Advice to newer players
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
One thing I've started to realize is that I think the game is a lot harder on tiny-medium maps, not to mention that the game plays completely differently.
A lot of the tips you will read from experienced players here, which are excellent, don't necessarily work that well in small universes. For example, putting all your resources into military and pumping out colony ships isn't necessarily that helpful in a small universe where there is only a handful of planets, that the computer players have already colonized because they knew where they were and you took too long to find them.
Last night, I played in a large universe, using a lot of the advice from the expert players, and it just clicked. Not only did I win on Normal AI when I used to think that was hard, but I did it so easily, that I clearly have to put the AI level up now.
My experience in the smaller maps, is the computer advantage of knowing where the yellow stars are is much greater, because the planets are also in range of their colonizers. Playing in the larger maps, it becomes a race for those stars, and you have a good shot at beating them.
I just wanted to say, that I think a mistake I made as a beginner was that playing on smaller maps would make the game easier for me while I worked out the details. I now think it made the game harder.
This is just my opinion from we'll say an intermediate player, I am by no means an expert.
A lot of the tips you will read from experienced players here, which are excellent, don't necessarily work that well in small universes. For example, putting all your resources into military and pumping out colony ships isn't necessarily that helpful in a small universe where there is only a handful of planets, that the computer players have already colonized because they knew where they were and you took too long to find them.
Last night, I played in a large universe, using a lot of the advice from the expert players, and it just clicked. Not only did I win on Normal AI when I used to think that was hard, but I did it so easily, that I clearly have to put the AI level up now.
My experience in the smaller maps, is the computer advantage of knowing where the yellow stars are is much greater, because the planets are also in range of their colonizers. Playing in the larger maps, it becomes a race for those stars, and you have a good shot at beating them.
I just wanted to say, that I think a mistake I made as a beginner was that playing on smaller maps would make the game easier for me while I worked out the details. I now think it made the game harder.
This is just my opinion from we'll say an intermediate player, I am by no means an expert.
