So how does this gosh darn finangled contraption work?

Hey there, welcome to primary.

howdy.
any fast tips for a noobie?

Pick one thing to produce (military, food, cash, or tech) and specialize in it.

Construction sites = the amount of buildings you build per turn. As a rule that I'm sure anyone can argue with I generally always tell new ppl is to have 180 of them for a bpt of 50. Unless your a dictator or theocracy they change with the government bonus.

Also if your in gdi and haven't double hit someone, tanks and troops generally are useless at this point in the set, unless of course your going to war.

if I understand this then:
say I wanna build lots of military

from what I read communism has:
+35% industrial production
+35% market sale cap

so a good idea is build lots of industrial thingies, make military and sell it and use money to build more and get bigger?

Pretty much. Buy lots of tech. I cannot stress this importance.

You got it goofball! :)

You pretty much want to have near 0 of every other building type except industrial thingies and construction sites if you go this route.

Don't push the red button

Don't be worried about running into negative money/food per turn. This was confusing for me until I learned the economics of the game and how to use the public market to buy/sell goods. Just make sure you have enough of each on hand to cover the amount of turns you plan on spending. If you go to your Adviser page it will tell you at the top how many turns you can survive with your current money and food shortages. If you are using a lot of turns at once, you might want to buy a little more stock than whats needed to survive because as you gain more military your consumption goes up each turn.

A useful website to help with planning your market buy/sell prices:
http://www.eestats.com/primary/market

and...buy LOTS of tech

thank you kindly.
Can I keep doing this until the end? Seems to me that the bigger I get, the harder it gets to grow and the harder it is to sell enough stuff and use my turns

There is a good strategy forum in the earth forums, that a good place to get some strat advice it is located here:
http://forums.earthempires.com/...99298&z=strategy-room
I am not sure that there is any strats listed on it, but there possibly may.
We also have the earthempires wiki that helps explain stuff too.
http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Main_Page
Enjoy! And welcome!

You can pretty much do it until up near the end no problem. You only have to stop when there's not enough turns left in the round to get a worthwhile return on new land.

Additionally you can look into Stocking/Destocking as a way to boost your net near the end.

Welcome :)

thanks for the tips.
I have another question: I just noticed bonus points.
Is getting more turns the best thing to do? The others seem kinda tiny.

It depends on the strategy you're running. If you're a commie and you're gonna get really big, putting the bonus in Expenses is vital. Other strategies, it's up to you... expense bonus remains strong, but turns early and booms late works well also. You can also try to get 100% corruption removal bonus if you want to do a huge stockpile of money (hold over $2b and you start losing some of it due to corruption each turn)

I have also been getting the GDI bonus so it is free, how does that rank up there?

oh yeah, that's a good call too, forgot to mention it. most people get that at some early point early on.

And 32 missiles? I hink I need more

Wrong post