What research path do you take?

[athorpel]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

Stellar Cartography I never research either. It comes in too late to be of any use.

Researching functionally useless techs IS actually good for something. You sell them. You're not giving anything advantageous to the other races. You can sell it everyone with impunity, it won't come back to bite you on the butt. It is really sweet to sell Stellar Cartography to the AI when they already know where all the yellow suns are. I giggle inanely everytime I do it.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
You may want to sacrifice some research and social for military. I keep my research around 50% and trade back and forth between military and social for the other fifty.

Good advice Harry

In my current game I started out with the settings of 20/20/60 and I've managed to survive 3 wars with the drengin and the yor. I was close to the other races technology wise but still behind in military. However, when the war started I adjusted spending to 30/20/50 and was able to reach the end of the 3rd war. Neither side was able to overpower the other so peace was declared. Now that my planets have built up a little I can pop out battleships every 8 turns on some of my more productive planets.

I think for my next game I will try initial settings of 30/25/50 and see what happens. All of this is at sub-normal. I was using the republic form of government as well.

[Harry Seldon]

I wish I could take credit for it but I picked it up somewhere else in the forum; from Yin or Fried-Psitalon I think but it could have been someone else. Whoever pointed me in this direction also had a great suggestion in putting 100% into Research at the beginning of the game because you're not really building anything anyways. I leave it there for as long as I can before redistributing it to the other disciplines. This will give me a solid tech lead at the very beginning and can usually carry me through the expansion phase.

[bonscott]

Now that I've played quite a few games I have a good feel for what I do. Note that I play on Large galaxies (and one huge so far).

So far there are a few keys I try to get as soon as possible:

1) Universal Translator (so you can trade)

2) Impulse Drive (so you can go faster). On the way you usually get at least one range increase as well.
There have been many times where my colony ships reached a yellow star just 1 or 2 turns before the AI because of my speed increase. Obviously not needed as much if you choose the speed ability.

3) Enough Weapons and Defense to get the Defender (if you need it for border worlds)

4) Straight to Trade. Gotta get your dipolmacy rating up to better trade as well as get the extra Trade Routes. I try to have at least 3-4 trade routes before I'm done with my initial expansion. It's amazing how much trade routes really help out your economy.

5) Next I go straight to Battle Axes or Battle Hammers. This will keep the AI off your back mostly, at least early.

6) Rest of the game I get what's cheapest with any eye toward more trade routes first or more military if I'm looking at a war.

Now situation will certainly dictate other routes which is a great thing about the game. Had one game where I was at war a lot so I was going for military pretty hard. But my start was the same as you still need the same base to get your empire going.

I've adopted an opposte strategy for funding then I did a few weeks ago (100% research and lease up a few colony ships). I don't lease anymore (unless I have no choice) and I truely believe in this now.

At the beginning setup your income to 100% spending, around 50% taxes. Go 100% military and 0% social and research. You'll pump out colony ships every 2 turns and you won't lose a lot of money each turn. You can survive on 100% spending for a long time with 1000 bc.

After about 4 or so colony ships and a scout or two, I'll swith to 50% military and 50% research or a bit more in research to get it a jump start. Social? Who needs it at this point. However I'll delay the switch if there are a lot more systems to get before the AI. This above all is the most important thing you can do, get as many systems as you can as quickly as you can.

I only blance things out with social once morale starts dropping and I really need to get some social improvements going. I'll set about one third to each or 50% research and split the rest between military and social. If you wait long enough before turning social on, you'll be building that soil improvement in less then 10 turns on most planets becuase your production is a lot higher then at the beginning of the game (where it might take over 30). In the meantime your should be catching up in technology and still rolling out colony ships or constructors as needed.

Trade a lot with minor races (and the majors if you can) to catch up in tech in a hurry. I always strive to be ahead in tech, even if not going for a tech victory.

The awesome thing about this game is that things are so dynamic to situation. I know in Civ 3 (and 2), no matter what happened I pretty much built the same build order, same techs in the same order, and so on. With GalCiv it's so dynamic I haven't had a single game the same yet. In my latest game I finally had a lot of resources nearby so I cut social production way down a lot longer then I normaly would so I could get constructors out quicker so I could claim them.

Just my thoughts so far!

[athorpel]

One more thing about selling seemingly useless techs. You can make a surprising amount of money. I can almost get as much from tech trading as I can get from taxes, with taxes set at 35%. I am only selling four or five techs. The thing is, I am selling them to everybody. Even at only 10 credits per turn for 24 turns it adds up pretty fast. There are five minor races in this game and I have found four of the major races. For one low level tech I can get 90 credits for 24 turns. Multiply that by 5 and your are looking at 450 credits per turn. I am only bringing in 472 per turn in taxes. Sell some useless tech and double your income.

I must make a clarification. My real situation is a little more complex than the above example. I am also selling trade goods. I have researched two of the trade goods. I am selling them to just the minor races so far. One more thing, some minor races come into the game late. They just pop up. It seems they pop up with all or almost all of the tech already researched. So I am not selling all 5 techs to every race. One or two of the races I cannot sell all the tech I sell to backward races.

