So, this is practically the first 4x game I play. And to be fair, it's been quite something to try and wrap my mind around. I've now played a few games and have come out defeated every time. If I look on the "scoreboard" (Players status and score) I'm usually last, with my opponents having atleast double or sometimes triple my score. What am I doing wrong? Or rather, what would your tip be to a noob player of the genre?

To be fair I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing. For the first bit of the game I go all out industry and then turn to science, I feel this might be the wrong way because my research takes so long for the initial rounds. But on the other hand I also want to be able to quickly produce system improvements and ships. So anything anyone could tell me would be greatly appreciated!

I personally dump my first exploitation in each system as food until I get an administrator hero to +50 food. The more you colonize, the higher your population, the higher your FIDS output. Obviously we have to know how much military we need to keep pirates out and be able to defend ourselves, or expand by conquering our enemies! But for the most part you just want to use the exploitations that give the largest bonus for the planet you are building it on.



Here are a few key things I try to at the start, mostly in this order:



Use my free colony ship to colonize any Terran/Ocean/Jungle planets that are in my home system, if there are any. Otherwise use scout to find a nearby alternative.

Build food exploitation on best fitted planet in home system.

Scout (continuously until scout is destroyed)

Research Xenobiology, scout for planets with the resources that technology unlocks. This is the last one for Turn one, the rest are in the turns afterwords.

Research to Titanium-70 unlock technology.

Research to colonization technologies that unlock planets with good resources and FIDS scores nearby.

Begin to colonize nearby systems with good resources and FIDS scores looking for monopolies and prioritizing Titanium-70 and Hyperium for Stategic resources and Bluecap Mold and Hydromiel for Luxuries.

Research to basic shield defense modules.

Research Efficient Shielding to unlock destroyer class.

Build a few omni-tanked destroyer fleets.



This should easily get you through the first 30 or 40 turns.

So essentially, your tactics depend on your faction e.g Empire favours a high tax rate late game because of its industry bonus, and Cravers favour constant expansion. These following tips have worked well for me (Sophons ftw)

Some basics, in a pretty random order:

-Always have your systems doing something. If you've built all the improvements you want, run the ind-dust conversion

-Do not build all improvements! Look to see what the improvement does and decide whether to build it on the basis of the system you’re in e.g don't build a moon exploitation thingy (can't remember its name) if none of your planets have moons! Improvements cost upkeep (in dust) so don't go crazy with everything. Bear in mind that some improvements, like ships xp boost, are completely useless since ship xp has not been implemented yet in the current build.

-When colonizing new systems with a ship, always colonize the planet with the biggest industry, or potential for industry (that also contains food)- this will allow you to build infrastructure fast and means that your population will concurrently be growing on the system.

-Very early game prioritise colonising new systems with colony ships over colonising planets that are available in your home system. This will make you vulnerable, but it’s a risk you’re going to have to take, even on impossible difficulty. Your aim early game is to aggressively expand into as many system as you can (within reason).

-Maintain the default tax rate for the first few turns (40%). Purchase an admin hero and place him at your home system (for the whole game, unless you find a richer system). Then purchase a military hero (place him in a good system so he earns some xp and put him in your main fleet when you eventually build one). Then set the tax rate to 0%. From now on you will earn your dust by rotating ind-dust conversions on your systems. Your aim is to make your population as happy (ecstatic if you can) as possible as this will generate greater FIDS.

-Facing the AI, look to build combat ships as late as possible ie when they attack you. You need to develop an infrastructure early game and expand, and creating weak combat ships early game is a waste of time. (This tactic will likely not work against rushing human opponents in multiplayer?)

-Turn off pirates because they are bugged, annoying and unrealistic.

-Engineer your ships according to how the enemy ships are constructed. If the AI is using flaks for defence, and beams for weapons, hit them with beams and kinetics and install strong shields:

Flaks defend missiles

Shields defend beams/lasers

Plating defends against kinetics.

Do not build your ships with all 3 defences, because that will make you too vulnerable (unless the AI is packing all 3 weapons). You must adapt to how the AI makes their ships.

