Broken Lords Expansionist Guide (Single player, Endless, Normal difficulty)

(In construction, not a final version but already contains enough information to be helpful)

Explains a general strategy to build as many new cities as fast as possible while maintaining a generally content population and while also getting all the techs. The guide is intended for experienced players as many technical terms will not be explained. However, many strategies will be helpful to other players, from other factions or who use different settings for the map.

MAP
- Single-player, vs. 5 AI (normal)
- Endless speed, Huge map, pangea (1 single big continent), not much oceans (top and bottom only), world wraps around.
- Chosen faction: Broken Lords
- Victory conditions: Extermination only (be the only faction remaining)

GOALS
- Maximize population
- Maximize happiness
- Maximize research
- Exterminate all enemies until 1 single opposing city is left. Then at any point, finish it to win.

This is the type of game that I like, expand like crazy, taking the entire map and leave a single enemy alive so you can experience a huge empire's management, enourmous cities, get all techs, all the best units, etc. The aim is to get an exponential expansion / population growth curve.

Intro - The first few turns (turn 1-30)

This guide explains a strategy that I have used to great effect using the Dust Lords on normal difficulty.

The idea is to maxime your number of cities ASAP. So it seems reasonable to think that the first thing you should build in your first city is a Settlers. But it is not the best choice. In pretty much all 4X games like Endless Legend, it's always better to first ramp up your production, before setting that production line onto the task of making settlers. Doing so outperforms methods that try to focus right away at a colonization effort by skipping the production effort. In other words, don't skip the initial production effort. So build anything that improves your production. I did still examine 4 scenarios to try and get the best result. Here are the scenarios:

Scenario 1: Settler first, rush! (buyout ASAP)
Scenario 2: Foundry, Founder's Memorial, Settler
Scenario 3: Founder's Memorial, Settler
Scenario 4: Settler first, no rush

Scenario 1 and 4 only differ in that scenario 1 buys out the settler asap. Scenario 4 uses that hoarded dust to purchase a Hero sooner (at turn 20 for 650). I really wasn't sure which would be the best. I did not even try those scenarios in the game, I just made the calculations in Microsoft Excel, looking turn after turn, exactly what production I would get in each case. Any random event or unforseen event during the game will happen no matter what scenario I pick - I can't predict that - and as such, I need to make a decision on turn 1 as to which scenario to pick. So the results from Excel were like this:

Scenario 1: Settler built at turn 11, city #2 up at turn 16
Scenario 2: Settler built at turn 12, city #2 up at turn 17
Scenario 3: Settler built at turn 13, city #2 up at turn 18
Scenario 4: Settler built at turn 17, city #2 up at turn 22

So it would appear, with these results, that scenario #1 is the best right? It's the fastest to get our first expansion city built. While this is true, it doesn't tell the whole story. Here are all 3 scenarios at turn 30:

Scenario 1: 2 cities, 1 Hero, 12 dust, Prod: Ryder(10 turns), 2 buildings.
Scenario 2: 2 cities, 0 Hero, 568 dust, Prod: Settler(2 turns) 3 buildings, 1 stalwarts.
Scenario 3: 2 cities, 1 Hero, 0 dust, Prod: Ryder(3 turns), 2 buildings.
Scenario 4: 2 cities, 1 Hero, 390 dust, Prod: Mill(5 turns), 1 building.

So with those results, it seems obvious that the best pick is scenario 2 since we have 1 more building than other scenarios and since we've had our Stalwarts unit out on the map for 12 turns already. The only place where scenario 2 lacks behind is the fact that it does not have a hero. This is where Scenario 4 has an advantage since it has had it's hero on the map for the last 10 turns. But also, Scenario 4 lags behind in nearly every other aspect. So I feel that Scenario 4 remains inferior to Scenario 2. Scenario 2 has 568 dust banked up along with the best income of all 4 scenarios so it's well on it's way to buy a Hero in about 4 turns. So at about turn 34, all 4 scenarios would have had a hero.

