Anacreon Era 2 Gameplay Guide and FAQ

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Additional Guides & FAQ

The additional guides have been moved to the Beta II thread so that I only have to maintain one version of them.


Frequently-asked questions


Why does my game client crash when I press the little button in the upper left hand corner or if I try to zoom in on a moving fleet?

The button in the upper-left-hand corner creates a high-resolution image of the galactic map, but itonly works properly in some browsers. It takes a couple seconds and can cause problems on slower computers. It may work in Chrome, creating a popup which is usually autoblocked but can be seen by clicking "allow" in the upper-right-hand corner of the browser. It does not seem to work in Firefox or Internet Explorer (Thanks to Wayward Device for explaining how this works).

The game client crashing when zooming on a moving fleet is a known bug. It should rarely be a problem in normal play since there's no reason to zoom in on a moving fleet.


Why won't the game accept my inputs?

There is a short period every minute or so when the game client is getting information from the server and commands don't get acknowledged immediately. Just keep trying to enter your command until the game accepts it. There is also sometimes a slight (5-10 second) delay before changes to trade route designations and fleet travel paths show up on screen.


Why do my fleets and infantry keep shrinking?

You lose a small % of all units and most resources every watch- but so does everybody else. This is called "attrition". The only thing you can do is always be building more! Capital ships and some resources have a lower attrition rate. Notably, hexacarbide doesn't seem to undergo attrition at all. Very small fleets may not lose a unit every turn, but they still occasionally lose units and will eventually vanish completely. Attrition doesn't seem to be affected by whether a unit is stationed on a world or is part of a fleet.


I made a big fleet and I want to deploy ships out of it, but it says there "aren't enough transports in the destination." Usually I can split fleets easily. Why can't I deploy ships out of this fleet?

This results from a bug involving cargo mass. Transports have 20 kiloton capacity but some cargo is larger (e.g. exotroops are 25 kilotons, so they get split across multiple transports) or not a factor of 20. When a fleet undergoes attrition each period, both transports and cargo are usually lost, but not always at exactly the same rate. If the cargo mass can't be evenly divided you will not be able to split the fleet. Either bring a few dozen empty transports in every fleet or transfer everything to a friendly planet and deploy from that.


Can I play on a phone or tablet?

Maybe. Anacreon loads on some mobile devices, but the interface is crowded on small screens and the game doesn't recognize touchscreen commands like pinching to zoom. It will be harder to move fleets around without right-clicking, but you can use the "destination" button. The game might run slowly or have refresh issues on devices that don't have a lot of RAM or have slow processors.


Why did my capital stop producing ships?

If you increased your capital to TL 9 or higher, most or all of the ship classes that your capital can build will require chronimium. You don't have chronimium on your starting capital world, but you can't continue to build the low-tech ships that don't require it if the capital's TL is high. Import chronimium from a world that you have designated as a chronimium processor. (A world must be TL 7 or higher to refine chronimium), or destroy the quantum or post-industrial structure on your capital.

If you didn't increase your capitals TL, you may have changed your empire's doctrine. Strength & Honor doesn't build transports on the capital; Law & Order only builds special infantry; and Trade & Industry doesn't build anything! Change your doctrine back to Fire and Movement and don't even think about the other doctrines until you have a couple dozen worlds.


I designated a world as a jumpship yards, but it's only building explorers!

Your capital can build jumpship components at its Fleet HQ structure, but jumpship yards must have a trade route importing jumpship components from an autofac planet or a trade hub. You could drop off a million jumpdrives using transports but the yards still wouldn't build anything except explorers unless it had a trade route.

TL 9 and 10 jumpyards require chronimium for almost everything (except the Adamant-class, buildable at TL 9 but replaced by the chronimium-requiring Undine at TL 10) and they need to be importing from jumpship component autofacs that have high enough TL to build their required components. See the ship tables for information about what each ship requires; generally speaking generally each ship class requires components buildable the same TL.

Keep an eye on yards as they increase in tech, as they will automatically dedicate a % of their labor to new ship models as they become available - even if you don't want the new types. Manually adjust these %s to match what you want to build; don't let the game do it for you. If a yard can't get the components and resources that it needs, some or all of the labor dedicated to building ships will be wasted. You have guys in the yard on permanent coffee break unless your world is able to import all of the components and import or extract all of the resources needed to build ships in the apportioned ratios.

