Gal Civ 2 Ultimate for beginners

[Ashurdan]

I just bought Cal Civ 2 Ultimate Edition and I am really intimidated by it. I have read before that going for an influence victory isn't all that complicated so I think I'd like to try that as the first general goal of my first few outings into this enormous game. I was wondering what kind of stuff I should do at the start, whats important to build, and more importantly which civ of the 12 to start with? I want to try a few starts first before I come back with more questions but so far everything seems a little overwhelming and I fall behind the Ai pretty quickly, so any adivice would be appreciated.

Ash

 

[GoodGame]

There's a galciv2 subforum, plus the galatic civilizations 2 website probably has a more active fan base for asking strategy questions.

 

[nullspace]

GalCiv 2 is fairly complicated, but the general 4X goals still apply so you shouldn't be too lost. When setting up the game, the fair difficulty level is "tough", which you get by setting all AIs to "intelligent." Go ahead and set it lower while learning. For civilization choice, I'd suggest anyone except the Yor, Thalans, or Krynn because those races are missing some important buildings until they do some research. Anyone else should be fine.

At the beginning, the general goal is to colonize many planets before the other civilizations get to them, and then rebuild your economy (kind of like in CivIV). At the start, it's a good idea to research some of the cheap propulsion technologies and build or buy a few factories on your home world. Then design a colony ship with the improved engines and start sending them out filled with colonists. Use the spending sliders to switch between research, social(buildings), and military(ships) as needed.

If you colonize quickly, you will be rapidly losing money because your new planets are spending money on production and research, and costing maintenance. You start with a lot of money, but before it runs out you need to start making a profit and most of your income will be from taxing your population. To do this, lower your tax rate until morale on all your new planets hits 100%, which doubles their population growth. Build economic structures. If you do run out of money, then raise taxes as high as you can but keep planetary morale above 40% so population growth doesn't stop.

Those are the basics of the colony rush phase and creating a working empire. Now you can actually start thinking of strategies to actually defeat the other civilizations and win the game.

 

[Matrix]

Moderator Action: Moved.....

 

[Strato]

Go here:

http://www.galciv2.com

and ask away.

Terrans are the best race to start with, they feel similar. Go evil, as in, always select the evil choices. And I'll second nullspace's comments a great place to start.

 

[Abaddon]

Any luck with your quest?

 

[Ashurdan]

Well, kinda, I am able to win diplomatic victories but only as the Humans. I'm still not sure how you deal with the computers ability to just spam colony ships in the begining, they don't seem to go through the same economic crash I do after the first few colonies start accumulating maintenance costs. I've seen some walkthroughs where people just build economic buildings on the first few colonies they found but when I do that the AI's found more colonies and I get boxed in...

Ash

 

[Racsoviale]

A little trick I have learned from various posts here and the galciv2 forum is to only colonize the best planet in a solar system - meaning if there are two planets or more orbiting a sun you only colonize the best of them and let the AI do the hard work with improving the mediocre ones.

This way you save a colony ship and on the expenses on having many colonies because eventually the other planet will revolt to you.

I know this doesnt help all that much but it has helped me getting more of the juicy planets in my corner of the galaxy.


Another thing I learned was how good space stations are, especially the economic ones where they boost all military, social and research on nearby planets, if the planets are placed right(a factor you dont have much influence on I know) you can place a single space station that improves everything on 4-5 planets, that is a huge benefit. Also in a recent game I realized military space stations dont have an area in which they give their bonus, it is universal, meaning with just one fully upgraded of these you can give all you spaceships a healthy +3 in all weapons categories.

Note I only have Dread Lords so I if you have all the expansions my advice may not be usefull.

EDIT: Im and idiot and didnt pay attention to you saying Ultimate in the thread title

 

[Flowerpunkt]

A bit late..but nevermind...
Terrans are obvious choice for beginners. Choose technologiest party and invest your points to max economy and research. The rest should go to creativity and luck..soldiering is not bad choice as well.
Best strategy for the beginners on normal difficulty : put research slider on 100% and overall production as well. Raise taxes on 40%. Automate your miner and flagship and buy colony ship, the colony ship you have send on the nearest place with some planets and stars (but do not colonize anything!, now you just want do uncover as much space as possible). Research yellow diplomatic technologies like universal translators or trade and some orange technologies. Then you can trade them to other civilizations for the money. You should be able to get at least 8000bc in first trading wave. All money invest in colony ships but do not colonize any planet until you have at least 10 colony ships bought (all of them should do scounting job). Then you have to research green technologies that raise fertility rate. You should get 20% fertility bonus. Research interstellar republic as fast possible too. It gives 10% economic bonus. If you have high popularity you can research democracy or even star federation (which gives 30% economic bonus). If you discover green or yellow anomalie send there constructor as fast as possible. It gives 5% bonus (and when you send there second one youll get another 4% bonus).
When you start earn like 50 bucks you can start with planetary improvements. All research points should be eqally split between social and military production. Planets which have 5-9 class are gooing to be your research planets...planets with 11 class +- are going to be production planets and the rest is for economic planets + superprojects (read carefully if some technology doesnt give yo superprojects...mostly you get really nice bonus..like 10% to hapiness...15% to logistics etc).

