Galactic Civilisations 2 [Archive]

Zenicetus

02-28-2006, 21:57

I've been playing it for a few days. I never played the earlier version, so I'm climbing a steep learning curve. This game is complicated! But I think I'm finally getting my head wrapped around how the economy works. Some quick impressions:

The two features that really knock me out (so far) are the diplomacy and the ship builder. The galaxy feels very "alive" once you start interacting with other civilizations, and there are many ways to work diplomatic angles.

The ship builder is a blast. You can customize ships from a toolbox of parts. I spent most of last Sunday just getting lost in the ship builder.

On the downside, the overall graphic design is a bit cartoonish. The idea of the ship builder is great, but the results can look more like Lego toys than spaceships. My last space game was X3 which had beautiful ship and space graphics, so I guess I've been spoiled by the look of that game. It's a minor quibble though.

The other downside is no tactical battles. Everything is auto-calc'd, and then the game runs a little movie showing the 3D space battle. The developer is adamant about not including tactical battles. He says the human player can always find weaknesses in the AI and exploit it. I miss this feature regardless, but it does mean they can put all the programming effort into strategic AI for the galaxy map, and that does seem to be very strong.

Anyway, yeah... a fun game so far, and highly recommended if you're into pure (non-tactical) turn-based strategy games.

P.S. it would be great if MTW2 had this level of diplomatic interaction.

BelgradeWar

03-01-2006, 00:18

Hmmm, sounds nice...always liked those games where you can customise a lot...but, generally these space exploration/domination (except SE IV, but nothing can beat that game in terms of customisation) get me bored after few days...but maybe diplomacy model here can keep the game rollng...

BTW, has anyone played Space Rangers 2?

GoreBag

03-01-2006, 04:58

I went to EB to buy it today after perusing the intraweb for reviews (which were all favourable). I only found the original in the deluxe version - they were sold out of the sequel, but get new copies in tomorrow. I pre-ordered it in full.

Xiahou

03-01-2006, 05:32

You know you can buy it on totalgaming.net (run by the developer-Stardock) and download it. No need to wait for deliveries or any of that and even better, downloads with their apps require no CDs! :2thumbsup:

If you wanted you could buy a 10 token membership for $70 bucks- GC2 costs 5, so you'd have 5 tokens left to get another couple of games with too. Alot of their library is kinda cheesy/dated, but some like Uplink are awesome, imo.

Sorry if that sounds like a sales pitch, but I really like their system since it has no intrusive copy protection vs something draconian like steam. And, being developers themselves, they(Stardock) are extremely developer friendly- unlike many big publishers who screw the devs.

GoreBag

03-01-2006, 08:37

That is quite possibly the most helpful thing I've ever seen you post. But then, that's 70$ American, so I'm not really losing much money in the transaction.

Tru dat about Uplink, though. I still play that game.

Thank you kindly. I'm going to look into this.

BDC

03-02-2006, 21:45

I just pre-ordered for £18 (maybe $28 or something) off Amazon, so hopefully it was a good purchase.

Apparently its #1 software product in Walmart in the USA now. Word-of-mouth really does work for selling. You just need a good product. EA could learn a lot. Invest all that marketing money into design!

GoreBag

03-03-2006, 00:22

Heh. When I got the game, there was an ad in the box for totalgaming.net. I would have discarded it without second glance if it were not for Xiahou's post.

The game is a lot of fun. Simple tech trees make everything easier to manage, even though I like a little bit of crossover in places like that. Diplomacy is fun, reminiscent of the Civ series (with trackers to keep track of past relations, like in Civ 4). The coolest part of the game, though, is the ability to design and customise your own ships. I've spent a great deal of time setting up my strategy and creating newer, longer-range colony ships, surveyors and freighters, as well as specialised fighter ships (quicker and with a greater sensor range for better interception, for example). I'm having a blast.

Zenicetus

03-03-2006, 02:39

The ship designer is wicked addictive. I take back what I said about ships looking too much like Lego toys. It just takes time experimenting with the editor to come up with what you want. There are also some additional construction parts if you get the Collector's Edition of the game.

Check out the "Transformers" ship someone just posted: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?ForumID=162&AID=104273

And here's a Star Destroyer (Star Wars): http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=104065

The cool thing is how the eye candy is a separate layer from the actual functionality of the ship, which is constantly being upgraded as you research new tech and develop the resources to build these things. You can design a totally badass-looking small fighter, even in the early stage of the game when your actual weapons and defense are primitive. You're not stuck on some hardcoded progression where you only get the cool-looking ships later in the game (well, except for hull size... you do have to wait to research the larger hulls for capital ships)..

GoreBag

03-03-2006, 08:49

You can design a totally badass-looking small fighter, even in the early stage of the game when your actual weapons and defense are primitive.

And upgrade later as your tech improves! I love it!

Xiahou

03-03-2006, 09:08

Check out the "Transformers" ship someone just posted: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?ForumID=162&AID=104273That is freakin awesome. :2thumbsup:

Voigtkampf

03-03-2006, 09:34

Best fun I've had with a space strategy game since Master of Orion 2. :thumbsup:

Bob the Insane

03-03-2006, 20:40

Playing it and loving it...

After a quick game in a small galaxy with 4 races all on sub-normal intelligence (which I won with a diplomatic victory) I switched to a Gigantic galaxy with all the races all on "Intelligent" (common Stars, common planets, rare habital planets, tight clusters)...

OMG...

I still have not met all the main races yet but have come across 7 of them plus 6 minor races (evil squirrels??) and the interaction is just so natural...

I am have a heel of a time staying in the running and if you want to survive you need to make a few friends at least... I had a slight tech lead (from neglecting military buildup) which I only maintained with high spending and tech trading. Then the Xorn and the Yor declared war... I understand the Xorn in a way because they where bottled up against the side of the map by my empire and I was militarily weak. I have not got to the bottom of the Yor's reaasons yet but they are quite far away... Fortunately I had invested in a large industrial capacity and with my slight tech lead and intelligence about Xorn ship designs I was able to develop craft to counter theirs. They had Mass Drivers and light armour so I built craft heavy on armour and utilizing beam weapons. It worked very well and my outnumbers fleets devistated the Xorn military. It was funny to watch the Xorn leader's attitude change from "we will wipe you out" to "sorry this war thing is just a big joke, you can take a joke can't you?"...

I just turned my attention to the Yor now and am happy to see that their ships match the Xorn in design but are a little more advanced.

In the meantime the Dregan are fighting everyone else and taking over the minor races...

It really is too much fun...

Lemur

03-04-2006, 07:13

I'm liking it, but I'm crashing like the Hindenburg every time I play it. I've updated all drivers, dialed down the hardware acceleration on the sound, and I'm completely stymied. Gonna have to go to the support chat rooms and see if they can help a lemur out.

Lehesu

03-04-2006, 22:07

Lehesu

03-05-2006, 00:33

Getting a new computer in the semi-near future. No use spending money on a computer that I will no longer use.

Zenicetus

03-05-2006, 00:33

I'd like to buy it, but I want to be sure that it will be playable with my system. I have a Pentium III 1.0 Ghz processor, 256 Mb RAM, GeForce 4 Mx 420.

The min specs are a 800 Mhz processor, 256 Mb RAM. I meet the min specs, but minimum specs don't always mean playable. Anybody on the lower end of the computer power curve that has this game?

You might want to post that question over in the official forum, maybe do a search first on that topic to see if others have already covered it (http://www.galciv2.com/).

I agree that your RAM is really low, not just for this game but Windows in general. You might be able to get away with it, if you're running a really stripped-down config with no extraneous services running. But more RAM would be better. One gig is pretty standard these days for all major applications and games. Two gigs is where you start to really notice that things are running like silk with no (or very little) HD paging with modern games. Having lots of RAM also helps when you're multitasking a game, like Alt-Tabbing out to ask a question on the game's web forum, or check email. GalCiv2 has a very smooth Alt-Tab exit and return, if you don't have a tight RAM ceiling.

Edit: just noticed your post about a new comp on the horizon. Go for 2 gigs RAM, even if it means skimping a little on the CPU speed. Tons of RAM and a hot video card are more important than having the fastest possible CPU.

TinCow

03-05-2006, 05:59

TinCow

03-05-2006, 16:28

I had one crash in the Shipyard, while designing a tiny fighter. No crashes since though, and i've made dozens of ships.

My shipyard crashes seem to occur mostly when I try to update a ship I have already designed. For some reason nothing happens when I click save. Then when I exit back to the galaxy map, the save window comes up asking for a description of the ship and it crashes. I've also had a few random no-reason crashes.

frogbeastegg

03-05-2006, 19:24

:froggy enters the thread again, muttering to herself that she does not have time for another game, especially not one of those time consuming strategy ones, least of all when she recently escaped civ 4's clutches and definitely not since it has taken her over 2 months to make 5 hours of progress in Prince of Persia SOT!:

I demand you stop making this game sound good! :hairpin3:

:Sees the comment about it being a more complex version of civ set in space. Resolve teeters, under the excuse that there is no harm in just asking:

Alternatively, anyone want to compare this to civ 4 and Alpha Centarui (which sounds like the closest matches I've played) for a frog? Where it is better, where it is not, little nice features, things which feel like they are missing, and so on. Sounds like it may be worth waiting for another patch ... is it likely to be well supported?

Xiahou

03-05-2006, 22:22

... is it likely to be well supported?If GalCiv1 is any indication, I'd say yes. They had several patches and a free add-on with new content in addition to a full 'for pay' expansion. Im really pleased with Stardock thus far. :bow:

I finally got started with my first real game with a small galaxy and uncommon habitable planets with 6 (Me, Altarians, Torians, Drengin, Iconian, and Yor) total races. I lost the planet lottery and was only able to get one 10 quality planet other than Earth before all the good ones were snapped up. I did find an awesome PQ18 planet, but the Iconians got to it way before my colony ship was even near it. Knowing I was in trouble, I went 100% research and charged down the diplomacy tree so I could hopefully do some advantageous technology trades with other civs. As I made contact with other civs, it became clear that the Iconians were the civ to beat as first the Drengin and later the Yor surrendered to them. Naturally, they started trying to extort funds from me and just as naturally, I told them to go to hell. :wink:

Long story short- they started attacking me, but my technological advances helped me stave them off even with the massive production disparity. Finally, my "luck" points paid off and I uncovered 2 complete Ranger class starships which allowed me to slaughter any fleets they had in my sectors, but they were too far away for me to hit em where it would count. So, what do I do? I screw over my neighbors- the peace loving Torians. :2thumbsup: They folded like a cheap suit after I took their homeworld in a suprise attack, allowing me the production and the range to go after the Iconians finally. I've now conquered 3 Iconian planets and have them on the ropes. Great stuff. ~D

ah_dut

03-05-2006, 23:29

One wee little question: how does this game fare for people who only play say an hour a week. Is it like dungeon keeper, where I can just go on and off or is it the type of game where I have to play for ages to get anywhere (like the X series)

Zenicetus

03-06-2006, 00:34

It works fine if you only have a little time here and there to play it. You can choose the length of each game by setting the map size and numbers of stars/habitable planets. Tiny and small maps push civs into contact very quickly, and the game won't last all that long (depending on what victory condition you're going for... conquest is faster than a tech or influence victory).

The larger maps lead to longer games, where you'll have a better chance of moving through most of the tech tree. So you can basically choose the type of game you want. It's nothing at all like X2 or X3 where your economic expansion and military power is locked into a non-adjustable timeline in a fixed universe. I'm dipping into GalCiv2 campaigns when I can find an hour or two of free time here and there, while also trying to finish a Sassanid campaign in RTW/BI, and also indulging my wife's obsession with WoW.

P.S. there is a scripted Dreadlord campaign, and I don't know how long that takes. I've been having too much fun just playing the sandbox game, gradually ramping up the map size and AI quality as I learn the mechanics.

Butcher

03-06-2006, 15:58

Regarding support, it is Published by Paradox, and there are patches out already (it wouldn't be a Paradox game without it! :D).

