I've played a few games against the AI so far and the early game is fine for me. However, I tend to get on a single track once the game starts going (either developing systems and researching and neglecting military, or vice versa). How do you balance between the two? Though I still think this game is heavily skewed towards aggression and military rather than diplomacy or economic development, if I focus purely on military I soon lose out to higher tech empires if I cannot win right away. And if I focus on economic development or science, well, I'm easy pickings for my neighbors.

I think you might misjudge that your early game is going fine.

Boosting population is the key to success. The Fids produced by your people often outweights what your buildings give you. So Approval and Food imho are the most important things. Only if both is high your people-count will rise quickly enough to keep up.

Also very important is to make the additional planets in your systems available. While the later planets give you an approval hit, it most of the time still is better to take that local hit rather than taking an empire-wide hit.



With enough population you should be able to keep up both in science and military.

There are a few key techs in each direction of the tree, you need them all.

By mid game, I want the following techs:

North I want the 3 weapon upgrades, and the 2 command point upgrades.

West I want everything leading up to and including Colonial rights.

East I want Hexaferrium (needed for weapon/defense upgrades), Magnetic fields, the dumbell tech (make your ships bigger and heal during combat), and Global tech parks.

South I want Adaptive Colonies (for moon surveys), Baryonic particles, Planetary institute (cheap and helpful to all systems), and 2 of the 4 reduced expansion disapproval techs - Cashmir and the Battleship tech. (just left of the middle of the tech tree)



It's important to research in all 4 directions to balance military upgrades , research, food production, income, happiness, and military production.



Hope this gives you some ideas!

Thanks a bunch! I'm doing a similar strategy on my current game as Cravers. Here's what I currently do with systems:

Colonize most attractive planet

Food exploitation (unless it has horrible food growth, like a desert, then I exploit in what it's strongest in, ie dust on desert, science on arctic, etc)

If I can colonize another system planet that's Tier 1 or 2, I do so and also do food exploitation

Work on system upgrades, prioritizing relevant food improvements and strong ind/sci improvements like N-Way Fusion Plants

When upgrades are done, if a ship can be built in a reasonable number of turns, I'll build one, if not, I'll do ind-sci or ind-dust conversion.



I think my problem is that I'm prioritizing system upgrades over ship production. Unfotunately, building ships in this game can be a hassle (a waypoint function would be REALLY handy). I'm thinking I should probably try to always have 3-4 full CP fleets of my strongest ships in the mid game and keep them around outposts. Hopefully that should be enough.



Regarding invasion ships, I'm neglecting them. Also, with invasions, are troops/bombs/fighters/bombers worth it, or just go full siege?

Your assumption sounds about right.



It often is tempting to first build all buildings before starting on ships but then it can be too late. It's not that someone will instantly conquer you but having your top-systems or important ressources blockaded will prevent you from making ships and you can never really get rid of them.



But especially in the early and mid game systems are also quite productive with only the most basic buildings and don't require every single improvement asap. That's when you pick your most productive ones to churn out some emergency-ships before going back to optimize your infrastructure.

jktstance wrote:
Here's what I currently do with systems:

Colonize most attractive planet

Food exploitation (unless it has horrible food growth, like a desert, then I exploit in what it's strongest in, ie dust on desert, science on arctic, etc)...

This is what I used to do. However, after studying the forums, I now do a food exploit on almost every planet. In fact if the first colonized planet in a system has poor food growth, it's even more important to exploit it for food. Otherwise, it will grow far too slowly. Later, once the entire system is mature, you can switch the food exploits over to what each planet does best.

jktstance wrote:
Regarding invasion ships, I'm neglecting them. Also, with invasions, are troops/bombs/fighters/bombers worth it, or just go full siege?

The AI builds way too many invasion ships, which end up as practice targets for your battle fleets. Once you have air superiority, then build troop ships. This is discussed in other threads, but the best invasion fleet is 10 or more destroyers with 2 elite troopers and the siderite (or better) healing module. This repairs 0.1 modules on fleet; if you have 10, then each troop ship will regain 1 trooper per turn. I have not seen a failed invasion with this size fleet. (at serious difficulty) They cost 2 population to build, so make sure they are protected. If in doubt, you can disband them temporarily if they are at one of your planets.



Late game, I have had better lock with the heavy troops rather than the mechanized 2 slot troops. I have not tried the heavy mech robot in the Northwest corner of the weapon tree.

I play on Endless and am always significantly far behind on military tech, but it doesn't seem to hurt the war effort much. My two keys to surviving the wars are Diplomacy and the Repair Battle Card.



Diplomacy ensures I am not fighting everyone at the same time, and the repair battle card means my fleet can fight many many battles without dieing. The fleet leader and experienced fleets that result easily withstand fleets 1-1.5 times stronger and often hold off 3x powered fleets if the ships have paper thin armor.



The key is to make sure you have sufficient choke points so all the enemy fleets are coming to you rather than blockading all of your planets (that can be a bit challenging to recover from )



As others have said, I buy the cheap techs (1 turn) no matter where. I focus on

1) Colonizing all planets since production is a function of STAR population.

2) Maximizing fleet size (cmd points)

3) Getting that repair card.



The end result is that I spend most turns teching in the south, but am only a generation behind in the other three quadrants which is generally all I need.