-Almost always have a repair module on your ship (unless its a really small ship or you are just using them as cannon fodder and you're waging an attitional war). Repair modules are hidden away in the support module section of the hangar.

-Constantly research.

-Research in all 4 areas, but focus immediately on getting the top 1/2 layers of southern tech tree (ie the one that will help you expand and colonize). Get the first layers of all the tech trees asap. Hold off on completing military techs as much as you can.

-Recognise that the starting techs are sometimes more useful and significant than the later, harder to get techs. Research the easiest techs where you can. Why waste 30 turns researching a dreadnought, when you could research 20 lower value techs in that space of time?

-Recognize that the diplomacy tech tree actually mostly consists of production and fleet improvements, not in fact, diplomacy.

-Early game, you need to balance industry with food- industry helps you construct things faster, and food surplus will increase your population growth rate. Do not neglect science- build scientific improvements on all systems. Science speeds up your tech research rate.

-When your system is fully grown, any food surplus you now possess on that system is wasted, so get rid of any unnecessary improvements and exploitations. Make sure the food production stays above 0 though, otherwise the population will starve.

-Do not build dust exploitations on any planets, even when that planet is apparently suited to dust. You will earn adequate dust through ind-dust conversion improvements.

-Industry is your most valuable resource. Earn as much of its as you can.

-Don’t play against Hissho as they are currently bugged.

-Early game do not be afraid to get a few hundred dust in debt (not sure if bug?). You need to grow early game and borrowing money is the only way you can achieve this.

-Mid-early to mid game frequently use the 'tactics' combat card in battle. This is because the counter to the tactics card is unlocked late game and the AI won't have access to it for quite some time.

If you want me to cover anything else in greater detail feel free to ask.



Edit: Oh yes, one more thing. Scout other systems with the scout ship you are given in the beginning of the game.

mmmm. You want to maximize your economy, in the general (i.e. not always) order of industry, food, science, dust. This is paramount to winning. Everything you do should be focusing on the single goal of maximizing economy. When you defend systems, it's to protect your economy. When you attack, it's take their systems, for economy. Eventually your economy is just so much better then theirs, you can build a fleet and steamroll them. Keep this in your mind, keep thinking about ways to maximize your economy and you'll get better over time.



If you want more specific advice, gonna have to be more specific. ;]

Thanks for the tips Sebbers after my first playthrough I started to realise that there's more strategy to this game then I originally thought and feel it is much better than some other 4X games due to this.

I just click buttons and hope for the best. Hey, I don't do all that bad either.

ArrowLance wrote:
I personally dump my first exploitation in each system as food until I get an administrator hero to +50 food. The more you colonize, the higher your population, the higher your FIDS output. Obviously we have to know how much military we need to keep pirates out and be able to defend ourselves, or expand by conquering our enemies! But for the most part you just want to use the exploitations that give the largest bonus for the planet you are building it on.



Here are a few key things I try to at the start, mostly in this order:



Use my free colony ship to colonize any Terran/Ocean/Jungle planets that are in my home system, if there are any. Otherwise use scout to find a nearby alternative.

Build food exploitation on best fitted planet in home system.

Scout (continuously until scout is destroyed)

Research Xenobiology, scout for planets with the resources that technology unlocks. This is the last one for Turn one, the rest are in the turns afterwords.

Research to Titanium-70 unlock technology.

Research to colonization technologies that unlock planets with good resources and FIDS scores nearby.

Begin to colonize nearby systems with good resources and FIDS scores looking for monopolies and prioritizing Titanium-70 and Hyperium for Stategic resources and Bluecap Mold and Hydromiel for Luxuries.

Research to basic shield defense modules.

Research Efficient Shielding to unlock destroyer class.

Build a few omni-tanked destroyer fleets.



This should easily get you through the first 30 or 40 turns.

Good advice, thanks! I'll keep this in mind.

