I don't know what i'm doing for the first 100 turns. If I play techer, I build farms and sell food privately, then start building labs (and a couple hundred indies for spies) after my first batch explore which i do at ~1400 acres. Is there a better way to do this? Should indies be incorporated into any startup to get spy production started early?

I do not understand how anyone does a tech start any sooner than that.. where does your money come from before selling tech?

I usually have about $1,000,000 and 20-23 BPT at turn 99, that doesn't leave me with a lot of farms.. which doesn't leave me with a lot of cash as i build up to 1400 acres and then funding the transfer to labs. would less BPT and more farms in the first 100 turns be better for this?

Also, how do i change my default forum handle? :(

i would finance lab building by selling military (500-1k indies and once you start getting nice money from tech sales drop indies to 200-500 and 100% spies prod) or if you are gonna convert to farmer later then with farms (same as before).

to change default handle 1st choose handle you want to be default and then click that wheel and then options and there you can set current handle as default.

You are not building enough csites.

Go one indie build then 4 csites for a while then start building csites whenever you don't have enough acres for a full build.

If you are playing Theo techer you build Indies and sell turrets until you have about 250k-300k cash then you stop selling the turrets, switch to Theo and continue with csites and indies. By the time you have 400 or so indies and about 120 csites you will have a million or so in cash, as soon as you come out of protection (or a few turns later if you don't quiyte have enough turrets) sell 5,000 turrets at a price to sell. If you got a very early start you can maybe get 139 if you are back in the pack you might have to settle for 105.

Anyway what I then do is to either grab for land or explore one at a time and get about 600 - 1000 labs up. Now money will be running short. Another sale of military may be best but what is playable is to spend turns teching bus/res and get your cash per turn up. You are still getting units from your indies and the cost of building is low. I find it goes something like, two turns explore, one turn build, two turns teching, two turns explore one turn building etc.

When you have about 2 k acres built you can do some AG and Industrial and when you have enough to make it worthwhile sell that. Supplement with one or two thousand units of your bus/res if you must but better to try to keep it as it is giving you cash as you tech.

Thanks for your feedback guys.. I finished playing first 99 turns with 1.6m cash, 23 BPT and about 300 farms (still monarchy).. sounds like indy start is better but I was already committed to farms for this week... that's whats great about express!

I'm just doing a start up in 1a so I'll post how I look at turn 100 for the sake of comparison. If you are going to play Theo your bpt will jump a lot once you switch. But it doesn't look to me that you got much extra money by building farms and you don't have the comfort of 20,000 turrets coming oop.

indy farmer (~150-200 farms) start = defense early and more money

i get oop with 15 bpt and then get it to 25-30 on 1st day.

At turn 100 I have 79 csites (bpt as Theo 34); 247 indies and 12,737 turrets; 10 farms; 342 acres; and just under $400k.

I will post how many more turns it takes before I can sell turrets.

(edit) Turn 115 put turrets on market.

I always do a Farming start, I will post my 1st 99 turns after the next Express start..