• think economically, calculate benefits vs. costs and return times. For example, when deciding whether is it worth to build another university, take investment return time into account (if I switch planet to workers now for 10 turns to get that uni, after how many turns will added benefit of university outweight research lost while building it). Compare return time to the actual needs (do I need to research something quickly? Will added benefit of new research help my economy? Do I need new tech for war machine now?).
• in the early times prefer maximum growth speed (if you have time to manually change population, calcuate the path of fastest growth- that usually means manually switching between all farmers and all workers to get fastest growth on the very first planets). The point is to get next economic benefit ASAP (economic benefit = extra citizen or extra farm/economic structure)
• never stop expanding. If you still see empty planets, keep building colony ships. If you don’t have empty planes, choose the path of war.
• keep scouting/scanning. Know your galaxy.
• check prices of buildings properly. First 3 instances of some structure cost c*(x-1) where x is number of buildings of the same type and c is initial value.

Further buildings cost 3*c*(x-2) and this probably increases even more in future. So first 3 buildings are most efficient. If you want to add 5th or 6th structure of some kind do not use larger variants (auto fact or research lab) but use smaller variants. Because it is much cheaper in investment / gain per worker ratio and you have to favor growth speed and not capacity (larger variants are more efficient in max. capacity achievable per planet). These are prices of some basic structure in costs per per worker gain (mulitply autofact * 2 to get actual price):

1. 40 - 100
2. 80 - 200
3. 120 - 300
4. 240 - 600
5. 360 - 900
6. 480 - 1200
7. 600 - 1500

You get my point, autofact is more efficient than factory only in some range, but there is usually no point building say more than 5 autofacts. Also sometimes it’s more worth to build less efficient structure if its going to be up faster, for example it’s better to build 3.) factory before 1.) autofact, because 3.) factory is going to be up sooner (120 cost) than 1.) autofact (200)

Similar comparsion for:

1. 70 - 150
2. 140 - 300
3. 210 - 450
4. 420 - 900
5. 630 - 1350
6. 840 - 1800

• in the long term, it’s most efficient to research expensive techs first. So go deep into the tree, if you can. Obviously the economic paths are automated factories and research labs. If you are not at large scale war I recommend this path:
  1. Start with either Advanced network (uni) or Astro engineering (factory) to get economic returns.
  2. Then improve engines (preferably down to quantum).
  3. Then either robotics (auto factory) or artifical intelligence (science lab) to get further economic benefit.

The way I did it was university, factory, quantum drive, resarch lab.

• I have 5 types of planets. Research, breeding, ship building, money making, intelligence.

• my standard systems have 1 breeding planet, 1 ship building planet and rest is research. Dedicated money making or intelligence planets are usually in systems where I dont own most planets.

• I think that having ship building capacity distributed across whole empire gives you greatest flexibility.
  1. you build your capacity uniformly as you grow.
  2. each system can quickly produce fighters/defending ships to kill enemy scouts/small fleets
  3. if you need to attack or defend from unexpected direction, this layout allows you respond faster than ship producing planets near the border
  4. loss of 1-2 system (which is to be expected if you are attacked from unexpected direction) wont hurt you critically in any area

• breeding planets are small planets with high food production. They are kept at population 2 by governor. Extra population is transported from there to other planets in system. When all other planets fill up, population is brought to ship building planet.

• ship bulding planets are as large as possible and with high production and farming outputs. Extra population gathers here, so they have military camps and academies to train idle military.

I’m using 7 basic generic governors 7 shared queues which can be combined to produce best results.

• this governor handles all newly colonized planets, and serves as a core that is same for all my planets. He has these tasks:
  1. if there is nothing to work on, switch production to basic queue.
  2. convert stationed military to farmers
  3. (usually disabled except in early times - draft military from pop. to man ships)
  4. convert citizens to workers
  5. if number of citizens is lower than 100% of the limit:
     1. if number of farmers is lower than 50% of pop.count convert workers to farmers
     2. if food surplus is lower than 0 convert worker to farmer
     3. if no production convert workers to farmers
  6. make sure there is enough farmers to feed pop
  7. if number of citizens is lower than 4 convert all to farmers
  8. if production output is lower than 30 hurry production (adjust this according to your financial situation, or specify specific structures to hurry)
  9. name planet after system

• this governor leaves all farmers if population is lower than 4. Otherwise it keeps 1/2 of pop on farmers. If there is nothing to work on, it changes all to farmers to fill planet asap.

• this governor handles planet that are expected to produce science right now. He has these tasks:
  1. run basic governor
  2. if ther is no production swtich queue to science queue
  3. convert citizens to workers
  4. make sure there are enough farmers to feed population
  5. if number of scientist is lower than 50% of pop count convert workers to scientists - change this ratio or disable it according to your present needs. If you need something researched quickly keep this rule enabled. Otherwise disable it for best long term results.
  6. if currently no production convert workers to scientists

this governor keeps keeps population on workers if there is something to do. If there is nothing to do, pop is changed to scientists. There is optional rule to keep some ratio of population on scientists (usefull in early days when you need to grow planet and research at once). It builds all that basic govenor builds + scientific queue.

