Hallo there.

In this guide we will outline some general strategic concerns, pitfalls of the early-game, and items to keep in mind when planning your victory.

It is a very general guide. The guiding principle of what's in here is "whatever came to my mind while playing a few campaigns". I'll go into details on some things that interest me, and I'll effectively wave in the general direction of the manual when it comes to others.

I have around 1500h in Shadow Empire. Most of those are certainly spent alt-tabbed elsewhere, or AFK outright, since Shadow Empire is a graciously light game to keep running in the background, but I promise you there's more than enough actual playtime in there. I have won campaigns on all difficulty levels, and lost a great many more, and consider myself as a generally competent though by no means optimal player. When I lose, it's usually because I failed to pay attention - and Shadow Empire hates it when your concentration lapses.

Note that there is also a multiplayer scene for Shadow Empire, and those guys are on another level. I just play casual singleplayer.

I now want to write down some thoughts that are good to keep in mind in the early-game, so that neither you nor I will make the same mistakes again the next time we start another campaign.

Overall this guide is entirely subjective. I lay out my own considerations and strategies that work well for me, but I do not claim that they are the best out there. You are invited to criticize them at your leisure and suggest improvements. Or just chuckle at my foolishness and do better.

I will assume that you are not entirely new to the game; that you have played at least one round already and/or that you have read the manual. If any terminology makes no sense to you, check the manual. If the manual doesn't help, please complain.

I'm also open to requests or suggestions. I will certainly forget about many important things, or skim over what should be addressed in greater detail. Let me know!

Many of the images in this guide will have explanations in mouse-over tooltips. I beg your pardon if you are on a mobile device, no idea how it works there.

Bottom Line Up Front:

If the rambling style, lack of structure small number of pictures don't give it away, then here's my confession - this guide is unfinished. I'll probably iterate over it many times in the weeks to come, so feel free to stop reading right away and come back at a later point.

Thanks for reading, I wish you good fun, and remember to stop staring at a screen, move your carcass and get some fresh air.

TODO

• How to deal with various crises. (Resource shortages, unexpected war, stronger enemy, unrest, rebellion, pirates, etc.)
  
• Tricky decisions.
  
• Maritime Trading Houses and you.
  
• Additional SHQs - when to create them, when to delete them, and when to do nothing.
  
• Include more feedback from seasoned MP veterans.

As I am a fairly experienced player, I will gloss over many things that may be of interest to you. Please let me know what I forgot, or what needs more fleshing out!

And as I am a very sloppy writer, I will get many things straight-up wrong. I can't buy you a beer for every mistake you point out, but you will have my thanks for doing so.

The Shadow Empire Manual[ftp.matrixgames.com].

I know, I know, it's 400 pages long, I can't be serious. And hell, you don't have to. Go and play without reading the whole thing, it's fine. But if you keep coming back to the game, it pays great dividends to have read the Manual at least once. Consider it. There are many little details that you will easily miss otherwise.

The first thing you do when starting a new campaign is generate a planet.

Some people swear that you must have a good planet for the game to be playable. That's not true, in my opinion, for at least two reasons.

Firstly, the nature of the planet affects rival AI regimes as much as yourself. They get a handful of advantages that can mitigate some planet generation difficulties - the AI is notoriously able to deal with logistics in mountainous areas with infuriating ease - but overall their economy will struggle with the same issues as yours. They need the same resources, and will suffer the same effects when those lack.

Secondly, where exactly on a planet you spawn is far more important than the general nature of the planet. It's arguably even more important than the actual difficulty level you choose. Some geographic warning signs that will tell you that your campaign will be harder than average:

• You spawn far away from natural potable water sources.
  
• You spawn far away from population centers to conquer.
  
• There are key resources missing in your starting area (though you cannot be sure of this; you might find some with a little prospecting and/or exploration).
  
• You are surrounded by strong Major Regimes.

But none of those are generally impossible to deal with. You can make it. Most of the time. Sometimes the world hates you and you die, but that's vanishingly rare. Usually it's your own mistakes that get you killed.

And besides, having the perfect starting situation is going to make for a boring game - because it's very unlikely that your enemies will be as lucky as you, and when you start with a large advantage, the game tends to be too easy.

So I recommend taking the planets as they come. It can even be quite fun to take a completely random planet and go in completely blind - see it as a challenge!

That said, sometimes the game can be a slog. Sometimes you spawn in a region with neither metal nor manpower, and there is no metal to buy on the market, and you know you are forced to wait for dozens of turns before you can get Metal Soil Filtration up and running, and even then you will still be bottlenecked by your lack of population. These situations are winnable by playing it extremely carefully - but that may not be fun. It's up to you whether to stick it out. In my opinion one of the great flaws of Shadow Empire is that there are lower bounds on how many resources you need to even get started on various strategies - you cannot build a tiny Industry asset to generate a little IP, and you cannot build a minimal Metal Soil Filtration to get at least a small amount of metal.

Anyways. In order to avoid the game becoming too hard or too easy, or in other words to reduce the influence of random chance on a campaign's difficulty, I recommend playing on the following kind of planet and history class:

• Small-normal sized planets, since the amount of micromanagement required for larger planets is pretty arduous. Larger planets do offer more interesting logistical challenges, but they also drag out the challenge-free part of forcing a game to its conclusion once it's already clear that you're going to win.
  
• Planets without giant alien monsters. It can be fun to have those, but game difficulty is already very dependent on luck, and with giant alien monsters it's even more of a coin toss whether your campaign will be too hard or too easy.
  
• Do pick the Spread Out option, so as to avoid situations where you start out boxed in between major regimes.
  
• Strongly consider picking Severe Violence. Not for every game or for your first, mind you, but in the long run diplomacy is unreliable, but when it works it trivializes the game. You practically win instantly once you form a durable Friendship Pact or unify with one or several Farmer regimes.
  
• Strongly consider playing on the highest difficulty that you don't just immediately fail on. Shadow Empire is a complex but not actually very hard game, and the AI is just barely able to play at all. In order for the AI to pose any challenge at all, increase the difficulty.

But ultimately everything is a matter of taste. Pick whatever you like, and live with it.

After generating the planet, you generate your regime. And each regime has its regime profile.

Your regime has three profile groups - politics, society and psychology. Each group contains three profiles, and each profile has a simple numerical score that represents in how far your decisions have adhered to or contradicted that profile. Keep a profile at high enough values for long enough, and you will gain bonuses that become increasingly powerful as your profile value increases. Each profile contradicts the other two in its group, so it's generally hopeless to try and maintain more than one per group at high levels.

You will be able to prioritize one profile out of each group when starting out. This will influence the profiles of the political parties or factions you start out with, though there is no guarantee that any of them will fit your chosen profiles exactly.

If your chosen profile does not match those of your leaders and their factions, you will have discontent among your ruling class. This can be tolerated to some extent, depending on how loyal your leaders are in general, but if it gets too bad you will have to either start firing people (and dissolving entire factions by firing all their members), or change your profile to match the preferences of your leaders. You can start switching profiles whenever you see fit, but doing so will take time as influencing profiles relies heavily on random events.

Many of those random events will also boost one profile at the expense of another, or boost several that suppress each other, or boost one that you want and another that you do not want. I recommend having clear priorities for which groups are most important to you, and which trade-offs you are willing to make. It's a very bad idea to pull in multiple directions at once, as this will pull your profiles closer to moderate values where they provide no major advantages. Remember: It's easy to boost low profile values, and easy to lose points form high values, but hard to do the reverse. There are diminishing returns when approaching extreme values. That said, it's absolutely possible to reach 100 or 0 if you stick to your guns.

Below, I will give you a rough overview of the different profiles, some of what they demand of you and some of what they offer to you. I will skip much information here that you can simply glean from the manual instead.

Government For The People
Democracy is probably the easiest form of Government to pick - as long as you don't run out of money. This is because you can raise it very quickly by paying off worker strikes, which is also the only option of resolving strikes that does not cause lasting damage. Democracy makes your people happy by increasing Quality Of Life in your zones, which also helps prevent strikes, and also boosts your Political Power output, which lets you play more stratagems. And finally, Democratic major regimes are by and large the only ones that make reliable allies - but only if your regime is also a democracy!

Democracy is said to be very strong in Multiplayer, see the following:

the PP bonus is extremely strong, and you can spam Cabinet Retreat to solve all your HR problems
QoL also helps you develop faster
Democracy also has the strongest Call stratagem and can actually afford it

Government By The Ruler
Autocracy is the polar opposite of Democracy. Rather than to keep the people happy and let your zones run smoothly, Autocracy will simply let you kill malcontents. Killing your own people will stall your progress sooner or later, as population is the most valuable resource in the game - but it also lets you solve problems instantaneously. Autocracy has no passive bonuses, but instead gives you stratagems with which you can get rid of uncooperative leaders. This makes a spontaneous swerve into Autocracy attractive if you suffer from constant unrest or severely negative leader relations. Overall though an autocrat will quickly burn his human capital, and should expand rapidly before he runs out of followers.

Government Through The Leaders
Of the government profiles, Meritocracy is the odd one out. Instead of the People or the Ruler, it revolves mostly around the Leaders. Meritocracy is the most difficult government profile to raise, and many pro-meritocratic decisions will cost you dearly. You can resolve worker strikes through a dice roll, which becomes easier when your governor is more competent - but a failure will cause unrest, which will grind your zone to a halt, which causes further strikes. Build up a high enough Meritocracy profile though (90+), and you will be offered much more capable leaders for recruitment, which will supercharge practically everything you do. The difficult part is getting there. Meritocracy choices are rare, and the only way to get the profile high enough is to pick all of them when they do show up - and damn the consequences. To make this a little less painful, Meritocracy has passive feats that boost a wide variety of things, which can help you avoid various problems.


Society By The Rules
Enforcement does three things - recruitment, service taxes, and logistics. The first two are situational; recruitment is rarely a problem and service taxes are insignificant. The recruitment bonus does give you the option to rapidly move around population though. The third bonus, Logistics, is very valuable. Enforcement is good for games in which you have rapidly shifting frontlines, or a population shortage that prevents you from building new zones with new logistics assets.

Society Is None Of Your Business
Commerce will help your people help themselves. They will be happier, will make more money, will build up private assets more rapidly, and will finally pay more taxes. This makes commerce an excellent profile for playing wide, as underdeveloped zones will build themselves up, to a certain point, as long as there are enough people there. Commerce also boosts your resource trading. All of this means you save a lot of money. The Commerce Profile can be difficult to maintain at high levels if you have to deal with Maritime Trading Houses, as they will frequently make outrageous demands of you, and refusing them reduces Commerce.

Society For The State
Government is a very strong profile for playing tall. If you plan to have relatively few cities with high-level public assets, Government will boost their output and will keep the workers happy so that you will not be crippled by strikes. It will also boost your bureaucracy, which means that all your councils will work faster. Those are very strong bonuses indeed.

For Survival
Fist does two things. One is increase casualty tolerance. Nice to have, but bad to plan with - losing people is the worst thing you can do. The other thing Fist does is increase your units' combat performance. Massively. Fist is good if you need to do a lot hard fighting and you can't just win though technological or economic superiority. One problem with Fist is that Fist leaders will often demand that you conquer specific places - and those demands are often extremely ambitious.

For Progress
Go on, guess. What does mind do? Research, obviously. It makes you research faster. Very strong. It also helps you assimilate newly conquered peoples, but that's fairly minor. Overall mind is Research.

For Love
Heart is probably the comfiest of the three psychology profiles. It makes the people and your leaders more loyal, and increases unit morale. This simply means that they will not turn against you as easily when the going gets tough. Heart is great for new or sloppy players, and for when you don't want to deal with everyone's problems. Take heart, and worry less. Perversely, heart also lets you play as a very callous ruler who imposes his will with little concern for his subjects and followers, because they will just love you anyways.

If you aren't sure which profiles to pick, here are some suggestions.

This keeps everyone happy, healthy and loyal. Your own men shouldn't give you any trouble and will follow you wherever you lead them. And if ever there is a worker strike, you will have the money and the ideology to just pay them off.

The most capable leaders, the most advanced technology, the most efficient economy. Weak private sector and you need to micromanage to keep everyone happy, but this should be the combination with the greatest overall potential. Government should stave off worker strikes, so Meritocracy will not cause as much unrest.

With this you are set up to shut down internal opposition, recruit lots of men and attack over vast distances against unlikely odds. Probably best on small maps. The few times I tried this I failed miserably, and so can you!

But feel free to disagree, experiment or roleplay!

My personal favorite is Meritocracy - Commerce - Heart, possibly transitioning into Meritocracy - Commerce - Fist if I need more punch and don't need the extra loyalty.

Now that the game is about to start, here's the goal: Obviously we want to win. We should be aware of what it takes before we set out, so that we get our priorities straight.

How to win the game:

• Acquire Territory
  
• Acquire Population
  
• Deny Territory To Enemy
  
• Deny Population To Enemy

Acquiring and Denying Territory mostly comes down to picking terrain along which you can easily proceed and through which you can easily resupply; i.e., avoid mountains and swamps unless doing so leaves your lines of communication exposed. It means picking good bottlenecks at which to set up entrenched defences - a narrow isthmus is perfect for this. The goal is to take territory as quickly as possible, and to hold and defend it with as few men and resources as necessary. Taking ground rewards you with access to valuable targets, with natural resources, and often with random discoveries. Having neutral or allied buffer Regimes can be useful to keep a flank secure, but that also means giving up on that territory for the time being. And neighbors will often turn against you, so don't rely on them.

Acquiring Population requires acquiring territory. Territory gives you access to Free Folk settlements, which you can absorb into your cities, and it gives you access to cities belonging to other regimes, which you can conquer. Gaining population is the single-best thing you can do for your regime, as it lets you do more of everything. You can also passively grow new population, which will happen in all reasonably functional zones, but this is a very slow process and will not win you the game on its own. You can greatly accelerate it by acquiring cloning facilities, but whether you can find any is a matter of luck. And lastly: Keep your people alive. Don't throw thousands of infantrymen into meat grinders, keep your cities safe from air strikes, maintain good stockpiles of water and food, and do what you can to keep public order.

Denying population comes down to three subtasks:

• Don't let them conquer your cities. Obvious, yes, so just don't do anything embarrassing like leaving a city entirely undefended, or having no reinforcements within several thousand miles.
  
• Evacuate threatened populations. If you know that you cannot hold a zone, but you do have some time to prepare, try to pull all the population out of it. Recruit them into the army, recruit them as colonists, pay them money if they don't want to do either. And if all this fails, play stratagems to expel them - better to turn them into free folk than to let your enemies get them. And lastly, if nothing else helped, kill them. Starve them, let them riot and shoot them for it, release plagues, let the city be the next hotly-contested frontline or even just bombard the city or nuke it outright.
  
• Kill the enemy. Each soldier you kill is less population for them. Each civilian you starve or nuke, ditto. It's not nice, but sometimes it's the straightest road to victory.

And finally, remember that the meta-goal of the game is to have fun. If you're not having fun because the only winning move is to wait for a thousand turns, feel free to quit and start a new campaign. Or if you're not having fun because you are already too strong to lose but you will need to spend days conquering more hexes of a huge map to make the victory screen appear, consider declaring it an early unofficial victory and putting the game down for the rest of the day. Sometimes the victory screen just isn't worth it.

No, this is not this guide. But its name stuck in my mind, so consider this a form of homage, even though my guide is not meant purely for turn one.

That said, here's what I always do as soon as I start out. Anything underlined is a section in its own right, and you should scroll down accordingly.

Check your Factions.
Identify which ones to depend on, which ones to tolerate, and which ones to suppress.
Establish an Interior Affairs Council.

Check your Models.
Decide which ones you want to depend on and which ones need urgent replacement.

Check your Economy.
Take note of natural resources and any shortages that might come up.
Talk to your governor, stop them from paying recruitment bonuses, and make them give a public subsidy of 15cr per turn.

Check your Neighbors.
Establish a secure perimeter and try to predict where danger lurks, where you can expand to, and whether diplomacy might do you any good.

WIP / TODO: Pictures

• Before you do anything else, check your Decisions. You may need to adjust your plans for this turn based on the Decisions on your desk.
  
• Check your zone overview for any zone with low worker happiness.
  
• Check every unit in your military. Every last one. Make sure they are where you want them to be, that they are within range of operational logistics, and not about to be eaten by a monster or a stronger enemy army.
  
• Ensure that you're not running out of resources or money.
  
• Check your logistics network to make sure that everything is connected nicely.

• Check your construction report to have an overview of ongoing and recently completed asset construction.

• Check your applied science council and have them switch research targets once they have made some progress.
  
• Check your zones and make sure that they're not running out of people.
  
• Check your zones and make sure that public sector wages are a few credits above private sector wages.

TODO: Pictures.

Check your factions and their profiles. Take note of 1) which you can live with because their profiles don't matter either way, 2) which will actually make loyal supporters because their profiles match yours, and 3) which are completely intolerable to you because their profiles contradict yours.

1) ♥♥♥♥, 2) Marry, 3) Kill.

