Noob in need of help =/

i started playing neptunes pride since last year but i haven’t been playing that much since then, but now i want to be an active and better player. I have so many questions like how do you defeat and enemy neighbor that is almost equal to you. essentially what i need is a strategy guide and i know there are already alot out there , but i just want to know more.
if someone is kind enough to help a man in need i would be forever grateful =D

There is no guide to strategy that is why it is strategy…

Strategy requires knowledge of the game physics,knowing the optimizations you can make to achieve goals better than if you did not know what you was doing, and also observation skills. A strategy is basically just a group of tactics strung together.

A better strategist will string together more chains of tactics and allow room for error if a tactic fails by allowing another tactic to happen in its place and continue the chain and the flow of the strategy.

No one can really tell you a strategy, because if you brake the chain of tactics in that strategy then you would have to come back to the forums again and ask what to do. (Which isnt particularly useful).

You could be a beast at strategy but if your observation is just horrible, you will miss read the galaxy and get your empire destroyed… which almost happened to me a few times this last few days, because I actually have just come back from a long few months brake as well.

I actually resigned to early thinking I was dead but then my AI actually is still in exactly the same position as where I left off. But I read the situation incorrectly, but I am very good at strategy. So…

The game is very complicated there is a lot of problems to solve to make tactics work…

You need to solve the travelling salesman problem like everyday for several different carriers to know exactly what is best route to send your carriers, but sending your carrier that particular route means you wont need another carrier to go there… however you still might need more carriers heading in that direction so you have to work them together, try not the make there paths overlap, and try to make them intercept at a star at exactly the same time.

Then you need to do that as cheaply as possible… because you could just spam 1000 carriers but the better you can do it you will achieve the same result with 1 carrier lol over exaggerated, but its true.

You need to know, is it better to get banking tech or terraforming… is it better to get weapons or manufacturing… should you get manufacturing before weapons because you dont plan to fight anyone and you can get a few more ships before you do plan to fight… because manufacturing improves your empire while you are not doing anything while weapons is not useful if you are not fighting.

You need to know will you end up with more money by improving your science tech and going banking or terraforming after you decided which is better or do you bulk spend economy…

Same with your military, do you bulk spend industry or buy science and get the techs to improve it.

The only strategy that works every game is, collect stars as fast as possible… You do that by being aggressive in the opening, capture every star possible while planning who to attack when you run out of stars, and then continue collecting stars from other empires.

No matter what plan you use, even if your plan is to spam economy, you should be spamming economy for stars collected per hour or per tick.

That might not make sense but, economy leads to more industry which leads to more stars, economy alone does not win the game it actually does nothing by itself.

You could spam economy all year and never buy anything else, but all you would be doing is improving the size of the number in your bank balance… because you are not even going to use that money to collect stars your just going to keep buying more economy which is useless. So in other words, buying economy to improve your economy is useless.

If you want some hands on training I know a good group of players. We can always create different simulations to improve strategies.

Have you tried reading SunTzu’s “The Art of War”?
I find that to be a very good strategy guide for not only this game but quite a few others I play as well :slight_smile:

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We also need to remember, we are not the only ones playing the game trying to achieve victory (or defeat in some cases).

If someone else is employing the exact same strategy as everyone else in the same galaxy because they read a guide on the forums telling them all to do that… Someone is still going to lose and you cant just read another guide. But if that happens, you can maximize your stars per tick while sabotaging your enemies, which means… help your enemies enemies.

You wont perfect the entire game in one sitting, you need to focus on certain parts of the game so its more simple, then all you have to do is remember what you have learned while you perfect the rest of the game. So divide it into 3 parts, opening middle and end of the game.

The end of the game is simple, everyone can do this… if your winning then basically you continue winning lol or if your losing you can resign or learn how to lose properly like by sending credits to alliances or again your enemies enemies, so they will think twice next time about attacking you.

There are still tactics to be used in the endgame with diplomacy or observing when the leader is about to capture the final star then you quickly attack your alliances at the right time in betrayal to gain a few more positions on the leaderboard but because its the end of the game they can not retaliate against you.

The opening is the easiest part of the game but also where you could easily waste a good position if not careful, you need to first of all decide how many carriers you need, and how you will develop your infrastructure, where you will expand to. Its usually the same every galaxy what you do, because there is always optimal strategy at this point. But not for the middle game.

