Post beginner tips here!

[BeefBayford]

Fantastic tips PaperBeetle thanks! Tip 1 was particularly helpful, in my first game every planet I got to was already taken, only had about 4 planets and no more there to colonise

 

[Chubain]

I appreciate the helpful posts so far, but I still have some questions I haven't seen answered specifically.

When starting a new game what is the best ratio of factories to labs on your home world and initial colonies?

Is it a good idea to make small low level worlds into research planet? Build one factory and 3-4 labs? Or is it better to have all of your worlds with a mix of factories/labs/trade?

I've played several games so far and ended up losing all of them eventually. During my most recent game I focused all my research strickly on non-military research. So basically anything to do with ships (with the exception of engines) or planetary defense was ignored. It was a small map, so all the races had 2-6 planets each. I had 4 planets. I loaded all of them up with labs. I figured since I wasn't fighting anyone and focusing on building up my planets and influence, I would end up with an extremely strong economy/tech tree and therefore be ranked pretty high against the other races. That didn't happen. I ended being ranked last. I know I didn't have the military to stack up against other races, but I should have been kicking their butts when it came to all other areas. Has anyone else experienced this?

I'm interested in hearing some of the different strategies people use to win.

 

[Comraddict]

I hate this unrealistic tweaking on beggining (expansion) in other to stay in game. Only Civ IV had it somewhat balanced: too many cities= you can't support them.

 

[Berrie]

7. When you design your own ships, make them look really hard. It gives you the edge in combat. No really!

My ships always look like toys. So, that's why I'm losing all the time. If I understand correctly, I don't have to fit more weapons on my ship, just make them look thougher. Thanks for the helpful tip

Seriously, your tips look really usefull. Will sure try them out

 

[PaperBeetle]

Right , but also bear in mind that adding weapons does make ships look tougher! In fact, when you do add guns to your ship, remember to set the scale slider as high as it will go. Bigger guns definitely get better results than small ones.

 

[Berrie]

Bigger guns definitely get better results than small ones.

The funny thing is, that would actually make some sense in real life, but not in the game
Sometimes, when I don't find a proper place for it, I make the engines as small as possible, so you won't notice them in my ship design.

 

[Arkanin]

If anyone would talk about their thoughts on whether to specialize planets or balance them, that would be great. So far, I am experimenting, and it seems to me that you generally want to make at least some specialized planets to make use of the Capital structures.

One of the things I like a lot about Galactic Civilizations 4 is that planets can be individually quite strong, even in a Huge galaxy. It's not nearly as much like Master of Orion 2 or 3 where planets are individually fairly worthless if you play with just 'occasional' abundant planets; the result is that that research capital is of extreme strategic importance in GalCiv 4, while in other games (Moo series, Civ3, and even Civ4 to an extent) it would be a nuissance but not nearly as much of a hard blow.

 

[Duelingground]

I build 3-5 factories on every world I colonize, with my homeworld and PQ 12 and up getting 5. Less than PQ 12 get 3, unless they have a manufacturing bonus. My homeworld, and nearly every other planet, then gets a starport, an approval buliding, a farm, and a stock market.

I rarely ever colonize anything less than 10. The AI will grab them, and I can flip them later.

After those basics are out of the way, it's specialization time, with at least one world becoming a manufacturing giant, one getting as many research facilities as possible, as well as a Technological capital, and one getting as many approval buildings, farms, and stock markets as it will hold, along with an Economic capital and Political capital.

Manufacturing capital may be built on my homeworld, depending on whether I think it needs the boost, or on a border planet that I think may need to pump out ships.

Each of the heavy manufacturing worlds supply warships, all other planets build constructors, except the farm worlds, which will also supply troopships when needed.

 

[Vizzini]

I hate this unrealistic tweaking on beggining (expansion) in other to stay in game. Only Civ IV had it somewhat balanced: too many cities= you can't support them.

The same thing will happen in GalCiv if you expand too rapidly. Your economy can easily crash with all those planets sucking up social/military spending before they start showing a profit.

