A lot of the players that I play with do not know how to get themselves out of a hole or the long term planning and adaptability that is required to be quite skilled at Eclipse. Just as a side note, players should not be using the vanilla GCDS... it is poorly balanced and gives some races a large advantage over others.
I am going to markedly ignore race specific strategy and look at economics, aggressive/defensive, and a little bit of diplomacy.
*Note, I originally posted this on the RotA forums without realizing it. A few years later I am correcting my mistake![whistle]()
oops
========================= Starting your game ==========================
-The first question you should ask yourself is: do I want to be aggressive PvP (attacking players), PvE (only fighting ancients and GCDS), or a mixture of the two; or do you want to sit back and mind your own business and hope nobody attacks you?
-Now if you've answered that question on the aggressive side, take a look at what techs are available and see if the technology is there to allow you to upgrade your ships to a point you are comfortable taking on ancient cruisers round 1 or 2. DO NOT RELY on those techs coming up at the start of round 2! If you do not see the right techs, either change your aggressive strategy to less aggressive or pick a race that you feel will allow you to start stomping out ancients by the end of round 2.
-If you want to take on a more PvP role, consider some of the races that lend themselves to advantages in PvP fights and think about picking a race with 3 or more ship activations (Terran and Rho Indi) as ship activations can be very crucial in a PvP strategy. Keep in mind that a single dreadnought can often be the cheapest and most effective way to go around bullying ancients out of existence (Orion and Rho Indi are an exception).
-As for a turtle strategy, I would suggest a race with unique bonuses that do not rely on interaction (Lyra Shrines, Planta/Draco double explore, Hydran double research, etc). Although almost any race can be played defensive, some races like Rho Indi have significant downsides if they are not used aggressively.
============= The first round (Well, mostly exploring) ===============
-First off, the chances are your very first action will either be Research or Explore. Military tech that is crucial to your plans, or early economic/action advantage is your PRIORITY, otherwise Explore. Some examples are Improved Hull, Advanced Robotics, Plasma Cannons. Do not research anything that either won't immediately help you or is critical you get and may be researched by other players before you have another turn.
-Once you get into exploring, it should be the rest of your turn, unless you are capable of attacking, then you may have scenarios where you attack and/or build ships after only 1 or 2 explore actions. Remember, you never want to allow someone to explore your Hex 1 for you and you always want to get some of the Hex 3 before they are gone. Attacking on round 1 should only happen if you really like the resources you will be getting and you can populate it upon victory. It is usually better to explore more systems on round 1 and do all the actions for your attack on round 2 if you aren't going to be able to reap the resources from that system at the end of the round.
-Exploring hexes is the most critical skill in the game!!! Yes, three exclamation critical. Anyone can whine about the "luck" of drawing hexes, but a skilled player will learn to adapt their game to the hexes they explore and know when it is worth discarding a hex. On Round one, you will want to explore at least two hexes of some use to you (a discovery tile, a system that you can immediately populate 2 planets, ancients if you are attacking on round 1).
-There are almost no scenarios where you want to discard a Hex 3 (hive systems, warp portal systems, and sometimes ancients are the exceptions). The reason for this is simple, if it doesn't block you from exploring more Hex 3 down the road, your opponents will not get a chance to explore that hex and you can simply leave it without influencing. If it does stop your exploring dead in your tracks, you may need to discard it as being unable to explore can be a huge loss! Don't forget that you can always influence a system to explore from it (or take the discovery) with the plans of going bankrupt and removing that disk at the end of the turn.
-When it comes to Hex 2 systems, you will want to be somewhat selective. Usually you can keep the system, even if it is not ideal, but there are a couple cases where you will want to consider discarding it. (a) If you have drawn more hexes with ancients than you can handle. Do not allow your only options for the next few rounds to be battle. You still need to have a system or two that adds to your economy and the option to continue exploring. (b) It is a hive or warp portal system and it is very bad for your strategy (turtle and build little to no fleet early on). Usually I suggest exploring your Hex 1 before Hex 2 so you know if you can keep ancients or need to discard ancients (ancients on both Hex 1 and 2 can shut down your game if you aren't able to beat them by the end of the next round).
