Okay so I started this war with the Poppero Empire because I was sick of them demaning offerings, and not even being polite enough not to blast me if I come near.

So:

I have 2 issues.

1. I want to take the war back to them, but I don't understand how to win over their planet. Also, it is costing way too much to send in fleets (like it has gone up to 500,000 for some reason) from allied systems. What are some good ways to capture planets?

2. I obviously can't win a defensive war. My home planet apparently only has 1 city left that hasn't been 'asploded. And I swear to god as soon as I fend off invaders and go back out of the system, my home planet is like "HALP WE'RE BEING ATTACKED OMG HALP BECAUSE ALL OF OUR UNITS ARE TOTALLY USELESS AND YOU'RE APPARENTLY THE ONLY CAPTAIN (OR WHATEVER MY RANK IS NOW!) OF A SPACESHIP IN THE UNIVERSE!!"

So yeah I'd appreciate some tips. I don't have time to go back and fight off enemies from my home planet every 2 minutes (not even exaggerating). I'll never get anywhere in the game that way, and honestly, I'm a college student who spends too much time not doing homework anyway. So yeah. Post tips, and I'll love you forever.

Well not really. But it would make me happy.

Ignore your home planet. It cannot be destroyed/taken over.

Thank God for small blessings!

I still have to rebuild for them once in a while. Once a city is turned into a pile of ash, is there anyway to rebuild it? Because there is only one city on the radar now, when there used to be like 10.

Unfortunately, once you lose the extra cities on your home planet, they cannot be replaced. It turns into a regular planet set up where you can only have three.

Okay, okay. Well I can live with that. I only have one city though... do I have to use a colony pack thing to make new ones?

trulyalone wrote:Okay, okay. Well I can live with that. I only have one city though... do I have to use a colony pack thing to make new ones?

yeah i think so

creator5 is correct; you will need to place two more colonies on the planet again via colony packs.

trulyalone wrote:1. I want to take the war back to them, but I don't understand how to win over their planet. Also, it is costing way too much to send in fleets (like it has gone up to 500,000 for some reason) from allied systems. What are some good ways to capture planets?

Fly to the system you want to capture then to the enemy planet in the system. Fly down to the planet level. Move to the first (if there are more than one) enemy city. Use your laser, pulse cannon, and/or any bombs you may have on the city hall of the enemy city. Before long, the city with either 'asplode' (T0 planets) or raise the white flag (literally, a small white flag appears above the city) and surrender. Once you have done this to all the enemy cities, the planet will either be empty and colonizable (the cities 'asploded') or you can hit the capture system button (top center of screen once all existing cities have surrendered) and it is yours.

Hope this helps.

Yes that is helpful thanks. =]

Keep posting tips everyone! Maybe we can make this a really helpful thread to other users.

trulyalone wrote:Yes that is helpful thanks. =]

Keep posting tips everyone! Maybe we can make this a really helpful thread to other users.

When you are trying to convince allies to attack others for you try to pick an ally that's star level is very close to the star level of the guys attacking you or it will a) cost more to have them attack and b) they probably wont win anyway if they aren't strong enough
Have your allies wear down the other race starting with the smaller planets first and then working them to the larger planets - this weakens your enemy and reduces their star level so the cost in sending your allies in there to toast them never really alters much.

Nice great tips. I've managed to avoid war so far, but my neighbors are getting on my nerves, constantly starting wars then asking me to back them up...

The next empire that looses interest in my alliance will get some mega bombs instead of the happy ray

Some well-developed cities take a lot longer to capture than others (I think it has to do with the population count) unless you destroy some surrounding buildings first. With bombs you'll probably hit them by accident anyway, but with the laser and pulse you have to aim to take out some of the other things. If you can recognize which ones are houses I'd make them priority, since they're the most expensive and almost all money and happiness comes from them. Then if you fail the computer still has to rebuild, this appears to reduce the number of swarms on your planets a bit. I've also expanded a single assault over 2-3 "lives" when it was very close to my home planet by using the Shamen power to retreat. (Only thing it's been good for other than getting lost/stuck someplace.) You can always fall back the normal way, zoom to your homeworld or any planet friendly with you, repair/recharge, and zoom back into the fray. Ships will respawn but turrets and buildings won't and the capture bars don't go down.

Here's my quick takeover strategy:

Take out any ships that are on the planet far away from cities. This means it will just be you vs. the ship and you won't be pelted by turret fire while you're shooting ships.

