A lot of people seem to be having trouble with even normal difficulty, so I'm going to post some tips and advice on how to crush your enemies beneath your mighty heel (since I won my second game no problem).



There are two ways you're going to win by being a warmonger. Supremacy and Expansion. Supremacy you do by finding every enemy homeworld, build several large, powerful fleets, they casually declaring war with everyone, walking into their territories, and taking all their homeworlds. Expansion is done in a similar (and harder imo) way, except instead of aiming for their homeworlds you just take EVERYTHING. Goal is 75% of colonized systems are yours. Remember these are your ultimate goes, and everything else is a means to these ends. :]



Now, first turn. Start scouting with your scout. Keep scouting with it. It should never be idle. It'll probably die eventually to pirates or enemy players, so try to delay that. If it dies to pirates build a basic combat ship to kill them (base design works just fine). Keep scouting with the combat ship or build another scout. Focus on exploring the area around you. Look at every system you explore and think what you'll use this for later. Ocean, Jungle and Terran are the best at the start, preferably with some Tundra or Arids. Then lava. Focus on building these up (and every other planet you find).



Early game you have one goal. Maximize industrial output. This means you need food to increase population, and expansion tech to colonize everything (yes, EVERYTHING). Colonize planets with good food output (+2 per pop or more), and build food improvements right away if it has the industry, otherwise build industry improvements first. Don't colonize non-food planets in a system until you have plenty of population on your food producing planet. You want your population grow as quickly as possible. Get N-Way Fusion Plants at the start for the +10 Industry improvement (build it on EVERYTHING) and Core Mining for Geo-Industrial Plants (industry exploit). Lava planets are great. They get +4I from Geo-Industrial Plants. So keep expanding and spamming industry/food until you've got a solid economy.



Now you have choices. You'll probably have found 1-2 enemy races by now. You'll probably anger one by expanding too aggressively and close to him. There's 2 ways to deal with him (and everyone else). The simpliest is to research weapon/armor/hull tech and go to war, build ships non-stop from any good industry system(100+ industry) take all their stuff, and get even more economy (economy wins this game). The other way is to ally them. I haven't done this, so I'll keep it simple. Basically rob them blind with trade, use them, backstab them. As the sniper says "Have a plan to kill everyone you meet".



So you're got a thriving economy, starting to get into the later techs, and you're at war with one or several races. Combat is fairly simple. Build/research armor to stop their weapons, and use weapons they don't have armor for. Simple. Build lots of ships. You will win by attrition and good ship design. Out teching enemies helps a lot too. Keep improving your economy, never stop. Take breaks from building ships every once and a while to improve FIDS and happiness.



Happiness is important. Get Infinite Supermarkets and Colonial Rights. Build them on any systems that aren't happy. Happy citizens work better, and produce more FIDS. Tax is also important. I usually keep it around 30%. If you make everyone really happy, you could really increase this quite high and become rich. Empire also gets a bonus to industry if tax is over 50%. So if you're Empire, really try to make everyone happy and raise that tax way up.



So you've got a strong economy, you're at war or allied with everyone and your military might is unrivaled. Time to do one of those victory conditions I mentioned before. Enjoy the victory. :]

I'm going to agree with everything the OP said.



A few more tips:

- Hire heroes with the "administrator" trait. The boost in industrial output they provide is absurdly powerful if you get it early and put it on a system with 5-6 planets. If you're Horatio, you can clone your best admin hero early on and get an even bigger boost.

- Horatio gets a huge bonus to food production and have higher population caps, meaning that your systems will develop much more quickly than your opponents'. This gives you a massive early-to-mid game advantage in production, which is enough to win the game by turn 150 if you play aggressively (6 players on a medium map).

- Focus on making several 5-6 planet "forge systems" where pop and industry are maximized. These can generally produce fleets faster than the AI is able to handle.

- If you reach the point where you can spam basic ships at a rate of 1 per turn early on (before turn 30), you're in a good position to wipe out the first AI empire you run into.

- Second tier lasers + destroyers are usually enough to kill the first and second enemy empires.

- Explore all your moons. They give HUGE empire-wide bonuses if you find a temple (examples: +10% to production, +10 approval, +1 industry/person, etc.)

- Put a repair module on every ship you have (except colonizers). This makes your fleets a lot more durable than you'd expect.



And most importantly, check the "Empire" screen at the end of every turn. If you have a system that's not doing anything, give it something to do. This makes a huge difference.

