Newb Questions

It prevents your empire from crumbling just because the AI managed to take your good planets.



Economy worlds. High population, morale structures, and lots of economy structures help produce large amounts of money. It might be worth considering making your homeworld an economy world. The civ capital provides many benefits, large population, higher base morale, strong base industry to help build it up quicker, etc.



I use larger ships. They have more room for defensive parts than smaller ships. I prefer to have ships strong enough to survive every battle, rather than having to replace ships after every battle.

I tend to keep my fleet composition of 3-5 ships of whatever hull size I'm currently using. Anything more, and I'm probally wasting money on defenses. The 100+ defense only favours the ship being attack, not the ones being ignored. You still have to pay for those defenses in terms of production, and upkeep.



I get serious about it after war is declared on me. Otherwise, I work on my economy, and ship designs until I'm ready to build a small, yet powerful fleet.

To start with, probably. But as the game progresses you will want to specialize. If you have bonus tiles or moral choices effecting a planet when colonizing it can help determine if it should be a research, production, or economy planet. You definitely get more bang for your buck doing this.

I try to hold off on building ships until I have the tech to make it worthwhile. I usually try to only include weapons and defenses that I have fully researched for that generation. Fleets are definitely better than single ships. Sometimes I build a ship called a "Baitfish" that is nothing but engines. I use this to lure enemy ships away from my resources into a wild goose chase, but generally mass produce one type of ship, unless I need to counter different types of ship defenses.

Keep a fighter nearby at all times to destroy an attempted early invasion rush. Sometimes one ship can protect multiple planets if they are close enough together and the ship is stratigically placed. If a planet is lost that early, then you must retake it immediately before the A.I. gets a chance to rebuild the population.

Not sure which defenses you are talking about: ships, defensive buildings, or starbases. But I generally do not start worrying about this until the mid to endgame. Planet tiles are too valuable to be used on defenses when there is no imminent threat, constructors are going toward mining resource starbases or other peaceful-type starbases. Ships are always there to some degree, but not enough to seriously defend a full attack until mid-game.

Thank you all for the comments. It's really helpful.

When I was talking about defenses I meant the starbases mostly. I mostly put starbases around the extent of my territory. Though in thinking lately I could also see just putting them where resources are and arming them... or also putting military starbases near key planet clusters so I need less ships to defend those planets throughout the game.

Starbases...quickly overpowered by fleets of ships. I rarely utilize them in a passive state. Depending on the situation I'll use Influence starbases. If I'm heavy into trade then I'll use econ starbases....but military starbases seem the least utilized by me.

That's just my preference though, others may have better experiences. For border and empire defense, I'll use ships. That way, if they get damaged, I have them fall back to a planet for quicker repairing and move the ship off the planet to replace it. I'll often have 2 or 3 lines of defense, keeping 2 of which in planetary orbit repairing during a long defensive war.

If I'm on the offensive, I'll pull all but 1 ship off of the planets, leave a line on my border to halt any counterstrikes and send the remaining in to take out the enemy. Sadly, this means I'll normally need a decently higher military rating than the AI unless my individual ships outclass the enemy in all respects.

My proper military however doesn't get enacted until, as Qui-Gon Jinn said, the first hostile action is prompted to me. This way you don't piss away funds you don't need to. This will often times lead to a more superior military than the opponent as your technology will be more advanced do to less military building time in the past.

Don't get me wrong, I'll have a military fluff fleet around to keep races from declaring war on me for as long as I can, but I wouldn't trust these ships with my life. I got for the best bang for my buck at that point, then worry about upgrading them to what I'll need come war time.

I always specialize every planet I have right from the beginning. If you read any of the strategy threads, this seems to be the overwhelming consensus of the optimal way to build.

I handle early game invasions, but not letting them happen to begin with. Dont let the transports make it to your world. I never fight a multiple front war, and almost always start a war on my terms and my time. Keep the galaxy in political chaos by inciting wars between your opponents. This will sow disension and occupy their military resources. I dont build any planetary defenses, but rather have strategically postioned fleets to intercept any interlopers. Id much rather have mobile defenders than static defenses. I almost never leave ships in orbit unless they are repairing.

Sentient species taste better...

I never start building any ships until the last moment. I want to see what everyone else is building and build my ships to hit their weaknesses.

After that, I always try to have one ship in orbit around each planet just to force the AI to send both an armed ship and transport. It makes a difference when there is a lot going on and you might not notice a transport flying in solo. These ships are all weapons and armor, nothing else since they never need to move.

I specialize my planets but I include a spaceport on all of them. This is because it takes too much effort to move around my defenders otherwise.

