Fjoelsvider

Join Date 04/2007

All Lab. little help needed. any volunteers? :)

first of all: hi folks, hope youre all enjoying a late night session of galciv II (dont know where most folks are from, but here in germany its around 1 am)

two things first: im not that good at english and its kind of late, so please ignore errors as much as possible, if osmething isnt clear, ask right away. you can eben leave corrections if youre that kind of guy

so, regarding the topic. i just switched from DA to ToA (props to SD, one of the very few games in these last years i was actually happy to pay for, keep it up ).

since there are so many changes i feel a little lost. on the one hand i managed to up the difficulty from normal for two levels(kind of mix up all those names, is it challenging or tough?!). its kind of gotten easier on lower levels, especially as the drenings. thats no complain, just observation. with the thalans i get my ass handed down to me even on normal i seeriously have to take the time and get to know all those techtrees.

anyway. i tried the all lab strategy, due to some bad roles with the random generator in my last game. middle map, rare start/planets/habitable and a slow tech speed.

i failed miserably due to economic nose diving. so i thought "try it with more planets, you should get your economy going". another fail, thats what happened

so what im looking for are some tips on how to get it going in the begining. would be nice if its kind of tailored for the altarians, i just need to get the grasp of it, you know? i can manage to take it from there.

for the sake of simplicity lets assume i usually play on a medium sized map with abundant everything and random minors(not that important for the strategy, right?) and 5 random majors.

in DA i was able to hold my own long enough to get a good lead and than switch to all fac(with econ buildings) or simply a mixed layout. now i seem to do it all wrong. any general (in terms of what to do in a setup like i described) hints?

random sitenote: the option randomize opponent intelligence seems like its for masochistic people. tried that too today, seems like the terrans got the suicidal setting or something... the flooded me with influence bases faster than i could say "i like you guys dont take my planets, please"...

well anyway, sorry for the bother and thanks in advance

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I always find the key is balancing economy vs. expanding too fast. I feel like Stardock made some tweaks in TA to really emphasize this, which is one of the key reasons the AI seems to act "differently" in TA. Here's some tips I've found:

1) Population growth is key. You need a tax base. I tend to rush-buy recruitment centers (200 bc, +20 growth, +10 econ) as the first thing on each planet. A big key is also very low taxes in the beginning - 100% approval ratings give you a 2x growth bonus. This is extremely important in the first 20-50 turns.

2) Rush-buy / expand / run a deficit until you have about 10 turns left in your treasury (E.g., 1000 bc vs. -100 bc/turn). Then focus on getting your economy in shape.

3) Econ bldg vs. farm - I tend to like farms vs. economy improvements. Going from 8b to 12b people will give you a 22% tax increase (assuming you don't need to lower tax rates to keep approval high). I tend to wait until later to phase in econ buildings - when I've maxed out population growth and have increased tax rate.

4) As necessary, cut costs by stopping social and military production - only expand when your economy / treasury can handle it.

Good luck!!

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Hi!

middle map, rare start/planets/habitable and a slow tech speed
i failed miserably due to economic nose diving

Yeah, all-labs does that, esp. if you have labs on bonus tiles. The catch to survive this is in obtaining other sources of money. With all-labs you should have plenty of techs to sell. With your "rare everything" game the trade could be another source, because the fewer the habitable planets, the more trade becomes important. Fully develped trade routes should bring you 1500-2000BC per turn. In medium all-rare galaxy that's big money.

BR, Iztok

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oh well thanks for the replys.

i knew that i would have to cope with the deficit spendig somehow. i failed because i couldnt manage to get my economy going. i thought maybe another civ is more suited than the altarians? i mean because of the time when economic buildings or bonuses(sp?) are available.

also i guess i overdid it with the colony rush. maybe i should let the take more planets and focus more on keeping everything in balance. im just so used to being best in the early phas, but with ta it seems i have to give that up for some settings.

and i definitly was going the wrong way in terms of morale. i usually raised taxes until im at about 60%. will try to change that too.

for the trade routes: i actually dont remember that particular game that well anymore, i believe i didnt had the chance to establish trade. wrong research order i believe. when i quit two civs declared war with me(those suicidal terrans, damn them ) and were all over the place with small 2/0/0 fighters and some troop transports. if i would have cut spendig to get into the green again i wouldve been dead anyway. so ill just try it with another research order and those tips i guess .

sidenote: i dont like the all labs approach that much, but sometimes it seems like it could work, you see how that wound up

is there a race thats especially suited for all labs? or all fac, while im asking?

i tjink im going to play more with a mixed approach again. in da i was taking all fac approach almost all the time