Best tips:

1. Don't play Human, or if you do tweak their starting techs so that you have Stellar Cartography. So many discount this tech or say "piffle" and blindly send their colony ships out on fools errands - personally I can't stand starting a game without it. It allows you to see planets on the mini-map, which tells you in advance what direction to send your colony ships. Why waste 10 turns only to arrive at a star and find 1, class zero planet? KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

2. Starbases starbases starbases.

3. The starting ships are the only "stock" ships you should ever have - everything else you should design yourself. You can already design a faster colony ship on turn 1 - do it.

4. Starbases starbases starbases.

5. Build queue on planets size 10 or better: Factory, Factory, Factory, Multimedia Center, Starport, Market, Market, Research, Research. Even if there are spare tiles after this I won't put anything else into the queue until these are all done. (This queue order presumes no tile bonuses to screw things up) Leave other tiles on the planet alone for now and when all this is built you can decide then what you need more of.

6. No farms on planets size 9 or smaller. No starport on them either if you can avoid it. 1 Factory, the rest Research - maybe a cultural center or two if I need the influence boost.

7. Starbases starbases starbases.

8. As soon as construction of a starport is finished, get something building there! A defensive unit, a constructor, freighter - anything. Even if it says its going to take 30+ turns because your planet focus is Social -get it building-. Never EVER have a starport building "nothing".

9. After you complete your first engine tech, design a Cargo hulled explorer. Don't bother with the stock "scout" ships, and certainly don't design or build a "small" or "tiny" scout ship of your own. Use a cargo hull and pile on the engines, sensors, and life support.

10. Starbases starbases starbases. When in doubt, build a starbase. When in doubt about what ship type to build at a starport, build a constructor - which will allow you to build or upgrade a starbase. Upgrade modules early, upgrade modules often.

Oh and by the way... anyone mention starbases yet?

 

[Vizzini]

do economic starbases have to be on one of your own trade routes or any trade route?

and to work they need to have thier range of influence touching your planets for them to be useful?!

Two types of Starbases. Resource starbases (built on a resource glowy polygon thingie) and free-standing starbases.

Resource Starbases provide their bonus empire-wide... so an Economic Resource Starbase the moment you settle on it grants a 5% economic boost to all of your planets, everywhere in the galaxy.

Free-standing starbases you can build anywhere. They have an influence radius of 8 parsecs (so the entire area-of-effect is a 16 parsec diameter). Any of your trade routes or planets within the area-of-effect receives that starbase's bonuses. If you have Allies and the UP vote has held that Alliance starbases must also provide bonuses to Allies then your Allies starbases provide bonuses to you - and vice versa.

Positioning: Your constructor ship has a faint colored circle around it as you move it around. Zoom out a bit to see it all. This is telling you the area-of-effect of the starbase if you were to build it there. A much brighter and more obvious area-of-effect can be seen if you select an already built starbase. (Should see a very bright circle around the base - this is its area of effect. Remember that starbases built upon resources apply their effect empire-wide)

Remember to upgrade them like crazy any time you get a new Starbase module!

 

[woodelf]

The part that still bugs me is that the AI doesn't seem to have the same problem overexpanding. The player can get 4, maybe 5 planets before getting crippled economically. The AI, however, even at low diff levels seems to have way more pop and planets....

 

[Vizzini]

The part that still bugs me is that the AI doesn't seem to have the same problem overexpanding. The player can get 4, maybe 5 planets before getting crippled economically. The AI, however, even at low diff levels seems to have way more pop and planets....

I can expand as fast as I can crank out colony ships (6 turns or less per ship - usually at 2 or 3 planets) without dipping into the red.

There are some key techs that you must research ASAP (some of these you may have at the start with some races)

Xeno Engineering (Social +10)
Xeno Economics (Economy +10) <-- Huge boost
Planetary Improvements (Social +10, Military +10, Research +10) <-- Another nice boost
Impulse Drive (Speed +10)
General Life Support (Range +20)
Sensors (Sensors +1)
Interstellar Republic (+25% Economy, +25% Industry, +25% Research)

Obviously you can't research these all right away, some have pre-requisites, others will be too time consuming to research immediately. Once any of these key techs falls into the 10 turns or less category to research I beeline it.

