In light of Petroglyph and Disney being awesome I decided to update this. To put it bluntly alot of the people I am fighting right now seem to have no idea what they are doing and the resulting matches are not fun for anyone... So I decided to reformat this guide and add more sections and information.



I myself am still unsure of a few things but most of what I want here is here and I will continue to update as needed info becomes avalable to me. Help and feedback is apreciated, and pointing out anything I got wrong or left out, along with providing additional planets for my lists and reasons why they should be on them would be most apreciated. GLHF!

EAW:

Nothing special here, it doesn't really matter what tech level or funds you set as long as the map allows the Rebel player to see the Empire so they can tech up. On some of the smaller maps where not much is seperating the two factions it might be a good idea to have a peace time.

FOC:

It is almost always best to have some sort of player agreed peace time, as otherwise the game turns into a rush fest, which is usually one sided and boring.



Regardless of the set tech level, Cons always start at the equivalant of tech 5, but need to buy unit abilities on the black market. However, even without any abilities, capital ships and heavy tanks will beat frigates and light walkers every time. Always start a game at tech five when facing a Con player or you are severely nerfing yourself.

EAW:

On most of the small maps, the Rebels have an advantage. They can easily capture pirate held planets with raids, while the empire must first engage in a space battle. The Rebel player can then defeat the weakened Imperial fleet and win the game, or at least steal the planet.

On the large maps, both factions start off more or less equal, with no particular advantage for either one. Pick whichever one you are best at.

At very high level gameplay the Rebels also have a space advantage due to thier five extra unit cap. Yeah the Empire gets Tie Fighter spawns but those can literally be instantly evaporated with the right rebel fleet composition. Just keep this in mind if you are fighting somebody more or less as good as you are...

FOC:

As a general rule:
Cons should be used against an Empire player, as the Consortium can easily counter the Empire's main strengths. The Death Star can be hacked to explode, Darth Vader can be assassinated, those nasty Hypervelocity guns can be sabotaged, and the mighty ATAT can be bribed. Also, it is very difficult for the average Imperial base to win against a Consortium stealth hero attack. The garrison is simply too weak and lacks the killing power needed to counter the stealth BS.

Rebs should be used against a Con player, as the Empire is terrible against the Consortium and that leaves the Rebels. However, the Rebels can actually hold their own against the Consortium strengths. The Rebels do not have Death Stars or giant ships that can be easily bypassed, and on the ground the average rebel base spawns artillery, which is moderately effective against a Consortium hero invasion. T4bs also come in threes, and Zann can only bribe one thing at a time.

Emps should be used against a Rebel player, as the Rebels often have a hard time coping with Deathstars and Super Star Destroyers. The average Imperial base can hold off most raids, and a strong imperial fleet can dominate the Rebels in space.

Also, I am not saying that the Empire can't beat the snot out of the Cons or the Rebels can't crush the Empire, it just is harder and requires a bit of extra work that will be covered later.

General:

Assasinating C3P0 early in a low tech game can really mess a rebel player up, and doing it several times in a row, well...

If you think you can take the other guy out early in the game, do so. However, if your all out rushing attack fails without doing significant damage to the enemy, they can probably now kill you. Especially go for this kind of win if the enemy fleet is scattered as garrisons. Just mass all your own ships and defeat them in detail. Park something that isn't a stealth unit over all their planets when you are done rampaging so they can't rebuild any space forces and they will either be forced to surrender or die slowly to invasions.

Attacking anything not controlled by the other player means an auto resolved battle. There is no setting that changes this, so you will just have to plan for it no matter how much BS it may give you...

EAW:

The Rebellion and the Empire often start with several pirate held planets seperating them, which must be captured or bypassed before they can even see each other.

Expanding: On any map, expand as fast as possible. And by that I don't mean rush the pirates until you run out of ships, I mean at a situationally safe speed. The other player can and will jump you if you overextend yourself. Use the rapid expansion tricks later on in the guide to do this safely and effectively.

On some maps there are neutral planets. I suggest memorizing what and where they are and going for them first. Don't bother with pirate held captial ship planets (depends on the map ofc) until later in the game, as the defences can eat your whole fleet. There are also other strong pirate defences scattered around various strategic points on most of the maps. Make sure you know where those are as well on the maps you play on or you will get a very nasty suprise...

Pay attention to how fast the enemy player is expanding. Their rate of expansion is a good indicator of their skill level. If they are not expanding at all, the game is probably yours. If they are expanding significantly faster than you, you will probably lose. However, rapid expansion may also have overextended the other player and and they may now be broke from construction and vulnerable to rushing. Speaking of rushing, pay careful attention to happenings on the planets on your border, especially a blinking crossed lightsaber symbol that means a battle was fought there. Whatever enemy forces that just took that planet next to you probably arent expecting your whole fleet in their face on the same turn.

