Extremly noobish question

An small area that the enemy has to go through to get to the rest of your base/empire/etc., and are usually well guarded because of that fact.

If a place is heavly gaurded and is a chock point then is it a chock point and a stronghold?

Chokepoints are areas you know there will be fighting occuring sooner or later. Thats why players turn in strongholds, or at least put some repair bays on it.

A chokepoint can be permanent (ie entanglement to another portion of a system, or planets with direct phase lane to the sun) or for a short time (ie frontline planets, once you take the planet you may scuttle the uneeded defenses and build them on next world).

There can be pirates chokepoints too, usually the nearest planet near pirates base. But they target the nearest juicy planet so it may be wise to add a couple more trade centers on those planets to make it more attractive for pirates. Build tons of hangars, bunch of repair bays and a few well situed turrets and pirates will break their teeth on those. Add a freshly build cap ship in the battle, and you'll get free xp, since pirates are pretty dumb and tend to target trade ships first.

To make a strong chokepoint, added to any "static" defences, you better build at least 2 frigs factories and at least 1 culture center, in order to quick building reinforcements in, and to get the racial cultural bonus. A phase inhibitor may be nice too, especially against ai who will flee if the odds turns in their defavor.

Needless to say that a small fleet of LRM is very welcome when things are quiet (5-10, depending how stade of the game you are), so if a surprise attack occurs, you wont get caught your pant down , and a few (2-4) support cruisers (hoshiro, guardians (with repulse if possible), overseers/subverteers, mainly) too.

A chokepoint main purpose is to stall an ennemy attack, but human players may try to skip this planet so thats why phase inhibitors come in, and are rarely seen in MP gaming (at least like strongholds with tons of static defenses).

Dont forget to create rally points for any frig factories from nearby planets to the chokepoint, if needed.

Choke points by my definition are where the phase lanes lead to a few key planets, which then must be visited by an enemy in order to reach the rest of your planets. These are then heavily defended so that the enemy cannot pass.

By this definition, choke points occur mainly in games with the fewest phase lanes. For example, you could have a 100 planet system, where only 4 phase lanes lead from the sun, and each of these arms contains about 25 planets that are mainly connected with only a single phase lane, and occasionally the arm branches at planets with 2 lanes. But none of these branches then connects back anywhere else.

In this sort of example, the planet nearest the sun on each arm is a choke point, and as long as you can defend and hold it, then all the planets behind it are yours and never need defending. If you have an enemy in that arm of the system, then the planet that leads direct to their space is also a choke point, at least until you take them out.

Most of the maps that are provided with the game, as far as I can see, contain few true choke points. Most of them have multiple ways of attacking any group of planets, and as such, there is no way of choking an enemy out other than building defenses on most planets.

The true choke points are where you build a defended planet, and hold them, which stops all enemies from even exploring your space.

The best choke points are usually far from your starting point, and if you get there first, they guarentee you a large area of space thats free from attack.

Note though, if your playing with pirates active, this somewhat negates having a choke point since they defy all common sense and gate in from nowhere.

If your playing a game with maximum phase lanes, the chances are, there will not be a choke point anywhere on the map, or if there is, it will only guard a couple of planets. The true choke point will guard 10-50 planets.

Most of the random maps I've seen so far dont really have any.

In my little happy world These are chokepoints:

Important areas on the map. Say, a neutral planet between your Empire and another's. It's a planet you fight to the death for. You send a big fleet there, same for the enemy. Basically, you'll stop at nothing for that planet.

If it's your planet, this is what a chokepoint is:

Planets your enemy has recently been attacking.  You should build a lot of light frigates (depending on which race, the average is about 40-50, maybe more) and two or three capital ships. Repair bays would make it easier to hold, and putting a few Turrets in there would make it a challenge.

Finally, if it's an enemy planet, build several large fleets. If you can, attack it from different directions at once. Keep the pressure up and keep pumping out reinforcements. Once it's yours, quickly upgrade it.