The most important aspect is that even with the production of an additional unit, the stalwart, and even with the production of an additional building (the mint), Scenario 2 will have a Settler in 2 turns, where the other two scenarios have not even begun the production of their 2nd Settler. And other scenarios don't have their empire mints either... So scenario 2 will definitely get it's 3rd city sooner than all other scenarios and from there it's a snowball effect where scenario 2 will always outperform others in the future, in all aspects. Also, we can understand why scenario 2 is the best because it is the one that focuses on production first. And given enough time, this increased production will propel scenario 2 in a different class than all 3 others.

In conclusion: The build order we want to set for our 1st city is this (you can't build the Foundry right away tough as you need to research it first, but as soon as you have it, build it):

Founder's Memorial
Foundry (research it first)
Settler (increase your population to be able to build it)
Stalwarts
Empire Mint
Settler
Public Library
Sewer

Here you might be wondering why we build a Stalwarts so early. The reason is because you will get a quest which requires you to bring your hero and 3 units to the temple. So you can bring the initial stalwarts, the second one here and a settler. This allows you to progress the main quest line. You might be thinking, I'll just delay that Stalwarts because I'd rather get my city as developped as possible first. That's a good approach but here you should make an exception. The thing is, you need to bring 3 units to the temple so if you delay the additional Stalwarts, where will your two other units be when you finish building it? Will you just waste turns having them to sit idly waiting? Or will they now be far on the map, exploring and maybe in a minor quest or maybe just about to get a new hut? So that's why you're better to take care of that early. Doing it early won't tie up your units for long. Having your stalwarts on the map so early will also mean more exploration and more experience for it. But also, the other civilizations, on normal difficulty, will advance their main quest so you could fall behind. And the goodies from the main quest are 100% worth it.

Also, building a Stalwarts so early will allow you to group it with your initial hero providing him with sufficient strength to clear anything on the map for the next 100+ turns. This is assuming that you use the Stalwarts ability to regenerate health when it kills an enemy unit correctly. Also, sometimes, you can split that additional Stalwarts from your hero and double your rate of reaching temples and ruins. This in turn can provide you with much needed additional dust at this critical point of the game. For the same reason, getting a ryder early is also pretty good. It's a long term investment. As for the initial research order:

Foundry
Mill
Mercenary Market
Public Library
Sewer
Lux Res. Extractor
Metals Extractor
Ryder

Become the Best and Stay the Best

I've outlined the best build order and the ideal research selection in the previous section and here I want to examine the general strategy for expansion. The general strategy revolves around a "bubble" in that you will expand from your starting position in all directions until you "pop" on an enemy. Then you colonize backwards from the frontier back to your starting location. Makes sense? You're essentially grabbing territory as much as you can and then defining the outer shell of your empire by colonizing and finally you fill in the blanks between your starting location and the shell. And so goes the analogy of the bubble. Do that in all directions around your starting location.

Below are some tips to do just that. Bear in mind that those tips are general strategies that you should try to apply but you must remain flexible to adapt to the situation as it evolves. Also, as a general rule, try to not get distracted by micro events: the macro strategy is the most important to focus on.

Tip 1 - Make 2 Settler with each new city you build. That way we get from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8... This way you do get an exponential growth curve. HOWEVER, in Endless Legend, because of how approval works, DO NOT FOLLOW THIS TIP. But this remains an ideal. Even better would be to make 3 or more settlers for each new city but that's way to aggressive for this game. In Endless Legend you are going to micromanage much more which city builds a settler. You can't just template 2 settlers automatically into your new city's production queue. There needs to be more thought as to what territory will you colonize? How many turns from the city that builds the settler to that target spot? Could I retrofit my settler with a movement accessory afterwards? But the most important question is what will happen to your approval after you colonize that new city. More on that topic in it's own section.

Tip 2 - Hire Heroes in every city to govern. I don't have any exact recommendation but I did go for a mix of Broken Lords heroes (about 75%), Cultist Heroes (15%) and a few other, notably a ranged hero decked out for combat. Also a Female Hero with Heal. While I didn't care about her healing ability, that hero also has a natural +3 Influence which makes her excellent and her governor skill tree begins with +10/20/30 approval on city. So that hero is my "candy governor" which I can assign to any city in need of affection. Because otherwise, the Broken Lords heroes and Cultists don't provide any approval in the early game. Try to assign the Broken Lords heroes on cities with long rivers and where desert takes most of the terrain because they excel at producing dust. Try to assign the Cultist heroes to cities that have great resources in general since they excel at boosting all resources equally.

