Strategy guide to Galaxy (Explorer)

You can produce a multi turn ship and have it ready one turn faster (key - Upgrading takes place before ships arrive from hyperspace)

1. you must have tech level of 2 or higher.
2. design the ship at full tech level.
3. produce the ship at the minimum tech level to produce it in one turn. This ship will be weaker at production time than the final design.
4. upgrade the ship. The upgrading will take place before any ships arrive from hyperspace. So you can produce a 2-turn ship and have it ready to attack arriving ships on turn 2.

1. design a 2+ turn ship
2. product the ship at full tech level
3. product tech at other worlds
4. when the ship is finished it will have the tech of all other ships produced the second turn.

If you put 1 cargo area on your attack ship, you can send it on a route to attack an enemy planet. Like routing EMPTY ships to your target. This way it can be upgraded before it leaves. Your enemy will never see what is coming, since your ship will be stronger. Quite a surprise!!

Combine Routing and Two turn trick and you can get a 2 turn arriving at a planet 1 hop from your HW on turn 2!! Woooow.

Winning Strategies

CAP up fast: CAP is the best investment. When you produce cap you grow at a rate of 20%. This means you can grow your tech or fleet 20% faster than your opponent.

Highest tech levels: Tech levels make the most difference. Winning players have the highest tech in the earlier turns. Always!

Earliest kills: Strong players usually take out their neighbor before turn 5. How?

• Turn 0. Produce ships (2-3) with weapons and shields and speed with minimal cargo space. Stay AGGRESSIVE!
• Turn 1. Load these ships with cargo and route 1 to farthest 1 hop planet. Send the others to other planets all 1 hop. Produce Drive TECH.
• Turn 2. View increased by AUTOUNLOADED routed ship and Drive tech. If you can see any alien ships in hyperspace you can guess where their HW is by drawing a vector back to their source. Send you ship to this HW. Hopefully this HW doesn't have any defenses yet or only weak defenses
• Turn 3. Ships arrive at enemy home world before production. Enemy only had 2 turns of production. (i.e. 100 flax, 10 cargo ships)

After this attack the player will grab up all the newly captured worlds and spend a lot of time producing CAP. This way he can out produce all his neighbors. For example he can raise his tech levels while simultaneously creating an attack fleet!

Stay aggressive. Don't let someone visit your worlds until you know more about them. They may trade the intelligence to an enemy, or just notice which planets are large so they can guess where to strike later to wipe out your production.

Avoid 2 turn hops. Ships in hyperspace are visible to all races near by so a smart player can look at these and guess where they came from. Once they know where your HW is you can expect a 500 mass incoming group.

Don't spread out too thin. It’s hard to defend 10 planets. You'll waste a lot of production building picketing forces while your enemy is build tech.

AUTOUNLOAD and ROUTE your COL. While this is a war game. The winners are the ones who have the biggest production base. COL are worth 2 production points per turn. CAP is worth 1 production point per turn. Don't let these sit around. Set all your planets to AUTOUNLOAD ASAP. It doesn't hurt unless you have a really junky planet you are working around to avoid 2 hop trips of cargo. AUTOUNLOAD and ROUTEs unload BEFORE production! This means you can route 200 COL to a planet and it will be able to produce a 40 mass ship on the SAME TURN the COL arrive!!

Don't make friends with your neighbors. You’re too close. You want to be friends with your neighbor’s neighbor. That way they can help you gobble your neighbor and share the property. You will actually want to gobble up your neighbors much sooner than you think.

Everybody has 3-5 neighbors, most of which they don't know and don't talk to. Don't be afraid to ask someone's neighbor to help you attack him. Chances are they were considering it too and the two of you will achieve better results.

• All your worlds are probed in one turn. This means your enemy is looking you over one last time before he attacks. Usually a large fleet will arrive next turn.
• Your ally shoots down your probe on an asteroid. He has gone to war with you and all his ships will attack you on sight.
• You are attacked by an unknown enemy that seems to know a lot about you (i.e. his fleet easily wiped out your defenses with minimal losses, even though he never probed that world) This means one of you allies has turned on you and is giving away intelligence on you.
• You see two attack fleets on a nearby asteroid that are not attacking each other. This means that 2 races have teamed up and everyone should be afraid since 2 heads are better (twice better) than one.
• Your tech level is ½ of your neighbor. Basically this means that he can wipe you out anytime since he can make ship twice as powerful for the same cost.
• You see an alien ship in hyperspace coming to an asteroid near your worlds. This could be a HUGE fleet that will then 1 hop to your world with no warning. Get a probe on that asteroid, or better yet, get a fleet there to meet them.

Secure your system.

You must keep enemies away from your worlds. If I can put a fleet right next to your home world with out you knowing then I got you! To secure your system, you need to have ships at all the near by planets. You want to have ships on all asteroids too. Ships with out guns don't secure anything. By keeping a ship with guns on your nearby asteroids you can keep your enemies from discovering them. Asteroids are bad because I can send a 500 mass fleet to your asteroid in two hops and you will not get an incoming group message. You will only see a small ~ on the map view. By the time you discover the size and power of my fleet I've got you.

• Aggressive players secure their system late in exchange for trying to capture their neighbors system before turn 10.
• Moderate players secure their system early.
• New players usually build a fort and then start probing their system. So aggressive players look for these probes and try to locate the new player’s home world.

Disguise your Home World

You want to disguise your Home World for the first 10-15 turns at least. If you have a 99 mass ship with no drive at your home world I know where it is. Then I can send my planet bomber to get you. I prefer to keep 2-3 planets equally equipped so alien probes cannot determine which one is my home world.

Kill or be killed by turn 20

It is important to grow. By turn 20 most players either have taken out one of their neighbors or been killed. That's right. 1/2 of the players are gone around turn 20. Another 1/2 of the remaining players are killed by turn 40. Then things slow down as the remaining powers fight it out until turn 70 when only 1 or 2 strong races remain. I suppose if you played a game with more than 40 players this.

Growth is important

By turn 20 most players are out of space and generating surplus colonists. Players who have already expanded are continuing to grow while those who haven't expanded are getting desperate.

Strong players sometimes take out their neighbor by turn 10.

Moderate players take out their neighbor before turn 30.

Weak players try to take on their neighbors after turn 30 and fail.

When do you attack?

Don't make long term enemies. Your goal should be a surgical strike that wipes out your enemy in one hit with minimal losses. If you take too many loses then your other neighbors will be ahead of and eventually take you out while you try to rebuild.

If you see an enemy that has developed planets that are undefended you may consider attacking them. By knocking out his production you set him back and make him easier to take out at a later date, the problem is he may gather allies to help him extol his revenge on you.

Killing 200 mass of CAP on a big cargo ship is a major success, costing your opponent at least 2 turns of production. This is also a clear declaration of war, so only attempt this if your ready for an invasion.

Winning isn't everything

In fact nearly everyone will lose (all but one to be exact) Give your self credit for trying and for what you did achieve.

• Wiping out a race

• Bombing a HW
• Winning a major fleet battle
• Bombing a large world
• Living past turn 20, 40, 50, 60, 70!
• High Tech levels
• Good roll playing of race
• Honesty and integrity.