So in the opening you want to avoid buying carriers until you can see the entire galaxy, which is when everyone joins the game (unless your not active enough to check when it has started). Then you use the rule (press V hotkey) to plan your expansion, always expand as far as possible… even if your in the centre of the galaxy. This is because you will find out who is your enemies sooner and you can always retreat back to a more compact position instead of just starting in a defensive position then you never end up getting attacked. Use the ruler to work out if you can reach a star before your opponents, if there starting star is closer to that star than your starting star then you simply do not go there. (if they run into you it is there fault).

However, if you notice they are not active and might go AI, you can take the risk and expand further. But if they are active and have not expanded as far as possible you must respect that they are still closer to that star and they are still in control of there own empire.

When you do that you also need to know how many ships to actually send because you might encounter situations where you can expand to 20 different stars all in the same place but you only have 10 ships on your carrier. This is very hard to do and it still messes me up some times, the key is to observe what you think is a key star and hold that position. Even though you want to expand crazy there is still a thing as over expanding, you will know if you have over expanded when there is not enough ships at your star to hold the star after you reach it.

So you want to expand as forward as possible in that situation, do not waste time capturing every star even if there all in a straight line, just get as far away from your home star as possible and if you reach a complex expansion problem then just capture a key star as close to your opponent as possible. Then if they try to jump to stars around you, you will be closer to it than them… You will be defending all of your stars by defending your front stars. (Do not end up with less than 5 ships at a star in the opening, and do not separate your ships to multiple stars if possible. Try to defend as many stars as possible using the minimum number of carriers)

Recognise when you can use passive expansion or aggressive… which is the above what I just told you, but passive is were you have less than 5 ships defending, this is were even if the opponent runs into you by accident you are going to lose your front line already, which you never want to allow because then it is not safe for you to build economy anywhere in your territory… Passive you use when the stars are isolated and only you can reach them so they can not be attacked by anyone, or when you know they are ai or when you are using diplomacy to receive territory… such as alliances.

In the opening of a standard game do not buy any economy until just before production after you have expanded, and there is also no reason to buy industry in the first galactic cycle. If you buy industry your hurting your economy the most during the first cycle than any other cycle and also, if your opponent spams industry and 0 economy at the start they still wont have enough ships or carriers to actually break your front line.

The reason you dont buy economy either till just before the end of the first cycle is because you wont to spread your economy over all the stars you have collected not the stars you have started with, as you will be able to buy more economy.

Unless you are using the alternative strategy for infrastructure which is not buying economy on your borders for security, but I never really do this to be honest I think it is a useless strategy at the start the game because your economy will pay off at your borders before they capture it which means you still benefited from it more than your opponent, and its worth the risk to either have the most economy in your galaxy or the worst for the rest of the game… because those two things will be decided on how your upgrade infrastructure in the first cycle of the game. Also if you really wanted security you could just buy one industry on a star you think is unsafe at the start. Instead of ultimately screwing your entire economy. But its your choice lol

Now I will finally shred the remains of my fingernails to talk about SCIENCE, of which basically you should always start with 3 even if the galaxy is not revealed yet because not everyone has joined… you will be always be safe in knowing 3 science is probably the optimal choice no matter what happens.

And always get banking, experimenting or weapons at the start of the game… otherwise you are absolutely wasting your time. ;p

With 3 science and research to banking you will have banking in exactly 2 days on production which means you will benefit from banking as fast as possible… even if you spam science at the start of the game you will not benefit from banking any sooner because you simply dont have enough credits to spend to get banking in one day. It is possible but it requires 6 science and you cant start with 6 science so you have to get like 3 science in the first production then 8 science after the first cycle has paid you. (dont do that)

So there you go, and that is why I said there is no guide to strategy ^

DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE MIDDLE GAME

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thank you all especially you aliengamer for replying and helping me out i see now that you dont just need a strategy guide to win you just need to know your enemy and yeah diplomacy is a big thing and it just saved me in a tight spot

yeah i have read it lol really good book

yessss that would really really help me if your friends are cool with it that is

The AI, when in a trading partnership with 2-3 other near equal sized AI players (AFK away from keyboard, or Quit) actually plays a decent game. I would say this AI is better than at least half of our live players. The AI, when not trading with other empires is very weak - A gang of two or more neighboring live players can quickly shred this lone wolf down to nothing. Either way, this AI plays the neutral turtle with the same economic algorithms for purchases of carrires, Economy, Industry, and Science. The AI will only break neutrality to attack the top player of the leaderboard. The AI has not been observed to purchase any warp gates.