-For the Hex 1 explore, I am a little more open to discarding any hex to try and get a hex that suits my strategy. Usually I won't throw out a Hex 1 if I wanted ancients but didn't get any... most of the time I will just count on finding another ancient or two in the Hex 2 sectors. But I will consider throwing out ancients on a Hex 1 explore if I do not want ancients. I also like to throw out Hex 1 sectors that I cannot populate 2 planets without researching (unless I know I will be getting that research very soon and I have at least one other system with that advanced planet).
-Explore as much as possible without going bankrupt and DO NOT populate single hex systems unless it is critical science or material that you will need next round to get a specific research or build the right number of ships to fight with. In some scenarios, you will get a couple awesome hexes and you can just influence 2-3 systems, pass early, and benefit from the resources and first pick at tech. Most of the time you won't be that lucky.
-Attacking will be an option for some races with advanced ship blue-prints or good starting technology. After 1 or 2 explores and finding a suitable ancient system to attack, ask yourself the following before any more actions (a) How many actions will it take me to win that battle at the end of this round... can I afford that without going bankrupt and will I get suitable resources during my upkeep to make up for not exploring and populating systems with no enemies? DO NOTHING to upgrade or build ships on the first round unless the chances of winning are in your favour and the systems within are beneficial.
-Discovery tiles throw an interesting wrench into first round exploring. You can always influence for the discovery and bankrupt the planet, but if you run into a +8 money, this could snowball into 3-4 more explores than other players in the first round, resulting in additional discovery finds. It is up to you how you want to gamble with exploring for discoveries on the first round, but keep in mind that Hex 3 has the most discoveries, but in smaller games will often have them removed from the draw piles, and 3 of 11 Hex 2 tiles have an unprotected discovery.
================= Second round, change your plans ====================
-Did you notice I didn't talk much about discarding hexes based on their resources? That's because it's a bad idea in the majority of scenarios you come across (probably more than 9 in 10 games will agree). Now that you have an idea of what hexes you have, what resources you will have available, what ancients you have to fight, what new techs are up for round 2, etc.... you will want to completely re-think your strategy (well, maybe not completely). You need to take a strong look and say "I can pull off fighting ancients in a very efficient timely manner" or scrap plans that involve a lot of spend (actions) on military! Next, look at if you have the resources to support your current game plan, if not, seriously consider changing your game plan to something that fits in with the hexes you have. On a side note, a player who is more defensive and explore oriented will continue to explore during round 2 before making any major changes to their plans. Some examples of when you need to change your strategy:
- -You are low in material planets and wanted to be aggressive but don't have great starting ships: Look into saving up for a dreadnought (higher survival chance, hence not needing to rebuild ships), upgrade your ship until victory is 90% certain, or scrap military plans and focus on science or exploration ASAP
- -You aren't getting the resource planets you wanted: Start thinking about orbitals and if that strategy is viable. Also look into using gray planets to juggle your resources (i.e. move a science on, put it back on the materials track)
-Don't get too crazy about changing plans, but do keep it front and center. Sometimes the best thing you can do is hold on to just your best few systems, pass early, gathering up resources and saving for a big turn that will catapult you ahead. Don't think you have to spend your resources every turn! Never saving resources for big ticket items and influencing/populating too many systems are common mistakes!
-Now that you've decided your plan for the turn, execute it. Focus as much as you can and don't try to do "everything" in one turn. Make sure your resources are spent efficiently and that you profit from your actions for the round. This is only the second round, so it isn't like other players can do tons of actions either.
============== Third round, Decide the rest of the game ==============
-Technically you aren't picking a plan that will last you the rest of the game, but you are now able to start planning seriously. We are at the point where you will be done the bulk of your exploring, know how your battling (ancients) will go, exhausted the basic starting tech options, and get a feel for what other players are playing like. At this point there are two critical things to plan out before taking your turn.
-Midgame plan! Take a good look at the technology board, where you expect to have battles (either on the defensive or the aggressive), what resources you have, what advanced planets you have, and what ships you want to be upgrading. Sometimes the technology you need for a plan to work isn't there... the smaller the game, the less the chance it will show up in time. So take a good hard look at aborting your plan and changing it to suite what technologies are available and work with what you have. Now, will you need to have starbases to defend, how strong are the enemies you will attack, how strong will your ships need to be? This will heavily influence what actions you take towards military as maybe you will entire skip midgame military as long as possible and focus on economics and improving what you already have. Always try to be as extreme as you can towards your military, either avoiding it as much as possible, or going for it as much as possible in the midgame. Taking the middle of the road doesn't give you an advantage over other players. Now, can your resources support your goals?
