New to GalCiv, questions and thoughts.

[Paingod]

I picked up GalCiv on Friday, and spent just about every free moment I had this weekend playing.

After probably 30 hours of this game, I'm still not 'getting it'. Now that I've come to the forums, I have learned quite a bit, more than I thought I would, actually. I figured that, after 30 hours of playing, I'd know most of what to expect, and how to run the game.

One of my biggest issues, out of the box, so to say, was the instruction manual. I feel it was woefully inadequit for this type of game. Instead of a floppy little 48 page pamphlet, it should have been a thick 300 page manual, that gave details on each option, not just generalized descriptions. Things like destabilization were glazed over, such a powerful tool, and the only thing it says is: This will hurt your relations permanently... But makes no mention of exact effects, or benefits.

The included 'tech tree' diagram was a joke, but provided about as much information as was on par with the rest of the manual... It kinda urks me that I had to hunt for it online to see where I was going, and what I could do. Yes, I realize the tree is huge, but a folding map would have been much appreciated.

I had a huge list of things I felt the manual needed, but realized that the list was essentially everything, from Trade to Combat units.

So far, during actual play time, I've had serious issues staying afloat, but this, again, is probably due to a lack of information. Only last night was I able to effectively utilize the economy controls, once I stumbled on the need to display planets on the right, and the economy on the left. Before, I didn't touch it, since I was unable to guage effects on what I was doing.

As for the AI, I've been trying to play vs. 5 'Sub-Normal' opponents, but didn't adjust anything beyond that, really. Now I'm thinking I need to knock them all down to 'Fool' though I think renaming is in order, if 'Fool' is the most 'normal' mode of play for a casual gamer, it should be called normal, then work up in grades, so as not to make the player feel an idiot for fighting (and loosing to) 'Sub-Normal' opponents. In Civ III they did a good job of this, with the easiest, and most playable setting, being 'Chieftan' working up to 'Demi-God'. I never was able to keep up with anything but 'Chieftan' there, unless I had created an island full of everything I needed to make the best Civ around, then I played on 'Warlord'.

I also enjoy a 'gigantic' playing field, as I get very annoyed (to the point of restarting) if I'm trying to intermingle colonized sectors with the enemy. 'Gigantic' is a nice option, as I get to really get a strong start before I need to shift gears and start huge social and military production.

On the whole, though, my biggest problem as been just trying to keep pace with the AI. Generally, by the time I meet them, they've got influence pouring through my sectors, and taking over my outlying systems, one by one. Restart. I hope setting everything to 'Fool' fixes this.

As for influence, maybe I'm just anal-retentive, but I feel you should have a 'frontier' effect. It's really annoying when a sector deep in my territory suddenly turns red, when it's at least 6 sectors from my frontlines. My latest failure, also being my longest one, I established a series of Starbases along my frontier, all upgraded once for Influence, and once for defense. I had 2 in every sector, except corner sectors, which had three. This worked pretty well at keeping the enemy taint at bay, but they were, unfortunately, snapped up like popcorn when someone declared war on me for not giving him 2 star systems and 123 bc's.

Alignment is an interesting twist... And when I was skimming the tech tree, it mentioned alignment in some of the techs. Do these add to, subtract, or change your alignment somehow, or are they pre-requisites to the techs?

I also wish I had some idea of what certain choices I make actually had on my alignment. I know good/neutral/evil choices when I see them, but it seems to be much harder to turn good than to go evil... Also, when I colonize a planet, and the first two options are like -39% planet value, -18% planet value, +37% planet value, what's the obvious choice? I really do like these worms, but they've simply *got* to go. Can't I do it covertly? Just make me spend some money doing it. When a textbox reads 'For the good of the Empire, this lower life form must be removed' I think that should have less impact, if any at all, than the choice 'Ahh, slaves, nothing starts a colony off like nice fresh slaves. And they taste good to boot!.' ... Which is obviously more evil.

I also read the notes on the expansion, and by the looks of it, it's a must have, once it's finished. Will it be a free download, or a boxed CD that I'll have to buy?

I'm also appauled that if you do get a technological lead, and a rogue nation springs up from one of your planets, that it gets all your tech AND is forced to dole it all out to the enemy. Somewhere in there, there should be a planet-wide revolt, which sends the scientists packing, tears down your infrastructure, and replaces it with someone much more mundane. If they didn't like me, and what I was doing, why did they keep it all around?

All this aside though, I do love this game. Even just getting smeared left and right has been fun, I hope someday, I'll be able to actually play the game and hope to win.

[Sombra]

First of all you can get an updated manual at galciv.com and the "expansion pack" will be free to all GalCiv users. ETA for the expansion pack is late September.....

