I wrote a strategy guide aimed at newbies and other players who can't seem to win the game. Experts might find a useful tip or two.
Ok, the forum software is breaking my link. www . mikehealan . com / stuff / galciv_guide.txt
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Guide written by Mike Healan. Copyright and other rights are waived. Feel free to copy it wherever you like.
All of these tips apply to the normal game, not to the campaign missions. I've never played those missions, so I can't give any advice on them. Some of these tips, like reloading saves won't go over so well if you play in the "metaverse". I've never played with the metaverse, so I don't really know.
BEFORE YOU START...
Make sure AUTOSAVE is enabled. Yes, it's annoyingly slow to save but trust me when I say it is very much worth having it turned on. You can decrease the frequency in the beginning of the game, but you'll need to move it back to 12 turns later on, when each turn becomes more complicated.
CUSTOMIZING YOUR RACE
IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID
Pick the Federalist party, which should be selected already. The tech boost in picking Technologist isn't all that helpful. The production boost for picking Industrialist is nice, but.... If you don't have very many planets, you won't be able to pay for the ships you can build, you will go bankrupt and eventually lose the game. Federalists have a nice economic boost and the economy is the most important thing you can boost.
You also should reset the racial abilities and give yourself the biggest economy boost you can. What you do with the other points is up to you. I suggest soldiering or research.
On your very first game, I suggest going with a tiny or small galaxy. Play it through just to get a feel for the game, then move on to huge or gigantic galaxies.
IN THE BEGINNING....
The game starts with the research screen. Click DONE, because it's already researching the first thing you need. Then the planet screen pops up for your homeworld. Now, pay attention.
You may have to restart several times. It depends on what bonuses are on Earth (or whatever homeworld).
There are three bonuses to look for. Bonuses are the little icons on the planet tiles. One looks like two pyramids and gives you a 300% research bonus. There's another that supposedly gives you a 700% research bonus but I've never seen it.
Another bonus is the precursor mine. It looks like an octagon and it gives you a 700% boost to your industrial capacity. You'll be able to pump out dreadnoughts at a rate of one per week with this bonus tile. A lesser bonus gives you a 300% boost to your industrial capacity. It looks like an orange triangle on a black background. Or maybe it's a black triangle on orange. I forget.....
If any combination of these three bonuses are on your homeworld, keep the game. If none of these bonuses are there, press CTRL + N to start a new game with the same settings. Trust me on this, if you don't have any of these bonuses, you're not going to do well. Once all that's done and you're happy with your homeworld, build a factory or lab on that bonus tile, depending on which bonus it is. Next, build a market center and an entertainment center. I wouldn't suggest building anything else just yet, because you have to pay for each building every week.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER build a farm on a tile with an agriculture bonus on your homeworld. NEVER DO THAT. EVER. You can do that on colonies, but never your homeworld. You can build a farm if you want, just don't build it on an agricultural bonus tile. You'll need two approval building for every one farm on Earth, or at least one if you don't build any farms.
I once built a farm on Earth, on a tile with a 300% agriculture bonus. By the time I'd researched Advanced Farming, I had the capacity to feed 42 billion people. Trust me, even at half that population you'll never keep your people happy, your approval rating goes way down, you have to stop taxing your population altogether and you could end up with a revolt. The last thing you want to see is that Earth has broken away to form the Terran Confederacy. Then you have to invade your own homeworld just to get it back.
Click DONE to close the planet screen. Your survey vessel will be selected. Press A to send it off after anomolies. DO NOT USE THE SURVEY VESSEL TO SCOUT. Those anomolies give you some outrageous bonuses and by the time you can build another survey vessel, all the anomolies will be gone.
Your colony ship will be selected next. Send it to Earth (yes, Earth, not Mars). It only has 100 million colonists to start with. Relaunch it from Earth with a full load of 500 million colonists. Press S and leave it sitting for a minute. Or send it off to the nearest star to scout for planets. Don't colonize Mars yet. It is a very poor planet and you have better uses for that colony ship. Wait until you can't find any other habitable planets before you colonize Mars. It doesn't matter if another race colonizes it, because the influence of Earth will overwhelm the alien's influence and you'll get it anyway.
