OK - so I have to play this game in one or two hour chunks (having a full time job, a 5 & 4 yr old and playing about 10 hours of online poker each week for extra $$ all get in the way of mega-sessions).
Played thru the tutorials (not quite to the end but enough to get the hang of it I hope); fired up a 40 planet world - 2 easy AI 5's - +1 progress every 30 mins, have Zenith installed on its default settings, picked space planes as special and off we go...
Start is trivially easy - tech up to space planes to 3, heavy bombers to 2, built full complement and off we go;
My planet is at one end of the galaxy map with about 3 planets behind it. I have 3 wormholes out of my homeworld, one of which leads to the 3 planets behind and the other two of which look like they (eventually) go towards the AI homeworlds...
Of the three to my back two are are AI 1&2 but one is AI 4 and it makes me nervous to leave it at my back. For a few jumps in each of the other directions I can't see anything over AI3 so it looks like a good start.
For the moment though I lock up the other two worlds at my back, build turrets on the AI4 world's wormholes to each and head out in the other directions where my scouts have spotted 2 advanced labs.
I take out both the warp gates in the adjacent worlds, take one of them for production and just leave the other with a control centre.
Next it's the advanced lab worlds which net me bulletproof fighters and gatling lasers. I don't bother to built normal fighters for the moment and tech up gatlings to level II. My starship line is up to a full complement of light starships and flagships by this point.
The next scouting push reveals some interesting stuff. A key world with both a botnet golem and a core V heavy bomber fac which also has as its neighbour a world stuffed full of tech IV and V AI ships, turrets and a fortress. I take the world, leave the golem alone (I think I'll try my first game without using them until and unless I need to) and throw up as much static defense around the wormhole as I can.
I also pick up an advanced factory on the way to the key world that let's me start pumping out space plane IV's (and shortly thereafter advanced bomber IV's once I tech them up to III)
I also send my fleet at this point to take out the AI 4 world at my back - which goes without incident (although quite costly in ship rebuild time). I also pick up tachyon microfighters from somewhere.
At this point I don't pay quite enough attention to a warning of a 532 AI ship cross planet attack which then turns up, doesn't get stopped by my tractor turrets and proceeds to roam around my weaker worlds killing off a couple of command posts until my fleets catches up with it. My homeworld has heavier defences and a small fleet of tech IV spaceplanes so it was never in any danger but it did cost me time.
Another scouting run shows up 2 more golems (black widow and the regenerator - I read their descriptions and leave them alone)
Scouting also shows up a couple of unexciting planets that I mine for knowledge and retreat from and I have now reached spires on my main starship line, so it takes a while to get them built.
Also I have hit two distribution caches but both of them were trojans (so that slowed me down too!).
AI progress is now about 260 and I finally find two data centers which I hit n run on to take it down to 220.
Teching up to scout drone II now helps me push all the way to the weaker AI's base (and I have managed to leave a scout intact on each planet on the way).
It's 7 jumps away, but in the next 3 jumps can net me another data center, fabs for sentinels, arachnids and warbirds (all of which sound very nice although I've no idea how good they are) as well as 2 AI starship construction units (are these the same as mine or do they give me nicer tech?).
The stronger AI is hidden somewhere the far side of the key world - I have pushed scouts maybe 4-5 jumps past the nasty fortress world but haven't found much of excitement there. The AI home is probably another 8-10 jumps or so beyond that.
My strategic plan is to fortify the key world, blocking the stronger AI's route in, and turn my attention to picking up the nice 3 world cluster with its 3 fabs. If I hit n run on the last data center I have found my AI prog should be about 270 by the time I have got these.
Then I think it will be time to build up my fleet and make a decision whether to leave the pretty crippled AI (which will be down to about 4 worlds by that point) in its corner and go and do some fortress busting vs the stronger AI, or whether I finish it off and take the +100 AI progress on the chin.
What I like about this game is that it's a bit like that old classic 'Panzer Leader'. It starts easy - beating up on Poles on horseback and then the French, but soon you are trying to outfox Monty at El Alemain and then taking on the Russians at Kursk (and if you manage that it's the US who have nukes etc). The game grows in difficulty.
Most RTS's are just grab resources, build optimal fleet, reach a tipping point and win.
This is not.
Well worth the time and money so far - very pleased with it...