Game is one of the best I've played so far.

Fragony

03-06-2006, 18:25

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This game sounds awesome. Why do they do this to me? Is it for mac as well?

The_Doctor

03-06-2006, 19:39

It took my a few days, but I am now getting into it.

I like it so far.

frogbeastegg

03-06-2006, 20:01

:sighs in a resigned manner, and sets out to order a copy, muttering furiously all the while that she does not have time and really should ignore this!: But it sounds so good ...

Curse you all! Curse you!

Reverend Joe

03-06-2006, 20:39

Wow... this might be my first new game in a long time, not to mention how long it's been since I got a really good one. (Years.)

GoreBag

03-07-2006, 07:18

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This game sounds awesome. Why do they do this to me? Is it for mac as well?

I think there is a version for the Mac; I haven't checked, but I've seen posts in the forum about it.

Lemur, have you tried patching it? There have been two patches already, and they improve a few of the performance issues.

frogbeastegg

03-08-2006, 17:46

The Paradox version of the game (the one in shops in Europe) is a very nice production. I'm impressed. The DVD case is metal, yet still manages to be slimmer than a normal case. The manual is highly glossy, well bound, and actually mostly useful ... for a modern games manual. The tech tree does disappoint though, and lets down the package - it doesn't tell you what any of the techs do! Gah! Confused amphibian ahoy.

Installation, now there is another question entirely. Trouble. Not excessive trouble, but still enough to leave me cursing. It took so long for the installer to load I thought it had crashed or my CD was a dud; Windows itself reported the program as not responding. Good thing I come from the "Gah! If it doesn't work the first two times, and if it keeps on crashing, just try again with liberal inventive cursing and leave the PC alone for five minutes to see if it decides to cooperate!" school of computing. Or I'd have taken it back to the shop for a new copy.

A tip for anyone else getting the Paradox edition: The CD key on the back of the manual is not the only key you need. You have to go here (http://www.galciv2.com/paradox/index.aspx?c=1), bung in your key to receive another one. This is the one you need to install and use the Stardock direct thingy and/or get patches and updates. Confusingly both are referred to as your serial number. I gather there was a slight mess up when creating the first CD keys for the Paradox version and that this is a workaround solution. :grumble:

Game finally installed and a good half hour of trying to navigate the serial number/patch/update/stardock/GAH! swamp and I booted the game up.

Like the music, very tasteful. All else follows that - the bad beginning has certainly not been followed by a poor game. I've hardly done a thing with it, yet I can see so many things I want to try. I watched the tutorials (I think I have some new ones to watch from the downloaded update ...) and they were educational, better than civ 4's at any rate. Even if they were non-interactive and still left me without a real feel for what to do at the start of my first game. No, what they did - and did well - was show me the many things I might like to do.

There are so many options! I'm impressed.

This bit from the manual I think deserves quoting:
(From the section on difficulty levels, bold is my emphasis)
Fool: AI's economy runs at 10% of normal. No higher algorithms enabled.
Beginner: AI's economy runs at 25% of normal. No higher algorithms enabled.
Sub-normal: AI's economy runs at 50% of normal. No higher algorithms enabled.
Normal: AI's economy runs at 75% of normal. AI evaluates common human tactics.
Bright: AI's economy runs at 100% of normal. Evaluates most human tactics.
Intelligent: AI's economy runs at 100% of normal. AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered.
Genius: AI's economy runs at 125% of normal. All higher algorithms in place (same as above)
Incredible: AI's economy runs at 200% of normal. All higher algorithms in place.

From what I hear of the AI it works damned well too. I wonder if it will be updated to reflect what players do? Hope so.

What do people like to do at the start of a new game? I've played all of 40 minutes this morning, and I wonder if I ignored the military side a bit too much. I didn't really know where to research first for best result, except the translator so I could understand the aliens. There are so many techs you have to research before you even get your first weapons and defences, and then there are the three different types of each. Military research looks as though it will take up a very good proportion of the research part of the game.

Away from research I scouted, found a galaxy full of class 0 planets and a small handful of class 4 -10 ones, the closer ones of which I colonised. Did a bit of tech trading. Built a couple of space stations on special resources. Built my planets up a bit, trying to keep things even between cash/research/production instead of specialised. I had created my first trade route when I had to quit to go to work.

Vladimir

03-08-2006, 22:15

Froggy's guides are always a pleasure to read. I might get this game after all.

Kraxis

03-09-2006, 02:22

Since it doesn't cost you to demolish structures I would say that it is good to build structures, then when better ones pop up you can get those going.

TinCow

03-09-2006, 02:45

The only three things that have seemed important to me at the beginning:

Immediately buy a factory on every new planet with no buildings and then start building another. That will get your production going.

Spam colonization ships like it's going out of style. You want to grab as many planets as you can as fast as you can.

Nab as many of the anomolies as possible. They're essentially GC2's version of Civ goodie huts.

GoreBag

03-09-2006, 02:46

At the beginning of the game, my best advice is not to use all of the slots on your planets right away. That's your permanent number of building slots, and you will want to build other things later. For the beginning you ought not to need more than two or three slots used up on your home planet. But once you get trade routes going, and an economic capital, you can afford to start seriously packing in the factories and research buildings.

No, they're not the permanent number of slots. As Kraxis mentioned, any building can be 'upgraded' to any other building at no additional cost (beyond the money you're pumping into social production), and additional will appear on most planets after certain technologies (Soil Enhancement, Habitat Improvement and Terraforming) have been researched and implemented.

Also, certain...things can lower a planet's quality rating, lowering the number of available 'slots'.

GoreBag

03-09-2006, 03:03

Now your just nitpicking. Yellow an Orange slots are still slots. You can never incrase the total number of slots.

They're not available upon to build improvements in the early game, so your point is moot.

TinCow

03-09-2006, 03:14

Is it ever possible to colonize a class 0 planet?

GoreBag

03-09-2006, 03:19

Is it ever possible to colonize a class 0 planet?

No. However, some events can take place which will change a class 0 planet to another class (usually higher than 10, in my experience), but these events are outside the player's control.

Bob the Insane

03-09-2006, 03:27

Beware building too many factories or your manufacturing capacity will rapidly outpace your economy and you production will have to slow to a snail's pace before you go totally broke.

I will build a factory on most worlds as speeds the building of everything else, but I will pick one (or more depending on the size of the galazy) promising planet to be the production center and built a lot of economic and research improvements elsewhere. Meanwhile I will spam ships out of my production planet...

I have beaten the game on Sub-normal and Normal so far, but Intelligent kicked my arse... :D

Xiahou

03-09-2006, 03:27

What do people like to do at the start of a new game? I've played all of 40 minutes this morning, and I wonder if I ignored the military side a bit too much. I didn't really know where to research first for best result, except the translator so I could understand the aliens. There are so many techs you have to research before you even get your first weapons and defences, and then there are the three different types of each. Military research looks as though it will take up a very good proportion of the research part of the game.
For me, and probably everyone else, the opening game is a mad scramble to colonize as many decent or better quality planets that you can find. I usually peg my spending rate as high as possible (usually even running a deficit week to week) and pour everything into military and research spending, shutting down social entirely at first. Depending on the situation (ie: having more colony ships than decent planets that I can find), I'll also cut military spending pretty drastically and really try to get a jump on technology. I'll often try to hit the diplomacy branch first, so I can tradeup non-vital techs to other civs as advantageously as possible.

Once it looks like all the good planets are gone, I'll re-adjust my spending and resource allocation as the situation warrants and begin to start on planetary improvements.

GoreBag

03-09-2006, 03:50

I just shell out money on purchasing my ships directly. I'm usually too slow anyway, though, depending on the size of the galaxy and number of opponents.

Kraxis

03-09-2006, 14:07

I have found that the lousy Class 4-5 planets are in fact great traps. They are like speedbumps for the enemy.
In my most recent game the enemies attacked these planets (outlying) and I thus had a good chance of intercepting them. Of course they did make a commandorun at Mars (was Human), but my garrison there just managed to keep them out.

So I will settle any and all planets I can find. The lousy productionplanets (with three slots besides the capital) I build 1 factory at, then research. That should provide me with some well needed research, and the ability to upgrade those buildings when needed. At some point I remove the factory and put another research building there.

Butcher

03-09-2006, 14:13

In my current game, I have been lucky to come across two class 24 planets, one's a reaserch behemoth and the other builds ships quicker than a very quick thing that's just won a being quick contest.

Kraxis

03-09-2006, 14:55

In my current game, I have been lucky to come across two class 24 planets, one's a reaserch behemoth and the other builds ships quicker than a very quick thing that's just won a being quick contest.
Lucky... LUCKY YOU! My best is a couple of class 12 world next to each other with lots of specialities (700% manufacturing bonus on one and 400% research on the other).

By th way, the manual doesn't say: Do those bonusses apply to the entire world? Or just the building placed in the plot?

Zenicetus

03-09-2006, 20:00

Bonuses only apply to that one building on the bonus slot, it's not a planet-wide effect.

I found one lvl 26 planet in my current Large map/Normal AI game, and I made a mad rush to colonize it. Just one bonus slot, on research. I'm a little worried though, 'cause it's on the outer edge of the empire on a spur of otherwise barren systems. So I parked a couple of early production fighters in orbit to discourage a quick takeover, while my population was still low.

Don't wait TOO long to get at least a token military presence, even if it's just some weak fighters here and there, parked around your border planets. If you turtle and go pure economic/research with no military, you're setting yourself up as a juicy target. The major civs basically go after whoever looks the weakest militarily, when they go into expansion mode after the initial colony rush. If you more-or-less match their military buildup, you get treated with respect and they leave you alone (for a while, anyway). Trade routes will help reduce aggression, and to a certain extent you can hold off threats with bribes, or distracting an aggressive civ by supporting its neighbors. But I wouldn't rely on that alone, without any military, until you get really good at playing the diplomatic side. I'm still learning how to do that.

The_Doctor

03-09-2006, 21:34

Have any of you made any cool looking starships?

If so post images of them.

My ship look pretty bad.:help:

phred

03-09-2006, 22:05

Check out the Gal Civ main forums for some good ones

http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?ForumID=162&AID=104951
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=346&AID=103958

Kraxis

03-09-2006, 23:50

Have any of you made any cool looking starships?

If so post images of them.

My ship look pretty bad.:help:
Mine all end up looking like some kind of overdressed fighters. Though a few of them have been rather cool (lasers are ugly btw, missiles are way cooler).

Zinecetus, but such planets normally support huge populations, which will mean you get a massive denfesive force. That alone should protect the planet for some time.

Btw, how do you deal with the minor races?
I have found them to be great tradingpartners, both with traderoutes and tech. I have no trouble with selling all my techs to them if they have the money. It isn't as if they can do much harm to me, and they are a kind of safe fallback in times of war. And if you have been nice to them, they might even support you with money and weapons in wars (or be your allies).

Conquering them just doesn't seem to be worth it.

Nikpalj

03-10-2006, 09:36

Having played through MoO 2 and Birth of the Federation I intend to try this out cause I like what I've seen so far.

The problem is that I've got a PIII 1000, 128mb, GeForce 2 32mb (enough for MTW...) and I'm not sure if It'll run. I've seen the min specs and it says that it's 256mb. Can anyone confirm if it would boot up on a 128mb machine? I've tried out the,say, Dawn of War demo and it didn't work on less then 256, period.

Can you scale down the graphics in-game etc, I really don't care if it looks great (I still remember MoO 2)?

AggonyDuck

03-10-2006, 11:39

Well it ran decently on my system, which isn't that great, until I designed my Leviathan-super dreadnought class spaceship. It was a bit too big lol and it kinda lagged up the whole game..:oops:

Butcher

03-10-2006, 11:48

It runs fine on my X850 ~:thumb:

Lehesu

03-10-2006, 17:03

AggonyDuck

03-10-2006, 17:44

The game sure is challenging. I'm currently playing the campaign and I've first finished two missions, but in both missions I managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

In the first mission I was down to one planet and 3 Vanguard-class frigates, but I managed to recapture one of my planets and stole plasma weaponry from the Drengins.:sweatdrop:
After that I started massproducing my Vanguard Mk II's and the tide turned and within short I had tipped the scales decisively in my favour.

