help an experienced loser (lol!)

hello all!

I was wondering if any veterans could give me some advice. I used to play GalCiv I for a while and have in the last month or so got DA, DL and TA (I love the game so much I got the expansions immediately simultaneously!!) but the problem is, I keep losing!!!

I usually play medium/large maps with about 3/4 opponents on challenging. I turn off ascension because frankly it frustrates me - I don't undertand how you can tell how close an enemy is to ascending and once the countdown starts I havent been able to stop it (is it even possible?).

I ususally make my home planet a balanced world and put some trade gds on it, then make class 10 and under planets specialised according to need/bonus tiles but I never really have a outlined strategy when I start a game. I just think 'Ok this time I'll be... the Arceans (or whoever)...choose some small and varied bonuses and then once in the game I usually tech-up in order of shortest time remaining, occassionally checking opponent's military choices and bumping mine accordingly if they're 'wary' etc of me. But as I say, I never think 'this time I'll go for an influence victory' for example.

I usually buy ships/buildings straight off in the first few turns according to the given situation - I never for example, always buy loads of colony ships straight off and just fling them outwards. Is this lack of basic strategy my weakness?

Another side question: how does espionage work in TA? In galciv2 you had the general espionage slider, and now you have the spy slider, and I understand how to place/nullify spies, but only once have I received a 'low espionage level achieved - Drengin' event window occur - why is that? It's annoying because ppl keep warring on me because I offended them at dinner or something and this stupid stuff should be easily prepared for with espionage.

Thanks very much

strategies

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Economy economy economy. Whenever you are trying to decide what to build next on a planet, if you arent sure what to choose, choose an econ structure.

As for your homeworld, I would try NOT to build trade goods on your home planet. Put labs, factories, or econ buildings. Put your trade goods on some other secondary planet.

make your PQ 10+ planets manufactoring/research planets. Anything under 10, unless strategically located, make it a econ. planet, lots of banks with 1 farm and 1 happiness structure.

As for the start of your game, try a different approach and see ifyou like it any better. Instead of buying colony ships, buy the factories/labs and just let the colony ships build. maybe buy the first one, and possibly upgrade your miner to a colony ship. Otherwise save your cash as long as you can. I'd rather produce colonies a little slower and have extra cash later to buy an important trade good a little faster, or finish that tech/econ capital a few turns sooner.

Hope that helps

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My biggest advice would be to dial down the difficulty until you can win. Relatively consistently - like 4 or 5 in a row. Practice your strategy on the easier games, and then dial that sucker back on up.

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Ascension Victory conditions on listed in the lower right hand corner of the Victory tab under Civilization Management. It gives you a percentage value of how close they are.

I never go into a game with a mindset of, "I'm going to win by doing X" Usually as a game progresses one or two forms of victory will emerge as best choices.

For racial picks, some help more then others, especially to new players. Economic and Morale bonuses are going to be your best friends as you learn the game because your economy is the life blood of your civ. It enables everything else. As you learn how the economy works and how to balance it, you can shift those bonus points over to other perks. My next two favorite are Military Production, and Social Production since they let you build things faster, but everyone has their favorites.

I have two primary strategies for my home world. Manufacturing Capitol with almost all factories, or Econ Capitol with almost all econ buildings and one farm. Both work well. The factory route lets you get those early ships out faster, but you need to make sure those early colonies become profitable (or at least self sustaining) faster. The econ route capitalizes on your home worlds high population of tax payers. You'll need to setup one of you first colonies as a factory planet then to build most of your ships.

For that map size, the only thing I would buy straight out is your first factory. Ships are too expensive, and the more money you have in the bank, the more turns you can afford to run your economy in the red while you expand. The only time I buy ships is on Small or Tiny maps where there are only a handful of worlds and speed is far more important then money.

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Some more tips besides what was posted already:
1) Research down the path to "Total majesty" and build a Spin control center. This will give a huge boost to the perceived military score of all ships in orbit around that planet --> will dissuade AI's with far lower military rating from attacking you.
In addition (perceived) military strength is one of the factors to get to an alliance with AI's.
2) Trade with 1 or 2 AI's to boost your cash and improve relationships. Longer trade routes towards their capital work best. On the other hands, trade relationships with nearby AI's can help to keep them more friendly.
3) Tech trading will help you to stay ahead and/or grab some quick cash (especially early on, universal translator + xeno communications easily give 300 bc per AI you trade them with)
4) Don't try to balance planets too much. It's often better to specialize them (except for special bonus tiles), especially when you have your econ/tech/manufacturing capital on a planet. The same goes for racial bonuses: a bit of everything will often make you weak in all categories.
5) Just to stress the point: "challenging" is quite something to begin with. I've been playing for some 2 years now, over 50 games and I still don't feel too comfortable playing on harder levels than challenging

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Few random pointers:

1) Learning how to manage your economy is perhaps one of the most important aspects. Morale is very much related to this issue, especially since morale determines population growth and population = money. 100% morale on a planet is double growth.

2) Tech to Xeno Ethics earlier and pick evil. The mind control center and artificial slave center are really helpful. The mind control center is so helpful for some people, they will buy or lease it in order to get the effects as soon as possible. The evil specific weapons (psionic) are extremely powerful, especially since it comes relatively early in the game. Take full advantage.

3) At challenging difficulty and easier, tech trading is really effective. Don't trade any diplomacy related skills and try to limit weapon trading. Otherwise, take advantage. Being Terran to have Super Diplomat can really net you some great trades.

4) Use diplomacy to convince the AI to war with each other. This screws up their relationships to prevent alliances and treaties. It usually weakens the AI as well.

5) Try to war against only 1 AI at a time. When you do go to war, it is sometimes good to convince the other AI to war at the same time. That lets you focus on just one target while the AI is involved in messiness.

6) When you initially pick racial bonuses, pick morale and economic bonuses. In general, they are the most helpful unless you have a specific strategy in mind.

7) It may be better to start with smaller maps and fewer planets. It's not really any easier, but it lets you play more games. I think you'll be able to learn faster that way, instead of spending a lot of time micromanaging everything in bigger maps.

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2) Tech to Xeno Ethics earlier and pick evil. The mind control center and artificial slave center are really helpful. The mind control center is so helpful for some people, they will buy or lease it in order to get the effects as soon as possible.

CariElf had to say this about the MCE in this thread
https://forums.galciv2.com/309035

...as oppose to giving 100% econ bonus as it does now.

Actually, the 100% econ bonus is just a side effect. The Ability type is not specified in the file, and the ID for the economics ability is 0, so it's obviously defaulting to that.

However, the comments in the code that uses the mind control center seem to indicate that the code is intended to make it LESS likely to flip planets as opposed to the description, which says that it makes alien planets MORE likely to flip planets; So I'll have to ask Brad about what it's really supposed to be doing.

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Gah, no ability to edit that post.

Ok, MCE=MCC. where the E came from, no clue.

So the reason I posted that is because the MCC may be getting 'fixed' here shortly.

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Good point. Strike that piece of advice from my first post. It's probably better to learn how to play without MCC, because we don't know what's going to happen to it. Hopefully if it does get changed, it will be to something useful.

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