Influence: There is a small button upleft corner of the screen where you can see the exact infuence per sector though you won´t get surprised if sector suddenly switches to another race. Looking for an influence resource is helpful and certain galactic wonders are helpful although.

Alignment: The purpose is that the decisions are hard. Good players will have better relations to the other good civis out there. Evil gives you short term advantages (And suddenly the fundis appear and wipe out the evil empires anyway)

Good and Evil gives you acess to certain techs not avaible to the other alignments.

Some playing tips:
Keep up your military and the other civs will be much more polite to you, invest the ability points in diplomacy again helpful for your relations and you will get much better results when trading techs and tradegoods.

Establish as soon as possible trade roads to your opponents if you are builder type of player the AI´s will let live longer at peace if you are their mayor trading partner.

[Paingod]

My problem really seemed to be 50% lack of military, 50% AI settings.

I just played last night with everyone on 'fool' and because of the way I learned to play against the 'sub-normal' AI, I felt like superman under a yellow sun. It was actually *too* easy, so I'm going to have to go back a bit harder.

With some new insight, I think I might be able to hold my own in the 'Sub-Normal' game for a while. I was shocked at how much nicer they were when I was the ruling military leader. I was under some diluded impression that I could play a diplomatic game without a heavy military presence to back me up. I was wrong. That was my real problem. I had a mindset that I would be so awe-inspiring that no one would mess with me. It was a lie.

The Pure Evil race declared war on me, and in return, I began producing the biggest ships I had available, Avatars. After I made the first 5, they called back and apologized, asking to be friends. I declined, and continued my buildup... Several turns later, they called up and plainly stated that to spite my conquest, they were surrendering to one of my allies. I just about fell out of my chair laughing. I never even managed to lift a finger against them.

Which actually leads me to another question: How, without just dumping people into space, can I keep my planets happy? When I started a holy war against another player, I made a slew of Combat Transports, and just about cleaned out every planet I had moving troops... Later I went back and noticed my general approval rating had skyrocketed to 95% from 48%, because I had dumped my people into ships.

I have a Morale bonus (overall) of like... +157% - and still couldn't keep anyone on my planets happy until I killed them all. Is this a flaw? I raised taxes (39%) to lower population, and that worked okay, but it seemed like a loosing battle for morale, I still seemed to loose more than I gained back. Should I just 'purge' my planets as often as possible? Is it possible to station one transport over each planet and empty that cargo, pick up more people, then dump them into space too? Or do I need to keep producing transports, instead of using just one? (Now I understand why people were SO cheesed when I dumped colony ships back onto planets, they'd go from 56% morale, to 8% in a heartbeat. There should be a way to achieve a balance, without slaughtering billions, or adjusting sliders every ten turns.

[Egbert]

As the population increases the morale of that planet decreases and eventually the morale of a planet stabilises at around 50% but population stops. You build some morale enhacer so population then grows pushing morale down and on it goes.

If you notice your morale going much below 50% you can be certain that someone is destabilising you. The only effective solution is to wait until you get a message saying who is destabilising you and then completely exterminate them. In the meantime you must get on a fruitless treadmill of spacing people or build overpriced morale enhancers. (Destabilisation is so ridiculously overpowered it comes close to making this game unplayable IMO).

[Paingod]

Thanks for the info, now I have a few more questions, if anyone has time:

- With morale, do you need to have a facility built to take advantage of a 'global' moral boost (Space stations, tech upgrades) or is it just supposed to kick in?

- Is there anyway to just disable destabilization? The computer seems to be too good at keeping people happy to make good use of this, and I'm not... So it's even worse for me. Though I do understand the impact it has on Influence, I'm still not a big fan of it.

- Free vs. Low Cost Military: What's your take on using Starhawks (Ungodly long to build, but 'free' after that)... Or should I use maintenance 1 ships, and TONs of them to compensate? I know they don't do squat if I'm attacked, but if I have enough of them, I shouldn't be attacked... ?? (Could I, theoretically, bankrupt the computer as it tries to win the arms race with real vessels...?)

- Are there any ships that have an enhanced defense bonus for being stationed on a planet?

- How, exactly, do you determine the 'influence' value for a sector with your planet in it. If I knew numbers - like ('Military production'+'Social production'+'Research production')*population/morale, I could guage what I needed to do in lacking sectors to bring them up. I understand the outside sectors, sort of, (though I still can't push my influence barrier as far as the computer does... usually it's right on ym doorstep.) My 'home' sectors in my last game had influence in the 2000+ range, and even the most distant sector had a 100 influence rating for me... I wish I knew how I did this.

- What is 'Creativity' and 'Luck' good for? Luck seems to get me more of the free Rangers, though even with +50% luck, I didn't seem to get as many as the computer did.

[Sombra]

- Morale boost just kick in.