If you are the Empire, attack pirate held planets at a pace that allows you to replenish and expand your fleet before hitting the next one. Do not attempt a space battle against a pirate held planet that is next to the Rebels unless you are certain that your fleet can hold off any attack after defeating the pirates. That also goes for land. A Rebel raid can take your new planet away from you if your army is weak.

If you are the Rebels, raid pirate held planets first to remove their starbase before attacking with your fleet. Pay attention to what the empire is doing. Their newly captured planets are vulnerable to raids and invasions, and the pirates likely damaged the Imperial fleet. You can also use pirate fleets on your raid captured planets as a buffer zone to deter the enemy, but this lowers your unit cap and your first warning of an enemy attack in the area is likely to be an invasion on your mining world behind it...

FOC:

FOC maps start with all three factions right next to each other, so the fighting usually starts right away and can be quite chaotic and messy with both players ruthlessly attacking the unprepared and poorly defended worlds of the other. Or, more likely, one player is caught with their pants down by the combined force of the enemy on turn one and they rage quit in disgust. Unless, ofc, there is a peace time, in which case things tend to be a bit more fair and interesting and involve the massive epic battles that we want and expect out of a campaign game.

This is why many FOC games start with a player agreed peace time that lasts until the third faction is destroyed or a set number of days. This allows the players time to build up in preperation for what is usually one or more outcome defining space battles. If one player has the last of the third faction planets behind their lines, they get to decide when the fighting starts.

If there is no peace time, players start fighting immediately. Your best bet is to mass your fleet and army and attack your oppenent's nearest planet. Dont bother wasting precious time scouting, you will always find one of three things there. If there are no enemy ships, they massed their fleet too but it is somewhere else. Send your army over and grab the planet quickly before they can respond and either keep attacking or use your new advantageous positon to build up a bit and scout. If there are some enemy ships, defeat your opponent in detail and keep attacking until you occuply all their space. If there are alot of enemy ships, they massed their fleet too and now you get to take it and a starbase head on, so GL and go for the hanger asap.



As to expansion, peace times in FOC give you alot more leeway than in EAW for doing risky auto resolved invasions that exaust your forces. Here the goal is to take as many planets as possible as fast as possible so you can start earning money off of them to help build up for the fighting. You don't even need to worry about defending yourself as nobody is going to attack you any time soon, so just mass everything you have and go at it until you are done expanding. In the name of fairness (and not having your opponent cry foul and quit on you) try to only take half the third faction planets and leave the rest for your enemy. You shouldn't have enough starting land forces to grab more than that in one go anyway.

Unclear Outcome:

If it is over an hour in and the game hasn't crashed yet, first of all congrats and second of all its time to end this thing before it does! What it really comes down to at this point is which player has more or better units, and how well they use them. Which I will go into later...





Clear outcome:

If the eventual outcome is clear and you are on the wrong end of it, there are several actions at the campaign level that can be attempted.

EAW:
Go for their leader! A good speeder raid can kill Palpatine, and a small force can kill an ungaurded Mon Mothma. Though this is very difficult to time right, you can actually do an all out desperate attack by sending a combined space and land force at the enemy planet as the enemy fleet is in transit to you. They will pass by each other harmlessly and even though your planets are now defenceless in space, so are your opponent's. You may even catch the enemy army in space as a bonus. Simply continue attacking towards where you think the enemy leader is located (any worlds they have with just mines are good targets too!) and then kill the leader to win the game. The enemy fleet will either try to chase you and you will have to outrun it, or they will continue on to your own leader, and you will have to hope your defences can hold.





Stalemate: Even if the enemy has you down to one planet, if they can not take or otherwise destroy that planet, they can not win. Planets with alot of build slots such as Coruscant, Caridiia, Byss and Nal Hutta are some of the hardest places to take in the game, and if you have a full garrison and a good base, you can hold off almost anything. Again, it comes down to who can best use their units.



FOC:
Unfortunately, the only way to win in FOC is to remove the other player from the galaxy, so there are no leaders to assasinate. Your best hope is either somehow destroying the enemy fleet without losing your own or turning the game into a ground stalemate, which does not work against the Death Star or multiple base sabotauging defilers...

General

1. AA turrets can be ordered to fire on ground units. They are effective against infantry and sheilded units, and have a long range.

2. Turbolaser towers can be ordered to attack air units, and though innacurate they will kill any air unit that sticks around through sheer firepower.

3. Space stations are expensive and by themselves can't do much to defeat an attack. Personally, I often only level up one or two to build ships at and leave the rest as level one to use as a warning system. If I have alot of money I will level up a few where I am expecting an attack and put a superweapon and a small fleet there to guard it, but other than that I don't really waste money on them unless I need more unit cap.

4. Use all that money you save on space stations to build nasty ground defences. Unlike a space station, a decent ground garrison can hold off most attacks. A nasty ground garrison on the right planet can defeat a hundred + stack invasion and turn even a losing game into a draw.

