Ok.
Just finished my first game and walked away with 16% of the achievements.
8.5 hours on a small map with the Vasari (chosen as a random race). I destroyed over a thousand frigates thanks to NUMEROUS pirate raids and a Frigate happy AI. I maxed out a capital ship. I built one of each capital ship. I got the "He's no good to me dead" award. I picked up the Crystal and Metal Miner awards as well as the bombadier award.
Part of the reason it took so long was a really strange map that effectively cut me off from my enemies culture but also kept me from expanding past 4 worlds for about 5 hours. I managed to tech out the ENTIRE warfare tree then, expanding out my Cap limit from 3 to 4 and my logistics to 3, I built up 2 extra capital ships and sent them out to reclaim my solar empire. Then I had to clean up 15 enemy territories.
I had basically 4 buildable sites, 2 asteroids, my homeworld and an ice planet; connected to the rest of the network. However, the site was a magnetic cloud and completely useless to me. Every time I tried to expand in one direction, I'd get attacked from the other side. The cloud prevents antimatter abilities and you can't build anything there. On the plus side, it kept me from the late game influence that was building up.
Lessons learned:
Teching up really helps alot. Especially as the Vasari. The phase ring technology is the foundation of the endgame. You can expand easily without having to worry about the home stations. However, the Dark Fleet Tech is almost a pass. You get "free ships" but, those ships do count against your cap and I got a bunch of Carriers I had to "load."
Phase jump inhibitors don't seem to stack. Media Centers do. Interestingly enough, a triangle of lanes seems to provide extra culture protection. I destroyed all the Broadcast towers from one planet and watched the influence dissolve from the connected lanes. I couldn't settle there until the culture effectively drained through the connected systems.
Late Game Pirate Bases HURT. I actually sent a small fleet including 4 veteran capital ships and maybe 15 cruisers and frigates and got chewed up. 100 plus guns actually took down my level 10 battleship. Interestingly enough, I know the enemy had a level 5 or 6 capital ship but, I don't know what happened to it. I can only assume the AI tried to kill the pirates and lost.
Is there anyway to review a game and see what happened during the game? I was on the ropes, then all of a sudden, the entire enemy fleet seemed to disappear. Did it tech itself into the grave?
The question and goal now is...
Other than playing against an easy AI, can you get some of the "harder achievements"? Fear of Icebergs? Go Big or Go Home? All Military or All Empire?
What race did you use and what sized map?
