Hi Guys!

I haven't been playing games for a long time now. Last game being Fear and the one before that was KOTOR 2.

Well, I played Fear only for awhile as it was a gift from a client who worked there.

Anyway, I was looking at SoaSE and it reminded me somewhat of MOO - Masters of Orion. lol.. I think i'm getting old but the game seemed a little diffcult to play and I tried all the tutorials before embarking on a small map scenario.

1st Game : Died after playing like 6 hours.

Analysis: I realized that I really need to explore and colonize other planets but I couldn't do that because I was too weak. I used Advent.

2nd Game : Won. after 4 hours

Analysis: I used Vasari in this scenario and only focused on trying to get my weapons up asap. I was still very weak and not able to colonize other planets due to the rest of the planets being ICE or very strong ships around the area.

I took a gamble and realized that 1 chap was slightly stronger than all of us and what I did was to complete the quests to hit the strong chap and use politics to survive.. that ended with another AI being friendly with me and also not attacking me at least in that case i could focus on building my fleet.

I just want to find out from all the seasoned players, in the game, do you find it necessary to manipulate the rest of the AI if you are playing against the computers?

How does one also build up all the research? the planets don't have so much space..

Its really an intriguing game and I really hope you guys can help me with some advice.