1) You can leave at their posts as long as they're on good terms with you, but if they ask you to hire new leaders from their party, or when they make outrageous demands of you, feel free to refuse them. Only fulfill their demands if they are easily fulfilled, and if the faction has no profiles that are at odds with yours, because fulfilling demands raises that profile value.

2) Cherish them, these are your guys. Take on any new recruits they offer, and do your best to fulfill their demands. They will provide your most loyal leaders, will do the best jobs, and will help you keep your chosen profile values high.

3) Literally kill them if you can. You want to exterminate the entire faction if possible. Fire them all from their posts immediately. Send them into retirement if you have the stratagems and money to do so. Have them assassinated if you have the option. Never hire their recruits. Reject all their demands. Assign them as OHQ commanders, then let that OHQ wander off into enemy territory to starve or be ambushed - shame about those 500 men, but they died doing their duty to take down a future traitor. If you can't do any of those, then let them rot in the Reserve Pool.

New factions will pop up as you acquire more leaders. Check those, and give them the same 1-2-3 treatment as above. Over time, old factions will also gain new profiles. Those changes will usually conform to your regime's dominant profiles, so that's usually a good thing - but beware of ever straying from the path and taking on a different profile for your regime "temporarily". Such temporary changes may permanently spoil a faction when they decide to take it to heart.

Your councils turn Bureaucracy Points into Political Power, research, development and stratagems. Creating a new council costs Political Points, and the price increases the more councils you have. You can either wait for your secretary to suggest the creation of new councils, or just talk to your secretary directly to create one immediately.

Your Supreme Command Council will exist from the start, and will split its efforts between generating Political Power and generating assorted stratagems. Right on turn one, tell your Supreme Command Council Director to stop messing around and direct 95% of his BP budget towards Political Power. This will greatly accelerate your internal politics. Try to build a level 2 Bureaucratic Office asset as early as possible to further speed up everything your councils do, or if that is too expensive, try upgrading your Command Bunker. A Supreme Command Council Director should have a high Charisma score; consider replacing him if his is low and you have someone better.

The first council you should create is the Interior Affairs Council. Don't skip it. Your Interior Director has numerous tasks, but above all will be responsible for getting your tax rates in order, which is required to stabilize your cashflow, and for hiring new leaders. The latter is crucial early on, as you need to quickly get decent leaders to serve as directors for your most important councils. Your Internal Affairs Director should have decent Intelligence for taxes and human resources stratagems. Charisma is also useful for certain specialized stratagems that also go through Internal Affairs, but those are optional. Tell your Internal Affairs Director to focus his budget on Taxes and Human Resources, and ignore everything else.

Let's briefly consider what we have.

So far your councils produce tax stratagems, human resources stratagems, and political power.

Political power is very straightforward. You need it to interact with leaders in any way, including responding to events, firing people, creating new posts for them, and playing stratagems.

Taxes are also fairly simple: Raise your income tax to around 30% and your sales tax to around 50%. You can try to go higher, but be prepared to reduce them again in case of unrest. How high you can go may depend on your society profile; I am under the impression that Government tolerates much higher taxes than Commerce. Makes sense. Also, overly high taxes may cripple your private economy, so keep an eye on that. So much for taxes.

Human Resources needs some attention however. As soon as you can afford to without depleting all your PP, hire new leaders. Juniors and Military leaders are fairly cheap to hire. Your factions may offer you recruits; take them if the faction's profiles are agreeable to you. You will have to hire and fire a lot; many leaders you get are poorly qualified, or are ideologically incompatible with your profile. If you can't afford to send leaders into retirement, then at least don't give them any post - leave them in the reserve pool. They may leave on their own eventually. In a pinch you can get rid of them by sending them into suicidal combat, see the Second Book Of Samuel, Phrase 15: "Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die."
Alright, let's say you've got some new leaders, and you already vetted them all for ideological compliance. Now look at their Capabilities and Stats, as these define how fast a leader learns, i.e., how competent he will actually be after a few turns at his new job. A good council director should have at least Capability III, and at least a value of 30 in all stats relevant to his post. More is better, of course. Anyone who does not fulfill those requirements should ideally be relegated to rear-line OHQs or the governorship of unimportant zones.

For your remaining councils, you need to see what kinds of leader you get. I suggest creating councils that you already have good Director candidates for. Unless, of course, you urgently need a specific council up and running - sometimes any director is better than none. Just don't be afraid to replace the Directors later.

If you have Farmer-type Minor Regime neighbors, then a Foreign Affairs Council should be a high priority. Get a Director with a very high Charisma stat to lead it. This will allow you to vassalize and assimilate those regimes. If there are no prospective vassals nearby, then Foreign Affairs can wait. For a long time.

Next up, you need to start researching. The Economics Council needs to get to work as soon as possible, and tell it to focus on Discovery and Research. You need to research Power Plants or Solar Power. The Economics Director should be Intelligent.

After that, Military Research. Again, an Intelligent Director.

Once you have researched some military technologies, you will need a Model Design Council with an Intelligent Director in order to create and update new unit models that actually use your cutting-edge technology.

Everything else can wait a little.

You will want a Staff Council in order to operationalize new Formations, but it's not urgent. If you lack a formation, then just use a basic one and attach independent units of the type you need. For example, if you lack RPG Infantry Brigades, just use regular Light Infantry Brigades and attach two Independent RPG Batallions to them. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done for a while. Your Chief of Staff should have a high War stat.

The Secret Service Council is useful in that it gives you a good supply of Spy stratagems, and some diplomatic options. Spies are especially useful for early-game exploration, and when you are at war. They do not replace regular scouts however. Your Secret Service Council Director should have a high War stat. I recommend directing only a small part of your BP income at this council, 5% are usually enough.

The Airforce Research Council is very powerful...if your planet has an atmosphere that's suitable for aircraft. Get one eventually, having some planes is very useful even if your armed forces rely mostly on ground troops. The Director here should be Intelligent.

The Applied Science Council is extremely powerful, in that it can almost double many of your economic and military performance statistics. But doing so requires a solid technological base, a strong bureaucracy, and an Intelligent Director. You should absolutely not get an Applied Science Council early on, because the technologies it can work on only become available once you have cleared the first tech tier. In the late-game you should direct a large part of your BP towards Applied Science.

The SHQ commander is very important because his high command abilities are applied in each and every combat fought by units that belong to that SHQ, which is to say all of your units (unless you deliberately split up). Make sure that your SHQ commander has a good War stat, and replace him if he does not, or if he is disloyal. The SHQ commander is also responsible for trade, so Intelligence may also matter for this post.

Advisors can be very powerful or a catastrophe, depending on how well they get along with the Leader you attach them to. Check regularly to make sure they're not just pissing in each others' cups.

You will start out with a handful of unit models. Which exactly those are depends on your starting settings, but normally they are Infantry, Machinegun, Motorized Transport and Recon Buggy. Check the Structural Design Score of each, and take note good note of it.

I for one write it down in the model names: An Infantry model with a structural design score of 115 becomes "I-115", for example, and will make a good backbone for the army. A Recon Buggy with a Structural Design Score of 80 would become "RB-80", and then I would mark it as obsolete and never build it, because it will perform poorly at first and will benefit less from future redesigns, and you should rather prioritize getting your Model Design Council up and running to design a new Recon Buggy model from scratch than to waste resources on subpar models.

But of course, even when you design a new one, it might end up with yet another bad Structural Design Score. It's possible, and part of the semi-random challenge of the game. At that point you have to choose to either reroll, try another redesign that will be more expensive than the first, or bite the bullet and deploy the shoddy model because you need that unit type in the field right now, or try to build an army without that unit type.



Armor is important, because armor keeps your soldiers from dying. I would generally prioritize armor over firepower. Mobility is trickier - mobility depends on geography, on your fuel supplies, and your strategic situation. Firepower needs to be high enough not to be stopped by enemy armor. But armor, I would say, should always be as thick as you can afford, because a dead soldier is a soldier you need to pay for all over again, and a dead soldier is one that needs to be replaced by one more recruit who is now no longer working his productive job in the economy.

At some point you may realize that your infantrymen are dying even though you gave them the best body armor you could afford. Sad, but fixable if you have the resources. Turn them into tanks. This will free up a lot of people to return to civilian life, because tanks require less manpower, and will greatly increase their combat power. Obviously this is expensive, and you will still need infantry to fight in terrain that's bad for tanks, but it will pay for itself in the long run if it keeps your people alive for longer.