- -If you are good on build material, will you be getting orbitals or building ships and engaging in battles where you expect casualties? If you don't have enough, are you designing ships to have crushing victory in battle (remember, the dreadnought can be the best early game ship for most races), looking to research advanced mining, or simply trying to avoid having to build any military?
- -If you are good on science, will it be used to support aggressive midgame ships (think plasma cannons, computer, energy, maybe extra hull) or to support advancing your economy even further (more advanced planets, quantum grid, advanced robotics)? If you don't have good science, are you going to just save for the most critical ship weapons and upgrades that will last you the rest of the game or will you look into advanced labs?
- -If you are good on money, will you be more aggressive and attacking in more places, or will you take systems without money planets so you can get the science or materials? If you are low on money, will you be taking minimal actions, passing more, researching advanced economy, researching Advanced robotics/quantum grid?
The important thing is to WORK WITH WHAT THE GAME GIVES YOU, and not trying to force what you have to work with your strategy. Change your strategy if the game took a dump on you when exploring hexes. Also, consider long and hard the effectiveness of any ship improvements/upgrades you do at this point. Will you be still using those ships at the end of the game, as often you can only max out 2 ship blueprints, will your midgame ship upgrades still leave you with a fairly easy transition into late game ship design, will any ship improvements now get you a meaningful benefit before round 6? Just keep in mind that "wasted" actions in the first 3-4 rounds cost you MULTIPLE actions in round 7-9.
-That last bit leads me into late game. You want to have a general idea of where you plan to be in the late game so that your mid game actions leave you with a reasonable transition into your late game. For example, spending lots of time improving your midgame military and then having to research "duplicate" technology for the late game (i.e. the better version of your drive, the better version of your energy source, upgrading and building interceptors and not using them late game). For the more defensive player, you want to have a good idea of how much you can push the envelope with not investing in military and plan for getting attacked earlier than expected. What is your backup plan to defend yourself? What can be upgraded with the least cost to deter or defend? Be EXTREMELY mindful of pinning, especially when using virtual fleets. Always know what ships can enter any of your hexes before you get another turn and make sure you have something to pin those ships before they can get past your outermost system. Sometimes this means building in response to them moving into the system, other times it means building defensively before they move. If they have ships that can move deeper into your territory than your outermost hexes, you should seriously consider having ships built to pin them at your borders. They don't need to be upgraded unless attacked.
-Remember you CAN recover from mistakes. This is only the 3rd round. You can make some mistakes and still recover. Do not over-extend if possible and if you do, try to find a way to make up for it in the next round or two (i.e. skip military investments to boost your economy), but do not throw away ships at risky battles to get back ahead.
-So, now that we've discussed all that, let's play the 3rd round! there may be some exploring (depending on your race and defensive stance) left for you, or some battles to be fought and won. Sometimes you will fall in a position where it's better to just do little and pass early, saving up your resources. This is not a bad thing! At this point in the game, you will probably not have any PvP elements, but you will be getting very close and possibly having diplomatic options open up at the end of combat.
=============== Fourth round, Can we stay the course? ================
-Time to see how things settled after the third round! Look at how your plans went, etc. Remember you can still recover if things didn't go well! If you were on the aggressive side, either improve your military and ensure victory or hold off on all military plans for the round and recover. If you are on the defensive side, do you need to get into some military, do you need to research a new tech for your economy? Overall, you should be able to stick to Your plans you made in round 3 or tweak them slightly. Just remember that losing ships and not winning the system is one of the fastest ways to put yourself behind, so after your first resounding defeat, play cautiously.
-When your economy just isn't working, you need to consider a few things you can change to work with what you have. (a) Reduce the number of systems you have influenced to be most efficient. (b) If any economy boosting technology can help pull you out of this rut. If it isn't up this round, it probably won't be up next round and be very hesitant to make plans based around a tech coming up next round. (c) If you need to build a ship and attack something.
-Diplomacy should also be a well thought out aspect of your game now. What can you do to prevent players from attacking you and what can you do to have strong players attacked?
-Usually the fourth round is the round for the Galactic center to be attacked (again, don't even consider using the weak vanilla GCDS) and players should be aware of this and how it will change the board position. Sometimes you can wait until they start moving ships in and then throw a ship into the middle to try and weaken their attacking force to the point of them losing, and other times you can't do squat. If you are the one attacking the core, make sure you can defend from the hate it will bring your way (or jealousy if you prefer to call it that).