5. Know the terrain of the ground map on every planet. Some ground maps put the sheild generators in really stupid places, so that the attacker comes across the gen before they even see a turbolaser tower or get anywhere near the shield. Others put the generator inside the sheild, making a sheild more than worthwhile to build on that planet. It is also helpful to know how many reinforcements particular landing zones give out, and where abandoned mines, build pads, indigenous structures (and their inhabitants, a rebel raid on Kashyk or Endor has a much highter chance of success than a raid on Coruscant or Taris, for example), base buildings, and turbolaser towers are located.



Some Good planets for Generators:
Hoth (not in the shield but there is more than one of them)
Coruscant (freaking three of them inside a shield, with turbo towers inside the shield as well.
Kashyk (inside the shield and protected by build pads)
Naboo (not in the shield but placed in the back of the map past a large number of turbo towers)

Some Bad Planets for Generators:
Byss (outside shield and poorly hidden)
Taris (outside shield on enemy attack route)
Nal Hutta (outside shield on enemy attack route)

6. Have at least one of every garrisoned building on all your planets (with the exception of the advanced factory and its Chewbacca prone liability). Try to avoid putting only mines on a planet on a large map. Though it earns you more money and is especially tempting on the planets that have a high mining income, unless you use the unit cap to put a large garrison there the enemy can just send a small force and take it from you before you can respond. Small maps you need money so put as many mines in as many places as you can get away with. Besides, if the enemy is in your backfield there you probably already lost.

7. If you are having difficulty finding a player for your campaign game, renaming it something like 'Lobby Of Cowards' or 'choose map and settings' will sometimes help, if only to get people in to complain about the former. Also I heard something about a discord for setting up games so you could try that as well...



8. This game has a tendancy to crash, so save every once in awhile if you expect to see your opponent ever again.

9. Sending a decoy unit at an enemy planet, even a single cheap infantry unit, can lure the enemy to move their fleet to intercept an expected attack while it is in transit, leaving them vulnerable everywhere else for the real attack.

10. Rebel starbases tend to explode violently upon retreat, so any ships nearby will probably die. Keep your frigates and corvettes at maximum range if you think the rebel player will retreat.

11. Hypervelocity guns and Ion cannons stack, meaning that the more you have the shorter the cooldown timer. A planet with six ion cannons will be able to hit your ships about every five seconds, which translates into needing the Death Star to win any space battle there. Multiple Hypervelocity guns make the planet vulnerable to raids, so no more than three (with the ability to hit ships every 10 seconds or so) is advised.

12. When retreating, you need to hold a reinforcement point to escape from or all your units will die. Units do not have to be standing on a point when the timer ends to survive. Even if Vader and Obi-Wan are having a duel in some corner of the map, either one of them will still be able to retreat as long as you hold a point.

Rebels: Raids can have up to three normal units and a hero. So, your raids should at the very least include three units. If you place stealth units above the planet you are raiding, you can send them down as reinforcements during the battle. You can also send multiple raids at a target at once, though the battles will be one at a time. Even better, if you have a fleet and an army on top of an enemy planet you can start the land fight with a raid, which is kind of op. This lets the Rebels skip the time normally needed to call in reinforcements and get right to rushing the next landing zone and on top of that raids can be larger than the amount of unit cap some initial deployment zones give you, which gives them even more of a chance of taking the next cap point before the defenders can stop them.


EAW:

Empire: Do not attack with Palpatine. This should be common sense, but I have won dozens of games against people who thought it was a good idea to send him at the pirates, or that he was a good addition to the imperial fleet or army in an attack. While he can be a powerful addition to the battle, the risk is almost always not worth it. The only time he should be used in an attack is if you are surrendering via last epic battle or pirate killed leader.



Veers cannot retreat for some reason, even if you have him standing on a controlled reinforcement point he will die when the retreat timer goes out. This does not affect other ATATs.

Rebels: Using speeder raids to remove hyper guns and the like can work once, but the enemy will likely have time to build turrets to prevent aircraft from doing the same again. It is fairly easy to kill Palpatine with a speeder raid. The aa turrets take too long to build and his force corrupt does not work on aircraft, so in theory nine of them should make short work of him. Having him stand right inside the edge of a sheild or between several tall ATSTs until the turrets come up is a good way to counter this.

FOC

General: Never remove the kidnapping corruption unless you want to make your opponent rich. I have won many games just from the income that generated. Do not ever remove the corrupt militia corruption, bad things will happen. Zealously remove all other corruption to prevent the cons from reaping massive income benifits and getting access to ships that you would rather not have to fight on top of all the other stuff they get. Also, all that money that corruption generates for them over time lets them have the funds to use their corruption to travel through your worlds wherever they want, so that level five starbase you made way in the back to sneakily build the Death Star on actually isn't safe...

Empire: Do not try to use the Death Star to solo the third faction space defences, it can lose. If it loses on a planet with IG88 or Rouge Squadron, it will die and your oppenent will find it hilarious.