Starship and ramjet yards can always build gunships as long as they have the necessary resources, since gunships don't require any components. The same caution about auto-dedication of labor to new ship models applies, though. Starfrigates and starcruisers need components built at dedicated starship or ramjet autofacs.

Unlike yards, autofacs can still build low-TL components even at TL 10. This is true for every kind of autofac. Jumpship autofacs' light jumpdrives are also used by citadels to build jumpmissiles and starship autofacs' heavy missile launchers are also used to build battlestation planetary defense units on planets that have completed a battlestation program. Keep these additional component uses in mind when locating your autofac worlds, citadels, etc.


My jumpship autofac is producing a huge number of graviton launchers and pulling in too many resources!

This was a major bug that was recently fixed and you shouldn't see it occurring in normal gameplay. If you are having problems with overproduction, reply to this thread or reopen this ticket on Ministry.

This well-known bug happened with jumpship autofacs of TL 9 or 10. The autofac would sometimes try to produce -0.00001% graviton launchers, which causes an integer overflow that makes the jumpyard build something like 25500% graviton launchers.

This could only happen if the autofac is TL 9-10. There were a few workarounds:

Make sure you have at least one TL10 jumpyard importing from every jumpship autofac of TL 9 or 10 and make sure that some % of labor is allocated to building Undines, even if it's just 1%.

You may also see success if you prevent your high-TL autofacs from building any low-TL components (they should only build advanced jumpdrives and graviton launchers.) To achieve this, don't let your TL 9/10 jumpship autofacs export anything to any planet that is building Stingers, Reliants, Adamants or jumpmissiles; and don't let them export to any hub supplying such a world.

(Thanks to Stargazer and lazygun for identifying solutions to this bug.)


I built all defense structures to defend my planet, why aren't any of the defenses being built very fast?

Structures produce disproportionately more when a larger percentage of total labor is being dedicated to them. You can see this by changing the labor assigned to a defensive structure from 5% to 10% and reducing the labor assigned to a different defensive structure from 5% to zero. After a few minutes, more than twice as many defensive units will be getting built at the structure with 10% labor, and the absolute amount of labor being used by the structure will be more than twice as much as it was when you were building two types of defenses.

A planet's labor pool is not a fixed quantity; the fewer things your world is doing, the more labor will be available in total. This is why it makes sense to import resources from dedicated extractor planets rather than have every world extract its own resources. Likewise, it usually doesn't make sense to build small amounts of multiple kinds of defenses. Instead, focus on only building one or two kinds- or don't build any, and rely entirely on ships for defense.

Most defenses need hexacarbide and advanced defenses require chronimium, as well. If your planet doesn't have deposits of these or a trade route to a dedicated extractor planet, you can't build anything but GDMs. You can assign labor to other defenses but they won't get build; the labor will all be wasted. If your world isn't importing minerals, it will have to dedicate labor to extracting them, which will once again have a disproportionately negative impact on your planet's primary industry.


I imported tech from a foundation and the planet's tech level went too high!

By default, worlds try to go up to the same level as the foundation. It's not a good idea to raise a world's TL too fast, so click on the trade route once you've established it and change it to the desired tech level.

Foundations automatically raise their own tech level to match your capital's TL, unless their natural TL is higher than the capital's. If this is the case, the foundation's TL will remain higher, but will not supply TLs higher than the capital's TL.

If you try to import tech from more than one foundation, the planet's TL will increase super fast and to a higher TL than specified. This is a bug.


I'm supplying tech from a foundation but my worlds' TLs aren't increasing / my worlds actually lost TLs!

Check the foundation structure on your foundation world to make sure it's producing enough levels to supply all the planets. If it isn't, give it more labor by either reducing defense structure allocations, building habitat structures, or importing more resources.

Foundations won't uplift other planets above the capital's TL, and won't normally be able to uplift the imperial capital.