- Desstabilization can´t be turned off but it is not such a big issue try not to go over 39 %tax maximum. On low quality planets build only the economic boosters and the improvements which improve planet quality.

- Trade (sell techs and trade goods) a lot especially with minors. Techs´, or trade goods though you can mantain a 100% spend rate througout the game. This is although the best way to keep the computers econonmy down. (He will have to pay all the time his debts to you...)

- Take out enemies econimic + mitlitary resources if you like to see an empire stumble to its econmoic death.

- On galciv.com there is at the forum boards an explanation how exactly influnce is calculated.

-Creativity lets you leap sometimes to new discoveries, not confirmed is that you although gain acess to technologies not suitable for your alignment.

- The lead programmer "Frogboy" compared the way luck works with "Saga of the magic land Xanth and there with the caracter bink" if you need help something good will happen. In game terms if you way behind you willn notice an increase in free ships or other "good events" playing with luck you will notice that you nearly never get bad events reducing the total amount of events you will see in the game and elimating the most interessting. Its a really powerful ability but I like a little more random games though now I turn it off always.

[Egbert]

When you sell techs to a minor, bear in mind that the other majors are constantly extorting the minors.

Ships in orbit get a bonus. I don't how big that bonus is but it is certainly not trivial.

[anofalye]

On a "hardcore" powerplaying basic...(sorry, I repeat some stuff that others say...just see this as crucial if I just repeat) :P

- The smaller you are, the more you should be "evil" as each little edge matter a lot.

- Let the other "evil" empire declare war on you ASAP, this keep them losing all fleets as they produce them, it is easy to handle(especially the Drengin usually declare war even if they can`t do transport LOL) and survive whatever small things they send, when they are strong and have time to build up, you might face extermination. Also, you have the same diplomatic edge if you are weaker, no matter how strong opponent is, and you will received support in ships gift from smaller and those that don`t want to declare them war or simply to support you while they also war their style.

- Focus on less starbase and improve the defense value to avoid losing them like popcorn, there is a balance of what to do here, hard to judge, it depend on the game, personnally I only improve my production in main sectors, cultural in critical area or place I wanna conquer(often transform such a starbare in dreadstar after since they have all the cultural/defense improvements already and usually are close to front line) the defense for some defensive starbase and the ressources, don`t care to developp the rest as they are slowing me more then helping me.

- Good empires are unlikely to cause you troubles if you are good, when you reach a "saintly" alignement, the Altarians should be a "bodyguard" empire. I have no clue for masochists levels as I don`t play masochist. Arceans are purely capitalist to the core, I never see them been hostile with me unless the game is well advance and they feel I am highest threats, thereby they are usually the most challenging empire(Yor and Drengin hostile behavior keep them from builing a real fleet, they often have others enemy(Altarians in particuliar). I see the Torians require I funds their war engine(since it is costy to maintain peace), I never see them put any threat to execution when I was with 75+ alignement, if you lack ships, they will usually give you a lot of corvettes which are just perfect to destroy small starbases and colony/transport and cripple the Drengin/Yor to a point they can`t be any danger.

- + speed >>>>> anything else. Get the +2 at creation and developp the +2 trade good and don`t trade it to anyone! :P Then eyes of the Universe and you are virtually unbeatable on the defense as they lack mobility and your sensor power to be any real troubles, if you have +2 speed, + 2 speed from trade goods and Eyes of the Universe, you should win the game easily unless you are to limited in size. Also, that speed will turn your survey ships in awesome war machine. :P Again, the +4 movement compare to them and Eyes of the Universe make it unfair a long time, YES BUY THEM FROM MITROSOFT if you need to get them, don`t let the enemy get those 2, you need them, at any cost(you might want to buy any economic related wonder the same way, as the benefit is often higher then the interest you pay)!

- For the first turns, either put near 100% in military and pop a lot of colony ship (all have 4 movements, which mean you can be everywhere faster then anyone else) or buy a few...yet...I don`t know what to do with production that early in the game as the social developpment ain`t work the efforts that early.

- Cultural effects are to strong in that game, it is like everyone is a whore ready to change to whoever look cooler at the first moment, kinda juvenile demeanor if you ask me, it should not be that powerfull. I also wish I could have starbases that can move without the need to be a ****ing DreadStar. Often moving a DreadStar(since cannot be anyless) will make your taking of a sector from hard or impossible to almost easy with all the inherent bonus in military and of course in cultural.

- When you sell/trade tech to anyone but a very powerfull empire, sell/trade to everyone so at least YOU get the benefit from it. I often "buy" a tech from someone and sell it to everyone when I am way behind in tech, that way I can make money and climb the tree while making money, the fact everyone climb as well is irrelevant as overall, I make money and I start from behind to equal to everyone, which is, a good deal IMHO.