Tip 3 - Generally try to keep up hiring heroes with new cities expansion. So you should have about the same number of heroes as the number of cities. In practice however, I expanded faster than I could find suitable heros. I maintained about a 75% hero to city ratio. But the ideal is 100%.

Tip 4 - Try to keep a maximum of 1 or 2 fighting heroes that you develop with fighting skills. All others should follow the tree of city governors. Your power as an empire will come from your cities, not from a few heroes. Your fighting heroes will support your empire. In my game, my starting hero was sent from the start of the game to explore and grab temples and ruins. But even there, I still followed the city governor path with him because he has so much experience that he can kill anything anyway. He is not as strong as a hero with fighting skills but if I win every fight anyway, then it is better for him to be great when assigned to a city also. And a fighter focused hero will not help a city as much. So I prefer to have my first hero to complete the city governor tree before spending any extra skill points on fighting skills. In other words, fighting skills for heroes should be "nice to have". See the Military section for more details on this topic.

Tip 5 - Build everything in every city with the following exceptions: build only the military building that cost nothing to maintain, notably the Stronghold architecture and the Infantry Cantina. Also build only the resource of FIDS that make sense. So do not build the Forester's Guild which benefits forests, if your city only has 1 hex which is Forest. Also don't build a Mining Rights in a city that has no resources! But otherwise, overall, especially for economic, research and approval buildings, build everything everywhere.

Tip 6 - I rarely build military units to defend my cities. Only in emergency cases and those are always because a minor faction's unit has decided to siege one of my cities. Then I will hire an Orc mercenary and spawn it on that city, create an army and break the siege ASAP.

Tip 7 - Send out as many units as possible, while being extremely conservative as to the number of military units you produce. Keep in mind that every time you build a military unit, you're adding to your maintenance costs and you're not producing something else. But you still need some military so consider from a high level perspective, even you just have 6 cities, where would a hero or a normal unit benefit my empire the most? What type of hero would complement my army the best?

Tip 8 - Grab every hut you find and go get them. Those huts are just amazing. Especially if you have the patience to save just before and reload in case you don't like the outcome. Sometimes I spent close to 1h reloading a single hut. And I did reload nearly every hut I found but that's because I'm very patient and I want a superb game. Just think about it. If your first 10 huts normally would give you: 75d, nothing, nothing, 100d, 10spice, nothing, quest, nothing, 75d, nothing, then you would have 250d, 10spice and a quest.

If, on the other hand, you reloaded the huts like crazy like I did then you would have this: 100d, 100d, 100d, 100d, 25wine, 100d, 100d, 100d, 100d, 100d. So a total of 900dust and 25wine. With that you buy yourself a hero and more resources or buildings. With that wine you may be able to take another region early on. Doing that all the time will set your empire really apart from the "normal path".

Tip 9 - When you get a tier 1 item from a hut, seriously consider reloading. It's not that bad but you've got to think long term. At turn 300+, those tier1 glassteel unique shield won't cut it. So if a hut gives that you, and since you can't sell those unique weapons/ armors, reload!

Tip 10 - I don't bother with diplomacy. I don't research diplomacy and don't even listen to other civs. I just want to build my empire and when the time comes, I'll be so powerful that I can crush other civs.

Military

I would strongly advise that you don't lose your units and reload in case you do. While losing a Stalwarts on turn 101 might not be dramatic, if you lose your first Stalwart at turn 23 seriously consider reloading as far back as necessary to keep it alive.

As you advance through research Eras, your units will all automatically be created with a certain level of experience. While this seems great it is in fact something to consider. I've delayed techs because of this... Let me explain. Imagine if you have a Settler in production in a city and it shows 2 turns left. You're like great! Cool! I can have my next city in 2 turns plus the travel time to destination! But then BAM! You finish your research and that advances you to Era III. Even better you think? ... Well not really. Because if you look at your city, you might very well see something like Settler (9 turns). So because you've reached a new Era, all new units will be created with more experience and as such, they cost more to produce and as such a settler that was planned for 2 turns which could be bought for 126 dust, now shows that it will be done in 9 turns and could be bought for 1678 dust. So be careful with that aspect when planning on your unit's production. If this happens, you can (as I did) voluntarily delay your research. Just remove citizens from research in your cities or in the worst case, swith the tech you're researching for a brand new one. The combiation of those two should give you time to finish whatever unit you are building.

