Raven's Guide to Winning Empire of the Eclipse
I've been beta testing Empire of the Eclipse since April 2011 and along the way, I've learned some important lessons that will help beginning players stand a chance in the cold and cruel emptiness of space. This is one approach, and there are certainly others, but it's an approach that has worked quite well for me.
#1: Landgrab. Your job is to grow as fast as possible. The longer the game progresses, the less unclaimed planets will remain. Expand outward in all directions with Outpost Ships, and reclaim those resources back to planets that can produce ships with Small Harvesters within a solar system and Resource Harvesters between solar systems. Once you bump into your neighbors, stop growing, and here's the most important part - get a Colony Ship into the core of the galaxy once you can no longer expand outward from your home solar system. Not the exact center for reasons that will become apparent if they are not already, but very close into the center, certainly into the galactic sectors inward from where you started. You can expand rapidly in the mostly unclaimed interior of the galaxy. Eventually, you should have multiple growth clusters throughout the galaxy. Don't bother expanding in the outer rim once you start bumping into your neighbors as the outer rim will be the most populated with the least amount of available planets.
#2: Economics before warfare. Going to war as a small empire is a waste of resources for both parties. Grow to gain resources, use resources to win. Going to war means winning only for Warlords, but that's a mistake until the end game when you need a lot of power to destroy home worlds. For Traders, you need to get as many resources as possible, which means getting as many planets as possible. For Researchers, you need to collapse stars, which is dependent upon learning skills, and that takes time. Once you learn how to collapse stars, that takes a lot of resources and you need lots of planets for lots of resources. Warlords, Dreadnaughts and Planet Killers take a lot of resources and you need lots of planets for lots of resources. Economics before warfare. More wealth is created for you by taking an unclaimed planet than fighting for one, which will inevitably cause loss of resources on both sides.
#3: Get your object (ship) count up ASAP. You need to have a ton of ships to grow big. Most of your ships will be harvesters making resource runs between mining outposts and colonies. Build as many shipyards as you can and augment that with the Advanced Shipyards skill.
#4: Don't build any defensive or offensive ships until you are attacked. This may sound counter intuitive to some of you, but every ship you build that's not allocated towards growth is going to slow your growth. If you focus on growth and are attacked you'll have built up enough resources to go and build a response to the threat.
#5: Explore everything. Send probes everywhere. Map the universe. Discover where your neighbors are, where the unclaimed planets are. You need to plan to map 100% of the galaxy by the endgame so you can observe all other players and achieve victory.
#6: Be nice to everyone (until they aren't nice to you). No one likes attacking the nice guy (unless you like playing a psychopath). The more friends you have, the more you attempt to use diplomacy, the less likely you will be bogged down in a costly war before you have the resources to win the war. Communicate! There is in-game messaging and chat for a reason. When you encounter another player, reach out, negotiate borders.
#7: Use hub and spoke harvesting. Pool all resources within a solar system from the outposts using Small Harvesters, and send all of the solar system's resources out from a single planet using Resource Harvesters (and for Traders, Cargoships). A Resource Harvester is 8x more expensive than a Small Harvester. Don't build a Resource Harvester when a Small Harvester will do.
#8: Don't over-emphasize your specialty skills at the expense of empire growth. Everyone will need to max out Advanced Shipyards and Advanced Materials Collection regardless of your specialty. You will do this over the course of a month or so, but you should balance training in your speciality with training in Advance Shipyards and Advanced Materials Collection.
#9: Not all Terran planets should be colonized, many should become outposts. Outpost ships cost 25Ku, Colony Ships costs 120Ku. That's almost 5x more expensive. With a 10 Shipyard limit in the game, you really only need 10 colonies to max out your object (ship) count (although you will likely end up with more than 10). If you find a Terran world you don't need to colonize, turn it into an outpost to gain resources.
#10: Trade. Trade with everyone. This is another reason you should be nice to all players - you want to maximize your trading relationships for increased resource wealth. Trading is another great way to gain resources without going to war.
Enjoy the game!