Either way works, specialized or generic. One thing you need to consider is the number of habitables in your game. If each race only has a few planets, then losing one is a big deal. In a gigantic/abundant game with max habitables, you can lose a number and not worry about it, even if they're specialized. I play mostly gig/abun so my comments are oriented toward that.


I like to take advantage of what a planet has to offer. Higher class planets are my military production workhorses. Lower class planets are my money makers, but that's not always the case. Bonus tiles can determine whether a planet goes production or economy. I build a few research planets as well, but not too many. A planet with a lot of research bonus tiles may get all labs and a tech capitol, Research Coordination Center (DA), or Omega Research Center.


Build the biggest hull fighters I can. I run a balance of engines, defenses, and weapons, but defenses are a lower priority until I have a lot of defense tech. In DL I fleet them. The battle system does not favor fleets in DA so I run them solo in that game. Transports are cheap throw-aways consisting of a cargo hull with nothing but engines and a transport module. I do escort them with fighters sometimes, but not fleeted. My transports are totally defenseless otherwise. They totally rely on speed.


I don't defend them. I give them up because for every one they get, I can use that firepower to take 3 of theirs. Also, I try to intercept enemy transports with fast fighters before they can do any damage. Eyes of the Universe and scout ships are key for this.


I don't. Like I said, I use that firepower for offense. The thing is, the AI is pretty slow about taking planets. I can pretty much waste them before they can take enough of my planets to really hurt me.

Good tips - thanks

Eyes on the Universe and scouts - good info - thanks

Good info for newb that I am.

One other note, I do avoid early wars by working the diplomacy and military ratings pretty hard. That allows me to fight on my terms. However in DA, playing with the Drath messes that up because they're always inciting wars against you. You either need to take the Drath out of the game or make a special effort to waste them as early as possible. You can also disable super abilities, but that takes a lot of fun out of the game.

Or simply don't play an evil race and make a special effort to setup trade routes and make treaties with the Drath and improve your diplomacy skill. The Drath seem to only incite wars against races that they don't like in my experience. If your careful not to piss them off and keep relations at least at neutral if not better, they'll incite wars against someone else instead. The main problem is that they never seem to like evil races, even if you attempt to kiss up to them.

Eyes of the Universe ----- I haven't used it in a long time. With it, it seems that you constantly have to monitor the galaxy so that the AI doesn't sneak up on you.

Instead, I've been using scouts built on a cargo hull containing decent engines and loaded to the gills with my best sensors. Park them between you and the AI in guard mode. They will light up much of the galaxy and come alive when an enemy comes into view. You get a positive early warning of any incoming AI and can back off your scouts while constantly monitoring their movements. Haven't lost any scouts yet and they are a cheap alternative to the Eys of the Universe. They don't cost any maintenance either since they are unarmed.

I don't see this as a "mutually exclusive" situation. I like EotU b/c it makes every ship, even a mini-freighter, a powerful scout. On big maps, that can save much time in finding resource nodes & choosing the best colony worlds. Plus, the minimap shows all ships in the galaxy, which can let you see where a potential enemy has most of their hulls regardless of where your scouts & other ships are.

But 10kLakes is right about the tricky tedium of *using* all that data you get from EotU. If I can, I always try to put a screen of guard vessels between me and any AI that I suspect has hostile intentions. With EotU, you can make this screen with your outdated small and tiny warships and if maintenance cost is a problem, you can upgrade them to a weapon-free design for their hull size and still get the max sensor range.

Another type of ship I've found to be useful ---

This baby normally sits well behind the enemy lines.

I normally build this on a small or medium hull (depending on galay size). Equip it with the smallest weapon you have. Add enough life support for the amount of penetration you want and (maybe) some sensors to warn you if the AI is sneaking up on you while you are in guard mode. Then load it up with maximum engines because you want this thing to move. You don't care what it costs since you do not need many of these ships.

Park it behind the AI lines in guard mode and wait till you go to war. When at war use it to knock out the enemy's mining bases, miners, freighters, unguarded troop ships and other unarmed ships and starbases. You'll be coming up from behind causing considerable damage and its maxed out engines will allow you to outrun most any enemy persuit. Then go to a quiet area and throw it back in guard mode when you run out of targets.

You can build this ship on a cargo hull but then you may not survive an encounter with an armed troop ship or constructor. Also, to prevent it from becoming obsolete you can upgrade the ship as you uncover new technology. Just remember that this is a specialty ship so do not even think of engaging AI combat ships.

On instance where this strategy will be of no use: if the AI's vote yes to the UP vote event calling on all ships to go to neutral territory at the outbreak of war. Then that ship will be magically teleported at the outbreak of hostilities.

Of course, if you are evil/isolationist and have left the UP, or this vote/event went the other way, or has not even occured...then all is good