================ Fifth and Sixth round, PvP begins? ==================
-Well, at this point, the main monkey wrench to your plans will be the other players. Tweak and adjust your plans as required to not leave yourself vulnerable to other players. The game gets so dynamic at this point that I can't offer as specific of advice because it is so situation. Sometimes you are behind and need to just save up for a quick "big punch" research that will allow you to get back into the fight, other times you just want to solidify your defenses and hunker down. At this point, you really should have taken your core systems and decided how you want to interact with/attack other players. There are a few things you want to assess and keep top of mind as players start to transition towards the late game. Round six can sometimes be the transition into Late game, other times round seven.
-Keep an eye out for what other players CAN do and their potential. For example, the Rho Indi do not get dreadnoughts, so they want to harass and damage player's economy and (hopefully) kill some ships to keep them from being able to afford a late game dreadnought. Races like Planta and Hydran progress may need an aggressive "road bump" in the form of a few ships taking sectors away from them. Making the right ally or being "peaceful" in just the right way might allow you to flourish and be a fighting contender (even if this means defensively) when the late game comes around. You really need to be aware of what players could ruin your day and prepare the best you can to counter or defend.
-See if people are starting to show their ship builds for late game. Although most players won't give away their late game design too early, you want to keep an eye out for a tell so you can see if highly aggressive cannon based ships, missile fleets, defensive hull, or shield heavy ships are the way to go. Thankfully RotA provides a lot of rare techs that make non missile builds viable vs missile builds... but only if they come out and the player with missiles can't research them!
================ Seventh Round, so enters Lategame ===================
-At this point of the game, you've either lost already and are hoping (a) someone makes a mistake or (b) the PvP aspect works in your favour, or you are looking pretty good. Diplomacy becomes key in many games if you're not one of the military leaders (note, you don't have to have the best ships right now if you built up the economy to support a fast transition into late game ships).
-During this round, you want to be re-assessing your late game plans and turning them from "approximately" to "mostly." The reason I say "mostly" is because there is still a lot of time for players to change their ship blueprints and anyone who ends up battling in the last 3 rounds needs to be able to adjust their course of action with regards to building ships to counter those that you will fight. Of course, there is always the option of just trying to get in with as many neutron bomb ships as possible and you don't care about winning fights.
-Diplomacy is key, and not just in the conventional sense, but also in the sense of know how diplomacy WON'T work with! (Or maybe you're the one who doesn't want diplomacy and just wants to attack EVERYONE!)
-There should not be much focus on economy as you should have it set up for the rest of the game, but you will be thinking of things like Orbitals, Monoliths, Artifact Key, and (most important) how to save/stockpile actions for Round 8 and 9. Yes, you need to plan for round 8 and 9 as there will be a LOT happening and you might get caught in this whirlwind of the galaxy. Start thinking about maxing out the influence disks you have available at the start of your turn and stockpiling resources for the most efficient purchases or additional actions.
=============== Eight Round, Prepare for the nine ===================
-Simply put, round eight is all about preparing for the last round (nine). There are some exceptions and some strategies, but in general, try to leave yourself as many actions for round 9, plan AHEAD what you can afford to purchase (technology and ships) so you don't make plans only to find out you can't afford them![]()
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-Even if you are on the aggressive side, do not over-extend yourself on round 8 such that you lose what you gained. On the flip side, if you can cripple your opponent on round 8 (or 7), it can often be a lot cheaper and more successful than waiting until round 9. As a more defensive player, only having to defend yourself should derail any plans to take it easy and prepare for nine. A very important strategy is ship pinning and do not be afraid to pin enemy ships in their OWN territory! Instead of waiting for the fight to come to you, send out ships into their spaces to pin them and prevent a move into your space. Your ships can be weak and suffer a quick defeat, but if they fight in their own system they cannot take yours!
================= Eight Nine, The winner emerges ====================
-The players who planned for round 9 ahead of time are often those who benefit most (or simply the dumb lucky dick who rolls 6s all the time and got amazing hexes, but most of the time you didn't play well enough). Simple advice for round nine and then the rest is up to you to play as you see fit.
-Use influence actions as required to dump 1VP systems to free up actions are take more valuable systems.
