them down. Any other advice on them?

Also, Endless Legend had this chart where you could compare the rankings, is that gone in ES2?

yeah I mean the ranking compared to other AI. It was more in detail in Endless Legend (the F1 screen with all the graphs).

So any other advice on pirates? Everytime I watch an LP, it looks like they dont have pirates lairs popping really close to them