I suck at this game....

treat Sins as a matter of study....

=O= understaning can't be without time....

Don't give up! I'm serious. The best advice I can give you is play Random Map and learn from the things that your opponent does. That's where I got my small amount of tactics, like sending out the Pirate fleet to attack them, while you attack a different location. Forcing them to either split their fleet, or focus with only one side (usually being the Pirates side).

Just stick with it. When you think you're going to lose, you can always go back, think about the board position and what you can do to fix it. That's how you get better. Learn from your mistakes so you become better equipped to fight against the enemy.

After a week, I finally won my first battle on Small Random Map. Took a total of seven hours but I did it. You can too.

I agree with Nilix. Small maps (with pirates) and take your time. Send the pirates after your opponent whenever you can afford it. Utilize choke point planets to build up your fleet and use the other planets to build up your empires infrastructure (economy and research). With the pirates pounding the enemy, they should be softened up enough for you to easily deal with them. Doing a few maps like this will help you get a feel for whatever race you're fond of playing and you'll start to learn what works and what doesn't. Then play maps without pirates and see how well you can do. First map I ever played lasted 6 hours, but I won in the end. Last map took only 3 hours. Pratice, practice, practice.

Have you tried locking teams? This way you can cause a free-for-all where the AI cannot gang up on you. You can also set custom teams so that one or multiple AI's can play on your team without abandoning you or giving you pesky missions.

Just do 1v1, on one of the small maps, easy difficulty, and use pause a lot (so you can mouse over all the structures and items to figure out what they do). Make sure you send the pirates after your opponent and that should weaken them big-time.

-HM

dont give up. this game is truly awsome... you will get the hang of it.
there are several groups forming around the game that if you join them will help you to learn the game better and allow you the opertunity to play with people on the same level as you as well as better then you to assist you in learning. Just go look in the clan section of the site.

Well, its good to know that I'm not the only one having a tough time with this. I love playing Civ games and do well with those type of games. I've been playing small and medium randome as well as a few scenarios, but so far i've gotten my ass kicked.

I keep coming back to the forum to get ideas and then go back to the game. Boy this
is a big learning curve. I can expand to about 3 to 4 planets, before I get hit by someone. Pretty soon, it Capital ship vs. Capital ship. I've had some luck with a new Capital ship level 1 taking out a few lvl 5 and 6 ships. Now thats a good fight.

Ok, can't wait to see more info about surviving the onslaught of attacks.

I suck at this game too. 2 hours, I'm dead, on a small random map with pirates. I keep reading that the AI is stupid and too easy, but on normal difficulty the single opponent is building 3 or 4 times as many ships as me.

I don't have the resources to build the ships they have. They have cruisers in the first 10 minutes of the game, and I don't get them until an hour in, if I'm lucky. They attack with 40 or 50 ships, and I don't have that many in my whole fleet. With 14 planets to split, I get 5 and the AI gets 9.

Between the constant pirate raids that seem to hurt me and not the AI, and the giant rushes of AI ships, I get nowhere.

The screwy thing is, if I set the opponent to easy, it's a cakewalk. There's no challenge at all. Normal is beyond me.

Right now, I'm not that happy with the learning curve of this game. It goes from boring easy to impossible so quickly I can't keep up.

-Do the tutorials.

-Manuals location, C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\Sins of a Solar Empire

-Don't have more then 2 planets with negative income at any one time, you increase their income with the infrastructure upgrade IIRC (it increases the population).

-You can view you credit/metal/crystal income by holding your courser over the boxes showing how much you currently have.

-Research whatever you are lacking, but not to the extent that you are low on ships in the early game.

-You have to upgrade your fleet logistics to be able to field more ships at any one time, but this will reduce your income by a increasing percentage.

-Make sure you know how to research (covering basics).

-Expand towards choke points to make defense easier.

-All caps is not a good idea.

-Build trade ports at each planet in a chain (gravity wells you can not colonize do not count) to increase credit income. The longer the chain the more credits you will make, you view the chain by putting your cursor over the box showing how much credits you currently have.

-Look at the damage type and armor type of each ship to figure out what you require.

-Small random map with easy AI is probably the best way to start off. You can turtle up and take your time.

-ALWAYS bribe the pirates to attack someone else (tab next to research, pirate raids are on a timer you can view there).

-Build scouts and set to auto-explore to quickly see where everything is on the map.

-Your first capital ship is FREE, you just need to build the capital ship yard.

If the tutorials are not working properly (you do not see any text) update to the latest version (v1.02) or switch to the 1024x768 resolution to fix this, you do not need to keep the resolution on 1024x768 to play the game (unpatched) outside the tutorial.