This may irritate a few players over however many games you feel needed to learn (hopefully no more than two) , but you can quit in the initial minutes after game start of a few galaxies (before spending any credits) to study the EIS algorithms and trade patterns compared to the other empires.

One bad habit of noobs is to spend as soon as the credits appear on your dashboard. Learn to budget. Save some of your credits for buying econ just before the payday click. Trading among live players often involves a forward of credits to cover the trade cost to the sender of technology. This is a big ettiquette reason to read your messages before spending your money. Most players view not sending a requested tech over immediately after they sent you the funds to mean you guys are now at war. They can broadcast your treachery THEFT to the rest of the galaxy to get your neighbors to gang up on you. Sending the forwarded credits back immediately is considered a polite way to reject a requested trade. That is bad to the requester all the same, but not enough reason for neighbors to gang up on you early. Good ettiquette alone will not prevent some ambitious neighbor from lying to you and your neighbors to start a resource draining war allowing easy pickings from among the survivors. After technology differences arise, you will also need to budget funds for expected technology trades. If you have allies you can communicate and coordinate the trades so your alliance members can all plan budgets to match the timing ETA’s ahead of the next payday click.

Early game budgeting allows you to quickly build infrastructure on newly claimed neutral stars. Remember that the next new infrastructure built upon existing infrastructure of existing stars will often cost more than new EIS built on a newly claimed empty star. Budget for those new stars in the exploration phase of the game. This also allows you to buy carriers to fighters dropped further away from your original industries as the exploration phase starts to establish borders.

thank you can you give me tips about combat too? because im having a hard time defeating the enemy

I can see if they will create a game to help you out:

I’ll be your punching bag in the game.
We’ll simulate a few battle situations so you can not only understand the what to do, but also the why.

As stated earlier, most players will wait until before production then dump their remaining credits on econ. It’s a good tip, but it doesn’t tell you why you need to do this. The reason is simple, emergency funds for a carrier or extra industry to boost your defense.

When you understand why you would want to do something, that will also tell you when you should do this. You can spend very early on without a problem in some situations, you just have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. I’ve dumped all my money on industry/econ when I know I’m up against a seasoned player to bait an attack. Yes, some people will keep track of what you buy to determine if you could pull off a defense or not. But once you know what your opponent is doing, you can start to manipulate their actions and set them up for traps.

In the training game I’ll show you some of the strategies I’ve found effective not only against a larger player, but I like to get people to gang up on me. Depending on their experience I either have a very rough time before getting beaten or I get the opportunity I need to turn the tables and take out 2 opponents on my own.

We will set it up with 1 AI so you can practice baiting attacks for devastating counters. Once we feel you’ve got the basics down we’ll start another game with a few extra players and test out what you’ve learned and move on to tactical diplomacy and advanced strategy.

Also, be warned: There will be math involved.

thank you i am eager and ready to learn! and i think im a pretty good diplomat but like my granny always says theres always something else to learn. the thing im really looking forward to is the tactics of combat

http://upvee.co/6-brutal-truths-will-make-better-person/

As NP2 is basically 4X with a farmville factor of gifting credits and tech. (trading if they gift back).

These brutal truths for career mostly apply to the game as well.

I am not a seasoned player myself, havent looked into guide to play just yet to be quite honest. just finding own feet for few games the now.

im finding my own true nature fighting in the galaxies of NP :slight_smile: Ive noticed a few things however that i lack in always, economy and carrier numbers. somtime spend time trying to figure out how the heck they got so many carriers when im all spent. in a 64 player game i have like 69 carriers my ally has 169 or so. like alot more everyone has better economy.

i spend economy before cycles ends like everyone, even learned the hard way in turn based game by forgetting to do so. and still always fall behind in cash/carriers. before cycle should i even have a dollar left? spend it all economy i do whatever cheapest.

slowly reading what ever catches the eye. but more information on this would be great. economy stuff links please.

There are only 4 brutal truths in that list, and 1of them is not even true.