Here is an overall strategy that i found on my computer, i believe it was pieced together by some old family members years ago.  it is rather old, so some of it may be outdated, and seeing as im just coming back out of retirement there are many things i havent learnt about any changes to the game so if there are any constructive comments and ammendments they are welcomed.

Here a few good banker tips...
Population growth: 50%
Income: 50%
Research: 20%
Attack: -30%
Magic: -30%
Population Based Economy Strategy:

Day One:

Try at all costs to be active. Starting of i would recommend building Living
Quarters and Mines(The ratio of them depends upon you and your preferences
only build Living quarters if you have a high population growth race
percentage if not substitute with Cash Factories, but if substituting as
soon as your home planet is nearing maximum population *10 ticks away build
living quarters*). Keep building Living Quarters as needed, the Main thing
here is NEVER let your population stop growing. Another thing as a bonus of
being in a good family, play the market as much as you can! Start small so
the risk of losing anything will be insignifican then work your way up!

Day Two:

Overnight your Mines should have arrived, i would start immediately playing
the iron market make some extra cash, then right before the end of the tick
withdraw all bids and build LQ or CF depending on your race population
growth percentage. Always think ahead to keep your population growing, from
now on you should not need to build any mines or any other resource. Buy
everything off the market, plan ahead before bed calculate how much food you
will need to keep your population from starving, always give a little extra
to substitute for your population growing.

Day's Three-Six:

If you have Tax Offices i would build a few of them now, Really Same as
stated above keep population growing. And building your Economy. By Now you
should not build any CF's unless you are just waiting for population to fill
on newly explored planets, after population fills raze CF's and build LQ's.

Exploration Stage:

ALWAYS BUILD 6 EXPLORATION SHIPS PER DAY. Even if you cant afford to send
them out always build 6 per day, you can send them out in mass later. The
more planets you have the more it costs to send exploration ships out so
sending in mass would actually be more cost effictive. But always keep an
eye out to keep your population growing, the faster you can get some planets
explored the faster the population starts to grow on them. If you have To's
keep a good percentage of them to boost your income.

After all planets are Explored:

Keep your economy moving full speed, build some defenses to guard yourself.
If you are in a good family feed your attackers to conquer you planets, if
not overbuild alot!. When your income is very high consider saving for a day
or two building a fleet and conquering planets, you can always disband some
fleet to recover income later.

Mid-Round

By this time you should be more focused on helping your family/defending
than building economy although economy is good still. This part of the game
there will be lots of wars, i would prepare a heft amount of wizards to
defend your population also a sizable ground force would be nice. Have some
transports ready to take undefended planets after your attackers kill
peoples fleet.

End of Round

If you are planning to do any kind of networth jump start saving ahead of
time! Just try to work and get yourself a good rank if you are not. Maybe
get revenge on a few families who have been troublesome to you in the past
by feeding your attackers alot.
********
Suggested Races:

Banker

Option 1:

50% Population
50% Income
20% Research
-30% Magic

Specials:

Tax Office

Spells and Operations:

None

Option 2:

30% Population
50% Income
50% Research
-30 Magic

Specials:

None

Spells and Operations:

None

Option 3: (Cash Factor Based)

-30% Population
50% Income
50% Research

Specials:

None

Spells and Operations:

Individual Choosing with the few Race points left.

Attacker:
Attacker

Option 1Resource Based)

-30% Population
-30% Income
50% Research
50% Attack
100% Speed

Specials:

Droid

Spells and Operations:

No Fear, the rest are personal choices.

Option 2Self Supporting)

50% Income
50% Attack

Specials:

Tax Offices

Option 3:

-30% Population
-30% Income
50% Attack
50% Magic
100% Speed

Specials:

Droid

Spells and Operations:

Spells only! Must get portal Forcefield shut down enemy portals and take
undefended planets.

Wizards:

Partaxian ONLY

Strategy: War

During war it is most critical to always keep your familie's income higher
than the enemies. If this is a war for your survival and not just fighting
over a few planets here and there, it is critical that you make the enemy
want to stop attacking you this includes ops,spells, grabbing back
undefended planets, laser traps. If you are in a good family you may want to
pre plan (if you are the agressor) get someone with the least amount of
planets possible for one of your attackers put him in key systems with the
enemy and some backup systems so he cant get forcefielded and sabotaged out
of all of the systems , fund him for fighters.

For big Wars, preparation of one week or so would be nice, saving cash for
even longer would be great. For smaller wars standard planning time is 1-2
days ahead of time. Good planning can win just about any war. Organization
is the key to success. Planet Lists, ally checks systems shared are musts in
any form of war. If you are going to engage a family head on you need to
have your head screwed on straight . If the family you are attacking is
bigger than you get your allies to declare war on you preventing the enemy
from declaring war and getting the bonuses but allowing you to use them.