Well the second mission wasn't perhaps as close in the sense that I was never really lost a planet, but I was truly getting my arse kicked due to having a lot lower military production. At worst I was down to 4 Arrow-class Heavy Fighters and although they were experienced it's still a bit too few to protect 3 planets at once.

Anyways what was surprising was that after the Drengins figured they had gotten military superiority they stopped churning out fighters and instead built a lot of transports with not many escorting fighters with them.
So I fought hard to intercept the enemy Transports with my extremely slow Arrow-class fighters and luckily I managed to intercept about 85% of them.
Also the Drengins kept trying to destroy my three extremely well protected starbases, which meant the end for a lot of fighters.

Anyways I continued churning out my Arrow-class fighters which ship for ship outclassed the Drengin ships and also brought in a new fighter class called the Barracuda that in essence was a fast and cheap scout fighter with limited weaponry. I could churn them out in a rather good rate and I used them to hunt unprotected Transports and starbases. They were extremely successful in this role and eventually I could start a massing a small taskforce of heavy fighters and transports. Due to the heavy losses that the Drengins were suffering off I eventually managed to gain space superiority for a while and I used this lull in hostilities to capture one of their planets.

I captured it with relative ease after three assaults and after that I split my Arrow heavy fighters in two taskforces and sent them to initiate a blockade of the two remaining Drengin planets. Due to the fact, that I managed to blockade the Drengin planets while their fleets were annihilated, I could destroy every new spaceship they created peacemeal and thus keep my superiority in space. :2thumbsup:

As you might guess I'm having great fun and getting a great challenge from the game. It's almost as if the AI learns, because it started to equip it's transports with shields after the losses caused by my Barracudas.
The one defiency that I can detect in the AI, is that once it believes to have destroyed my fleets in space it stops protecting it's troop transports with proper amounts of fighters. Instead it sends in lone transports and some weak escorts, that just make for good gunnery practice for my heavy fighters. At the end second mission I still had two of my experienced
Arrow-Heavy Fighters left and they were equals to Frigates in combat power, if not even better.

Anyways it's a wonderful game, if you can look past the occasional CTD..:2thumbsup:

phred

03-10-2006, 20:05

I'm currently playing the campaign and I've first finished two missions, but in both missions I managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Sounds like a fun campaign.
What difficulty level are you playing?

TinCow

03-11-2006, 00:23

Is there any way to capture starbases or at least preserve the resource that they are on? I

frogbeastegg

03-11-2006, 19:16

I played a little while eating my breakfast this morning. Wow! Two whole play sessions in one week! 1 1/2 hours total! I’m excelling myself! :cough: Anyway, returning to things people actually care about, I'm having some thoughts about the economy and the economy improvement buildings. I'm not sure if I am right, wrong, or something in-between - I just haven't played for long enough, and most of the games concepts remain very sketchy to me.

Ok. Planet A has 10 manufacturing points(or whatever they call them) total. This means it can put out 10 MP per turn if spending is set too 100% and then the military (and social, I think. It splits MP between both categories? Need to read that manual again ...) subcategory is set to 100%. Otherwise it does a portion of that based on total spending and the smaller percentage.

Right. Fine. Slightly odd, but it will work. Even if I’m wrong about which sliders need to be where it doesn’t matter for this.

Then you build a basic factory. This adds 8MP, for a total of 18MP. Here is my problem - that 8MP is not an always present bonus as in other games. It needs to be activated in the same way as those base 10 points. It is a raised limit, not a boosted base.

Therefore it costs more to run the same settings (say 70% spending with 50% to military) with the factory than without. The planet can put out more MP per turn, and reach a higher potential MP limit, but it costs more. Not a problem if you have a good economy, but potentially disastrous with a small one.

So perhaps building factories at the start is not a good idea? Seems like one or two maybe, but then there's not the money to really use them ... in my extremely limited experience.

Still not sure about the other structures. The economy boosters, the influence boosters, morale boosters, and all that. Hardly had chance to even look at the blurbs for them, and there are loads I haven't even seen mentioned yet.

How does the research increase building work? Same way as factories? Or does it give a base increase, like the first economy one does (can't remember the name, but it gives a 10% bonus to income).

Anyone want to tell a frog what the economic space station can do? I understand the principle and so on, but haven't had chance to do more than build a basic one with no modules at all. What kind of modules can you put on it asides from attack and defence, what effects do they have, and what techs give them? I hear these stations can somehow give a boost to nearby planet's manufacturing capabilities. Ditto influence stations; I haven’t even managed to build a basic shell of one yet. I guess military is just what you would expect from the name – a gun platform.

Crandaeolon

03-11-2006, 21:43

You got the basic idea right. Factories and Research stations increase the caps for "basic" production. Basic production is then modified by the various other bonuses such as inherent civilization bonus, tile-specific bonuses, starbases etc.

Credits are used to fund the whole thing. Each production and research unit (after modification, i understand) costs 1 bc to utilize, up to your civilization's max production capacity. The amount of credits is divided proportionally to each planet, up to the maximum percentage set in the industrial capacity slider and modified by the military/social/research slider.

It splits MP between both categories?

Yup. Or more accurately, divides MP between military / social as set in the spending slider.

Then you build a basic factory. This adds 8MP, for a total of 18MP. Here is my problem - that 8MP is not an always present bonus as in other games. It needs to be activated in the same way as those base 10 points. It is a raised limit, not a boosted base.

Correct.

Therefore it costs more to run the same settings (say 70% spending with 50% to military) with the factory than without. The planet can put out more MP per turn, and reach a higher potential MP limit, but it costs more. Not a problem if you have a good economy, but potentially disastrous with a small one.

Yup. A strong economy is pretty much a necessity, since everything costs money.

So perhaps building factories at the start is not a good idea?

Well. You'll need that production to get those improvements done in _this_ century. ~;p It's also a good idea to burn the cash reserves on colony ships and scouts early on, or you'll miss the initial rush for colonies. And _that_ is gonna hurt.

How does the research increase building work? Same way as factories?

Research buildings produce tp (technology points) the same way as factories. What I don't understand is that why the technology and manufacturing fundings are interconnected? Technology and industrial production aren't dependant on each other, since factories produce manufacturing points and research buildings research points. So, why the hell must you decide a balance between them? Why can't I run both industry and research at 100%?

Anyone want to tell a frog what the economic space station can do?

Economic space station modules can boost the military, social and research point caps of planets in range, or increase revenues from trade routes that go through the area affected by the space station.

EDIT: I'm not really sure of all the factors. The numbers don't seem to add up. It could be that space stations and manufacturing/research resources boost the end result, after money is spent. Grr. Gotta hate poor documentation and shady mechanics like this.

Military stations can boost the abilities of allied ships in their range by a huge margin. They also possess some pretty impressive offensive and defensive abilities. They're basically "zone defense."

I'm not really sure about influence stations. They do boost influence, yes, but the mechanics elude me so far.

Edit2: copy-paste mishaps. :p

Zenicetus

03-11-2006, 22:24

Research buildings produce tp (technology points) the same way as factories. What I don't understand is that why the technology and manufacturing fundings are interconnected? Technology and industrial production aren't dependant on each other, since factories produce manufacturing points and research buildings research points. So, why the hell must you decide a balance between them? Why can't I run both industry and research at 100%?

Here's how I understand it. The spending slider is the throttle on your total industrial capacity. It controls how "hot" you're running your industrial output (including research). The sliders for military (ship building), social (planetary improvements) and research, divide up your focus. If you're in a research crunch and need to get a new tech fast, you ramp down your ship building and planetary improvements to put a focus on research instead. Call it more salaries being paid, more supplies being purchased, more people working, whatever. You can't have 100% of your potential industrial capacity going to research, and also have 100% of your potential industrial capacity going into making planetary improvements at the same time.

One thing it took me a while to wrap my head around, is the way industrial capacity is disconnected from income, which means you can run a defecit economy with more industrial output than you can "afford," as long as you have the cash reserves to dip into. There is a lower limit on that... $500bc I think, and you have to be careful about unrest because it causes a drop in approval when you're running a defecit economy. I often do it in the early colony rush, to support ship building, and to get an early espionage effort rolling. I usually don't climb out of the hole and get a net positive economy going until I have all my initial colonies settled. I sell tech like mad to the minors, to help fund the defecit economy when I need to. It contributes to unrest though, so you have to be careful not to run it too low. This may not be the best strategy, but it works for me.

Also, note that military production (ability to make ships) is "banked" and isn't a drag on your economy if you're not using it. You'll see the points in parenthesis on each planet, when it isn't being used. Social production (ability to make buildings) isn't banked, and it's wasted if you're not actually building anything on a planet. That's not necessarily bad... it's just a game balance decision the devs made. So be careful about setting more social production than you actually need.

Crandaeolon

03-11-2006, 22:45

You can't have 100% of your potential industrial capacity going to research, and also have 100% of your potential industrial capacity going into making planetary improvements at the same time.

But... industrial capacity is not research capacity. Factories produce MP = industrial capacity. Research buildings produce TP = research. You don't need MP to produce research points, therefore the fundings for each shouldn't be connected.

The amount of people on the planet has no effect on either industrial or research capacity: industry runs at the same efficiency whether there are 0.1 or 10 billion people on the planet. The capacity is entirely dependant on the amount of factories/research centers; population only affects taxes.

My point is this: Suppose i have the sliders set at 33% each. Each planet uses 33%(military) + 33%(social) = 66% of its industrial capacity, and only 33% of its research capacity. Since both require different structures that produce different things (MP vs TP) and population doesn't affect anything, what's the deal with connecting them? The planet could have 20 billion people and I might have 100,000 billion credits in the treasury, yet there's no way to get research running at full efficiency without shutting down industry.

Social production (ability to make buildings) isn't banked, and it's wasted if you're not actually building anything on a planet.

I'm inclined to believe that this is a bug. It's certainly not logical, and it's contrary to what the manual states. Page 29:

"Social Production, represented by hammers, is spent on projects. If you have no projects queued, the number above the hammers will be in parenthesis. In this case, the hammers are not drawing bc from your treasury."

Seriously, there's a lot of illogical, counterintuitive and poorly documented stuff in the game. The release version was also quite full of bugs; thankfully most of them are squashed now.

Crandaeolon

03-11-2006, 22:55

Espionage is also rather stupid. Once you get full access to a civilization, you'll keep stealing technologies even if you don't spend a dime in funding. It's like buying a one-time ticket to their research databases! :laugh4: Access levels should at least degrade, it's quite retarded like this.

Spino

03-11-2006, 23:05

I bought GalCiv2 last Wednesday and it has occupied all of my free time. It makes an amazing first impression and quickly sinks its claws in you until real life responsibilities somehow manage to tear you away from it. No small feat since World of Warcraft has virtually monopolized my gaming time since I bought it last August. Suddenly the travails of a level 60 gnome warlock seem to pale in comparison to carving out a slice of the galaxy for my people as they reach for the stars...

I haven't had this much fun with an Explore/Expand/Exploit & Exterminate game since I played the original Civilization and Masters of Orion games on my old Amiga 500! Medieval Total War comes close but that was primarily due to the tactical battles instead of its strategic gameplay which was somewhat lacking. Virtually everything about GC2 is slick and well done, this is especially surprising given the size of the developer and its limited resources. GC2 may not be state of the art in terms of visuals & sound but it has it where it counts and that's what keeps me coming back for more. The best part about GC2 is the AI which is astoundingly good. The AI is so good that I've been forced to abandon all those sloppy habits I developed playing Rome and other strategy titles with lackluster AI. Not only do you have to pay attention to what your opponents are doing but formulating a long term strategy is absolutely essential to victory.

