I fail.

[BlueFirePhoenix]

Alright, I'm new to this game, but i love it!  I think I'm pretty good at MOST strategy games, this one just beats me usually though.  I have a few questions on what i should do in my current game.  I need strategic advice from those willing to offer it.

1) Right now for whatever reason I am VERY low on metal.  I'm not really sure what it is, but some of my planets are LOSING me metal and i don't know why.  I'm not producing anything on them so I'm not sure what's happening.  Does anyone know what it COULD be?

2) Ok so far in my game I've been doing pretty well.  But the only two bordering enemy planets are both RIDICULOUSLY high level.  With between 300 and 500 Mark IV and V ships....I don't really know how to advance, because of course the AI destroys me every time i try.  The Progress isn't very high so i don't really know how this happened.  It's only about like 80, but I'm playing a really small map (i don't know if that means anything)

3) What's the use of starships?  I go into the enemy planet with a starship and around 1,000 other ships. But the tractor beams make it impossible for me to attack anything, and the ones i do destroy they just put back by the time i get another wave of ships ready.  Also, my ships get insta-killed by their ion cannon.  I'm really confused at what to do.

4) Missle silos....i happened to capture one from an AI planet.  Would anyone say those were useful? I really want to use a nuke...but i'm not going to lie...i just want to see it blow up lol... I REALLY don't want to raise the AI progress by 50.

Just in general could someone help me with general strategy?  I just don't know what to do when i encounter very strong AI planets. 

[x4000]

Welcome to the forums!  And glad you're enjoying the game, even if having a tough time.  To your questions:

1) Well, energy reactors cost you a lot of metal and crystal, so usually that is it.  If you want to see where you are spending a ton of metal, just open the stats screen (click on the scores box), and then look at the Expenses By Player tab there.  That gives you the rundown on literally every metal/crystal expenditure in your empire.  It might just be that you haven't captured enough metal to really support the sort of economy you want at present.  I generally aim for a gross metal/crystal income of around 500 or so at least by mid-game.  If you have not been already, you may want to build metal manufactories to convert your crystal excesses into metal.

2) That's really not that many ships on those planets, honestly.  If you leave them for a while longer, they'll both wind up with around 4000ish of that level ships on there.  Different planets around the galaxy have different marks, independent of the overall level.  Have you played the intermediate tutorial for the game?  That is talked about in there a bit (along with many other topics), and it's really something that is well worth your while if you skipped it.  You'll probably want to use transports to get around those big planets.

3) Again, the intermediate tutorial teaches you several strategies for dealing with ion cannons.  If you skip the intermediate tutorial, you're likely to be confused, as this game is sooo very different from most other strategy games.  You'll either want to "flood" the ion cannon (ie, rush it and kill it with low level ships), or send in higher level ships, or send in ships to pop out of a transport and surprise attack it.  Starships have many varied uses, depending on the starships line, ranging from increasing the power of the rest of your fleet, to taking out other starships, to going on long range raids themselves, to converting enemy ships to your own use, to shooting out the engines of massive numbers of enemy ships... and so on.

4) Lots of people love using the lightning warheads to clear wormholes on enemy planets that are high level (as you mentioned having trouble with in #3), but nukes are a weapon of last resort.  If you need one you really need one, usually, but they aren't to be used lightly for sure.

For strategy tips in general, please make sure you play the in-game tutorials.  You won't be prepared for the game without them, for sure.  And, you may want to have a look at the various strategies in the official wiki, which breaks down a lot of specific topics in more depth (check out the offensive and defensive sections in particular, I'd suggest).  There is also a strategy discussion subforum here, where a ton of people (newbies and experts alike) discuss various topics, and where you can ask further questions that might remain after the other venues are all exhausted.  Also, some video tutorials if you want.  You may find the ones on general tactics to be of particular note, in that one.

[ShadowOTE]

Ok, a few things that I've picked up since I started.

