You know, after posting that I went back and looked at the damage table vs. various armor types and it certainly seems to support your approach.  I had assumed that the higher overall damage of the bombers made for a faster kill than with fighters even with the multipliers but I'll have to test that and adjust. 

Never too early or late to learn something new and help your game play!

Moon hits 30 pop in 240s, 50 pop in 400s...IIRC, you start with 5 pop so that brings it down to 200s, 360s...so, after 3 and a half minutes your moon already could be using that 2nd pop upgrade...not really a big deal upgrading both levels at that stage in the game...

Other than that I'm mostly in agreement with Ruby....in general, don't ever bother with only 1 civ lab at that early of the game...either build 2, or build none, because you can't get culture or colonization techs with only 1...

When you look at your early game needs, only 2 things need one lab: Advent/TEC corvettes and repair bays....note that neither of those things need one civ lab...

Now consider all the early needs that require 2 labs:  Vasari Corvettes, Orkies, Advent Culture, TEC trade (if eco), colonization techs...you either need to quickly commit to 2 civ labs or 2 mil labs...

For Advent, you can crutch on disciples for quite a while....situations where you'd need corvettes immediately (like if you're 1 or 2 jumps away from enemy), you won't be in a position to make use of civ labs (neither 1 nor 2) so you might as well build 2 mil labs and get better military techs...

For TEC, the situation is similar, either you don't need the 1 mil lab immediately or you aren't in a position to utilize any civ labs....Vasari are the worst faction to go either way in my opinion, because tier 2 Orkies and tier 2 corvettes means you can't do much with one military lab...

As I have said before in post game discussions, sometimes you don't have a choice...when the only nearby planets are ice/volcanics, what are you going to do?  Only colonize your moon and asteroid?  If you have 3 or more jumps between HWs and the only way to approach your enemy is through ice/volcanics, you have very few options, and twiddling your thumbs clinging on to only your roid and moon isn't the best choice....

Yeah that's the trick. Just having that experience gives you an intuitive sense of when to use what strategy or when to retreat your capitalships that a relatively inexperienced MP player won't have despite knowing exactly how the game works. Which is why I'm trying to play MP more.

Ruby I agree I was slow in seeing the value of multiple factories. But at the same time those two civ labs are pretty important, not the least because at this point I plan on losing if I'm on the front line eventually. I've gotten pretty good at the sending a colonizer to relocate game to try and avoid being total dead weight to my team, and in that case you definitely need Volcanic and Ice colonization. Even if you scuttle them later, having those techs can be extremely valuable if things don't go well. Unless your asteroids are directly connected to each other, I'd be tempted to try to get a civic on my homeworld and my first asteroid, get the techs before the action gets too hot, then scuttle a lab and build a factory.

Ok so after a lot of reading through the forums, and some great advice/coaching from the community, I finally waded into the multiplayer end of the pool.  This 1v1 and the following 5v5 are my first games played vs actual human opponents.  

Having said that I think I played respectably, but obviously still have a lot to learn so please give as much constructive criticism as would be helpful.  I ask just one thing... since I'm assuming I'll get quite a bit of stuff to work on, please help me prioritize what are my most dire mistakes, and what can be addressed after I fix the major stuff.  Maybe a tl;dr section that helps me triage my mistakes.

So here's the 1v1:  http://www.2shared.com/file/KyGmbj6p/AutoRecord-12081328.html

Thanks again.

1v1

Remember colony ships have weapons as well so they can help with militias  clearing and always jump capital ships first that way militia with few exceptions will target cap ship first. Learn which ships does not target ships you are using for expansion and target them first....

In 1v1 you failed to recognize that that ice connected to sun being massive choke and front line point if you got it ruby needs to make 2 jumps with ships to bring reinforcements. By early colonization and defending it you could easily afford so split fleet and use some to colonize rest of your side of map which had much more planets. Instead you wasted time by backtracking on vulcan and sitting on desert. I would also fleet later and go for trade ports instead. 

You are not scouting to see what enemy is doing. Those factories you build on desert were just by chance on good planet but they did not have good position. Next time build them as closest to side of phase lane you will be jumping at as you can. You never colonized first ice and you are not aggressive enough, If you decided to build corvettes you could use them as harrass fleet and fleet that kills constructors which are priority whenever you come to enemy gravity well....

Once battle started you can see rubby building flak but because your factories are badly positioned your disciples counter which you do build takes too long to arrive resulting in loosing battle and game. You retreated too late as well.

