New Player Guide#

Introduction#

First of all, welcome to the game of Galactic Empires. Galactic Empires is a game in which each round, war and player poses a different challenge. Strategies must be adapted to survive and nothing is truly flawless. Even so, this guide is intended to outline the basic mechanics of Galactic Empires and help you as you transition through your first days of game play.

Registration#

Registration is a relatively straightforward process. Simply enter the username you wish to be known by, your account password and a valid email address. You are also able to select your gender and empire name. The empire class selection is a little more complex. The possible empire classes are as follows:

  • MinerThis class will allow you to generate a higher amount of  exium , which is one of the key resources in Galactic Empires. Exium is required for all buildings and technology but becomes especially important when producing units. It can also be sold to other players. The miner class is arguably the easiest class for a new player to play as, although you will be at a disadvantage when it comes to expansion and research.
  • Expander/ExpansionistThis class is ideal for players that want to obtain a large number of colonies. The larger number of colonies means that you will likely have a higher credits income than that of other players. On the other hand, you may suffer from exium shortages if you are unable to produce or purchase enough to cover your build costs. This class is a reasonable class for a new player to choose, however you should be aware that if you join more than three weeks into the round, many of the planets around where you spawn may already be claimed by other players, which will reduce the effectiveness of your bonus.
  • Researcher/TechnologistNo new player should choose to play as this class, so I will keep the description short. The researcher class receives bonuses to the effectiveness of their labs, which reduces the cost of investing in new technology. This class is difficult to play with.

First Steps#

Your Home World#

Your home world is the only planet you have at the start but comes with a reasonable amount of starting resources, housing and a bunch of  scanners . To start with, build 50-100 labs, orbitals and factories in order to reduce the credit cost associated with research, ship building and ground unit production. After this, invest in a small amount of exium mines to begin producing exium on your home world. More information about the various building types can be found  here .

Despite having just started, you are now ready to design and build your first fleet/army and take your first planet.

Researching Your First Ground Unit#

The first thing you need to do is design a ground unit to kill the alien barbarians which will populate the planet you intend to conquer.

  1. Go to the research panel, by clicking on Research on the main game menu in the bottom right corner of the screen.
  2. Click on Research new weapon and then click on Custom Design.
  3. Name the weapon whatever you want and enter stats similar to the following: Power: 5, Damage: 5, Accuracy: 70, Area: 15, Rate: 20
  4. Click on Research below the weapon stats to develop the new weapon.
  5. Go back to the research panel.
  6. Click on Research new ground unit and then click on Custom Design.
  7. Name the unit whatever you want and enter the following stats: Hull: 25, Armour: 7, Engines: 70
  8. Click on the Weapon 1 drop down box and select the weapon you just designed.
  9. Enter a 1 in the Weapon 1 quantity.
  10. Click on Research below the unit stats to develop the new unit.

Researching Your Fist Space Unit#

You should now have a unit with which to kill alien barbarians and take your first planet. You'd already be smiling at the decimation your forces should bring upon the primitive spear users but there is a problem - you have no way to get there. It is time to design your first transport ship.

  1. Go to the research panel.
  2. Click on Research new space unit
  3. Click on small transport
  4. Select yes on hyperunit. You will need this to travel between planets.
  5. There is no need to add a weapon to this design, so simply click on Research to finish the unit.
Note: You could instead design a custom space unit with (for example) half the hangar size. Choosing a larger hangar value will allow you to load more units onto a single transport, meaning that each planet conquest will take less time. Choosing a smaller transport means that you will be able to produce a larger number of fleets and take more planets at once.

Building Your First Fleet And Army#

Now that you have designed a transport and a ground unit, you are ready to build your forces and launch them at a nearby planet.