1) Resources:

First, in the lower right just above the scores is a "summaries and statistics" label - it's actually a button (Note to X4000 or Kieth - might want to make it a bit more obvious that it is clickable). If you open it up and look at expenses by player you can see where you're spending all your income.

Next, turn off your engineers. If you build them by default using control nodes, I would stop, since they suck up resources faster than you can maintain them early game, and late game you only have a few systems you probably want them in, so it's not really worth it. Along similar lines, disable auto-manufactury management and any pause your manufacturies (if you built any), since the only time you want them on is when you have a huge excess of metal/crystal and are in the negatives with the other. Otherwise you just waste resources and energy leaving them on.

Are you building lots of defenses? If so, turn off most of them. Tractors suck huge amounts of crystal, and other turrets can be just as bad or even worse. Build a few at a time, and make sure you have rebuilders if they get destroyed! (ironicly, that's a good thing, since rebuilding them at the half way point if they get destroyed before they finish building can sometimes be cheaper than going from scratch).

Finally, if you have high levels of energy, consider turning off a few reactors, starting with MKIII, since they are the most expensive. If you're still in the negatives, then turn off any trader projects you happen to be building, like superfortresses or zenith power generators, and then start looking at turning off shipyards (if you've got mercenary shipyards for some reason, turn them off. that's a late-game item).

2) Tier III/IV worlds:

Those border worlds are tricky if you're early in the game. I'd invest in transports and drop a fleet of bombers and such right on top of their orbital command station, then take the wave in your system with a fleet and some turrets. Then just go in and take the guard posts one at a time. Remember, holding Z-X shows where the AI can reach, so try taking one station at a time from angles outside the reach of as many other guard posts as possible. Mobile repair stations can also help if you find you need to repair during or between each attack, saving tons of ships in the process. If you can't get the command post, don't forget cleaner drones to prevent turrets from automatically rebuilding

3) Starships

These are basically there to buff your late game fleet. Light starships are a good investment. Just keep them in the center of the fleet and they will increase your fleets firepower by a huge amount. Don't expect them to carry the day on their own though. They're support, not designed for solo attacks (outside rare exceptions).

4) Missiles

If you can't break a system, use these. They increase AI progress and are time consuming and expensive, but for systems without warhead interceptors they can save you a ton of grief. Ideal usage varies, but generally you either use them for securing a beachead via EMPs and/or lightning warheads disabling and destroying stuff while you take out key targets, or to  wipe out the orbital or a high value target like a Raid Engine - generally via an armored warhead. When all else fails, nukes work great against non-core stuff, but they carry a hefty penalty.

[Aegis]

"1) Right now for whatever reason I am VERY low on metal.  I'm not really sure what it is, but some of my planets are LOSING me metal and i don't know why.  I'm not producing anything on them so I'm not sure what's happening.  Does anyone know what it COULD b"

 If you have an overabundance of energy, try turning some mk 2 or mk 3 generators into low power mode. Saying that you arent producing anything leads me to believe this could be the issue.


"2) Ok so far in my game I've been doing pretty well.  But the only two bordering enemy planets are both RIDICULOUSLY high level.  With between 300 and 500 Mark IV and V ships....I don't really know how to advance, because of course the AI destroys me every time i try.  The Progress isn't very high so i don't really know how this happened.  It's only about like 80, but I'm playing a really small map (i don't know if that means anything)"

How many ships are YOU sending in, and what MK level are they? You may want to send in 1000+ units here to compensate for relatively high enemy numbers. Send the full force, and park them on the wormhole until you finish destroying everything there. If your planet can handle its defenses well, I would do my best to blow the enemy station. Then I would either retreat back to my planet and deal with the enemy as they trickle in with my ships and turrets, or place my ships on the wormhole form their end, stopping them from coming through.