As said, firepower needs to be high enough to reliably penetrate enemy armor. Low-caliber artillery and low-tech rifles will do very little against infantry with advanced body armor, and low-caliber high-velocity guns will struggle against thick tank armor. But of course your guns shouldn't be bigger than necessary, as this will incur extra costs in production, maintenance and mass. Periodically check your combat reports to see how your units are faring against the enemies they actually fight, or if at peace, get some recon on enemy units and try to guess how well-protected they are. And if you want get exact numbers on how much firepower you need, check the manual for the relevant formulae.

The choice between howitzers or high-velocity guns for tanks is, in my opinion, a straightforward question of what kinds of enemies you will face in the near-future. Reconnoiter ahead of time to gain an idea of what units your neighbors are fielding.

The choice between kinetic and energy guns comes down to whether you have more Ammunition, i.e. Metal and Industrial Points, or more energy available to you. Energy is also easier to transport - but if your units consume too much of it, your energy-dependent industries may suddenly grind to a halt. I recommend not converting your entire army to energy weapons all at once; upgrade them slowly, gradually, and make sure that your energy production and energy storage could theoretically resupply all your units on at least one front without your economy collapsing.

Mobility comes down to unit types, strategic needs and tactical preferences. Foot troops have fixed mobility, towed artillery depends on trucks, and everything else has mobility that effectively comes down to mass VS engine power. Too little engine power and your units will take too long to get anywhere, or may even be unable to move at all. Too much engine power and you consume much more fuel than necessary. There is no straight advice to give here - just try to plan ahead. Ask yourself whether your tanks are simply meant to grind down front-lines, or to penetrate deep and strike from behind. Are your trucks just meant to transport infantry and to provide a minimum of mobility to heavy guns, or do you actually want your motorized units to act as mobile reserves? Will your recon buggies merely act as spotters for stationary units, or do you expect them to patrol vast areas, or are you up-armoring them to pair them with light tanks? Each use case will benefit from different levels of engine power. And if you notice that you chose poorly, don't be afraid to ask your model design council to go over it again.

As for combustion VS electrical engines, that's mostly a question of whether you have more fuel or more energy. When it comes to upgrading to electrical engines, keep in mind the same caveats as for energy weapons above - don't upgrade all units at once. Do it slowly and make sure your energy economy can keep up.

In this section we will examine the most important model types.


Can move through most terrain with almost constant speed, gets good entrenchment bonuses for staying in place for several turns, and is generally very affordable but bad at attacking. Use foot troops to garrison towns, protect borders, and to man defensive positions during wartime.

• Regular Infantry is your bread and butter, and will be contained in any multi-unit formation that isn't pure armor. They're decent defensive units against infantry assaults, and enough of them can stop a tank or overrun an enemy formation, but they do not fill any tactical niche. For much of the game, these are the only unit type that's remotely capable of offensive operations in mountains and swamps.
  
• Machineguns are infantry that specialize fully in defense against infantry attacks. They're next to useless in assaults. Sometimes they shoot down low-flying aircraft, but don't rely on it. Machinegunners are excellent for defending mountains, where offensive operations are largely limited to planes and infantry.
  
• Quad Machineguns are an even more extreme version of Machineguns, strong enough to give light armor pause, and a serious threat to low-flying aircraft. They will also slow down their units though, and given their price are utterly wasted in offensive operations, where they will die quickly.
  
• Bazooka or RPG infantry is essential for letting infantry formations withstand tanks. Light Tanks can overcome them, but risk losses in doing so. Medium Tanks are often too tough for them to crack, unless the RPG units have a technological advantage.
  
• MANPADs are to planes what RPG units are to tanks. They are not immune to planes, they cannot stop a dedicated heavy high-altitude bomber fleet, but they will be able to inflict disproportionate losses on small wings of more casual attackers.

Artillery is slower the heavier its guns are. These are specialized weapons, very powerful in their niche, but with only body armor for protection and thus very vulnerable to getting killed when things go wrong.

• Artillery are your basic ranged attack units. They can attack adjacent hexes, and retaliate automatically against ranged attacks from adjacent hexes. High-caliber artillery can threaten light tanks, whereas small-caliber artillery is useless against anything more heavily armored than early-game infantry. Artillery is generally slower than infantry, and heavy artillery needs to be towed by trucks or APCs. You can use artillery to assist in an infantry assault, to bombard static defenses that are too strong to assault, or passively to deter enemy artillery. Note that large-caliber artillery consumes large quantities of ammunition.
  
• Anti-Tank Guns have the same movement rules as Artillery, but they only have one job - stop attacking tanks. Consider them the big brothers of RPG infantry. They are a huge investment in resources for an extremely specialized unit, and on top of that they are no more durable than regular infantry. But when you absolutely must stop a well-armored tank, they will do the job like nothing else short of an even bigger tank.
  
• Flak Guns are to MANPADs what Anti-Tank Guns are to Bazookas. Well, not quite - big enough Flak Guns will also protect adjacent tiles from air strikes, and big enough Flak Guns will also reach high-altitude bombers. But they still follow artillery movement rules, so bring trucks for the big ones.

Wheeled units are very fast on solid ground and on roads, but their durability is usually very lackluster. Use wheeled units as rear-line patrols, mobile reserves, quick response forces, or for logistical support. They cannot enter mountains.

• Trucks or Motorized Transports are the mobility providers for infantry that needs to move fast, and for heavy artillery that wants to move at all. Note that you absolutely have the option of motorizing a formation, moving it into place, and then downgrading it to its foot-borne type again. That way a smaller truck fleet can service a larger army, and your trucks are out of the way of the actual fighting, where they are useless and vulnerable.
  
• Recon Buggies are the first real reconnaissance unit you get. They are unlocked from the start. You can either use them as cheap spotters with small engines, as patrol units with big engines, or as up-armored anti-infantry escorts for light tanks with high-velocity guns.
  
• Motorbike Infantry is the cheapest reconnaissance unit you can field. They are fast, but largely hopeless in a fight. Use them liberally - reconnaissance is very important, and this is the most affordable way of getting it done!

Tracked units are almost as fast as wheeled units on solid ground, and deal a little better with rough terrain. That said, they still cannot enter mountains. Tracked units however do carry significant firepower and protection, though this can come at a high price in resources.

• APCs or Mechanized Transports are just trucks with armor and a machinegun on top. Consequently they are somewhat slower for a given engine size, and much more expensive. But if you want a mobile infantry unit that fights on the move, APCs are what makes it happen without you needing to replace all the trucks after every fight.
  
• Mechanized Artillery and Mechanized Quad MG are artillery and Quad MGs with APC durability. Note that this is not the same as having Artillery or Quad MGs in a mechanized infantry formation - these two integrated mechanized weapons platforms actually have armor on themselves and not just on their transports. This makes them very valuable as attachments to armored formations, where they can provide anti-artillery and anti-infantry support respectively, while being just as fast and durable as the tanks.
  
• Light Tanks are your most efficient offensive unit on flat ground. They fall off in usefulness when heavier RPG units and heavy infantry armor come into use, but that's at some point in the mid-to-late-game. Just don't let your light tanks linger on the front lines where they may end up getting attacked; they're not very good in a defensive role.
  
• Medium Tanks are more expensive than Light Tanks, but a sufficiently well-built one can almost ignore infantry and bulldoze over anything smaller than itself except maybe a well-entrenched Anti-Tank Gun.
  
• Assault Guns are Medium Tanks made a little cheaper and specialized in defense, contrary to their name. They have a penalty to hard attack.
  
• Heavy Tanks are very uneconomical and you probably won't field many of them, if any. That said, there's little that can stand up to them.
  
• Tank Destroyers are what you use when an enemy attacks you with strong Medium or Heavy Tanks. The bigger brother of the Assault Gun.

Air units ignore terrain altogether, but need airfields to operate. They consume vast amounts of fuel and ammunition, but offer unparalleled flexibility. When designing aircraft, make use of the Blueprint Designer tool to get a preview of their performance.
• Ultralight Aircraft make for good recon planes.
  
• Light Aircraft are good short-range dogfighters or long-range interceptors. I personally prefer a long-range fighter configuration that covers the largest area possible.
  
• All other Aircraft, from medium to X-Heavy, are generally suited for the fighter-bomber, bomber or transport roles in ascending order of weight class. A note on bombers: Use level bombing where the enemy has good Anti-Air platforms, and use tactical bombing when you want to get more kills for the ammo you spend.
  
• Helicopters can fulfill all aircraft roles and can operate without an airfield. That said, they will suffer a readiness penalty when doing so, and generally perform worse than planes.

is highly situational, comes late in the tech tree, and I recommend you just play around with it and find out for yourself.

Your economy produces what you need to win the game. Especially Units, Supplies, Logistics, Research and Development, and Money. I am conflating your economy and your bureaucracy here to some extent, but the latter does nothing without the former.

