After reviewing several guides and many conversations on the boards, I think people are overly complicating this game. I want to share a few of my experiences to hopefully make your game experience better.

This guide contains a step by step process to get your economy roaring by the time you complete your quests, and then guides you through important milestones in the game.

Before we begin, this game differs than most of its type so we need to define a few important concepts.

1. Overbuilding is not wise. You must maintain a very delicate balance in order to survive.
   
2. Fishing is not needed. Follow the guide below.
   
3. Certain cliffs are junk. Any cliff with water takes up a huge amount of extra space. There are much better cliffs available.
   
4. Do not rush this game. Building one building can upset your entire balance and cause issues.
   
5. You do not need to build anything not related to the basic needs (food, water, eco, health, etc). Avoid entertainment, 3d printed consumables, wine, etc until honor 15 (hours from game start)

Game Modes: Orbital Order, natural disasters (uncheck raiders).
(for now you need to learn the game before you move into TD modes)

Cliffs used: Way, Obsidian, Unity
One cliff always has high solar, one has high wind, and the other has around 50% of each.
Always build all 3 cliffs initially and don't use nuclear power because you don't know what the uranium is going to be yet.

When building you want to make "zones" in your mind. Place all of your residential buildings as well as buildings which don't require zones away from where you will have your warehouses.
This ultimately means your drones have less distance to travel

Build (All Cities)

1. Bridges between cliffs.... snooze each so they won't build. it is important to place these initially so that the space is reserved.
   
2. landing platform
   
3. residential platform
   
4. two of your choosed power type for each cliff (4 square solar, or 4 square wind) - on the cliff that has around 50%, I recommend wind as it is always operating as opposed to solar which isn't 24/7
   
5. place 1 battery (you don't need more than 1 ever, as extra power speeds up battery generation. 2 batteries split that power so there's no real gain)
   
6. place 1 matter mine in each city. You don't want more than that as you don't know how much matter is available in the city.
   
7. Now place two portals and snooze them.
   
8. finally, place your warehouse. This will unpause the game. Once it lands, pause the game again and place the remaining 2 warehouses.

Unpause the game and set the speed to six. Let the first 5 quests complete (This ends at charging a battery 2 times and gives you around 1k cash). Once all buildings are set, hit pause.

Choose your largest cliff (Way for me) and complete all quests there. This raises the funds of that city as it will be where you place your unique buildings.

Build (all cities)

1. one large indoor crop field
   
2. one water treatment plant

Upgrade the following buildings (all cities)

1. Matter mine ($580 for +1 additional metal)
   
2. Water Treatment ($700 for +1 additional water)

Complete the next 4 quests in your primary cliff (should stop on build a town square)

Lets pause to look at your cliffs. Each one should have around 35 work places, and 45 citizens (and you are paying the lazy @#%&(@% unemployment)

build the following buildings (all cliffs)

1. maintenance center
   
2. town hall
   
3. town square

This may take a while to complete depending upon the unknown matter deposits on each cliff. Once all are complete, continue.

Complete the next 2 quests in your primary city. You should now be on the quest to place an airport, build engines and furniture.
We are going to leave this quest unsolved for a VERY long time, so get used to it! do not build furniture.

unpause one of your portals on each city and let them complete. When they are completed, set the priority of this building to 1. (these are usually the only things i have set with a priority).

build (only in your primary city!!)

1. airport
   
2. 3d printing facility (set to build ONLY engines- 2 each cycle

hold down shift and que up about 100 cargo drones. (no need to build anything else yet).

In your primary city, upgrade your residential to provide an extra 28 living spaces ($440)
Your secondary cities are around 70% manpower, but leave that for now.

Upgrade all 3 of your warehouses to provide 25 extra storage (this costs $5k, but we will get it back!)

Click on your portal and change the "sell if more" for each resource to 50.... even if you aren't making the resource. Also set "buy if less" for food and water to 25. We will adjust these values higher later on.

You should now have 75 people in your primary city out of 80 available spots, and around 95% manpower. In addition, you are also producing cargo drones.