"3) What's the use of starships?  I go into the enemy planet with a starship and around 1,000 other ships. But the tractor beams make it impossible for me to attack anything, and the ones i do destroy they just put back by the time i get another wave of ships ready.  Also, my ships get insta-killed by their ion cannon.  I'm really confused at what to do."

If you view normal fleet ships as grunts, starships are the hero class here. more health,more damage, and some boost stats of nearby ships. In this case, you can let your ships all stay put to deal with turret defenses and follow through by either destroying the command station and placing your own, which will make the ion cannon yours, or you can make a beeline with starships in an attempt to destroy the cannon first, then take your time destroying other assets.


Nukes? not my cup of tea. Had some bad experiences involving special forces and nukes idling on my home planet.  In general, I would say just do your best to assemble a good sized fleet and only focus on eliminating one planet. set turrets on your wormhole to defend from the other until later on. I'm sure there is better advice though.

[BlueFirePhoenix]

I figured out what my problem was! The AI had destroyed pretty much all of my metal harvesters on one of my planets, and since they didn't attack my Command Station i wasn't alerted, so yeah.  I went with the whole idea of just trying to rush the planet with all of my ships, but the AI sent core ships to my home planet and just destroyed me.  It sucked.  I don't really know why that happened, I didn't attack their command station.  But yeah, I'm trying again on a bigger map this time, hopefully it'll be easier.  The one i was playing was a 10 planet map, and i just read that those were going to be a little difficult.

I started over and I'm doing pretty well so far, I've only taken about 4 planets (50 planet map) but I have tons of resources, buuut I'm starting to run into another similar problem.  Most bordering planets are extremely high level.  There's one beside me that has a data center in it, and i want to go for it, but it's a Mark IV planet, so i feel like i might just get obliterated.

[Draxis]

If you can, get into a multiplayer game with some players who use voice coms and are willing to take the time to explain the game to you.  As my buddy dragon said, you can spend 10 hours doing the tutorial and reading the wiki, or 10 minutes being tutored by someone who knows the game, and pick up the rest as you go.

[Hellheart]

I've yet to play a co-op game, but I do agree that as long as you and they have voice communication, it's going to be a helluva lot faster learning the game. I like to slog it out singleplayer and read up on everything and figure things out myself, but it's quite a chore. None of this is poor advice, but it may not be the best advice - this is just the way I've been doing it (I haven't had enough experience with the game to claim that I know how to do things "the right way"), and even then it's still highly situational. There are several games I've outright abandoned because I'm not experienced enough to deal with a situation similar to yours - I'm completely surrounded by entrenched high-tech planets very early in the game. However, unless they contain things like Mark III or IV Force Fields on the Command Center, or have nearby planets with Raid Engines, or have an Alarm Post (or SF Alarm Post), or one of several other nasty things a planet can have that makes your life miserable, I'll usually try to slug it out. If the planet lacks something powerful and it isn't reinforced much, they really aren't that hard to crack - they just take a lot of preparation and a lot of resources, and you're going to suffer a lot of losses unless you get lucky.

You start with 10k knowledge, and if you've conquered 4 planets that's another 8k without knowledge raiding. You can theoretically unlock Mark II for all 4 of the ships you can build and Mark III for 1, or Mark II for 3 of them and Mark III for 2. You could also unlock just one of them to Mark III (I normally go with bombers because the upgrade is really significant, but they get a lot more expensive and take much longer to build) if the ships and/or defenses on those planets are weak to a specific kind of ship. Generally speaking, you can get away with destroying a (somewhat lightly-defended) Mark III planet early on if you've got a bunch of turrets on your side of the wormhole, even if you only have Mark I ships, as long as you can destroy the Command Center without losing a ton of ships. However, this is rarely the case, so I highly suggest getting at least a couple Mark II ships if you want to save the knowledge until you better know what you're up against (you'll still want the turrets in any case). There are cases where you want to keep the Command Center up and take stuff out the old-fashioned way (avoiding wormholes because those turrets will just be rebuilt); this is usually the case if you know there are ships that won't give you much trouble if you attack them, but will give you massive amounts of trouble on your own planets because they're fast or immune to tractors or both. I have the unfortunate tendency to face an AI who starts with Z-Bombardments unlocked, and gleefully makes them the entire garrison on every planet he owns, so my default action for every planet has become "rush the Command Center to minimize losses."

