1. Getting Started
There are lots of posts about getting started. I suggest you look at the following:
faq.php
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2136

2. From Noob to Fleeter
This tutorial is based on the Standard game. I played Zorg a few years ago, dropped out and now I decided to play another round. While relearning how to play I pasted together all the development stages that were very hard to discover in my first pass through the game.
This tutorial will give you the big picture of what you want to do at various stages of developing your empire. It skips a lot of gritty detail. You'll need to hunt for some stuff but at least you'll know the objectives.
And don't assume I know what I'm talking about. Go to the Zorg Forum. Read the FAQs, Guides and other stuff posted by other players.

3. Noob = Miner
As a Noob you start with one colony on a so-so planet. You can't abandon your home planet so learn to live with it. In the left menu bar, select HELP and then STARTING GUIDE. This has all the steps to get you from Zero to your first Small Cargo ship. The one thing I would change is Don't spend Rubies on "Increase buildings queue by 3." In very short order you will be resource limited and the build queue will be almost useless.
My other piece of advice is be patient! Zorg makes you wait for everything. You don't need quick fingers to play Zorg. Zorg is a long, slow game and that's why I like it. Unlike other games Zorg does not demand your constant attention. It almost forces you to stand up and walk away from your computer. Go make dinner, clean your cave or get some sleep! If you can't handle waiting, you won't like Zorg.
Here are some very rough timelines for the stages in this strategy guide. The optimistic timeline is what I'm hitting and will try to hit as I pretend to be a NooB but with all my knowledge from my prior incarnation.
Miner => Small Cargo can be accomplished in a weekend
Salvage technologies can take anything from a week to a month depending on how successful you are at finding deuterium.
First colonies can happen within two weeks or two months
Upgraded colonies - arguably overkill this early in the game.
Moons - I haven't gotten there yet but I'm betting on 1-4 months.

4. Start your salvage operations
Terminology Salvage = Attack = Raid.
The only way to get ahead in Zorg is to salvage resources from other players. In the menus this is called Attack! Salvage will get you resource 10x faster than mining. It's also your first chance to get out of the house and reap vengence upon an unsuspecting universe!
But you don't have any weapons yet and you can't see what's on nearby planets. So what do you do? You can wait until you have the next 3 technologies (below) or you can blindly start hitting on your neighbors. Here are a couple tips on how to run a successful salvage operation without any weapons.
On the galaxy display, look for (iI) players. These are players that have left the game. Their resources are up for grabs but may still have defenses.
Start with planets for players ranked 1000+ These are noobies that didn't read this tutorial and gave up before they really got started. Often they don't have any defenses at all.
If your cargo ship is destroyed, build another and try another planet
Best to keep building cargo ships until you find a planet you can salvage. Then hit it a few times. Max 5x per day. Don't go past the "bashing" warning.
If this gets too frustrating, work on the next technologies until you can get a few more details about the planets you want to hit

5. Early Technology Ladder
In these early days you want to focus on a few key enabling technologies. Left menu => Technology. Use this to figure out what you need to get the following techs working for you.
Espionage Ship - these are very fast ships that will tell you how much Deuterium, Crystals and Metal are available on a planet. But at this stage they don't tell you if the planet is defended. You need to do more espionage research to get better reports.
Light Fighters - these make good probes for defenses. Cheaper and faster than Cargo ships. If the LF attack is successful, send cargo ships. If not ... meh.
Colony Ships - this is your ultimate early game target. Build more colonies!
Once you have Espionage and Light Fighters you can make a good run at salvaging. As you get more resources, build a larger fleet of cargo ships. At this stage 10-ish small cargo and then 4 large cargo ships is a good number.

6. Build your Colonial Empire
Scale up your salvage operations so that you can build 2-3 colonies over the course of a weekend.
Build your first Colony Ship. It's hugely expensive compared to everything else you've done so far. They take a long time to build and they're slow. Get used to it.
As each colony ship is completed, send it to the neighboring galaxies. Don't bother setting up multiple colonies in your starting system. Or even near your starting system. You want to spread your seed as widely as possible! Pick star systems near the middle of the target galaxy, in the 200-300 range.
How to colonize
Find an empty planet slot - no planet, nothing there. Memorize the address. Eg. 3:238:6
In Fleet view, select your colony ship.
Fill in the destination address
Choose Colonize. You can fill the hold of the colony ship with resources but don't send any other ships with it.
GO! And start waiting the 3-ish hours it will take for the colony ship to get there.
Once you have 2-3 colonies in distant galaxies, spend your Rubies on "Increase buildings queue by 3." Now it will really pay off.
Deploy a couple Large Cargo ships, Light Fighters and Espionage ships to each of your new colonies.
Start salvage operations at each new colony
Watch your net worth balloon.
Watch your ranking rise!