We are now going to build supplimental food (Apples, salad, grapes - NOT WINE)

Build (each city)

1. 1 orchard
   
2. 1 salad
   
3. 1 vinyard

Build (all cities)

1. additional power source as needed (I will no longer detail the building of wind/solar)

Upgrade (both secondary cities)

1. residential (+28 for $440)

You may be out of one or more of these resources by now. if so, buy what you need from the portal we previously built using the "one time purchase".
It may take some time to complete these buildings as you may be out of cash after upgrading the warehouse.

On your primary city, click on the city button above the manpower percentage. Sell 1 drone to each of your other cities. You should have maxed out drones by now.

Build (All cities)

1. Medical College

Build (primary city)

1. residential complex (pause this until university and medical college are completed so you aren't paying unemployment)
   
2. university

On your primary city, click on the city button above

Research in this order (will take some time to complete) : (general)Geo prospecting (this will complete FAST), (energy improvements)reverse reaction, (general) Neural Network, (food industry) pipeline

Look at your cliffs again and notice the full fertility/deposit percentages. We gradually want to shift to nuclear power and will keep this focus until Honor 7. You will NEVER care about uranium deposits as we are going to build
megadrills and uranium towers (when the 2nd research completes). 4 uranium towers take the same space as a uranium drill yet provide 12 eco boost instead of draining it.

Sell 2 more drones to each secondary city (everyone should have 6 drones now)

Unpause the bridges and the remaining portal on your cliffs and let them build. One cliff has 2 bridges.... make sure you unpause both. Set the second portal to priority 1.

Review your cities. The secondary cities should have around 75 people and 80ish manpower. Your primary city should have around 120 people and 80ish manpower.

We are now goign to let the game run a while to build up some cash. Check periodically to make sure you aren't running out of food/water.

Monitor your cargo drones. Keep selling until all cities are maxed out.

In your secondary cities, click on the bridges to set "buy if less" for engines to 10. If one secondary city has the two bridge, you only need to set it on the one which is connected to your primary city.
This moves engines from your primary city to each secondary city so that the megadrill can be completed (later)

Build (all cities)

• mega drill
  
• nuclear power plant (pause until megadrill is complete)
  
• 4 uranium towers (pause until nuke plant is complete)

Build (secondary city)

1. residential complex

Upgrade (primary city)

1. residential complex

Let the game run until everything is built. This may take a while, so check periodically to que up research, grab a coffee, pet the dog / spouse, etc

Build (primary city)

1. parliament

Once the parliament is completed, sign into law the first option for each city (this eliminates the need for fish).

Review each of your cities. You will probably have to build a residential complex or upgrade the existing one. Try to get around 80-90% manpower.

Build (all cities)

1. 2 large parks
   
2. 1 large indoor crop field.

Next you want to build an office building and place another residential complex (upgraded)

review your food and place as needed. Keep your manpower above 80%.

Next upgrade your warehouse in each city and adjust your "sell if more" amounts to 75 and your "buy if less" to 50.

As far as research goes, there are not really and wrong answers..... I typically get heavy drones and then work on all of the food research. You don't need to do any power as you are switching to nuclear.

The next part depends entirely upon your cliff %, but it should be fairly similar to what I have listed below. The main goal here is to get around 500 pop in the secondary cities and 650 pop in your primary city, and most importantly, have 2 megadrills and 2 office buildings. There is a quest to make money via the office building which you won't be able to complete with only 1 building in each city.

Again, this may vary between cities but this should get you really close (and is perfect for the next 15 cities). In the previous section you made a good start, this section is to detail you the rest of the way there.

During this time period i also maxed out each city with personal drones, cargo drones, and large cargo drones, including the tech traffic reorganization which raises your max for each type.

