AI War:Starting Out
I'm Just Starting Out -- What Should I Do?
Q: I'm a new player, and I don't yet have that great a feel for the game. What should I be doing at the start of a new campaign?
A: First of all: you have played the tutorials, right? They teach you the basics of what everything is, how to control everything, and some of the unique features of this particular game. Assuming that you've played through the tutorials, I'm interpreting your question as "What are my goals in the early game?" Here's a list of what you might want to look at first (in order):
1. Build Harvesters on all your metal and then crystal gather points on your home planet.
2. Set up an effective perimeter around all of the hostile wormholes on your home planet.
3. Send out scouts to find out as much as you can about all nearby planets.
4. Prioritize the nearby planets -- if there are Data Centers, Advanced Research Stations, or Advanced Factories, go for those (but there probably are none that close).
5. Capture most (or all) of the weak planets adjacent to your home planet, to help protect your core resource production facilities.
6. Gain the knowledge from your home planet as well as all the planets you capture.
7. Research some technologies -- if you're new, try starting with the Mark II and Mark III technologies.
8. Keep scouting, upgrading your scouts if you have to, and look for Advanced Research Stations. Capture any that you find.
This is a pretty good list that can actually last you for the first 3-5 hours of the campaign, if you're on a map with unfavorably-located Advanced Research Stations. The core idea, however, is that you want to make yourself as strong as you can while at the same time keeping the AI Progress number as low as you reasonably can (things get more difficult the higher that number goes). Beyond that, take a look at your secondary objectives and decide if you want to pursue any of those. See what sort of special ships are on the planets you scout, and decide if you want to pursue any of them. Look for the two home planets of the AIs, since those are where you're ultimately heading, when you're strong enough.
There are a great many choices that can be made, and what you choose to do will largely depend on your play style. How aggressive or conservative are you? How open to risks? Are you willing to lose a big chunk of what you already have in order to make a quick grab for something else? It also depends on what new ship types you unlock, and what extra ship type you started with. Some are offensive-oriented, some are defensive-oriented; some are stronger than others. No matter what you choose to do, what secondary goals you try to shoot for, what unique obstacles might be presented to you on a given map, your most central directives are always the same:
- Know as much about your surroundings as possible (Scouting)
- Protect your existing holdings as well as possible (Defense)
- Take anything valuable that the enemy has that you want (Offense)
- Maximize your ability to build ships (Metal, Crystal)
- Maximize the strength of your fleet (Knowledge)
- Maximize the size of your fleet (either Knowledge or Advanced Research Stations)
- Keep the AI Progress low (destroy Data Centers, avoid taking low-value targets)
- Find the AI Home Planets and destroy them for the win!
Further Reading
There is an excellent and growing set of player-created strategy guides in the Community Wiki. These are grouped into Novice, Intermediate, and Expert guides:
