Nope, it's not a quick game

That sounds fine if you are just getting the feel of things and you're playing a little more defensively. You can change your game speed, research speed, and resource level for any game  if you'd like to play a faster game   

I got me arse handed to me in less than an hour. In a sense, I don't have the 'Whaaaaa game is too slow/lasts too long!' complaint.

But tonight, tonight the pirates will PAY!    

I have yet to win the game!

Of course I've only played to small map games but man I suck! LOL
Oh well, I guess I just need more practice

shiva.. now thats impressive Yea my first couple of games took a few hours each as well i've decided to start something a bit bigger - 2 v 2 v 2 v 2 v 2 on a huge map this way im hoping to play out to the end of the tech tree! also playing advent for the first time! any ideas how long this game might last?

It takes a while, but once you get the hang of the basics the begining of the game speeds up dramatically.

One thing you can basicly do in the beginning is to get 1-2 scouts and 1 colonizer (so that it starts charging up antimatter) and put them on exploring, get about 5-7 light frigates and buy about 200 or more crystal from the blackmarket before everyone else so you pay the least. Go forth conquering the first asteroid in sight if one is adjecent to your home(and building resource extractors first) and then a hot or cold spacerock as you build/research the prerequisites research techs to colonize in these respective enviroments (micromanage your frigates, if it get too close to dieing send it to a nearby star system and have it come back right away). Now the 200 crystal you bought are a good investment as your gonna build yourself a capital ship yard to build you a free capital ship to assist in capturing a desert/terran one if you can get there fast enough. (You dont warp in your colonizer untill it is safe to do so). You may want to get a second colonizer or scout (depending on which one of those of your race can capture resource extractors) and send them out to asteroid belts (without a big planet in the middle) to take the resource extractors, for more metal/crystal.
From henceforth some people opt not to build any more light frigates but instead go straight for their next best fighting frigate like the advent illuminator or a second capital ship. I upgrade my fleet tech a bit. With other alternatives i have not experimented. What you decide to do from that point i won´t tell you right now, there are many possibilities. What you'r gonna do depends on all the factors. In a 1v1 on a small map you can choose to rush, but in a 4v4 with random allies this is not usually a good idea.

The most important is that you are improving yourself and this is by itself the most fun/rewarding too as it creation/creativity that brings joy forth and it is this from which we are, so we enjoy to create. Creativity has some pretty creative ways of expressing itself, including in ways you dont recognize, such as improving your strategic/management/foresight/intuitive/precognition skills or coming up with new strategies or variations (improvements) on old ones. It may seem like a laberous road to do so, but it makes it all fun in the end and you (or anyone else) wont later beat yourself up for not improving, because you did.

LOL yep have had my ass handed to me several times on small maps i think maby satrting on a bigger map will help and adding allot more ai so theres compatition   

the ai has improved dramatically over both beata 3 and beta 4

glad to see posts like this as opossed to hate this or that threads keep up the good attitude and keep trying we will get there im shure

ps im shure eaven the devs struggle somtimes