I have to say playing for value is more fun. I researched xan fr early so I didn't get attacked at all before advanced units saw daylight. I think I got first attacked around tick 300 or later. Also because of the lack of fleet analysis there was no need to spend all the resources on ships so I basically roided people with minimal fake fleets with pods only and stockpiled resources. This quickly resulted in a top 5 value rank. Once AU's appeared I built quite a large amount of shadows which I think were underestimated as self defensive ships. Etd's weren't value heavy enough to hit xans with lots of shadows early. The first real problems came when cathaars started massing roaches (hello `mac^, elviz and voodoo). However being value heavy helped getting a lot of stuff covered without ally defence. HOWEVER, after QEBAB SCREWED MY PRECIOUS FLEET
(yes yes it wasn't even a bad crash but don't trust qebab to dc!), I decided to try something completely different...
Before reset at tick 735 as a xan:
Size: 634 75
Value: 1,453,119 7
Score: 1,969,059 45
XP: 8599 634
Then planet reset, bs research, landed first etd bs attack around tick 900. Three fleeting for 10 days straight with bs, and round ended like this:
You are: The hot flavor (10:6:7) (Clear)
Size: 779 82
Value: 585,720 857
Score: 4,060,200 38
XP: 57,908 12
Worst and easiest round ever. I hope they come up with something new or this game is dead.
edit: jer sucks