A game summary, (otherwise known as tribute to the Spathi)
Wish someone would write a strategy guide :)
from 
GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
Great game! I was VERY disapointed at first as it seemed like 4x lite compared to the Moo series but after persevering with it ive been delighted with the deceptive depth the game has (and the AI which plays like a human at challanging!!!!) turns out a GREAT game!!!!!
Hey one thing ive really noticed so far is noone has written a strategy guide
I love those things especially for these kinda games I would have been lost playing MOO3 (which was a GREAT game despite what everyone says : ) without one for sure...
Anyways, ive got some questions (albeit after a long game report/story thing hehe i had to share it was such an awesome game for me)... after easily winning my first 2 games on normal (and i mean easily, didn’t even understand the econ system, first game as the Yor winning a influence victory over the last remaining unconquered civ, then as humans full conquest win) i moved up to challenging... BIG difference! At first i was extremely happy to see that the civs weren’t going to sit back and pick off the weaklings one by one, and even if they did i found that most of the time *I* was that weakling. Anyways ive lost more challenging games now very early on slowly understanding the econ model more and more....
The last game i had was kinda close.... playing as the Thalians, and having a good starting position (one of my initial colonies had a +700% manufacturing square and several other bonuses... found that early (pop.) growth can be beneficial lowered the tax rate until my approval rate was 100, snatched up about 5/6 decent colonies (large map) and paid tribute to a couple of the more aggressive civs around me... which was fine because i wasn’t building a military.... I always seem to manage a decent tech lead and when im satisfied that the starships i build aren’t going to be over glorified tugboats i proceed to build a military...
to cut a long story short, i enter into a couple of strategic wars and manage to expand until there are 4 computer players (9 to start) and wow.... STRONG AI. i enter into a "cold" influence war with the Arcanites who now own at least a 3rd of the map, have an incredibly strong military, but thankfully are lagging behind me in tech.... i start plonking down influence starbases trying to halt there advance (they have completely encompassed the humans who really are now only a minor power, tho they are allied with the Arcanites) and have some moderate success, 1 human colony defected to me, and it seemed that for now their evil influence was halted.
Fearing their military strength, i made an alliance with the Evil Korx (im neutral, along with every other race left in the game) , and the humans (hehe hoping they would put a good word in with me to the Arcanites, who remained cold to me after a random event plunged us into war early in the game) ... was about to make one with the Torian Confederation when i realised they were on the loosing side of a war with the Arcanites.... seeing as the Torian's had always been fair and just trading partners with me since early in the piece (and having shared borders without incident for many a century) , i made the just and noble decision to decimate their shabby preoccupied fleet, and invade mercifully denying the worlds that bordered my territory to the Arcanites. In retrospect i really should have declared on the Arcanites at this stage...
Enter the end game stage...
The Korx, Arcanites and I each roughly control a 1/3 of the galaxy each, tho the Arcanites are definitely advancing influence wise tho not dramatically... i am leading in tech, population and industry tho not by much... the arcanites are winning influence slightly, but have a MASSIVE military... at this stage it isnt looking good, i cant seem to build my military ANYWHERE near what they are doing despite supposedly having an econ. running at 140 galactic rating.... the tech is still powering ahead.... i was thinking of going for a tech victory or diplomatic victory but arcanite and korx relations were hostile at this point... deciding once again to take the courageous route, i broke off my alliance with the korx, and left them to their own devices.... within a couple of turns the arcanites declare war on them and take out at least half of their territory/planets... very alarmed at this stage and realising that things are not looking good for my civ in the face of the Arcanites constant militancy and hoping that the Arcanites favored the quantity over quality in their fleets, i surprise attack them. (an interesting side note, the arcanites had positioned several fleets in my territory that were extremely poor in quality a big influence on my decision to attack, hehe dammed that AI i think he did that intentionally) . The initial campaign against the Arcanites went well, our brave soldiers managed to capture one of their colonies with the help of a trusty device called Core Detonation, and we definitely made a dint however slight in their military rating.... if only it could have lasted... after taking some heavy losses to the incoming Arcanite armada, despite our advanced technology, and fearing impending death and torture, our race favored survival over brutal conquest and voted to surrender just about every tech we had and 2 non core planets..... dejected my people decided to devote themselves to scientific research; having no real fleet any more and no more dreams of galactic conquest... the Korx lasted about 10 more turns or so then surrendered to the humans (!! even tho i had friendly relations and never fought with them) and i got into the routine of 'happily' donating my races hard won tech to the Arcanites in an attempt to keep them at bay................ my hopes kinda sunk when in the diplomacy box had the negetive comment "we know what your doing" and relations dropping to hostile every other round... our once great race lost our usefulness to the barbaric Arcanites and they could no longer be appeased. Surrender soon followed.