 

[Ashurdan]

Necro'ing this thread,

Can someone explain how research works?

I see both a research slider and research buildings... so do both effect research? As in does both money (in maintenance costs for buildings) and production (from the slider) go into research? If so, which should I focus on for my research, lots of buildings or lots of production?

I get lost in the beginning and mid game if I start losing money, and have trouble in terms of what do with planets, I don't like have my planets jack of all trades, so I have like 2-3 planets that do nothing but makes ships, a few that are economic if they are big (like 15+) but the rest I don't know what to do with... I make some research but they cost so much money I was wondering if it is best to just have a ton of economic planets and a ton of production planets and get your research through the slider?

And then ship construction becomes another question, should I put military spending low and just force focus the ship building planets to military?

Thanks in advance...

Ash

 

[feelfreetodie]

Just a few things I do @ start:
-home planet, 1st build is factory, then all markets and last build is entertainment network. this will provide a huge income for you quickly cause of high population to start.
-you start off with 5000bc, spend it!! I buy every build on home planet except entertainment
-by purchasing your buildings early you dont need social slider(set to 0)
-start manufacturing colony ships, split slider between research and manufacturing
-set production slider to 100%
-on home planet I click on manufacturing tab(the icon in manuf. tab to get more hammers) to build colony ship faster, I end up buying the ship once the price has come down to around 700-800bc
-upgrade your spaceminer to a colony ship, it costs 66bc, asteroids are a waste of time
-only settle the higher number planets, usually 8 or better, I only settle 5-6 planets before economy starts to crash and money is all spent but I feel thats all you need early
-specialize your planets!!! planets that are 10 or larger become manufacturing planets, nothing but factories turning out ships
-all other planets become either all markets or all research depending on what special tiles they have, 1st build is factory then all markets or labs

I play as alterians with my points going to max out research and economy with last 2 points going to manufacturing

early research goes to xeno research then planetary improvements, get to xeno entertainment fast for + 15% morale, then I go military research to start conquering

This is a start I use that has gotten me to crippling level, theres alot more to it but thats another chapter

 

[oopsy poopsy]

Has anyone done a Sullaesque walkthrough on a galciv 2 forum for this game? I played this a tiny amount before the expansions a couple years ago, but i never did the initial research to learn how to play so it never quite grabbed me, but I want to give it a real shot this time and as helpful as the comments here are, I'd love it if someone could point me in the direction of a walkthrough like that if one exists.

 

[headcase]

I read this and dived in! http://forums.galciv2.com/104908

In my experience, the computers are pretty easy by default; I just started building factories and whatever else seemed good (a lot of research buildings) and now I'm the most powerful civ with everyone else (including the Drengins) sucking up big time. I traded some techs with my diplo ability (playing as Earth). So I would say dive in for the first game unless you want to try a higher difficulty to start.

Big things I've learned (but remember I'm only starting myself so some of this could be misleading):
- The Ship Hull tech line is vital for military; until you get medium-sized hulls, you can't make any real combat ship. Military = respect.
- Miniaturization makes ship parts smaller so you can fit more on the same sized ship, so that's good too
- If the tech tree is overwhelming you, check out the list in the upper-left and pick something that looks good for the # of turns. Even if you don't fully understand what it does, it's not a big deal on the default difficulty since no one else really seems to know what they're doing either.
- It's good to get those resources before other civs call "dibs" (borders are always open in space as far as I'm seeing)
- trade is good for both diplo and cash, so freighters early on is good (you won't have military ability right from the start anyway)
- you need lots of constructors; one is sacrificed to make a starbase, and another is used up for every starbase module (upgrade).
- I didn't beeline the tech line, but worked on it whenever there was nothing pressing, eventually making it to the omega research centre.
- Starting to beeline the cultural conquest line now, to win that way.

 

[Ashurdan]

Can anyone answer my question about research? Is it better to use buildings for it or sliders? How does the sliders work for it? Does it turn some of my factory points into research? If so, wouldn't it be better to just set the slider low and manually set planets to research focus and build research improvements?

