Colony management

Can it be automated?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Have to admit, I'm loving this game. I was a big fan of Ascendancy many years ago, and GalCiv2 is pushing all the right buttons.

One thing though, is it possible to automate the colony building?

One of the big time-savers in Ascendancy was a "Self-Managed" option for colonies (especially if they were off to a good start) which automated building of land projects where the tile had the most optimal properties.

Anyway, I'm probably missing something obvious.
6,026 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can tell it to build whatever you want on the tiles of a new colony (you already know this). In addition, when you tell it to build something new while it's already building something else, it will go into the build queue to be completed in the order you specify.

What it will also do is, automatically upgrade buildings with improved versions -- which I think is what you want. (although it can be a pain sometimes).

These simple features beat any AI colony management that they could implement -- both in strategy and in ease of use.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
well, it would be nice, instead of having to specify what's in every tile myself for every single planet, if i could say turn on a governor for the planet, that would direct the placement of future tiles in the same way an AI player would do it.

it would be really useful towards the end of the land-grab part of the game, and during later-game invasions, when a bunch of new planets are being aquired quickly.

this was a great feature in SMAC, where the personality of each colony's governor could be set to focus on different goals.

heck, even if it just reverted behavior back to the default AI for the race i'm playing, without allowing me to select a focus, that would still remove a lot of hassle.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nadia: Thanks. I noticed that it was upgrading existing projects when new technologies became available. Certainly a useful helper.

pedxing: Yes, that's defainately the sort of thing I'm talking about.

When you have a large galaxy, it's nice to be able to concentrate on your border worlds and let the bulk of the well defended worlds look after themselves. In a sense, they do.

It's really so that at the end of each turn you're not confronted with a large list of worlds asking what to build next.

I know people would say "so, you want control over less and less?". Not really, I just want to concentrate on the development planning of worlds that are strategically important to me at any one time without scanning through all of them.

Anyway, more play...
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The governor in SMAC was great as long as you turned off military. It was good for building improvements and controling population. With all options on you got artillery and colonizers.

In GC2 where a choice of tiles is often important, I'm not sure it would work. If you recall the mess that land terraformers made on auto-improve in SMAC, you will know what I mean.

Also in SMAC I was usually involved in multiple wars, whereas in GC2 I am usually focused on culture and economy so the colony development is not a problem for me. I can appreciate that for those that are focused on military conquest , less is better in colony management.

Of course, I started out in SMAC the same way and evolved into a war monger as my skill improved so it could be the same with this game