Apart from resource extraction, your economy is largely independent of the physical country, and your main constraints on what you can build in each city are simply which resources are available to you. Check the section on Resources to get an overview.

Generally, don't build anything unless you have enough resources to pay for it in full. Remember that the costs you can see on asset cards are costs per turn, so multiply those by the number of turns it takes to build that asset to calculate the full price. An asset in construction does not produce anything useful and ties up resources, and I find again and again that it's better to start a construction a little later than to run out of resources mid-construction and have the building project slow to a crawl.

A Zone is a set of tiles associated with a specific City. This means that the terms City and Zone will often be used interchangeably in this guide.

Talk to each Zone's governor at least once, and tell them to invest 15 credits per turn into the private economy. This will make your people very happy, and help them help themselves. For a newly conquered zone, remember to order the governor to turn the zone form an Unincorporated into a Regular zone as soon as the population is reasonably happy. Only then will the zone provide taxes, recruits and colonists, and only then will the population assimilate into your culture.

Given time, population, stability and a little bit of money, most of your zones will grow themselves a healthy little private economy over time. This helps a lot with raising zone Quality of Life, which in turn keeps the first workers you send into the zone happier. Consider founding new zones early on and letting them grow a little, even long before you can afford to build serious public sector assets there. They won't contribute much to your regime at first, but it'll be much less arduous to settle public sector employees there later on. The Commerce profile will greatly accelerate this process.

Obviously you shouldn't spam zones everywhere - each zone must exist for a good reason. Generally there are two such reasons: To extract valuable resources, and To act as a logistics hub in otherwise unpopulated areas. If you have no such reason to create a new zone, then don't. If all you need is more public assets, then go tall and level up the ones you have; it's more efficient than going wide. If a high-level asset is too expensive to run for you, then build it anyways but reduce its throughput to 75%, 50% or 25%. It's still more efficient than running a lower-level asset at 100%. And take great care not to run too many public assets at high levels, because that can quickly use up all the workers available to you - leave some workers for the private sector.

Often you will need a Truck Station, Supply Depot or a Mine in a specific place. Maybe a Volcanic Power Station. Maybe an Airfield. Be careful when doing so far away from a city. If any asset is more than 6 hexes away from the city of the zone you put it into, it will cause Administrative strain, which reduces the output of everything in the zone across the board. This strain scales with the distance of the asset from the city, and with the level of the asset. So when you need to build something far away, it's often best to turn it into a new zone.



Your cities should not be seen as fortresses. They do provide some defensive advantages, it's true, but this usually not worth the damage they will take in any fighting. Combat even just near a city will quickly raise the Danger level, and the local economy will grind to a halt. Combat inside a city will trash the assets, kill the population, and is very counterproductive in the long run.

You absolutely should check all of your zones each turn. This may sound like a lot of busywork, but it's worth it. And you can make it a lot easier by just using the relevant reports instead of checking each zone individually. Things to look out for are low happiness among population and workers, unrest, and starvation.

Starvation is obvious, but shouldn't normally happen as the population builds farms at the first opportunity. If it does happen, tell your governor to hand out emergency food. Population Unhappiness is usually caused by negative events or by fighting near the city. If nothing bad is happening, then the population should slowly grow happy over time as they build whatever they need. Worker unhappiness however needs taking care of. Ensure that your workers are paid above-average salaries and that the Quality Of Life in the zone is adequate for the City level. Unrest is caused by random events, and very slowly dies down on its own. You can accelerate this by building Barracks, garrisoning troops in the city, and by playing various stratagems. Avoid Unrest, as it completely cripples a zone's productivity.

So you acquired a new zone. This generally comes about in any of the following ways:

• You started with it at the beginning of the game.
  
• You acquired a minor regime's City through diplomacy.
  
• You conquered a City.
  
• You founded a new Zone manually.

All of these scenarios pose slightly different challenges and offer different resources to work with, but ultimately they are different problems all with the same solution. Just make sure the following happens.

• Make sure you don't lose the zone. Keep at least one military unit directly in the city. Some sort of infantry is ideal. Militias are okay for backwater peacekeeping, but regular forces are better near the frontlines.
  
• Provide enough Food. Most zones do that on their own through private sector farming. If those farms have been destroyed somehow, make sure to get logistics running into the city and tell the governor to distribute emergency food.
  
• Eliminate Danger. Danger is caused by events, and it accumulates while hostile units are near a city. The only way to reduce it is over time, so just make sure to secure the territory around the city and don't let any hostiles near. If this isn't an option, consider withdrawing the population via stratagems or aggressive recruitment.
  
• Assign a competent Governor. Try to find someone with at least decent Intelligence and Charisma. For small, unimportant zones this doesn't need to be a genius, Capability II and stats in the middle 20s are enough to keep a single Truck Station running. But for large, economically important cities, it pays to send your best. But keep in mind that if you lose the zone, your governor dies, so secure the place first.

• Eliminate Unrest. This also happens over time, but can be accelerated by garrisoning troops and having a Barracks asset.
  
• Increase Population Happiness. This happens over time when the population's needs are met. In an Unincorporated (newly conquered) Zone, this happens at an accelerated pace, and this is indeed the main purpose of having unincorporated zones at all. Make sure to let your governor give 15 credits per turn to the private economy, people like this.
  
• Corollary to the above, remember to Incorporate newly conquered zones, i.e., tell the governor to turn it into a Regular Zone, as soon as the population is reasonably happy.
  
• Increase Worker Happiness. This is only relevant if you actually have public sector assets here, but you will have those in most places. Ensure that wages are a few credits above the average population income, and try to raise QOL by building the relevant assets.
  
• Fix your Logistics. Make sure the City is connected to the SHQ, and that enough of the trucks or trains can actually make the whole trip. Build a rail or truck station as soon as possible, or nationalize a private logistics asset.
  
• Adjust the throughput levels of all public assets, consider downgrading or disbanding any public or private assets you don't want, build assets you need that are missing (but do this slowly, over time, so as to not overtax the zone's resources).

• Make sure the zone has little or no administrative strain. If there are assets that are too far from the city, consider assigning them to closer zones. If that's not an option, consider founding new zones. Else, either disband the asset, or eat the administrative strain - for example if it's just a few per-cent, or if the asset will soon run dry anyways.
  
• Clean up your roads. Especially after conquering a city, many roads will have been built for temporary wartime purposes, or will have been destroyed by fighting. Straighten out the ones you need and remove the ones you don't (or at least put down some traffic signs) so as to not waste any logistics.
  
• Keep a Quick Response Force nearby. The necessity and size of this varies with the location, size and importance of the zone and with your strategic situation. A brigade is ideal, since it can surround and isolate enemy units, but an independent battalion is often enough. Generally it's advisable to have a least a small unit of motorized/mechanized infantry, motorbikes, buggies or light tanks somewhere in the area to take care of infiltrators, pirates, monsters and rebels. Air units can also do this job, though they may have trouble mopping up survivors.
  
• Have some Anti-Air units covering the city so other regimes don't get funny ideas.
  
• Extract Resources. Obvious, right? Make sure to put mines on any resource deposits that will come in handy for you. Also consider population as a resource, and make them work. See how many of them are unemployed, and either create useful work for them or extract them via recruitment as soldiers or colonists.

• Clean up your zone borders. Make them look nice. Avoid border gore. Pretty borders are good for the soul.
  
• Make the zone resource independent to some degree. Make sure they have enough water, food, fuel and energy to keep the lights on and the people happy even if the connection to your SHQ should happen to be cut.
  
• If you don't need the zone, consider Merging it into another nearby one. This is only an option if there is another zone that's close enough, and it only really works when the zone you want to delete is relatively small and very loyal.

Each cult is unique, and has a different set of negative and positive effects, and a different set of profiles. Cults will occasionally ask for your support, and how to react to that will affect your profile. If you don't want to get those events, you can play a National stratagem that asks you to either support or denounce the cult - denouncing it will stop the events and reduce the cult's growth. Denouncing it twice will outlaw the cult, which causes a lot of unrest and possibly even loss of population.

I recommend denouncing cults the profile or economic effects of which you dislike, supporting the ones you do like, and banning no cults because the penalties are too severe.

Ah, the Crime family. I honestly can't give you any advice here; I kill them all on sight whenever I see them. Maybe they could be useful somehow, but even when not playing an Enforcement profile, I prefer to make short work of them. I just don't like them. Ask someone else about them.

