Hints and General Info Region Selection Military Selection Using Colors What T-Ops to Send S3Sabre Settings Using Agents Avoiding Pirates General Facts Region Selection What do the different regions do? Coastal Regions - Coastal regions are the second best money-producing regions. I like them because unlike river regions, they are consistant. The only problem is that coastal regions, which bring in tourism, can be affected during war. River Regions - River regions produce the most money by using hydro-power. The only problem is that two out of every ten turns, your workers stop producing hydro-power and become fishermen. It isn't always good to have only river regions because when I say two out of every ten, that is an approximation. Sometimes your workers can fish for ten straight turns. Agricultural Regions - Agricultural regions have only one porpose: to produce food for your barony. Desert Regions - Desert regions are the third best money makers. Most people use desert regions because it is a very stable source of income during war times. Urban Regions - Urban regions increase the flow of people immigrating to your barony. The more urban regions you have, the more people will immigrate. Urban regions are good if you are planning to use the tax trick. Go check out strategies to find out more about the tax trick. Technology Regions - Tech regions slowly reduce the cost of maintenance by inventing new stuff. Inventions won't be big but you will see a decrease in costs. To make a significant difference you must have at least 500 tech regions, otherwise the change is so miniscule it isn't worth the cost of buying them. Industrial Regions - Industrial regions create military for you to use. One of the most inportant regions to have after getting full investments. Mountain Regions - Mountain regions make money, but the least out of the four. In most cases, stay away from buying mountain regions... that is, unless you like living poorly or something. I have heard, though, that mountain regions increase the production of your industrial regions, so if you are one who depends heavily on your industries you may consider buying some mountain. I start out my game by buying coastal regions, only swaying to buy agricultural when I need more food to support my population. When I have over 2000 regions, I am making about 8 million coins from tourism. Now I start purchasing river and industrial regions. When buying river regions, your money being made per turn increases drastically. My region count at this time looks like the following: Region Number Coastal 2100 River 2000 Agricultural 300 Desert 5 Urban 10 Industrial 500 Mountain 2 If you are interested in learning the tax trick, please click on strategies which is in the bottom toolbar. The tax trick means that you have to have a whole change in region purchasing. Inportant Hint - On your first turn, sell all your military. You need the best start you can possibly get and the more money the better. Anyways... never start work on a headquarters on the first turn either and only purchase money making regions, never industrial on your first turn. Military Selection What military you buy depends a lot on what the game settings are. It used to be that jets and turrets were the force to buy but now with the indroduction of the SDI Program jets have a bad side. People are now favouring tanks and troopers as the new dominant force. Each military unit has a offensive value, defensive value, or both. The following is a table explaining this. Unit Offensive Value Defensive Value Troopers 1 1 Jets 2 0 Turrets 0 2 Tanks 4 4 * Bombers are not normal units. They can only destroy jets. From the chart you may get the impression that tanks are the best unit to buy. I agree with you but one thing that you must know is that tanks are pretty expensive. They are about 4 times more expensive than troopers. Troopers themselves are pretty good except that you have to pay a hefty amount to house them and you have to provide food for them. Jets have HUGE maintenance costs and are sometimes a pain in the ass to have. Depending on how much money you are making, jets may be a good choice for your barony. What you have to be aware of are the following facts: * Jets have no defensive value * Bombers have no defensive value * Bombers can only kill jets * Troopers can kill anything but jets * Tanks can do anything troopers can * Turrets have no offensive value I tend to favor tanks a lot during the game and so, whenever I buy military, I only buy tanks. Pros and Cons Troopers - Pros - Very cheap to maintain and buy. You ccan buy 7 troopers for the price of 1 tank. Troopers help defend you against s3sabres. Cons - Easily affected by t-ops and consume a lot of food. Jets - Pros - Have a very strong offensive value. You can get 6 jets for the same price as 1 tank. Cons - High maintenance costs and you need carriers to take your jets to the battle field. SDI program can destroy up to 30% of incoming jets and are suceptable to Bomb Airbases. Turrets - Pros - Have a strong defensive value and cannot be destroyed by t-ops. Cons - They are also very expensive to maintain. Will drain heavy cash outta you. Tanks - Pros - Have stron offensive and defensive value and don't cost too much to maintain. The more you have the less effective incoming chems will be. Cons - Expensive. With no HQ and low military support, they will be weak. Setting Industries and Specializing Them In the systems menu (press * in the military purchasing menu) you can do two different things to help your industrial regions produce what you want them to. You can "Set Industries" and "Specialize Industries". Setting industries allows you to control how many of each unit is created. Remember, I tend to favor tanks, so here