Well, I'm still a noob but I've been liking the Advent a lot. So far, it's been like this.

Disciples are your best fleet for the early game, and they are pretty useful until you do get to unlock other things.

Sieges are meh because they're taken down easily, but if you ever noticed a place unchecked, you can spawn about 10 of them and send them to a location of your choice, it makes a decent disturbance strategy.. at least for me, anyway.

as far as the other units, Crusaders are pretty nice later on, and Guardian is useful, but Disciples and Defense are the two main. Sieges comes in for random disruption strat if you can manage one.

As for Capital Ships, The Mothership really takes it home for me. Malice and Shield Regen have been the most useful to me so far. However, I usually pick up Revelation for the Concentration Aura. I'm pretty sure they stack and they have a large range of usefulness. Pairing the two together usually pulls me through large fights.

Uhm, you forgot about carriers. Are they easily counterable? Yeah, but they can wreak alot of destruction too.

Culturespam really needs to up gun the tax dollars it gives, or otherwise be a great deal cheaper if it's supposed to be a viable alternative to tradespam. There ought to be perhaps a cheaper cost to build on worlds with the same culture.

Advent seems a bit more defensive for early game. That's just how I play it. Of course you don't want to do it for too long, but usually I just colonize two to four things. Go insane with Logistics for a while, Adding Hangar Defense (which only needs one hostility tower and the upgrade needs two) everywhere. Then after I've gotten a large enough force, I go for whatever I see fit to take.

Of course, this is just basic Human vs CPU tactics. Actual people would probably play better than that, but that's what's been working for me. I can't go very extensive on it sadly. =/

Advent are definitely best played defensively. I'll usually turtle up and attack with culture, get some trade ports down. Then I can tech really high in weapons and get good Illum upgrades and then go rampaging across the galaxy with some Illums, motherships, and drone hosts.

Alright, here is my strategy for advent in larger games. Obviously you may need to adapt depending on your enemies/starting position, but generally this is what I like to follow.

Basically the startup focuses on gaining an early economic advantage and countering LRM spam, then you can start adapting/trying different strategies with your superior economy.

If I know I'll be first, I'll immediatly buy 200 crystal, and then do the civilian upgrade on the homeplanet for the increase in tax income.

Build a capital ship factory and the resource extrators, and queue up the Progenitor Mothership and a few Seekers. The first seeker set to auto-explore, and possibly the second if its a larger map. Make enough seekers to support the Mothership in taking over the first asteroid/planet (yes, early game my main fleet consists of Seekers, while doing less damage than disciples, they have better hull/shields for the price, and will save you metal for later, all while being an effective counter to LRM, just make sure to turn their auto-attack ON).

Once your capital ship is complete, give it the colonize ability to avoid wasting resources on a missionary vessel. Scuttle the cap ship factory for some resources/logistics slots and build 2 temples of harmony. You should be taking your first asteroid/planet now. As far as that goes, I like to destroy any siege ships first, and colonize even if there are other enemy ships still around, it'll give you jump-start on the population and upgrades. Upgrade the civilian infrastructure and logistics slots first while the Motherships colonize ability has reduced the cost (it seems to take effect around 10 seconds after colonizing the planet or so).

From there on, build the extractors and your third temple of harmony at your new planet, then research trade centers, and build at least 1 trade center on each planet (I prefer 2 if possible, and your homeplanet still has enough free logistics for the first center if you scuttled the cap ship factory). During this your fleet should be advancing/taking new planets, upgrading civilian infrastructure to eliminate the new planet tax penalty takes priority over research/ship production.

There, keep building trade centers for a longer route, and you now have good credit income, are able to field fleets of seekers (which only cost credits) and able to counter early LRM spam. Now you can adapt easily to the other players and do what you want (I personally focus a bit on culture first if my enemies aren't aggressive.)
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As far as capital ships are concerned. I personally love Progenitor Mothership + Rapture Battlecruiser + Guardians + any attack frigates. The mothership and guardians work great together for the shield regen/shield projection combo. The rapture makes that combo even better with Vertigo, -30% to hit AND firing rate for the enemy. Add in culture bonuses and/or shield/hull techs, and you have a nigh invincible fleet.

I usually get the shield one first, because that way I can use the mothership to take on insane amounts of local militia and snag Terran planets. By the time you blow up all the militia, you usually level to 2 and can get colonize.

ever though of an early rush with advent? why else would advent have their planetary bombardment frigate require only 1 research facility?

the advent carrier capital ship is my first choice for the auras.

One of the best ways yall could illustrate your points is through posting replays.

By showing what you or the other guy did, yall can give your arguements a more grounded basis, and just show off in general

I like this thread. I've gotten some great tips here already that i'm eager to put to the test. Thanks everybody.

Actually, the Advent is currently the only race i have any desire playing. Once i feel (if) i've mastered it, then i'll try another race. The Advents' ships just look so much better to me than the others (human ships look really boring) and i enjoy the whole aesthetic of the race and find the various female UI voices soothing throughout the game.

The only problem I've ever found with the Advent is the voices. Oh god, I have little psionic Children of the Corn girls piloting my ships!!

Just randomly brought out a question about the guardians, doesn't their shield bubble stack? Which is more effective: x numbers of shield all together? or 1 by 1? assuming it's in very big battle.

Oh, and i find the manasteal ability of their Disciple pretty useful as well.

HuntingX, I think you need to review your analysis of the Advent a bit more carefully. Look at the numbers, you can figure out how to squeeze out more DPS with Advent.