test... post not showing up in forum, whats with that?

test... looks like these forums are severely broken...

test...

nothing geez

...

Your posts are showing up just fine; how is it that you are not seeing them?

-

If you played with the default settings, you're probably on common/common habitable/planets or lower...I don't remember exactly. In a large galaxy, and with DA's extreme environments planets requiring different techs to colonize them, it wouldn't surprise me if you went a good 10-15 turns without seeing a colonizable planet. 30 is a bit excessive, but may well have happened if you happened to pick random and got a rare roll.

Though, I have to ask, what about your PQ3/4 in your system? Did you not colonize that? Although, I have to admit, now and then it doesn't show up ingame.

One other thing that seems obvious but you may be doing is attempting to colonize planets with scouts. That simply won't work; you need to have a colony module on the ship in question.

1. The default ships are not that great. Try designing your own custom ships. I suggest you use a cargo hull as a base, and then install some engines, life support, and sensors.

2. I recommend that you send your ships to other stars so you can get a look at them. Alternatively, you could try to use your scout ships to scout as much as the map a possible, making sure that every par-sec has been seen by sensors. It might be time consuming, but a thorough search might find you some resources.



I'm not sure I can help you there. There have been many improvements in this game to inform the player when an event happens (Icons to the right of the screen for instance). You're going to have to figure out what would be a reasonable amount of stuff you need to get done.

For the record, I've beaten large maps in less than 5 hours on tough, and reguarly beat tinies in less than 2, so you might be trying to do too much.



All maps are randomly generated in such a way to give all civs different advantages, yet remain equal. So if you can't find any nearby planets to colonize, you might better be looking for nearby galactic resources. Alternatively, you want to consider your position from a defensive point of view, since if you can't find nearby planets, other civs might need to make some effort to attack and invade you latter.

One other note-it helps to have Stellar Cartography (planets will show up on the mini-map orbiting their stars, though habitable/uninhabitable is not designated). If your race didn't start with it, it comes after Xeno Research (in DL and DA), which has a base cost of 20TP, and Stellar Cartography itself has a base cost of a mere 25TP. Basically, you should be able to very nearly get either one of them with just your homeworld in one turn regardless of tech rate.

I'm old school, I come from Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. I'm a god in that game. I'll take on anyone, any race, any starting level, I'll whoop yer a$$, I still play it

Ok, I'll be the Federation starting on level 5 and you can be the Romulans starting on level 1. I would like to see you kick my a$$ then.


Seriously, GalCiv is a very different game and it will take some time to get used to.

Thank you all for the great feedback! I can see it's going to take a while to absorb everything this game offers... and that is a good problem to have



LOL how brave of you You can be fed 5 and I'll be Rom 4. You would have a very hard time winning that one.

Thanks again everyone, I'm reading up some more before trying it again.

I'm wondering if I should focus on cranking up morale/research first, at least a bit, before focusing on raising production.

Is there a trick to growing people faster (increasing population)? How long does it take a newly colonized planet to reach max pop?

There are a couple of "tricks" to growing population faster. First and foremost, launch each colony ship with the full 250M colonists. Secondly, ferrying further colonists to low population planets from your homeworld (with a specially designed colony ship consisting of 2-4 colony modules, or transport modules if you've got 'em) helps significantly, but is not strictly necessary. Thirdly, Xeno Biology unlocks Xeno Medicine, which gives an additional +10% population growth. Fertility Acceleration after that gives another +10%, but is typically not worthwhile enough in the early game. The latter also enables you to build Fertility Clinics, which increase the planet's growth by 19M or 25% of the base growth, whichever is more (and base growth tops out at 75M with a pop of 2.5B, so the most you'll get out of one is 19M). If I remember correctly, Fertility Clinics do have the population growth bonus applied to them, but I could be wrong.

Additionally, you could try investing racial customization points into population growth, though the maximum you can gain that way in DA is 40%. Personally, I've been using the Universalist party a lot lately, as it grants +10% populaton growth-though I've been using it more for the +25 luck aspect.

But, other than getting the population to 2.5B so base growth becomes 75M, the main thing you can do to get your population to grow faster is lower taxes so morale is 100% on the planets in question. At 75%, you get a 1.25x factor to overall growth (after factoring in racial bonuses,etc), whereas at 100%, you get a 2x factor, for double the overall growth. You'll lose money in the short run while your population grows, but it'll get to the point where it'll make you money faster.

However, as your population grows, you're going to notice they're becoming unhappy. A morale resource or two helps, and depending on the map size and your luck (real life, not game stat) you may have more. But the primary thing you want to do to counter that is research the entertainment techs. Xeno Entertainment alone gives +15 morale, and is cheap to boot. The buildings themselves aren't that useful, except early game, but the innate bonuses help loads.

Oh, and do keep your population down. The civilization capital is up to 16MT food now, capable of supporting 16B people, and there's really no good reason for a planet, any planet, let alone all of them, to have more than that. They just get too unhappy. Personally, I'm trying an 11B cap on my non-civ capital planets (minor races are tasty) at the moment, as it just feels right, but to each their own. Just...watch that approval.

Huh? At tech level 1 they are weak, not as bad as the romulans or cards. Once Klingons get that cloaked scout 2, they are extremely powerful. At tech 5, Klingons are by far the most powerful race. I love playing them, they are the most fun.

The ferengi are over-powered at every level, too easy, not very fun.

Thanks Craig, I love the idea of using survey ships instead of scouts... makes good sense!

I have found that there are more ways to play and win this game than any other game I have tried, mainly due to the different styles of play.

I usually play smaller maps so I hardly ever build scout ships. I use the surveyor on auto to uncover everything and occasionally build more survey ships if I happen to be playing a bigger map. On a tiny to large map I build all colony ships on the home planet so I can usually max out the colonist. The rest of my planets build constuctors except when I am gearing up the military.

As an influence peddler, I usually colonize as many planets as possible, stay out of wars as much as possible and scoop as many mining resources as possible. As a matter of fact, I don't recall ever losing a game where I had the majority of mining resources.

Be sure to study the bonus abilities carefully, I see others having economic and morale problems that I don't have and I am pretty much convinced that econ, influence and creativity bonuses trump anything else. Speed is a great bonus but it is too expensive and eats up all your points to get a significant boost.

This has worked well for me but would not be a popular strategy for others. the vast majority of my wins are culture wins with just enough war to have some fun with it.

I find military victory to be a long and tedious process since no one surrenders to you (they surrender to your other enemies) and you must take every planet. I usually wind up taking any victory option to avoid this tedium. I know that others have mastered the ability to plan military victory so well they can apparently pull it off more efficiently than me. So there you go, sauce for the gander, etc, etc.

In the end though, winning is mostly about real estate and money, of which you will have neither without a high tech rating, so keep the research slider as high as possible always. With money and influence you can choose your path to victory.