Things I learned the hard way..now you don't have to - feel free to add to this list

Sola_J

Officer

30 600g2g pts

12 years ago

Oct 6, 2012, 2:15:58 PM

MoonMonster wrote:
When designing ships, on the support-modules screen, you can scroll down. There's more stuff to put in there!

I've been tricked before by this scroll bar, thank you for advice

Don't colonize too much too fast, and specially "bad systems" with the only aim to "block" acces to the systems you want to keep.

Just put a fleet and blockade the system, it's cheaper and saves you approval&dust

fourteenfour

Newcomer

fourteenfour

Newcomer

17 900g2g pts

12 years ago

Aug 13, 2012, 1:08:05 PM

Rudest wrote:
In single player do not trust the Ameobas, especially if they are your immediate neighbor. They are not peace loving! THEY LIE! They are duplicitous devourers of worlds and should be first on your priority on your list of races to wipe out!

Actually I think they are quite delicious

Rudest

Newcomer

Rudest

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 13, 2012, 2:46:15 AM

In single player do not trust the Ameobas, especially if they are your immediate neighbor. They are not peace loving! THEY LIE! They are duplicitous devourers of worlds and should be first on your priority on your list of races to wipe out!

Deleted account (8142)

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 11, 2012, 9:04:39 PM

Maybe this was obvious to some people, but more planets =/= more FIDS. Rather, more population =/= more FIDS. Therefore, only colonize planets when near max population on all your other planets for max fids efficiency and good approval.

WhiteWeasel

Newcomer

WhiteWeasel

Newcomer

6 500g2g pts

12 years ago

Aug 11, 2012, 5:38:28 AM

Epimethee wrote:
I am not totally sure of that, because if you've 1 ships and the other 10, you'll just focus one of his ships.

In fact, from my experience, when I've a fleet with enormous ships and smallers. The big one is focused and dies during battle.

(but I guess it's just because i'm not lucky)

I didn't mean a full fleet of dreadnoughts, I meant having more defenses and armor per ship, (50-70% of tonnage) and making your ships more survivable; outlasting and destroying/mortally injuring at least 2-4 of your opponents fleets before yours goes down, than making glass cannons with little to no defenses that do their damage but usually don't live very long to brag about it. (Assuming the AI/player is equally strong as you).

Scubasage

Fanatic

Scubasage

Fanatic

11 900g2g pts

12 years ago

Aug 11, 2012, 3:53:32 AM

Epimethee wrote:
I saw AI ships full of beams today.

I think it just depends on which ships the AI have in defense.

The only beams I've seen has been when the enemy was Sophons...in 62 hours of gameplay. Even then, they only got beams about 100 turns in on fast...

Dagan

Newcomer

Dagan

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 11, 2012, 2:36:32 PM

Just finished my first game and got my backsided handed back to me. This is where I screwed up and what I have learned:

-You move fleets by right-clicking (seems so intuative now, but I actually had to save the game and read the manual to find out)

-To refit ships they have to be in a friendly system, then you open the military/fleet screen and can then select the fleet or individual ships to repair

-You can prevent enemy fleets from moving through systems if you have a fleet there that uses the intercept option (That would've saved me a lot of pain hunting down 'rats)

-Speaking of 'rats, they can spawn anywhere outside your territory. Sure does hurt if you have all your fleet engaged and then some blackbeard starts a rampage

-Expansion Disapproval is a bad thing. I thought it meant I wasn't expanding fast enough (Hey, new Outposts didn't have the penalty, so I thought I was doing the right thing)

-Don't neglect research! Know what to research and beeline for the techs you need (that +40 research per system improvement is pretty nifty, approval boni are a must, reduction of ED (see above), increase of CP and not the least weapon techs and defenses)

-Disapproval for planets apply fully for the system, it's not averaged

-Know the victory conditions! I got beat by Cravers with an Expansion Victory...

-The engineering card can be played even when you have no repair modules installed. Strangely enough after I found that out my fleets healed more during battle then outside

-Kinetics suck at long range

-more food is better. I stopped pushing food once I knew the system could sustain itself. Should've waited till I had max population to switch out food improvements/exploitations

I really like this game, lots to learn and find out. Now I'm off to get beat again

Bentley

Newcomer

Bentley

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 10, 2012, 9:32:20 PM

I just try to have the biggest ships and the biggest fleets with balanced defense and mostly beams and a few missiles for offense. I rarely upgrade, but experienced ships are very hard for the AI to take down. If you get a nice full stack of ships, put your admiral there and send it in against an enemy stack. Generally, very effective.

Epimethee

Newcomer

Epimethee

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 10, 2012, 8:31:32 PM

I saw AI ships full of beams today.

I think it just depends on which ships the AI have in defense.