Ok, here is a little thing that I figured out for myself over the years:

In both EAW and FOC, Combining a large army ( at least 20 units stacks) with a fleet slightly better than whatever it is you are attacking, will trick the auto resolve into having you win with no losses, (almost) every single time. This translates into taking a vast amount of the third faction on Equal Footing quickly with no space losses, and the same thing with the pirates in EAW. The larger the army and fleet the better.



And here is a better version!

Now, this was oh so generously shown to me by a certain douchebag who ended up being my nemisis in this game. If he still plays, I take great pleasure in imagining his reaction to having every player he meets knowing about this and giving him a hard time with it...

Anyway, Heroes are weighted quite a bit in auto resolve. The game tries really hard to keep them from getting killed. This means that just by themselves heroes can do a good amount. In EAW specifically, just Piet with Darth Vader and Ackbar with Solo can safely take out the lowest level of pirate fleets. This means that a player can rapidly make a safe passage through many of the pirate planets to capture the nuetrals in the early turns of the game, even faster than the first method.

Unfortunately in FOC this mostly works against you, as with the security of peace time there is little need to do this and the third faction has their own heroes that can cause some upsets with the auto resolves.

General:
When contruction starts, fly around blowing up Imperial level 5 starbases until the scary timer goes away. Note that good players will have put a hypervelocity gun where the Death Star is building, and possbibly elsewhere as well. A good indication of where the Death Star is under construction is to look for the the enemy fleet, it will likely be parked over that planet. That is why I usually put my fleet over some other level five starbase planet on my border, to throw them off. Or, you can try asking your oppenent nicely to not make it, which suprisingly enough sometimes works.

EAW:
Fighting the Death Star in a space battle is like fighting a normal space battle but with a few extra imperial units at the start, and possably a fireworks show at the location of where your planet used to be. So, nothing to worry about unless your leader is down there. Just make sure that Luke is present and survives the battle and you win the game.



FOC:
The Death Star 2 is an overpowered beast armed with a glorified laser pointer that can knock your most powerful capital ships and starbases out of action with one shot, along with your planets. It is also often accompnaied by Darth Vader and his Super Star Destroyer, which can be a problem all by itself. The Consortium has it easy, IG88 can hack the Death Star for 50 grand and blow it and everything around it to space dust. However, on smaller maps there is simply not enough money to do this, and some other way must be found. The Rebels? Well... remember what I said earlier about maybe not fighting the Empire as them?

In any case, fighting them with conventional means is...difficult, and even if you somehow win your losses will be huge. The only good way that I have found to fight them in open battle is by using something that the Death Star cannot hit, fighters and bombers. You will need hundreds of them, a rush order from all your planets the entire time the Death Star timer is going. It is best to have equal amounts of your best fighters and bombers along with some corvettes and a few larger support ships that can remove troublesome enemy Tartans quickly before getting zapped. It should be noted that this aproach can really lag up the game and/or tick the other person off, but my response has always been to ask them what they were expecting when using such a force, that nobody would think of an equally cheesy way to counter it? Make sure that Rouge Squadron or IG88 are present and survive the battle, otherwise the Death Star won't die even if you win.

On a small map, it might not be possible to make sufficient forces to fight both the Death Star and Vader at once, in which case you will have to think outside the box. The win condition is to take all enemy planets, and your fleet moves much more quickly than the death star. Your only chance is to attack the enemy as their fleet and Death Star are attacking you, and take all their planets. The enemy will likely have blown up all your former planets, and will now want to head back to finish the job with your new possessions. However, you can easily avoid their slower fleet, and keep them at no more than one space debris at all times, constantly throwing up whatever ships you can out of any starbases you have alive. If you can take that one last imperial space debris while their fleet is in transit to one of yours, they lose. Once they figure out what you are doing, they will likely seperate their fleet from the Death Star, and might even split it further by leaving it guards. This leaves you with two seperate, manageable enemy forces to fight, and a good chance at a victory. Again, make sure that IG88 and Rouge Squadron are alive and well at the end of the Death Star fight.

This is pretty straight forward. Whoever has more/better ships will usually win. This is a problem that must be dealt with on the campaign level, as there is only so much a player can do a the battle level to overcome it. However, for equal or near equal space forces there are a few tactics that can make all the difference.

General:

1: Focus fire. Basic RTS methodology that too many people still don't use. This should be self evident, but having all your ships shoot at one enemy ship will get rid of that enemy ship in short order.

2: Go after important hardpoints/units first. That hanger on that starbase or destroyer will get annoying after awhile, so blow it up. Same for the shield generator on anything that has it. Enemy wants to run? Take out the engines. Mauraders and Broadsides deal alot of damage to shields and vaporize fighters but they are fragile and easily taken down.





3: Defang enemy ships: A Star destroyer or Mon Cal with just ion cannons left isn't good for much of anything. Those damage dealing MC30s aren't so dangerous once you take out those torpedo launchers. Oh, i'm sorry Mr. big bad capital ship with no engines but the battle is on the other side of the map now. Leave defanged ships alive so that they waste your opponents unit cap and their remaining units will be at a disadvantage from the reduced killing power.



4: Don't be afraid to cut and run if the battle is not going your way. As long as you have something to fall back to a defeat in battle does not mean a defeat in the campaign.

5: Don't be afraid to make it look like you are losing or about to retreat. As long as you still have ships that take up unit cap on the battlefield somewhere the battle is still ongoing. It is unwise to keep having your ships jump into a meatgrinder, let the enemy wipe your current fleet and reset somewhere else on the map. This is also how you get rid of your defanged ships.



6: Focus on incoming ships. Ships jumping in from hyperspace take way more damage than normal. If you reactions are good and you have enough ships firing at them you can have enemy ships come in with their shields already down. A hyper gun blast that actually hits will also almost kill a Mon Cal as it comes in.

7: Keep your fleet on the battlefield balanced enough to deal with anything. For example, not having enough anti fighter units can be bad as the bombers will rip your ships to pieces, but so can having too much as then you can't even hurt the frigates and capital ships...







FOC: You know that option in FOC that lets you choose which ship to spawn in first? Don't use it if you have a fleet commander that doesn't come with his own ship. Tarkin and the ones you recruit will spawn in with a wimpy shuttle and take up one of your unit cap. The game will go over the battle unit cap to accomodate fleet commanders (and Vader's SSD) if you let the game choose your initial battle composition. Do use fleet commanders, the bonus is worth it.

Empire Fleet Compositon:

You have 5 less space unit cap than the other two factions but your ships spawn in fighters and bombers. This means, including the otherwise excellent Tie Defender, using any fighters not spawned by your ships or starbase is a waste of your unit cap. Do not ever use tie Scouts or Phantoms, they are useless. Defenders might have some situational use but personally I never use them.

Acclamators and Victories both take up three unit cap but Vics spawn in more fighters, are tougher, and hurt the enemy more. As soon as you have the tech for them stop using Acclamaters and as soon as you can/need to sell them for money and free unit cap.

Star Destroyers are your main ships of the line. However, Victories are still viable even when you have Destroyers as they cost less cap and can be sent in as something expendable to take out weak enemies.

The premise of Interdictor frigates is kind of cool I guess but unless the enemy is spamming you with bombers or maurader fire they are pretty useless, and even then it is better to use your three unit cap to throw something else at the rocket happy enemies and just kill them.

Edit: One of my friends pointed out to me that in FOC Interdictors can shut down a missile heavy rebel fleet composition. I also theory crafted my own scenarios involving the Death Star 2 and using them as an effective counter to fighter/bomber spam while the DS zapps every large ship they bring in to kill them. Now if only FOC would stop giving me connection interupted screens so I could actually try this....

So, your fighters. This is why the game devs saw fit to take away five of your unit cap despite the fact that compared to the Rebels or Cons your fighters kind of suck. They respawn up to a point, but you need them alive to do you any good and there are alot of things that quickly kill them. Keep your fighters close in to your fleet to deter enemy fighters and bombers, and use your bombers to take out shield gens and starbase hangers. A-wings will completely destroy your fighters in a fight, even when (at the start at least) they are badly outnumbered, so having your fighters go off alone without support is usually a bad idea. Try and keep them away form Marauders and enemy corvettes, or at the very least make them get in range of your large ships so you can kill them as they wipe your fighters out. Also keep in mind that your Interceptors can't easily catch B-wings and so if you rely on fighters to stop them the B-wings pretty much have you at their mercy...



EAW: Broadsides spew out missiles over a wide area and are really good at clearing fighters and taking down Rebel shields. They also completely destroy rebel starbases as all the hardpoints are close together in a space about equal to the Broadsides area of effect. Dont bother with Tartans Broadsides fulfill the same role and do so much more.



FOC: Unfortunately Broadsides are nerfed here, instead of spewing out high explosive missiles in a large area they shoot at a small point. They are still really good at taking down shields but against fast B wings their slow projectiles will fail you and they can't deal alot of actual damage to starbases anymore either. They are still viable but you will need Tartans as well to deal with fighters and bombers.


Rebel Fleet Composition:

I know that technically Nebulons and Assault Frigates have the same loadout but Assault Frigates have better shields and "enhanced turbolasers," so when you get the tech to do so stop using Nebulons and get rid of them.

Mon Cals are really tough to take down by laser fire due to their shield ability. These are your main ships of the line and should be used as such. Assault Frigates are still viable in support of the Mon Cals as expendable ships to destroy weak problem units.

Marauders work the same as Broadsides in EAW and FOC respectively, however as imperial starbases have spread out hardpoints unlike Broadsides in EAW three of them can't just wreck a starbase in one volley. A few Corelians to get rid of Tie Fighter Vader/Fett are ok but for anti fighter purposes focus on Mauraders.

EAW:I will just go out and say it. Here your fighters and bombers are a waste of unit cap. Think about it it, the point of your fighters is to kill enemy fighters but your Corelians and Mauraders do the same job better. Your bombers are for bypassing the enemy shields but the Empire frigates have this ability that turns off their shields for more damage, so really Y-wings are only useful against Star Destroyer and starbase hangers/ Shields. Even then, Maurauders can nuetralize the shields just as easily. A-wings are kinda sorta useful for clumping tie fighters together for the Mauraduers but for all practical purposes the Ties are grouped tightly anyway as that is how unit selection in this game works. So, really no reason to use fighters and bombers at all as the Rebels. Use Mauraders instead to do everything your fighters and bombers do and more.



FOC: Fighters are awesome here. A-wings and B-wings are essential parts of your fleet. Use your A-wings to clear the enemy fighters into a small space so your corvettes or Maruaders can kill them. Use Your B-wings to take out valuable hardpoints and defang lone ships. If you are fighting the Death Star 2 your fleet will out of neccessity consist almost entirely of fighters and bombers.

MC30s are the most easily defanged ship in the game, so maybe don't waste unit cap on them and use three B wings instead.


Consortium Fleet Composition:

Cons play alot like the rebels, but there are some differences.

First, Piracy. If you have Defenders, B-wings or A-wings, use them. If you have Mauraders or Broadsides, Use them. Everything else from piracy isn't as good as your own stuff. Used to be Pre-September patch Con Acclamaters would spawn a Star Viper, giving you an Acclamater, a tie fighter and a tie bomber for essentially two unit cap but that seems to have changed and they are now pretty useless...

That Interceptor 4 piece of trash should be shoved in the same place as Nebs and Acclamators as it is if anything worse than them and Cons always start at tech 5.

Vengence Frigates are really good, they do shield piercing damage, and once they get defanged you can turn them invisable, fly up to the nearest enemy ship, and turn it into a bomb.

Kedalbes are slightly better armed than Star Destroyers and Mon cals and are thus a formidable opponent.

Agressors are interesting, basically a really big gun that ignores shields and deals spash damage to enemy fighters and corvettes near the impact site, preceded by a second big gun that just does alot of ion damage. As a second line ship they can dish out impressive punishment. However, they are very easy to defang. This is usually ok, as they can also turn into a bomb.

Star Vipers and Blastboats: Very solid. The buzz droids may or may not make Star Vipers the best fighter in the game, and while not fighter bombers Blastboats are still a tier above Y Wings and Tie Bombers.

Land battles can be really hard slogs, depending on how good the garrison is and how agressive the players are.

The attacker has to deal with whatever unit cap limit the inital spawn point gives them along with map choke points and endlessly respawning enemies from barracks and factories, on top of whatever normal units are stationed there to hold the planet.

The defender has to deal with (if the attacker knows that they are doing) being seriously outnumbered/outmatched overall in a battle of attrition.

Either side may have to deal with the indiginous population, who may support one side or the other or be nuetral or hostile to both. Scattered around the maps are also abandoned sensor arrays, mines, and factories that give useful benifits.



Attacking:

1: Those factories and barracks are like a hanger on a starbase. Your primary objective is to take them out asap by any means neccesary, otherwise the defenders will never run out of units.

2: Do not be afraid to get wiped. A solid defence might wreck your attacking force many times before you break through. Heck, you might need to let your army get wiped just so you know what you are up against. Just try not to get hard wiped (no units left at all) if you are not done with the battle, as you will need to restart from the beginning.

3: Gaurd your landing zones, or at least have it so the enemy can't get at them. Losing your reinforcement points, regardless of whether or not you have no infantry left to retake them, can be...quite inconvienient.

4: Use build pads, but keep in mind that only the owner of the planet gets to keep the turrets built so you have to win to keep what you made for the next battle.

5: You have bombing runs and in FOC you also get bombardment. Use them to deal with problem
areas.




Defending:

1: Rush the enemy deployment zone with expendable units (the ones that respawn and things like Tie Maulers) along with infantry. If you are lucky you can do alot of damage to an unprepared enemy and maybe even kick them off your planet by taking the landing zone. Also, if one side is significantly stronger than the other that side gets a permanant map reveal for the rest of the battle. Catching the enemy weak on the landing zone before they fully deploy is a great way to get this.



2: Set up artillery around choke points that the enemy has to go through. Spread them out so one bombing run, bombartment or small breakthrough can't take them all out at once.

3: Use your build pads. Empire and Rebels should usually just spam AA turrets and order them to shoot at ground units at range and Cons can use whatever is best for the situation.

4: Take full advantage of defencive structures. Line your units up behind a shield so the enemy cannot hurt them without breaking in and place artillery and anti infantry units around your turbolasers so that when the enemy sends infantry to take them out that infantry gets jumped.

5: Take full advantage of terrain. Hide some repulsorlift tanks over water and use them to hit vulnerable enemy artillery from behind. Place your own artillery behind a wall or hill something else impassable so that they can shoot the enemy with impunity.

This isn't as important as fleet composition as it is harder to mess up. The important thing is numbers. If you have enough units you can take any planet, no matter what is defending it. If you have a strong enough defence with alot of garrsion buildings and all ten normal units, "enough units" can easily end up being "more units than the attacker has."

Empire army:

Lots of ATATs, artillery, Hovertanks, and Tie Maulers. In FOC Lancets and Dark Trooper 3s are also quite useful. Use the ATATs to spawn troopers for capturing stuff. Use your tanks for blitzkrieg tactics to capture areas of the map and your walkers for overwhelming local force to break through to the base.



Empire Garrison: Base garrison should be a barracks and a light and heavy factory. Keep in mind that scout bikes are a bit bugged at the moment and so are unlikely to listen to more than your first movement order.

EAW: Some Tie Maulers to deal with the locals and an artillery unit or two is usually enough to deter normal attacks with support from the garrison buildings.

FOC:

Vs Cons: Your main objective should be to deter a hero invasion. You will be dealing with in loose order of least trouble to most: Defilers, Bossk, IG88, Zann, Silri, and Urai Fen. The two bounty hunters are easy to take out, but Zann comes with bombartment that doesnt go away if you kill him, stealth, and the ability to bribe your units. Silri has an ability that stunlocks nearby units while she heals herself immensely and another ability that spawns a freaking rancor. Urai auto heals, can stun infantry, and turns invisible. You need serious killing power to take him down in the short intervals you can actually see him. Against a good opponent to have any chance at all of stopping them you need a mid size garrison on every planet, conisting of the base garrison, 2-4 tie maulers, at least two artillery, and at least one Lancet squadron. Focus down the invisible bastards Zann and Urai first if you can to make your life easier.

Vs Rebs: Your main problem with Rebs will be Garm and his hovermonster. To beat him and whatever raid he comes with, have the base garrison, two artillery units a lancet squadron... And an AA turret on every build pad for good measure. Go for his shield generators, he is really tough and will probably be able to either kill all the units attacking him or retreat, so that will make it easier to hurt him more on the next encounter.



Rebel Army:
Spam T4bs, Artillery, speeders, and plex troopers. Wave after wave of T4Bs should be able to break through anything sooner or later. In FOC, use the mobile build pads as well. You can make a mobile fort with the shields as you push your way up to enemy strong points.



Rebel garrison: Base garrison should be a barracks with a light and heavy factory.

Vs Empire: Aside from the base garrison, extra Artillery never hurts, speeders can take out enemy artillery and reveal the map if you rush the point with them, and a few t4bs showing up at the right time should all be enough to hold off moderate attacks. Honestly, in FOC especially half the time the Empire is more focused on their Death Star than on land invasions and so should you.

Vs Cons: Again the main problem is the heroes. However, simply placing 2-3 artillery units on the planet and making sure your garrison units will be the ones to die first should be enough to make any would be Stealth Hero attack a failure. "Come at me bro!" Guess this would work for the empire too...

Con Army Very Similar stuff to the Rebels, spam tanks, art, droids and disrupter infantry.

Con Garrison These guys have it easy. They only have one income building per planet so all their other buildings do something to help in a fight. Just build lots of factories and counter attack the entire battle to wear down the attacking enemies. On most worlds with many building slots normal units to boost the garrison are not even needed, but having some artillery around to deal with Garm wouldn't hurt.

You are probably tired of me yammering on and on about how the game works, so let's put it all into practice with the popular EAW GC map The Lines are Drawn.

Tech level: Irrelivent
Start Funds: Irrelivent

Be very careful when moving your mobile coupon around on this one. If they die you lose, and the enemy will be paying attention to what you are doing on any planets they have sight to. They will pay a visit if you leave your leader sitting in orbit for too long. Personally I just have Mothma sit on Hoth (I move her somewhere more defensible eventually) and Palpatine sit on Coruscant the entire time churning out 3 and 2 unit cap space units for the entire game. If you set up your economy well money is not an issue on this map, so let your opponent make the mistake of giving you a free win instead of the other way around.




When setting up a planet, queue light factories before barracks so you can go back later and queue on a heavy factory before the barracks is finished constructing. For money planets it is ok to queue the mines first before garrison structures if the place is relatively safe.

Nuetrals: Go after these asap.

1: Bespin
2: Corellia
3: Naboo
4: Geonosis
5: Thyferra
6: Alztoc 3
7: Anaxes
8: Aeten 2
9: Ilum
10: Kashyk
11: Shola
12: Korriban

High income Planets: Put mines here. These are not the only ones worth building mines on just the ones with enough building slots to put a decent amount of mines.

1: Bespin (you can't build mines here but you don't have to it is worth alot anyway)
2: Nal Hutta
3: Coruscant
4: Bonadan
5: Thyferra
6: Alztoc 3
7: Jabim (repulsurlift vehicles don't work here, so it is hard to garrison with buildings. This one place it is tolerable to put all mines)

Production Planets: Put factories here. Mining income here is low so don't bother with them.
1: Byss
2: Caridia
3: Geonosis

Rebel Strategy:

Bespin starts out as nuetral, seperate Mon Mothma from your fleet and army and take it. Use the better method to clear out Azteri space, combine your forces over Endor, and hit Taris. If you are not at tech 5 steal a tech from Taris first. Taris has almost no defences at all at the start, so the battle will be an easy win. Don't start the battle immediately, while the timer is ticking down go to Bonadan and build some mines and upgrade the starbase on Hoth if you can. Also sell the Turbo towers on Hoth, Endor, Yavin and Bonadan for a nice cash boost.



