Monocerotis VII - Cycle 0, Tick 9 - 23:00 06 July

All progressing rather smoothly. I'm 2 hours away from Terraforming 2, which I'll be sleeping through. Since my opponent has spent all their money on their starting stars I'm not too worried about being optimal and staying up to buy economy with that. I'll get away with it. 

My smuggler is racing off to the south and with no enemy specialists in sight, I am on course to capture my target star and maybe more in a little over 10 hours. That means I just need to keep things tight elsewhere and not give up any stars overnight. Just because I'm sleeping doesn't mean they will be.

In the center, this is how it's looking. Interestingly my opponent hasn't sent a ship immediately from Arthel to Andos. They could have done it as it's within hyperspace range. It does tempt me to make a play for that star but there is a chance they made the move just a tick or two late and I don't want to risk being second to it. I need those ships to defend my frontline star.

Since I won't be awake for any overnight strikes I'm massing 100 ships at each of those touch points and relying on the defender's advantage to protect me. I'm also bring in another carrier from my capital to reinforce the front line. Meanwhile, my carriers will explore off to the north and south. My smuggler is already off-screen south racing with 100 ships and the second set of 100 ships heading to Sidua will depart north to provide some force up there. 

To show how important it is to not buy Economy at the beginning of the first cycle, compare what I've been able to buy this cycle against what my opponent has - AND - factor in that usually if it wasn't awkward cycle end timing I'd have captured another 3-4 stars before I needed to buy Economy - AND - I'd be on Terraforming 2. Even without these edges I clearly have a big infrastructure lead. This is a good lesson to learn in a 1v1 though and from Asgana's perspective better to learn it here than in a bigger game you're going to invest more time in. I'll let him know next cycle.

I'm also still sat on 254 coins. I don't usually roll over credits from the first to the second cycle but there's nothing that jumps out at me to buy yet. Maybe if I wake in the night I'll find a home for it on some newly captured stars.