Thanks Franco, great feedback.



I can see economy is the obvious first choice, and influence to help trade and win by influence. Why creativity? I would think morale would be more valuable, but I'm new to this. Others I'm pondering are population growth and research.



Hmmm, that does suck. I'm used to the game BOTF, in which all enemies will surrender when they know it's hopeless. I do like military conquests.



This brings up a point I've seen others ask:

Do you specialize planets? Dedicate them to 100% military, or 100% research? It seems to me a mixed planet is not as efficient, under-utilizing resources.

I was thinking of making my home world 100% military production, and every 4th or so colony dedicate to 100% research. I haven't tried it yet. Does that work? I realize I'll have to move my production planet sliders to zero to save up money to buy research... I'm wondering if that is worth the effort.

Thanks again for all the great feedback everyone!

Strategy can vary greatly depending on map size and the total number of habitable planets in the galaxy. Something that works well for one galaxy configuration may not work well for another. That said, I put the most focus on economy followed by military production then research. There are game strategies that rely heavily on research and make it a top priority. So, it depends on what works for your game. You really have to experiment with it and find that balance for yourself.

When building labs and factories, one thing to understand is that you are not actually creating research or production. What's going on is you're creating spending capacity for that area. For example, moving sliders to 100% research and spending will put some amount of money into research determined by your total research capacity or total RP. Building more labs, upgrading labs, developing research mining resources, and some special projects increase your overall RP. So, if you build too many labs, going to 100% research and spending might result in negative cash flow. Conversely, not enough labs would fail to utilize your spending ability.

You can specialize your planets or generalize them. Either way works. I tend to specialize my planets because like you said, it seems more efficient. Plus, there can be bonus tiles that dictate what role a planet is best for.

Regarding bonus points, creativity provides some research benefit that can be helpful. I don't use it myself, but from what I've read, it's very effective in the Twilight of the Arnor (TA) expansion releasing soon. A lot of people put points into population growth. I used to do that myself, but I've opted for military production instead. I rely on the Aphrodisiac special project to help population growth rates instead of bonus points (that one is made available by Habitat Improvement).