impact
Posts: 88
Joined: 2/18/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline
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Here are a few pointers, they might be subjective though:
What will almost inevitably happen during your first few games while you watch the AI and get your feet wet a little is that sooner or later your empire will go broke.
Getting your head inside the economy to optimize it and prevent something like this from happening means getting your head into empire management. Which is pretty much the most complex topic there is in the game.
However, you can make it a bit easier, so don't panic.
What you do is this:
Start a sandbox game (no victory conditions) in a fairly large galaxy with 4-6 other races. This will give you plenty of room to expand.
As your race, select the traders. I am not at home right now and can't remember their name, but they get Merchant Guild as government form (which you should choose).
Start the game by building 3 additional explorers, one additional constructor and a colonizer (if you want).
Leave the ships on automatic, it will be fine.
Once those ships are built, you can accept the AI suggestions for building warships.
Now with the number of explorers flying around, your expansion planner should fill up nicely.
Look at the resources your empire has in demand. Make sure that on top of that list there are only luxury goods and that you have at least one source for the production recources you require (otherwise your empire won't be able to produce any warships, your production will halt, which is bad).
Most important keyword however: colonies, colonies, colonies.
Your empire get's about +50% tax income from colonies, so don't build any mines your don't absolutely need in the beginning and build colonies as many as possible to make money.
Befriend and pay off every pirate faction you meet - you are a trading empire, not a warmonger. Being friends with pirates doesn't come cheap, but your income shouldn't be a problem once you have a few colonies. The big plus is: they will leave you alone, sell you valuable intelligence and raid enemy empires for you should it come to a war.
With other empires you deal more or less the same way: make friends. Send gifts, try to get a trade agreement with them.
Some races however you just can't befriend. Don't declare war. Declare trade sanctions. Starve them out. If this doesn't work: make sure you have a few fleets and blockade their colonies.
If they declare war, pull back your ships to bolster your defense and let the pirates and allies handle the attack.
You don't wage war by sending massive fleets, because every warmonger or technocrat will just wipe them off the face of the galaxy. You wage war with money and contacts, just like a trade empire should.
With a strategy like that, your empire will expand very very quickly from the beginning - this is good. Even if it causes corruption, money won't be that important. Control over resources is.
Spreading out means controlling more luxury goods. That way, if someone messes with you, a trade sanction will severely hurt them. The pirate raids and your allies will do the rest.
And while this is the overall strategy, it should give you an empire that is stable enough so you can try getting your head into the micromanagement aspects of the game.
You should probably start by grabbing a few ships, switching them to manual and put them into one or two fleets you can manage. But make sure that you still have enough ships on auto for defense.
Next thing should be one or two constructors. Look at resource requirements and mining closely and get a feel for it.
The rest should come bit by bit.
Hope this helps, and sorry for the wall of text :)
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Any tips (already)? - 
). Let us help each other! 
I suppose we won't know what day of the week it is anymore, quite soon!
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