SolarBall

New uses of Agents : In the current system, agents are either placed on specific buildings on planets to shut them down, or placed within empires in general to gather overall information. In addition to these locations, here are a few other ideas for places to send spies in enemy empires: Research: Spies in enemy empires could either give their source empire a percentage of the enemy empire's research (sort of like a research treaty

A couple of links to ideas here: Space combat (This is a slight variation on current combat that provides different qualities to different types of weapons. It assumes a typical 2D square system, whether realtime or turn based.) Ground combat

Something else that seems to work all right for me (Though I haven't played the most difficult levels, but have won some challenge games), is to try and be the first person ot research the extreme colonization technologies. You won't be able ot fully use these planets for awhile, but they will provide money once they grow a bit, and will provide access to planets (for a time), that other races don't have access to. (Though this does rely on having a good research advantage.)