I have a friend who is getting into Stars!. IIRC he played some a
few years ago, and he just found a copy on ebay.

He asked me for some starting hints. After thinking about it, I figured I could come up with a basic list. I am sure others will have more to add, and that the list will quickly be longer than 10.

The Ten Commandments of Playing Stars!
1) You need a good race design. Your race should be designed to the game you are playing. Ask friends for opinions. Test your race design at least a few times.
2) Good population management. Learn about population growth, and
the 25%, 33%, and 50% values. Managing your population is the best way to start a strong growth curve.
3) Autobuild factories and mines. I like 500 of each generally, as planets seldom need more than that. Autobuilding is VERY efficient. It will build as many factories as possible with the Germanium available, then build more mines for building more factories the next turn. No need to build specific numbers of factories and mines.
4) Building is more important than fighting. If you get into an early war, always give the war a low priority, if possible Focus on growth of your empire. In the long run this will win you more wars, as you will have better tech and resources. Do not be afraid to spend resources on ships to help expansion.
5) Information is important. Scouting is important. You need accurate information to make good decisions. Flying or fighting blind is dangerous.
6) Only build fighting ships when they are needed. 'Need' varies, but do not build fighting ships if you to not have a specific purpose in mind.
7) Diplomacy. You will almost never win without one ally, or without several neutral players. You cannot take on the universe alone. Make diplomacy a part of your game. On occasion this will mean letting go of anger, or swallowing pride.
8.) Only fight when you can win. Throwing away ships is wasting resources. Pull back if necessary, until you know you can win. And actually, I prefer to win battles without any losses. This is much more efficient.
9) Use tools, like the Stars! Calculator, and Posey's spreadsheet, to help you with the math, and make yourself a better player.
10) Ask questions. If you do not ask questions, you will never get answers, and it will be hard to improve, as well as succeed. And of course read this forum and any other articles that you can find.

RainDancer (pretending to be a guru).

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Raindancer wrote on Fri, 15 August 2003 15:57

RainDancer (pretending to be a guru).

Commandments? No. Ten Suggestions. Or Ten Instructions. But not commandments. What god has commanded these?

11. Use good military strategy: Do unto others before they do unto you. If you want to turn the other cheek then go ahead. But remember after you turn two cheeks you're right back where you started.

12. Lots of pop drop colonizing: The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
AR/HE colonizing: I've given up trying to escape from reality; they always find me anyway.

13. Overgate for quicker travel: All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

14. Use Wormhole travel: No matter where you go, you're there.
especially "highly volatile" wormhole travel: It's bad luck to be superstitious.

15. Use diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I can only please one person a day, and today ain't your day... tomorrow ain't looking good either.
So many stupid people, So few comets.
You get the drift.

16. Find lots of good allies but never an SD.
Remember the two golden rules with SD:
Allying with SD: Never play leap frog with a unicorn
Fighting an SD: Never play leap frog with a unicorn

17. Do lots of micro-management: Hard work has a future payoff, but laziness pays off now. So consider playing factoriless race instead. Or play one world wonder. No micromanagent in early game. And no management in mid game. By then you will be walking around asking "I wonder what happened to my world?"

18. Play huge packed games only: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. This way you get to win and go on social security in the same year.

19. Be careful when allying with beginners. They still think of everyone as AI. They also like to play disguised as AI. Sometimes you have to double check your game file location to make sure you are not playing with AI. Ahahh! I thought so. This IS a multi-player game. AI's don't send e-mail messages!

20. Never ever ever ask a PP to send some minerals to replenish your HW for building more defenses.

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Damn, you good!

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Deuce wrote on Sat, 16 August 2003 07:32

29) Check your designs carefully with an attractiveness calculator. Few things are more embarrassing than chaff that don't draw missile fire.

Amen on that one

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How about these no-brainers?

31) Only transfer fleets to allies if they KNOW it's coming.

32) Don't get in a pop-drop war with a -f HE.

33) Beamers without chaff is like pizza without cheese.

34) You can't build defenses to protect from a packet hit one year away.

35) If you want to win, play TT CA a couple times. If you want to have fun, play something else.

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boneandrew wrote on Wed, 20 August 2003 08:30

How about these no-brainers? 32) Don't get in a pop-drop war with a -f HE.

I've never met a -f HE that I was afraid of. Generally, a HE is dead meat to invasions in my experience. And a factoryless with say 30% growth... I've tried 'em, can't build freighters fast enough to export pop. I'll stick to 19%/20% races with bigger planets, thank ya very much.


36) SS may be weak alone, but put it in a team and it gets very evil.

37) Colloidal BB's own. Make sure you get the first of 'em and the most, and you'll have some force behind your expansion right when you need it.

38) Learn how to use packets! Send a fleet along with the packet as it moves - this can be tricky as the only move half the normal distance on year one. Take down the enemy starbase the year before it hits, drop some LBU's to kill defenses. Whenever possible strike with two packets at once. Also, packets tend to do the most damage at one warp less than the absolute maximum speed due to packet decay rates. This isn't always the case.
(Okay okay that was like 5 or 6 commandments. Sorry.)

[Updated on: Thu, 21 August 2003 01:17]

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(39) never befriend a CA
(40) never make an enemy of a CA
(41) always take Consctruction cheap
(42) Never take Weapons expensive even in a team game.
(43) never go to war early if your an AR, rember youre just a small little defensless race, until you get powerful
(44) always try to make a freind of an AR late in the game
(45) never let an AR live to the end of a game, youll regret it.

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The Taubat wrote on Tue, 26 August 2003 20:36

(39) never befriend a CA (40) never make an enemy of a CA (41) always take Consctruction cheap (42) Never take Weapons expensive even in a team game. (43) never go to war early if your an AR, rember youre just a small little defensless race, until you get powerful (44) always try to make a freind of an AR late in the game (45) never let an AR live to the end of a game, youll regret it.

In a team game, to have everybody have weapons cheap or normal is a huge waste. It is a good idea to have your two best races take weapons cheap in case one gets a bad planet draw or gets off to a bad start, but the rest should have one of the other techs cheap in order to share tech with the team. Usually in a team game, you should either have a tech cheap or expensive, no normal.

Paladin

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Amen to that.

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Never take over an experiemental race - especially when the race creator bailed

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[Updated on: Mon, 20 October 2003 19:56]

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Hi!

• Whatever you do, do it faster.

(Haven't listened to that advice, 've waited one turn too much with the attack, and he gated all his ships to defense. Attacking now would be way too costly. )

• Even the fastest performance is sometimes too slow.

(Too many times I've heard/said "Damn, I needed just ONE MORE turn...! ")

BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Tue, 21 October 2003 05:33]

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Lebaron wrote on Thu, 11 December 2003 02:22

whatever number yall are on: If your alone in the Univers, youve won. If your not, theres still plenty of game to be played despite how badly you have your enemy beat. 1+ whatever number yall are on: Dont put yourself in a situation where you need to counter-attack. (think about that one) 63: If you need to use calculators to find out if your gonna win, then youve already lost.

The discussion that spawned from this has been split off to a new topic: Stars! battles: all about numbers and calculations or not?

mch,
underpayed moderator

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