Sebbers wrote:
So essentially, your tactics depend on your faction e.g Empire favours a high tax rate late game because of its industry bonus, and Cravers favour constant expansion. These following tips have worked well for me (Sophons ftw)

Some basics, in a pretty random order:

-Always have your systems doing something. If you've built all the improvements you want, run the ind-dust conversion

-Do not build all improvements! Look to see what the improvement does and decide whether to build it on the basis of the system you’re in e.g don't build a moon exploitation thingy (can't remember its name) if none of your planets have moons! Improvements cost upkeep (in dust) so don't go crazy with everything. Bear in mind that some improvements, like ships xp boost, are completely useless since ship xp has not been implemented yet in the current build.

-When colonizing new systems with a ship, always colonize the planet with the biggest industry (that also contains food)- this will allow you to build infrastructure fast and means that your population will concurrently be growing on the system.

-Very early game (up to turn 25?) prioritise colonising new systems with colony ships over colonising planets that are available in your home system. This will make you vulnerable, but it’s a risk you’re going to have to take, even on impossible difficulty.

-Maintain the default tax rate for the first few turns (40%). Purchase an admin hero and place him at your home system (for the whole game, unless you find a richer system). Then purchase a military hero (place him in a good system so he earns some xp and put him in your main fleet when you eventually build one). Then set the tax rate to 0%. From now on you will earn your dust by rotating ind-dust conversions on your systems. Your aim is to make your population as happy (ecstatic if you can) as possible as this will generate greater FIDS.

-Facing the AI, look to build combat ships as late as possible ie when they attack you. You need to develop an infrastructure early game and expand, and creating weak combat ships early game is a waste of time. (This tactic will likely not work against rushing human opponents in multiplayer?)

-Turn off pirates because they are bugged, annoying and unrealistic.

-Engineer your ships according to how the enemy ships are constructed. If the AI is using flaks for defence, and beams for weapons, hit them with missiles and kinetics and install strong shields:

Flaks defend missiles

Shields defend beams/lasers

Plating defends against kinetics.

-Always have a repair module on your ship. Repair modules are hidden away in the support module section of the hangar.

-Constantly research.

-Research in all 4 areas, but focus immediately on getting the top 1/2 layers of southern tech tree (ie the one that will help you expand and colonize). Get the first layers of all the tech trees asap.

-Recognise that the starting techs are sometimes more useful and significant than the later, harder to get techs. Research the easiest techs where you can. Why waste 30 turns researching a dreadnought, when you could research 20 lower value techs in that space of time?

-Recognize that the diplomacy tech tree actually mostly consists of production and fleet improvements, not in fact, diplomacy.

-Early game, you need to balance industry with food- industry helps you construct things faster, and food surplus will increase your population growth rate. Do not neglect science- build scientific improvements on all systems. Science speeds up your tech research rate.

-When your system is fully grown, any food surplus you now possess on that system is wasted, so get rid of any unnecessary improvements and exploitations. Make sure the food production stays above 0 though, otherwise the population will starve.

-Do not build dust exploitations on any planets, even when that planet is apparently suited to dust. You will earn adequate dust through ind-dust conversion improvements.

-Don’t play against Hissho as they are currently bugged.

-Early game do not be afraid to get a few hundred dust in debt (not sure if bug?). You need to grow early game and borrowing money is the only way you can achieve this.

-Don’t try and be diplomatic when dealing with the Cravers. When they declare war, they mean to wage war.

If you want me to cover anything else in greater detail feel free to ask.



Edit: Oh yes, one more thing. Scout other systems with the scout ships you are given in the beginning of the game.

Brilliant post! I'm sure this will help me a great deal in conquering the galaxy. I'm thinking I should down the difficulty to Easy for the time being, atleast until I get the hang of things.

liq3 wrote:
mmmm. You want to maximize your economy, in the general (i.e. not always) order of industry, food, science, dust. This is paramount to winning. Everything you do should be focusing on the single goal of maximizing economy. When you defend systems, it's to protect your economy. When you attack, it's take their systems, for economy. Eventually your economy is just so much better then theirs, you can build a fleet and steamroll them. Keep this in your mind, keep thinking about ways to maximize your economy and you'll get better over time.