-Systems where you expect to lose fights will free up influence disks at the end of combat, so go and over extend just a little...
-Use ship pinning to your advantage as much as possible!
I am going to markedly ignore race specific strategy and look at economics, aggressive/defensive, and a little bit of diplomacy.
*Note, I originally posted this on the RotA forums without realizing it. A few years later I am correcting my mistake
oops========================= Starting your game ==========================
-The first question you should ask yourself is: do I want to be aggressive PvP (attacking players), PvE (only fighting ancients and GCDS), or a mixture of the two; or do you want to sit back and mind your own business and hope nobody attacks you?
-Now if you've answered that question on the aggressive side, take a look at what techs are available and see if the technology is there to allow you to upgrade your ships to a point you are comfortable taking on ancient cruisers round 1 or 2. DO NOT RELY on those techs coming up at the start of round 2! If you do not see the right techs, either change your aggressive strategy to less aggressive or pick a race that you feel will allow you to start stomping out ancients by the end of round 2.
-If you want to take on a more PvP role, consider some of the races that lend themselves to advantages in PvP fights and think about picking a race with 3 or more ship activations (Terran and Rho Indi) as ship activations can be very crucial in a PvP strategy. Keep in mind that a single dreadnought can often be the cheapest and most effective way to go around bullying ancients out of existence (Orion and Rho Indi are an exception).
-As for a turtle strategy, I would suggest a race with unique bonuses that do not rely on interaction (Lyra Shrines, Planta/Draco double explore, Hydran double research, etc). Although almost any race can be played defensive, some races like Rho Indi have significant downsides if they are not used aggressively.
============= The first round (Well, mostly exploring) ===============
-First off, the chances are your very first action will either be Research or Explore. Military tech that is crucial to your plans, or early economic/action advantage is your PRIORITY, otherwise Explore. Some examples are Improved Hull, Advanced Robotics, Plasma Cannons. Do not research anything that either won't immediately help you or is critical you get and may be researched by other players before you have another turn.
-Once you get into exploring, it should be the rest of your turn, unless you are capable of attacking, then you may have scenarios where you attack and/or build ships after only 1 or 2 explore actions. Remember, you never want to allow someone to explore your Hex 1 for you and you always want to get some of the Hex 3 before they are gone. Attacking on round 1 should only happen if you really like the resources you will be getting and you can populate it upon victory. It is usually better to explore more systems on round 1 and do all the actions for your attack on round 2 if you aren't going to be able to reap the resources from that system at the end of the round.
-Exploring hexes is the most critical skill in the game!!! Yes, three exclamation critical. Anyone can whine about the "luck" of drawing hexes, but a skilled player will learn to adapt their game to the hexes they explore and know when it is worth discarding a hex. On Round one, you will want to explore at least two hexes of some use to you (a discovery tile, a system that you can immediately populate 2 planets, ancients if you are attacking on round 1).
-There are almost no scenarios where you want to discard a Hex 3 (hive systems, warp portal systems, and sometimes ancients are the exceptions). The reason for this is simple, if it doesn't block you from exploring more Hex 3 down the road, your opponents will not get a chance to explore that hex and you can simply leave it without influencing. If it does stop your exploring dead in your tracks, you may need to discard it as being unable to explore can be a huge loss! Don't forget that you can always influence a system to explore from it (or take the discovery) with the plans of going bankrupt and removing that disk at the end of the turn.
-When it comes to Hex 2 systems, you will want to be somewhat selective. Usually you can keep the system, even if it is not ideal, but there are a couple cases where you will want to consider discarding it. (a) If you have drawn more hexes with ancients than you can handle. Do not allow your only options for the next few rounds to be battle. You still need to have a system or two that adds to your economy and the option to continue exploring. (b) It is a hive or warp portal system and it is very bad for your strategy (turtle and build little to no fleet early on). Usually I suggest exploring your Hex 1 before Hex 2 so you know if you can keep ancients or need to discard ancients (ancients on both Hex 1 and 2 can shut down your game if you aren't able to beat them by the end of the next round).
-For the Hex 1 explore, I am a little more open to discarding any hex to try and get a hex that suits my strategy. Usually I won't throw out a Hex 1 if I wanted ancients but didn't get any... most of the time I will just count on finding another ancient or two in the Hex 2 sectors. But I will consider throwing out ancients on a Hex 1 explore if I do not want ancients. I also like to throw out Hex 1 sectors that I cannot populate 2 planets without researching (unless I know I will be getting that research very soon and I have at least one other system with that advanced planet).