Corporations are all the same. This is not real-world commentary. They offer you various decisions to make, usually with implications for your Commerce profile. You can talk to their CEO to either increase corporate tax (which doesn't amount to much money, but is supposed to slow the corporation's growth), or to get a Board Member stratagem with which to make a Leader happy. If you have good relations with them they will offer some more stratagems that can, among other things, instantaneously discover or research technologies or reduce unrest or recruit capable leaders. Overall useful stuff, but the corporation will also make the people in your zones progressively unhappier as corporate control grows. The only way to reduce it that I know of is to play anti-trust and anti-corporate stratagems, but that will also worsen your relation with the corporation.

Overall I recommend freely making use of what they offer, but playing anti-trust stratagems wherever they grow too strong.

• Food is what people - including soldiers - need to survive. Run out of food and they die. Don't run out of food. Food production can be easy if your planet and location are good for open air agriculture, or fairly difficult if you need to supply power and water for hydroponics. Food production requires a lot of labor as well, at least until you break into high technology.
  
• Water is needed primarily to grow food, and for some specialized industries. Water can be absolutely trivial to acquire if you have large sources of good fresh water nearby, or downright impossible if you're stuck in a hot, flat desert with no subterranean ice to mine. But the latter happens practically only if you deliberately make it happen as a challenge.
  
• Fuel is essential. Firstly to make motorized units and tanks, secondly to turn it into electrical power, and third because your entire logistical network requires fuel to run. If you manage to run out of fuel, all your units will starve and public industries will run out of resources. You needn't worry about fuel on turn one; your scavenging asset will do the job at first. But do formulate a plan for how you will get fuel as your consumption increases. Are there large deposits in the ground? Is there methane in the atmosphere? Are you likely to run up a large Energy surplus so you can synthesize fuel? Will you have lots of extra food that you can turn into bio-fuel? Is late-game Deep Core Mining an option on your planet? There's always some way to do it, but it pays to be aware of which are more efficient given your situation.
  
• Ammunition if you run out of ammo your soldiers die and then your regime dies. Don't run out of ammo. You start with a good stockpile, but when you start making a dent in it you will need to manufacture more. Ammunition Factories are more efficient than manufacturing, so get those - but that's more for the medium-term. Only prioritize this if you know a big war is coming.
  
• Metal will likely be the first thing you notice you lack. Your only source of it will be a private scavenging community. Nice guys, they'll give you some of what they gather, but nationalize them ASAP. You need that metal, all of it, and you need it now. If you see a metal deposit anywhere on the map, grab it with extreme prejudice. If not, scavenging is your friend, build as many scavenging assets as you can. If you cannot find more, then level up the ones you have. If all else fails, then you must trade for metal, and that will quickly break the bank. Later on you can build Metal Soil Filtration which will passively produce metal out of thin air, but that requires research and is expensive to set up and run. Anyways, get what metal you can early on, as quickly as possible, because in the early phases this will be your biggest bottleneck.
  
• Industrial Points or IP are required to build new assets and units and roads. Getting a steady income of IP is an important early-game goal. You can get lucky and have the private sector build up Light Industry, but that's not reliable. Sooner or later you will want to build public Industry assets, which require 1500 metal, 3 machinery and 500 IP to build. Prioritize this above most else; it's essential for expansion and war - and that means that without Industry, you lose the game.
  
• Energy is required by most buildings. Some very basic buildings require none, most buildings require at least some, and high-tech or high-level assets require lots. How you acquire energy mostly comes down to the kind of planet you're on. Burning organics or running scavenging furnaces can get you through a tight spot, but you'll run out swiftly. Solar works on most planets, but is labor-intensive to set up (and does cost maintenance!) and has fairly low output unless you have extremely high levels of sunshine. Burning fuel can be decent if you do have fuel to spare, say because there are large fossil fuel reservoirs or because you've set up a strong fuel economy anyways. Nuclear is not generally feasible because fissiles are too rare, but is very strong when you can make it happen. Volcanic Energy Tapping is extremely good where it's feasible, but it requires accessible volcanoes, lots of Industrial power to set up, and a constant supply of water. Serpentinization always works, but is fairly inefficient and also requires water. Check your Planetology early on to determine which energy source you need, and prioritize your Economics research accordingly. Getting at least Solar or regular Power Plants should be the very first thing your Economics council does.
  
• Radioactives or fissiles are very rare. You will often find no source at all on the entire planet. Their uses are, obviously nuclear power and atomic weapons, so you should by all means grab them as fast and as securely as you can if you see any, and deny them to your enemies. Metal Soil Filtration can give you a slow, inefficient, expensive but steady income of Radioactives - enough to build some nuclear weapons. Overall not something that you are forced to worry about.
  
• Rare Metals are nice to have early on and become essential as you climb the tech tree. Early on you only need them to build Machinery, and even that can be skipped if you're willing to just buy machinery on the market, in which case you can sell your Rare Metals for some early cash. Later on you will find a growing number of uses for Rare Metals, including polymer armor, rockets and solar power.
  
• Machinery is required to build most industrial assets and some advanced unit types, and is even consumed by some weapons as ammunition. You can either manufacture them at need from IP, Metal and Rare Metals, or build Heavy Industry to produce them more efficiently, or buy them on the market like all physical resources.
  
• High-Tech is much like machinery, only for things that come later in the tech tree. And it cannot be manufactured. You will probably have to get lucky to get any at first and find some through Fate Stratagems or Archaeology, or else buy some on the market. Once you have some, and your research is done, you can build them automatically in High-Tech Industry. Not something to worry about early on.

• Population is your most important resource by far. How many people you have defines the absolute limit of how much you can do at once, acquiring more people is very difficult, losing the ones you have is very easy, and making new ones from scratch takes a very long time. All your public assets, i.e., your entire economy, requires workers to run. And all your private assets require private sector civilians. And your soldiers and colonists are people, too. So without people, nothing goes.
  
• Money makes people happy. You pay salaries to keep leaders, workers and soldiers happy. You pay bonuses to recruit soldiers and colonists. You make investments to boost the private economy in your zones. You play stratagems that cost money to do any number of things. If you play on a watery planet, money buys you shipping. Money also lets you trade for resources you might otherwise have shortages of. Democrats can use money to pay off strikers. Money also greases diplomacy, and money pays for severance packages. Without money, your people will mutiny one way or another. You can gain money through taxation, trade, some stratagems, vassals, and various events. Generally your taxes and stable trade surplus should roughly cover your continuous expenses, and you should have a few thousand in the bank to prepare for emergencies and random events. Early on you should prioritize getting your Interior Council to raise taxes, and sell goods in a pinch.
  
• Buerocracy Points power your various Councils. This is essential for doing Research, generating Stratagems, developing new Unit Models and Formations, and a variety of other tasks. It's very important to maintain a strong bureaucracy because all of those things are vital for winning the game, but it's generally a little difficult to tell how much is enough, too little, or too much. Observe your enemies to make sure you're not falling behind in any arms race, keep an eye on your economy to see whether you're lacking key economics technologies, and take note if you run out of important stratagems. But also consider reducing the throughput of your bureaucratic assets if you notice that your councils are doing fine but too much manpower is tied up in generating BPs. Still, you start with very few of them and this will bottleneck your internal politics. Prioritize building at least one level of Bureaucratic Offices as soon as possible - they're cheap!
  
• Political Power is generated principally by your Supreme Command Council, which consumes BPs, and you need it to play Stratagems, to interact with Leaders, and to answer random events. Never spend all of them; always keep a few dozen in reserve, unexpected needs do arise. The Command Bunker building in your capital also produces PP directly, and can be levelled up to produce more of them, but this should not be an early-game priority. Focus on BPs first.

Ah, logistics. If you try to understand them, prepare for some pain, because it's complex. There are numerous rules, mechanics and tricks with which to ruin or optimize your supply network. I've given up on all that, and instead of trying to know exactly what's happening, I just use a few simple heuristics to make things work without complete understanding. My way is not optimal, it will take a little extra fuel and manpower compared to a perfect setup, but it's also easier to make it happen.

If you do need to know it all, here's a detailed guide.

At first, logistics will only matter for in how far you can push out your starting infantry or militia units. The carrying capacity of your logistics network will, at first, be far greater than your needs, and the main issue is simply how far it reaches. And it reaches this far: Four tiles out from your roads, subject to terrain modifiers. That's it, for now. You can forget about logistics for a few turns. Press 6 on your keyboard to switch on the Operational Logistics Overlay that will color-code your logistics reach for you - as long as your units don't go beyond the red zone, you're safe. Keep in mind that if your planet has a temperate climate and variable seasons, your operational supply range will be reduced when winter brings snowfall.