I've used the first Hero I got as my Champion, out on the map, even if I have completely skilled him as a Governor! It's his future role when he retires, when all opponents except one is left. But this is a standard Broken Lords heroe equiped for maximum damage and defense. I've explore about 60% of the map with him and 2 Stalwarts. Eventually, I got some Ryders out on the map and I am still not very impressed. They do serve their purpose as scouts on the map, to explore and get ruins. But the Dust Bishops are amazing. Also Orcs and ranged heroes since you do not get a lot of range power with Stalwarts, your heroe and Ryders. So here are the recommendations.

- The first heroe you start with will be your champion, he will clear about 60% of the fog of war by himself. Gear him up with movement accessory and combat items but set his skills as a governor.
- Get a Range Hero, preferably one with Range 4 and bonuses to his army. Gear him up for ranged combat and map movement.
- Otherwise a healthy mix of Stalwarts, Dust Bishops, Orc Crossbows.
- When fighting, try to adopt a turtle formation, with your Stalwarts on the first rank, and the bishops and orcs alternating on the 2nd and 3rd rows.
- Eventually, I gave a Renegeration accessory to my dust bishops, my ryders, my ranged heroe and my initial heroe.
- Honestly, 2 dust bishops with Regeneration accessories that stay next to one another are very hard to kill. I just mopped up 9 units of a minor faction with just 2 bishops (lvl8 and lvl5) but over multiple battles. But in the end, both bishops were at full health.
- The obvious tactic, try to focus just the necessary amount of damage on a unit so you can kill it in 1 turn and then spread the rest of the damage (if any) unto another target.
- Prioritize targets that would act before some other of your units. So if you have a unit that acts first, then an enemy, then one of yours and finally another enemy - 4 units in total, 2 on each side. Let's say they're numbered 1 to 4 and you control 1 and 3 while your enemy controls 2 and 4. Then you should attack 2 with 1 instead of attacking 4 with 1. The idea is to try to kill 2 before it can attack. If it works, then the turn goes to unit 3 and again you can attack and try to kill unit 4.
Otherwise, if you attack unit 4 with 1 and kill it, well then fine, unit 4 is out, but now it's unit 2's turn and it could attack unit 3 and kill it...
- If you have a settler that gets attacked before it can build a city, just retreat. You don't care about the damage it takes since next turn it can build the city.


Power of the Dust Bishops at defense. Notice that after the fight, my Dust Bishop is at full health. In the next few turns, he alone will wipe out all that remains of the opposing army:

Approval - Sustaining your expansion

There are two values for approval in the game overall: City-approval and Empire-approval.

Empire approval
is calculated by taking the weighted average of each city's approval. So a city with more population weighs more in the empire approval than a low population city does. Depending on your Empire's approval rating, you will receive penalties or bonuses to your entire empire. I find it very important to keep those bonuses and use them to improve your overall growth. You should aim to have 90%+ at your empire approval at all times. If you dip below, see if you can use a booster or build settlers out of the low approval cities (to lower their pop) or buy population in the cities that have the best approval (to increase their weight). It is for the sole reason of maintaining 90%+ approval that we limit the expansion of our empire in terms of cities. A 90%+ approval is called "Fervent". It boosts Food and Industry.

City-approval
is the value of approval that is specific to that city. This value is affected by your city tiles, your buildings, your hero (governor in the city), your race and any empire-wide effects. Building districts in your city will affect your city tiles value since the tile (hex) on which you built the district is the one giving the bonus or penalty to approval. So that's why the value for districts shows up in the "city tile" category of your city's approval meter details, mixed in with any approval terrain bonuses you might be exploiting with that city.

