We present how we have strategically allocated fitness evaluations in a large-scale rule based evolutionary system called ECStar. We describe a strategy that culls potentially weaker solutions early, then later only compete with solutions which have equivalent fitness evaluations, as they are evaluated on more fitness cases. Despite incurring some imprecision in fitness comparison, which arises from not evaluating on all the fitness cases or even the same ones, the strategy allows our system to make effective progress when the resources at its disposal are unpredictably available.