the reason the ai may have a bigger fleet then you is because they researched their fleet logistics. This allows them more fleet capacity thus increasing the amount of ships they can have. I believe this is the 3rd button tab on the research tree. Once you are in the fleet logistics tab you want to go to the bottom research queue and that is where you can increase the fleet capacity. The top on is for your capital ships. Also it will appear dull in color until you have the required resources to purchase the upgrade. So if you move your cursor over the icon it will display the approperiate materials needed.

Thanks for replies everyone.

Yeah, I played a game for the last, I dunno, 2 hours on a 7 planet map. Unfortunately, I had pirates 'on'. It wasn't that big of a deal to defend against them. Within time, I had a fleet that could take them out really well.

Unfortunately, just as the 3rd pirate wave came, the enemy sent their entire fleet in on another planet of mine (my capital). So, that friggin sucked. I eventually took care of the pirates and scared the enemy, but I got tired of fending out attacks on both fronts. I'm just not skilled at that yet when my main goal is to learn what everything does and win a game so I get a feel for everything.

After awhile I was getting the hang of things... but I noticed credits really come in slow. I spent a lot of my time 'waiting' for something to happen. The big problem was that I wanted to take out the stupid pirate fleet, and I needed more ships and research to do it.

I'll keep playing. I wish the game wasn't so 'hardcore'. It's a great engine and design... just not much put in a functional tutorial. WC3's tutorial was basically the entire human campaign, and even then they had 'tutorial' missions throughout. That's a good way to do it. It just seems like the game throws everything at you all at once ;(

Tech strategy varies by map. If you are playing a very big map you might aswell research everything, always having your research going because if you build up your empire and then decide to research, you won't have the time

Use Trade Ports to generate Credits. Don't forget to upgrade your Population Cap(The top left upgrade) ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU GET A NEW PLANET/ASTEROID. If you don't upgrade the pop by atleast one on recently colonized planets, then they drain your overall credit income.

Try and get Trade Ports at every planet, to make a big chain. The bigger the chain, the more credit per port.

Thanks everyone.

I played another game with 20 planets and I started upgrading the population limits on them (and also upgraded the research). I didn't upgraded my military much, but I built a lot of frigates and a colony capital ship. This strategy worked much better, even though all the planets were volcanic or ice. I finished the game with 150,000 credits and lots of resources

I did make trade centers too, but I don't I needed to. Still, it was a lot easier to win making 44 creds/sec

I'll play some more on easy to get a feel for the right order to build things. More questions to come I'm sure

Hi everyone. Reading all this sure sounds familiar - lol. There is one other thing i found to make things move along. When your at a slow point in the game use the plus key to increase your update rate. It really makes it click the credits. Each push increases up 2X,4X,6X to 8X. Then when you get caught in a bounty war or multiple attacks pushing the minus key to slow back down, again each push goes down by 2X. Hope this helps.

SIN on  

...Advent are not better than any other race. In fact, they're the least played. It's a pretty balanced game, really. I've seen TEC demolished Advent. I've seen every race be demolished and demolish the other races. Sure, there's player skill, but none is better than the other.

experiment with the different ai settings too, there are different ai personalities you should look at:
aggressor, fortifier, economist, researcher etc, I found that the normal fortifier was good for me, because they dont attack until later on but they become tough to break, which makes for a good game, the aggressor function can be annoying as they attack early on which keeps catching me by surprise, ofc you could be hardcore and put it on random

Also research your crystal income techs, as crystal is what seems to be in shortage early on, trade ports are friggin sexy, i had over 60credits per second from my ports in one game, then whatever extra from tax, as soon as you start your game the first thing to build for me is always a cap ship factory and then build your free cap ship of your choice, send it out with like 5 frigates and start clearing out neutral planets so you can cap em quick.

When you load your game and get to the screen where it shows the different teams (you and however many AI players there are), the last button in each team row is the AI difficulty. Explanation is on pages 10 & 11 of the manual.

Well, I think Advent does have big enough early game disadvantages to make them difficult to use in multi player (1.04 patch is addressing those issues). However, once Advent gets up a head of steam and gets moving they are hard as hell to stop. Excellent capital ship abilities and, IMO, the best bang for buck as far as heavy cruisers in this game go.

I would think something (that others have touched on) is that you need to be able to multitask in this game.

For example, when you get into a fight, don't micromanage the fight, try not to watch the fight (even though they are fun to watch)... instead go improve a planet or scout out a planet you've not been to, or build some more ships.

The AI in this game fights well - both for you and the baddies.

Don't click several things to research or build and then sit around and wait for them to complete... again, instead go improve a planet or scout out a planet you've not been to, or build some more ships.

I've found that it's really a bad idea just to find yourself sitting around waiting for something to happen. I can guarantee that if you do this a lot, eventually something will most defintely happen, and most likely it's going to be something you don't want to happen.

I understand when you're new to the game and don't have a clue as to what needs to be done... this happens to everyone when they start. The learning process sometimes presents a steep learning curve for some.

There are many posts here that cover several methods of getting started. Find one or two (or more) that you like, print them out and use those as cheat sheets. Make notes on them as to what buttons/keys and etc. you need to click or press to do the task at hand.

Soon, you will find your own best beginning strategy and ways to multitask in the game. Your own version of getting started will eventually become a habit, and you won't need your cheat sheets anymore.

This game seems to develop slow enough that you don't have to hurry hurry hurry... but you DO need to keep busy... at least until you've got enough of an empire that is fairly well along the path to your personal happiness.

One final thing I've found that works for me. If you find yourself sitting there with "nothing to do" or need to decide "which thing you want to do" -- pause the game (i.e. press the "Menu" button at the top of the screen) and take a moment or two to think about it. Then after you've decided your course of action, go back to the game and go for it.

Best of Luck and Best Regards to all...

WC

Here is a good way to learn. I get my home planet fully upgraded and very well defended. Get a few outter planets set up as well. Once this is set up with credits and resources rolling in, save it, let it continue runnin and goto bed. Or even let it go in background while doing other things. By the time you wake up you will have lots of resources and credits to wipe out the AI. If you happen to have been defeated, just goto load game and reload the autosave(I like this feature). Keep going down until you find one that you are still alive in. This will help you to learn which upgrades will work better in the start game.

Note: This works best with easy AI, going normal or above they turn you to space dust to soon to be worth it.....

Coilshot