But of course, this state of affairs doesn't last. Sooner or later you will go further, and then you must extend your reach. You will need to build roads. And as your roads grow longer, you must also keep an eye on your trucks. Check your various logistics overlays to see how far your supply points will go, where they dry up from distance or by being consumed.

If your supply points get used up, then there's nothing for it, you must produce more by building additional truck stations. Note that it's possible to temporarily exhaust your supply network by having too much happen at once, for example by upgrading too many units in one turn. This kind of situation will resolve itself over time. But if that's not the case and your demand continuously exceeds your supply, then you better upgrade your truck stations.

If your supply points simply dry up on the long road, then you can either replace the Roads with Sealed Roads and/or build supply depots to extent you reach - I recommend building supply depots six tiles out from the closest city, so that they do not cause any administrative strain. Note that you cannot chain Supply depots, a truck will only get resupplied once. If sealed roads and supply depots aren't enough for you to bring supplies to your far-flung troops, then you will need to build a new Truck Station closer to them. And that practically means founding a new zone, since a far-away station will cause administrative strain.

When building your road network, try to build it as a tree[en.wikipedia.org], with your SHQ at the root. Avoid having loops in your road network, as this will have trucks drive around wastefully. You don't need to destroy unused roads; it's usually enough to just put down a traffic sign that blocks 100% of the trucks. Use the Preview Overlay to see what effect your traffic signs will have.

Rails work differently - they don't really lose anything from distance. But they can only load at stations and unload at stations or railheads, so plan ahead. It still takes trucks to distribute supplies beyond that.

TODO: Airlifts, Maritime Transport Contracts.

Take a look around. Who lives near you? Use reconnaissance or spies to see further, it may take a few turns for you to learn who your neighbors are. But once you can find out what types of regimes they are, check the list below.

Are they farmers who are not already another major regime's protectorate, vassal or war target? Then make Peace with them and offer them protection as early as possible. The moment they become your protectorate, they're yours. For now they'll pay you tribute. If anyone declares war on them, all their base are belong to you. If you turn them into vassals, they will pay even more tribute. And finally, each step - Peace, Protectorate, Vassalage - makes the next one easier for your Foreign Affairs Director. The last step is Assimilation - their country will become yours, all of it, without anyone needing to declare war on you. This will give you all their assets, all their militia units, more importantly all their land, and most importantly all their population; all intact and without you firing a shot. Assimilating one or two Farmer Minors is usually enough to win the game outright because you're suddenly several times bigger than your rivals. If you have Farmers nearby who aren't yet spoken for, make it a very high priority to turn them into Protectorates.

Any other minor regimes - kill on sight, conquer as quickly as possible before anyone else does it. They're either actively hostile to you, or useless, or unreliable, and in any case they're softer targets than Major Regimes and you don't want your rivals to conquer them.

If you find another regime of the Corporatist, Realpolitiker or Humanist type, and they are not already losing a war, then consider buttering them up with diplomacy until you can offer them a Friendship and then a Victory pact. This is usually easiest if you play a Democracy. Once you have signed a Victory pact, you have won the game. Not because that's the rules, no, but because two major Regimes together will usually utterly break any balance of power and will steamroll whatever else is out there.

Diplomacy doesn't always work, especially when their profile doesn't match yours and you keep offending them in random events. Keep your borders guarded until you have at least a Friendship Pact.

Neighboring major regimes of any other type you can try to do diplomacy with, and sometimes this allows you to delay a war until you are ready, but generally speaking everyone is your enemy and you must prepare to conquer them sooner or later. Most regimes will declare war on you at some point, and it is very rare for there to be a possibility or indeed any point to attempt ceasefires; war in Shadow Empire is usually Total.

Diplomacy will usually fail either because the other side sees you as too weak, or because you decline to fulfill their demands either because they're excessive or because doing so would contradict your regime profile, or just because Shadow Empire doesn't actually tell you when another regime cancels a treaty and you never realize they started to hate you for reasons unknown. If you're serious about diplomacy, you'll need to monitor your relations closely and keep plenty of Foreign Affairs and Secret Service stratagems and enough PP to play them handy.

Here are your early-game priorities for war-making, assuming that you start out at the lowest tech level.

First off, there is probably some undefended territory. Move in some infantry units to take it. You can spread your units out a little, keep one or even two tiles of space between them to take more ground faster, but pull them back together if you meet any resistance - you don't want them to get surrounded and cut off by some enemies that you didn't see. Don't leave any larger gaps that enemy units can just slip through. And don't move further than your supplies can reach. And remember that any ground you are not actively defending with troops will be taken from you by your neighbors - guard it or lose it! And yet, in the short term you want to cover as much ground as possible, even if you must cede it afterwards - exploring hexes can yield great rewards, such as units and resources, and you want those to go to yourself rather than to your enemies.

If you meet any hostile independents or minor regime units, see if they are weak enough to be beaten by your infantry. You can try to surround them from as many sides as possible, that will also help an infantry assault work out. But don't sacrifice your men in lossy attacks. Instead, form a good defensive line and let the enemy kill themselves by attacking your entrenched units.

Now you need to grow a little stronger. Your two primary avenues for this are 1) strengthening your infantry and 2) breaking into artillery and/or armored units. These two are not mutually exclusive, of course. You can and should do both. But you will probably need to pick one to do first.

1) Is generally accomplished by researching Automatic Rifles and Padded Envirosuits, and then either upgrade your infantry model (if its Structural Design Score is sound) or make a new model from scratch (if your old infantry model's SDS is bad), which will make your infantry units many times stronger overall and should allow you to win against most minors and independents with ease. Against Major Regimes you absolutely must hurry up and add RPG troopers to the mix, or else even upgraded infantry will be murdered by the thousands when attacked by armored units.

2) Requires more research, and discovering new model types. It also requires more resources - artillery needs a lot of metal and IP to build and to make ammo, whereas tanks are similarly expensive to build but require less ammunition in combat. Tanks need fuel to run, of course, but if we are honest, then so does artillery. You want to motorize your artillery, because any artillery that's big enough to matter will be too slow to get anywhere in time if it needs to be dragged by men and donkeys. Still, it will probably need less fuel than the tanks, and you can de-motorize it once it has arrived.

Of these options, tanks are the most expensive to set up, but will also give you the greatest advantage over early-game enemies. It is for you to judge which approach is most convenient and worthwhile in any given situation.

Once you have your improved fighting units, you should take a good, hard look at your logistics. Nationalize, upgrade and build Truck Stations and Supply Depots as the need arises, and make sure to produce enough fuel. Maintain a good stockpile of ammunition, even at peace, because even just one round of fighting in a real war can cost you thousands of units of ammo. Ensure that your roads are secure.

And by all means, once you can afford it, maintain some mobile reserve units. Even just an independent Buggy or Tank unit, or a single motorized Brigade, can save your bacon when the enemy pushes harder than you expected, or when some giant monster or a bunch of pirates suddenly make a naval landing.

Here's the most important thing for any combat in Shadow Empire: Attacks from multiple sides at once are far more powerful than a frontal attack from only one direction.

So Make sure to attack from as many angles at once as possible, and make sure not to expose your own units to attacks from more angles than necessary. A defensive line is best kept as straight as possible, with no unit sticking out and exposed to flanking attacks. You may make exceptions for good defensive terrain, of course. When advancing, avoid letting any one unit get too far ahead where its flanks are exposed, unless you're confident that the enemy is too weak to exploit your exposure.


Generally speaking, you should avoid attacking any enemy head-on who can give you a fair fight. By all means to roll over light infantry with tanks, or shoot entrenched MGs and RPS with artillery if you can afford the ammunition, or drop precision bombs on armored formations, or even mop up starved and demoralized units with infantry assaults. But if the enemy is entrenched, well-supplied, technologically on par, and can actually defend himself against your attacks - then I recommend not attacking them.

You can, of course, crack any resistance with enough manpower and firepower, but the price you pay can cost you many rounds of economic progress. Only force a difficult engagement if it's for a goal you absolutely must have, like a river crossing at a bottleneck, or to fulfill a faction demand, or to destroy an enemy SHQ, or to lay hands on a valuable mine. Avoid trying to take cities by force, however, as that is likely to destroy most of the assets and to kill most of the population. Unless you're already winning and just want to wrap up.

So what else can you do?

If you can outflank them with mobile units, or infiltrate through a gap in their lines to threaten their rear, enemy units will often withdraw. This not only gains you ground, but also removes their entrenchment bonus, so you may have an easier time attacking them on the next turn. Just be careful not to get your flanking or infiltrating units cut off - always support them with mixed infantry that can hold its own against nearby enemy response units. The Defense Posture is very good here.