 

[headcase]

I'm going by this so hopefully it's correct: http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/General_Gameplay_Strategies

Setting the sliders means allocating money from the treasury to them. So, if you set sliders equally (33/33/33), then factories receive 2/3 of the "money" and labs 1/3. What this means in practice is 1 out of 3 factories does NOT produce anything, and 2 out of 3 of your labs are also NOT doing any research

If other words, yeah, you need factories to produce research.

However, the planet-by-planet focus does let you add a few more of one thing at the cost of the other two.

But for the civ as a whole, the money sliders just dictate how much you're getting from the proper building. So I think what you get (ignoring planet-by-planet focus) is:

Research generated = # of research buildings* X % of spending on research.
Social generated = # of factories* X % of spending on social
Military generated = # of factories* X % of spending on military

* adjusting for buildings\abilities\etc that enhance other buildings on each planet

The Wiki page says that, hypothetically, if you didn't want to waste anything, you would either:
- put research all the way up, and don't make any factories (focus on research buildings) OR
- put research all the way down (go all military, all social, or a mix), and don't make any research buildings (focus on factories)

Of course, in most cases you'll want a mix.

 

[Tambien]

The slider is basically how much of your GDP you spend on what area. THe reasearch builidings are like Universities. They give bonuses for your research. A combination of both is probably a good strategy.

 

[PhilBowles]

Just tried GalCiv II, starting the first campaign, for the first time despite buying it in a sale some time ago, having been inspired by the release of GalCiv III and unwilling to pay $50 on an untried franchise.

Possibly I've been spoiled by the pace of more recent games (but then, I've happily played MOO II in recent years), but is there a way to speed progress in the early game? The planet terrain slots are very characterful, but functionally they're just a restriction on building slots with a few paint-by-numbers bonuses (labs go here with the double research bonus, embassies go there with the double influence bonus etc.).

I allocated all my building slots on the first two planets (the scenario gives you a fully habitable planet next to your colony ship) and set my ship to exploring, but everything occurs painfully slowly and because building slots are limited, there's nothing to do once they're allocated. At this stage, I also have no weapon options for ships or new modules of other kinds, so can't create new designs even after trading for Interstellar Warfare (my own first chosen research was Artificial Gravity).

My big issue is that the scout ships' exploration speed is so low that it takes many turns to explore what's in a quadrant - which is again characterful and would be great if I had other options at this game stage to occupy my time; in games like Master of Orion and Civ, slow early-game build times and developing to a stage where you have options for research, projects or diplomacy are compensated for by an unrealistically quick exploration game.

I'd like to get into the game proper; any tips for making the early game enjoyable or strategically interesting enough to enjoy it, and/or accelerate progress to the next stage of the game?

 

[vmxa]

Sorry, my only tip is to not play it. It put me to sleep and often annoyed me. At least Stardrive 2 lets you get into fights early and battles are fun. Well, not when you lose.

GCIII does look a bit better, so I will eventually give it a try. GC2 has some lame victory options, such as spamming influence to crush the AI. Trade to win with the boil the frog aspects. The AI does not even realize it lost and does nothing to avoid losing.

 

[PhilBowles]

Sorry, my only tip is to not play it. It put me to sleep and often annoyed me.

The game concept looks very interesting, and while I realise it's rarely placed in the same league as my all-time favourite space 4x - Master of Orion I & II - there certainly seem to be areas where it advances over that series, and it's still widely acclaimed. But pressing "End Turn" repeatedly with nothing else to do bored me about Endless Legend and Beyond Earth, and I know bores a lot of other people about Civ V (though that's not my experience with that game). Plus, trying to enter it so long after it debuted may be a problem as a lot of it now looks like a lethargic, turn-based version of Distant Worlds without the automation (which is basically the criticism I've seen levelled at GalCiv III).

I don't think it's fair to call time on it based on an early game where I still have only the most basic hyperdrive tech, but it's possible I'm doing something wrong that makes the game pace so lethargic to start.

At least Stardrive 2 lets you get into fights early and battles are fun. Well, not when you lose.

The lack of tactical combat controlled by the player is one reason I haven't tried GC2 in earnest before. But for some reason most games dispense with that, not just GC2 (except Endless Legend, whose implementation of tactical combat is just poor) - I'll grant that it could be a bit tedious at times, but it added a lot of flavour and much of the appeal of designing your own ships is getting to play with them, rather than just admiring their stat bonuses in an automated dogfight.

 

[vmxa]

Don't listen to me on GC as I kept buying each addon for GC1 and GC2 (except twilight), hoping I could get into it. Does not make it a bad game, just not for me and I am a huge Moo1/2 player as my avatar suggest.

I like Distant Worlds Universe, just not got to play that much so far.