While waiting for garrison buildings to build on Taris go to your other side and grab nuetral Korriban. Start making raid forces to take the nearby pirate worlds, but keep them on the ground until ready to fend off imperial attack.

If you are feeling adventurous go back to your fleet on Taris and use the better method to clear out Polus space and grab nuetral Thyferra. If you are feeling super agressive go on to clear out Jabim with the better method, take nuetral Alztoc, and start hitting the Empire core worlds from the rear. They were nuetral until just recently and will likely be poorly defended.

Otherwise move back to Bespin, clear out Dagobah space and take nuetral Naboo and Geonosis. Clear out the space over Tatooine and take the Vergesso Asteroids while you are at it. If you are feeling agressive hit Corelia, if not start stealing tech from it if you need to.

If you find at this point that the Empire player hasn't gotten around to taking the nuetrals around them yet put them out of their misery and kill them, you are faster than them and your forces should thus be more numerous and superior.

If you rushed the Empire focus on space production to resupply your fleet and occupy their space. If not still build ships from your level 3 on Hoth but sit tight for the time being and focus on raiding nearby pirate planets. Your next goal should be Bothawuii, money world Nal Hutta, nuetral Kashyk, and nuetral Shola. however, the better method does not work on Bothawuii so you will need to use the first one to not lose any ships there. Either wait a bit for the Empire player to attack it and hopefully weaken themselves or throw up 25 infantry units and some more ships and hit it and Nal Hutta yourself before taking the ground.

Raiding: Speeders are the most time and cost effective units at raiding the pirates, so just spam them and send them in groups of three until you have taken all the nearby pirate worlds. Most pirate planets will go down in two speeder raids. If you do not have the tech for speeders use infantry. If might take four or five raids to take a single planet though.



At some point you will want to connect your two halves, Corellia is the most direct route for this but you can also take the Capital Ship worlds nearby and go through Kessel. When you start needing unit cap go around and start clearing the pirates off your border planets. If the Empire player is bad they would have done some of this for you already by trying to attack you and lost some ships and alot of land units in the process.

Your end game focus should be Palpatine, find out where your opponent keeps him and pay him a visit with overwhelming force. In the meantime it is ok to send a small expendable space force behind enemy lines to reveal their planets, alot of people keep worlds with just mines and no defences whatsoever back there. You can come back later with a larger force and grab them all, crippling your opponent and boosting your own economy.

Empire Strategy:

First, build some garrison buildings on Taris. Then go to Coruscant, upgrade the starbase and build 3 mines. Anaxes, Aeten 2, and Ilum are all nuetral, send Fett back to grab them. At the same time he is doing that mass your fleet over nuetral Corelia and your army on the ground there in case the Rebels attack. Once you have some garrison buildings under construction and reunite Fett with your fleet you have several choices.

Sell the Turbo towers on Coruscant (The ones that you start with are bugged but since the place is really good for turbo towers rebuild them later) and Byss. Also sell the officer accademy on Coruscant and move it elsewhere.

If you are feeling super agressive use the better method to clear Kessel space and rush the rebel planets there. The rebel player may or may not have even had time to take nuetral Korriban at this point and it should be a clean wipe of all three planets. This does not neccesarily mean the Rebels have lost, while your fleet and army is occupied with this the rebel forces have time to accomplish quite a bit on the other parts of the map.

If you are just feeling agressive without wanting to freak out your opponent into quiting you can go through Tattoine and take nuetral Geonosis and Naboo. Note that the Geonosians really like the Rebels and spawn in great numbers, so build a strong garrison there. Go on to hit the rebel main forces around Bespin if you so choose.

Otherwise fall back to Coruscant and while building up your fleet there, break off your heroes and use the better method to clear out the space around Caridia, Manaan and Jabim. Clear Polus as well if you want a connection to Taris. Grab nuetral Thyferra and Alztoc 3 and set your army to capturing the cleared planets.

For Empire the most time and cost effective land units to attack the pirates with are Tie Maulers. Spam them.



Eventually you will want to grab the money world of Nal Hutta and the surrounding nuetrals. You need to use the first method to clear Bothawuii as the better one doesn't work there. At some point by now the Rebel player is probably thinking about attacking you if they haven't already so watch your back. Grab a capital ship world when you are ready to do so and start making Destroyers.



Your end goal is to kill Mon Mothma, but unlike the Emperor on land she is bound to a building and helpless in a fight. If there are no buildings she is bound to a stationary shuttle somewhere on the map and is even easier to take out.

Coming soon...



Or probably not. Game kind of died again...