Well for the TEC you want to focus on Economy very early in the game. trade ports are a second teir tech for them so you want to get that as soon as possible then after you have a thriving economy build up you military more. near the beginning just use The free capitalship and some cobalts to capture planets. that should give an advantage over everyone else.

and for the vassari
they are slower to start off becasue their ships are more expensive than the other to races. what I usually do is try to find an asteroid and send a few ravistra skirmishers to it and then send a colony frigate. then for the more defended planets as much as other people might disagree send a capital ship just the capital ship, usualy the best ones are the battleship and the bombing one. and you pretty much leave it there to destroy the other ships unless it gets seriously damaged then you should have a repair bay at your capital and you can fix it fast. once all of the militia is removed from the planet you can send your colony frigate and with the money that you have been saving up you can get the planet upgrades. you basically continue along this stratagie buying a few skirmishers and when you get the tech you get assilients and using two separate fleets to capture planets but other than that i don't have much more

I haven't played as the Advent yet, seeing I'm relatively new to SoaSE.

For the TEC, you should worry about how you gather your resources. Things in the TEC are averagely-priced, but sometimes I've seen people immediately buy big Cap ships and make them attack a planet alone, ultimately bringing them to a demise. The TEC are average in combat. But to answer your question, resource gathering is best for the TEC, since their vehicles aren't as powerful and you need to keep an eye on credit income.

The Vasari are probably one of the more expensive factions. They are not combat-worthy in my opinion. Most of their ships are support-types, and therefore you need to keep your credits, crystal and metal as high as possible. The first thing I usually do as a Vasari Commander is take over nearby crystal and metal asteroids, and use those resources later to buy more combat-worthy Frigates, Cruisers and Cap Ships. In the initial parts of the game, I would say spread to a planet or two, get as many resources as possible, then buy some good ships for protection.

That's just me though. Hope it helps

Most of their ships aren't good for dead-on attacks. Most of their Cap Ships are for supporting their frigates and cruisers.

overseers can heal? which ability is that, never noticed it before.

The Overseer doesn't really heal it gives a ship temporary hull. So if your cap is at 1000/3000 a couple overseers would boost your hull to like 2000/3000, they can do this over and over. The enemy kills temporary points, until the enemy is dead, then your cap drops back down to 1000/3000. Yes actual healing sounds a lot better, but repair ships are slow, while 10 overseers can make a cap unkillable temporarily.

I'm mostly a Vasari player myself. As I see it, there are two main reasons to play Vasari:

1. The Navigator's ability to take neutral extractors. When you consider that the main benefit of colonizing asteroids is that it allows you to build on extractors, and everyone always takes their asteroids, you see what an insane advantage this is. If you build enough Navigators (usually at least 3) and scout aggressively, you can gain the metal/crystal equivalent of 2 asteroids very quickly for a very low cost. Vasari requires you to pay a bit more attention to your scouts than the other races (it really hurts to lose a Navigator early), but the payoff is huge. Also note that you can take the extractors on gas giants and other neutral sites defended by pirates. Using shift-right click, order your Navigator to move back and forth across the system until it has enough antimatter to use the ability. Then use it, and repeat if necessary. The pirate ships aren't fast enough to catch it.

2. Long range frigates at tier one. Vasari can get its LRFs with only one research building, compared to two for TEC and three for Advent. Since LRFs pretty much dominate the game, this is a big deal.

If you're losing in the first 30 minutes, that's a bad sign, because Vasari should actually have an advantage early because of free extractors and quick LRFs. In fact, it's important to be aggressive and apply pressure to your opponent early. This is especially true if you're fighting Advent because in the long game his fleet will outclass yours.

My usual starting build is buy 100 crystal, upgrade homeworld, queue cap factory, crystal extractor, 2 scouts, Evacuator. As soon as resources become available I then queue a third scout and the 2 metal extractors. The scouts immediately go to explore and take any free extractors that are available. When the Evacuator finishes it goes to colonize the nearest asteroid. As soon as you have enough resources, build a Military Lab and start researching Assailants. Start pumping Assailants as you take any other asteroids/lightly defended terran/desert that are available. Once your scouts find the opponent, send your fleet his way.

Of course there are a lot of other ways to go, but this build is pretty solid and should put the pressure on your opponent right away. Good luck.

Noobs giving noobs advice.


Vasari econ not good? Slow starters? Uh, did their assailants get put as a Tier 4 tech while I wasn't looking or something, or are they still Tier 1? Sounds like they're pretty fast out the gate myself, especially since they're widely known as the "rushing civ".

Do yourself a favor and disregard most of the above posts about vasari. Am I being cocky? Yes. Am I going to give you better advice here in a minute than about 95% of whats above? Yes.


First off, the two very combat worthy (LOL) ships that Vas fields are the assailant and the enforcer. If your opponent is far enough away and/or you can get a feed from your teammates, I would typically recommend teching to enforcer as quick as possible and making a ton of those to start with, adding assailants after you have a number of enforcs (about 12-15). Enforcers counter Illuminators, the most spammed unit on ICO. They also provide a meatshield that absorbs damage while the assailants, which do awesome damage but are relatively frail, pick away at your enemies.

If your opponent is close, then tech assailants right away and try to put assailants at his worlds before he starts spamming his illuminators. Target the frigate factory first, and then the Hostilities. Usually you dump everything you have plus a little your buds have (AKA feeding) into assailant production so you can overwhelm him early.

Now med distance away is where you're sorta fucked as Vasari. The advent player will be able to tech illums before you get any functional number of enforcers out, and his illums will eat your assailants in 75% of the straight up battles. My advice? Make sure you have every neutral that you can get, expand as much as you can behind your home world so that he can't easily access your breadbasket, and build repair bays/turrets on your homeworld while spamming the crap out of assailants. Once you have a large blob of assailants, start teching up phase missiles, health upgrades, and Armor upgrades. Why? Because a 6 Armor assailant with as much HP as an enforcer and phase missiles at 20% or 30% will eat illums for breakfast, burp, and ask for more.



As far as vas combat strategy, the piper can't give away all the tricks. I doubt half of you guys care enough to do the stuff I do anyways, since it's very micro intensive and the payoff is relatively small in the grand scale of things. I will suggest that you leave your Evacuator, your first vasari cap 100% of the time, away from the battle unless you're taking down an enemy mothership. Why? Because you want the damned thing to get experience so that you can get drain planet so you have to leave it near the combat, but you don't want to lose it in 20 seconds, which is what seems to happen every time the egg is mixed with assailants right on the front line.