  1. Click on Colony on the main game menu.
  2. Within the Build ground units section, click on the unit you designed previously.
  3. For the quantity, choose a value that will fill up the transporter you designed. A unit with a hull of 25 will take up 25 hangar space, so simply divide the hangar size of your transport by 25, and enter the result in the quantity box.
  4. Enter a name for the army. I suggest something such as Expander.
  5. Click on build.
  6. Return to the colony screen.
  7. Within the Build space units section, click on the transporter you designed previously.
  8. Choose a value of 1, and name the fleet the same as you named the army.
  9. Click on build.

Loading The Army#

You are now ready to load the army you just built into your fleet and send them to another planet.

  1. On the planet information, click Planet Fleets. This can also be accessed through the combat menu.
  2. Click on the name of the fleet that you just built.
  3. You will now see an outline of the fleet and the units in it. Click on Load fleets/armies.
  4. Select the army you just built, and then click load.
  5. Click back on the name of your fleet in the top left corner of the panel.
  6. Click on Create template with this fleet and then enter a name for the template. Templates are very useful as they allow you to save a fleet/army composition and produce it again via a single link.
  7. If you want to build more fleets, use the template you just created. It can be found on the colony screen.

Selecting A Planet To Attack#

The unit that you have designed is capable of taking on  alien barbarians , but may struggle against stronger units. For this reason, you should only attack poor and very poor planets with this unit.  Poor planets , especially those with  stargates , should be your top priority at this stage.

The first planet you should attack is the stargate planet located within your home system. This is very obvious on the map, since it has (stargate) written beneath it in yellow and also has a * in the location coordinates.

Launching The Fleet#

Now that you have identified your home system stargate, it is time to conquer it for your empire.

  1. Select your fleet from the planet fleets or all fleets menu.
  2. Click on move fleet.
  3. Click on the coordinates beneath the planet sprite of the planet to which you want the fleet to move. These can also be entered manually, or copy-pasted. If entering manually, ensure you include the * at the end of any stargate coordinates.
  4. Click on move fleet.
  5. Your fleet has now begun to move towards the planet you selected, taking the loaded army with it. You will have to wait for the fleet to arrive.

Taking The Planet#

Once your fleet has arrived at the planet, the army will automatically deploy and a battle will begin.  Battle reports  occur automatically, once every fifteen minutes. During each battle report, combat will be simulated and your units should begin to kill the alien barbarians. It may take a few battle turns, but eventually you will eliminate all barbarians and conquer the planet. You can view the battle reports off your empire from the combat menu, or by clicking on the "attacking" status of a fleet/army in battle.

Developing Your New Colony#

Now that you have a new planet, it is time to begin constructing housing upon it. Housing will generate credits once every 100 seconds, with the amount of credits produced being directly dependent on the amount of housing. First of all, you will need to transfer some resources to the planet so that you can afford the construction.

  1. Select your home world. This can be done by clicking on the planet sprite on the map, or by accessing it through your Planets list.
  2. Go to the colony panel.
  3. Click on Transfer Resources
  4. Enter 7000 in the credits textbox.
  5. If your newly conquered planet has less than 800 exium (possible, but unlikely) then enter 800 in the exium textbox.
  6. Enter the coordinates for your newly conquered planet and then click on send. You will incur a small transfer fee.
  7. Now select your newly conquered planet, and go to the Colony panel.
  8. Click on Build housing
  9. Enter the value of 200. You may notice this will cost you 8000 credits and 800 exium, instead of the 7000 credits you transferred. Don't worry about this, as any newly conquered planet will have 1000 credits by default.
  10. Click on build to construct the housing instantly.
Note that it is possible to develop a larger amount of housing; however this is unwise at the moment. (See the first building tip below)

Expanding Your Empire#

Now that you know how to take a planet and develop a colony, it is time to repeat the exercise for other nearby poor and very poor planets. You can build multiple fleets of the template you earlier designed to hasten this process. As you develop new colonies, you will begin to encounter a build cost penalty. To counter this, begin building command centres on your home world.

You can explore the galaxy by using the map at the bottom of the screen. Above the map is a link trail which allows you to toggle between galaxy, sector and system view. Click on the sector to view nearby star systems and search through these (by clicking on them) for other planets to which you can send your fleet.