-Explore as much as possible without going bankrupt and DO NOT populate single hex systems unless it is critical science or material that you will need next round to get a specific research or build the right number of ships to fight with. In some scenarios, you will get a couple awesome hexes and you can just influence 2-3 systems, pass early, and benefit from the resources and first pick at tech. Most of the time you won't be that lucky.
-Attacking will be an option for some races with advanced ship blue-prints or good starting technology. After 1 or 2 explores and finding a suitable ancient system to attack, ask yourself the following before any more actions (a) How many actions will it take me to win that battle at the end of this round... can I afford that without going bankrupt and will I get suitable resources during my upkeep to make up for not exploring and populating systems with no enemies? DO NOTHING to upgrade or build ships on the first round unless the chances of winning are in your favour and the systems within are beneficial.
-Discovery tiles throw an interesting wrench into first round exploring. You can always influence for the discovery and bankrupt the planet, but if you run into a +8 money, this could snowball into 3-4 more explores than other players in the first round, resulting in additional discovery finds. It is up to you how you want to gamble with exploring for discoveries on the first round, but keep in mind that Hex 3 has the most discoveries, but in smaller games will often have them removed from the draw piles, and 3 of 11 Hex 2 tiles have an unprotected discovery.
================= Second round, change your plans ====================
-Did you notice I didn't talk much about discarding hexes based on their resources? That's because it's a bad idea in the majority of scenarios you come across (probably more than 9 in 10 games will agree). Now that you have an idea of what hexes you have, what resources you will have available, what ancients you have to fight, what new techs are up for round 2, etc.... you will want to completely re-think your strategy (well, maybe not completely). You need to take a strong look and say "I can pull off fighting ancients in a very efficient timely manner" or scrap plans that involve a lot of spend (actions) on military! Next, look at if you have the resources to support your current game plan, if not, seriously consider changing your game plan to something that fits in with the hexes you have. On a side note, a player who is more defensive and explore oriented will continue to explore during round 2 before making any major changes to their plans. Some examples of when you need to change your strategy:
- -You are low in material planets and wanted to be aggressive but don't have great starting ships: Look into saving up for a dreadnought (higher survival chance, hence not needing to rebuild ships), upgrade your ship until victory is 90% certain, or scrap military plans and focus on science or exploration ASAP
- -You aren't getting the resource planets you wanted: Start thinking about orbitals and if that strategy is viable. Also look into using gray planets to juggle your resources (i.e. move a science on, put it back on the materials track)
-Don't get too crazy about changing plans, but do keep it front and center. Sometimes the best thing you can do is hold on to just your best few systems, pass early, gathering up resources and saving for a big turn that will catapult you ahead. Don't think you have to spend your resources every turn! Never saving resources for big ticket items and influencing/populating too many systems are common mistakes!
-Now that you've decided your plan for the turn, execute it. Focus as much as you can and don't try to do "everything" in one turn. Make sure your resources are spent efficiently and that you profit from your actions for the round. This is only the second round, so it isn't like other players can do tons of actions either.
============== Third round, Decide the rest of the game ==============
-Technically you aren't picking a plan that will last you the rest of the game, but you are now able to start planning seriously. We are at the point where you will be done the bulk of your exploring, know how your battling (ancients) will go, exhausted the basic starting tech options, and get a feel for what other players are playing like. At this point there are two critical things to plan out before taking your turn.
-Midgame plan! Take a good look at the technology board, where you expect to have battles (either on the defensive or the aggressive), what resources you have, what advanced planets you have, and what ships you want to be upgrading. Sometimes the technology you need for a plan to work isn't there... the smaller the game, the less the chance it will show up in time. So take a good hard look at aborting your plan and changing it to suite what technologies are available and work with what you have. Now, will you need to have starbases to defend, how strong are the enemies you will attack, how strong will your ships need to be? This will heavily influence what actions you take towards military as maybe you will entire skip midgame military as long as possible and focus on economics and improving what you already have. Always try to be as extreme as you can towards your military, either avoiding it as much as possible, or going for it as much as possible in the midgame. Taking the middle of the road doesn't give you an advantage over other players. Now, can your resources support your goals?
