It seems that quit a few people are having some difficulty getting started and i thought i would try to write a plain english guide covering the beginning of the game and a few principles to get people going in the right direction. I am assuming that you at least browsed the manual and played the tutorial galaxy. If you haven’t go do that now. I am going to try to keep this guide from being to specific for three reasons:

1. having been in the military I am a big believer in the K.I.S.S. Principle (keep it simple stupid)
2. I don’t want everyone to play the same way because its boring. I think this game is designed well enough to allow multiple paths to victory so I encourage new players to use this as a starting point, not a bible.
3. I don’t want to give away to much about how I play.

You are going to start with 1 planet and 2 colony ships. The first thing is you need to get those colony ships moving and get your planet doing something.

Pick the two most attractive planets in your system and send your colony ships towards them. You want to pick planets with good food, production, and science output with food and production being the most important. Size is important but in the very beginning this is not a big consideration because you are not going to have max pop planets. Eventually you are going to colonize all of your home systems so pick the planets that are going to give you the most benefit immediately. On turn 1 a planet with 4 food and 4 production with a max population of 17 is more attractive than a planet with 3 food and 3 production planet with a max population of 35. In the long run the second planet is much more valuable but we are talking about turn 1 not turn 100. You also want one of those planets to have 4 science production because you need to get your research going soon. Many players start researching on their home planet from turn 1 so you need to get moving. Couple of tips:

• 3 food/3 production is greater than 2 food/4 production or 4 food/2 production at this point.
• make sure you set your ships to colonize planets, not to move to planets.(i have done this)

You also need to get that home planet going. Set up a queue of 3 farms. Make half your pop farmers the other half workers and make a governor to maintain that. Once you colonize those other two planets set them up the same way.

Once you get those three farms built on your home planet its time to build ships. Some players will build ships immediately, others will wait longer. Find what works for you but for the purpose of this guide this is the time to start building ships. You have a big choice at this point, build a scout or a colony ship. Lets look at the advantages of each:

• scout ships allow you to explore surrounding systems sooner allowing you to make informed decisions about where to send you colony ships. Even if you don’t build one immediately you need to make one soon.
• colony ships allow you to increase your planet count sooner. More planets=more economy=faster start=more likely to win. There is some risk involved you may find a really poor system or you may find another players home system. Colonizing someones home system is risky and slightly aggressive. Its risky because they have at least one developed planet and you have a 2 population colony. One troop ship can end your stay in that particular system. Your other option is to send your colony ship to another system which can be very time consuming.

Your two initial colonies should be reaching the point of being productive soon. A general strategy would be to get that 4 science colony you hopefully have researching and have the other planet aid in ship production. You also can have your home planet start researching at this point. It does have 4 base science but it also has the most production capability of your planets so at this point it is your best planet for ship-building and research. This can be a hard decision but it won’t be your last so get used to it.

This is another hard decision(told you so). A tentative list of the first techs to research in order would go like this:

1. advanced networking -gives you universities. Build some on your research planet(s) immediately. 3 is a nice number to build but do what you want. Also gives you military camp but you won’t need that for a while.
2. advanced magnetism -troop bay and magneto shield are good and if you happen upon an undefended planet this will be most valuable but your mostly researching this to get to:
3. astro engineering -factories, factories, factories. Build them. More production is invaluable. Corvette is nice and so is large pilot cabin but factories are gold. When your planets are producing ships twice as fast as others you will thank me
4. cold fusion -breeder planets are impractical without a fusion engine(i will go into breeder planets more later). Also gives you your first ship-to-ship and your first ship-to-planet weapons. Last and certainly not least this gives you light turrets which ties into my next topic.

This list is not an absolute, play with it as you wish, just if you are sitting there at the beginning of the game and you just can’t make a choice on what to research this is a good starting point. After researching these initial techs you need to make your own way through the rest of the tree. To the left are your weapons and defensive structures. The next column over is engines and shields. Next is ship hulls some misc ship items and most importantly auto-factories. These 3 columns on the left eventually merge but the one on the far right stands alone. Even though I generally give this far right column a lower priority there are some important things there so don’t ignore it indefinitely. The next techs to research is kind of a crap shoot. If you go straight for auto-factories you will get a leg up on production that will serve you well and get you destroyers before anyone else(a big advantage). The other two branches(on the left) are necessary for defense and offense so if you concentrate on getting auto-facs you could get caught with your pants down.

The power of just a single light turret is very good in the early game. I am not telling you to build one or more light turrets on all of your planets but if you do it probably won’t be the worst decision you make in this galaxy. By the time you are in a position to make this choice you need to have explored your surroundings. Make that scout ship(s) if you haven’t already. Find out who is around you. If you have a bigger neighbor talk to him. Send him a peace treaty or an alliance if you fear he may be eyeballing your planets, If he refuses to talk or declines/ignores your offer this doesn’t mean he is hostile. But its not the best sign. If you know what systems he has scouted consider the pros and cons of building light turrets. (Note on alliances: at this stage of the game scores are not the best way to determine someones abilities. Don’t rush into an alliance you will regret in 50 turns)

Talk to people. Not talking is a sign of hostility/being inactive. Don’t rush into alliances but peace treaties can be a real good choice at this point. Don’t advertise that you are new until you are pretty sure the person is trustworthy. Opening conversations with: “hey, this is my first time playing” translates to “hey, come take my planets”. There are plenty of players that will give you leeway if it is your first time playing but don’t count on it. Do not advertise precisely what you are doing either. Intelligence is one of the most valuable commodities in the game, don’t give it away for free! An exception would be if you have a strong alliance with a person that you feel is trustworthy then, and only then, you can feel free to share information, just be wary of the double-cross.