Mark IV planets are harder to crack, particularly if they have starships or nasty heavy beam cannons, and Ions make it even worse. You have to rush the Command Center on a Mark IV if you're attacking it early on, and it's going to be very hard to get there, and after you destroy it you might need up to your turret cap (or unlock a few stronger turrets/tractors and add those) at the wormhole to save your empire. However, it's highly suggested that you avoid Mark IV planets altogether until you're stronger, unless they have an ARS; if you can advance by hitting a Mark III instead, do that. 2k knowledge plus more knowledge from adjoining planets (assuming they aren't Mark IV as well) will get you another unlock, and at some point you'll have enough of a numbers advantage to make up for the lack of quality.

In both of these cases, you'll want to save before you start your attack on the Command Center, and load if the guards don't all go to Threat and attack you. I feel uncomfortable doing this, but this early in the game you just can't take these planets if you have to deal with guards and turrets at the same time.

Always rush the Ions after you destroy the Command Centers and wipe out the wave, unless the Command Center is on the other side of the planet and the Ion is much closer. You'll sometimes take less casualties in that case by rushing the Ion first, but that means a lot more time you're under fire from guards and turrets, and you need a critical mass to take the Command Center before all your ships die. And if it's a Mark IV, or even a Mark III with Tractor III's, none of your ships are going to make it back alive no matter what you do.

[Sizzle]

If you can, get into a multiplayer game with some players who use voice coms and are willing to take the time to explain the game to you.  As my buddy dragon said, you can spend 10 hours doing the tutorial and reading the wiki, or 10 minutes being tutored by someone who knows the game, and pick up the rest as you go.

Not to derail the thread, but I need to do this     Perhaps we can set up a "newbie seeks help" system somehow.

[WinterBorn]

Transports are a key element in rushing a com station or bypassing a hard planet.

Cutting supply to an AI world that you need (destroy the com station on the target system and all connected AI systems) will knock out all turrets on it except for core level and Ion cannons making cleanup of a heavely fortified planet a lot easier.

Consider EMP missles, the EMP effect stacks so 4 EMP detonated just inside the AI wormhole will give you 2 min to set up a bridgehead or ninja the comstation, or build 5 fortresses.

AI war definatly rewards creativity.

[Hellheart]

I forgot about the transports. I don't recall if Planetary Mass Drivers do massive damage to transports, but if they do, the transports won't get your ships far on planets that have one. They were more useful before all the recent patches brought them down from "you're crazy not to use these" to "these are really really useful," but in some games I've unlocked them early just to make sure I don't burn all my knowledge right before I'd need them. If they don't have Mass Drivers, one or several transports (you can use decoys, of course) can get your ships unscathed to the Command Center, and then get them out again assuming they have good health. They also repair quickly if you have them on an allied planet. I'm actually glad you gave that tip, because there's an ARS in a Mark IV planet I'll be taking in about 3 more hours into my game, and Transports might save me a lot of casualties (although I have more than enough resources to rebuild almost anything, thanks to a pretty rich starting area). And there's a Raid Engine I'm not very fond of that might be easier to hit with the aid of transports.

