Hello, all:

So I'm brand new to the game.  I won a couple easy SP games yesterday, with and without pirates, and I've been playing the Advent since I love their theme.  I think I love their abilities as well, but it's hard to tell... I really miss my Alpha Centauri fold out tech tree that let me compare everything.  Clans of Sin is helping out a lot, but I really need everything in strict parallel and with ship stat numbers to boot.

So, here's my take on Advent gameplay.  I'd appreciate both correction on this and an understanding of how the other races compare.

Civilian: Advent have the strongest culture in the game, and this gives them their major economic boost - high allegiance.  Therefore, while their economy is weaker than the TEC's in brute power, they gain a bonus similar to efficiency from SMAC, allowing them benefit more from larger empires.  Additionally, they are more reliant on trade ports than other cultures due to their resource focus ability, which gives them some additional flexibility to customize their economy.  They also have research and exploration bonuses fairly early in their Harmony tree which seem unparalleled by other races.

Military: The Advent live and die by their cap ships.  I can't ever seem to have enough crystal, so I've been primarily fielding huge hordes of upgraded Disciples backed up by Guardians (for shield boost) + Rapture (for vengeance) and Progenitor (for malice and shield regen), with Revelation in tow to Reverie enemy cap ships.  This is how I have gotten around the Advent's lack of AoE damage - although I understand that the Radiance is very popular for this once fully upgraded and it's often my first due to its excellent early tanking ability, it seems less critical to their late game.  I have yet to take advantage of most other non-cap ships besides Subjugators - it seems to me that the core of my fleet will always be massed disciples + support.