Help/question as Ag Terran

Again, in my experience, you want to stop exploring ENTIRELY once you get 2 or 3 c1s over your initial c2.

By following this guide, you will be making your own c3s, even if you never win a single (good) CLUSTER.

One potential compromise is that you can keep anything over 800 land for the first 3 or 4 clusters, and then once you have that, you first clear all the ranks and then you use remaining turns for plundering, exploring, etc.

Keep a set log-in time every single day and attack all fleetless empires during that time period. If you are consistent, eventually all the potential candidates for folks missing a log-in will be exclusively yours. Be sure to attack them as soon as they exit DP since any delay will end up pushing up your log-in time.

Keep special note of those who you see as low on borders, and monitor the feds for low PR empires who are possibly going inactive. Usually they`ll be on VM, but sometimes not.

Once you get your first c2 with over 20k land, you can, if you want, explore for 1 or 2 more nice c1s, but after that you need to completely abandon exploration. Keep everything above 500 land that you get in battle and cluster when you are able to (if you have no such planets, clustering 5 useless planets and then plundering can be a great way to save turns).

If your 2nd c2 is at LEAST 15k land (more like 17 or 18k in most cases), you will be doing great.

After the 2nd c2, keep attacking for borders and more planets. Maintain a high standard (500+ land) for the early c1s, but don`t feel bad about lowering those standards esp when you get to that last c1 needed to forge a new c2. In fact, when working on your 4th and 5th c2s, lowering your standards to a 300 land per planet minimum standard isn`t a bad way to go.

If you continue on this trajectory, you will end up on something like this:

20-22k land c2
15-18k land c2 (35-40K total)
12.5 - 14k land c2 (47.5 - 54K total)
7.5 - 9k land (55 - 63k land)
5k land (60 - 68k land)

Trust me, anything over 50-55k land for a c3 is PHENOMENAL for any empire. Most empires settle for much less.

By following this guide, you will be making your own c3s, even if you never win a single (good)

Wing has good point. On TB its much more effective to take the 500 or better approach to get money flowing. It just is too big of time gap to keep only 900+. And once your up and going with the 500+s you can hunt the big planets in battle.

Are you planning on having an explorable ag terran with 2 c2`s and several u.fertiles?

On RT you can gordo fertiles, so there really is no point to c2`s. 6000 land on a fertile is about equal to a normal c2 production. adding 4K land to a fertile is reasonably easy.

On TB, you could try to explore 2 c2`s, and then collect fertiles, but there is a problem with doing this: you can`t collect fertiles and still have space to cluster c2`s, and exploring once you have c2`s is extremely difficult. 3 2K fertiles equal the output of one 20K c2, so exploring 1 c2 and then collecting fertiles severely limits your land. Making an explorable ag terran on TB is very time consuming in every way.

If you are planning on clustering 2 nice c2`s, then start fighting for more land, I would guess that fighting from the start and keeping anything you find is the most efficient way to gain land.

To just answer your question, anything with 500 land average is usually worth keeping for an ag terran collecting c3`s on any tb server. If you want to spend the next 10 years making an epic explorable ag terran, keep only the highest land planets you can find (25K+ c2`s, and 2K+ fertiles), spend your turns digging gordoes (use them only on fertiles), and research. All while trying to stay sane and not just quit half-way through.

Without paid: always 850+
With paid: always 950+

At slow + normal i would only make the first c2 this way.
At the other servers you can make 2 c2`s this way.

If you plan to keep your empire for a long time i think it makes sense, if not there is still some fun in making a high-end product.

You could say that exploring at all gives poor returns. Stealing clusters is the most efficient way to get nice planets quickly. As an ag terran, you will always make more $ collecting c3`s. Explorable taxers do well because u.larges, but fertiles don`t do much unless they are gordoed.