That Ice you let rubby colonize and fleet from and bad position of your factories is what decided game. If you managed to get that next thing to worry about would  be who gets titan out first and farms it on pirates   

Oh and if you had that ice you would not need to worry about neutrals. They would be much easier to defend. Which you completely forgot about. You also never build all extractors on your planets. IMO it is best to purchase all extractors as you colonize. Yes you tie up some resources but the price  you tie them for is much less than if you forget to build them.

I would like some play advice! I haven't played multiplayer yet because i mostly play for leisure and with friends, but i really like playing the Advent Loyalists and i played against an unfair AI that was the Vasari rebals and they smashed on me completely. I know i didn't fleet up early enough, but i don't know the best way how. Any tips you could give and possible strategies would be appreciated. Also besides the jumping Orky Vasari Rebals seem to have the best upgrades as well with the higher damage to phase missiles and the improved shields and hulls they get later on how as an advent do you counter that?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v8davcgetpr701q/yo.recordreb

the below replay goes for the entire game which is about twice as long and i get stable with my Titan until he doubles my fleet.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kj4uoq8t1s2p4yx/AutoRecord-12082304.recordreb

How to beat AI 1v1 (any difficulty):

1) Find chokepoint

2) Build starbase (before ANYTHING else)

3) Fully upgrade SB and surround with repair bays and a few turrents

4) Save up and build titan while opponent sends wave after wave of ships to be eaten by starbase

5) Level up titan off a couple waves of enemy attacks

6) Win

*EDIT*  Fixed step 3

A lot of my review for Archa's game vs Red is in agreement with Red's review. So I don't want to repeat things again but I've just picked up a few points from my review  that were not really mentioned earlier and am going to focus on why sb rush as vasari is nearly always their only viable strat on an typical 1v1 setup in a skilled 5s. The reason is I got the impression in that game that you didn't trust in using the sb - both offensively and defensively. I'm going to talk both generally and in reference to your game vs Red.

1) At the very start, you must always micro your scout in such a way that it finds the enemy homeworld asap. Try not to leave it on autoscout until you find your opponent's hw. The hw gives you the most essential information as to what kind of approach you should adopt. Like Red said, as vasari on the front lines this is almost 99.9% of the time starting off with 2 weapons labs. Instead you chose to go double-frig factory/skirmisher spam from the outset. This is dangerous as vasari because vasari units at this stage of the game are expensive, take up a lot of fleet supply and have a slow build rate as compared to the other factions, meaning you will be outnumbered fast and be playing into advents early game strength which is low-tier spam.

2) If the scouts were micro'd properly, you would have found red building a culture centre on his hw, which was 3 jumps from your hw. You would also have found that his hw logistics was saturated (ONLY 1 factory, 2 harmonys and culture centre. THIS imo was your golden opportunity to attempt an sb rush, because if done right red would have had hard time fending it off with just the one factory on the hw. At worst it would have failed but I'm afraid corvettes and sb rush is about all that the vasari  have in the early to even mid-game on the frontline. Sb rush would have a better chance of working if you did the hull and plasma gun research too.

3) If a direct sb rush fails then you can always appear to threaten, but not necessarily deploy, an sb. This for vasari players is a good way of buying time to build a fleet comparable to their opponents. So if you see a large enemy fleet in one well but send migrator off into a deeper enemy world then it will likely force that fleet to go back and follow the migrator. This can then allow you either time to build up larger forces or to attack in another direction with smaller fleet size but with the 'real' sb. This is kind of what Red was doing to you, forcing you to chase him around while he simply build up larger forces without you even knowing. Whereas this is really meant to be one of vasari's essential strats, to 'outfoot' the opponent systematically. You can do this by threatening to sb. Its another reason why double 2 weapons labs is a must for vasari. It unlocks pretty much everything you as vas will use up to mid-even late game from sbs  and corvettes to pjis and later you can then transition to other units with the right upgrades.

Advent Loyalists really don't have many good options until the mid game. Now that global unity gives an allegiance bonus they do have something going for them economically, but really either of the TEC factions will be able to beat you economically, so you'll still be relying on your ship synergies to ensure you don't take as many casualties.

If you really want to play a more economic/defense Advent, and you don't care about multiplayer, I might just have to plug my Enhanced 4X mod. Among many other things I seriously buffed culture and the Advent loyalists have culture capacity at the start of the game, so they get a nice boost early game from that.

It's always hard to deal with Vasari as Advent. The AL titan's suppression aura helps somewhat by cutting their rate of fire. Combine with Vertigo on a rapture and you can seriously reduce enemy damage output. Culture upgrades and the shield pact will also reduce your vulnerability to phase missiles.