So I've never played strategy games before this one, but I saw this game preview on steam and thought I would give it a shot. I fell in love with it and I play it a lot, but I still really suck at this game haha. I don't think I understand the concept of colonizing the worlds and what not, but no matter if I have the settings on Easy or Newbie, I am always in last place, I generally get pulverized by space pirates, and then my worlds get invaded by so-called "neutral" races, and then... it's game over .png" alt="smiley: " title="" />.



I also find modifying the space ships to be quite weird. When I play as the Harmony, my defenders have an overall military power level of 325 I believe, but when I try to outfit a ship exactly like that one, the highest I can go even if I replicate every module, is around 120. What's with that?





Anyways, I guess my main question is, how the heck do I get better at this game? What things should I be focusing on at the very beginning of the game? Should I just pump out colony ships like crazy and expand until I meet resistance?

1) you need a plan

2) you need a plan

3) you need a plan



More seriously, the beginning of the game is way more than simply clicking "Next Turn", the early decisions can have a profound impact on your game, regardless of the difficulty.



For first turn, you have a couple of things you need to do right away:

1) check what heroes you have in your academy and their qualities and professions. If you have an administrator, do the happy dance at once, it gives a huge boon at the beginning of the game.

2) check the technology trees and begin to plan your first couple of technologies (privilegy industry boosts/food boosts then colonization, then happiness, then weapons).

3) check your ship designs and see if you can't come up with better ones (the standard designs can be optimized)

4) check your tax slider and pump more taxes for the FIRST turn, that way, you are almost sure to be able to buy a hero very fast.

5) check your homeworld and give it an occupation between Food, Industry, Science and Dust. I tend to go for industry or growth first, depending of the size of the planet. Food first means faster growth.

6) send your scout and your colony ship out among the stars to explore. You can get lucky and score an habitable planet right away and have your first colony within 1-2 turns.



Then end turn one....



Then as soon as you have enough money, hire a hero, ideally corporate and put him/her/it on your homeworld, heroes give huge boosts.

Remember to reduce your taxes as soon as you can afford your first hero.

Send your scout to explore asap. As soon as your first system nears full population, get your first colony ship in production.

Once you have scout informations, consider if the next techs shouldn't be new planetary types (Tundra, Arctic etc...)

Identify the chokepoints and as soon as you can, station a couple of defense ships on them, in guardian mode.

Then colonize the chokepoints first then go backwards with new colony ships to fill the gaps up.



If you go to war, remember to produce ships with invasion modules if you want to be able to be more than a nuisance.



That on the short.

That's exactly what you need to be doing: snarfing up systems around your home system as fast as possible. You want to try to claim as many systems as fast as possible. Switch off pirates for your first couple games until you get the hang of it. They're sort of overpowered for the first 50 turns or so.



The Harmony are a rather complicated faction, and not for beginners. I'd recommend starting off with the United Empire or maybe the Sophons.



What I like to do is first I save the game when it starts up. Turn Zero, save the game. Then, I explore the entire constellation that I'm starting on with my starting scout ship and colony ship. If I like what I see on my starting constellation, I reload from that turn zero save and send my colony ship towards the best planet in the constellation. If not, I start a new game.



In tech, I make a beeline for the tech that allows me to move across wormholes, but that's because the way I configure my galaxies, there's lots of constellations, and not a lot of systems per constellation. Then I try to get the rest of the first tier techs. That gives you some basic system improvements to help out in the early days of settling a system, the most basic missiles, flak, shields and beams, and the techs needed to colonize tier 2 (Arid and Tundra) planets, which in turn is enough to plant your flag in most systems. I avoid military techs unless I absolutely need them now, or I can pound them out really, really, really fast.



At the end of the day though, you need to find a strategy that works well for you, and whatever faction you're running with. Regardless of if it's a custom faction or a stock faction. There's enough differences that it's necessary.

Sharidann wrote:
1) you need a plan

2) you need a plan

3) you need a plan

I sure wish the forums used the vBulletin reputation system. This is an excellent 'how to get started' guide. I've been playing off and on for a year and could never get past 'easy' in the game settings. Easy became way to easy almost immediately, but 'Normal' had me in the hole right out of the gate and I could never seem to be able to recover. A few times I got lucky, but for the most part I was always in last place and eventually got trounced by the other races. Your 'starter' guide has me in a far better position than I ever was before.



Thanks.

Its often the case that some systems are not very user-friendly and apporaching them with no basic idea (aka experience) like in the OPs case can be very frustrating for the longest time as improvements come slowly and are often hard work. If thats the case a few helpfull comments or videos will greatly enhance your playstyle simply by explaining some basic rules to you which might not have been self-evident to you in the first place.



It certainly was the case with myself. When I first picked up Endless Space I "wanted" to play it having fallen in love with its visuals and polished UI. I got punished hard for a few matches until I almost gave up because regardless what I did (and most of the stuff I did I didnt understand) victory eluded me and even when I managed to win a newbie session after 250 turns....it didnt feel like voctory to me. Took me another week of brooding until I eat my pride and looked for help on the internet. Some of the posts I found and especially the Youtube videos gave me LIGHT-YEAR jumps of imrpovement simply by making me understand the system.



In order to master something you need to understand it first. That requires learning which is boring thats why this system is disguised as a "game" so you ll have fun learning it

Thanks for the help, it is much appreciated



I have learned a lot reading from the forum and have progressed immensely reading these threads

I'm in the same boat as the OP, but where I feel I am getting stuck is with the tech tree.



Anyone have any good guides, strategies, or philosophies when engaging with the Tech Tree in particular? It is simply massive and unlike a lot of other strategy games not linear in any way. Thanks!

Everyone has a style I guess. For me, I can't play the game without solely focusing on Industry. Huge food production type of gameplay is just not my style. That's why I lose. :P

rockmassif wrote:
Everyone has a style I guess. For me, I can't play the game without solely focusing on Industry. Huge food production type of gameplay is just not my style. That's why I lose. :P

Well, I'm having some success with my custom sowers, the "efficient bastards". I could even keep up with DMT, in multiplayer, once. Both of us ending with sci victory in the same turn.

They are industry-based and it can work, if you use it wisely, by converting it to whatever you need at the time.

iheijoushin wrote:
I'm in the same boat as the OP, but where I feel I am getting stuck is with the tech tree.



Anyone have any good guides, strategies, or philosophies when engaging with the Tech Tree in particular? It is simply massive and unlike a lot of other strategy games not linear in any way. Thanks!

The Tech Tree can be intimidating. I start with Nuclear Fission and work my way around for the first 8 techs. After these, I usually beeline to Applied Casmir affect, one of the games key techs.



The most important thing is to zoom in with your mouse wheel, and see exactly what each tech does.



Also, don't go too far in 1 direction. If you ignore the eastern fork too much, you will not find the key minerals, which give bonuses as well as being prerequisites for building certain items and ship components.



Hope this helps!

Because you're not using the resources available to you on things like youtube with its lets play's and this places many guides.