7. Colonization Part 2
If you talk to the Big players, they recommend you only colonize planets with lots of fields. Some will say 350 others 250 and I've even heard 400+ from a very high ranked player. The max is 425 and the field count is random. So set your own targets.
Each Building and upgrade to a building consumes one field.
You can see how many fields are on your planet in the Buildings page and the Empire page.
You can't see how many fields a planet has until you colonize it and probably find out it's a dud.

So your first colonies probably got built on crappy planets with less than 200 fields. Too bad, so sad. Your next job, before you build big palacial colonies on these crappy planets, is start tracking down a good planet in each galaxy. As far as I can tell it's a lottery, so just keep rolling the dice. How high you set your sights depends on your stamina.
At each of your crappy colonies start building colony ships.
Send the colony ships out to the nearest empty slots and see what you get.
If it's a dud, abandon the colony and try again. Abandon is under Overview => Select the Colony link at the top.
Keep at it until you find a good planet! Once found and minimally established, abandon the original planet in that galaxy. Now you have a good foundation for the future.
My experience: I had to create and destroy about 10 colonies to get one with 340 fields.

8. Vacation Mode
You can take a 3 day vacation about once a week. If you have a real life, don't let Zorg destroy it. Take the busiest part of your week and just go into vacation mode.

9. Fleet Save

You're almost ready to start defending yourself and building a fleet. Up to now I haven't advocated building any defenses. That's just my style. Don't worry about defenses until someone is actually trying to kill you.
The proper response to this is Fleet Save! IE. send your ships, loaded with all your resources, on a mission. Ships in flight can't be attacked. I won't try to explain further because there are good explanations in other FAQs. For example: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6797

10. Moons, Phalanx & Jump Gates
Relative to the 'real' players you're still green around the gills until you have Moons, Phalanxes and Jump Gates. Real players have a Phalanx array that lets them see all your fleet movement! They've been watching your every move since you started the game. Scary, huh? Yup, you've been naively stomping around wondering what other players are up to meanwhile they know EVERYTHING about you.
Jump Gates allow you to instantly move your fleets from one Moon to another. No more wandering slowly through hyperspace! Worse/better yet, once you have moons, fleet operations around moons are hidden from other players. So how do you get in on this action?
A Phalanx and Jump Gate can only be built on a moon
A moon can only get created after a few massive battles on your front lawn!
Again, I could regurgitate what others have written about moonshots but here is an exemplary page that includes a description of moonshots: http://chuck-games-reviews-tips-guides. ... uides.html
And that's about as far as I can take you in this tutorial. If you get this far your player rank is probably in the low 100s. Congratulations on having enough patience, stamina and persistence to get this far. Now you're playing the big league!

GJ.


(Should be moved to Player Guides after March 15)

Chlotharlll wrote: Noob = Miner

Chlotharlll wrote:If you talk to the Big players, they recommend you only colonize planets with lots of fields. Some will say 350 others 250 and I've even heard 400+ from a very high ranked player.

In X the most fields I have filled on any planet is somewhere around 270. So you will probably never fill a 300 field planet in X, and in Standard you will need significantly fewer.

Chlotharlll wrote:As each colony ship is completed, send it to the neighboring galaxies. Don't bother setting up multiple colonies in your starting system. Or even near your starting system. You want to spread your seed as widely as possible!

Crucial advice. Clustering will make you an easy and juicy target, while limiting your own targets at the same time.

Chlotharlll wrote:Pick star systems near the middle of the target galaxy, in the 200-300 range

Point of correction here. You said you were talking specifically about Standard, so in Standard the galaxies have only 250 systems, so the middle range would be 100-150.

Always prepare to be the next gozar of mines

I have a world that has 527 fields, I am going past 300 used slots, can only see myself using a lot more, so the bigger the better!