Turn shield on. Zoom into the city. I use my pulse cannon for taking out turrets (once you get a mega-pulse, one or two shots will take out any turret except a Grox one.) Then I use the megalaser to take out one building. I try to find an entertainment center because they're the least expensive. Then I focus on the town hall and make them surrender. the idea being that if you're going to capture the colony you want to preserve as much infrastructure as you can so you don't need to rebuild it.

However, if the idea is just to blow the colony to kindgom come, then I use megabombs. You can drop these from outside of turret range, just fly a little higher than you normally would and spam away. No need to waste time taking out turrets either.

I just got the cloaking device but I haven't tried it in war yet, so I'm not sure whether it would let you attack cities without having turrets attack you. If so, that would be the ideal strategy for either method because you could preserve turrets without having to rebuild them once you've taken over.


This overall plan will be hard to execute when you first start out because your ship (and, likely, your allies) will be weak. Don't worry. You can either attack T0 (you get a nice amount of cash for blowing up enemy T0 planets) or T1 planets and they'll only have a single colony to fight against, and likely fewer ships. Or you can attack T2 or T3 planets but you don't have to capture every city in a single sortie. Just make sure that you capture a single city when you attack, such that you've either completely obliterated it or it has raised the white flag. You can then leave the system, repair, recharge, and come back and the city will still have surrendered, you'll only have the remaining ones to deal with.

One final note - save the home planet for when you've upgraded your ship a little bit, since it will likely have many colonies and will take a while to deal with. When you have decided to attack the home planet, take as much care as possible not to destroy cities but to force them to surrender. When you finally take over this planet it will be a spice machine, cranking out far more spice than equivalent T3 planets. I have a planet (granted, I bought it for 10 million rather than having taken it over) that, once I put a spice storage on it, is capable of holding 100 pink because it was a home planet. That's a ton of money every time you visit.

trulyalone wrote:

So yeah I'd appreciate some tips. I don't have time to go back and fight off enemies from my home planet every 2 minutes (not even exaggerating). I'll never get anywhere in the game that way, and honestly, I'm a college student who spends too much time not doing homework anyway. So yeah. Post tips, and I'll love you forever.

Well not really. But it would make me happy.

Don't stop. Keep moving. Fly over their cities and drop a couple of bombs and keep going, loop around the planet and drop a few more bombs on that city until it's captured or destroyed. Don't fly so low that they can hit you with the laser turrets.

The enemies ships will never catch up and the cities missiles will be exploding well behind you.

Doing this will allow you to wage war without having a shield, just a mini bomb. Which you can get the badge for just by starting one war.

With the bigger bombs and you want to capture the cities instead of destroying them, finish the capture with the laser. Sometimes, even the pulse will do too much damage.

I've finally got this space war thing figured out...

I was approaching it like other space conquest games, where you usually need a stonger fleet than your opponent to win - not so in this case. Not even close - your single ship is a self-contained, colony-capping terror.

I was getting pestered by this level 3 empire when I was just starting out - Medium Health, Low Energy, Mini-blaster and Mini bombs were basically all I had. But I figured - no guts, no glory right? So off I go to the closest enemy T0 system to take the fight back to him...

So I quickly get down to planet level, and notice that there are maybe three or four ships flying aroung, not really taking too much notice of me. I apporach one of them, and quickly dispatch him - he has only about 400 health to my 3000. Then I decide - forget this, I'm going straight in. I arm my mini-bombs, get down as close to the ground as possible, and make a run for the colony. I get there, and start to chuck down bombs on the town hall like a mad monkey... and it only take about FIVE seconds for the colony to fall. Yup, five seconds. Plus, once there were no colonies left on the planet, the enemy ships just packed up and left, and I got about 50000 sporebucks for my effort.

Feeling bold, I got healed up, and headed to the next enemy system. Same deal. This one was a T1, but again, the city fell in less than 10 seconds, meaning that the turrets barely had the time to touch me. They even capitulated instead of letting themselves be destroyed, so I got a free system to boot.

On this went, system by system, and in about twenty minutes, I had absolutely DECIMATED this once-large empire, and he was begging me for peace (yeah, right). I left the homeworld for last - it was certainly more of a challenge, since the colonies are very well defended, but again, by doing one city at a time then zooming out to heal, I was able to capture a 6 city planet that oozes purple spice.

The point is, the developpers seemed to have made it really, really easy to get rid of an annoying empire. You are absolutely overpowered compared to others (granted, I haven't met the Grox yet), and I can't even imagine how powerful I'll be once I get the better weapons.

Hope this can help somebidy out there - take the fight to 'em!!!