Planning

In this phase, players have time to think about the  orders  they will give their tiles and units. At the end of the planning phase, players hand in up to 5 orders, which are added to their existing list of orders; if any tile or unit now has two orders, the oldest order is discarded.

Tiles can be given Produce, Expand, Upgrade, Cultivate and Stop orders. Units can be given Move, Focus, Bombard, Shell, Gas, Shape, Settle and Stop orders.

These orders are executed in the Action phase.

Empty orders
A player can also insert an empty order between two other orders, causing execution to skip them and continue with the next player. This can be useful to artificially delay the execution of a combat ability.