Any developer who decries the difficulty of producing a challenging, let alone competent AI opponent (and one that does NOT cheat) ought to pick up a copy of GalCiv2 and prepare to be schooled. Stardock is a small company with decidedly limited resources and yet GC2 seems to have the most depth and challenge of any strategy game I've ever played. to keep you coming back for more over a very long period of time.

More good news is GalCiv2 is doing extremely well in terms of sales. Stardock's head developer recently published a comparison of both GalCiv games on the official forums and dropped some sales figures in for good measure...

http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=106589

The game did reasonably well selling approximately 150,000 units worldwide. 70,000 or so in North America retail (I don't have the exact number), nearly that # overseas plus electronic. At the time of this writing, GalCiv II in its first 10 days have exceeded that North American # and by the end of the month may exceed the # of units sold electronically. We will be looking into what precisely caused such a huge difference in sales and report the findings. But so far -- word of mouth is king. Simply put, people seem to like GalCiv II and tell their friends.
Looks like we'll be seeing alot more from this little company in the years to come. :2thumbsup:

P.S. Tip of the day... make exploring and colonizing the sectors around your homeworld as quickly as you can your top priority. The developers have admitted that the AI receives one 'unfair' advantage over the human player; it knows where ALL the planets are at the beginning of a game. Since the AI doesn't have to waste time or resources finding those colonizable planets it means every turn counts! Build as many colony ships as quickly as you can and get them to those habitable planets ASAP!

Spino

03-11-2006, 23:07

Zenicetus

03-11-2006, 23:43

But... industrial capacity is not research capacity. Factories produce MP = industrial capacity. Research buildings produce TP = research. You don't need MP to produce research points, therefore the fundings for each shouldn't be connected.

Well, we can argue whether it *should* be connected or not, but that's the way the current game is designed. Research is tossed into the same bag as the others, and it's all considered "industrial capacity." Actually that makes some sense to me, because most important research even now is done on an industrial scale, and has been ever since the Palomar telescope and the Manhattan project.

I'm inclined to believe that this is a bug. It's certainly not logical, and it's contrary to what the manual states. Page 29:

"Social Production, represented by hammers, is spent on projects. If you have no projects queued, the number above the hammers will be in parenthesis. In this case, the hammers are not drawing bc from your treasury."

The devs have said in the official forum that the manual is wrong. They tested having social production banked instead of spent, but didn't like the way it affected game balance, and took it out of the final release.

FWIW, one of the devs just posted a message saying they might reconsider that... like maybe having unspent social production converted to credits in your treasury. But it's not certain. He also said "the AI would love it"... which makes me wonder if it's really a good idea.

Seriously, there's a lot of illogical, counterintuitive and poorly documented stuff in the game. The release version was also quite full of bugs; thankfully most of them are squashed now.

I agree, the game could be better documented. Some of this is obviously the devs being very close to the game and understanding it completely, and they don't see that some of it is not very intuitive or well-explained.

Overall though, I don't have too many complaints. There are only three big things that bother me right now, and none are deal-breakers. The first is the way the AI's trade tech like crazy... which forces you to keep up, and it also "normalizes" the tech too much (e.g. not enough variation between races' capabilities). Second, the micromanagement involved with upgrading starbases. Pumping out a steady stream of constructors gets tiring. And finally the surrender mechanics... the way a faction you have on the ropes, will suddenly surrender to another faction instead of collapshing or surrendering to the player. I understand why they did that.... to make it more challenging and harder to steamroller the map, once you get some momentum going. But sometimes it can cause huge shifts in power balance. It can feel like a game you've played well, with good strategy, has been wiped out by a random dice toss.

But I'm still enjoying it.

doc_bean

03-12-2006, 00:04

I haven't gotten the game yet, I'm still waiting for the demo. But I'm loving the developers and the Galciv2 homepage, especially when they quote the bad parts of the reviews and then say the reviewer is right, or when they tell people who aren't sure whether or not to buy the game to just wait for the demo instead of trying to sell them the game :laugh4:

But the latest episode is just disturbing :

For example, we were quite disturbed to discover that the company that makes Starforce provided a working URL to a list of pirated GalCiv II torrents. I'm not sure whether what they did was illegal or not, but it's troubling nevertheless and was totally unnecessary.

I hope whoever posted the link gets thrown in jail for inciting theft (possibly handling stolen good ?) :furious3:

Crandaeolon

03-12-2006, 00:45

Well, we can argue whether it *should* be connected or not, but that's the way the current game is designed.

Hehe, I'd actually argue that they should indeed be connected so that you need MP points (produced by factories) to fund research. Maybe also a penalty to funds that aren't produced domestically. That would encourage to build more balanced worlds instead of the one-dimensional research/industrial/economical behemoths that are most optimal now.

FWIW, one of the devs just posted a message saying they might reconsider that... like maybe having unspent social production converted to credits in your treasury. But it's not certain. He also said "the AI would love it"... which makes me wonder if it's really a good idea.

Yeah, probably not. AI already has a distinct advantage because it can manage spending on a per-turn basis (most human players probably won't bother), and calculate leases with high precision.

Overall though, I don't have too many complaints.

Me neither, the good stuff easily outweighs the minor niggles. I don't mind the surrender mechanic too much - it can be turned to the advantage of the player as well, and I like fighting proxy wars. It's great that the AI knows how to fight proxy wars as well. ~D

My pet peeve is the much-touted tactical battle display and ship design; they're mostly cosmetic. Everything is based on the same die rolls, and things like positioning or initiative (in the tactical sense) have no effect. Ships always take damage one at a time, and combatants just float around pointlessly. Why bother to do something like that, if there's no point to it?

And ship design. I don't know what others think, but for me ship design should be about fiddling with fun, interesting and varied gadgets, not dull incremental upgrades to size or damage. I can partially understand the design decisions behind that; it's to prevent exploits against the AI. But... accommodating the AI at the expense of the human player ceases to be fun at some point.

For good examples of tactical battles that don't allow direct player control, one could take a look at Space Empires IV or even Dominions 2. Great PBEM games both, by the way. ~;)

Xiahou

03-12-2006, 00:52

But... industrial capacity is not research capacity. Factories produce MP = industrial capacity. Research buildings produce TP = research. You don't need MP to produce research points, therefore the fundings for each shouldn't be connected.Its not that confusing to me, I just think you're looking at it wrong. It's all about funding- your sliders for military, social, and research only control how big a slice of the total funding pie you get, while the size of the pie is determined by your spending slider.

You're not taking MPs and exchanging them for TPs, you're just taking funds from one category and diverting them to another. It doesnt matter how man MPs you can produce if they arent getting funded.

Crandaeolon

03-12-2006, 03:44

ts not that confusing to me, I just think you're looking at it wrong. It's all about funding- your sliders for military, social, and research only control how big a slice of the total funding pie you get, while the size of the pie is determined by your spending slider.

I'm not confused at all, I'm just wondering about the voodoo numbers and the odd way of doing things. :laugh4:

It's pretty easy to check for yourself. Start a new game with a custom race, who doesn't get either production or research bonus. Then look at main colony building (24 MP and 24 TP) and fiddle with the sliders. At 100% output and 50/50% social/research, it's a predictable 12 social MP and 12 research produced, total expenditure of 24 bc.

Now, let's build four basic labs (5 TP each) and have another look at the stats. Social production for the colony is still at 12 MP (50% of total industry capacity), and research is at 22 TP (50% of total research capacity), for a total of 34 bc spent.

Now, let's put 100% of funding to social. We get 24 MP of social production, expenditure 24 bc. Another tweak of the slider to 100% research - 44 TP produced, with an expenditure of 44 bc. WTH, the available money and manpower suddenly almost doubled?

The spending slider sets an upper limit for the production capability that gets utilized, while the military/social/research sliders set how large a percentage of a colony's production (capped by the spending slider) in a given area is used. There is no pie - the system doesn't care one bit about how much money is available, only how much the colony can potentially produce.

What I don't like is that even with a practically unlimited economy, my research colony's research works at 30% of maximum capacity because of some weird need to make a "universal" spending policy for a huge galactic empire! Not one imperial advisor ever thought that planets might not be balanced, but instead optimised for a specific purpose? Thank goodness for the ability to focus on a specific area, otherwise I'd long gone mad at the stupidity of the system. I understand it's meant to be abstract, but still... the developers obviously understand the necessity for finer control, hence the focus buttons. Why not go all the way and disconnect the sliders and make it possible to adjust each colony separately? :dizzy2:

And don't even get me started on influence mechanics. :laugh4:

Xiahou

03-12-2006, 05:31

I still dont follow you... Let's keep with the 1 planet example. The spending slider would indicate how much of the planet's total industrial capacity you're going to devote- ideally, 100%. From there, you get to determine where this capacity is allocated social, military, or research. You seem to be saying that research should come from a different pool of resources than social and military production? I dont understand why- if you're going to devote 100% of capacity to research you cant also throw 100% of your resources into military production because some of the capacity is devoted to research.

Now, let's put 100% of funding to social. We get 24 MP of social production, expenditure 24 bc. Another tweak of the slider to 100% research - 44 TP produced, with an expenditure of 44 bc. WTH, the available money and manpower suddenly almost doubled?

We're talking about very abstract things being expressed in a fairly simplistic manner. The total capacity is more than just money, it'd include labor, natural resources, power, ect. You shouldnt think of a 'research facility' a literally just a research facility, but rather a buildup of infrastructure to allow for greater research capacity.

What I don't like is that even with a practically unlimited economy, my research colony's research works at 30% of maximum capacity because of some weird need to make a "universal" spending policy for a huge galactic empire! Not one imperial advisor ever thought that planets might not be balanced, but instead optimised for a specific purpose? Thank goodness for the ability to focus on a specific area, otherwise I'd long gone mad at the stupidity of the system. I understand it's meant to be abstract, but still... the developers obviously understand the necessity for finer control, hence the focus buttons. Why not go all the way and disconnect the sliders and make it possible to adjust each colony separately?Yeah, I can see where some might have wanted that, but to me it'd be a headache in huge galaxies- I'd rather control it from one point. But, I suspect the real reason it wasnt done was because it would've made the AI design more complex by several orders of magnitude if it had to constantly tweak sliders on every single planet. :wink:

Crandaeolon

03-12-2006, 13:15

I still dont follow you... Let's keep with the 1 planet example... ...We're talking about very abstract things being expressed in a fairly simplistic manner.

Yep, it's abstracted. I also suspect that it's a balance mechanic to keep things equal between AI and human. Still, it could be done in a less hamhanded manner. The system works fine for a small number of balanced planets, but when optimised worlds come into play it gets a little wonky.

I suppose there could be a plenty of excuses for the abstraction - availability of domestic funds and resources, manpower, relation between private and government sector, logistics of an intergalactic empire etc. But they're just that, excuses. In reality it's only a mechanic that someone made up, and has little or no connection to real-world (or even made-up ~;p) economics.

ou seem to be saying that research should come from a different pool of resources than social and military production?

It would be logical, since factories produce MP for military and social, and research buildings produce TP for technology. The abstraction is just unnecessary, since it's a voodoo fudge factor. There are zillions of other games that do just fine without such heavy-handed abstractions.

I suspect the real reason it wasnt done was because it would've made the AI design more complex by several orders of magnitude if it had to constantly tweak sliders on every single planet.

That's most likely correct, a finer control would require the AI to specialise its worlds to be more competitive. Currently, specialising is one of the advantages that a human player has over AI - and it's "balanced" (read: crippled) by the imperial-wide production sliders that make specialising less effective.

I'm of the opinion that the AI takes too much spotlight in this game. The game is tailored to accommodate the AI, not the human player. Another evidence of this is the reluctance to make even remotely meaningful tactical battles. The devs have frequently stated that they do not want human players to "exploit" things. Another way to say this is that they want to limit human beings to the level of the AI, which is, by the way, an exercise in futility - in complex games like this there's always something to exploit.