Next, you need to immediately design four new ships: A fast colony ship, a long range colony ship, a fast scout with better sensors and a fast constructor.
Supposedly they fixed it so that there isn't a massive rush to colonize every habitable planet in the galaxy all at once. I don't know what they did but I don't see any difference. If you don't start colonizing on a massive scale right away, it's going to hurt you severely because the other civs will be doing it. Colonies == taxes == production capacity.
FAST COLONIZER - In the ship designer, pick a cargo hull. Put a colony module on it, one life support module, then pack as many engines as you can make fit. If you can get an extra engine by removing the life support module, do it. This is the ship you'll send to planets near the other civs. Hopefully you can beat them there. There's nothing more frustrating than sending an armada of colony ships to an empty star cluster, only to have the other civs beat you there with faster colonizers twenty turns later.
LONG RANGE COLONIZER - Once you get stellar cartography researched, look for planets a long way off with no other civs near them. You'll send your long range colonizers there and hope no one beats you to them. Put on one colony module, then pack it with as many life support modules as you can fit. Don't put engines, sensors or anything else. It'll be slow, but it'll be able to reach planets the regular colony ship can't get to.
SCOUT MK II - The default scout is a piece of junk. Obsolete the design and build another one. Pick a cargo hull, put one engine on it, then pack on as many sensors as you can fit. Build two or three and send them off to investigate planets you find on the minimap (after you research Stellar Cartography). If you can't get to an area because of range, either send a constructor to build a starbase or wait until a nearby planet is colonized. That will increase the range of the scout.
FAST CONSTRUCTOR - There are natural resources scattered around the galaxy that give very powerful boosts. A properly mined morale resource will let you tax your citizens at 86% in an emergency. Try doing that without a morale resource and you'll end up with a revolt. Keep sending constructors to add more mining modules.
The default constructor is fine for resources far away from anybody else. For resources that are close to another civ, you need a faster constructor to beat out anyone else. Cargo hull > constructor module > as many engines as will fit.
Try to avoid colonizing low quality planets (class 4 or lower), unless there is no better planet within range. That goes even if it's in the same star system with a planet you have colonized. If someone else gets it, the influence of the better planet will overwhelm the alien influence and you'll end up with it anyway. You might end up with better factories out of it.
RESEARCH
Once Xeno Research is done, start researching Stellar Cartography. If you zoom in on the minimap, you'll notice that you can see stars but not planets. Once you have Stellar Cartography, you can see planets in areas you haven't explored yet. THAT is how the AI tends to beat you to most of the planets, because they already have Stellar Cartography.
After that, do Universal Translater, then Diplomatic Relations, then trade. Don't research anything else ahead of those. Researching trade lets you send off freighters, but it also lets you build an economic capital, which enormously boosts a planet's tax revenue. As soon as you're done researching trade, build an economic capital on Earth. Start building freighters.
Contact every race you can and give them the Trade technology. Don't trade for it - give it to them for free. A) Giving gifts improves your relations and B) They'll start sending freighters to you before you ever finish your first freighter. When you research Advanced Trade and Master Trade, also give that out to anyone who doesn't have it. You can redesign the freighter to give it more speed or longer range. Don't bother arming it, because it'll die from one hit anyway.
Next, you want Galactic warfare, Space Militarization, Space Weapons (do we really need three separate techs here?) and Missile Weapon Theory. If it's only a few weeks away, also research Stinger missiles. The other civs will be researching other things, so they won't build warships as quickly as you can by doing this.
No other factor matters in your relations with the other civs except your military strength. Ignore what anyone else says, because military strength is the ONLY factor that has any real relevance to your relations with the other civs. Beat the other civs in the arms race and they'll all be friendly or at least neutral. Never let any other civ become more powerful militarily if you can help it. NEVER have any planet without some sort of fighter or other warship in orbit. It could get taken from you in a sneak attack.
Missiles are the most destructive weapons, so research that before going to Beam and Mass Driver theory. Once you have missile theory or stinger, design a fighter with missiles and start pumping them out. Use the SMALL hull, not the TINY hull. A Stinger missile is twice as destructive as a Sparrow, so at least try to research it before building anything, but don't let another civ become more powerful. Get at least one fighter for each colony to act as a defender. You don't need a fleet yet, the default defender is crap and you're not ready yet to design an advanced defender. Fighters will do just fine.