You'll usually have the opposite problem; your foundations will produce a bunch of extra TLs that aren't needed by surrounding worlds. Allocate labor to defenses until you're only generating a small surplus of tech. Remember: if an enemy captures your foundation, all the worlds it supports will slowly revert to their original TLs or TL 5, whichever is higher. Autonomous-designated worlds getting tech from a foundation will revert to their prior TL even if it was lower than TL5.

I'm not sure what determines the amount of time it takes a world to revert a level. Worlds at TL 10 seem to revert to TL 9 almost immediately, but going from TL 9 to TL 8 seems to take a lot longer.


I conquered a planet, why did it go into civil war so quickly?

Try bringing a couple thousand units of trillum with you when you conquer a world, or don't redesignate it immediately.

Populations require consumer goods: organic food, durable goods for planets at or above TL4, and luxuries for planets at or above TL 7. Independent worlds don't stockpile consumer goods; when you conquer a world, total efficiency drops and structures operate at reduced capacity for a couple of watches. Structures operating at reduced capacity will have small white % numbers below and to the left of the larger labor allocation percentages on their boxes. If you immediately redesignate a captured world, efficiency and operating capacities will drop even more.

If the planet's consumer goods autofac structure can't produce enough goods for a few turns, people will experience shortages of durable goods and luxuries; millions will die if there's an organic food shortage. You can import consumer goods through trade routes, but it will take a couple of minutes after assignment before a trade route works at full capacity. Consumer goods shortages hurt social order every turn they occur; bigger shortages have worse effects. TL may also drop to compensate, since people on lower-tech worlds require fewer consumer goods. Efficiency also takes a hit when people die. Shortages are most likely on worlds with trace trillum deposits, since the world will have to allocate a lot more of the available labor to mining trillum to run the autofac.

See the "Social Order" section of the guide for more info on civil wars.


I can't stop people from dying from life support/radiation meds/etc. shortages on a planet and I can't import them from another world!

You're probably experiencing a trillum shortage; your world isn't producing or importing enough trillum to run both the consumer goods autofac and the habitat structure that produces the needed survival resource. Survival goods can't be exchanged with trade routes. Import trillum with a trade route; if this isn't possible, drop some off with transports as a stopgap. Stop building defenses- they all consume trillum.

This can also happen occasionally at times when recently-conquered worlds are increasing in TL and/or population; they seem to produce barely enough survival goods to get by and even slight population increases can put them over the edge.

You can use transports to move survival goods from stockpiles on worlds of the same type to the world experiencing the shortfall; don't take too many!


I captured a world within 250 light-years of my new sector capital. Why can't give it any orders or change the designation?

It takes 24 hours after a sector capital is designated before it actually begins to project influence. Planets outside the influence zone of a capital can't be given orders (you can deploy or remove fleets and infantry, and any planet TL 5 or higher can be designated as a sector capital at any time, but that's it.) You can track the progress from the overview tab; you'll see a little clock that shows you how long until the capital will start operating. Sector capitals do start building special units immediately after being designated, so the 24 hour period won't be totally wasted.


What are jumpmissiles for? Why isn't my Citadel building any?

Citadels use light jumpdrives to build jumpmissiles. You need a trade route importing from a jumpship components autofac or from a trade hub that is importing from a jumpship components autofac.

Jumpmissiles are single-use weapons that are useful for attacking fleets of ships that move through their area of influence (a circle 200 LY in diameter). Jumpmissiles are the only weapon that can attack fleets that are moving through space. You normally have to order them to fire, but they will fire automatically against invading fleets. They are more effective when manually fired against moving fleets, since orbiting fleets seem to take fewer casualties and can intercept missiles if they contain ships with missile protection (like Stingers or Eldritches). Jumpmissiles are devastating if you can hit a moving jumpship fleet with them. Starship fleets move slowly enough that you will likely be able to catch incoming fleets in space if you log in every 24 hours or so.

When a citadel is invaded by an enemy fleet, the attacking fleet will destroy the jumpmissiles from orbit before landing transports; unlike planetary defenses, the jumpmissiles don't fire defensively at attacking ships. In an annoying bug(?), jumpmissiles can't be fired at all if a foreign fleet of any size is orbiting their citadel.


Exotroops are 40 times stronger than regular infantry and 10 times stronger than armored infantry! Why would I ever want to build anything BUT exotroops?