Primary City: (612 pop, 655 work spaces, 92% workforce -cliff = WAY)

1. 2 Solar panels (i destroyed 2)
   
2. 1 battery
   
3. 3 Nuke plants
   
4. 8 uranium towers
   
5. 2 megadrills
   
6. 1 matter mine (upgraded +2)
   
7. 2 water plants (upgraded +2)
   
8. 1 recycling plant
   
9. 2 maintenance centers
   
10. 2 portals
    
11. 1 storage (upgrade 2x)
    
12. 5 large parks
    
13. 1 cold store
    
14. 1 hospital
    
15. 1 research center
    
16. 1 university
    
17. 3 medical colleges
    
18. 1 parliament
    
19. 1 courthouse
    
20. 1 3d printing (engines)
    
21. 1 airport
    
22. 5 large indoor crop field
    
23. 1 apple (luckily this cliff is 100% soil fertility)
    
24. 2 salad
    
25. 2 grape
    
26. 7 upgraded residential complexes (+28 pops)
    
27. 1 residential complex
    
28. 1 landing platform
    
29. 1 town square
    
30. 2 office buildings (large)

secondary cities (both are very close to the same) : (480 pop, 515 work spaces, 86% workforce -cliff = Obsidian, Unity)

1. 3 wind turbine field
   
2. 6 urnanium towers
   
3. 2 nuke plants
   
4. 2 mega drills
   
5. 1 matter mine (upgraded +2)
   
6. 1 water extraction (i researched pipeline for bridges so that my main cliff could provide most of the water)
   
7. 4 large parks
   
8. 2 maintenance centers
   
9. 2 portals
   
10. 1 storage (upgrade 2x)
    
11. 1 cold store
    
12. 3 medical college
    
13. 2 courthouse
    
14. 1 town hall
    
15. 4 large indoor crop field
    
16. 1 apple (i prioritized researching soil and apple researches)
    
17. 2 salad
    
18. 2 grape
    
19. 6 upgraded residential complexes (+28 pops)
    
20. 1 landing platform
    
21. 1 town square
    
22. 2 office buildings (large)

I hope I remembered everything.... sorry if i didn't - its hard to sort this all out once they are placed.

Upon reaching this and checking to make sure your manpower, food, and water are adequate, complete the quests to begin

By the time i made it to honor 3 i had 100k in my primary city, and about 60k in my secondaries.

When you hit honor 3 you gain the ability to place buildings on the side of your cliffs. This is one of the main reasons i picked these 3 cliffs, because they offer quite a bit of space on the side. Our new goal is to move many of our buildings to the side and destroy the buildings on our cliffs.

There isn't any real order to this, so I'll build a list for each in the interest of ending this guide in the next year :)
Of course, adding some buildings means your population increases as does additional requirements. It is a dangerous cycle :)

Remember to place your producing side wall buildings close to your storage bins - leave the far sides for other side buildings

This is a replacement, so once the buildings are complete destroy the other buildings.

It is very important to leave 1 3X2 space near your storage bin (for a Mall at honor 14) and 2 3X2 space for the factory on honor 7.

Primary City

1. 5 large indoor crop fields (80 crops) = 7 Vertical indoor crop farm (84 crops)
   
2. 2 salad (no change)
   
3. 2 grape (no change)
   
4. 4 large parks = 8 vertical air purifiers

Secondary Cities

1. 4 large indoor crop fields (64 crops) = 6 Vertical indoor crop farm (72 crops)
   
2. 2 salad (no change)
   
3. 2 grape (no change)
   
4. 2 salad (no change)
   
5. 4 large parks = 8 vertical air purifiers

This does take extra power, so we are going to place 1 nuke plant and 4 uranium towers in each city

Of course, adding some buildings means your population increases as does additional requirements. It is a dangerous cycle :) Take this time to also balance out your eco, food, etc.

All cities

1. 1 nuke plant
   
2. 4 uranium towers
   
3. 1 upgraded residential complex (+28)
   
4. 2 food
   
5. 1 apple
   
6. 3 vertical air purifiers

There's no way of telling what else you need because of the varieties in cliffs. Check your justice, health, etc. place court houses and medical colleges as needed

You also want to knock out some researches like agricultural drones, water, soil fertility, etc. (focus on a few in industrial, most of agricultural, and then do justice.

The main objective after honor 7 is to convert all 3 of your cities to remove the nuke reactors. This will save you manpower as well as reduce your overall eco requirements. In addition, it is a great space saver.

