Locked teams doesnt let them break alliances right?? Also, I know in diplomacy it says you can give missions (With the upgrades diplomatically) and then give them attack missions as such, but one of the upgrades said you can ask for credits and crystal just like they do and I couldnt figure out how to do it, the only missions it would let me offer were attack planets and ships missions, even though I had the upgrade.
Yeah, with locked teams, whatever teams you specify during game set-up are permanent: each team will always be at war with every other team, and the alliance is unbreakable.
As for asking for donations: someone in some other thread said that the AI has to research the ability to give credits and resources before you can send them a mission to donate credits or resources.
And as far as the pirates go, I just always made sure I offered more credits on the table to keep them on someone else.
If you can keep on top of it, pirates can provide a great hindrance to early-game non-hard AIs and give you more breathing time for expansion and colonization before you have to fight.
I knew starbases were king, but I had this nasty habit of dropping a starbase at EVERY planet I colonized
Starbases cost a LOT and are only really needed at your front lines, except after the 45 minute mark or so when you've (hopefully) maxed out on logistics slots and trade ports, at which point you can think about building starbases elsewhere so you can get the trade upgrades.
I think my problem was I didnt scout enough, I'd always stagnate at about 5 planets in because thats as far as Id scout, then Id see the phase lane lines coming off my outer most planet, realize I can get hit from the side, so I build a starbase and as much defense there as I could, Im going to try to colonize as fast as possible now as well as scout and see how that goes.
One expensive, inefficient, but hassle-free way to solve this is to have 3 scouts or so go exploring (right-click their Explore ability) and they'll automatically scout out unknown gravity wells. One scout will almost surely die to the pirate planet, but the other two will probably be able to map the rest of the star system for you, without any micromanagement on your part.
The better players scout manually, but if you're busy with other commands, having scouts auto-explore is one solution.
Colonizing as fast as possible (correction: colonizing a choke point close to the enemy as fast as possible) is a key to winning. The better players can colonize a new planet every 3 minutes or so, from the start of the game up until they have 5-6 planets.
Any other strategies as far as economy goes?? I mean I do level my Civillian up all the way asap when I colonize, then logistical and tactical slots as needed, then I explore, I almost never ever have emergency facilities though.
Your scouts should always be exploring - they should never be idle. (Unless you have a scout mob for the purposes of fighting, which I'm not going to go into now) Civilian infrastructure increases the planet's population cap: unless you're getting close to the current population cap, there's no point in upgrading it (except of course to stop planet underdevelopment from sucking your income away).
Needing to increase logistical and tactical slots is usually rare in the beginning of the game. Often you can colonize fast enough that slot upgrades to planets you already have are unnecessary.
