GalCiv availability thread - first impressions

[unic]

Originally posted by Grumbold
First impressions:

Grumbold: The manual is very thin on detail.

Yes... and is incorrect in some aspects. There is an updated one online (see the useful links thread in this forum http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=73513 for that page, and other useful reference ones)

Grumbold: Only by researching it to see what these gadgets it provides actually do, so its too late to research one of the other dozen choices instead.

That is one of my annoyances too, though according to the designers posts, that was a concious design decision, as research leads into the unknown. However, after many requests from people, some sort of tech tree in-game help should be available in the free expansion.

The game progress seems very stilted. Massive rush at the start to discover and grab your planets then tedium as you shuffle one or two ships around waiting for the finances to crawl out of debt just enough for you to rush-finance your next ship.

Hmm... I rarely rush-finance ships - have you tried doing that less? To me, the game seems fairly well-paced until right at the end, when just mopping up the other civs is left. But that might be due to us having different strategies and ways of playing.

Curious economic model. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems if you opt for (say) 50% social spending to get your zero maintenance improvements up fast, any planet with nothing new to buy just swallows the money instead of putting it back in the global pool to offset the debt mountain. All your planets have to march rigidly in lockstep which feels very unnatural.

There is a long, sticky (Top) thread, encouraged by the designer, on the galciv forum discussing how to address this, so I expect that will somehow be changed in a while. However, I guess it's not the top priority for now, with CTD's and AI exploits and the demo and other stuff going on. Meanwhile, you'll just have to try to balance your spending so that not too much is wasted.

It seems getting into debt is a problem for you, and as it seems to take a game or two to start managing economy decently, here are some (hopefully helpful) suggestions:

* Generally, avoid lease-buying (rush-building) until you know how to manage economy with it

* Get your maximal # of trade routes up and running as soon as possible! Short-term, they don't do much, but the longer you have a trade route, the better it will get.

* Sell techs to minor (and major) civilizations. Especially near the start of the game, I use this much... towards the end, trade and taxes is usually enough to keep my spending slider at 100%

* Don't colonize low-quality planets - they will cost you too much. Unless there is strong strategic reasons, I usually think anything below Planet Quality 15 is a big No-no, and I have seen good players advising to avoid 15's and 16's too unless there are good strategic reasons to have them.

* Balance extending your industrial capacity with your economic capacity; if you build manufacturing plants, not only will their maintenance cost you, but to use the increased production capacity, you need to be able to afford it!

* Don't build high-maintenance buildings (I try to avoid anything above 1 in maintenance for quite a bit of the game) without good reason.

* Trade techs to the other civs! (I know I already said this... but in the early game, it's really the, in my experience, easiest way to get extra money. Not as over-powered as it was before the updates, but still a good way to earn extra money to get through the build-up time before your economy becomes self-sufficient).

* Oh, and don't hesitate to lower your spending slider for a while if it's needed...

... that's my (rather basic) advice from my games so far.

/unic

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by MarkG
well when you're done with the social improvements you should change the social spending to to 0%
duh!

Markos if you don't know what I mean, read unic's post, but I suspect you do

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by unic
Hmm... I rarely rush-finance ships - have you tried doing that less? To me, the game seems fairly well-paced until right at the end, when just mopping up the other civs is left. But that might be due to us having different strategies and ways of playing.

I thought this was pretty mandatory for the early planet rush. If you don't buy colony ships on the never-never then there are no worlds left by the time you can afford to purchase from cash reserves.

There is a long, sticky (Top) thread, encouraged by the designer, on the galciv forum discussing how to address this, so I expect that will somehow be changed in a while. However, I guess it's not the top priority for now, with CTD's and AI exploits and the demo and other stuff going on. Meanwhile, you'll just have to try to balance your spending so that not too much is wasted.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

It seems getting into debt is a problem for you, and as it seems to take a game or two to start managing economy decently, here are some (hopefully helpful) suggestions:

Not really a problem. Just a bit irritating that this seems to be the way to expand (unless there turns out to be merit in having less planets.)

[Fried-Psitalon]

I purchase my first ship outright (no lease) and then purchase my second on the longest-term lease plan. After that, I set social to 0 and research/military to 50/50, and every single planet builds colony ships regardless of population- this usually nets me as many or more colonies than anyone else around, particularly since I use the PQ +15% bonus which opens up more worlds, makes them produce more effectively, and so on.

::shrug::

I play Gigantic maps and this strategy has currently netted me roughly double the number of colonies of my nearest rival on "Challenging." (Granted, I've only met 3 of 5 so far.)

[unic]

I don't lease or purchase any ships... instead, I set military spending up to 100% - with that, I produce a colony ship every 2-3 turns, which so far seems to be sufficient.

Also, I set any newly colonized words to produce constructors, so by the time the initial colonizing rush is over, and I put military spending down, I usually have a couple of those finished, and more near to completion.

Of course, as I gradually increase the AI level, this might not work... but I easily out-colonized the AI on normal level (which is as far as I am now - increasing it one step after each game) and it might depend on galaxy size too - I play on Medium or smaller, so far.

/unic