A lot of players do not like breeding planets. I will leave the debates about their legitimacy to other threads and tell you this: There isn’t a better way to get planets to max pop fast and pump out ships quickly once they get there, period. If the rules get changed in such a way that they go away i won’t really care, as long as the playing field stays even I don’t mind. I will deal with this section in a question answer type format so here we go.

A breeding planet is a planet whose sole purpose is to create population to be transferred to another planet.

At 3 population it takes 12 food to get to 4 population. If you get your surplus food production up to 12 or greater with 2 farmers you will add a citizen every turn. Two fast shuttles per breeding planet will then transport these new citizens to your other planets greatly increasing their growth.

You need to pick a planet, 3 food and 4 food are easy. 2 food isn’t so great. The amount of farms required will vary based on your corruption/reputation and the planets quality factor..

• 4 food 2-3 farms
• 3 food 4-5 farms
• 2 food 5-7 farms

I have made a tutorial to help new players figure out how to set up breeder planets.

Breeding Planet Tutorial

Lets say you find yourself a nice six planet system. If you colonize all planets at the same time you will have some good growth in the beginning but you will eventually slow-down. Example: your farmers are putting out 7 food each(4 base and 3 farms), you have no corruption and your food quality factor is 115%. your current population is 10 and you have half your population set as farmers. It will take you about three turns to go up 1 population and it will just slow down from there. From 11 to 12 pop it will take 3 turns also. From 13 to 14 pop, 3-4 turns; 16 to 17, 3-4 turns; 17 to 18, 4 turns; and so on. This will be your growth under absolutely ideal situations. Your actual growth will be lower, often considerably lower. You can actually surpass this ideal growth with one breeder planet per 4 production/science planets and the whole time these planets will be operating at peak efficiency.

Few different options here.

1. Start sending all your population to your ship production planets. A good ship-producer will be able to keep up with two breeder planets. Ship production is where breeding planets really shine. Max-population worlds add citizens very slowly. No matter what magic you are pulling you will never come close to crewing ships as quickly without breeding planet(s) as you will with them.
2. Just keep feeding all your planets to build up an equal distribution of military on all your planets. You can then reverse the direction of your transport admirals to quickly populate your breeding planet(s).
3. Just stop the transports and let the breeding planet(s) build up like normal(I don’t like this option)

Eventually you will have to fight someone, either because you need to expand or because they attack you. You need to produce bombing ships, ship-to-ship ships(lets call them escorts), and troop ships. While designing your ships try to maintain a consistent speed between them(your troop ships can be faster because they often need to play catch-up). The more speed you have the better but at early tech levels 20-25 will be about the best you will probably manage. As your tech level increases speed your ships up. A 50 speed fleet will run circles around a 30 speed fleet but a 30 speed fleet will have more firepower/hitpoints for the same price. Its another hard decision. A few pointers on ship design:

1. Weapons are cheaper and take less engine power to reach a certain speed than shields.
2. Ships with shields and weapons will usually edge out an equivalent ship with just weapons.
3. The battle calculator is your friend, if you have two ship designs but you just can’t make a decision match them up against each other in the battle-calculator. You can also use the battle calculator to match yourself up against your anticipated target. You will not know exactly what your opponents defenses are but you can make an educated guess.

Try to be unpredictable. Never declare war unless you are either one turn away from attacking or right outside of their scanner range.

Reputation is important. Attacking players of equivalent size and larger will net you positive rep. Attacking players more than 20% smaller than you will net you negative reputation. Attacking players with negative reputation will increase your reputation gain if they or larger than you. If they are smaller than you their negative reputation will either reduce the amount of negative reputation you get or reverse it altogether. Think about how attractive you look to larger empires if you have a large negative reputation. Now you may ask, “how does reputation affect me?” reputation has a big effect on your food, production, and science output. Negative and positive reputation will decrease or increase your corruption respectively. At the same time attacking someone smaller than you will give you a (hopefully)easy victory and some nice developed planets so sometimes a little negative reputation is worth it. You just need to be aware of the ramifications.

One thing that I have noticed a lot is a tendency towards stagnation. A player will get a few systems(three seems to be a favorite number) and then nothing more. Three systems can do a lot, they can make a lot of colony ships, they can make a small fleet for attack or defense, they can research a decent amount. One thing three systems can never do is win the game. Expansion is key, if you are not actively expanding you need to be planning to expand either through colonization or through conquest. Also make sure that every planet in your systems are colonized. Even the one with max 15 population and 2 output in every category. If an inactive player adjoins your empire and you don’t want to take the penalty for attacking him colonize his unused planets. More planets leads to more science output and production which wins the game.

As far as system development goes my personal philosophy is take what the system gives me. Let me explain, if the system has a lot of 4 science planets make it a research system with the other planets as breeder planets to max out the science planets as soon as possible. If the planets are mixed make the system mixed. even crap planets can be useful for making wealth. You will need some planets specialized for making ships though. An average of one per system will be a pretty good guide but I don’t believe you need a ship producer in every system. Every planet that has 4 science should be researching. If you are unhappy with your science output make some of your 3 science planets research planets also. You need at least one breeder planet per system. Often you will need more. As I mentioned earlier a good ship-producing planet will need two breeders for constant production.