If you want more specific advice, gonna have to be more specific. ;]

Economy is power. Power is win. Sounds easy enough!

People here seem to have covered the most important parts, though I have some notes if you're going to play UE.



During the first turns I personally set the tax rate down to the smallest level that still gives you a surplus of dust. This will make your planets happier, and happiness = economic/scientific boom. Be sure to grab the tech for Infinite Supermarkets, and then the tech for Colonial Rights(which will increase outputs in systems with Ecstatic happiness once its built, AND increase system happiness). Once you have 22 dust, grab a Hero that's a good system administrator and put him/her/it in your homesystem for great success. Fleet heroes are not necessary until later in the game.



When colonizing systems, focus on food-rich planets and specialize them for food production. Once the population cap is reached you can then colonize the other planets. Once the system has an appropriate level of development, specialize it towards whats appropriate for industry or science. This is paramount, especially late-game where your industry systems will be the only ones that can pump out high-tier ships at sensible build turns. Systems full of Barren planet types are great for science, systems with Lava planets are great candidates for your industrial powerhouse.



Also once you've made some friends, Trading is a great way of getting free Dust. There are some improvements in the game that makes trading very lucrative, and paired with certain trading abilities of Heroes(like the one that gives you x0.3 trading bonus per Wit stat of the Hero), you won't even know what to do with all the Dust you'll get.



EDIT: Oh, and don't forget that you can move population between the planets in a system. Just drag and drop them where you want them. The way the game moves your populations automatically can actually be directly harmful to your development.

Some guidelines:



~ Scout around at your start: If you've not got at least three 5/6 planet systems within 4 jumps, ditch the game. The AI does not fight fairly, and you'll need the backbone.

~ You should aim to have 8-10 systems by turn 50. Do this by aggressive growth: build a farm while the system is growing >2, then colonise a 4+ food planet if the system has it, then purchase the colony ship as soon as you can. People advising here to use the colony ship on your starting system are wrong. A ship costs more materials to build than a colony, so your starting colony ship should always be used 1-2 jumps away on the largest / best +food planet you can find, while your starting colony should be building a 2nd colony. Don't be afraid of reloading an autosave1 to know where a decent system is if it takes you >3 turns to find.

~ The order of tech research is generally best to do #1 tundra or arid [dependingonyourstartersystem] -> Xenology -> Core Mining > Soil Xenobiology > Containment fields [ignoringdestroyer,gothrougharctic]. People are advising not to aim for higher techs, but tbh ~ if you're purely exploring / expanding in the first 50 turns, the boosts that each of the resource unlocks give is essential, and then allows you to consolidate & fill in the preceding layers. Ignore military as much as you can because you'll want to leap-frog the crappy layers to jump straight to tier 4/5 (you can do this easily: if your research is high enough, you can research 3+ stages in a single turn: it's worth putting all systems to industry > science for a turn before doing this jump, for the added push].

~ If you're within 4 jumps of an AI, ditch the game [unlessyou'replayingonatiny/smallmap]; simply put, the AI atm cheats out of the wazoo, and the diplomacy bugs means that it'll stomp all over you, however much you attempt to use diplomacy. [Theinfamous"yourmilitaryissoooothreatening:WAR"whenithasx20stacksrightonyourborderwhenyoubuild...10orsoships.:rolleyes:]





Bottom line: play a few games on easy with 2-3 opponents to get a feel for the tech tree, and don't be afraid to not bother with difficulties over hard. They're not balanced atm, and all the AI does is have infinite cash to buy stuff [fixednextpatch,allegedly], so the game isn't actually more taxing, it's just more grindy.

4x_Fan wrote:
People advising here to use the colony ship on your starting system are wrong. A ship costs more materials to build than a colony, so your starting colony ship should always be used 1-2 jumps away on the largest / best +food planet you can find, while your starting colony should be building a 2nd colony. Don't be afraid of reloading an autosave1 to know where a decent system is if it takes you >3 turns to find.