Do you play on the default settings (small map, 4 empires, normal difficulty)? Can you give me an idea of how many turns in you get, with pure economic expansion, before you build up your attack fleet? You mention about lava planets, but unlocking that is more than halfway into the tech tree. Usually I have already been attacked before that.

davea wrote:
Do you play on the default settings (small map, 4 empires, normal difficulty)? Can you give me an idea of how many turns in you get, with pure economic expansion, before you build up your attack fleet? You mention about lava planets, but unlocking that is more than halfway into the tech tree. Usually I have already been attacked before that.

Yeh default settings. Hrm. I don't have a strict "build fleet now". I switch to fleet once I've angered one of the AI and they're gonna declare war on me in a few turns (or me them).



In a Sophon game save I just checked, I could have lava colonize done by turn 54 (it's turn 35). Probably faster since I'll get more science before then. Lava are a bit slow to get up and running, but they produce the most industry besides one of the gas giants (and nearly as much anyway).

Hmmm... heres a more in depth one for surviving the early game.



You should try to colonize a 5-6 planet system with your first colony ship (or whichever system has the highest number of planets that you can colonize in the immediate future). Colonize the planet that has the highest food production. Put an admin hero on it if you have one (if not, use another hero and get labor bonuses on level up). Build a food improvement on the first planet. Then N-Way fusion plants. Colonize the other planets in the systems and build industry improvements. You should be increasing your population every turn if done right. Build some of the other system-wide improvements while you wait for the population to max out. Once population begins to peak, spam colonizers and repeat with every nearby system you can.



If done right, your homeworld and 5-6 planet forge system should be churning out colonizers and basic attack ships by around turn 30. Keep a few ships around for defense while you max out your new wave of colonies. Try to stay at peace with your neighbors during this time.



Two possibilities here:

1. The nearby AI attacks you. Research the first level of kinetics and deflectors, redesign your basic attack ship so that it has a couple deflectors, repair, high-energy couplings, and as many ballistic weapons as possible. Spam attack ships from your forge world, keep developing the rest of your colonies. Use your newfound military power to defend yourself and take the fight to the AI. It probably won't kill them outright, but will buy you some time to make it farther up the research tree. Research lasers (2nd tier, if possible) and destroyers. Get techs that increase your command cap if possible. Spam your laser destroyers (with repair!) and wipe out the AI that attacked you.



2. The AI doesn't attack. Max out your newly colonized wave of systems as fast as possible, researching techs that boost approval, industry, and food production. If you have money, buy out the N-way fusion plants or food infrastructures on your more important planets to speed them along. Keep a fleet or two of basic warships around to kill pirates and the occasional scout that tries to blockade you. Don't research weapons unless attacked. Food production and industry are the most important exploitations. Colonize every planet in your region of space. As soon as you run out of room, research the best weapon techs available. Once you have shiny new weapons, have your biggest systems start pumping out warfleets. Kill the nearest AI and take their stuff.



If you're still having trouble, use Horatio or Craver. Horatio gets a MASSIVE boost to food production (and hence, rate of expansion). I haven't tried Craver yet, but it looks like they get a temporary boost to FIDS production upon colonizing a planet.



In short, just try to capitalize on every economic advantage you've got. Hope this helps.

Another thing to take into account is the tax-rate.



1st of all a lowering of taxes only decrease one attribute: Dust. On the other hand it means it increase food, science and industry. Be sure however to get those 3 starting-heros quite fast and assign them. If you start to get a bigger negative number on dust just get an arid planet and stock it up with the proper exploit and it should be set after that.



Of the two races I can say that Sophons and Horatio are very easy to use for rapid expansion.



Increase in pop usually means you have an even bigger increase in stats than just by building the prod-increasing buildings.

Just two things I wanted to add to this. Seems like I am playing the game quite differently from others:

-Tax:

For the first few rounds, keep your tax at the default 40%. This will allow you to purchase you first administrator hero, who you should station on your home planet for most of the game. Reduce to 30%, then buy a military hero. As someone has already said, focus on food production throughout this period- quickly look to colonize other systems which have been scouted.

When you've reached maybe turn 15, you'll have say 4 systems colonized. Reduce your tax to 10%. Production values in everything skyrocket. Earn dust by having the industry to dust conversion improvement (can't remember what it's called) on your most/a good industrial system.



-Diplomacy and the tech tree:

1. A lot of people completely ignore the diplomatic tree and don't realise that most of its skills aren't to do with diplomacy at all, but increasing production, which you really want!