- -If you are good on build material, will you be getting orbitals or building ships and engaging in battles where you expect casualties? If you don't have enough, are you designing ships to have crushing victory in battle (remember, the dreadnought can be the best early game ship for most races), looking to research advanced mining, or simply trying to avoid having to build any military?
- -If you are good on science, will it be used to support aggressive midgame ships (think plasma cannons, computer, energy, maybe extra hull) or to support advancing your economy even further (more advanced planets, quantum grid, advanced robotics)? If you don't have good science, are you going to just save for the most critical ship weapons and upgrades that will last you the rest of the game or will you look into advanced labs?
- -If you are good on money, will you be more aggressive and attacking in more places, or will you take systems without money planets so you can get the science or materials? If you are low on money, will you be taking minimal actions, passing more, researching advanced economy, researching Advanced robotics/quantum grid?
The important thing is to WORK WITH WHAT THE GAME GIVES YOU, and not trying to force what you have to work with your strategy. Change your strategy if the game took a dump on you when exploring hexes. Also, consider long and hard the effectiveness of any ship improvements/upgrades you do at this point. Will you be still using those ships at the end of the game, as often you can only max out 2 ship blueprints, will your midgame ship upgrades still leave you with a fairly easy transition into late game ship design, will any ship improvements now get you a meaningful benefit before round 6? Just keep in mind that "wasted" actions in the first 3-4 rounds cost you MULTIPLE actions in round 7-9.
-That last bit leads me into late game. You want to have a general idea of where you plan to be in the late game so that your mid game actions leave you with a reasonable transition into your late game. For example, spending lots of time improving your midgame military and then having to research "duplicate" technology for the late game (i.e. the better version of your drive, the better version of your energy source, upgrading and building interceptors and not using them late game). For the more defensive player, you want to have a good idea of how much you can push the envelope with not investing in military and plan for getting attacked earlier than expected. What is your backup plan to defend yourself? What can be upgraded with the least cost to deter or defend? Be EXTREMELY mindful of pinning, especially when using virtual fleets. Always know what ships can enter any of your hexes before you get another turn and make sure you have something to pin those ships before they can get past your outermost system. Sometimes this means building in response to them moving into the system, other times it means building defensively before they move. If they have ships that can move deeper into your territory than your outermost hexes, you should seriously consider having ships built to pin them at your borders. They don't need to be upgraded unless attacked.
-Remember you CAN recover from mistakes. This is only the 3rd round. You can make some mistakes and still recover. Do not over-extend if possible and if you do, try to find a way to make up for it in the next round or two (i.e. skip military investments to boost your economy), but do not throw away ships at risky battles to get back ahead.
-So, now that we've discussed all that, let's play the 3rd round! there may be some exploring (depending on your race and defensive stance) left for you, or some battles to be fought and won. Sometimes you will fall in a position where it's better to just do little and pass early, saving up your resources. This is not a bad thing! At this point in the game, you will probably not have any PvP elements, but you will be getting very close and possibly having diplomatic options open up at the end of combat.
=============== Fourth round, Can we stay the course? ================
-Time to see how things settled after the third round! Look at how your plans went, etc. Remember you can still recover if things didn't go well! If you were on the aggressive side, either improve your military and ensure victory or hold off on all military plans for the round and recover. If you are on the defensive side, do you need to get into some military, do you need to research a new tech for your economy? Overall, you should be able to stick to Your plans you made in round 3 or tweak them slightly. Just remember that losing ships and not winning the system is one of the fastest ways to put yourself behind, so after your first resounding defeat, play cautiously.
-When your economy just isn't working, you need to consider a few things you can change to work with what you have. (a) Reduce the number of systems you have influenced to be most efficient. (b) If any economy boosting technology can help pull you out of this rut. If it isn't up this round, it probably won't be up next round and be very hesitant to make plans based around a tech coming up next round. (c) If you need to build a ship and attack something.
-Diplomacy should also be a well thought out aspect of your game now. What can you do to prevent players from attacking you and what can you do to have strong players attacked?
-Usually the fourth round is the round for the Galactic center to be attacked (again, don't even consider using the weak vanilla GCDS) and players should be aware of this and how it will change the board position. Sometimes you can wait until they start moving ships in and then throw a ship into the middle to try and weaken their attacking force to the point of them losing, and other times you can't do squat. If you are the one attacking the core, make sure you can defend from the hate it will bring your way (or jealousy if you prefer to call it that).