One infantry autofac can supply all the armored vehicles needed for one infantry academy building armored infantry. If the same academy is assigned to build nothing but exotroops, you'll need three or four infantry autofac planets in order to supply enough exoarmor (and you'll also need chronimium.) Unless your empire is enormous, you'll probably prefer to not need to dedicate this many planets to infantry production.

Exotroops are a little weaker than their stats make them appear, because other infantry types are less willing to surrender against them. This prolongs fights involving exotroops and results in fewer enemy units captured. This might be because a small force of exotroops inflicts fewer casualties per individual combat round than a larger force of infantry with the same ground forces strength (the exotroops also take fewer casualties since they're so well armored). Groups of more than 150 or so exotroops seem to be nearly immune to basic infantry and always beat them without taking any losses in my tests.


What good are starcruisers?

This is one of the Seven Mysteries of Anacreon, along with "Where do Mesophon ships come from?" and "How do you pronounce 'chtholon'?" Starcruisers are universally reviled - they are ruinously expensive, their high-damage missiles have no logical armored targets aside from other starcruisers, they do only slightly more damage than starfrigate cannons on paper and much less in actual battles (due to range issues and the effects of missile protection), and they are unable to cause any casualties against jumpships or starfrigates except in highly contrived situations.


I set up a trade route, but nothing is being exchanged!

Trade routes only move resources produced by the primary industry of a planet. Trillum extractors only export trillum, starship component autofacs only export starship components, etc. Yards, citadels, sector capitals and academies don't export anything (exception: under the Trade & Industry doctrine, your capital and sector capitals will turn into trade hubs). If you redesignated a world and have a huge stockpile of resources just sitting on it, you can use transports to move them to a world that can use them.

If your trade route is from a supplying planet and to a hub, you may be experiencing a bug. Trade hubs won't ever seem to import or export trillum properly if they're being supplied by only one extractor. Connecting a second trillum extractor resolves the problem. This may also happen with luxury goods and jumpship components.


I captured a world but it has a really low TL that isn't increasing.

All worlds in your empire <TL5 will increase in TL to TL5 (spacefaring) - but only after they have been given a designation. You may want to give a newly-conquered world a designation that requires a higher TL than the planet has. In this case, you will have to designate it as something else (consumer goods autofac is a safe choice) until it reaches TL5. It will suffer a temporary efficiency hit every time you give it a new designation, though. Alternately, you can leave the world as an independent world and import tech levels from a foundation if you have one within 50LY.


I captured a world but I can't import from it and the import/export range is really short!

To import resources from a world, you need to build a starport on it. You want starports on every world, since they increase import/export range with no downside. Starports can be built at TL5 and are completed in about 5 minutes.


My fleet can't find a path to the world that I want to send it to!

Starship fleets can't pass through nebulas and ramjet fleets can't leave nebulas. Ramjet fleets sometimes can't pass freely between light and dark nebulas, but it's hard to predict. If there's no straight path to a target, the game will consider a few alternate paths and then give up quickly, even if a complicated path exists that could get your ships where you want them to go. In this case, you may have to send your fleets to a closer world and then redirect them from there. Fleets can path through unexplored space to a known target unless the unexplored space contains rift zones; unexplored space containing a rift zone is impassable until it has been mapped. Rift zones interfere with pathing but are not an absolute barrier. Jumpship fleets are much better at finding paths through rift zones than ramjet fleets.


If my capital gets captured, which sector capital will become the new imperial capital?

I believe the first choice will be the established sector capital that has the highest space forces AND is TL7, TL8, or TL9 AND is connected to at least one trade route. If no sector capital meets all these criteria, another sector capital (such as one that is still building the administration structure or one that has an "inappropriate" TL) will be selected, but I don't know which criterion is most important.