Xiahou

03-12-2006, 18:29

Yep, it's abstracted. I also suspect that it's a balance mechanic to keep things equal between AI and human. Still, it could be done in a less hamhanded manner. The system works fine for a small number of balanced planets, but when optimised worlds come into play it gets a little wonky.
Yeah, but a specialized planet is still a specialized planet. If you're funding said category at 33%, it's still going to produce more points by being specialized- it's not like they're totally worthless. Also, I regularly move the sliders depending on what Im building from one extreme to the next- if I need ships I'll pump military and the planets that have high manufacturing will shove out ships every turn or two. Once I get as many as I need for the moment, I flip it back to research or whatever. Obviously, I do leave resources split 33/33/33 or some variation as well. But still, a manufacturing heavy planet will produce more quickly than one without factories.

It would be logical, since factories produce MP for military and social, and research buildings produce TP for technology. The abstraction is just unnecessary, since it's a voodoo fudge factor. There are zillions of other games that do just fine without such heavy-handed abstractions.I still disagree here. You can have all the factories you want, but they're not going to produce goods (MPs) if you're diverting resources into research programs (TPs).

For myself, Im glad it doesnt have tactical battles. I already skip almost every fleet battle as they take too long and I dont think they'd really fit the mood of the game, but that's just my opinion on it.

Crandaeolon

03-12-2006, 20:22

This would probably be high time to start winding down this particular discussion, and focus on something productive. ~;)

Agreed on specialisation - high-quality worlds that have natural bonuses to things are very important to develop in a specialised manner. In my current game I lucked out and found a planet with huge bonuses to research, so apart from the initial factories and other infrastructure to get things started I just loaded it up with research buildings and set focus on research, except when upgrading the labs. It's responsible for a good half of my total research, even though there are about 15 other planets in the empire.

Economy is very important. Critical, even. For the few first games it's highly advisable to pick a race with economic and morale bonuses (to allow higher taxes); it makes things so much easier. BTW, it appears that the "stock" races get a bit more leeway in ability picks (higher total than the custom race), and also a naturally higher logistics score. Some get unique abilities, such as 100% loyalty and 25% miniaturisation :jawdrop: for Yor.

The governments don't seem to function as advertised. They do not raise production caps as indicated in the in-game screens, but boost taxes as stated in the manual: Republic 15%, Democracy 25%, Federation 50%.

I haven't quite figured out the exact mechanics for influence, but proximity seems to be important when placing influence stations: the closer, the better. However, constructing an influence station in the sphere of influence of another race is an act of aggression, so it's useful to build an "initial" influence station first to boost your borders closer to the colony you want to affect and then build another station as close to the colony as possible.

For myself, Im glad it doesnt have tactical battles. I already skip almost every fleet battle...

Yep, me too. It's just that i'd rather not have these tactical battle displays at all, if they have no other functionality than being a marketing gimmick. Better tooltips, technology descriptions and such would be far more useful.

Crandaeolon

03-12-2006, 21:11

To be honest, this abstraction hasn't hindered or bothered me in the least. Talk about making a whole lot of hooey about nothing... ...I actually watch every battle, and enjoy it..

Alright, I guess I have gone too far playing devil's advocate. Apologies! ~:) It's just that truly good games like this tend to bring out the little niggles, and it's far more annoying because they stand out in an otherwise excellent game.

BTW, does anyone know of a place where I could get a list of all technologies and improvements that affect logistics?

BDC

03-12-2006, 21:26

Gah the forums there won't let me register...

AggonyDuck

03-13-2006, 00:11

Sounds like a fun campaign.
What difficulty level are you playing?

Challenging :2thumbsup:

Phatose

03-13-2006, 01:24

It's not MoO/MoO2 like in any real way, but it's not a bad game. I'd just prefer more depth on the tactical level.

Kind of fun to edit yourself in a race of space gods though.

Bob the Insane

03-13-2006, 10:56

I managed something a little odd last night, I actually had too good of a start...

I was playing a small game to demo to some friends (to make it extra embarrasing of course) and I spammed out the colony ships and lucked out finding habital worlds...

So successful was I that my empire was way larger than all the other races at the end of the colony race...

But, then it turned up that my colony maintainence now outstripped my lowly tax income so I was even loosing money with the production sliders set to zero... I got into debt bad and with no way to recover my aspiring empire bogged down in debt and civil unrest... I don't know if things would have been recoverable at some point but I was falling way behind the other races and the last straw was the Dregin declaring war on us while we had no military capability...

So game over...

A little warning for anyone else seeking to expand your boarders too quickly...

Bob the Insane

03-13-2006, 12:19

Also about 10 I think, what I remember was total maintainence reaching 109bc and enve with a 100% tax rate I could only raise around 108bc.

I used my initial cash reserve to spam out the colony ships and build up Earth...

So I would love to hear what you did...

Butcher

03-13-2006, 15:40

Don't forget, you can 'optimise' a planet by clicking the tag in the box where it gives you the relevany hammers, shields etc. This comes at some loss of military and social production of the planet, but what does that matter if the planet doesn't even have a starport...?

Zenicetus

03-13-2006, 21:00

I was playing a small game to demo to some friends (to make it extra embarrasing of course) and I spammed out the colony ships and lucked out finding habital worlds...

So successful was I that my empire was way larger than all the other races at the end of the colony race...

But, then it turned up that my colony maintainence now outstripped my lowly tax income so I was even loosing money with the production sliders set to zero... I got into debt bad and with no way to recover my aspiring empire bogged down in debt and civil unrest...

You can run a defecit during the colony rush, but it has to be supported by cash reserves so you don't get too deep in the hole. Buy ships, but don't finance them. Get some research going on the techs that are quickest to research, and try to find other races quickly, so you can start selling your techs for cash. The minor races are really good for this... they love to buy your tech, and in the early phase there isn't much that's strategic. So I just sell everything. That's one reason I spam sensor scouts as well as colony ships in the rush phase, so I can find trading partners quickly.

You can get a LOT of cash to help support a defecit (or near defecit) economy this way. It's about the only way to boost your income in that phase, since your population isn't giving you much tax income yet, and you won't be running freighter trade routes that early.

<edit> P.S. I just noticed you were running a 100% tax rate. That's way too high.... you can do the colony rush with 49% tax rate, which will help with the unrest problem. Going too deep into defecit spending will also cause unrest, but not as much as a high tax rate.

Bob the Insane

03-13-2006, 22:01

<edit> P.S. I just noticed you were running a 100% tax rate. That's way too high.... you can do the colony rush with 49% tax rate, which will help with the unrest problem. Going too deep into defecit spending will also cause unrest, but not as much as a high tax rate.

Thats is not something I normally do, it was just to show the point of how deeply I had gotten into the hole...

The point is taken though, try and sell stuff...

Only issue was the game I was playing was a real small one of Humans against the Drengin (kind of Federation vs the Klingons kind of thing) so there were no friendlies to trade with...

GoreBag

03-14-2006, 00:12

I would have stopped building ships (unused military production doesn't cost ou a cent) on most worlds. If I was still struggling, I would have begun focusing the production on worlds where there were no ships being built on military production to further reduce my spending (taking away from research and social production). A few economic buildings here and there (generally one on each world, if there's enough space) and then, just sit back and let your taxpaying population grow. It takes a while to level out, but I can usually manage 100% spending after everything gets going.

Ja'chyra

03-14-2006, 11:02

Ordered this off of play.com (along with another copy of RTW as I broke the first one:embarassed: ) and it should be here tomorrow, if it's not as good as you all say I'm afraid I'll have to sulk for quite a while as I am very poor this month.

Phatose

03-23-2006, 00:27

Strangely, I'm finding that a production world, focused on research and surrounded by starbases puts out much more research then a research oriented world. Much more, in fact. This normal?

Crandaeolon

03-23-2006, 03:32

I noticed that a manufacturing-oriented world can output a decent amount of research (more than should be theoretically possible, i think) by focusing on research, but an optimised research world (labs instead of factories, etc.) is still more effective. Maybe your research world has less benefit from starbases, low-quality labs, less racial bonuses or somesuch?

In any case, a new patch (1.1) should be available rather soon to fix a lot of the current bugs and oddities. It includes economics fixes and tweaks to the system, and better tooltips to explain where the numbers come from.

Butcher

03-23-2006, 13:24

And an optional banning of tech trading.

GoreBag

03-23-2006, 18:23

Banning of tech trading? That just seems silly.

Zenicetus

03-23-2006, 21:57

Frequent tech trading among the different AI factions has been one of the bigger player complaints over in the GalCiv2 forum. It can make it seem like your own research efforts have to compete against the pooled research of all the other factions at once, which is basically what's happening. Some players also felt that the AI's gave each other better deals than they were giving the player, but it's probably just the efficiency of the trading algorithms that make it seem that way.

The frequent trading also tends to normalize the tech in the galaxy, so after a while the different alien fations don't appear all that different from one another. I don't see that in every game, but I have seen games go that way when there aren't many wars limiting tech trading.

I never felt it was a huge problem, personally, but I may try a game or two with it switched off, just to see if it makes the aliens more distinct from each other. What's probably needed is some kind of halfway measure between full trades and no trading, like maybe making it harder to trade with a faction that's very far from your algnment or something. For now, as a quick fix, it was easier for the devs to just include an on/off switch in the setup screen.

GoreBag

03-24-2006, 06:19

I'd prefer that the algorithms be changed, or allow a new setting to gauge tech trading between races the same way most games gauge aggressiveness.

frogbeastegg

03-24-2006, 11:35

The more I play this game, the more I like it. The more I read about the updates and see their frequency, the more I like. The more I see of the developers, the more I like. The more I play without the usual copy protection, the more I like. The more I play with an AI which does not rely on cheats, the more I like. Really, this whole package is something quite special in today's gaming world. I find myself with a lot of respect for Stardock. A lot. A damned good game and a damned good company and frequent updates which contain so much they truly are updates and not patches.

Anyone reading this thread who does not own a copy should go and buy one right now. :yes:

I am really looking forward to 1.1 as there is some great stuff in there, and I want to see what the as yet unmentioned items are. And yet, the amazing thing is that at the same time I do not care how long it takes to arrive - I'm playing a stable, mostly bug-free, deep and challenging game right now. It has so many options and so many ways to play that I can see it being a long time before I feel the need to shake things up with changes. I've only scratched the surface! I haven't played against AIs above normal, or won a game, or lost a game, or even completed a game, or tried any galaxy sizes aside from tiny and normal, or been a military superpower conquering the galaxy, or tried a race other than the Terrans, or built a custom race, or designed half the ships I want to try, or used espionage much, or been played a diplomacy heavy game, or ...

:loveg:

Puzz3D

03-24-2006, 15:50

Anyone reading this thread who does not own a copy should go and buy one right now.
Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.

Crandaeolon

03-24-2006, 18:45

Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.

GC2 will probably be updated and fixed continuously, and will never be "finished" like big-budget titles. This is often the case with indie games. There will always be the next update that fixes bugs and adds new features.

Martok

03-25-2006, 05:32

Froggy, you sound like you're in love! ~;p

In all seriousness, though, I really dig GalCiv 2 as well. Not since Medieval Total War have I had this much fun and spent so many hours playing a game--and that's with it crashing every 10 turns or so! (My computer is desparately underpowered when it comes to memory and processing ability, so it isn't the game's fault for not running well.) It has quickly become my favorite PC game of all time, surpassing even Medieval itself--something I didn't think was possible. ~D

frogbeastegg

03-25-2006, 10:39

Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.
Do you want the idealistic answer, or the more practical ones?

The idealistic answer runs thusly:

Stardock are going against the flow of the industry with this game. They are doing something incredibly brave, very different, and they are doing it with a high quality product. No copy protection; a game which launched in far better shape than many big budget and name titles; and constant updates which address everything, from bugs to suggestions and additions. They deserve to be supported for that, and the better this game does the higher the chance of others taking notice and following their lead. I for one would love to see more companies doing this, rather than the usual 'messy 1.0 release, 2 incomplete patches which take months to appear, then game dropped and sequel announced' approach. Oh, and I love a game not demanding I keep the CD in the drive all the time! Love it.

