by Ghorro
Being aggressive early is rarely beneficial in games with more than 2 players, unless you are isolated. The problem, as others have mentioned, is inviting a 2-front war, which you can never survive early in Eclipse.These problems are gone in games with equal number sides (3vs3, 2v2m, 2v2v2) because you have the comfort of your allies keeping pressure on your other enemies, which isn't the case in Free-For-All games where everyone is an opponent. In a FFA game you may have trust in an adjacent opponent, but if you are fighting a battle with someone else they really should exploit your weakened area and attack you.
This is why I've been pestering the Eclipse developers to include a simple variant for starting with fixed sides (3vs3, 2v2m, 2v2v2, etc) that are kept throughout the game. Solves pretty much all of the chaotic randomness associated with the erratic player behaviors in FFA games.