Hi all, am an ES novice with tonnes of questions after playing my first game with Sophons, am 40 turns into my second with Hissho; they’re FAQ’s for quick answers and basic strategy just to get a grounding, not intended for the finer points of gameplay, and trolling thereupon. There’re loads of questions so maybe just pick a few to answer.

I came from CiV and EU4. Stuck it on serious for Sophons and gave a whirl. Blew it out, so now I’m am struggling a little on immortal with Hissho. These are the things I don’t get:



1) How do the war cards work? Which ones cancel which? I never got to use hero ‘abilities’. Are these the war cards you can get as hero promotions? Do they cost money (I’m trying to work out where some of the hero bonuses fit in)?



2) How do the random events work? I picked ‘hostile’ cos it was the best option (Should this happen? Shouldn’t it be a trade off?), but then I just got more and more worse events. Is it supposed to work like this? Also in my current game they seem pretty harsh: turn 20ish and my 3 decent planets on my first 2 systems all get a red anomaly; -30 happy on my home system, -20 on the other, FIDS losses too. Two green anomalies also get knocked off, one of which I’d spent attribute points on. Also it’s only happening to me, and it’s a massive trek to the tech which removes them. Seems a bit strong. Is there any way to tone them down or make more of them galaxy wide events?



3) Can someone explain all the colony defence statistics and improvements, and how they interact with the various siege methods?



4) What does xp on a ship do? As I’m currently playing with Hissho it’d be nice to quantify the bonuses.



5) What happens if your influence engulfs an enemy colony’s bubble? Do they get unhappy? Is it just for cutting movement paths and trade routes?



6) How does the expansion happiness modifier work? I get it’s dependant on influence area, and gets bigger with more outposts/colonies, but is it also about distance from home system or population of system? What about the empire gold cost to a city, is that calculated in a similar way?



7) Can someone give a summary of fighters, bombers, and their use in both war and siege? How does point defence fit in?



8) I’m suspicious of the auto fight: even when I preselect my cards, I seem to do worse on auto than on ‘manual’. Is this an actual thing, or just my mind playing tricks?



9) What does the age of the galaxy mean for planet types and their distribution and/or galaxy connectivity and system makeup?



10) What’s the point of large ships? All the things that could be benefits like the support modules work on a percentage of tonnage, so scale accordingly. Also they’re more vulnerable to missiles which can’t hit your whole fleet if you got lots of small ones. Is it maybe cos of a benefit to xp if you’re willing to spend money repairing as they don’t die proportionately?



11) My diplo faces seem broken. They show moderate face with a flat grey arrow, but it says hostile/hatred and the hover over produces a big negative. Which one is correct? Are they being deceptive?



12) Can someone explain the diplo penalties you get for DoWing/being Dowed/taking a colony/taking a homeworld/rejecting peace offers? I seemed to get a big hit for being DoWed, which doesn’t seem right; don’t think everyone else loved my enemy enough to do it.



13) Are there any diplo no-no’s when it comes to trade, war and expansion? What important features are there about trade and general diplomacy comparing to CiV? I kept trading research for lux’s, only to have them cancel randomly. What are the rules for cancelling?



14) What happens if a hero loses a battle? Can they die or lose promo’s? When would they need to heal? Which bonuses level them quick? How do they level on systems and fleets? Is it per build and per victory, or per production and per ship?



15) First build on an outpost – farming exploit or heavy isotopes? For which planet types and exploit level?



16) Hero promo’s, which are the really good ones worth planning for, or general all-purpose paths for each hero type? Do you mix the two hero attribute promotions or just go straight down one line? I tried keeping my second hero (pilot and adventurer) in a city and going down the veteran line while I was waiting for war to start: is this advised?



17) How do you grow systems? Seems clear planets should be specialised, but should you do the same with systems? Do you specialise entire empires for % bonuses or keep things balanced? Do you colonise (within system) asap or work the good planets avoiding the unhappiness hit till they’re full (excluding when there’s a resource you need etc.)? What about colonising in system vs. on a new system? To me, it seems like in this game expansion and claiming turf is king. How big do you grow your systems before making colony ships?