The strategy is to start by expanding in terms of cities. Then at a certain point, when you have a good established base of population, all fervent, with secured resources, you begin to build districts in your cities, progressively. The reason is that cities that build their first district are now at a -10 approval. The next district that they build will bring them to -20 approval. The following one will bring the city to -30 approval. From here all new districts (provided you build them in a double line) will have positive approval impacts (at +5/district) but building them all (minimum of 18 population) to come back to a net 0 approval from district expansions will take a lot of time and production capacity. You will need 9 new districts to form a group of 10 total (with the city center) among which 6 will be level 2 (+30 approval) and 4 will be level 1 (-30 approval because the city center does not give a disapproval penalty.)

All of this time, you are buying population on the city to allow it to build those districts. So you need to make sure that this city, with it's growing population and growing disapproval from new districts, won't make your empire approval rating drop below 90%. Because if it's the case, you could either use an unplanned booster or you could in parallel increase the population on other Fervent cities. And those Fervent cities are usually the cities that have not started their borough but have their Sewer and Marketplace, or, the cities with Approval-boosting anomalies. So this is why I believe it is more efficient to first build out a core of cities that have 100% approval and relatively high pop before you can have one of those (other than your capital) to embark on the borough district expansion journey.

This is a table to show how city approval varies as you build districts, assuming you start at 100% and have no special anomaly and are building in a double line:

Approval 100% 90% 80% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100%
District (incl. City Core) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

As you can see

Further on, the strategy is to progressively start more and more cities on their district production until all cities have unrestricted district building permit. So really, you prevent the cities from building their boroughs, even if the city is size 7 and you feel it should build a district. There are exceptions however. If the city, by building it's district, would now exploit an approval bonus, then build the district ASAP. This is because the -10 approval from your first district will be negated by the +10 from the anomaly netting you 0 approval but plenty of FIDS. Also (it took me a hundred turns at least to notice...) your capital doesn't get any dissapproval from level 1 districts. So you should build it's districts ASAP.

City tile selection & Resources

City selection

When building a new city, there are a few things to look for. Specifically, you want to evaluate those aspects:

1- The initial FIDS you get (and food doesn't matter for Broken Lords so it's really just IDS)
2- The region's FIDS that surround your initial city center, in general, so you can imagine what this city will become once it's developed.
3- The special hex that provides various bonuses (anomalies)
4- The strategic resources
5- The luxury resources
6- The minor factions present
7- The proximity to other empires and to your empire.

1 - FIDS total
Let's examine each in detail. First is the FIDS. You should check the city center's and surrounding hex's FIDS total, expressed as the sum of I, D and S that the city will get initially. This is shown directly when you click the Build City with a Settler and move your mouse cursor on top of a colonizable hex. It's basically the hex you're building on plus the 6 hexes that surround it, or less if they are part of another region.

In general, a FIDS total which is above 30 is great. The highest I've seen is 39 I think. But I've still colonized some regions that had some 23 FIDS total for the initial city center. Obviously, higher is better and I would say that D and S are more important to Broken Lords than I is.

2 - If the initial city center hex is great but the region is small and other hexes are not good, that makes the region less attractive. On the other hand, if the initial city hex is not that good but many other hex around it are great, with rivers and special bonuses then it makes up for it.

3 - I really like to colonize a city that gets a Morale boost from the start. That makes it easier to keep expanding my empire in general because the city starts at +10 morale. This way it will be more productive from the start. If your initial location has 3+ special location (except black earth which is not good for Broken Lords) then it general is a great spot for a city. But take a careful look at the region in general to see what it contains. Try to grab the Wizard Stones, the World Spines, the Trees, the Black Dusts and many other great special hexes.

4 - Strategic resources are necessary to build special buildings and to pay for equipment. Lacking some strategic resource might stall your progress because none of your city will be able to build this brand new building you just discovered. So keep that in mind when selecting a region. A region with 3+ strategic resources is very good, even if you have some in double in the region (2x titanium). That just means that for the next city, titanium will be less attractive because you've got more of it now. Try to diversify as much as possible. If you ever have too much, you can sell it on the marketplace and buy what you need with the proceeds.

5 - Luxury resources are essential to keep morale up when you're expanding. Especially wine. You should aim to grab all the wine deposits you can early on. It's worth founding a single city that has poor FIDS, poor region and little special hex if it has 2x wine deposits. See it as your specialized wine producing region - Champagne! Otherwise, as with strategic, try to diversify as much as possible. If you ever have too much, you can sell it on the marketplace and buy what you need with the proceeds.