The more practical ones:
This is not a release a la Paradox, the other company famous for patching and updating games long after release. The game you buy on the shelves is not missing features and so buggy it is nearly unplayable. You will not be waiting half a year or more before it gets to be sound. It is a damned fine release as it stands now. I've passed over games I wanted for being buggy, dropped others for the same reason, and waited so long between patches that I have lost interest. GalCiv2 doesn't need that.

I don't see the fuss over playing a game for the first time. If it's a complicated game it takes hours to find your feet and begin to understand it, so those first few hours are rather poor. If it's a simpler game then usually the best things start to appear some distance in. The first time playing any game is usually one of the less enjoyable play sessions for me.

As has already been said, this game is going to be updated for a very long time to come. It's the method of copy protection: updates, of high quality and containing content people want. You must have a legitimate CD key to get them, so pirate copies are stuck with 1.0. If you wait for it to be done then you will be waiting for potentially years. The content is approaching the more usual add-on territory, and much is by player request or suggestion. Stardock are listening to their players.

I also don't really think this game needs those updates. With the sole exception of the problems I had with the CD key during installation and the first update, this has been a very smooth experience for me. Which is more than I can say for most games I have played recently. No crashes, no slowdown, and I'm only spotting a few minor bugs. As an aside, the 1.1 beta is now available, and those bugs are fixed. By beta they do not mean the usual partly tested, potentially unstable programming. They mean a patch which contains all the fixes and features they have tested, but does not yet contain everything they wish to put in for the version number. You can see the 1.1 beta changelog here (http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=109552).

I feel that I am not going to play one GalCiv2. I'm going to play many editions of it. The future changes I've seen talked about will alter this game immensely. It's unlikely I am going to tire of this game in the same way I tired of Civ 4 and others. Why play just one game when I can play many flavours of it?

Heh, and another: The AI. It's got tougher with 1.1 beta, and it will continue to get harder. Which means it is improving alongside players. It's already a damned fine AI, and doesn't rely on cheating. Assuming the AI updates stop in a year and you pick up the game then, well then you get one AI only and when you have learned how to beat it that is that. Whereas those of us with the game have had a year of changing AIs to play. A year of potentially extended playtime; I don't know about others, but when I can win too easily I lose interest. I also don't like playing against cheat-heavy AIs, such as those on Civ4's higher levels.

Perhaps you want the price to drop? GalCiv2 is already cheaper than the standard new release, even with the edition you find in shops. The downloaded version is even cheaper. I doubt the price is going to drop for a long time, especially when you look at the sales figures; this game is topping the charts and doing better than was ever expected.

Actually, maybe I'll just ask this: why wait? Why pass over a fine game when the usual reasons for waiting (bugs, more bugs, missing features, potentially not very good, cost) do not apply?

Didn’t you see the little smitten geisha smiley, Martok? :winkg:

Seriously, this game took me completely by surprise. I hadn’t taken any notice of it until I had to read this thread. The setting is one I don’t care for (prefer classical and medieval). It’s by some company I have never heard of, and a sequel to a game I didn’t play. It’s being touted as a spiritual successor to another game I didn’t play (MOO2), and the game yet another I didn’t play (MOO3) should have been.

I don’t have time to play it. There are other things I want to be doing more than playing games. Yet I find myself cramming the game in to whatever time I can spare from those things, and occasionally pinching a half hour or so from them. I find myself plotting strategies and thinking about aspects of the game during quiet spells at work …

Crandaeolon

03-25-2006, 14:00

Anti-gushing code is kicking in, so please allow me to play Devil's Advocate again. ~:)

I don't quite agree with the "finished" status of the retail version of GC2 that many are proclaiming. Even 1.0X has some crash bugs (on my up-to-date, non-overclocked system GC2 crashes once in about 5-10 hours, which is far more than other games i've played recently), and update notes seem to indicate that retail had more. There's also at least one potentially gamebreaking bug (population / influence explosion when invading a planet with Information Warfare) which is rare, but devastating if it happens on smaller galaxies.

What I found far more annoying than crash bugs, however, is the haphazard manner in which information is presented to the player. I like to know how games work, and don't particularly enjoy second-guessing game fundamentals such as Influence mechanics or economics. Ships use a different amount of logistics points in the build screen and the galactic map. Governments list a bonus to production, but provide a bonus to taxation. It's more profitable to keep populations smallish and concentrate on trade centers, even though all documentation indicates otherwise. Race abilities list just about everything as a percentage (stuff like logistics, speed obviously are not) and don't work as advertised (most work at half the listed efficiency.) The list goes on.

Some (hopefully most) of that stuff is fixed and cleaned up in 1.1, but retail... well. Just one glance at the changelogs, let alone playing the game itself, should be enough to convince anyone that retail was far from a finished product.

Having a less than polished release version and then updating it constantly over the course of the game's lifetime is quite normal for small developers. I've always been a supporter of indie devs, and this appears to be a pretty normal product cycle in that field. Incorporating player suggestions is another thing that indies are good at, for both good and ill; sometimes indies don't manage to weed out the good suggestions out of the bad ones.

The stance against copy-protection isn't really particularly brave or unusual; it's just common sense, and it's been done before. Raven software, for example. Still, it's a very good thing to know that Stardock does have the common sense to ignore (often biased) marketing data.

OK, that's it for now. (I'm so going down in flames... sometimes it's just not smart to speak one's mind.) :bow:

BDC

03-25-2006, 15:08

I'm having issues getting the Stardock program for updates etc to work, says I have adware/a firewall blocking it. Even when everything is switched off. Very odd.

frogbeastegg

03-25-2006, 16:36

Crandaeolon, if I burned you to ash I'd only have to clean the floors again. :winkg:

Finished compared to the ideal, no. Finished compared to the PC games I've been playing and looking at for the last year or more, yes. Huh, but then the cynical frog in me would like to point out that most of those games has bigger budgets and were a worse mess in my experience, and took months to be patched. I'm also a survivor of three Paradox games, including the CK release. GalCiv2 has been perfectly stable for me, and I've not seen anything like that influence bug. Just the odd minor irritation. If I thought GalCiv2 sounded anything like the kind of release I've experienced with Paradox I wouldn't take any notice of it at all for a year or so. Believe me, I've had enough of waiting for my game to become playable. I've also had a stomach full of the 'delights' of issues like RTW's save/load, Stronghold 2's slowdown, Vampire: Bloodline's unfinished state, etc.

I wouldn't have classed this as an Indie game myself. Those, I was always under the belief, are tiny companies with rather simple games which are either released for free or for a couple of quid per download. For example Taleworlds and Mount and Blade. Stardock, Paradox, and the like are small companies. This is what makes the difference with the copy protection, along with the fact the game has a normal retail release in many countries. I can think of ... 2 other games I own which were released without a CD check, and one which had it added in a patch. This is out of a hundred or so from the last 5ish years. Of those 3, only 1 appeared in my local shop, and then it did so in very grudging and limited numbers. It was also a fairly ... erm, let's say cheap feeling release, and priced normally. Whereas here I've got a fancy metal box, glossy manual and tech tree, for £5 less than usual, and it was in a prominent place in the shop. None of those 3 games advertised the lack of a CD check; in fact it is a discouraged subject on their official forums.

I don't play FPS, and Raven make them, so ergo I don't take any notice of their products.

I also like to know the minute detail, the hows and the whys of my strategy games. The strange thing is, I feel I have a better idea of where things are coming from and what is happening in GalCiv 2 than I did in Civ 4. Civ 4 drove me crazy! Too much, and yet also not enough. :cough: But this is the fallout of being a dyslexic frog who has dodged much of the literacy related problems only to be blasted full in the face by the numeracy ones. I don't - can't - play by numbers, so I play by ... playing. ~:)

GoreBag

03-26-2006, 20:55

Just to butt in for a moment, most of the bugs which cause the game to crash are actually overheating graphics cards, I've read. I'm pretty sure this has been the case with me with just about every crash since the first patch.

professorspatula

03-26-2006, 23:28

I bought this last week. It's one of the most difficult games to get into. I think playing RTW for the past year and a half has made me soft, because in many respects GC2 is hardcore strategy and it feels like a baptism of fire everytime I start a campaign. It's virtually impossible to know what you're doing in the first few 'goes' as there's so many things and stats to consider and only a series of trials and errors will get you through. Your economy is non-exist for seemingly ages, and research initially is mostly random. And if you haven't expanded like a lunatic in the opening few turns, the AI will just nick all the habitable planets whilst you're still playing with your economy sliders. And then there's starbases to consider, another factor you'll be forgiven to completely misuse in the opening goes.

I eventually had to start the Dreadlords campaign which appears to be the only way to gradually get you adjusted to the game and its mechanics, despite some guide or review for the game suggesting you leave these missions until you know what you're doing. :inquisitive: After 4 missions I decided to start a new game with loads of different races present, thinking I'd got the hang of things, only to once again get frustrated at the speed of which things move initially. I find it tedious to be forced to have to rush-buy everything because you can't make any money for about 454 turns into the campaign. And if you research and build newer manufacturing plants, you lose even more money. Would make sense if production costs decreased per level of building instead of leading you further into debt.

The latest beta patch seems to be addressing certain issues, but players are apparently already complaining that rush colonisation is more important than ever. It's good to see the developers are really listening to their community though and working to fix things. Wouldn't it be nice if CA could take a leaf out of their book.

All in all, GC2 is a game with incredible scope, but one that I can't help but find needlessly tedious at times, or a bit unpolished. Once I get into it proper, I know I can kiss goodbye to a good chunk of my life for sure. Though to be honest, I think I'd prefer Master of Orion 2 with GC2's diplomacy. That would make for a great game.

Zenicetus

03-27-2006, 03:25

Don't be afraid to set taxes way up there (49% usually) for the duration of the colony rush, and it can sometimes help to send scouts out to find other races so you can sell them techs if you run out of money, although admittedly i've never had to do that.

I don't know if this is the best approach, but it works pretty well for me. I alternate between buying (and later building) colony ships and cheap/fast sensor ships in the colony rush phase. The sensor ships are cargo hulls with two engines and the other hardpoints loaded with sensors.

With sensor ships fanning out ahead of the colony ships, I can avoid a situation where the nearest star system has a class 8-10 planet that looks tempting, but there's a class 26 in the next system that I could have settled instead, if the colony ship just kept on going. I can leapfrog to the best planets, then fill in the closer ones at a slower rate... the ones that other races are less likely to reach before I get to them.

Fast sensor ships are also important for finding civs I can trade with. None of the early tech is strategically important, so I sell all my tech to whatever aliens I can find in that early phase of the game. After the initial colony rush, I park the sensor ships as a picket line to keep an eye on the local neighborhood.

We can bitch about the colony rush, but it's basically how the game is designed. If you don't do the "Gold Rush" thing, you lose. At least, I tend to lose at my current skill level. I've heard of people doing okay with just a few planets, while all the AI's had dozens, but I sure can't handle that yet.

Martok

03-27-2006, 09:19

Actually, 1.1 looks like it should nerf the "colony rush" somewhat, so that it's not so insane. Brad has significantly decreased the population growth rate, so you won't be able to just churn out colony ships and dump 500 million citizens in them every few turns. Now our homeworld will take a fair bit longer to recover its population after it's sent out a colony ship. In other words, if we keep sending out colony ships all the time, our homeworld will very quickly run out of people!

Personally, I'm glad of this change, as it should stop everyone (both humans and the AI) from making a mad rush for planets, and will help level the field a bit for those players that prefer to turtle more. It also just feels much more "realistic" as well, at least to me. It always seemed a little bizarre to watch my homeworld "regrow" 500 million people in the space of a month or so.... :inquisitive:

professorspatula

03-27-2006, 19:00

That is true, but then reading through comments on the patch, people discovered the new tax rate calculations mean you get far more tax per person on smaller populated worlds than on heavily populated ones. And looking at the beta patch thread, it seems they've stuffed up quite a few things. It's going to be one of those games were the quality and experience of the game changes with every patch it seems. They seem like the kind of company who stick through with things and not just give up after a couple of patches though.

frogbeastegg

03-27-2006, 19:49

I played my first few games on a tiny universe with abundant inhabitable planets, against 2 AIs on beginner level. This kept it manageable, as each faction only ended up with about 5 planets total, and the AI was not busily killing me from turn 3. Then I just played about. I found my feet much faster than I expected to, to be honest. Though I make no claims of mastery, or even of being good.