2. Diplomacy skills are useful anyway. In my current game I am friendly with 2/3 of the factions I have encountered, allowing me to concentrate on defeating the cravers. Negotiating with enemy factions will benefit you militarily (won't need to fight on two fronts), and economically (giving you a monopoly of various reousrces, like Titanium-70)

3. The early game should obviously have you investing more in the southern tree. Ultimately though, invest in all 4 tech trees. Why waste 30 turns researching a dreadnought, when you could reasearch atleast 10 lower value techs in that space of time? A lot of people don't realise that some of the basic, easy tech to acquire is often the most significant.

A side note to devs- there is a bug which allows me to trade, with friendly races, fewer dust for more dust. For example, I can trade 200 dust, for 300 dust, provided I have enough relation with the faction- or maybe I'm just bloody persuasive!

Great thread. Great info. :rolleyes:

Sebbers wrote:
Just two things I wanted to add to this. Seems like I am playing the game quite differently from others:

When you've reached maybe turn 15, you'll have say 4 systems colonized. Reduce your tax to 10%. Production values in everything skyrocket. Earn dust by having the industry to dust conversion improvement (can't remember what it's called) on your most/a good industrial system.

Playing as United Empire I have found I can still make a positive income with 15% tax due to thier race bonus income, so after the first 3 turns at high tax to get 2 heroes I drop it to that and then can build ind-sci when not churning out colony ships which does seem to give a good boost to research.



I also like to get magnetic field generators and build them on every colony early as the +40 raw research adds a massive boost to my total research in the early game when my colonies are not very high pop yet.

FluffyBunny wrote:
Playing as United Empire I have found I can still make a positive income with 15% tax due to thier race bonus income, so after the first 3 turns at high tax to get 2 heroes I drop it to that and then can build ind-sci when not churning out colony ships which does seem to give a good boost to research.



I also like to get magnetic field generators and build them on every colony early as the +40 raw research adds a massive boost to my total research in the early game when my colonies are not very high pop yet.

Gald I'm not the only one then. However, although I haven't played Empire, I would think that that they would be the only faction where I would actually have a 50%+ tax rate because of the bonus you get from that race. A 50%-100% tax rate with them grants massive bonuses to industry. I would then focus on quick-buying (through dust), and install moral boosting and growth boosting improvements ASAP.

For other factions, a low tax rate, perhaps below 15% seems more desirable.



This is how my economy ran in my first game. It was still a little rough around the edges because I didn't really know what I was doing (e.g huge food surplus on my home planet which wasn't growing), but still...:

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/596969657796165670/DBF06FCD97F59B1539EA4CD23D6A1A93F88FDC9F/

Note how the ind-dust conversion is earning me almost 60 dust per turn (would have been even higher on my home system); thus allowing me to implement a low tax threshold.

Good advice here. Thanks.

Sebbers wrote:
Gald I'm not the only one then. However, although I haven't played Empire, I would think that that they would be the only faction where I would actually have a 50%+ tax rate because of the bonus you get from that race. A 50%-100% tax rate with them grants massive bonuses to industry. I would then focus on quick-buying (through dust), and install moral boosting and growth boosting improvements ASAP.

For other factions, a low tax rate, perhaps below 15% seems more desirable.

Early game high tax destroys morale and plummets food/research so I generally go with the 15% tax for ecstatic pop untill i get the main morale boosting techs. Once my systems can remain super happy with high tax I pump the rate up for massive production and then churn out fleets to stomp the AI. Maximising expansion for the first 50 turns seems to be the best method I have found in general, whether I then move on to warmongering or sit back with a big empire to win by another method.

FluffyBunny wrote:
Early game high tax destroys morale and plummets food/research so I generally go with the 15% tax for ecstatic pop untill i get the main morale boosting techs. Once my systems can remain super happy with high tax I pump the rate up for massive production and then churn out fleets to stomp the AI. Maximising expansion for the first 50 turns seems to be the best method I have found in general, whether I then move on to warmongering or sit back with a big empire to win by another method.

Actually I can see how that would work with Empire. So you keep taxes low for the first 50 or so turns then hike them up above 50%?

I've just started a new game based on a 0% tax rate and it's going very well.

Sebbers wrote:
Actually I can see how that would work with Empire. So you keep taxes low for the first 50 or so turns then hike them up above 50%?

I've just started a new game based on a 0% tax rate and it's going very well.

Yup, I do 3 turns at about 50% tax to buy my first two heroes on turns 3 and 4 then drop down to 15% to get my colonies building up pop fast and expanding then hike the tax back up once I have the happiness techs built which is usually around turn 50. Once you have the happiness techs there really is no point in not hiking up the tax as your systems can stay ecstatic/fervent even with the high tax, and you get production boost and tons of dust. The dust I blow on system upgrades for any newer systems that haven't got all thier upgrades yet while I build ships with my more established colonies.