How to approach the game...my tips

[kuertee]

I decided to spend the last four days (from Friday to Monday) learning a bit more of the game. I've had the game since it was released. And I've played it a lot since then. But I never learned how to "play" it properly.

These tips are not "how-tos" or "what-to-dos" in the game. The purpose of these tips are how to approach the game. Hopefully, it will help some adjust their mind-set on how they approach the game. These did help me appreciate the game's depth a lot more than previous game sessions.





Expect to play the game manually.
Automation will not play the game for you. It will only help you. And it's not a very good helper.
You will likely not WIN when you let the automation features handle a huge portion of your game.
Regardless of how automation is marketed, this game will require a lot of micro-managing.
You will spend most of your time with the menus open and the game paused.
E.g. I order some ships built (or I accept the automation's suggestions). Immediately, I open the Ships screen to assign important ships to fleets. Then immediately after that, I open the Fleets screen to rename it for easy access. And to assign its home base.
E.g.: Designing ships will take up a lot of your time. Space them out. Otherwise, you'll find that you're in the Design screen constantly. This is especially true when your labs are pumping out new techs at a high rate. Auto-saves are a good timer. Immediately after that kicks in, update your designs.

Expect that you will change the way you play during the course of the game.
Do as many things as you manually can at the beginning of the game.
Then be prepared to let the automation take up some tasks later - e.g. when you're busy managing a large war.
You can correct for its decisions later anyway.
Also, you can't learn everything at once so learn how to play the game manually bit by bit.
E.g. at every new game or game session, do something new manually.
Play that for a good bit of time or until you feel like starting a new game.

Expect to lose a lot of ships. And I mean a lot.
Do not keep "hero" ships or fleets. Micro-managing them during a large war may save them at the expense of several fleets - or even your empire.
Exception to the rule: speciality ships - especially those tied to the Return of the Shakturi story missions.
Pump out as many ships and as often as you can.
BUT ALWAYS MANUALLY manage your main fleets.

Pause and play. Pause and play.
It's not fun to let the game play continuously. And you'll likely lose if you do.
Pause the game. Do a bit. Let it play for a bit. Pause. Do a bit. Let it play for a bit. Etc.
E.g. During a large war...Pause. Jump to a battle. Let the game play for about three seconds. Watch and evaluate your ships performances. Pause. Jump to another battle elsewhere. Play while watching it. Pause. Jump to galaxy view. Play and watch the travel vectors of fleets (e.g. make sure you have a line of listening posts between you and your enemy and that Travel Vectors are visible). Pause. Go to another battle. Play for a bit. Pause. Check and give orders, if appropriate, to your construction and exploration ships. Jump to a battle. Play. Etc.

Money is everything...so population is everything.
Check out Larry Monte's tips: www dot youtube dot com/playlist?list=PLzEZx9zuF9_7NojhT8oA5bWf0ltD9ZiHp
His only got 2 very short video clips. But they really helped me get into the game.
Use his tip #2. It's a bit of an exploit. Accept that setting up your empire is only a small portion of the game.
The larger portion of the game is later in the game when ship and base maintenance is burning your cash.





My current game:
I hate how the odds against the Shakturi is stacked so much against the player. But I also love it. (When I think about it, I think this is Code Force's reply to Arcen's AI War.)

Anyway, I created a save immediately after they declared war against me (or when an ally forced me to declare war against them). And I played many games from that point. All of them resulted in losses - mainly due to my inexperience. I always abandoned previous games when I start to lose to them. In these games, I managed to keep my interest in replaying from that save-point and by learning from my previous game. All still resulted in losses, though. In my current game, the Shakturi has whittled me down to the population of two colonies from a population high (from only about 6 colonies) of 25% more than the Ancient Guardians. I never got my population higher than the Ancient Guardian's before.