6 - Some minor factions are better than others. I was lucky to get Dust Dwellers (dwarfs that provide dust) early on and assimilated them. Consider what the region has and weigh in the benefits it might bring you.

7 - It is less important to consider how far the city is from your main empire. Since this guide is against the AI on normal difficulty, there's little chance that the AI will send a military unit all the way to a city far far away. The biggest threat to an isolated city are the minor factions blockading it. But still, if the region is great and the FIDS are good and the resources are there, don't limit yourself because the region is far away. Also, colonizing next to an enemy region is actually good since it should limit the enemy's expansion in that direction. I find it that enemy factions tend to only colonize adjacent areas. Also, if the region is really juicy (really good), and located next to an enemy faction, grab it ASAP to prevent the enemy from taking it before you.

Concerning proximity to your own empire, it's better since you can link the city with trade routes but consider the long picture: Eventually, no matter how far the city, you will colonize everything in between, so it's not a show stopper. Again, if the region is really juicy and provides great resources, grab it, even if it is at the end of the world. Besides, doing so will allow you to get an outpost "at the end of the world" and that might prove useful in various situations.

So with all that in mind, you should build a list of potential regions. This allows me to get a feel of which is the juiciest region available. I note the FIDS total (see point number 1 above), the region's strategic and luxury bonuses and also the distance from my empire (in general). That distance is expressed in how many turns a settler takes to get there. The settler originates from your point of production, usually your oldest cities. My list, at a given time, can look like this:

- Sadrej, 32, Mithrite, Wine, GlassSteel, 12 turns
- Zhivor, 36, Titanium, GlassSteel, PixieBlood, Hydromiel, 8 turns
- ...

This allows you check what's available and pick the best one. Then you colonize it and remove it from the list.

Resources

(Section in progress, check again later to see this section)

Additional strategies and techniques

The shifting soldiers technique

I will here explain a technique that I often use in 4x games like Endless Legend. I've decided to call it "The Shifting Soldiers" and I will explain it here. This strategy, if I were to name a few, applies to these games: Civ I to IV, Endless Space I, Endless Legend, Galactic Civ II, MOO I to III, Age of Empires, Space Empires IV, Sins of a Solar Empire, Master of Magic, Starcraft, Starcraft II,... The list could go on an on. So it is a very usefull technique and you should use it to be a better player in those games, against the AI or in multiplayer. I am not mentionning some games in the list above (such as Civilization V and VI) because I have not played them yet but I am 100% certain that it applies there also.

The technique is used to distribute resources more efficiently. Essentially, you should shift all of your ressources by one city/planet on a chain of planets to accelerate the propagation of those ressources along the chain that your cities/planets form. Sound complicated? It does... but it's very simple so let me add more details to help you understand. I will be using the term city and planet interchangeably in this guide. The idea applies no matter what. Of course, for Endless Legend, we're talking about cities but again, it makes no difference. The same would also apply to your planets in a game of Master of Orion.

Often in the games I have mentionned above, you will evolve to have multiple cities/planets in your empire. Generally, those can be arranged in a somewhat linear fashion. Let's take letters to represent your cities/planets. Your first city, your capital, is A. Your second city, the closest to A, is B. The next city further along the chain is C and so on. If that is all you have (3 planets) and they are in a triangle pattern well then you cannot use the technique on those cities. They are all at the same distance so it's useless. But if you have them arranged in a line with A at one end, B in the middle and C at the other end, then the technique applies.

So with that setup in mind (3+ planets in a line), you also need to have a resource you want to share. The best example and the one that does indeed happen for real is when the resource is a military unit. And since what you'll be doing is shifting all those resources by a small amount each, hence why I call this the Shifting Soldiers Technique. This technique aims at distributing those resources faster than by using an intuitive approach. Let's take the example further to account for the resource.

So you have 3 planets in a line and planet A is your homeworld and has a lot of production. As such, it was tasked with building a basic military unit which you intend to defend your newest colony, planet C. Note that planet B already has a similar military unit. When planet A finishes the production and that you now have your new military unit under your command, the intuitive approach is just to tell the unit to "move to C". But it starts at planet A. So it will have to move to B and then move to C. This is what you normally do right? I mean it's obvious; Your new military unit just popped out and now you need to send it to your new planet. Simple enough!

