To play Solar Imperium you need a web browser like IE, Firefox, Konqueror or Opera. You also need to create a account first (Register), Once created and logged in you can browse for available games and join them. When you join a game you have to provide a emperor/emperess name and an empire name, it will be your identity in the game.

You can join all the games if you want and play a different empire on each one. The goals of each game may slighly differ but its usually 3 kind of goals, you have research race (the first empire that complete all the fundamental research tree), classic goal (The biggest empire after 30 days of playing won) and fast game (The biggest empire after 7 days of playing won). We plan to introduce new goals like 'last man standing' eventually.

The game is turn-based, for each day you have a specific amount of turns available. You can play all your turns in one straight shot or come several times a day to play few turns since they regenerate every 2-3 hours. All the empire management is turn-based but the attack and trade system is real-time, convoys travelling in space can be seen moving, in case of a invasion convoy you can see the doomsday coming fast to your empire :)

As an galactic empire, to stay alive you need to keep your population happy about they life and about you. Loosing all your population is the way to go if you want to play a very short game.

The primary resource in the game is money (If we dont count population as a resource), to earn money you can raise population taxes, urban taxes, attack others, attack space pirates, exploit ore planets, exploit tourism planets and petroleum planets, you can also turn all the research production to money production. You can also take loans from "The Solar Bank" or invest in galactic bonds at a interesting rate. Planets and military maintenance are usually the places where money are spent, you can buy government planets, they reduce overall maintenance costs for planets. To reduce army maintenance you can sell your troops (not a good idea), get attacked and loose some (not a good idea either) or send them attacking pirates (pirates are usually a better-than-nothing solution).

When you start a new game you have several turns of protection where you can't be attacked, don't stockpile army units if you don't plan to attack pirates

Solar Imperium is the kind of game that contains too many way to succeed, too many different strategies (good or bad) to describe them all theres, it why at this point I recommend you to actually play a game and learn how to play the good way. The game itself contains integrated help system when you hover your mouse over items. You can also refer to "Galaxypedia" at any moments for extra help.

Have a good game and don't forget the best hint of all: TRUST NOBODY! ;)

If you want to chat, we have our own channel on server: irc.freenode.org, called: #imperium