How to manage a large empire toward end game?

[Alneyan]

Don't forget the stack of satellites, a few fighter squadrons (where "a few" means ten thousand), and drones to spice up the battle. You know, the more, the merrier.

Big Empires (where big is defined as having several hundred planets and more than one thousand ships; Return to Hell anyone?) are indeed annoying to manage. Very annoying if you don't love this part of the game. Even setting a "all ships go to that sector" order for all your planets take time, especially if you have to build ships *not* intended to go to the front. Laugh as you will, but I am known to send colony ships with warfleets by mistake. Granted, they can still do 200 points of damage when ramming, but...

Other suggestions include not using fighters or other units (when your production of units reaches fifteen thousand per year, you are in trouble), and focusing on building ships by the hundred. You can also add a *Colony Finished satellite/platform for your colonies to build, when they aren't doing anything else. Put this construction on hold, sort your construction queues by name, and you will have all your planets not doing anything set apart from the rest. Then you may want to select all your spaceyards currently unusured (with the Shift key), and order them to build a single ship design.

Oh, and do not overlook the Last possibility: surrender your Empire to your closest neighbour. *Ducks for cover*

[tesco samoa]

use repeat for orders...

With large empires i suggest you use build ques and set up a bunch of them...

for the fighter problem

Build a couple of large transports and have them on repeat going to the planet building the fighters ( which you have on repeat building as many fighters per turn as possible )
loading the fighters and travelling to another planet and drop them off.
Have this planet set up as a waypoint
have the shipyards that are building the carriers set to this waypoint.

that will clear that up

I also recommend that since your sending ships to this waypoint planet... that you just have all your ships go there.
put training facilities on there and have that planet build base yards. have them build fighters as well

[tesco samoa]

as for updating ships.

Send them off to die.

Build new ships ... to replace those.

upgrading and retrofitting is for the weak and timid.

[bearclaw]

Okay, one crazy dancing Twinkie-monster is one thing but when you post twice, tesco, that's one of the most bizarre things I've seen in a long time. Cute, but bizarre.

[Karibu]

Return to Hell -games have teached me many things of managing large empires. At the moment, managing about 200 planets and nearly 1000 bases takes no more than 30 minutes each turn. I will not talk about my ships for understandable reasons.

[Yef]

The best way to manage large empires, is to not have large empires, at least when playing against the AI.

- Only colonize homeworld type planets. (rock) (and it looks cooler than having an entire system colonized, plus you don't have to be checking what kind of planet you are going to colonize, to send the right kind of colonizer)

- Only build colonizers in a single orbital shipyard, in orbit on your homeworld, so you get a new planet every 7 or 8 turns or more. This way you will only have a few items being build by turn.

- Use the "fill que" funtion.

- Build at least 10 troop units per planet, so you don't have to micromanage the planets' mood sending fleets to their sectors.

[tesco samoa]

to add on the troop thing.

when you do get large... it is important to have at least 50 to 120 troops on your planets that can support them....

As larger empires can lose more in one turn than a small empire ( in the grand scheme of things it may mean little to you but in the happiness data files.... it can hurt as it does not care I.E. losing 1 planet in a 6 planet empire costs as much as losing 1 planet in a 1000 planet empire )