Wayward Device's Diplomacy Guide
This section was written by Wayward Device, leader of the Republic of Reason

"The Comm-Burst is mightier than the Basilisk Cannon"- Nameless Rumourmonger

So, you've set out to build an empire to make the very stars tremble. You've read the facts and the figures, you know how to to set up your economy, what ships are worth making and what simple but devastating errors to avoid. Maybe you even have a plan for your star-straddling imperium, some cunning strategy nobody has thought of before or, better yet, maybe you begin things with an advantage, a giant remnant fleet under your command or a small pocket of independent worlds ripe for the taking. But when you start to look around the tiny portion of space surrounding your new homeworld a feeling of dread starts to seep in. You are surrounded on all sides by enormous empires that smother your chances for growth and could crush you like a toddler in a hydraulic ram if you tried to take what's theirs. What's a young upstart empire to do in an overcrowded galaxy?

Well, first of all, both giving up and trying to attack everything in sight have historically had a 0% success rate in establishing a galaxy-spanning empire. So put those plans aside for now. The first and most important thing to understand about diplomacy in Anacreon is that it slow game. This is also true for war and economics but particularly so for this catch all term Diplomacy under which we will discuss the rise and fall of empires and how they relate to each other. As of the writing of this guide, the game year is Cycle 4374, 353 real days since the server started running this version. A lot has happened and the galaxy is very, very full. And unless you happen to start a new empire at the same time as a server reset there is always going to be somebody out there with way more power than you. Probably many someones. Since I've already told you that giving up or trying to take on empires with many orders of magnitude more forces than you could hope to muster is out of the question, that means we are finally going to start getting to the point:

New Beginnings

Surrounded? Incredibly Weak? Massive Empires? Creeping Despair Feeling? Ok. Here's what you do. First, in the next few Cycles you probably won't be doing much epic space conquering. Maybe a little if things go well, but going full space Mongol is currently out of the question. For the purposes of this guide I will assume that you have had the worst possible start, say surrounded completely for hundreds of light years by the most powerful empire in the galaxy.

First, set you homeworld production to 25% Explorers, 25% Stinger Jumships, 25% Transports and 25% Infantry if it's not already. You won't be using to those Jumships, Transports or Infantry for a while but it's important to have them ready. Lucky people who haven't had the worst possible start and actually have some independent worlds next to their homeworld with low enough defenses to take, this is the bit where you take those and properly use them to your economic advantage.

Anyway, start sending out your Scouts in all directions in groups of 200. It can be a little boring but you need to do this until you have explored the whole galaxy. You don't have to go nuts and remove every fog of war hex but you do need to find as many empire Capitals as possible, especially those of the empires that surround you. Once you've found an empires capital you can send them a message by clicking on the capital, going to the Empire tab and clicking the Send Msg button on the right, pretty simple.

Assessing the Situation

As you start to get a rough picture of the galaxy and can send messages to the empires with any real power (I'm assuming you didn't just give up after only exploring a few thousand square light years) start asking them question and try and figure out what's up. Introduce yourself. Somewhere out there is a patch of worlds just right for you to expand into. It might be the empty space were an old empire has just collapsed, the remnant worlds captured in an ancient war, even a gift freely given by a larger established empire for reasons of their own. It doesn't matter how, you need to find the best likely candidate. It may not be perfect, you may even have to accept somewhere hundreds or even thousands of lightyears from your homeworld. But everybody has to start somewhere, so start asking people things. There are definitely going to be places that seem safe to expand into but are really are not. Some empires will hold claims over certain territories and be aggressive about it and most established empires will be quiet annoyed if you take a world that they use that happened to rebel while they were sleeping.

Why would anyone help me?

Well, there are a multitude of reasons. Empires die all the time, as much to players getting bored and quitting as to war or economic disaster. Some players are in it for the long haul though and often want to keep up friendly relations with empires that might potentially visit them with a few million ships in 30 or 40 cycles time. Maybe they need fresh blood to keep their alliance strong. Maybe they want a puppet state to act as a spy for them. Doesn't matter. You need to find out what people are offering and take whatever you can get.

The Might Lord of Two Dozen Worlds

So you've arrived. Nearly 50 billion people call you emperor (well, except those pesky rebels, damn them!). You've got a jumship world and a starship world, even some dedicated ground forces production! But you're still weak on the galactic scale and can't take on anybody with something you actually want. Sure, you can laugh at the small one world empires, but you know in your heart that you are barely better than they. So kept up the diplomacy. By now you should have a good picture of the current state of the galaxy and have some resources to actually take advantage of a fortunate situation. Cultivating your diplomatic ties will also help you know when an opportunity to expand happens. It's one thing to join the scrabble for independent worlds when an established empire abdicates and another to find out that your invincible neighbor has been weakened by a recent war and couldn't stop you pushing their borders.