I set taxes up to about 49%, slam spending to 100% and split it 50/50 military/research. I begin by getting a few of the faster engine techs; I can usually get them within a couple of turns. Meanwhile I buy 1 factory for my homeworld, send my first colony ship to the nearby rubbishy planet and settle it. My mothership I send scouting. I buy a colony ship. End turn. That colony ship is sent to the nearest star, to scout out any habitable planets. When one is found, I settle. I keep on buying colony ships, but it does not take more than a few turns before I can build one in ~3, and so I build them instead.

When I find a world of class 10 or better, I buy a factory on it and build a starport )I put some funding into social at this point, usually 50/30/20 mil/soc/res) and focus the planet on social so it is constructed in a decent amount of time. Then I reset to the 50/50 spending and even focus. This world then starts building colony ships, or occasionally I will buy one if I want one in a hurry. When it's viable, I build a custom colony ship which is basically a colony module strapped to the biggest hull I can find and any spare space is plastered with engines until no space remains. That allows them to travel further faster, and generally the cost is not too much more, so build time is either the same or 1 turn more (depends on the engines available to me, mostly).

After a while it feels right to me to stop expanding. Then I put spending 40/30/30, and start building labs, factories, and the economic building which I forget the name of of my various worlds. I choose a function for a world: ship building, research, money mine, or other, and then build to suit. By this point I have better engines and sensors, as well as other techs, so I custom build a scout ship and send a few out to finish exploring. I put my mothership on auto-survey. I think it took about 40 turns to get to this phase in normal-sized universe game, and those 40 turns were very rapid.

And then .. well, it depends what I want to do and what the overall situation is.

That is for 1.0X. I thought I would finish my current game before trying the 1.1 beta. Which may have been a good plan. I was under the impression the patch was mostly tested, just incomplete because some of the desired ideas had not yet been coded or tested. Emphasis on "was". Humph!

Ironside

03-28-2006, 15:42

Must say that influence resources seems to be essential for an influence victory.

5 players on a small map, challenging. Didn't exactly have the best faction for influence (Torians) but did try for influence victory anyway.

Tried to influence one outlying colony for the Korx to get it into rebellion, so I was teaching like mad into the influence branch. Even 2 fully upgraded influence stations didn't help, instead it really pissed off the Korx.

As the Korx was at war with the Altarians at the same time, my troops could easily do what my influence had not. The ungrateful Korx did finally surrender to the Altarians and that gave my one colony by influence as the planet next to Korx (who had been taken by me) did eventually rebel.
Meanwhile, the Arceans decleared war on me for some reason (the Altarians was practically blocking hiim out from my empire, we had no shared borders). The Arceans did actually give some decent opposition, but my newer ships and a war with the Altarians (who seems to have been very aggressive on this map) made short work of him. About half of his original empire surrendered to the Altarians.

By this time I had 72% taxrate, 91% approval, 100% efficency, earning about 500 a turn and was doing about 90% of the total research. :2thumbsup:
This while owning two research and one economical resource, all stolen during the war with the Korx.

And had about 50%-60% of the influence, with 4 fully upgraded influence bases. Then I came up with the idea of buying the 2 influence mines that the Talans owned. :idea2: 10000 bc and about 7 high-techs later, I had my plans for an influence victory ready.

The next turn I owned 83% of the map... and within the time it takes for an influence victory to be declared, I was owning 100% of the map. Really makes a difference.

Edit: I must say that the incarnation of evil summoned by the dreadlords really got a fiendish look :laugh4:

Martok

03-29-2006, 03:41

Gelatinous Cube, I see the perfect solution to your problem: Give those planets to the Yor as gifts. You'll get rid of the drain on your economy, plus it should calm down the Yor enough that they might actually start to like you a little bit. I did this with the Terrans, with some pretty favorable results. ~:)

doc_bean

04-09-2006, 16:34

I downloaded the demo and finally got a chance to play this game this weekend. I must say I'm underimpressed after hearing all the hype here.

First of all, a little explanation of the demo: it allows you to play in a random small universe with up to three opponents (Dreghin, and two civs that start with an A). You have to play as the Terrans. You can play for 140turns (three years).

So I stated my first fame at the easiest difficulty setting, the AI basically did nothing, not even colonize other worlds, but it did give me an idea of how the game worked. Second game on a little higher difficulty, fast research, not too different from the fist game, I quit. Third attempt at an interesting game: normal difficulty, fast research. After a while I became untouchable (again), all rating near or over 200. Fourth attempt, one on one with the Dhregin on challenging, I took 70% of the galaxy in the colony rush, quit. Fifth and final attempt (thus far) I played the three races on challenging, I got a really bad starting position, my best planet (I think I had 5 in the end) was earth, which was right next to Dreghin. I managed to keep up with the rest for most of the game (thanks to some lucrative tech trading), I did lose an influence war (?) which caused earth to fall under Dreghin influence, I built some star bases to counter this but could barely get earth back in my zone. I lost an election and couldn't go to war on the dreghin (stupid senate), the 'yellow guys' eventually attacked me (after I had gotten bored and just pressed skip turn a bunch of times) and destroyed most of my fleets, I surrendered.

Where the hell is this awesome AI everybody keeps raving about ? On equal footing I could beat the AI if I had been given a few decent planets. CivIV has given me more of a challenge, even on lower difficulty settings.

Other things that kinda bugged me:

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

-The AI seems to tech rush at first (or cheats...), all other Civs have much more techs than me, but after a while it seems like they just stop researching, especially the Dreghin don't seem to advance much beyond LaserII.

-Military rating seem a little bugged

-The AI seems to be unable to design its own ships

-Does anyone actually buy stuff with delayed payments ?

-The battles are a little too drawn out for my taste

Despite my complaints here, I did play 5 games. It's a decent game, I might pick it up if/when i tire of CivIV, but I'll wait to see how Sword of the Stars turns out before I decide.

Crazed Rabbit

04-09-2006, 18:27

Oaty

04-09-2006, 20:02

^^^ @ crazed rabbit

I never played the demo and the options may be limited.

In the retail version you have options for fast research to slow research. By default I'm assuming the demo is set at normal. If you look at the journals on thier website it will tell you what is in the demo compared to the full game.

Also you can start a game with the lower end techs researched right away so you can militarize right away all the way to all techs researched. Also I'm sure you can mod how the techs are, all the way to making a custom map where the warmongers have a decent tech tree already researched for militarization to other races who start with less in the military tree.

Zenicetus

04-09-2006, 20:24

I just played the demo too, and I was wondering if taking 3 hours or so to get a military aircraft is normal. On the one game I played, I got 2 class 10s, one 7 or so, and one 18 (stole the highest out of Altarian territory...heehee).

But the begining seemed to take forever. Is it like this in the real game? I wouldn't want to spend an hour or so before being even able to fight.

Well, that's pretty much the normal flow of the game. Unlike the TW series, it's not designed to allow an early military rush. You don't start with any military power. Planetary Invasion is also pretty far down the tech tree, which discourages early military action. There isn't much incentive to attack your neighbors until you have that. In most of my games, the shooting doesn't start until somewhere in the midgame.

You can speed it up a little by using the smaller maps (so fewer early resources are used in colonization buildup), and using one of the faster research settings in the initial startup. That will bring Planetary Invasion online faster. Another way to get into a quick fight is to play the startup mode (I forget the name... Battle of the Gods, or something?) where everyone starts the game fully teched-up. That can be fun, but it's a bit one-dimensional (IMO).

I actually enjoy the slow buildup and jockying for position and strength with larger maps and slow tech, but that's just me. When I want a game where I can run an early Blitz, I go back to RTW:BI. They're just different types of games.

Xiahou

04-09-2006, 21:38

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

Weird, with just a few planets I can get planetary invasion in less than 30 turns if I really want it- I usually dont though, since I like going after diplomacy techs. Not sure what your were doing.:shrug:

As for the AI try "tough" if the others are too easy for you- its' the highest level that doesnt give the AI economic bonuses, although Im not sure how you were dominating the game without such techs.

I just played the demo too, and I was wondering if taking 3 hours or so to get a military aircraft is normal. On the one game I played, I got 2 class 10s, one 7 or so, and one 18 (stole the highest out of Altarian territory...heehee).Well, how many turns do you think that'd be? Sounds like a pretty long time to me.

Are you guys using your spending sliders, ect?

doc_bean

04-09-2006, 22:12

Weird, with just a few planets I can get planetary invasion in less than 30 turns if I really want it- I usually dont though, since I like going after diplomacy techs. Not sure what your were doing.:shrug:

Sure, I didn't mean you can't rush towards it, but following a pretty 'normal' (imho) build path it can take quite a while before you get those techs. In my last game (challenging) it took about two years before a civ got planetary invasion iirc (the drengin of course).

EDIT: in my normal game (which I finished) none of the other civs got to planetary invasion or medium hulls afaik

As for the AI try "tough" if the others are too easy for you- its' the highest level that doesnt give the AI economic bonuses, although Im not sure how you were dominating the game without such techs.

Well, it's hard to tell if you're really winning if you don't play until the end i guess. In the games i quit I far outdid any other civ in all of the different areas, for instance I had a 200+ economic rating and every tech they had plus about a dozen more. My military was bigger than theirs and much better equipped, and I had about twice as much planets as any of them (in some cases thrice as much).

I guess I just got teh rush down quickly.

frogbeastegg

04-10-2006, 19:58

I find games on the larger maps are far more lively; I wouldn't go back to the two smallest sizes now I have played on normal. If the demo limits you to those then I expect that might be a problem.

I'm surprised to see someone say research is slow! In my last game I was getting a new tech every 2-4 turns on the standard tech speed, with no research bonuses on my civ, no research resources, and a moderately sized empire. That was so fast my military was semi-obsolete as soon as I built it. Putting research labs on your planets is a Good Thing. I specialised quite a few of my mid-sized ones (class 4 -9) for resaearch, giving them just one factory and nothing else but labs, and then used the focus thingy to aim them at research.

Has anyone else seen the Pokemon-like event yet? Made me chuckle.

Xiahou

04-10-2006, 20:21

That was so fast my military was semi-obsolete as soon as I built it.That sounds more like my problem- it seems every dozen turns or so I'd have to go back into the ship designer and update my capital ships to keep them current with my technology.

Ive had some good games in a small galaxy, but I dont think the demo allows you to control how common/habitable planets are, ect- it's just random, no? Also, I think you will get cakewalk from time to time by just getting lucky and starting out near oodles of good planets while your enemies get screwed. That's something I think would also be exacerbated in a smaller galaxy as opposed to a large one. :yes:

doc_bean

04-11-2006, 12:40

Ive had some good games in a small galaxy, but I dont think the demo allows you to control how common/habitable planets are, ect- it's just random, no?

You can change it, I didn't play with it much though. I turned anomalies down since the AI didn't seem to hunt them in one game. My last game I turned habitable planets down (to rare I think), which makes colony rushing somewhat more difficult.

Research may be pretty fast, but laser II isn't exactly an improvement over laser I, I wouldn't upgrade ships until I had laser IV or V and at least one decent shield (lvl III I guess, the small ones).

frogbeastegg

04-11-2006, 19:23

Research may be pretty fast, but laser II isn't exactly an improvement over laser I, I wouldn't upgrade ships until I had laser IV or V and at least one decent shield (lvl III I guess, the small ones).
Size! It matters, despite what kind people may say :gring: I tend to find that researching a few levels of a weapon tech allows me to cram something else onto the hull, be it another weapon or a dohicky I want. So laser III is enough of an advantage over laser I that I wish to upgrade; I also research weapons/defence/engine techs in spurts, getting several in a row before going back to something peaceful. At the research rates I'm seeing at present that usually takes about 10 turns total, to make the jump from base tech to needing to upgrade.

screwtype

04-13-2006, 03:03

Okay, I just downloaded the demo and played it for a few hours last night.