anyways thanks for your patience... a couple of questions tho..
*from mid to early in the game the social and military rates (budget) continued to drop, at the end there i could only really get say 5 percent in each or maybe 10 percent in one even then id quickly be taking a loss if i was building starships while I know that im still producing more BC , it seemed to spread out badly across my colonies, anyway to have more control over that? Im hoping that the social/military production patch will come soon because it makes it difficult to develop colonies, when 5 % social gets me 100 social production points on my core worlds but only 5 on the newly conquered ect...
*i probably had half the number of starbases i could have had at end game, i chose to upgrade most of them instead of throwing them everywhere ... but ive noticed that the AI tends to throw heaps of undeveloped starbases down... whats the advantage of that? And do starbases bonuses stack? I had 2 fully developed eco bases next to my core worlds.
*at the end game i really had only 2 (initial and second) colonies capable of pumping out bigger sized starships, the rest were kinda hopeless... with maybe 3 more mediocre ones, any tips?
*in relation to the above point even tho my industry was almost as good as the arcanites they managed to PUMP out military at a rate exponential to mine, im thinking that they dont get a econ. bonus at "challenging" difficulty? whats the AI doing that im not?
*Should i be specializing tech wise? for instance is it best to research one kind of tree more intensively than the rest?
*My civs always seem to have a BIG dependence on trade which is unreliable, anyways to get around this?
thanks for reading , if your awake at this point i congratulate you... Any assistance would be fantastic!
Hey one thing ive really noticed so far is noone has written a strategy guide
I love those things especially for these kinda games I would have been lost playing MOO3 (which was a GREAT game despite what everyone says : ) without one for sure... Anyways, ive got some questions (albeit after a long game report/story thing hehe i had to share it was such an awesome game for me)... after easily winning my first 2 games on normal (and i mean easily, didn’t even understand the econ system, first game as the Yor winning a influence victory over the last remaining unconquered civ, then as humans full conquest win) i moved up to challenging... BIG difference! At first i was extremely happy to see that the civs weren’t going to sit back and pick off the weaklings one by one, and even if they did i found that most of the time *I* was that weakling
. Anyways ive lost more challenging games now very early on slowly understanding the econ model more and more....The last game i had was kinda close.... playing as the Thalians, and having a good starting position (one of my initial colonies had a +700% manufacturing square and several other bonuses... found that early (pop.) growth can be beneficial lowered the tax rate until my approval rate was 100, snatched up about 5/6 decent colonies (large map) and paid tribute to a couple of the more aggressive civs around me... which was fine because i wasn’t building a military.... I always seem to manage a decent tech lead and when im satisfied that the starships i build aren’t going to be over glorified tugboats i proceed to build a military...
to cut a long story short, i enter into a couple of strategic wars and manage to expand until there are 4 computer players (9 to start) and wow.... STRONG AI. i enter into a "cold" influence war with the Arcanites who now own at least a 3rd of the map, have an incredibly strong military, but thankfully are lagging behind me in tech.... i start plonking down influence starbases trying to halt there advance (they have completely encompassed the humans who really are now only a minor power, tho they are allied with the Arcanites) and have some moderate success, 1 human colony defected to me, and it seemed that for now their evil influence was halted.
