Masochist Race selection.

Hi!

Same as for any game: grab as many planets as you can (and more ) with big planets first, grow pop as fast as possible until you have money to do so, make good infrastructure on your planets. Get good diplomacy, a trade route to all neighbours, some cheap armed ships in orbits to not look weak, and conquer weak civs ASAP. Keep gradually improving your empire with techs that make your planets/econ/research/production better. Incite wars among AIs and take planets from the losing side. Research bigger hulls, put on them lots of proper defenses and roll over the most dangerous AI. Repeat until you win.

BR, Iztok

That about sums it up, doesn't it!

You might want to start on a small map with some less aggressive races such as the Altarians, Thalans and Torians (though they can all be very aggressive given the right circumstances). I often like to use a custom race with max economy, max diplomacy, high morale and high population growth. I find Super Diplomat is a good special ability since you get faster access to negotiations with the other races. Tech trading can still be very advantageous in Dark Avatar if you focus initially on the diplomat skills so you can get the Diplomatic Translators, the Galactic Bazaar and the Galactic Showcase. I still get the majority of my techs by trading in Dark Avatar on suicidal difficulty (though it is MUCH easier in Dread Lords then Dark Avatar).

Another hint is to keep a close eye on the Military graph at the beginning of the game. When the other races start building up a military and see that you don't have one, they tend to get quite aggressive. My solution is to either start building a military early with traded weapon tech OR getting them all fighting each other (or both). I've gone deep into suicidal games with absolutely no military while building my economy -- I just get all the other races playing with each other and ignoring me.

So, try your starting strategies out on small or medium until you get them down pat (you have to invest a lot of time in larger maps to see the results). If you can get your strategies to work on smaller maps, you should have no problems on bigger maps. IMHO, I find smaller maps to be far more challenging than the larger maps since there are fewer resources to work with and the other races are at your throat almost immediately, though other players might disagree...

Have fun! It's a great game.

I would add spend as many points on economics as possible when putting your race together, including getting the federalist party. This also means morale and pop growth bonuses (unless you are a super breeder, which is the ultimate pop growth bonus)

Also put a higher priority on galactic resources than the AI does, you can get your unfair share if you do.

On bigger maps, put out more survey ships.

Stop colonizing before the AI and turn towards building up your internal infrastructure with an eye towards being ready to start a war before the AI does (and obviously start that war) so that you start picking up techs from the AI that you didn't have to discover.

Learn the all factory strategy.

The better you get at the above the closer you will ride the edge and the more advantage you get. I tend to go from no military to a leading, if not the leading military in only a month or two.

This is only a small sampling...Search the forums for more topics along these lines, there is a ton of stuff in back posts.

You might also want to join one of the empires, most of them are open empires and anyone can join. Browse the metaverse forum for empire postings and see if any appeal. They often have private forums and more useful stuff in their back posts.

Plus the more specific you make the question the better others can help you.



BTW

Jalong,

I haven't seen you over at our private forum...If you get the chance you should check it out.

http://www.thegalacticcore.com

Let one of the moderators know you are a Galactic Diplomat and they will grant you access.

Hi Purge... I just discovered Altmeta the other day when I decided on basically a whim to join an empire. I was shocked to see my scores on the board there!! I've stopped by the forums but haven't joined yet, but I fully intend to...

Thanks for the invite!