Well the technique described here tells you to do otherwise. It tells you instead to do this:

1 - Tell your new unit to move to B.
2 - Tell the unit in B to move to C.

And that is all! What's the difference? Well using this technique, in this example, you can get your military units in each of your cities right on the turn the unit got produced, assuming the distance takes 1 turn to travel. If you did not use the technique, you will get your new unit defending planet C when it gets there, 2 turns later.

This technique shines when you have a lot of distance between your farthest colonies. I know I might not have explained it very well here but while playing, to simplify the application, you can ask yourself this question when you need to send a resource to a colony far away:

"Do I have an equivalent resource somewhere on the path from the origin to the destination?" If the answer is yes, then take that equivalent resource, send it to your destination and take the new resource you've just built at origin to replace the one you've just moved.

Of course, it goes by itself that the general algorithm when you have more than 3 planets is like this:

1 - Tell your new unit to move to B.
2 - Tell the unit in B to move to C.
3 - Tell the unit in C to move to D.
...

Also, even if you don't have the resource on each planet in the line it doesn't matter. If your goal is to get the resource ASAP to your new colony, then use the technique with what you have available in between.

I think it is important to have this technique in your tool box and I was reminded of it recently while playing Endless Space. On a given turn, I had just produced a new Colony Ship on my most productive planet. I needed to get all the way across the galaxy to colonize a newly discovered planet. I was tired and didn't think about it. I just instructed the new Colony Ship to "Move there"! Then I realised what I had done and realised that I had another colony ship on stanby in the middle. So in the end I colonized the new world a few turns later than I could have had. And that is what this whole guide is about: Making sure every turn you take the decisions that are the best for your overall empire management.

[DestinysBane]

what do I do when facing online?

[Deathwing]

Hi labratgreg, you're right, I know this is a problem. Right now I can't run the game on my current PC. I need to update the start of the guide to reflect the problem you mention. As pseyechosis mentionned before, you must research the Foundry before you can build it. You must research it first. Ideally, build something else but let it finish, then switch to the Foundry as soon as you finish researching it. The fact that your settler is not selectable is something else and I dunno what. Maybe you haven't bought population enough? Anyway, the idea of the start of the game is to focus on your Production first. Thanks for the comments.

[Experiment356]

I am confused, in that I don't have the foundry available on turn 1 and settler is greyed out and unselectable at all. I played through like turn 80 and it never became selectable. Something broken in my game? Your guide seems great but I can't even begin to make it work.

[dougdurgan]

brilliant guide thanks a lot,i will keep refering back to this while playing this fantastic game.

[Deathwing]

Hi Musrar, thanks! I'm happy you've found the guide to be useful. I think what is nice about 4x games is that you can taylor the game to fit what you like. So if you like it very long and hardcore, you can make a game like that. If you prefer casual or a faster game, you can also do that. If you have any questions, just drop them here!

[Musrar / Муся]

That was a nice guide to read! I'm halfway of it but it's fairly deep and as a not that much hardcore 4X player I think it will be useful for me to learn more about more complicated 4X's gameplay. Thanks!

[Fantasy Fan]

Yeah, I went ahead and built the founder's memorial and on the same turn my mill foundry researched finished and then I went on the build the first settler. This start worked well. Thanks for the guide, and I'm finding Broken Lords to be a fun faction to play. I had never thought about manipulating empire happiness by buying population in the happiest cities. That worked like a charm too!

[Deathwing]

Great comment @pseychosis, thanks. I cannot play at this moment because my PC won't run it... :/ I used to play on another PC when I wrote the guide. I cannot explain why and I'd like to load my game to check it out. What I'm thinking right now is that it is a mistake. That you should indeed research Mill Foundry on your first few turns while building your Memorial and then as soon as you get the tech (try to time both events), then you go on to build the Mill Foundry. The idea is really just to ramp up your production first, before going on the Settler production. Thanks again!

[Fantasy Fan]

I had a problem when trying the suggested build order since for me the mill foundry was not available at the start of the game. I had to research the tech for it before I could build it.