18) I didn’t get to terraform, and initially the idea doesn’t sit well as it seems to break the game a bit. Surely conversion to gas would then be easily the best one? Or would doing so lower the populations? Is there a guide to the base populations of different types of planet for different sizes? Maybe someone can convince me it is interesting and doesn’t just make the whole feel of ‘lay of the land’ redundant.



19) Retrofit strategy, do you just do it on upgrade or spend money switching them from missile to kinetic over and over when the enemy changes? Is the cost dependant on number of module changes? If so it’d be expensive to change like this. Do you bother at all and just let old ones die? Btw is there a gold upkeep cost for units?



20) Some of the support (healing and power especially) module benefits are confusing, some act on the ships, others on the fleet, some an absolute number, others a percentage. Can someone explain please? I haven’t even tried looking at the special modules yet!



21) Any well-known OP/UP benefits of the game? Obvs most things depend on the situation, but is anything just plain not balanced?



22) Can a sieged city produce anything? I’m scared they’ll make a ship and kill my unguarded siege. Also if I stop sieging, do I have to start from the beginning again, or does it grow back slowly?



23) Most bonuses seem additive (+30% and +50% makes +80%, not ((1.3*1.5)-1)*100=95%), but I got a random event -50% science for 20 turns which definitely just half of everything (I was Sophons so this was obviously not additive, otherwise it would have been fine). Is there a guide to how modifiers work in general? If that’s too big a question, start with FIDS.



24) Are there more pirates on endless? There seemed to be very few at the start both my serious and immortal games. Hmm, might put them on high in the options.



25) Open ended question – What are the highly rated mods about? Are there any glaring errors in the game fixed by any mods?



26) Got any interesting ideas for ships? As the later heal and power support modules act on the entire fleet and are % tonnage, I was thinking of a small ‘broadcast ships’ to boost others. Would this work? Does anyone have any fun ship strategies?



27) Basic strategy, do people tech flat, or bulb high techs? Which is most efficient for trading? Seems like the AI give a 300 tech a bigger weight than three 130 techs! They also don’t seem to ever trade fair (imagine this is for balancing? Does it improve with an alliance? Also what do alliances do)



28) Unique techs – which factions have really good ones? I can’t see when picking a faction at the start. Also who has fun ships? So far the Sophon ships have sucked except the kilo which was just mediocre, and the Hissho all seem to be about bombers (guess I know what I’ll be learning about this game then ).



29) Is there a way to make strategic resources sparse while keeping luxuries normal? Seems like Titanium is way too easy to come by early game.



30) Got some affinity/attribute questions. What do the Craven and Automaton affinities do? How does the dust congruity attribute work?



31) I read a guide that suggested starting with UE or Sophons as they’re simple, not playing as a couple of them (including hissho) until experienced. Well, I’m now a noob playing as hissho, so what were they warning me about? Seems pretty obvious; break other people and get extra stuff, including the ability to break yet more people. I’m lamenting not putting more pirates on . Also I read that Sheredyn are considered very strong; for what reason? Is there a general synopsis of what factions are set up to do what?



32) After my first game, I liked the way luxuries worked, so took the lap of luxury attribute, but it seems bugged to me; can’t work out how the FIDS add up or where the extra bonuses are listed, though maybe that’s cos there’s something else I’m not understanding. Does the doubling apply to the extra FIDS bonuses, the empire wide bonus, the monopoly bonus, or all 3? Also I loved the idea for a ‘monopoly at 3’ attribute, but it seems there’s only one for strategic resources .

33) How long does it take before an outpost becomes a colony? Is there a way to reduce this? Maybe gaining population? How long to gain ownership of a captured outpost/colony?

