I almost won a game of this on the normal difficulty setting. This is quite an accomplishment for me considering I have been pretty horrible at the game up to this point. But I kept playing because I saw the games complexity and potential.



Here are some meta-rules that I have figured out which I share here to assist other novice or newbie players.



The most important thing to your success in this game is the happiness of your population, which varies a bit from other 4X space games. You want your populations to be fervent and the easiest way to do this is to lower your tax rate as low as possible while still generating positive dust return.



Explore your immediate surroundings aggressively early in the game. Only colonize planets that are native to your species.



Every planet you colonize should have its planetary specialty set for farming or food production. This plus and ecstatic or fanatic population means very fast population growth. As soon as your population onto planet's max out, figure out the type of planet and what the things it does best and then change the focus of the planet to maximize the production in the system. For example, if you had an arid planet, start out by building farms to build your population, but as soon as you maximize your population, change that planets focus to research or whatever it is that arid planets do best. I forget. You do not want to keep farming on a planet that is best at research once your population is maxed out. Instead, turn that planets production to what it does best, research. In this way, you can maximize what the planet does for your empire.



Aggressively research the left side of the research tree with an eye towards improvements which make your populations happier. This plus a lower tax rate is going to allow you to build on all of the less hospitable planets. I like to try and get the first improvement infinite supermarkets I believe it is called as early in the game as possible and then invest in the lower portion of the tech tree so that I can begin inhabiting as many non-optimal planets as possible. Having happiness improvements allows my population in that star system to remain happy and very productive without the happiness improvements you really have no opportunity to colonize those planets without tanking you approval rating.



Don't choose one colony to generate 15 townships. Spread out colony ship production as much as you can because it seems like too many colony ships results in too many colony ships being built from one planet results in a very unhappy population. Spread it around.



I tend to neglect the military research early in the game because it's not very necessary. Build your early ships. Give them some missiles as well as some kinetic weapons and for the most part you will be able to beat the Pirates. Once I have several planets colonized, I am able to rapidly, in one turn or less, research the first two or three tiers of the military tree and therefore not fall behind.



Always check the build progress reports you get to insure that none of your colonies are doing nothing. Don't build every improvement. I always build every happiness improvement on every star system. I also buy the isotope construction bonus. If there is nothing that you want to build a star system, then convert that star systems production into generating dust or research. Especially early in the game, I prefer to have my colonies generate research because the higher up tech trees you go, the greater the benefit so it makes sense to get there as fast as possible.



Once a star system is colonized and you have more than one population unit on that colonize planet, other planets in that star system can be colonized simply going by their detail screen and clicking colonize. You do not have to build an waste colony ships to colonize planets in a star system already under your control.



Hire heroes is early and as often as you can. Try to get administrator and corporate heroes. They are the ones who will most positively influence your outcome in the game because they make your best Sartre star systems into super producers. I tend to stay away from Fleet and spy euros because they do not serve much purpose in the game right now. They can swing a close space combat in your direction but for the most part you should be relying on superior numbers superior technology and Sun Tzu's the Art of war in directing the how and where you fight.



These are all the thoughts I have off the top of my head. I am sure I have made other observations from the dozen games I've played up to this point. If anyone has any insight as to the best mid and late game technologies or planetary system builds I'd appreciate insight into that. I hope this helps you folks enjoy this game. I think it is really a phenomenal effort and I'm excited about where it goes from here.

Only colonize planets that are native to your species.

Planets are the same for every species.



For early outposts, most of the time:

Arid is worse than tundra because you cannot make effective use of base dust produced by Arid until the outpost is converted to a colony.

Same for terran (vs ocean and jungle), but the farming exploitation on terran make terran more than just worthwhile.



Only real specialty:

Arctic/Desert can be very good early choices for Sophon and Sower respectively.



In all cases grab that freaking Hydromiel and Garden of Eden anomaly .

Don't choose one colony to generate 15 townships.

No. It doesn't matter where you build colo ships. Expansion disapproval is the same for every colony. Expansion disapproval just is disabled on outposts.



After colonizing, the new planet is an outpost for 30 turns and then culminates into a colony (and gets influence area).

then convert that star systems production into generating dust or research.

Can be useful sometimes. Most of the time it is more efficient to build something like Magnetic Field Generators (+40 sci, -3 dust).

Sun Tzu's the Art of war

Best book ever.







My advice:



Outposts produce dust at 50%. In early game taxes are low most of the time reducing the dust income further.

So never build dust upgrades on outposts.



If you have arid planets in your home system, be happy. You can make full use of that base dust.



Tech-Rushing for Isotope Factory, Super Markets, Nonbaryonic Particles/Magnetic Field Generators, Containment Fields, Colony Rights, Planetary Institute (in that order) is very effective.



Build up: Isotope , Planetary Institute , Food Exploitations , Magnetic Field Generators - in that order. Consider buy outs for the first two. Put your Administrators with Civil Engineer (+15 Ind) and +50 Food upgr. And then you have very fast and economically useful outposts up.



My favorite fleet doctrine:

UE affinity, with that special orange armor tech. Cruisers. Missiles. Offense First perk. Strong Alloys Perk.

30% best missile available. 70% that special armor mod. No def mod.

+tonnage techs in the right tree, but dont use the +tonnage mod, it is too expensive.

+initial ship hp improvement.

Barrier and Nano Repair cards

HF with near invincible Cruisers that oneshot any destroyer and some cruisers for turns 40-80...