Preferably to maximize gains vs losses fund one person to clear the
fighters(maybe 2 if one does not share all the systems) and the rest get
some ground to break them and take the most planets possible. In one swift
motion you could win the war hands down.
The aim of war:

These are things that some people sometimes forget, but which you should
always keep to the forefront.

1) Your economy (and that of your fam) is the only thing that matters.

When attacking an enemy:
1)Do it only if will increase your/your fam's economy (e.g. by getting a lot
of big, fat, overbuilt planets very quickly).

2)Get it over with fast, to reduce the strain of your fam, especially the
bankers.

3)Go for the jugular (without exposing yourself).
- Take out all their fighters in the first tick.
- Take as many planets off their bankers in the first tick.
- Clear their attackers off as many systems that they share with your
bankers as you can.
-Destroy their bankers' population with spells.
-Reduce their attackers' research with opps.
-Destroy any reserves they might have.
-Be aware of where their defence system/laser traps are.
- Everyone else can then join in at their leasure and pick the icing off the
cake

Reminder: the aim of a war which you start must make economic sense.

When defending against someone who attacks you:
- Expel them attackers from your danger areas as fast as possible. This is
the single most important aspect, if you cannot remove them, then you might
as well say goodbye to every system they are in/arround.
- Destroy their bankers. Attack them where you can. Op them where you can't.
Try and sneakily swap/grap a planet close to them and hope they don't
notice.
- Nuke/spell them until they can't take any more. (their top players will be
well protected - go for their bankers instead. Forget about their top
attackers, just sabotage/destroy/attack all their portals and they won't
know what to do with their fleet .Remeber: you can sabotage the home system
portal
- Get someone small to (try to) retake each and every lost planet.
- Do hit and run tactics if you're facing a stronger enemy (e.g. pick some
of their weaker players' fighters off, then station yours again).
- Ask all your friends, neighbours, schoolmates, allies, cousins,
compatriots, and anyone else that will listen to you to attack your would be
agressors. If they're at war with several different fams they'll be far more
likely to want to make peace with you.

There are 2 overriding aims in this type of war:
1) Preserve your (bankers') economy at all costs. This means keeping the
enemy away from them.
2) Make the enemy start to think that attacking you is not worth the trouble
that they're getting for it.

Common problems:
"Invincible" enemy ground.
- Solution1, heroic efforts: save up, then pay a small player who he hasn't
noticed and who shares several portals to whittle his ground, then attack
him with as many people as possible.
- Solution2, the sly way: deportal/sabotage his portals. If agents don't
work try wiz! 1 person will not have more ground/wiz/agents then a whole
families' efforts
- Solution3, desperate measures: Make sure everyone is below his nw
attacking range and concentrate on the rest of his fam, for now. Don't
attack him whatsoever.

Invincible air:
If there is no-one with a high enough attack bonus + research you can feed
enough to win, then you will have to adopt a more operation-orientated
approach:
Take down as many portals as you can.
Every time he station's forges (make sure you know how many before you
attack with all you have), destroy them.
If he stations lots, destroy unit op is what you want. Lure him to station
units on planets he took from you (by taking them back from him, so that he
has to take them again and station units).
Get rid of his bankers. Without bankers, he won't have the cash to build any
more fighters.

Some formulas

Attack Time = xDifference + yDifference (x and y difference is calculated
from your closest "portaled" colony)

Fleet readiness:
This recovers by 5% points per hour upto 100%.
It then recovers by 1% point every hour upto 110%.
Minimum is -500%, Maximum is 110%

Applies for planet size and not Networth.

If war is declared the fleet readiness loss is cut in half. I've also heard
if your target has done hostile action against you, the fleet readiness loss
is also cut.

3 Stages in an Attack:
1) Bombers bombs laser turrets, then remaining laser turrets aims for
transports first and bombers second.
2) Defending fighters exchange fire with attacking fighters. they also shoot
at attacker's bombers & transports.
3) Remaining transports lands and unloads troops to fight with defender
ground units.

Transports: Each transport can carry up to 100 ground units.

Attack Thresholds: These are relative to your own networth.
70% or over to take the planets with buildings
35% or over to take the planet without builings
Less than 35% means the planet is razed
35% or over to attack out of war
25% or over to attack in war
If someone under 35% (and 25% in war) attacks you first you have 72hours in
which you can attack them.
Income = (100+ (pop/30) + (CashFactories * 6)) * (1+RaceBonus/100%) * (1+(2
* TaxOffices/TotalBuildings)) * (1+ EconomyScience%/100%)

Food Consumption = population/10 + food decay (0.005 * total food) + (1 * #
units)

Building maintenance cost: 1gc per building.