I am playing on a gigantic map. It was a long time until I contacted anybody. Everything is stretched out. You can get away with making early game mistakes because of the distances involved. This is the first game I am committed to playing all the way through. All my other games were aborted learning experiences. Silly me for thinking that a difficulty level labeled 'beginner' meant it was for beginners. How could I have been so deluded? : )

[Cookie Monster]

bonscott:

Very interesting idea regarding opening strategy. I like how you dump everything into military spending to initially grab all the juicy planets before the AI does. I wonder if this is what the AI is doing in the beginning? This would explain how they always seem to grab over 50% of the galaxy before you colonise your 3rd planet. I've got to try this gambit in my next game.

My tech strategies now are fairly similiar to yours. I tend to hold off on defender to get trade first though. Then I go for defender. My reasoning is to get those 1 movement point freighters out asap to begin raking in the cash.

Finally I agree with you again regarding GalCiv being more dynamic than Civ3 or Civ2. Good point there

[bonscott]

Haupt. Dietrich:

Agree with you on the Defender. I get Trade first myself if possible for the same reasons. Qucker to get the trade income rolling in the faster your economy takes off. But, if threatened early, Defender it is.

In my current game on large map I had 5 planets colonized before I even met anyone. Get those suckers out quickly I always say. However, the AI becomes pretty agressive at colonizing on Normal and above I've found so it's good to have 2-3 scouts along with your survey ship doing nothing but heading for star clusters to find good ones and get the colony ships on their way.

I've also made the mistake of missing out on resources in the past. Now after my initial star exploration, I send at least 3 scouts to keep making circles around my core systems to find any close by resources. Then send them out to the corners of the galaxy to meet more civs and establish relations. Or find that nice yellow star system tucked away in the corner that no one knows about yet. Speed is your friend in that case!

Man I love this game...

[Harry Seldon]

I used to go for trade first but my biggest weakness was my local economy. So I started trying to find ways to keep from depending too heavily on trade for positive income. Now I focusing on other paths and come back for trade later. I've found that If I can build the economic improvements along with reasonably priced manufacturing bonuses and keep my planets producing positive numbers, other civs will rush to trade with me. This makes them dependant on me because they use the boost to overextend themselves. I'll still post a surplus if trade is cut off but I can declare war and cripple another AI's economy.

This is on small, subnormal - normal. I'm not sure how this holds up on larger and more intelligent scenarios.

And I'll second the resource grab. I used to not care about getting them but a good military or morale resource can be a life saver.

[Garth Vader]

I start the game at 50-50 military prod and tech and build colony ships at the HW until I run out of planets to colonize. I get some scouts out at my new colonies then switch to constructors.

I run at 100% for as long as I can, selling tech as necessary.

Once I colonize everything I can easily get, and get enough constructors to get to nearby resources I basically switch military off and get all the improvements built.

At some stage in the improvement building I should switch some military back on to get defenders built so I don't get extorted, but that time depends on the game.

This has worked well so far on Bright/intelligent, and medium map.

[LDiCesare]

I finally managed to get a win on Masochistic. Here is the path I trod on a tiny map with rare stars (I know most people seem to play bigger maps, but this makes for faster games with more strategic decisions IMHO):
Goals:
Diplomacy for Republic (and the Translators), then trade goods: Aphrodisiacs, Nano-metal composition. When you have aphrodisiacs built, trade it to everyone. This gives a lot of techs, like trading, shields, etc.
The next step is to build up military, so defensive phasers are the way to go. I then got to 0-grav research to boost tech in order to research the ultra-spice tech faster. Then, all non military techs that allow dreadnoughts later on.
In the game, I researched only 23 of 96 or so techs, but the important ones were those researched. I had to research industrial theory and defense theory because the ai sells them at horribly insane prices.

[Cookie Monster]

Just thought I'd share with you all an update on my game.

Thanks to the advice given by all here I have dramatically improved my game. I am still playing on sub-normal but if the current game I'm playing continues to go well I may up the diffictulty to normal.

Thanks again to everyone!

[Felch]

Impulse Drive, Universal Translator, Trade. After that, whatever I think I need at the moment.

[Master Marcus]

After Trade, Impulse Drive definitely. Then a couple of TG techs, depending of the game I prefer Aphrodisiacs ( Basic Env.Cont.) and GravAccel ( Contr.gravity ). Generally I can get many military techs from the AI with some TGs and techs, like Shields - Turbophasers, so I tend to go for adv.trade and some other trade techs, and warp drive ( speed ). However I try to be the first to make battleship.

[LDiCesare]

It is definitely important to research the frigate/battleship/dreadnought techs yourself as they cost a lot to get from the ai, and you'd better have them first anyway. Other techs like phasers, turbophasers, are in fact cheap to get from the ai and not worth researching IMO. If you can avoid researching defense theory it's also good, as you will get deflectors, shields, space militarisation, etc. for cheaper from the ai.

[casualGOD]

First I go 100% military and 100% spend until I have 5 or 6 colony ships and a constructor. Then I shift to 20/20/60 60% spend.

Tech order:
Straight to Trade (switch to republic immediately)
Straight to Impule Drive
Industrial Theory (manufacturing plants)
Medical Theory -> Environment Control
Tech to Battle Axe
Tech to Frigate and/or Battleship
Once I have a firm military I go back and flesh out needed techs, whether its for more trade or population growth or starbase modules. Whatever I need at that point (games vary from here on out).