Fearing their military strength, i made an alliance with the Evil Korx (im neutral, along with every other race left in the game) , and the humans (hehe hoping they would put a good word in with me to the Arcanites, who remained cold to me after a random event plunged us into war early in the game) ... was about to make one with the Torian Confederation when i realised they were on the loosing side of a war with the Arcanites.... seeing as the Torian's had always been fair and just trading partners with me since early in the piece (and having shared borders without incident for many a century) , i made the just and noble decision to decimate their shabby preoccupied fleet, and invade mercifully denying the worlds that bordered my territory to the Arcanites. In retrospect i really should have declared on the Arcanites at this stage...
Enter the end game stage...
The Korx, Arcanites and I each roughly control a 1/3 of the galaxy each, tho the Arcanites are definitely advancing influence wise tho not dramatically... i am leading in tech, population and industry tho not by much... the arcanites are winning influence slightly, but have a MASSIVE military... at this stage it isnt looking good, i cant seem to build my military ANYWHERE near what they are doing despite supposedly having an econ. running at 140 galactic rating.... the tech is still powering ahead.... i was thinking of going for a tech victory or diplomatic victory but arcanite and korx relations were hostile at this point... deciding once again to take the courageous route, i broke off my alliance with the korx, and left them to their own devices.... within a couple of turns the arcanites declare war on them and take out at least half of their territory/planets... very alarmed at this stage and realising that things are not looking good for my civ in the face of the Arcanites constant militancy and hoping that the Arcanites favored the quantity over quality in their fleets, i surprise attack them. (an interesting side note, the arcanites had positioned several fleets in my territory that were extremely poor in quality a big influence on my decision to attack, hehe dammed that AI i think he did that intentionally) . The initial campaign against the Arcanites went well, our brave soldiers managed to capture one of their colonies with the help of a trusty device called Core Detonation, and we definitely made a dint however slight in their military rating.... if only it could have lasted... after taking some heavy losses to the incoming Arcanite armada, despite our advanced technology, and fearing impending death and torture, our race favored survival over brutal conquest and voted to surrender just about every tech we had and 2 non core planets..... dejected my people decided to devote themselves to scientific research; having no real fleet any more and no more dreams of galactic conquest... the Korx lasted about 10 more turns or so then surrendered to the humans (!! even tho i had friendly relations and never fought with them) and i got into the routine of 'happily' donating my races hard won tech to the Arcanites in an attempt to keep them at bay................ my hopes kinda sunk when in the diplomacy box had the negetive comment "we know what your doing" and relations dropping to hostile every other round... our once great race lost our usefulness to the barbaric Arcanites and they could no longer be appeased. Surrender soon followed.
anyways thanks for your patience... a couple of questions tho..
*from mid to early in the game the social and military rates (budget) continued to drop, at the end there i could only really get say 5 percent in each or maybe 10 percent in one even then id quickly be taking a loss if i was building starships while I know that im still producing more BC , it seemed to spread out badly across my colonies, anyway to have more control over that? Im hoping that the social/military production patch will come soon because it makes it difficult to develop colonies, when 5 % social gets me 100 social production points on my core worlds but only 5 on the newly conquered ect...
*i probably had half the number of starbases i could have had at end game, i chose to upgrade most of them instead of throwing them everywhere ... but ive noticed that the AI tends to throw heaps of undeveloped starbases down... whats the advantage of that? And do starbases bonuses stack? I had 2 fully developed eco bases next to my core worlds.
*at the end game i really had only 2 (initial and second) colonies capable of pumping out bigger sized starships, the rest were kinda hopeless... with maybe 3 more mediocre ones, any tips?
*in relation to the above point even tho my industry was almost as good as the arcanites they managed to PUMP out military at a rate exponential to mine, im thinking that they dont get a econ. bonus at "challenging" difficulty? whats the AI doing that im not?
*Should i be specializing tech wise? for instance is it best to research one kind of tree more intensively than the rest?
*My civs always seem to have a BIG dependence on trade which is unreliable, anyways to get around this?
thanks for reading , if your awake at this point i congratulate you...
Any assistance would be fantastic!