Unit Maintenance Cost = TotalUnit * 1gc

Population growth: Each planet has a max population of 40* its size and a
starting population of 1* its size. Population grows at 5% * current
population on that planet per week. if you have +50% growth rate then it's
7.5% * your current pop on that planet per week..
Research Funding : 1 gc gives 1 research pt.
If you have 50% research bonus, 1 gc gives 1.5 research pt.

The funding drain rate is 10% of the total fund you provided to research per
week. ie if you fund research with 2000 gc. it will use 200 gc first week,
180 gc next week etc etc until you give it more funding.
So during the first week you will get 200 research pts from funding alone
and 300 research pts if you have 50% research bonus.

Max Research bonus : 100%

Science% = 100 * (1 - exp(-RP / (100 * networth) ) ) RP is your current
research point.

Attack Strat

basiclly some people don't know all the attacks, so if you wonder why you
can't gain planets then read this guide.

GENERAL ATTACKS
The main attack that most people will use it fighter run into ground.
To protect your ground force from losing least, and cripple the enemy at the
same time, first you attack 5-10 times with fighters only. But MAKE SURE you
lose less then they do, if you lose more, it means they have more fighters
then you, at that point you want to station your fighters on a planet not to
be attacked, and hope your ground can defend.
now once you have succeeded in enlimiating their fighters, land your ground
on all their systems and you got urself a bunch more planets.

DETERMING WHICH ATTACK TO USE
Fighter run then ground is used for crippling the enemy and only use it when
you gain more then 5 plantes. you don't want to lose a bunch of fighters for
5 planets only

Full frontal attack, when they own only 1-4 planets in your system and their
nw is low. just use full frontal force and get the planets.

SCOUT MISSIONS/COUNTERS
Whenever someone gains a planet from you always send out a fleet of
2fighters, 2 soldiers and 1 transport to try to gain planet back.

Also this is good for scout missions, since with this force you can
determine if there is a station force, if there is fighters, and lasers.

MAGIC attacks
Create force field around 7 planets, pick one as the main one and send full
force there, on the others send 2 fighters, 2 soldiers and 1 transport. And
7 hours later, pull off another 7 portals. to distract the enemy. Repeat
process till they given up.

Word of warning, most people will bring lasers into their planets if its
disportaled, so be sure to have bomber support. planetary infractuation is
usefull here.

*NOTE You guys should station your fighters whenever you think your in
danger, since most people that will attack you will be someone that knows
they can enliminate your force, you DO NOT want to loser fighers or else you
can't counter.

AND USE THE IC MAFIA TOOL!!!!!

AND IF YOU HAVE NO FEAR USE IT!!

Short Guide to IRC
IRC, imo, is an almost essential tool for a top fam. My last family barely
used the forums at all, but there were almost certainly people online in our
family chat. 5 or so was the minimum we had would have had online at one
time, and usually there were many more than that. When I started using irc
was when I finally realised how important family cooperation was to a top
family. From then on I didn't cooperate with them because I had to, but
because I made friends with them, and wanted to help them out. It helped out
my playing no end, getting tips and strategys from people who had played for
7 or more rounds, and I became more acive because I enjoyed talking to them.
Although msn, or icq etc. have their places, there is nothing like IRC for
big family meetings, or quick responces in times of war. I don't expect to
get many converts from this, but its worth writing if I get even one . Here
follows a short guide to IRC, mIRC and whatnot. Its also damn useful for
finding allies.

If you're going to use the family chat more than once a round or so, its
worth downloading mIRC from www.mIRC.com its only a small program and is FAR
more stable than the family chat. Once you've downloaded and installed it,
double click on mIRC32.exe (or other, depending on version) icon to run. The
mIRC options screen should appear, with the screen showing irc servers.
Click on Add, towards the right of the screen, then set:

Description: Imperial Conflict
IRC Server: 64.246.11.92
Port(s): 6667

Leaving both Group and Password blank. Hit Add, then insert your name,
e-mail address, nickname you want to use, and alternative nickname. Then
choose Imperial Conflict from the drop down list (just below the IRC
Servers) at the top, and hit connect to IRC server. This will connect you to
the server which all the Imperial Conflict family chats are on.

Once this is done, and mIRC is connected to the server, you need to register
your nickname, this stops anyone else from impersonating you. Type "/msg
nickserv register [password]" where [password] is the password you want to
use for your nickname. Then type "/msg nickserv set kill on" to stop people
from using your nickname. To change nicknames at any time type "/nick
[newnickname]" but remember that the only nick that