Thousand Suns

How to Play Thousand Suns

You start with one planet and one goal: expand before someone else does. Your homeworld constantly builds ships on its own, and you send that growing fleet outward to claim neutral worlds or crush enemy territory. Every planet you take adds more production, more options, and more pressure on the four bots also racing to dominate the galaxy.

Growing Your Empire

Planets level up automatically over time, and every level-up hands you a choice between three upgrade paths:

• Industry — produce ships faster
• Agriculture — level up faster, though growth slows the higher a planet climbs and the bigger your empire gets
• Research — raise your tech level, extending your fleets' range and boosting their combat power against enemy fleets

There's no single best path: a battle-hungry empire leaning on Industry and Research plays very differently from an expansionist one stacking Agriculture across dozens of worlds.

The Galaxy Escalates

No two matches look the same. Each game rolls a different mix of galactic features into play, so you'll need to adapt your strategy round to round:

• Specialized planets — dedicated Industry, Agriculture, or Research worlds that double the value of the matching upgrade
• Asteroid Fields — unclaimed and dangerous. Holding one slowly drains your fleet unless your civilization is built to exploit them
• Starbases — capturable strongholds that fire on enemy ships in range, upgradeable for more range, faster-firing lasers, or quicker future level-ups
• Ferries — draw a supply line between two of your planets so newly built ships automatically reinforce your front line instead of idling at home

Command Your Fleet

Select a planet in range and send ships to a neutral world to claim it, or to an enemy world to fight for it. Win the fight and the planet, and its production, is yours; lose it and your fleet is gone. Your tech level determines both how far your ships can strike and how hard they hit, so racing up the tech ladder is as much a weapon as a shield.

Play as one of over 20 collectible civilizations, each with a unique galaxy-spanning ability: from fleets that outrange everyone else, to empires that start with a head start in ships, tech, or territory. You always start at a single planet, but which civilization you bring changes how that first spark of expansion plays out.

The clock is always running. With five minutes on the board, every choice compounds: and in the final 30 seconds, all fleets get a speed boost, turning the endgame into a mad scramble to lock in your rank before time runs out. Conquer the whole galaxy and you win outright; otherwise, whoever controls the most territory when the clock hits zero comes out on top.

Controls

• Left Click a planet or starbase you control = select it
• Left Click another planet or starbase while one is selected = deploy your fleet there — attack if it's enemy or neutral, reinforce if it's your own
• Left Click your selected planet again = deselect it
• Click and Drag from one of your planets to another = connect a ferry lane, so newly produced ships automatically flow to the destination
• Left Click an existing ferry lane = disconnect it
• Left Click the pulsing arrow above a leveled-up planet = choose your next upgrade (Industry / Agriculture / Research)
• TAB = quit to the main menu