It looks like it might be a bit of fun but there are some glaring problems with it which really give me the irrits.

To begin with, if you turn the music off, the game is played in almost total silence! There don't seem to be any sound effects at all, except for primitive "bleeps" and "bloops" when you click on buttons.

After a while the eerie silence gets rather oppressive, and I find it very immersion busting. Are they so poor they can't even afford to add a few sound effects? At least they should have the capacity to include them so modders can do it for them.

Secondly, the scrolling around the main screen is really s-l-o-o-o-o-w and gets me hot under the collar. I just *hate* slow scrolling games, GRRRR.

Not only that, but the scrolling is busted! If you put the mouse up into the corner of the screen, the stupid program won't scroll at all! Apparently it can only scroll in one direction at once. That's incredibly lame programming.

Same thing if you have a little window open on the screen. For example if you have that little window open that comes up when you click on the leftmost bottom gadget, the game won't scroll at all in that direction.

Thirdly, the lack of a "next active" button or something similar. You have a bunch of ships and you set them to various destinations, and then you don't see them again until they reach their destination, which means that if they encountered anything along the way which might be interesting, like an anomaly or something, you don't get to see it UNLESS you take the trouble to go searching around on the main or mini-map for the location of each and every one of your ships. I find it a real pain in the butt having to do that. Perhaps there's a way to set unit tracking in the options, but I didn't see one.

These might sound like little gripes, but it's the little things like this that one encounters constantly that usually end up driving me away from a game.

I don't like the tech tree display either. Having to pull it around with the mouse to see where you're headed is again, slow and clumsy. Surely they could have come up with a better method.

There are some other minor gripes too. For example, when you're informed that a planet has finished some structure and you click on "go to" to set a new structure, when you leave that screen, the original screen is still there with the original information! - it doesn't update as you complete stuff.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to check how much money you've got, except at the point of buying something. It should be on the screen all the time, or at least on the economics screen, but it doesn't even appear there.

Nor can see any place where the date or the number of turns is shown, which makes it kind of hard to track your progress.

In general, I find the game interface to be a bit cluttered and disorganized. It could all do with a major revamp IMO.

So I stated my first fame at the easiest difficulty setting, the AI basically did nothing, not even colonize other worlds...Where the hell is this awesome AI everybody keeps raving about ?

My experience was different, I began the game by setting the intelligence of all AI species to "normal" and in both games I played, even though I madly rushed to colonize, the AI ended up expanding faster and beating me to most of the good planets, even those in my own back yard. So in both games I found myself struggling even from the start.

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

You can put the tech on "very fast" if it's too slow for you. But there really isn't much time to achieve anything in the demo. Three years is hardly enough time to get some warships and start attacking the other guys.

I don't think the numbers of turns you play is a big issue though since after a while it seemed to me there was little to do but press the turn button over and over while you waited for something to get completed or for your ships to reach their set destination and so on.

-Does anyone actually buy stuff with delayed payments ?

Yeah, I did, in my second game, because I had more habitable planets than I had money to pay for colony ships. Don't know how viable it would be as a longterm strategy though.

The battles are a little too drawn out for my taste

I didn't play any battles :) I could see that by the time I got ready to fight I'd be near the 3-year limit anyhow so I didn't bother going that far.

Despite my complaints here, I did play 5 games. It's a decent game, I might pick it up if/when i tire of CivIV, but I'll wait to see how Sword of the Stars turns out before I decide.

It looks like it might be a decent sort of strategy game, but for an independent "budget" title it looks a bit expensive. When I went to their website they were asking $45 for it, which is rather a lot for a game of this type IMO. I'd probably be willing to pay $30, I don't know if I could justify the extra for a game which is lacking an essential feature like sound, and which in general appears to be lacking a little something in sophistication and utility.

frogbeastegg

04-13-2006, 10:24

I can help on a lot of those.

Secondly, the scrolling around the main screen is really s-l-o-o-o-o-w and gets me hot under the collar. I just *hate* slow scrolling games, GRRRR.
Turn up scrolling speed in the options menu; fixed it for me. Alternatively, there's a better option - use the drag feature. I didn't like it at first, but it has grown on me. It allows you to move the map quickly and precisely, and, with a little help from the zoom feature, allows you to cross a large galaxy in a second. Hold the left mouse button down on the map to grab it, then drag your mouse in the direction you wish to move.

Thirdly, the lack of a "next active" button or something similar.
See the button marked 'find' near the end turn button? That's it.

I don't like the tech tree display either. Having to pull it around with the mouse to see where you're headed is again, slow and clumsy. Surely they could have come up with a better method.
Agreed; it's a pain. I find the best way to navigate it is to select a tech in the top left hand box as though I want to research it, making sure it is from the research path I want. This centres the display on that line. Then it's simply a case of scrolling right.

There are some other minor gripes too. For example, when you're informed that a planet has finished some structure and you click on "go to" to set a new structure, when you leave that screen, the original screen is still there with the original information! - it doesn't update as you complete stuff.
Instead, click the 'done' button on the same screen. Now use the little square drop down icons on the right hand side of the screen to go to each event (left click! Not right; right banished the box). Then, when you return from the planet the box will be gone, keeping the list up to date.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to check how much money you've got, except at the point of buying something. It should be on the screen all the time, or at least on the economics screen, but it doesn't even appear there.
Er ... the treasury display? On the main interface, bottom left hand corner, below the research and approval listings. It's always there.

Nor can see any place where the date or the number of turns is shown, which makes it kind of hard to track your progress.
The date is also on the main interface. Top right hand corner.

There are tooltips to tell you what most of these things do, and I believe the demo is based on a version which has improved tooltips over the 1.1 build I'm still playing.

If you wish to find a really annoying thing about this interface (which, on the whole, I don't mind) try the sleep function for your ships. Or the 'wake up and bother me endlessly every time another ship of any sort which is not mine comes within your sensor radius' feature. Gah! There is no proper sleep mode. I built sensor hulks, a cargo hull packed with as many sensors of the best type I have and one good engine; I stick them on the borders of my empire to get early warning of other faction's movements. I also get bothered each turn by every single one of them. Gah!

screwtype

04-13-2006, 12:01

Hmmm well you seem to have demolished most of my complaints froggie ~:) But thanks for those tips, I will try them out and see how I go with them.

BTW I did try dragging the screen and it didn't work. Maybe there's also an option you can set which allows you to do this. I probably should have fiddled more with the options before I posted, shouldn't I? But I'm afraid that when it comes to new games I'm prone to shoot first and ask questions later.

Oh, and have you noticed the lack of sound effects too? Or is this just a feature of the demo? I find the silence really off-putting. But I can't listen to in-game music, I find it totally distracting.

Zenicetus

04-13-2006, 20:34

Oh, and have you noticed the lack of sound effects too? Or is this just a feature of the demo? I find the silence really off-putting. But I can't listen to in-game music, I find it totally distracting.

I don't think the demo is any different from the full game; there's just background music. I don't mind the music, and the lack of constant audio feedback doesn't bother me that much. Games where every click on a unit has audio feedback (Yes Commander!!) can get annoying after I've heard it for the 1000th time, but that's just me. Anyway, it doesn't get any better in the full game.

GalCiv2 basically stands or falls on the strength of the turn-based strategy engine and AI. It's not as polished in audio effects or overall graphics as some other games (although the ship builder makes up for a lot).

frogbeastegg

04-14-2006, 19:25

screwtype

04-15-2006, 06:50

Dragging the screen was on by default for me, so I don't know what has happened there.

I leave the music on; it's decent stuff, except for the angsty and threatening evil music. Those tracks get very wearing and stressful after not even a minute. Sound effects are ... inoffensive. There are not many, but they are all where I would expect them; there's no ambient sound in space. I like the lack of audio feedback on the units; I don't feel it would fit, and I do know it would send me quite derranged with the number of ships and orders I give. It's a quiet game in this regard, but I do not see how it could be otherwise, unless things like engine nosie were added for when the player zooms right in on a ship. At that kind of zoom, however, the game is not practical.

I just can't listen to in-game music, from any game. It distracts me. In fact, it infuriates me. Either I can listen to music, or I can play a game. I can't do both at once. I was tearing my hair out when I first started playing GalCiv because I couldn't find a way to turn it off!

The game really does need more sfx though. Without the music, there is almost nothing at all. The silence gets quite oppressive after a while.

A game like Imperialism II has it about right. You open the market screen and you hear the momentary murmur of a crowd. Open the transport screen and there's a little sfx of a sailing ship creaking in the waves. Little touches like that which can bring a game to life. It gives the impression of a living, breathing world. Without those little touches, you can end up feeling that rather than playing a game, you're just tweaking a spreadsheet.

frogbeastegg

04-16-2006, 10:24

While browsing that confusing mess of an official forum, I found one great little bit on how to get the best challenge out of the AI, according to the one who programmed it.

I suspect the AI plays best at medium sized galaxies with a reasonable amount of planets with 4 or 5 opponents playing.

Apparantly (according to another bit I couldn't find again) the number of planets is very important; more planets = more challenge. But for some reason I don't get this doesn't automatically mean the biggest map sizes are good for the AI.

doc_bean

04-16-2006, 12:12

While browsing that confusing mess of an official forum, I found one great little bit on how to get the best challenge out of the AI, according to the one who programmed it.

Apparantly (according to another bit I couldn't find again) the number of planets is very important; more planets = more challenge. But for some reason I don't get this doesn't automatically mean the biggest map sizes are good for the AI.

In my (limited) experience you can easily outperform the AI if you have lots of habitable planets, since this makes colony spamming more profitable.
I think the AI also isn't that focused on the speed of its vessels, making large galaxies better for humans.

Crandaeolon

04-16-2006, 12:49

I think the AI also isn't that focused on the speed of its vessels, making large galaxies better for humans.

That, and also range. In my last game (gigantic galaxy, clusters) some of the unoccupied star clusters were simply out of AI reach. I designed long-range ships that were able to bridge the distances, and ended up with a segmented empire. Made for a rather interesting game, actually.

That said, I'm giving up on Galciv2. Maybe it's the civilization-like gameplay, but the game just feels dull. Even though there was a plenty of time over the Easter I ended up playing XCom (yes, the old ~D) and MoO 2 instead of GC2. Maybe I'll return to GC2 later, one never knows... though Sword of the Stars sounds more like my kind of game. Here's to hoping that it's not a total flop. ~:cheers:

BDC

04-16-2006, 21:38

I find focusing on trade techs, and giving them to neighbours, benefits you a lot. You get a lot of extra cash for it. Very useful.

Butcher

04-16-2006, 23:18

The 1.1 patch/upgrade will be out at the end of the week, featuring improved A.I (which looks very good, check out a few of the play-throughs), improved ship builder etc.

NodachiSam

06-03-2006, 01:18

The more I play this game, the more I like it. The more I read about the updates and see their frequency, the more I like. The more I see of the developers, the more I like. The more I play without the usual copy protection, the more I like. The more I play with an AI which does not rely on cheats, the more I like. Really, this whole package is something quite special in today's gaming world. I find myself with a lot of respect for Stardock. A lot. A damned good game and a damned good company and frequent updates which contain so much they truly are updates and not patches.

Anyone reading this thread who does not own a copy should go and buy one right now. :yes:
...

:loveg:

You're making it extremely hard to resist:laugh4:

I've been playing the demo for a few days now and it looks very promising. I love designing the ships and I just successfully climbed up the tech tree to get 3 large style ships which is very cool :) Unfortunately it was the last turn of the demo, lol.

How do you guys feel about it now that's its been almost a month? Are you still playing it a lot?