is what I use: Unit Percentage Troopers 5% Jets 5% Turrets 40% Bombers 5% Tanks 40% Carriers 5% * Please note, if you never set your jets over 90%, you dont have produce more than 5% carriers. You need to transport jets to your battlesite via carriers. Each carrier can carry 100 jets. Another function in the systems menu is the "Specializing Industries" function. This allows you to increase production of a certain unit by 25% but all other units will decrease production by 15%. I specialize in tanks. :) S3Sabre Settings S3Sabres are a weapon you can use for interbbs BRE. It is found in the Special Operations menu and can help you dearly. Here are the settings that you can choose from. Setting Description 0 Bomb Agents 1 Bomb Agents 2 Bomb Residences 3 Bomb Residences 4 Bomb Turrets 5 Bomb Jets 6 Bomb Jets 7 Incinerate Regions 8 Incinerate Regions 9 Bomb Residences 10 Develop Regions What T-Ops to Send T-ops should always be sent before you send out individual or group attacks. They help to weaken the enemy lines of defence. Here is a table showing what you should send: Unit What to Send Troopers Demoralization, Dissentions, Bomb Food Markets Jets Bomb Airbases Turrets Demoralization Tanks Demoralization, Bomb HQ Using Agents Agents are a big part of BRE. They are used for C-Ops (Local only), T-ops, and for S-Ops. The more agents you have the more effective your T-ops and S-ops will be. Also, the more you have, the less effective your enemies S-ops and such will be. Your best bet is to buy at least 300,000 agents. This will give you enough to last the whole game and be pretty effective. Some people go a little overboard when buying agents and buy over 2 million. I find this to be a complete waste. Sure... no spies will ever get through but still... ain't that a bit too much? Anyways, another thing agents are good for is that the more you have the chances of your investments getting undermines lessens. Investing Investing is one of the most important things you must do in a game of BRE. With investments, you are guaranteed to have some kind of financial suport to fall back on if you need help. In BRE, you can get a maximum of 2 billion coins a day from investments which will be spread over all your turns. I find that the best way to get full investments is to first save up 2 billion in the bank. When this is in place, you will be making what you usually make off your regions plus an additional 30 mil a turn. Now you start investing. Everyday, save up all the money you make and on your last turn, visit the bank and make an investment for 10 days will all your money. Tomorrow, you do the exact same thing; save all your money and invest it for 10 days. In 10 days your investments will start coming back and if it isn't 2 bill yet, repeat the process. If it is 2 bil though, save up what you need to make one complete investment then you have an excess of 1 billion you can spend on your empire. Great, eh? Using Colors Have you ever wanted to make your message stand out from the rest... or just make yourself looked more skilled? Well... here's how. Use colors. Not too many people know how to use colors so the few who do look like more experienced players. Here is a list of foreground color codes: Color Color Code Black ^\00 Blue ^\01 Green ^\02 Cyan ^\03 Red ^\04 Purple ^\05 Brown ^\06 White ^\07 Grey ^\08 Light Blue ^\09 Light Green ^\0A Light Cyan ^\0B Light Red ^\0C Light Purple ^\0D Yellow ^\0E Bright White ^\0F To change the background color, all you have to do is change "0" that precedes the number's 0-9 and the letters A-F. Color Color Code Black 0 Blue 1 Green 2 Cyan 3 Red 4 Purple 5 Brown 6 White 7 Instead of changing the "0" to one of the above numbers you can change it to 8,9, or A-F and your foreground color will flash agains the following background color. Color Color Code Black 8 Blue 9 Green A Cyan B Red C Purple D Brown E White F Here are a few examples of using color codes: This would print "Hello World" in green: ^\02Hello World This would print "Hello" in green and "World" in blue: ^\02Hello ^\01World This would print "Hello World" in green on a blue background: ^\12Hello World This would print "Hello World" in flashing green: ^\82Hello World This would print "Hello World" in flashing green on a blue background: ^\92Hello World Color codes are a nice way to pizzaz up messages. To make things easier, you may want to set up macros. Avoiding Pirates Pirates are one of the nuisances you will come across in BRE. They steal your military, food, and money. If you aren't planning to send out any attacks, you can follow this plan. On the first turn of the day, put all of your military on the trading market. When they are their, you don't have to pay for maintenance and all and the pirates wont be able to get to them. Now don't forget about the military. When you are one your last turn of the day, take your military out of the trading market. There you go. General Facts and Miscellaneous Hints Here are a bunch of facts you may find interesting about the game. Some of them are pretty kewl. There is a maximum of 2 billion coins in the bank. There is a maximum of 2 billion coins out of the bank. You cannot send stuff from league to league. The more agents you have, the more t-ops will get through. There is a maximum of one treaty at a time with another realm. Bombers are the only thing that can destroy jets in an attack except for a s3sabre and t-ops. Always play the lottery. It is free and you can win money. If you have multiple group attacks headed to one planet, put less in the last few than in the first few. T-op costs go up with the number of regions you have. The more regions, the more expensive they are. Agents cost more every day you play. Don't forget to build your headquarters.