Monocerotis VII - Galactic Cycle 0 - Tick 1 - 19:00PM on 06 July

After a short wait an opponent joined the game and it got started at 18:27. Mentally that means I'm now conscious that ticks are passing at 25 past and 55 past (giving me a 1-2 minute cushion.)

At this point in a real-time game, I usually look forward across the first few cycles and make myself aware of the key timings around cycle ends. 

- Cycle 0 will end at 04:27AM (I'm asleep, but waking soon)

- Cycle 1 will end at 14:27 

- Cycle 2 at 00:27 the next day. (I'd usually be asleep)

Not ideal but not horrendous. Why are cycle timings important? Well, ideally you want to buy Infrastructure and Science at the beginning of a cycle and Economy right at the end. If you're not around at the start of a cycle you're missing the opportunity for some new industry/science to be working for you and if you're not around at the end you're pressured into buying your economy sooner before you might have higher Terraforming technology (if you're researching it) and in the early game before you have expanded to new stars that will mean you get more for your money.

My new opponent, Asgana has 0 rank, 0 renown and a starting 1200 ELO which suggests they are a new player and they begin the game with a mistake, spending their starting credits on their first six stars. This is bad because its cheaper to spread infrastructure across many stars and buy spending all this money on just 6 (mostly bad) stars Asgana will get much less for their money than I will. 

Without putting too dramatic a point on it, against an experienced opponent (which I am) Asgana has already lost the game. I don't think there is any coming back from this, but I'll show why.

On the positive side, I can see Asgana has invested sufficiently in ships to expand and whilst not spending any specialist tokens seems conservative to me it does give them some good options/capabilities later as remember I am down to 3 specialist tokens to their 10.

My ships are already off on their adventures to the front lines down preset waypoints. I always preset waypoints when joining a lobby of a game in case I miss the first few hours for any reason. What I'd highlight here is that all 600 of my starting ships are on the move and almost all are moving east towards the front line, remember my first goal is to get these ships to somewhere useful - that is front line stars for offense/defense. 

I'll check back in a few hours and see how things are unfolding.