You have to find a build sequence that optimizes the use of every single credit, and every unit of metal and crystal for about the first 10-20 minutes. Even thereafter it will be very tight for most of the game. There really is no means to save up for pirate bounty and keep up militarily or expand properly in advent, and if you play against better players you will almost always lose the game if you waste money on pirates at the start while playing advent.
Advent is about knowing what is important to build and what is not. Without a tight control and streamlining of your budget you will lose. That scarcity of resources is also why capturable asteroids are almost essential to get a slight edge playing advent. Unfortunately, advent is about the worst civ to play to capture and hold capturable asteroids. You could write an entire thread with the convoluted strategies for getting them as advent because it is so much more difficult and expensive.
Of course, another player could feed you, but then they would get behind, so it is better just to properly spend every single bit of resource in the opening minutes of the game on just the essentials of either illums if you are doing a very fast rush, or trade ports if you want to build a more robust econ first. This advice is true for most maps because, unless you are on a huge multiplayer map, most maps will place you within 2 to 3 jumps from an enemy. Most games therefore are rush or nearly rush games.
If you build trade ports first, (going civic first), then it will take you 10 extra minutes before you produce your first illuminator. If you go straight to illuminators your first illum will begin at the 10 min mark, and the 20 min mark if you go trade ports first. That means you will only have disciples to help defend the first pirate attack if you go for trade ports first. If you go illums first, defending the first wave of pirates is trivial since you will have illums coming out as they come in. Therefore you also need to use the map chokepoints to help direct pirate attacks, and grab a dead asteroid or regular one nearest the pirate base. Often, just by forcing pirate attacks on such a chokepoint, then fortifying the chokepoint with a few beam defense guns is all you need to survive a pirate attack... that allows you to continue expanding or even launching an attack against your enemy during a pirate attack. Let your enemy waste his money on pirates. You need to spend resources on structures, planet upgrades, or ships only.
Later in the game, if you streamlined and optimized at the start, resource and credit flow usually gets a little easier, but if you failed to do it at the start, you will almost always lose unless your opponent is a beginner.
