Economy

If you are low on money, make sure you have several dice(best 5 or more) you will get next turn. Or if you use all your dice, make sure you have some income.

It's frequently hard to start up again if you have little money.

It is better to save money then build a costly building than build a costly building then try to recover more dice.

There are two ways to get income:

1. select explore and then choose to stock (usually $2)

2. If you have goods on your worlds: select ship and then trade (usually 4-6 depending on colour).

Method 2 is a more productive way if you have green or yellow worlds, method one is more productive if you only have a blue or brown world (though there are many ways to measure it...)

How many turns it takes to get income (produce + ship = 2, explore = 1), How much money is profit per die (explore costs 1 die and produces 2 = 1 profit, produce+ship costs 2 die produces 4-6 = 1 or 2 profit per die)

Other factors may come in to play - 'acting like there is an extra die' in a phase helps bolster the income, being able to do the action more than just once (e.g. three produce and ship can yield credits $6 and 6VPs which can be sustainable every two turns)

1. Your dice need to be constantly cycling. If your dice are being used, going to the citizenry and being bought back every single turn, you're usually winning the game.

2. If you don't intend to use a die that's on top of a planet or development within the next turn, recall it. You are losing potential actions every turn you leave it on top of something.

3. In the same vein, try and exactly finish what you're attempting to Develop/Settle. Assign exactly however much you need to complete the tile and keep the dice cycling.

4. Shipping is generally an unreliable way to generate money and opens you up to being leeched from because it's inherently telegraphed. Shipping strategies in general don't work with less than 4 players and even then it's not advisable.

5. Always try and set yourself up to be able to buy back all of your dice from citizenry. You either want situations where you have enough money to immediately buy back all your dice, or where everyone is equally poor (usually because no one activated Explore).

6. Assign your dice based on what it seems like your opponent wants to activate rather than what you want to see activated. Assess whether you would get the better end of different situations. For example, you are assigning dice to both develop and explore. Before choosing which one you activate, you should assess who gets the better end of the bargain should one or both activate.

7. You want to have at least 9 dice total. This is because 4 Explorers can stock you exactly to 9, so you're generally most efficient if you're using, then buying 9 dice back from citizenry every turn. Building a couple 1 and 2 cost planets early on is the best way to quickly get to this point. Red and Brown planets are particularly good because they have great distributions for developing and are relatively cheap. Blue dice are usually only worthwhile if it's a one cost planet.

8. You want to have the ability to reassign 2-3 dice. This will make it drastically easier to finish a 6 cost development in a single turn. You generally want 2 out of your first 3 developments to be reassign powers. Note: Nanotechnology is generally too expensive.

9. The 6 cost developments are game winning. Once you found enough quality reassign powers and have your 9 dice, it's not unusual to abandon everything and dig specifically for the big 3 developments: Galactic Federation (1pt/3 Dev Cost), Galactic Bankers (1 pt/Dev), & System Diversification (1pt/2 Reassign Cost).

10. Abandon aggressively for the things you need at each specific stage of the game. Don't be precious about your tiles and cycle out mediocre tiles. The more tiles you are drawing, the more picky you can be. IE, if you know you're drawing enough tiles that you're likely to find a 2 cost world, it's ok to abandon an otherwise good 2 cost world in order to increase your odds of finding a 1 cost world.

• • Bonus Tips**

• Investment Credits is a very powerful development that's on par or better than the Big 3 Devs. As soon as you complete it, you're often looking to build up a stack of 2 cost developments in order to rush the end of the game with a flood of points.

• Mining League is the best Settle based strategy, but you have to read the signals. You still want a bit of reassign. You also generally need either Replicant Robots or Terraforming Robots for extra tempo. Mining League is typically one of the last things you build, but you need to make sure you aggressively dig and find it before dedicating to the strategy.

• If you have a starting race that gets money from producing, you can produce + recall in order to generate mone in a way your opponent can't leech off of.

Bugs

Selecting dice to Scout/Stock 'currently' has a bug -- For example, for Alien Archaeology ALWAYS use your yellow die first, regardless of which die you select to explore with. (not sure when author meant - pre 04 May 2020)