Starting a new game

Gosh, That's a question. One part of me says, play it straight first. It's like trying vanilla ice cream for the first time. It's great. The expansions are the toppings for a Bananna split. A heck of a lot more to work with and you'll enjoy it also.

In the end, I think that playing with the expansions is the best way to learn the game as it currently is. It's a bit more complicated, however; the gameplay changed quite a bit from the base game to the expansions.

Just play on beginner to start with, whatever you decide to do. The enemies aren't going to play all of their tricks on you but, you'll be able to work out the interface first.

Good luck.

So it depends on your ultimate goal. If you "Eventually" want to play the campaigns, best to get used to the base game. So pick a universe you like and conquer it to your heart's content, on DL. Then progress through DA and finally to ToA. You will find each game is different enough and unique enough that you will have to modify your strategies for each change of game.

I personally was very intrigued by the changes that DA and ToA brought, specifically the changes that make the races unique. I have no goal to play the campaigns so, for someone like me, I would say that the improvements in ToA really make the game. Skip what came before.

Either way, fully plan on not getting any sleep any time soon. Good luck and have fun.

If you have not seen it already, take a look at this thread, it goes through an overview of the start game for new users.
New User Game

As always there are a zillion and one strategies people will propose, in the end you will evolve your own. Its a good thing to take the time to read throught the "Strategies" part of the Forum once you are orientated after a CalkWalk game, it saves much grief - and saves you putting your fist through the screen

The start game is crucial though, and its very important to get that right as it has huge effects on the rest of the game. When you read that post note in particular remarks on

- Economy - this game is all about the economy, need to work hard to get it right.
- Game levels - use CalkWalk to start with, but expect ziltch from the AI at this level, but you get the chance to learn basic mechanics without being run over.
- Practice the early game, ditching the game after (say) 18 game months, you get through a few each night that way, and "practice makes perfect" as they say. The problem battling through to the end when you have not got the early game nailed, is you end up firefighting and learning little.

Never hesitate to post for help - you will not get flamed here - anyone flaming a new user gets creamed themselves, so relax and enjoy.

Regards
Zy

You might want to start a small/medium galaxy each for all 3 games, just to check out the differences.

The main, immediate differences that you will notice are

1) Dark Avatar has the mineable asteroid fields and uncolonizable planets. This will give you a huge difference in gameplay from the base game, Dreadlords, which is an excellent game on it's own.

2) With `Twilight of the Arnor', each race has their own, custom tech tree, plus the aforementioned additions. This adds a huge element of additional strategy to the game.

You might end up having 3 huge galaxy games going at once!   

Awesome guys thanks for the replies. I will probably start out making small galaxies in each game and play them to completion before I tackle the campaigns.