If you haven't already researched them, get foundation 4,5, and 6 in the general research menu. You will need all 3 of these when honor 11 hits. (or honor 14 if you follow this guide)

In each of your cities build the following:

Build all cities

1. 2 engineering hangers
   
2. 1 doc station

Build secondary cities

• 1 3d printing (engines)

[/olist]

On the bottom, build 1 capsule charge station. Build this as centered between your cities as you can. Also build 2 geo thermal stations.

As soon as all 3 buildings complete, place a capsule generator in one of your cities.

From now on, cue up 2 geothermal stations

When you have 6 geothermals, que up another charge station. (you only need 2 total, as they split the power. Building 3 won't do you any good..... building 2 reduces the down time slightly.....

Slowly build / replace nukes with capsule generators.... by the time you hit honor 15 you should be 100% tied to the power on the ground floor with no nukes/wind/solar anywhere.... And you are SET!

At this point in time our main goal is to convert many of our buildings to foundations. Hopefully by now you have researched up to foundation 6.

Our next major milestone is to reach 2800 people on earth
Lets get right into it.....

Build (All cities)

1. 3 Residential Skyscrapers (Remove residential complexes to make room as well as keep the population the same)
   
2. 1 mall (near portals)

Let the game run until these are built - if you are low on space, build them 1 at a time. You should end up with roughly the same population if following this guide from start to finish (your primary city is probably 50 workforce over the 750 of the 2 skyscrapers and your secondary cities are probably 30 pop or so over your workforce.

After the mall is built, its time to start converting everything to foundations. You should have plenty of space to built 3 foundations

Build (All cities)

1. 3 Foundations

Once all 3 foundations are built, pause the game. Do a quick check of your finances..... should should have hundreds of thousands, but if you don't, beware!

When placing structures on foundations, I like to keep all of the same structures on the same foundations..... you should have plenty of space. (this could be OCD related :) )

With the game paused and plenty of cash, remove all medical, research, and justice buildings (do not remove your town halls and leave 1 university and 1 research center in your primary city)

Within a few minutes we have converted all of our structures to the skyscrapers and foundations, freeing up lots of space and giving plenty of room to build for the goal of hitting 2800 people.

We are going to place a critical building now in each city.

Build (all cities)

1. 1 unified bank
   
2. 3 foundations

This will probably take a while since you are definitely short on matter by now. You will be short on population, so balance things again by building people. At this point in time you also want to add entertainment centers on your foundations, and again, adjust your population higher.

Make sure you let the game run and population to fill up before finalizing your populations in each city. You will need to make micro adjustments. But remember, you really only need to keep manpower around 90%.

Our main goal in this section of the game is to ensure we can auto-pilot our first 3 cliffs.

There is one section (I think honor 17) where you need to have a total of 120 prestige. This is so easy its silly, but many players have an issue with it. If you have followed this guide, you should run 30-32 prestige in each city, so we really only have to go up 8-10 per city to make it.

First, place epic waterfalls in your cities on the edge to raise your city prestige.

Second, do NOT try to go for fish or 3d printing to build gadgets, furniture, etc.... its a waste of time.

When the quest hits, do the following:

1. Turn off Dietary Suppliments 1 in the cityhall menu (you set this early on) - we are going to turn it off temporarily because it costs you 2 prestige - this will drop your workforce, so your city prestige will temporarily stay the same)
   
2. pause game
   
3. set each portal to one time purchase 150 Fish, Wine, gadgets, furniture, home appliances
   
4. start time
   
5. should take 1-2 days to complete question
   
6. remove your purchases if any are left to save money. Reset dietary suppliments 1

You should have no problem completing this quest and hitting honor 20.

I do recommend that you have all of the solar energy techs researched by the time you unlock 20. by now you should have 75% of everything researched.

I also recommend you build the initial 2 satellite dishes but immediately cue up 3 more. you will need it eventually.

You are now in space, congrats......By now you should have mastered many of this very challenging game.

Pause your game, read this section, then start the station!

About constructing on the space station (concepts)

1. Your drones on the station have to move in between the buildings and the center hub. Any drone not tasked with picking something up will be mining asteroids, getting salvage.
   
2. Place buildings which don't require drone pickups on the 3rd ring of the station (outer edge). This greatly saves drone pickup time.
   
