Glalaxy Settings

yes, on gigantic and huge it's pretty insane micromanagement. large or less it's not so much. but right now, it's the way to get the best score on the metaverse.

My favorite is HUGE galaxy, with occassional planet, abundant habitability, scattered clusters, occassional anomalies, common stars and normal tech levels playing 7 AI races, picking the most warring and best economic/tech ones first.

Every game usually ends up with most being equal in colonies, around 12 to 16. Having only a handful of planets makes for a long boring game. Having 12 to 16 planets to start with is quite fun and opens the door for a lot of strategic thought and depth. Which borders do you protect first, which race do you attack first and if they get an ally or two can you handle their large fleets that will be pouring in.

I've also found from my many years of playing computer strategy games that more resources for the AI always makes for a better game. All my Civilization, Alpha Centaur, Master of Magic, Colonization type games I use the largest or next to largest maps. Too many people exploit the weakness of tiny/small maps, play on the highest difficulty and then brag how they beat it, mainly grunt rushing the AI's before they can even start building up. This isn't winning it's exploiting. So, until you've won on a very large map with most of the AI's, you haven't won anything or defeated anything actually.

There is an interesting level of challenge to be had in playing in the cramped environments of the smaller maps. GalCiv2's AI deal with it much better than most. That said, my current game is on a large map, and I may go to huge for my next. I mix up the settings from game to game (really wish there were random options on the game creation screen). I avoid abundant planets, which results in a galaxy full of stars with exactly 5 planets around them, which is annoyingly silly. I stick mostly to normal tech, I pick scattered clusters a lot, and tend toward abundant habitability. I usually play with 1 more AI opponent than the default for the map size, though going with fewer lets them spread out more and can lead to an interesting clash of the titans scenario.

I use various sizes with abundant everything, scattered stars.


As for micromanagement, I do almost everything from the governor screen and colony list. I make extensive use of rally points.

There are many macro management tools in the game, it just takes a while to learn them all.

Gigantic map, rare everything, slowest tech. No diplomatic victory. It takes absolutely ages to complete, but it's damn fun. Plus, it's the best way to evolve your strategies from your starting position (If you get say 3 habitable star systems, which is lucky, you go for influence. High production planets military, and so forth) Currently I have 2 planets, my home world and 1 other (I forgot about my second planet in the system, bloody altarians have it) and am playing people off against each other to grind them all down, while being a tech whore. Just don't trade solidering techs, because it's fun when your advantage is comparable to the one the dread lords get against you

Right now I'm playing on large maps with common habitable planets and everything else set to occasional.

EDIT: And tight star clusters.

I like huge, tight clusters, everything occasional, slow tech. Yes, you do get big swaths of useless space.

What do you guys think of the AI behaviour on gigantic maps? I have some feeling that the bigger the size, the more desastrous are some bad AI moves ( speaking now of INTELLIGENT or higher of course). For example, you all know the engine bug. The AI is simply too slow. I´ve played now 6 games on gigantic and in all games even in mid to late game, the AI snails around at 2 -4 parsecs per turn. This will be hopefully fixed in 1.1 . But then there are also some moves which grinds my nerves sometimes ( of course I can take advantage of those moves but it feels unrealistic
and takes away the atmosphere I think) So, in 3 games at least one AI chose after you or some other AI had declared war to build massive amounts of transport. just that, no scouting no protection fleets. Well, it was a slaugther everytime. Is this an AI bug or is it a valid option for the AI? Speaking of building too many ships (f.e. too many small ships or to many colony ships in mid game, roughly 4 for 1 planet which are then mostly class 7 or below) of one kind I think this is a general AI failure. Especially on gigantic maps it shows off quite drastically. What are your experiences??

What do you guys think of the AI behaviour on gigantic maps? I have some feeling that the bigger the size, the more desastrous are some bad AI moves ( speaking now of INTELLIGENT or higher of course). For example, you all know the engine bug. The AI is simply too slow. I´ve played now 6 games on gigantic and in all games even in mid to late game, the AI snails around at 2 -4 parsecs per turn. This will be hopefully fixed in 1.1 . But then there are also some moves which grinds my nerves sometimes ( of course I can take advantage of those moves but it feels unrealistic
and takes away the atmosphere I think) So, in 3 games at least one AI chose after you or some other AI had declared war to build massive amounts of transport. just that, no scouting no protection fleets. Well, it was a slaugther everytime. Is this an AI bug or is it a valid option for the AI? Speaking of building too many ships (f.e. too many small ships or to many colony ships in mid game, roughly 4 for 1 planet which are then mostly class 7 or below) of one kind I think this is a general AI failure. Especially on gigantic maps it shows off quite drastically. What are your experiences??

again sry for the double post, all my trails with opera were realized when I switched to explorer

I mostly play on a large map with occasional stars in loose clusters, and rare everything else. I mix it up now and then, but never using anything more than rare or occasional habitable planets seems more realistic, as well as making for less micromanagement later in the game. I'm much happier with being able to focus on a handful of nice, smoothly run planets than some huge messy empire. By the end game I usually wind up with more planets than I want, anyway, just from conquering.