A Great Emperor This Way Comes

So you're a power now, a real one. A million swift jumships answer to your command, legions of soldiers shout your name, zappy shooty space guns without number (ok, with quiet a big number) protect your worlds. I knew I could write a good guide.

Now, if you want, you can rampage across the galaxy with fire and explosions and megadeaths and all that stuff. Or you could forge your own alliances, seek to corrupt galactic institutions, raise up fledgling empires as your puppet spy false flag minions, seek to promote peace and harmony in the galaxy, try to ban the use of jumships, try to get empires to agree to a naming convention for different types of world, spread rumours and lies that leads to a war that engulfs the galaxy, create your own galactic institutions or, you know, whatever.

Anacreon is what you make it to be. One thing is for certain, treating it like an rts instead of a grand strategy with real opponents will leave you bored pretty fast.

[sun1404]

Are missile weapons too weak? I captured a level 7 world with so much hypersonic missile sites that their power exceeded my 20,000 stingers by a lot. The world was captured pretty quickly while my fleet suffered about 5% loss.

On that note, are jump cruisers useless? From what I can see, most high-tech defenses and ships are missiles-based. Jump cruisers and other ships without missile defenses would be at a major disadvantage to the jumpships and other ships with missile defenses when fighting high-tech worlds. Even the Undines, the best jump cruisers, don't have any missile defense and use missiles themself. I would predict them to lose against Stingers of equal number.

[pensaer]

I still have problems to counter civil wars or make factories
why can't they change the reputation system or just remove it
wouldn't make me burn from the game 2 months ago

[pensaer]

still have a question: when i quit anacreon I had 10-15 worlds and this is how my empire looked like:
4 food 3 tritium 2 chromium 1 hexacarbite and 1 infantry + foundation + starship factory
what's the perfect designations to begin an empire because I think my one sucked (excually I was still learning the game)
do I have to conquer a lot of worlds for food and tritium or do I go for starship and infantry
i had a lot of food and luxury problems and i couldn't make trade routes very well
I don't know why but when i made a trade route I would get other problems like i don't know
can anybody help me please

[darkMATTER]

still have a question: when i quit anacreon I had 10-15 worlds and this is how my empire looked like:
4 food 3 tritium 2 chromium 1 hexacarbite and 1 infantry + foundation + starship factory
what's the perfect designations to begin an empire because I think my one sucked (excually I was still learning the game)
do I have to conquer a lot of worlds for food and tritium or do I go for starship and infantry
i had a lot of food and luxury problems and i couldn't make trade routes very well
I don't know why but when i made a trade route I would get other problems like i don't know
can anybody help me please

Hi Pensear,

I am sure people might have different suggestions / strategies on this point, but I will offer you mine. When you the start the game your really need to start building ships [actually that's the goal the entire time] - but I suggest you start by making your capital far more efficient - since it is already building ships/infantry. If you examine it’s structure tabs - you are likely to find something such as follows:
FleetHQ: 10 %
Jumpship autofac: 10%
Consumergoods: 32%
Trillium extractor: 28%
Hexacarbide: 10%
GDMs: 5%
HEL Cannon: 5%
(I am just guessing at the exact percentages / every planet would be somewhat different).

So you need your base to stop building its own autofac, consumer goods, hexacarbide and trilium. The quickest way is to first conquer a planet with major or abundant trillium and then designate it as a trillium world. Get your HQ to start importing from that planet. Watch as your trillium extractor percentages goes down and fleetHQ percentage goes up [click on FLeet HQ and you can see the exact number of ships your planet is making - you can also adjust those percentages and build the ships u prefer - for example set the vanguard explore production to zero, which will increase production of other ship types].