3. Your cities will be providing most of the resources, so don't bother working on materials, etc early on. Focus on your two biggest problems, Justice and Power
   
4. Don't rush this section. Build a very stable station before you start defrosting people.
   
5. If you don't need them, don't defrost them.
   
6. Like your cities, our job here is to get a stable ratio but we don't need to rush. I don't think you have to pay unemployment, so focus on critical needs and then your long term plan.

Our first objective is to stop bleeding money.

Do the following:

1. Go to your station. Click on the laws and sign "disaster mode". This reduces the amount of money you will use (just leave it on - it reduces prestige, but who cares..... it isn't required on the space station.
   
2. Build 2 financial sectors on your outer ring (This provides income, but most importantly, justice). Set the construction of these to priority 1. I recommend building them one at a time because the station drones are idiotic..... somehow gathering resources still happens when you have set priority.
   
3. Stabilize your justice before proceeding any further
   
4. If you make it to the quest to start thawing out people, don't do it! We are going to build up our station before completing that quest.
   
5. Build a docking station on the outer ring, prioritize it, and wait until it completes to go further.
   
6. You are no doubt watching the battery consumption of the station and getting nervous.... if you reach 200 or less, switch to building an atomic generator, else stay following this guide. Hopefully your cliffs are providing enough batteries to sustain you.
   
7. Once you have more drones, set your existing atomic generator to priority 1.
   
8. Build another atomic generator (inner ring). Set as priority 1 during construction and after it completes. Don't proceed further until complete.
   
9. Build a medical research center (outer ring). Set priority 1 and don't proceed until complete.
   
10. Build a second medical research center (outer ring). set priority 1 and don't proceed until complete.
    
11. Build 2 more atomic generators and prioritize them to 1 when complete (you should now have a power surplus!)
    
12. Reminder, don't complete defrost quest yet!
    
13. Build a recycling station (middle ring) - this will start providing us resources
    
14. build another docking station (outer ring) and another recycling station(middle ring)
    
15. Build 2 psychiatric care centers (outer ring) and don't go further until complete. You should now have 100% manpower in the station and around 400 people unemployed.
    
16. You probably are starting to run a little low on cash (30k for me - thankfully you are making money now as well as have 3 cities with a unified bank feeding you cash - However, money will be a big problem as we start building more cities. This will slow down, you have been warned!
    
17. Complete the quest by defrosting more people. Once complete, do not defrost any more! You won't need them until after honor 25!
    
18. Now the long section begins, completing 6 constructions at 25k a piece..... it will take you quite a bit of time to do as well as a lot of matter. You may want to pause and construction on your cliffs (if you are still building power plants - this will let you sell more matter to the station).
    
19. While building the solar ring, take time to pet your wife / dog / eat / etc. I just let my game run unmonitored until the quest was close to completion.
    
20. Once the solar ring is complete, build 8 3d printing facilities, set 1 to engines, 2 to furniture, 1 to appliances, and 3 to gadgets, and one doing 6/6 furniture/appliances. In each of your cities set your portals to "buy if less" to 50 for each (furniture/appliances/gadgets) - set these on the first / 2nd ring
    
21. Your next quest is to get your psychiatric care up to 100% and they give you a big penalty. You need to place 3 or 4 psychiatric centers temporarily to complete this quest. When it is complete, destroy the extras as they consume manpower.
    
22. The final quest is easy to complete. it just requires uranium and batteries, of which you should have plenty!

Our main objective here is to build 4 platforms (2 on top of each other) as quickly as possible. Don't bring more than 500 people down to ice citadel until you have at least 1 completed double stacked platform (you double stack so that you can have 2 rows of cliff side buildings)

At this point in time you shouldn't need any help :) Build, and enjoy the game.

A few notes:

1. You can move some of your unique buildings from your main cliff to here (parliament, research center, etc.
   
2. You have 1 "place of interest" left in each of your 3 original cities.... you can place the honor 29 power source "beacon of hope" in each city so you can be cool :)
   
3. You have a stupid amount of space and at this point, unlimited money! go big!
   
4. You can now fish!!!! congratz :)
   
5. I place 16 skyscrapers (2 cliffs) and a whole mess of foundations....
   
6. And above all, have fun :)