You are wrong. Colony ships are cheap and there are several benefits from dumping that colony ship directly into your home system if a good planet is there. Bonuses include instant turn 1 FIDS bonus and a better target for your turn 2/3 administrator. Many races start with a planet which does not get a secondary bonus from the food production exploitation, which is a natural choice to start building on your first turn.

I mostly play it by ear, however i heavily focus industry (only recently have i run into food issues). The last game (well current) i'm Sophons, and the diplomatic tree compensated for the racial trait of them being a bit naff for producing fleets fast. I managed to make an alliance, however it's not much use :P.



Dust problems occurred later on with sophons, but with United Empire it's fine. I try to maintain around 25% tax rate, because i'm not all that good at knowing what i need and when, 25% usually makes people happy and keeps the bank up.



I'm unsure about the use of the colony ship on the starter system, i've always thought that to be a step backwards, especially considering industry and expansion are key in the first 100 turns.

4x_Fan wrote:


~ The order of tech research is generally best to do #1 tundra or arid [dependingonyourstartersystem] -> Xenology -> Core Mining > Soil Xenobiology > Containment fields [ignoringdestroyer,gothrougharctic]. People are advising not to aim for higher techs, but tbh ~ if you're purely exploring / expanding in the first 50 turns, the boosts that each of the resource unlocks give is essential, and then allows you to consolidate & fill in the preceding layers.

Perhaps I phrased that tip wrong. I don't mean ignore higher techs- if there's a really beneificial tech and it's 6 turns away, or something like that, go for it. I'm just saying people should be realistic and aim for techs that are relatively within their reach- because of course if you're trying to research some kind of 'uber-death nuclear warhead of the Endless' that takes 50 turns to complete, you're essentially wasting 49 turns where you're achieving absolutely nothing.

The more you grow, the more higher tier techs become achievable, and as you said, try and leave researching military techs as late as you can.

Otherwise, good post. In fact, good thread all round- pro tips right here

ArrowLance wrote:
You are wrong. Colony ships are cheap and there are several benefits from dumping that colony ship directly into your home system if a good planet is there. Bonuses include instant turn 1 FIDS bonus and a better target for your turn 2/3 administrator. Many races start with a planet which does not get a secondary bonus from the food production exploitation, which is a natural choice to start building on your first turn.

I typed out a species by species comparison of the exact numbers each gets ~ costed by Colony ship, colony produced within system, and then colony ship using initial ship to boost starting colony.



Suffice to say, you're wrong in all cases barring the Sophons, who break even. All other races actually harm themselves if they use their starting colony ship in the starting system. From memory in reverse order of it being a stupid idea ~ Sophon [breakeven]; Craver, Hissho, United Planets, Horatio. Hissho is an odd one, since they can produce an inter-colony colony in only 5 turns due to starting on a jungle world [comparedto11foracolonyship] ~ the others are obvious. Cravers start on an arid world, which means they're better off building across to a colony [13turnsforaship,9foracolony,usingthecolonyshipinsystemonlyreducestheshipbuildto11turns].



I've crunched the numbers, and you're flatly pig ignorant: I suggest doing it yourself before accusing me of being incorrect.









But no, I'm not going to type it all out again, * retarded option to auto-log people out >10 mins or whatever this is. :rolleyes:

4x_Fan wrote:
But no, I'm not going to type it all out again, fucking retarded option to auto-log people out >10 mins or whatever this is. :rolleyes:

I concur with that ^^



But also with using you're ship to colonies another system, and that's mainly because you have a much higher chance of finding better resources faster. I haven't "crunched the numbers" as it were but it seems to work for me, and I am always winning till the enemy decide that infinite ships are on the agenda... Then I'm only sometimes winning.

I totally didn't expect to get this amount of great answers. I suppose the community for games like these are a bit more mature than others (*cough*minecraft*cough*).

Thanks, again, to everyone. These first few matches have really been a mindboggling experience for a newbie like me, but I'm getting the hang of it!