Then conquer another planet (hopefully with a decent population size) and designate it as a consumergoods planet [ideally you will want it to advance to biotech so it can also produce and export luxeries that your HQ and all biotech planets require]. Get your HQ to import from there, but also make sure your consumegoods planet is importing trillium and the trillium planet is importing consumergoods. Then just keep expanding your empire from there. Build a hexcarbide planet and a jumpauto fac - that export to HQ. And make sure they import trillium and consumer goods.

You really need to look at production levels of all your planets and their percentages for each production. A trillium planet might be able to support 5-10 other planets with trillium (but that depends on how much trillium it can produce as well as the needs of the planets its supporting - and those numbers are not static - they change as population increases and as the planet gets more effecient - for example as your Fleet HQ percentage increases - it is likely going to consume a lot more hexacarbide and trillium.

The goal in my mind - is your want a planet that produces ships - to have all its production building ships - have other planets specialize in builing and exporting the resources it needs.

In response to your other questions. I don’t think you need to build infantry or starship base right off. Startships are too slow for early expansion and your HQ will build enough infantry once it starts importing all the raw resources it needs [once your empire has expanded say beyond 10 or so worlds, then maybe look at designating those types of production]. Personally I like to have lots of food and trillium planets, as I like to ensure I easily have enough excess supplies to support all my planets, their future population and efficiency increases, and future expansion.

Trade Routes are tricky to get the hang of. Again, you really need to look at each planet connected to a trade route and understand what it is producing vs consuming. Production - consumption = surplus (export). If you make a trade route, your planet will export its surplus, but if you connected it too many planets (or possibly even one planet) demand can easily outstrip supply. This can lead to problems, for example if planet A has been importing all of it consumergoods / durable goods / luxuries from planet B and then you add planet C to also start importing from planet B; planet B may not produce enough for both planet A and C. Planet A will therefore need to adjust its own production to make up for the short fall. However, there will be a delay to make that adjustment, and likely a watch or two will go by before Planet A can make up for the shortfall in resources and therefore will likely experience starvation or unrest due to a lack of resources. Not a big deal if it happens once. But once trade routes get much more complicated and interconnected, it needs to remain stable. If the trade between planets is constantly in flux and unstable, planets will continually be readjusting their production for various resources, and you will keep getting shortfalls, which eventually lead to massive starvation / rebellion.

Hope it helps. I am sure someone else it can explain it much clear than I. I am still on my first cup of coffee this morning, so my thoughts are a bit jumbled - but wanted to at least try to answer your question. I hope you keep playing!

[Dorne]

Good advice!

My best rule of thumb when it comes to trade worlds is to never import consumer planet goods*. Just use it for trillum, hexacarbide, autofac stuff, chromium, aetherium, chotholon. It'll save you in the long run, especially the morning after. Don't want to see people starving when comsumption outpaces imports.

*You can still do it but know what you are doing first. Make sure that imports are more than sufficient.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

The strategy I've been trying to run everything through trade hubs and as a result I've needed a lot of worlds dedicated to making consumer goods. I'm running a very high tech empire. This seems to require a ton of tweaking, so I'm not sure I would do it again if I were starting from scratch (too late now, though!). It's probably a stronger strategy when there isn't anywhere to expand, but since there are still plenty of unconquered worlds (at least until Dorne gets to them) it's probably not the best one to pursue from the get-go.

Dorne, if you take all the planets there won't be anywhere for new players to grow into . I know that you haven't launched unprovoked attacks against your neighbors (unlike me), but I'm concerned that when new players see the size and contiguity of your empire (an entire sector with only one player in it that grows by dozens of worlds a day), they assume the worst.

[Dorne]

but I'm concerned that when new players see the size and contiguity of your empire (an entire sector with only one player in it that grows by dozens of worlds a day), they assume the worst.

As they should.

[sun1404]

but I'm concerned that when new players see the size and contiguity of your empire (an entire sector with only one player in it that grows by dozens of worlds a day), they assume the worst.

As they should.

You are getting consumed by the Dark Side...

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Are missile weapons too weak? I captured a level 7 world with so much hypersonic missile sites that their power exceeded my 20,000 stingers by a lot. The world was captured pretty quickly while my fleet suffered about 5% loss.