Sorry bro, but lots of your questions can be answered by da wiki

Somethings there out of date, but most are good. There are also couple threads around and maybe googlable for some more complex questions, like captured colony or retrofitting.



Let's see how many questions you will have left...

Ya if there are useful threads or guides about it'd be great to get a link, I had a look on the forum but things get very techinal quickly in a lot of the threads and are for the more experienced player, so was hoping for something a little more concise. Any advice is appreciated, and if someone else has already done it, that saves everyone time

well you should say if you are using classic or disharmony. ill try to help all i can here.



1. war cards do what they say, each has a type labeled on the top and each has a type it cancels out on the bottom. all cards can be countered except for retreat. hero abilities are special cards you can unlock through promotions. they cost dust and the hero has to command the fleet you are using for you to be able to use them.



2. random events happen randomly. you can choose any option you want that gives the best advantage. as far as the situation you are describing goes, you must have been realy unlucky, you should probably restart. or rush happiness techs which are a lot closer than the red anomaly techs.



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5. if your colony/outpost is engulfed in another faction's influence bubble they get some extra negative bonuses to dust.



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7. in a ship battle fighters protect your ship from bombers and then attack the enemy ships, your bombers attack the enemy ships doing a fair amount of damage. fighters and bombers are needed to give yourself the strength to land troops and bomb the system. bombers in fighters can come in three types, invasion, battle, and a sort of inbetween class.



8. manuel allows you to make quick adjustments to your strategy and see your enemy's strategy so people tend to do better in manuel but it has no effect other than the one i mentioned.



9. age effects a number of game elements. younger galaxies have younger stars which have easier to colonize planets but have a smaller chance of endless wonders. older galaxies are the opposite.



10. while large ships are often disadvantaged compared to glass cannon fleets, they can still carry more weapons and a lot more defenses meaning they can overpower a ship in one volley usually and then move on to the next ship (using missiles on large ships though is a waste). large ships are also good for invasions. each class of ships also have different bonuses, depending on the faction because of these bonuses big ships can be much more useful than without them.?



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14. heros cannot die, when they lose they have to heal for a few turns, you can spend money to heal them immediately.



15. it really depends, if its a tier one planet you should usually improve the planet with farming first, then production, with other planets its best to go for farming system improvements then production.



16. with heros its best to level them up according to what they do best, i.e. if corporate level up wit. it allows you to get the best out of that hero, and in the early game generalising means you get less of everything instead of a lot of a few things.



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18. terraforming to gas giants is a great idea though there are ways to get large amounts of fids using tier one planets but that is later game. gas giants however, reduce population capacity produce less of everything except for their specialty and make everyone unhappy. its best not to terraform into gas giants before being able to sustain them.



19. retrofit is often to use the most up to date modules and it is cheaper than making new ships. except for harmony all ships have upkeep.



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21. this game is designed to be unbalanced because each faction has different specialties. i.e. horatio will expand ridiculously fast, sheredyn will earn ridiculous amounts of science, horatio ships will murder your entire fleet. there are a lot of examples but for the most part, the factions are balanced.



22. sieged systems can produce things but they suffer some fids penalties. they cannot however produce things that require resources that are not in that system.



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25. most mods don't change things because they think the game is bad, they just add content to make the game more complex and sometimes better.



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28. factions have techs based on the style of play each faction has, their ships often reflect this, i.e. sophon and amoeba ships are terrible while hisso and sheredyn are amazing.



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31. some factions like the hisso, harmony, or sowers can be very difficult for new players because they require more advanced tactics. i.e. hisso has good military but against the UE and sophons they will have less money and science.

sheredyn are considered strong for a lot of reasons, you should read the bios of each faction it has some important information regarding playstyles and traits.



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33. it takes thirty turns for an outpost to become a colony, there is no way to speed this up.





i hope i answered a few of your questions, sorry i couldn't answer them all.