As you explore nearby systems, you may notice that some planets will have their location and name data obscured. These planets are covered by the  fog of war , which can be cleared by the construction of  scanners  on your planets. This isn't an immediate concern since you can still send fleets to planets that are obscured by the fog of war. Scanners also increase the detection time for incoming hostile fleets so you will still want to build some more eventually.

Join Another Empire Or Alliance#

Joining to an experienced empire or alliance is one of the best decisions you can make as a new player. It will provide you with technology, military support, trading partners, advice and much more. It is also an easy way for you to begin taking part in the community.

In order to join to another empire you must both have a planet in the same sector. If this is the case, you may send a private message to the player asking for permission to join their empire. If they give it, then you can join them when viewing their empire profile.

There are no prerequisites for joining to an alliance. Simply find an alliance profile by following the link on an alliance member's empire profile and then send a join request. It is also a good idea to send a private message to the alliance founder and introduce yourself, as well as give the reasons why you would like to join the alliance.

Building Tips#

Following these guidelines will make for more efficient economic growth:

  1. Build up your planets in stages. It is cheaper to build 100 housing on 3 planets than it is to build 300 housing on 1 planet, but you will receive the same amount of credits per turn in production.
  2. Build command centers as you need them to prevent you accumulating a large build cost penalty.
  3. Use the  multiple transfer  function to quickly get resources to a single planet or transfer to many locations with ease.
  4. Do not neglect to build exium mines. In the early game you can get away with a relatively low number of exium mines, but you will need a lot more later on in the round. On a similar note, think carefully before developing poor planets containing exium beyond 500 housing. Exium mines can only be built after 500 housing and so building past this will reduce the number of mines you will be able to build.
  5. Never build additional housing on your home world (it's too expensive to be worth it).
  6. As your credits income increases, invest in additional labs, orbitals and factories. If you have joined an alliance it may not be necessary to build labs as the alliance might have a  Technologist  dedicated to the job.
  7. Adopt a naming scheme to help you manage your planets. Whilst this isn't necessary and could help other players identify your most important planets, it will also save you a lot of time. Planets within the Galactic Empires lists are given in alphanumeric order, with symbols and numbers coming before the alphabetical characters. Naming schemes take advantage of this to group planets. Typical groups may be based on the planet type, location or exium presence although pretty much any combination is possible.

General Tips#

  1. Don't declare war on an empire that is bigger than you. There is a chance that you will be protected from retaliation by the points difference (see  pirate ), but this  protection  will be lost if you are in a state of war.
  2. Improve your economy before investing in any major technology or unit building.
  3. Increase your number of orbitals and factories to reduce the unit build cost before doing any major scale fleet/army building.
  4. Try to acquire technology from other players. This will save you the research costs (although you may have to pay something in return), and may result in better quality units than what you can develop as a new player. You could then analyse these units to improve your own design skills.
  5. (Opinion) Soldiers suck. They're cheap and plentiful but can easily get beaten by other units. You'd be better off with not building barracks and just sticking to factories and ground units.
  6. Focus on poor planets to start with. Very poor planets are not worth building on because of their small build limits. Rich and very rich planets (as well as exium asteroids) are usually home to stronger  aliens  which will require more powerful technology to defeat.
  7. Exium asteroids are particularly nasty since they are often home to alien drones which can be very difficult to kill, especially with early game tech. You'd best avoid them until you get your hands on an anti-drone unit.
  8. Any planet over 1000 housing cannot be conquered by an opponent. It can only be  occupied .
  9. Stargate  planets are especially useful since they decrease travel time and resource transfer costs.
  10. Got a tip? Add it here.

Other Sources Of Help#

  • The Exorace Discord
  • Other players. Just send them a private message asking for advice. Players within the top 10 are likely to be experienced and will probably not mind answering your questions.
  • Other guides
  • The game glossary