As a follow-up to the above; if you manage to outflank or infiltrate so hard that enemy units are completely surrounded, they will no longer be able to retreat. Oops. Sun Tsu would like to have a word with you. They will likely attempt to break out, but if you followed my advice above and used strong defensive units to surround them, they'll likely fail. From there on you can watch them starve to death over the following turns. This may take quite a while, so it's usually best to send in some tanks or artillery to clean them out at some point instead of waiting for the last of them to die of starvation.

Often there is no way to make it past the enemy front line. Maybe the terrain is too restrictive, or the enemy is too strong and numerous. And this still does not force you to waste your men and materiel in any frontal assault. Instead, just hunker down. Find mountains and forests to dig into, encamp behind rivers, and let your units build up their entrenchment. The Entrenchment Posture is obviously very good here. Be sure to have the right units in place to counter what the enemy might throw at you - RPG troopers and Anti-Tank Guns if they have lots of armor, Artillery if they have Artillery, MGs if you expect infantry assaults, Anti-Air units if you know they have bombers. Also be sure to have enough men on-site. Even with good composition, positioning and entrenchment, a lone battalion will rarely stop an entire army bearing down on them. If you have some resources to spare and want to give yourself the strongest defensive position possible, build bunkers on site.

Once your stalwart defenders are set up, leave them in peace for a few turns and focus on other fronts. If you prepared them correctly, you should now see reports about enemy casualties coming in as the enemy tries and fails to break your lines. And shortly thereafter, if my experience is anything to go by, the enemy will actually give up and go home! I'm not sure what's wrong with the AI in the current version of Shadow Empire, but they really do often just give up and retreat all the way to the end of the world after meeting a strong defense. I'm almost sure it's a bug, but for now that's how it works.


So in short, just defend yourself until the enemy dies or goes away, then take their barely-defended territory.

There are a few key technologies that you will very likely want.

• Automatic Rifle and Padded Envirosuit will modernize your infantry and elevate them above minor regime and independent units.
  
• Solar Power is relatively cheap and easy to set up and provides a steady supply of energy with very little ongoing costs.
  
• Barracks can help you keep the peace if you tend to have unrest problems.
  
• Ammunition Factory is vital to produce enough ammo for a hot war against major regimes.
  
• Radiation Filters are vital if you should happen to live in a or attempt to conquer a heavily irradiated area.
  
• Metal Soil Filtration lets you produce Metal, Rare Metals and Radioactives without needing to find any deposits.

All other technologies are also useful, of course, but the above are must-have in many games.

Once you have researched four technologies from the Chemistry and/or Engineering group, the Applied Chemistry/Engineering/Management groups become available for discovery. These are special because they contain the majority of the so-called "linear" technologies, which allow you to asymptotically double the efficiency of their related entities. This includes weapon strength, armor protection, fuel efficiency, production output, plane aerodynamics and even the performance of Quality-of-Life assets. Your Applied Science Council is responsible for these. Be sure to regularly switch its research target as any research points you put into linear technologies suffer from diminishing returns - it's better to have many linear technologies at 50% than to try to force one to 99%.

Then there are some unit models that you should discover and develop early on.

• Bazooka or RPG units are vital for making your infantry formations somewhat resistant to armored attacks.
  
• Artillery is needed, if not to attack with, then at least to dissuade enemy artillery from shelling your troops.
  
• Light Tanks will greatly enhance your offensive potential, provided that you can afford them.
  
• Motorbikes are excellent reconnaissance units, much cheaper than Recon Buggies.
  
• Light Aircraft let you build very efficient long-range fighters that can intercept enemy bombers over vast distances.
  
• Medium Armor will be a necessity once the enemy fields medium armor of their own. These MBTs will eat Light Tanks for breakfast and run roughshod over all but the most heavily entrenched infantry.

And finally there are some formations that you shouldn't sleep on.

• RPG Infantry is a good counter to very early light tank attacks, though you will still lose men.
  
• Grenadier Infantry has RPGs and MGs, but fewer rifles, making it defensively stronger and even able to resist low-tech low-altitude air strikes.
  
• Siege Infantry lets you resist enemies that actually bring artillery to an attack.
  
• Siege Grenadier Infantry is an excellent defensive unit that resists infantry, artillery and armored attacks.

You also have the option of skipping formation operationalization altogether by simply using the formation customization feature. The results will not be exactly the same, but according to a commentator it is more economical to do it that way.

Note that I would not bother with Siege Infantry if the enemy has no artillery of their own - for unopposed bombardments it's more convenient to simply have a single Independent Motorized Artillery Regiment.

Other formations, their motorized and mechanized variants, and armored formations, are generally less important. You can have a lot of fun operationalizing them, playing around with them, and even customizing them, but overall your workhorse formations will be mixed infantry brigades and pure armored brigades or even independent armored batallions.

And here is an excellent guide on formations.

I personally like to build some very specialized custom formations in the mid- and late-game, but that's mostly for fun. Here's what I like to do, but do not recommend. You will notice that I like for all units in a formation to have the same movement type, and the same armor thickness.

• Quickly respond to enemy incursions or patrol open country.
  
• Tracked and wheeled.
  
• 50mm armor.

Composition

• Independent Recon
  
• + Light Armor, to provide more punch.

• Specialized mountain troops.
  
• Foot.
  
• Personal armor.

Composition

• Heavy Grenadier Infantry
  
• + MANPADs if the enemy has air power
  
• + Jetpack Infantry to provide shock value
  
• + Mechs if available.

• Hold position at all costs. Low mobility.
  
• Artillery.
  
• Personal armor.
  
• High-Caliber guns.

Composition

• Heavy Siege Grenadier Infantry
  
• + AT Guns, to shut down armored attacks.
  
• + AAA if the enemy has air power

• Quick strategic redeployments where reinforcements are needed.
  
• Wheeled.
  
• Personal armor.

Composition

• Motorized Heavy Siege Grenadier Infantry
  
• + Motorbikes, to provide general purpose recon.
  
• + AT guns if necessary.
  
• + AAA or MANPADs if necessary.

• Exploit breakthroughs and encircle the enemy.
  
• Tracked.
  
• Personal armor and 50mm armor.

Composition

• Mechanized Heavy Storm Grenadier Infantry
  
• + Recon Buggies to spot gaps.
  
• + AT guns
  
• + AAA if necessary.

• Secure flanks and exploit gaps.
  
• Tracked and Wheeled.
  
• 50mm armor.

Composition

• Light Armor
  
• + Recon Buggies, to provide reconaissance and anti-infantry firepower.

• Break through enemy lines. Follow up with mobile infantry.
  
• Tracked.
  
• 100mm armor.

Composition

• Medium Armor
  
• + Mechanized Artillery
  
• + Mechanized Quad MG
  
• + Either of the above, depending on which proves more useful.

Shadow Empire is an amazing game, but it has its faults.

• Stratagem scrapping is almost useless for any player who isn't willing to completely destroy his profile.
  
• There are no loud, blaring alerts for when another regime cancels a diplomatic treaty.
  
• The Matrix Launcher doesn't close when launching the game proper.
  
• The main Discord Server of the game, "War of the Worlds", is moderated by mentally ill political activists.
  
• Natural population growth is a little slow for how important population is for getting anything done.
  
• Major Regimes will often declare war without even having any units at the border. You can then just walk up and grab undefended cities, occupy strategic positions and annex large swathes of territory. That is silly.
  
• The economy is weird. Energy Credits aren't a fiat currency, and are generated out of thin air, and there is a lot of inflation - late in the game it's possible to have wages of 43 credits per 1000 private sector employees, but the UI won't let you pay more than 30/1000 in the public sector, so you have no way of satisfying your workers.

• Display the cost of each technology when choosing a new research target.
  
• Add a Zone setting to automatically adjust public sector wages to keep ahead of private sector wages.
  
• Make the "Small Stratagems" setting the default, or at least let it persist for a save-game.
  
• Let Hospitals increase population growth rates, let Vidcom assets generate extra loyalty.
  
• Add separate logistics overlays for Road and Rail.
  
• Make the AI band together against regimes that get too far ahead. Once you have twice the population base of your closest competitor, it's no longer interesting to slog your way to victory. Make the AIs stop their wars and sign trade and research treaties with each other (and possibly the player, if the player isn't winning), so as to take down the leading regime.
  
• Add a way for a regime that is decisively losing a war to formally surrender, so as to let forgone conclusions be concluded a little more quickly.

For now. I intend to expand this guide, but I promise nothing. Please leave some feedback if you can.

Have a nice day, and remember that every day you die a little, and given enough time nothing of you will remain, not even a memory, and yet everything you do is important. Go outside, spend time with friends and family, we'll all be gone soon.