20. On ship means it only effects the ship it's installed on. On fleet means it effects the whole fleet, so you'd get more benefit out of these with large fleets of small ships than with small fleets of large ships. Armor, repair, power and engine tonnage is a percentage of the ship's total available tonnage. Engines are almost never worth their weight even with the top tier engines adding fleet bonuses, because you can get plenty of movement points just from the techs in the bottom section of the tech tree. Armor is only worth the tonnage on larger ships, because of the high hp and more defense modules, thus more of a boost. Repair is best when it has the fleet wide bonuses and on the smaller ships, although it's fine on the larger ships too. Power is only worth it once you get to the higher tier versions that have fleet wide bonuses, otherwise you're better off using that tonnage to just add more weapons.



The modules that boost tonnage are pretty much never worth it, because they only add 25 or 50 tons and significantly increase the industry cost of the ship.



The special modules tab is where you'll find troop, fighter, bomber and point defense modules once you've researched the techs for them. Fighters and bombers were covered by A_B. Point defense is a small weapons system designed to take out fighters and bombers. Troops are for capturing enemy systems quickly. With enough ships carrying troops you can take over an enemy system on the same turn the ships arrive if you're able to start an invasion. Without troops the fastest possible is 4 or 6 turns, but that takes an insanely high invasion score, which will take several fleets of ships loaded with nothing but bombers and invasion modules. One large (at least 10 of the 1 CP ships) fleet of ships even if they only have 1 troop module per ship with the rest of the tonnage used by a repair module and invasion modules will likely be enough to take the system immediately.



Never put weapons on your invasion fleets, because without weapons and with your fighters/bombers set to invasion only, you can't ever accidentally attack the enemy's heavily armed combat fleets. Instead always have a combat fleet(s) in the system with the invasion fleet to guard them. Then the enemy can't ever attack the invasion fleet until they destroy your combat fleet(s). Likewise you can't stop an enemy invasion until you kill their combat fleets guarding their invasion fleets. You don't even need defense modules on these fleets. This also frees up more space for more invasion modules. Also, don't mix your trooper ships with your bomber ships in the same fleet. Instead build bomber fleets that have the max bombers and max invasion modules plus the anti-personnel or anti-building bomb modules if you want. Then have a fleet that's just trooper ships using a 1 CP that have the best repair module, 1 elite troop and rest of the tonnage filled with the best invasion module. The repair module on the troop ships is important, because the +0.1 or +0.3 module repair (fleet) pert of the repair module will replace the troops you lose very quickly. Ten ships with +0.1 fleet wide module repair will refill 1 troop module per turn.



21. Sophons are for the ridiculous amounts of science. Sheredyn is for ridiculous amounts of dust thanks to one tech that boost the dust generated per CP destroyed and the unique improvement that adds 250 dust to your system per turn. The Sheredyn's unique improvement will always take 10 turns to build no matter how much industry your system generates and adds -50 approval rating to the system while it's under construction. Even with the severe approval penalty while building this unique improvement, you should try to build them as early as possible even if that means your system's approval drops off the scale on the negative side, because the extra dust is well worth it and can let you run as low as 0% taxes if you need to for the approval boost while still generating plenty of dust.



A custom Amoeba can also generate ridiculous amounts of dust and science with the blockade breakers, diplomats and merchants traits, because they start out with the entire galaxy mapped. So with these 3 traits, as soon as they meet another empire they will have trade routes to every system that empire owns, thanks to the blockade breakers. Diplomats 2 increases the dust and science from each trade route by 50%. Merchants 2 adds 2 extra trade routes to every system.

Many thanks to those answering questions; I've now played a couple more games and it's helped a lot. I still have questions, but they're now small and few enough that I can use the sticky . The only thing I really still don't get is terraforming; just doesn't feel right that you can terraform out of tier. Is there a decent guide to it somewhere?

you can only terraform a planet to the upper or lower tier. i.e., you can turn an arid into a desert but not into a hydrogen.

Lol, I was about to post some of these, thanks for clarifying.