Setting Up Your Race
¥ Creating a good race is critical for success in Pax: the standard races usually breathe oxygen and nitrogen: select carbon, or, better yet - hydrogen - to avoid competition for perfect worlds.

¥ Set your temperature tolerance range for as wide as possible: finding perfect worlds will by far offset any low abilities your race has.

¥ Since Aggression only affects ground combat, set it as low as possible (I usually go for 5 or 10) and bombard anyone who invades one of your world's from orbit.  One decent surface attack ship will compensate for a low Aggression - which in turn allows you to favor the two most important abilities: Efficiency and Curiosity.

¥ Set Reproduction fairly low as well.  Given a temperature tolerance range of 90¡ to 120¡ will offer many perfect worlds and moons on which your people will reproduce well.  A low Reproduction may also be overcome by play style.  Keep reading.

Colonization & Exploration
¥  In order to offset a low Reproduction, set colony spending to 200% and colonize only perfect worlds.  Now try to keep up with a 20 or even a 15 Reproduction!

¥ Turn a colony into a home world (by building one port on its surface) only when that world is fully developed.  This will allow maximum growth on that planet.  If you turn it into a home world too soon, your growth will slow and your gains will only be short-term.  Be patient.

¥ When you follow the above advice, all of your home worlds will be fully populated: your tax base will grow substantially, albeit a bit slowly at first.  You can then, when necessary, raise your social spending to 200% and increase taxes to - if you've a low Aggression - 95% or above.  This will halt production and mining throughout your empire, but raises cash quickly.  Following a three or four turn cycle of high and low taxes will keep your treasury and resource base full.  This is the biggest payoff (sorry) for a low Aggression.

¥ When developing worlds, concentrate on one at a time.  Build all you can on one world each turn until it becomes a home world.  Your tax base will grow much more quickly than if you squander your money and resources by building a factory here, a shipyard there, etc.

¥ It takes time and money to develop a colony into a home world, and it takes nine times the effort when you're doing so on a large (nine sector) world.  In the early stages of the game, colonize only moons and small (one sector) worlds: you'll be able to quickly turn them into home worlds, tax contributors, and ship builders.  Your momentum in the game will grow quickly.  Your opponents will still be pouring resources into their two or three large worlds when your tax base is double or triple theirs.  Save colonizing large worlds for when you can afford to quickly turn them into home worlds.  This is the best strategic advantage there is in Pax. (And I used to ignore one sector worlds... )

¥ A bug that was fixed in version 1.0.2 allowed players of version 1.0 to build a base on an unsuitable world that then added the cost of the base to their treasuries.  If you're still in 1.0, scrapping and building bases on unsuitable worlds is a great way to become a trillionaire.

¥ Cheating against your friends is unscrupulous but possible: After setting up the game, when you've a chance alone, run the game ahead and find all the perfect worlds.  Then when you're back with your friends on turn 2 or 3, you'll know exactly where to send colony ships.  Obviously this won't work if anyone has used a password - you won't be able to update turns.  This is a fantastic advantage and allows a player to beat everyone else to prime worlds, avoid enemy home worlds, etc.  It is also a great way to handicap an experienced player without cheating.

Ship Design & Space Combat
¥ Since Pax 1.0.2 allows only limited tactics, space combat essentially boils down to a slug-fest: ship design, therefore, is space combat.

¥ It is almost impossible to keep up with the computer players' technology advancements.  So don't try: rather than out-tech them, out-design them.  A low tech ship, when designed and stationed well, can gun down the best a computer (or a human opponent) can dish out.  Though be sure to stay at least average in the tech level rankings.

¥ Early in the game, tech levels don't allow for great weapons systems; however, if you run into a neighbor close-by, you'll need them.  One way to cripple an opponent early on is to send out a "Hammer."  Design a ship with weapons and sensors (especially ECM), maxed out at 0 and 25 ranges.  If you leave everything else alone, you'll be able to reach the maximum firepower at short range somewhere around tech level 8.  Short range ECM is also critical.  Give the ship an incredible shots-per-round: if you can afford it, go for 15.  Now park The Hammer in orbit around your opponent's home world.  If it's early in the game he or she won't have had time to colonize elsewhere.  When they build a new ship, it will automatically be placed within short range of The Hammer.  They'll be cut off from colonizing, will only be able to build a few ships at a time, and will never be able to break out of the short range blockade - remember to bolster the fleet now and again with more ships of the same design.  In my experience two or three such Hammers, built at tech level 10, have held a world and destroyed every ship created there either until the end of the game or roughly until tech level 25 when an opponent could build five or six monster ships in a single turn.  That problem could be taken care of by occasionally adding more Hammers to the blockade.

¥ Shields aren't as effective as ECM cloaks.  Don't waste your power on shields until ECCM tech levels get high.

¥ Numbers of ships often overwhelm higher tech level but fewer ships.  One ship, no matter how awesome in firepower, can only destroy one opponent per round.  Twenty ships, on the other hand, can take out twenty ships in a round - or one really big enemy.  They cost less money, take fewer resources, and can be built faster.

¥ When your tech levels are low, use separate systems to maximize performance.  Three weapons, one at 0-25 range, one at 50 range, and one at 100 range can offer far more fire power than one weapon trying to cover all the bases.  The same goes for ECM and ECCM strengths.  You can also use ships to compliment each other: build a short range space combat ship and include it in a fleet with a long range space combat ship.

One Last Tip
¥ Set up sensor nets.  A ring (or two rings) of ships stationed on the edge of each other's sensor ranges will alert you if an enemy ship crosses the line.  A series of rings is best, but expensive.  The best warning is forewarning.
