Thought it'd be a good idea to make a thread with an overview of a few key concepts on how to play this game well since it keeps coming up - hopefully we can sticky this and more players will continue playing. A lot of this is in the wiki but I don't think most new players read those.

SPECIALIZE YOUR COUNTRY
This is probably the most important thing for a beginner to learn. Having a rainbow country sucks in this game, don't self sustain - the market is your friend. Instead specialize in one strategy and use that to make your money. The main strats are casher, industrialist (sell military units for money), techer (sell tech points for money), farmer (sell food for money), oiler (sell oil for money). Ideally it's best to pick your strat the first few days of a reset when you're first starting off that way you can pick the best government for it and build the appropriate buildings from the start.

JOIN GDI
When you're starting off, it's recommended to join GDI. In primary this means that people can't randomly do harmful spy ops or attacks on you unless you break your GDI protection (grabbing someone two or more times). They can still land grab you, but they can't destroy things. This will ward off random suiciders.

BUILD CONSTRUCTION SITES, LOTS OF THEM
Typically you'll want to be between 80-100 by about the 3rd week of a reset, depending on how many acres you plan to have at the end. It seems like a waste of turns but in the long term it saves you tons of turns. I usually add 5BPT per day (the number of CS's varies depending on your government type)

RESEARCH IS KEY
Make sure you maintain adequate levels of tech for whatever strat you pick. As you gain land your tech %'s will drop, be sure to buy tech points as you get larger to maintain a good tech level. Most strats will do a tech startup (build research labs and tech to a certain level and then change over to your strat). This helps you produce more of whatever good your strat produces while keeping land lower so you become less of a target for larger countries.

If you find yourself being grabbed a lot, stop gaining land for a day or two and beef up your tech levels. This should slow attacks on you while still helping your country grow and should help get you out of the rut.

LAND GRAB
Grab land from countries roughly 1/4 your size with low DR (diminishing returns) to grab land with less risk of being retalled. Use http://www.eestats.com to find good targets with low DR. Get spy ops of your target and his allies and use PS's if possible. Attack formula is all over the forums.

STOCK/DESTOCK
The basic concept of stocking is to stock cash or food for the end game jump. After a certain point, it is no longer beneficial to keep growing in land and military as the military costs and tech points needed to maintain become too high. So instead of growing you buy/store stock. Typically people buy food and sell it on the market it to 'hide' it from behind stolen.

To destock, you just sell the food (on public or private market) and buy military with the money. Depending on how much stock you have, you'll want to time the last few days of the reset so you are able to unload all your stock as close to the end of the reset as possible while getting the best prices. I'll let someone else go into more detail on stock/destock.

thanks for the post

STRATEGY BREAKDOWN
Here is an overview of how each strat works - there are some techs/buildings that are universal to all strats, it's up to you to decide how many/how much to have. You can find more detailed breakdown of each strat on the wiki.

UNIVERSAL TECH'S AND BUILDINGS TO HAVE FOR MOST STRAT
Buildings: Industrial complexes to produce spies, construction sites
Techs: Military (keeps cost of your military low), business (increases $$ per turn), military strat (if you plan to attack for land, this helps you grab more per attack), weapons (makes your offense and defense stronger without buying more units).

CASHER
Typical gov't to use: Republic, Democracy, Theocracy, Dictatorship
Essential techs: Business, Residential
Buildings: Enterprise zones, Residences
How it works: Cash turns that you aren't building or attacking, buy everything you need

INDUSTRIALIST (OR INDY)
Typical gov't to use: Communism
Essential techs: Industrial, business, military
Buildings: Industrial complexes
How it works: Produce military, sell military on market, use money to build, run turns, buy tech, buy food, buy oil

FARMER
Typical gov't to use: Democracy, fascism, republic, dictator, tyranny
Essential techs: Agricultural
Buildings: Farms
How it works: Produce food, sell food on market, use money to build, run turns, buy tech, buy oil

OILER
Typical gov't to use: Fascism, democracy
Essential techs: None
Buildings: Oil rigs
How it works: Produce oil, sell food on market, use money to build, run turns, buy tech, buy food. But don't do it, it's very hard to play this well.

TECHER
Typical gov't to use: Democracy, Theocracy, Tyranny, Dictatorship
Essential techs: Whatever is selling for the highest. Highest demanded techs are whatever is needed for all other strats.
Buildings: Research labs
How it works: Tech turns that you aren't building or attacking, sell tech on market, use money to build, run turns, buy food, buy oil

LATC, good to see you care about the new players, we need more of them!

I would like to point out a typo in the FARMER section: buildings should be FARMS

Good high level advice from someone who knows what he's doing. Also left plenty of room for the person to figure things out on their own which is half the fun... after-all we wouldn't want to give away all the secrets ;)

Good catch, fixed, thanks!

Be sure to read the forum called "Strategy Room"! I have thousands of posts for beginner questions in there.

Thanks for the tips and helpful information!

Thanks for the tips and helpful information!

Or just don't be techer this set :(

I think you meant every set haha.

Don't hit anyone with the country name Croatia. I would suggest you don't hit KoH, oldman, Kingme, Fatty, blid just to name a few, but they change country names each set.
Good luck!

and don't ask Gally to teach you how to calc breaks.

:P

True story. That is just.plain common knowledge. People are born knowing that fact.

This was really insightful. Thank you!

I find always build CS and get tech up quickly. You fall behind a little at the start but always catch up and trap the benefit of the early investment.

if u join GDI they cant do anything

gdi is good or bad?

Good points, I've tried without teching and it just doesn't work.

Gdi is good to join. It protects from random suiciders, harmful spy ops and special attacks. Gdi is broken when you attack someone twice or more. Also you must join gdi before making any attacks.

dont die

It be sweet to see a compiled document containing these thousands of posts so people don't need to look through thousands of other irrelevant/useless posts that are there :p

I have spent a little time looking through that board and have seen several duplicate topics that either have inaccurate, outdated or unanswered posts. But I guess that comes with every board :/

you can find xin's posts via search and restrict search to sr and/or q&a.

Thx

So keen for a big round this Month!

best way to win is buy all tech under my tech price then buy my tech as well :)

and sell it back at 1k.

Thanks, super helpful.

Thanks... its help...

THANKS!

Was here

cN we mifht kyrn us some prupr goodrish engoish ifin we may??

New guy here. thanks.


Z

Thanks for the info.

interesting...

Personally I think you should hit someone closer to size for a land grab, just with lesser military

Oh and apparently never double tap a country unless you want issues lol or war

new here

Thanks!

new here & this guide really helped

This is great, thanks!

as for using the bonuses, it would probably be wise to invest more in the reduced expenses, particularly for an industrialist nation, while the building costs percentage is relatively high, the expenses that you reduce occur every turn, so you will reap a larger benefit long term.

Thanks

thanks bro

thanks

H

Thanks for the post

ty

thank you, helps me test out different methods

Thanks for the tips