First this tip: use the enter key to open the chat window. There are probably some people online or in IRC that are more than willing to help you out. They have mostly been playing this game for a while, so use their advice to your benefit.
First click on your builder. Then select the oil mine, and click on the black liquid near your command center. Your builder will now move to that spot and build an oil mine. Oil is the lifeblood of your bases and units, everything runs on it. Always make sure you have oil when you build a base.
Secondly click on a builder (you have 2, and you can build more with your command center when you need them) and click on the iron mine. Then click on the silver/grey pile near your command center. now you are building an iron mine. Iron is also very important, all your units, buildings and command centers require enough ore in the area to get built. You have a starting amount of ore in your command center, and about 15k ore in your first mine. This is bonus ore. All mines that have not been built on yet have bonus ore, a spawn mine has 15k, and loose mines generally have between 2 and 3k. After the bonus ore is depleted, this does not mean the mine is worthless. After depleting the bonus, your ore mine will still give off ore, just more slowly,about 500 ore an hour. This ore generation will keep going when you are offline, so when you log out in the afternoon and log back in in the evening for example, usually your command center will have filled up again.<br>
After you have built your oil and ore mines, its time to build the rest of your base. All buildiings besides the command center and the mines require power to function. So what you need to build now is a power plant. Click on the builder, select the power plant and click on an open piece of land near your command center. The square you now see will light red if you do not have room there, and will light green when you have. When the square is green, click on the land and the power plant will be built. Your first command center will need 2 power plants to get started.
You now have power available for your buildings. First thing to build is a factory. This will allow you to construct land units. The second thing you will need to build are research centers. They will allow you to research new technologies which will give you new units and buildings to build. If you have a premium account you will have access to all units, the trial account will not let you build or research air units or hover units. You will need a maximum of 3 research centers to research all technologies in the quickest way. When you click on a research center you will see the available research. click on one to get it started. At first there are 2 technologies available, once you have researched those new ones will appear. Reserach costs ore. You will need to have ore in your command center to start research. The research you have done will be kept for the duration of the planet, so when you are eliminated or respawn, you do not have to research the same things again.
Begin Naval first as this offers best hope of flight to better areas. Also frigates have a huge impact when folk have time and resources out on the seas also.
Do not waste iron on walls. Unless you have a small pass critical for entry to your base and aggressive neighbours of course. You will reach points in the game where you have lots of iron but no spare fuel locally for more units. Then you can have fun with walls. Gates allow allied and your own units to pass through.
This makes then useful for walls as you can attack with many units at once - inflicting more impact damage on an enemy that cant chase you. Less gates leads to confusion and units stopping when you wish to strike first or retaliate after an attack. Bear in mind walls do not stop planes or confer protection from them. They can limit units wandering when combined with good AI programming and confuse enemy unit pathing when being attacked. Do not waste your initial bonus iron on them…