Impulse Drive, General Life Support, and Sensors you should bag just as fast as you possibly can because those three combined will do BIG things to your expansion efforts. Your ships all go (generally) 1ps per turn fasters, can all see 1 parsec farther, and have longer range - and these bonuses are applied immediately to all ships as soon as you research the tech, you don't even need to upgrade your existing ships to take advantage of those bonuses.

Interstellar Republic will take the longest to get to, but it's the one that once I get to where I can complete it in 15 turns or less I'll beeline it.

Republic literally flips your entire empire around from losing money to making money and once I have it I never again have any expansion or economic worries.

OH! Other tip: Be wise with your research. Know -when- to research something and when not to. Don't beeline to Invention Matrix if all your planets still have Manufacturing Centers on them, becase the higher tech buildings take far more production to make - and lower tech Factory buildings can't handle it. Research your production buildings first, get them built, THEN research a higher tech building type like markets and banks and research academies.

 

[Berrie]

OH! Other tip: Be wise with your research. Know -when- to research something and when not to. Don't beeline to Invention Matrix if all your planets still have Manufacturing Centers on them, becase the higher tech buildings take far more production to make - and lower tech Factory buildings can't handle it. Research your production buildings first, get them built, THEN research a higher tech building type like markets and banks and research academies.

Good tip! Actually it's quite obvious but I tend to forget that when I'm making research choices. So I end up with planets that are upgrading buildings at the extremely fast rate of 1 every 50 weeks
Note to self: memorise this tip!

 

[JavalTigar]

2. Hammers go to waste if you aren't building a social project on a planet, so late in the game, when you don't have so much improvement to do (especially if you don't have the techs for building upgrades), it is probably worthwhile setting social spending to 0% and just using socail specialisation on planets that still have stuff to build.

I don't think that is right. If you look at a planet that has nothing in the social catagory, but is building a starship, notice the arrows by the number of hammers. The mouse over says that the unused production is being applied to the starport. At least it did last night on my game (I'm using 1.1 Beta 4)

 

[Vizzini]

Follow-up to my "Starbases starbases starbases" mantra... recently completed a Huge map on Challenging. Had 80+ planets total, and had more than 60+ planets building Constructors almost non-stop.

Went back and reloaded a save and took some screenies to show why. One is a resource starbase the other is a military starbase showing the total +attack and +defense it was adding to ships within its influence.

Needless to say when the Torian's declared on my ally and sucked me into a war... it went badly for the Torian's

Build those starbases. Watch as enemy fleets crash against them like ships on rocks (Nevermind the massive boost the economy and resource bases give you!)

 

[smjjames]

some of those tips could be helpful in the demo, even though the demo lasts about 2 or 3 years, which is still time to do plenty of stuff, although does trade work in the demo? because I've gotten the trade tech a couple times and managed to get something that I could possibly use on a trade route, I can't seem to make a trade route.

 

[Pentium]

I've gotten the trade tech a couple times and managed to get something that I could possibly use on a trade route, I can't seem to make a trade route.

You have to build a Freighter (a ship) and send it to a foreign planet.

Trade goods (if this is what you mean) can't be used on a trade route, they give you civ-wide bonuses and you can trade them in the diplo screen.

 

[smjjames]

well by the time I get trade and the frieghters, its prob too late to get one established. I could try though.

 

[Vizzini]

well by the time I get trade and the frieghters, its prob too late to get one established. I could try though.

It's never too late to establish trade routes, although you do want to do it as early as possible. Usually as soon as I finish researching Trade I'll either buy or build a freighter immediately and send it off.

Initially they only bring in maybe 5 to 9bc per turn, but with additional Trade research and Starbase upgrades plus careful planning of your routes you can get that up to 50+bc per turn. (And with further Trade research you can have 15 or so trade routes)

The biggest bonus to trade is that it improves your relations with the AI you trade with (and since you can have so many routes you could set up at least one route with each AI) Both sides benefit from a trade route - you earn money and the AI earns money from every route - so the more routes you have with an AI the better they like you and the less likely they are to attack you.

 

[Pentium]

Yes, if you check the details of their relation towards you, I think it's the Report page, you'll see that it gives you "++" even with only one route, so it improves your relations greatly.