Just a quick question, What is the "Inevitable game freeze" everyone is talking about?
I literally mean.. conquer a planet... send your naval fleet to destroy the next planet's defences . However.. I personally hate the EOTH. I wish there were an Art of war without their planets /faction, and instead replace them with Da soocha V, Endor, Bakura etcIt has always been my strategy to either withdraw or push forward to a certain point where I occupy choke points, so that I can divide my forces onto two, three, or at most four fronts. I create defensive structures and build hypervelocity guns, the whole burrito. Then I sit back and collect money for a few weeks, start slowly purchasing strong units (multiple ISDs and Venators usually, backed up by Lancers). Once you have a sizable fleet launch your blitzkrieg into the enemy. You can use the plan that Singularity mentioned: putting land units in orbit behind your conquering fleet to keep them from building again.
Then, once you have destroyed the majority of their space faring abilities, you send in masses of infantry/stormies and mop the floor. I sometimes don't even play out the battles, just build up a large enough force and auto-resolve. Sure you take a lot of casualties, but...we have reserves.
I can easily beat the EoW as IR, EoTH or the worthless scumbags before the freeze even at the hardest level (Ok, the scumbags will occassionally freeze depending on how quickly I can kill off the early heroes). But as the PA, it's INSANELY difficult to get enough income to build those attack fleets before the freeze.
All the while your other fronts are easily defended by any other enemies. As you absorb the conquered territory and gain more money and power, build up a second and third conquest fleet, and then go on a rampage!