================ Fifth and Sixth round, PvP begins? ==================
-Well, at this point, the main monkey wrench to your plans will be the other players. Tweak and adjust your plans as required to not leave yourself vulnerable to other players. The game gets so dynamic at this point that I can't offer as specific of advice because it is so situation. Sometimes you are behind and need to just save up for a quick "big punch" research that will allow you to get back into the fight, other times you just want to solidify your defenses and hunker down. At this point, you really should have taken your core systems and decided how you want to interact with/attack other players. There are a few things you want to assess and keep top of mind as players start to transition towards the late game. Round six can sometimes be the transition into Late game, other times round seven.
-Keep an eye out for what other players CAN do and their potential. For example, the Rho Indi do not get dreadnoughts, so they want to harass and damage player's economy and (hopefully) kill some ships to keep them from being able to afford a late game dreadnought. Races like Planta and Hydran progress may need an aggressive "road bump" in the form of a few ships taking sectors away from them. Making the right ally or being "peaceful" in just the right way might allow you to flourish and be a fighting contender (even if this means defensively) when the late game comes around. You really need to be aware of what players could ruin your day and prepare the best you can to counter or defend.
-See if people are starting to show their ship builds for late game. Although most players won't give away their late game design too early, you want to keep an eye out for a tell so you can see if highly aggressive cannon based ships, missile fleets, defensive hull, or shield heavy ships are the way to go. Thankfully RotA provides a lot of rare techs that make non missile builds viable vs missile builds... but only if they come out and the player with missiles can't research them!
================ Seventh Round, so enters Lategame ===================
-At this point of the game, you've either lost already and are hoping (a) someone makes a mistake or (b) the PvP aspect works in your favour, or you are looking pretty good. Diplomacy becomes key in many games if you're not one of the military leaders (note, you don't have to have the best ships right now if you built up the economy to support a fast transition into late game ships).
-During this round, you want to be re-assessing your late game plans and turning them from "approximately" to "mostly." The reason I say "mostly" is because there is still a lot of time for players to change their ship blueprints and anyone who ends up battling in the last 3 rounds needs to be able to adjust their course of action with regards to building ships to counter those that you will fight. Of course, there is always the option of just trying to get in with as many neutron bomb ships as possible and you don't care about winning fights.
-Diplomacy is key, and not just in the conventional sense, but also in the sense of know how diplomacy WON'T work with! (Or maybe you're the one who doesn't want diplomacy and just wants to attack EVERYONE!)
-There should not be much focus on economy as you should have it set up for the rest of the game, but you will be thinking of things like Orbitals, Monoliths, Artifact Key, and (most important) how to save/stockpile actions for Round 8 and 9. Yes, you need to plan for round 8 and 9 as there will be a LOT happening and you might get caught in this whirlwind of the galaxy. Start thinking about maxing out the influence disks you have available at the start of your turn and stockpiling resources for the most efficient purchases or additional actions.
=============== Eight Round, Prepare for the nine ===================
-Simply put, round eight is all about preparing for the last round (nine). There are some exceptions and some strategies, but in general, try to leave yourself as many actions for round 9, plan AHEAD what you can afford to purchase (technology and ships) so you don't make plans only to find out you can't afford them
.-Even if you are on the aggressive side, do not over-extend yourself on round 8 such that you lose what you gained. On the flip side, if you can cripple your opponent on round 8 (or 7), it can often be a lot cheaper and more successful than waiting until round 9. As a more defensive player, only having to defend yourself should derail any plans to take it easy and prepare for nine. A very important strategy is ship pinning and do not be afraid to pin enemy ships in their OWN territory! Instead of waiting for the fight to come to you, send out ships into their spaces to pin them and prevent a move into your space. Your ships can be weak and suffer a quick defeat, but if they fight in their own system they cannot take yours!
================= Eight Nine, The winner emerges ====================
-The players who planned for round 9 ahead of time are often those who benefit most (or simply the dumb lucky dick who rolls 6s all the time and got amazing hexes, but most of the time you didn't play well enough). Simple advice for round nine and then the rest is up to you to play as you see fit.
-Use influence actions as required to dump 1VP systems to free up actions are take more valuable systems.
-Systems where you expect to lose fights will free up influence disks at the end of combat, so go and over extend just a little...
-Use ship pinning to your advantage as much as possible!