• this governor handles ship building planets. His duties are:
  1. run basic governor
  2. convert citizens to workers
  3. make sure there is enough food to feed them
  4. if there is no queue switch queue to shipbuilding queue

• this governor is for breeding planets. It first grows the planet using basic governor till it reaches +8 food per pop (leave it at +7 for early stages of game, +8 is only needed to overcome corruption)
  1. if food output per farmers is lower than 8, run basic governor
  2. if food output per farmer is lower than 8, hurry current production
  3. if food production per farmers is higher than 7:
     1. convert citizens to farmers
     2. if number of pop is higher than 2, convert farmers to military

• this is a temporary governor for newly conquered planets, his duties are to get basic defs and shipyard there asap and then switch to basic governor.

convert stationed military to workers

1. convert citiznes to workers
2. make sure there are enough farmers
3. if number of light turrets is lower than 1 and no production build light turret
4. if number of shipyards is lower than 1 and no production build shipyard (swap or disable these two rules if you need shipyard first to repair ships)
5. hurry current production
6. if there is no production, switch to basic governor

• this is governor for planets, that are destined to be scientific in the future, it keeps the planet on basic governor until basic queue is done (=50% of pop farmers) and then changes to science governor:
  1. run basic governor
  2. if there is no production switch governor to science

• this is governor for planets, that are destined to be shipbuilding in the future
  1. run basic governor
  2. if there is no production switch governor to shipbuilder

These governors are complemented by queues. However you can combine different queues with different governors to get some specific results. Note that these queues are for advanced stage of game, you wont need so many farms in basic queue or so many factories and defenses in the early time.

You have to start with shorter queues (like 3x farmers for basic queue) and then expand it as your empire grows larger.

this is stuff that is common for all my planets

1. #1 farm
2. #1 factory
3. #2 farm
4. #2 factory
5. #3 farm
6. #3 factory
7. #4 farm
8. #1 autofact
9. #5 farm
10. #2 autofact
11. #1 light turret
12. #2 heavy turret
13. #1 shield

1. #1 farm
2. #1 factory
3. #2 farm
4. #2 factory
5. #1 uni
6. #3 farm
7. #3 factory
8. #2 uni
9. #1 science lab
10. #4 farm
11. #2 autofact
12. #1 light
13. #2 science labs
14. #4 university
15. #4 fact
16. #6 farm
17. #3 science lab
18. #5 university
19. #3 autofact
20. #5 fact
21. #6 university
22. #4 science lab

similar to basic queue but it continues with

1. #3 autofact
2. #6 farm
3. #1 shipyard
4. #1 light turret
5. #6 factory
6. #4 autofact
7. #1 military academy
8. #1 military camp
9. #7 farm
10. #8 factory

this is queue for my shipbuilding planet. I assign that manually to planets that have extra population stored on them

1. infinite of my currently favored fighter ship type

this is queue for my shipbuilding planet. I assign that manually to planets that have extra population stored on them

1. infinite of my currently favored bomber ship type

similar to shipbuilding but no military camps stuff and just intelligence agence and scans of various types

this is queue for wealth only planets. I switch to it manually leaving planets on basic governor. This queue builds some extra autofacts over basic queue and then fills planet with factories.

• It should be pretty straightforward. Leave newly colonized or conquered planets on their default governors (basic and conquered).
• if you have whole system decide what planets are going to be what and assign breeder, future science and future shipbuilder governors.
• if you need some extra output now, switch planet manually directly to science or shipbuilder governor and/or change its shared queue.
• when breeder planets starts breeding (switches to pop 2) build transport ship and setup route to fill your remaining planets.
• when your planets fill up, set transport to only send population to shipbuilding planet
• if your shipbuilding planet runs low on population or you need money, switch it to wealth. Later when your shipbuilders are full with people, switch them to fighters or bombers queue or build troop ships there.

become familiar with admirals. I’m using several admirals. One transport for each system. Scouting admiral to scout my enemies, and 1-2 assualt admirals to carry on attacks.

Assault admirals should gather ships either of specific or from specific planets and assign them to fleet. Once you defeat primary enemy forces, all you need to do is to add targets to admiral’s “attack planet’s” rule.

• try cloaked ships, it helps to mount a surprising attack especially in early days and it improves your scout’s survivability
• against large heavy firepower try fleet full of light ships with high dmg/costs ratios accompanied by a fleet of heavy ships filled with shields and 1 small weapon. Enemy heavy firepower will target your shielded ships and your light ships will come out unharmed. Small ships have better dmg/costs and large ships have better hp/costs.
• run simulator before attacking planetary defenses or enemy fleets first time
• try specialized ships to attack enemy breeding planets (I used that against astax in round 9 - destroyer class ship with troop module, bombs, light weapons shields and possibly cloaking. These ships were capable to capture enemy breeding planet alone and disrupt his economy. Psychological effect of this attack led to astax2 demise
• do not split your fleets too much. Even non-attacking ships like bombers are usefull in ship to ship combat to serve as “meat shields”
• try to use same desired speed for all your bomber and fighter ships through majority of the game. This allows you to use different designs old or new in same fleet without sacrificing efficiency of some ships by forcing them to run slower.