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In TA, the all labs and all factories strategies have been made tougher than they were in DA/DL, the loss of production through 'focusing' is greater than it was previously, which makes a huge difference. IMHO this makes a mixed approach vital at the higher difficulty levels unless you are a freakin genius at this game and can tweek everything every turn for optimum outputs - (and I'm not), but several that are have posted their "how-to" guides for "all" strats in TA elsewhere in the forums

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Some more pointers that will hopefully help:

When you pick your bonuses at the start, take some econ and/or morale and/or population growth bonuses
When colonizing early on, build on your first 3 planets and keep the rest empty until they start generating a decent income or your overall economy is almost in the green
60% morale is often not the best choice: early on, go for 100% morale until that becomes too expensive; then switch to around 76% morale (you get a population growth bonus on each planet that has at least 76% morale). Once most of your planets have reached their maximum population, 60% is a good choice: you can't go much lower without risking to lose the elections.

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i realized the focus thingy, thats why i tryed all lab, greater overall output, numberwise.

i would love to read those how-to guides. maybe its just me, but i seem not to be able to use the search function, i rarely find anything relevant ;/.

keeping planets empty sounds like a good idea, dont know why i couldnt come with that...

thanks again for the help

edit: oh well i totally suck at the mixed approach. dont get any research done, economy is in the red and lots of trrop transports on their way while i have laser II ...

edit2: i finally got a hold i a game. and its reeeaaallly fun. made a costum race with torian techtree, which i felt was best suited for an all fac strat. i wasnt so wrong. but i guess there are better choices. i had to step back to challenging. but its hard enough.

huge map all abundant with frequent mega events is just plain fun. those krynn nearly got to influence victory when i got an event(dunno if mega oder normal, doesnt really matter to me) where everyone gets a huge boost in their influece ability. i went from like 10% of the map to 30%. suddenly i could see myself on the map again (i have to add that im colorblind[well not blind, dont know the english word when you have problems with contrast at boarders of two colored spheres]) then i payed everyone to start a war with them and suddenly they drop like flyes. their class 4 worlds just could hold up producing osmething worthwhile. then those dang drath declared war on me, one round later the dreadlords show up. the altarians and yor got a really bad start, the yor own just 3 system in two sectors, whereas i have like... dont know about 60-80 planets in 20 sectors or something. altarians only cover baout 4 sectors. and guess wo wipes out the dread lords, the altarians

sorry if this is boring to you, i just had to point out how much fan that game is right now.

i have about 100 medium sized low level ships(a little bit better then the drath ones, the have more logistics though) all set on auto attack because i really hate micro. they dont have transports yet, so its not that risky. since i can pump out large sized ships now i guess i will take controllol of them to hunt the biggys.

i hope there will be morge events thogh. the spy event was really cool. suddenly i had 36(!!!) spys all over my little empire, i bet those kry got about 100 or even more. all the ai races tool that for an invitation and declared war agsinst each other. soooo much fun

the odd economy boost event is helpfull too, even though sometimes i have to be careful with my treasury, nearing those 20k caps... most of the time i simply drop the taxes...

i have like double the population of the second most populous race(the krynn of course) because im a superbreeder with the highest pop grwoth bonus. i made the race resemble the morganites from alpha centauri. much they like money, so i figures they would like many tax payers

well sorry for the spam, just thought id described whats going on right now

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i cant seem to get a hold of the search function. im sorry if this has come up allready. just a little question.

how the hell am i supossed to upgrade multiple ships at once? i thought selecting all of them and simply clicking on the upgrade button in the detail box would suffice. but... doesnt, work. is there something im missing? maybe some option in the game tab in the menu? or something?

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To upgrade all ships of a specific type to another specific type, just select one ship, and click the upgrade option, and in the screen that pops up just above the list/pictures of ships you can upgrade to is a check box "upgrade all ships of this type(class?)" tick the box, and you'll see the cost of the upgrade multiplied out by the number of ships involved.

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a'ight thanks a lot. didnt see that at all. helps a lot

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also: what the hell? i created a monster. one of my costum races (for those who played alpha centauri, they are greedy bastards called the morganites, pure economical overkill ) is bitchslapping me all around...

bribed everyone into war with each other but especially them are rocking the whole galaxy. now the fourth AI surrendered to them and they are extremely powerful. im kinda scared of them

didnt want to open a new thread so sorry for off topic

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Time to change your nickname into Dr. Frankenstein then

It's good to see that some custom races can do so well even in TA. Actually I probably haven't played any custom races since DA and DL, might have to try that again...

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well IME only the ones who get a good chunk of the econ abilitys are going to be good. i made one research heavy costum race and its doing "well". never on the top nor bottom of the bunch. seems like the ai istn that great in handling the economy, at least on the difficulty levels im playing. so give them money and they will take the rest

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