What to do when there are no high value targets near you?

[Luddite42]

I'm on about my 5th game (lost or gave up on the first 4), I gave in and turned the difficulty down to 5, playing on an 80 planet map, but there are no useful planets to take.  I found two zenith reserve planets but no way I have enough energy to support them so I can't use them until I take more planets.  I found 1 advanced research station which I took.  I have yet to find anything else of value and I have searched about 35 planets.  I overall control 8 planets, 7 of which are useless but they are positioned in a way that gives me a "core" empire with only one wormhole on each side leading in.  AI progress is 115-120.  I just don't know where to go from here, I'm running out of crystal, knowledge is tapped out, two mark IV planets are near me with a quickly building number of mark IV ships and I don't even have mkIII stuff yet, I can't seem to get scouts or scout starships through because new areas are blocked by aforementioned mark IV planets, stealing knowledge just makes them build more ships, I'm about 100k energy shy of being able to crack open one of the zenith reserves but I already got the only two distribution nodes in the area.  What next?

I guess one direct question I should ask is, if I leave the planets bordering mk IV AI planets less defended, will those AI worlds "stand down" over time if I'm not stacking on their border, or will they at least slow down production?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's possible to take mk IV worlds with a Mk II fleet, you just need to be smart and will probably have to wear it down with repeated assaults. Trick is to stay in as long as practical and withdraw before losses get too bad. Try to take out at least one high value target each assault, and make sure you have enough defenses backing you that if they follow you through you can take them.

Siege Starships are critical to such tactics, because they can let you strike targets and kill guardians from your entry wormhole.

AFAIK, The amount of reinforement waves the AI gets is simply based on AI progress. However, where the AI reinforces can change based on how many planets are on alert and what the AI thinks is most threatened. So, having only a handful of choke points can work against you, especially if theyre high mark worlds - there's less places to reinforce, so the chokes get reinforced more.

[x4000]

My general suggestion for a situation like this: take "launching point" planets that will help your further scouting.  No matter what, you know you're going to have to move further into the galaxy, right?  You can only really hop 4 planets or so at most at a given time.  So find a somewhat-interesting planet that is in a strategically-useful position relative to the rest of the galaxy and which is 3-4 hops out from your existing planets, and take that. 

Then launch renewed waves of scouts from there and reasses.  If needed, repeat the process until you're close enough to stuff that you are more interested in and thus can take.  If you're not seeing good stuff yet, that probably means it's all clustered more together on the other side of the galaxy, which actually can work in your favor if it's closer together rather than being spread all over the entire map.  The challenge facing you right now is just to get over there in an efficient fashion.

To answer the other question about moving away from a Mark IV planet or similar: once you've alerted an AI planet by taking an adjacent planet (or even just knocking the AI off an adjacent planet), it never comes off alert or stands down.  You can "neuter" it (kill all the guard posts but not the command station) to make it reinforce a lot slower and to a much lower cap, though.  The only time the AI stands down from having been on alert is when it's alerted by a big fleet of yours that moves out of the area -- but proximity to your or neutral planets always makes it stay on alert.

[Signata]

Some simple advice. When there aren't any strategically interesting targets around me, the next thing I check is resources. Hit 'R' in galaxy view and check out if any of the otherwise "dead" planets around you are 5 or more. A solid resource planet can be worth taking for nothing more than that. I'm also fond of dead ends. Even if there isn't anything of interest, a dead end wormhole fork is a nice place to stash unguarded MkII or MkIII economic stations, which are, all by themselves, like extremely well endowed planets.

[Echo35]

I usually get my scouts flying around looking for high value targets and head for them.

[Fleet]

When I don't see any targets that I really want, I scout as far as I can, and pick a planet 3 hops out (so there are 2 AI planets between my current and my target planet), and take it. Preferably I pick a planet that leads to a large part of the galaxy, rather than a small corner. That becomes my forward base, and sending out scouts from that planet is one of the first tasks I do. I set up space docks, turrets, and that new planet becomes my new hub of operations; my previous stuff goes on defense-maintenance mode.