Scubasage

Fanatic

Scubasage

Fanatic

11 900g2g pts

12 years ago

Aug 10, 2012, 8:27:09 PM

Epimethee wrote:
Yes of course, the big ship can survive (I experienced it with a tank which fought seven times in a single turn and died), but it is in most cases a draw don't you think ?

No actually. Especially against AI, if you build your ship right, you can literally fight off endless waves of fleets. I had a single ship fight off 20 enemy fleets and then invade and capture their homeworld...and it never took damage. Not once. It's because of the way that defense mods work. Beams are the weapons that the AI rarely ever gets and yet Beams are the only ones that aren't completely negated by their defensive counterpart.

Epimethee

Newcomer

Epimethee

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 9, 2012, 4:24:28 PM

Yes of course, the big ship can survive (I experienced it with a tank which fought seven times in a single turn and died), but it is in most cases a draw don't you think ?

Scubasage

Fanatic

Scubasage

Fanatic

11 900g2g pts

12 years ago

Aug 9, 2012, 4:20:25 PM

Epimethee wrote:
I am not totally sure of that, because if you've 1 ships and the other 10, you'll just focus one of his ships.

In fact, from my experience, when I've a fleet with enormous ships and smallers. The big one is focused and dies during battle.

(but I guess it's just because i'm not lucky)

Depends on the weapons being used and the big ship. If you set up your big ship to counter the opponent's damage type (1 flak module stops 3 missile modules, have more shielding than opponent's beams, etc.) then that 1 ship may get focused, though it will take hardly any damage at all, especially if you set it up to have defensive battle cards and repair (like Barrier and Engineering).

Epimethee

Newcomer

Epimethee

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 9, 2012, 4:09:49 PM

WhiteWeasel wrote:
Yes, I've learned that in this game 9 times out of 10, quality beats quantity.

I am not totally sure of that, because if you've 1 ships and the other 10, you'll just focus one of his ships.

In fact, from my experience, when I've a fleet with enormous ships and smallers. The big one is focused and dies during battle.

(but I guess it's just because i'm not lucky)

Eratosthenes

Newcomer

Eratosthenes

Newcomer

12 years ago

Aug 9, 2012, 3:57:05 PM

-- You cannot enter another Empires's influence (the colored circlular area of space) unless you're at Peace w/ Open Borders, or at War. You always start in Cold War (even with the Cravers).

-- You can blockade any outpost, if it is outside an empire's influence or within your influence area. You can only attack fleets outside of an influence area, or within your own influence area.

-- The "Eternal War" trait that Cravers and custom races have (I forget the exact name) makes you start at Cold War, not War.

For several turns I couldn't figure out why I couldn't attack the Craver fleets that kept arriving at an outpost I'd stolen from them via Invasion. An adjacent outpost had grown to a colony recently, covering that outpost in their influence. I had to go into Diplomacy and formally declare war. Previously, we'd been fighting over several neutral systems and outposts.

NewHorizon

Newcomer

NewHorizon

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 3, 2012, 2:27:05 AM

If you hover over the buttons on the top left of the galaxy screen(the ones that take you to other screens) they will tell you how you are stacking up against the other players. From resource income to how close you are to various victories, but most importantly to me, how you rank militarily against your enemies. It's a big surprise your first game when you think your paltry fleet is pretty good until the enemies stack of 20 fleets shows up.

liquidGG

Newcomer

liquidGG

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 7, 2012, 4:19:17 PM

With same technologies and without heroes /bad luck with the cards; bigger ships have a huge advantage over smaller ones.

Tiltman

Newcomer

Tiltman

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 7, 2012, 1:53:46 PM

liquidGG wrote:
Bigger ships win. - every time.

I disagree, it depends on the weapons used by the smaller ships (and somewhat how the cards are played).

liquidGG

Newcomer

liquidGG

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 7, 2012, 1:39:38 PM

Bigger ships win. - every time.

Player A: Hey how youre gonna deal with my 10 fleets full of destroyers?

Player B: Come at me bro, got some dreadnoughts waiting for yaa.

End of story: Player A: lost 10 fleets; Player B: lost nothing and is colonizing player A now. lol

Tiltman

Newcomer

Tiltman

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 7, 2012, 9:04:17 AM

8. Colonize planet's without using a ship. A played the game for a long time before I discovered that you may colonize other planets (in the same system) just by clicking on them and then You have the option to colonize it to the left (as long as the planet are of a type You may colonize).

9. A assigned Hero and manual battle makes all the difference in warfare. That and the fact that ship count are more important than ship size in the battles.

Milaha

Newcomer

Milaha

Newcomer

12 years ago

Jul 6, 2012, 7:47:16 PM

My general order assuming a standard non-sowers race. Custom races can alter this order.

N-Way fusion. Soil Xeno. Either tundra or arid planets depending on surroundings. Non-Baryonic particles. Infinite supermarkets or Applied Casimir depending on status