On that note, are jump cruisers useless? From what I can see, most high-tech defenses and ships are missiles-based. Jump cruisers and other ships without missile defenses would be at a major disadvantage to the jumpships and other ships with missile defenses when fighting high-tech worlds. Even the Undines, the best jump cruisers, don't have any missile defense and use missiles themself. I would predict them to lose against Stingers of equal number.

Sorry for not seeing this and responding to it sooner.

Anyway, I think the effectiveness of missile defense is intended to encourage mixed fleet tactics. A fleet that consists only of ships with missile weapons won't be effective at all against big groups of jumpships with missile defense, true- but missiles are much more effective against certain kinds of strong defenses and ships: gunships and plasma cannons in particular eat jumpships alive. Defending planets exclusively with missiles is not practical, but it's difficult to defend planets against gunship attack without them; likewise, I suspect that it isn't easy to amass enough jumpships to attack a highly-developed planet.

Distributing industry evenly between defenses results in weaker total defense against mixed fleets, so you have to match your defenses to the kind of attacks you are anticipating. Worlds deep in your empire get autocannons or hypersonic missiles and plasma towers, while worlds near other players get mostly armored satellites and battlestations, .

Note: This is old advice and has been mostly disproven.

[sun1404]

I've tried mixed fleet many times myself, and I always see them get destroyed by mixed defenses. For some reason, ships with missile defense would engage cannons, and ships without missile defense would mostly engage missile sites. I guess this is because they want to destroy the defenses that threaten them the most, but they should realize that they have allies more suited to the task. Even better would be to have formation options before each battle, so we can, for example, get missile-defense equipped ships to fly right above the heavy armored ships so the heavy ones would take the blunt of the attacks but still get defenses from the ships above them. My fleets never go the way I want them to, and I can't micro control them one squadron at a time fast enough, so mostly I just look at the planet's defense scheme, if it's missiles-heavy, I throw in a lot of missile-defended ships and if it's cannon-heavy, I throw in a lot of cruisers.

[MaxCPP]

If the enemy doesn't have any sector capitals, it appears that some other world (jumpyards?) will be picked to be the new capital; I'm not sure how this can be predicted.

I have never seen that.

In some cases taking an empire's capital might destroy the empire entirely, without any worlds defecting. This is based on observations of other players' wars, as I have never had it happen in any of mine.

In my experience, empire is destroyed if their capital is taken and no sector capitals is left.

Your war can stagnate or end when one combatant's imperial might drops below around 50% of the other's. This seems prevents further planetary conquests by the stronger player, but the weaker can continue to fight if they want. It may be possible to retake captured worlds from weaker players, however, or to take planets if the enemy is attacking yours. More research is needed. Alternately, the belligerents can just stop attacking one another.

If weaker empire attacks, the stronger one can attack its worlds and conquer them without any penalty for some time. I don't know definitely how long, i think it's one day. But it's enough to destroy other empire using jumpships if it is small enough.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

If the enemy doesn't have any sector capitals, it appears that some other world (jumpyards?) will be picked to be the new capital; I'm not sure how this can be predicted.

I have never seen that.

I think you're right. I'll fix it, thanks.

If weaker empire attacks, the stronger one can attack its worlds and conquer them without any penalty for some time. I don't know definitely how long, i think it's one day. But it's enough to destroy other empire using jumpships if it is small enough.

I'm still not sure if there is a distinction between attacking planets and attacking fleets, or any way to tell if you're "allowed" to attack somebody or not.

[MaxCPP]

I've discovered that imperial might is percent ratio of selected empire's population relative to yours. That means if selected empire have 50% population of your empire, it's imperial might is 50. One empire can attack another without penalty if target's imperial might >50 OR the attacker had been attacked by that empire recently.

In my previous game in Beta, I had been attacked by Mondo. After I recovered my shipyards, I had conquered most of enemy's planets and it's imperial might was <50. There wasn't any penalty. That means if for example 60 imperial might empire is attacked and it fights back, it actually permits its full destruction.

About how that war ended. It's ally (Confederacy of the Worlds) started a new war with me. External reasons (preparation for exams) forced me to abdicate.

[Datal]

I just wonder why George didn't make such FAQ\Answers and questions thread long time ago. Basically he is the creator of the game.
You know, without this thread the game is pretty hard.