Use only as many EMP missles as you need if you choose to use them. They do increase the AI Progress, although not as much as the more powerful missiles. Remember that EMP's will not affect starships and transports, so while you can keep your transports and troops relatively unscathed by detonating before you enter and before you drop them off, if they have any nasty starships in the system you're still going to take fire from them. For the love of God, remember to set your missile silo on Low Power mode when you're not building something - IIRC it sucks up 25k energy when it's active, which is especially ridiculous if you capture it on a planet and don't realize it (I was very confused about suddenly going from 15k energy to -10k energy until I discovered the culprit). Also, if you're not using transports, putting your ships in low-power mode as they're moving from the wormhole to the Command Center keeps them from firing until they're on top of it, maximizing your dps when you get there, which is especially important if you're on one of those super-annoying planets with 10-15 engineers on FRD mode. This is also how you keep cloaked ships cloaked until you get to the target you want to raid.

[Keemossi]

Regarding 2 and 3:

 Just started a game in pretty bad spot.. two level 4 planets, and one crappy. Most of the other planets in 3 hops distance also are lvl 3-4 and/or very low on resources and generally annoying. I pretty much messed the start and had all resources bombed away few times. Actually, it took the first hour to recover and get another planet.. I'm very newbie to this game.

I ended up getting raid starship, leech starship and repair station. I didn't really want to take the nearby easy planet, as there were no resources.. so I just quickly destroyed guard posts+warp gate and dropped a force field to block the wormhole - I needed to some more energy generators. Then I just did pretty much as described earlier.. trapped one wormhole with loads of turrets and as much ship as I could afford (had really low resources..). Using raid starship I raided the guard posts. Then I just watched my fleet grow, as with leech starship+repair station I could grab good portion of the attacking ships. Loads of Z-bombards and other goodies.. got the planet, repeated a few times.

The above works very nicely even with mk.1 stuff, at least up to some hundreds on a planet. Just have to make sure they don't all come at once (so.. no command station first) and that there aren't too many ships that can bypass tractor beams.

As there weren't any good planets, I had to use transports to skip a few planets, and rush through one lvl 4 planet as transports failed (no support). I only had some few hundred ships, but all were lvl 3-4, and with leech starship the fleet was pretty much self-sustaining. I just made sure it was near any enemy ships that would attack.

Point is.. I just love raid and leech starships. Raid starships are so fast they can usually survive to destroy a guard post or warp gate on most lvl 4 planets. There's no need for a big fleet, just one (bit expensive) ship. And getting leech starship is a lot cheaper in terms of knowledge than getting mk3 ships. In that game I've managed well with just mk2 scouts, rest are mk1 (I mostly just get keep ~50-100 fighters to pick off stray bombers etc). The flagship line is also nice in bigger fleets. Scout seems pretty useful for raiding fleet to reliable get the combat view screen, they aren't that expensive.
But I have no idea what to do with the cloaking ships, AI seems to spam those tachyon things everywhere. Haven't touched dreadnought yet either.. fighters are good enough vs. just few AI starhips.

And as far as I'm concerned, there's little reason not to get transports, they're just awesome for everything. I use them to skip planets, keep a fast response defense when I can be bothered, haul scouts as far as the ships can take to scout further planets, store spare sentinels (happens with leech/parasites), reinforce fast (mk 4 factories never seem to be conveniently located), pass ion cannons and other bothersome defenses, get those annoyingly slow frigates see some battle..


Uh.. awful wall of text. I just bought this game a few days ago and I'm terribly hooked. Saw this on Impulse, and.. strategy on grand scale is always cool! Though, those Zenith Remnant screenshots most links show are really misleading (I mean the closeups on golems and the like). I thought this might be more like tower based on them.

[ShadowOTE]

I personally use starships as a late game unlock, since they're pretty vulnerable outside the ball of ships you get late game (especially leech mk I, which I thought would be awesome until I saw how quickly they got destroyed). They can really be useful in some circumstances if you know what you're doing, but the problem (for me, at least) is that they don't feel like they do that much at the moment, partly because when you zoom out and keep them in the center of your fleet you can't even tell you brought them. Then again, I haven't used them that much, since I tend to go for ship unlocks and the flagship line, which doesnt really let me see what they're up to that well unless I zoom in and see all the ships they boost