Your goal for Save the Admiral campaigns should always be to help and improve the Admiral as quickly as possible.  The better you do this, the better your Admiral Rating will be, and the higher your effective  specific Region Scores will be.

 The quicker you sway the states, the better.  And therefore the fewer special state battles you need to fight, the better.  So ideally you try to capture states that start with a low initial resistance by swaying states next to them, eventually reducing the low resistance state to zero.  This will let you sway two or more states with the results of one single special state battle...

  Winning states offering bounties is the quickest way to do this, since all adjacent states will be reduced by two in resistance.  AND even stubborn, "swayed against" states will be swayed in one single battle if they were offering a bounty at the time you fight for them.

  Another way to quickly reduce the resistance of many states is by winning an "Influence" reward.  This Influence will immediately (once only) reduce the resistance of all states in the current Region who are next to a state that is already swayed in favor of the Admiral.  I.E. Ideally you should sway several medium toughness states across the Region, THEN win a state with an Influence reward to perhaps reduce several states all at once to zero resistance... awarding you the loyalty of those states too.

  Even when things you wrong, and you lose a state's special battle, all is not lost.  You will still earn points for the losing battle, along with perhaps earning some flagship modules and other rewards.  And your Admiral Rating will continue to improve as long as you are trying your best to help the Admiral win over the whole Region.

 The special state battles can be tough at times if you are facing a medium or high resistance level.  You can always use bribe points to soften the resistance a bit.  You can also make a point of hording your flagship modules and points just to use in tougher state battles.  These flagships can make quite a difference in a tough fight with their variety of special abilities, including even the simplest of abilities such as moving quickly and scouting out areas involved with the special mission for a battle.

 Another trick for tight special missions is to buy extra turns to finish the mission in using State or Bribe points.  On the last turn of your current mission, if you have not yet won the mission, you will be given a chance to spend five State points to extend the mission (and battle length if need be) by one turn.  At the end of that next turn, if you still have not won the mission, you can spend five Bribe points to extend the mission two more turns.  You can keep extending the mission as long as you have enough State or Bribe points.  Note that some mission goals are not updated till the end of the turn.  Mission extension offers come at the end of your movement phase, so there is a chance that you may not need to extend the mission because you have already completed the mission goals, but they have not yet been recorded (i.e. the end of turn will detect your mission success).  In other words, you need to weight for yourself if you need to buy another turn for your mission... can you succeed even with a few extra turns?  Have you actually already completed the mission? Etc.

 You can also use any one-use special ability play points you have accumulated over time during tougher battles.  Using these points, you can perhaps call for new reinforcements to supplement your existing fleet when you are lacking ships.  Or perhaps sabotage enemy ships to prevent them from moving during the next enemy movement phase.  Spy on enemy ship locations, or nastily cause mutinies on some of the enemy ships, giving you control over them.

 You can review and choose such helpful actions by right clicking on the Command Fleet (CF) button on the movement screen.  This will bring up a popup list of various action points you have available, and can use.  And bear in mind that these dirty tricks are often the same ones the enemy is pulling on you during tougher state battles...

Questions?  Suggestions?  Email thurston@fogstone.com with your feedback, questions, and suggestions!