Operation Barbarossa: For those of you familiar with history, Barbarossa was the code name for the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. When two empires of about even size meet in combat, the result is a massive war. Most of these tend to begin with a surprise attack by one on the other, but that attack probably will not have succeeded in capturing (or destroying) any factories and the attacker might well be very uncertain about the dispositions (locations), strength and battle power of the defender’s remaining ships. He will also be uncertain about the loyalties of any other players nearby especially if they are not formally allied (and even that is no guarantee). We can expect both players to use Death probe as often as possible and war to erupt on a number of fronts. Easily the worst example of this that I saw was a war where each side held forty percent of the galaxy between them, the remaining space being dead stars. Death probes were popping like firefly when the game ended with no clear winner. My only advice is not to fight such a war, but if you have to, place your ships about two stars back so the heavy starting blow does not hit your main fleets and place one or two spy shields so that you have some warning of impending attack. Also start building new factories as far from the front lines as possible. If you are the attacker, FIND ALL HIS FLEETS FIRST AND NUKE HIS FACTORIES!

"Lets all gang up on him!": If there is one big player, who is surrounded by a number of smaller players, they might decide to gang up on him and attack from all sides. If you are the defender, who is slowly absorbing all the small players one at a time, this will come as an unpleasant surprise. If the attackers are clever enough, they will plan to hit ALL your fleets with death probes and grab as much of your space as possible. This is a nightmare and is almost impossible to fight off. My advice is to build death shields round your factory worlds, remember they have less resources than you, and hold on to them till they get tired of battering at your defenses. You should also try to ally with one of them, promise your complete surrender if necessary, and get him to turn on his allies. For number six, the situation become hopeless and you must retreat to your core worlds and hide there.

Partition: This is very rare, largely because few Space Empires players would accept such a situation. The only circumstance in which I would even consider submitting to this is if everyone else told me accept it or they all would attack. This is really one player launching an attack to take a few worlds, declaring that this is revenge for an attack, perhaps a mistake, which the victim has launched.

"The Two Giants": This is when one player launches a long-range death-probe at someone hoping that that someone will blame another player for the attack and hit him, distracting him from fighting the guilty party. This stagitigy includes Shrike’s ‘The Lier’:

He sums that part of it up fairly well.

Total Nuclear War: This is when players just start throwing DPs at each other and keep on doing this until one side is wiped out. Don’t do it. I have never (whew) been in one of those, but my theories indicate that most of the galaxy could be destroyed before the players ran out of money (and the ability to make enough money to launch significant numbers of DPs).

Desperate Gamble: These are all-or-nothing situations with two main variants. One of them is mainly summed up by shrike:

Shrike is only part right as something like this would be easy to see coming, but it is very difficult to defend against. However, you will have to be careful of your fleet being worn down by the neutral stars and your opponent doing the same thing to you.

The other desperate gamble is only done just at the end of the game. It is launching a surprise attack on a larger player next to you to seize enough stars to win the game. It is a gamble, but if timed right should just work.

As the spacemaster warns, trying to be a lone ranger will often get you ganged up on and crushed by superior forces working together. Not even the best players could stop an offensive coming at them from all points of the compass. To paraphrase Bismarck, There are three functions of diplomatic messages in Space Empires, 1) To gain as many allies as possible, 2) to ensure that your enemy (or chosen target) has as few allies as possible, and 3) to avoid repeating Hitler’s mistake and fighting a war on two fronts.

There are really only a few types of alliances, the Non-Aggression pact (NAP), and the full-alliance. The NAP is the most common type of agreement found in Space Empires, and consists of an agreement that two players will not attack each other. A typical NAP DM might go like this:

There are endless variations on this, such as not giving economic support to his enemies (see below), negoacaing with others for him and of course varying the time limit. At first, you should try to form these with as many players as possible, to ensure peace for the first week, or thereabouts.

The real fun of space empires is in the full alliance. This is when you work together with someone to destroy another player. You will have to co-ordinate your movements with his, warn him if you are heading to a star he has just taken, share information with him and watch out for treachery.  The devastating effects of an 'ally' not keeping his word have destroyed many an empire.

P. H. Vigor, in his book 'soviet blitzkrieg theory' (very hard to find) identifies what must happen for a successful blitzkrieg.

1) the foes main forces must be destroyed or immobilized

2) The foes industrial base must be destroyed or taken in the first blow

3) the foes ecomamy must be disrupted

4) the foe must be decapitated

5) as much civil panic as possible must be created

Of course, it is not possible to directly immobilize anyone's main fleets, its not as if they needed fuel, is it?  However, a fleet can be effectively immobilized if it is too far away to arrived at the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) before the attacker seizes the factories and has built a defence of his new territories.  

While it is possible to win without taking the defender's industrial base (which in Space Empires refers to their factory worlds) in the first blow, it becomes much harder.  One of the most successful attacks I launched was at Ghost's homeworld, after my Spy Probes revealed that he kept moving his ships from there towards Frodo.  I seized the factories with four hundred ships, established a death shield (If you are the defender and you don't think that you can re-take the factory world quickly, a policy of scorched earth is sensible) and pushed onwards.

To disrupt someone's ecomy needs a great deal of careful planning, if you use your spy probes to identify undefended worlds without factories, send small groups of ships to them and take them without a fight.  While this seems to contradict the first point, it only needs small groups of ships and if you take enough worlds he won't be able to build many factories to fight you with.  It also disrupts reinforcements so it is worth doing

Because Space Empires in not in a real universe, there are no civilians to panic by the attackers attack, so that part does not really apply.  However, if you hit hard enough you can panic the brains, and so forth incapicte the defending player.