After you've done all that, I strongly suggest researching Advanced Computing, Basic Logistics, Xeno Economics and Xeno Industrial Theory as quickly as possible. Advanced Computing lets you build a Technological Capital, which you should put on the colony producing the most research. Industrial theory lets you build a manufacturing capital, which you should put on the planet with the highest military capacity (usually Earth, but not always).
What you research from here is up to you, but pay special attention to engines, miniaturization, logistics, sensors, economics and missiles. You should research armor, shields and missile defense, but don't spend a lot of time doing it. It's honestly not that important. You should keep up with beam and mass driver tech, but with a low priority. Missiles are more powerful, but you could find yourself fighting an enemy with heavy point defense.
Eventually, you really need to research Intestellar Republic, Star Democracy and Star Federation. They provide huge economic and industrial capacity boosts. Don't start off with it though, because it takes A LONG TIME to get that far.
You can ignore Xeno Ethics. The bonuses you get for aligning one way or the other are not worth the time spent researching this. The only exception is, if you align with Evil, the "Temple of Evil". That generates money from a "toll" on all foreign freighters passing through your area of influence and it's worth having.
PLANETARY IMPROVEMENTS
There are some things you have to build as soon as possible. There are other things you should not build at all.
In the early part of the game, don't build anything but a starport and a factory on your new colonies. Maybe a market center, but nothing else. You have to PAY for those things and you won't have the tax base to afford it early on. The only exception is the bonus tiles. If you have research or manufacturing bonuses, build on them as quickly as possible.
When the colonies begin approaching 5 billion in population, then you start filling up those tiles. Be sure to build farms, but make sure you build one approval building for each farm, otherwise the people will unhappy at the overcrowding. Try to avoid building farms on the agriculture bonuses, unless the same planet also has an approval bonus.
If you get an ethical question during the colonization of a planet, if it mentions "precursor workshop" or "precursor lab" or any other research/production bonus, pick the evil choice. You could end up having a precursor mine or a precursor lab on that planet. Just remember, this IS a game, so you're not really dumping an alien civilization into the sea and stealing their underwater cities. You can even up later by picking some good choices if you're worried about your ethical alignment.
Never choose an option that reduces morale, production, research or soldiering. Ever.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING EVIL
There could be unpleasant consequences to becoming evil. The United Planets could restrict your trade routes. Your colonies could break away to form "The Fundamentalists". Like I said, you can always choose "good" choices later on to even up your alignment, but it's up to you whether you follow this advice or not.
Just be aware that the evil AI WILL be making evil choices, and as a result they WILL get the precursor mine and the precursor lab. That's a nasty advantage to give up to keep your conscience clear.
MUST HAVES:
ECONOMIC CAPITAL - This is almost always going to be built on Earth and you should build it as soon as possible. It drastically increases the amount of tax revenue you make from the planet on which it is built.
You need to research Trade.
DO NOT REPLACE YOUR ONLY MARKET CENTER WITH AN ECONOMIC CAPITAL. Build it separately.
MANUFACTURING CAPITAL - Put this on the planet with the highest potential for military building. If any planet has a precursor mine, that's your manufacturing capital. Build that, build one farm, one economy building, one approval building and then nothing else but factories.
You need to research Xeno Industrial Theory.
DO NOT BUILD THIS ON A MANUFACTURING BONUS TILE.
TECHNOLOGICAL CAPITAL - Put this on the planet producing the most research. It greatly increases the research production (how do you "produce" research anyway?).
You have to research Advanced Computing.
DO NOT BUILD THIS ON A RESEARCH BONUS TILE.
EMBASSY/CULTURAL EXCHANGE CENTER - I hate it and so will you, but you'll need at least one on any colony close to somebody else. You may not want an influence victory but the AI does, so you'll find them building as many as 10 embassies on planets next to their neighbors. Unless you want your colonies getting swallowed up in someone else's influence, you need these. If it's a low quality planet, ignore it. You probably won't lose it and you need other things on those planets. You do NOT need one on Earth (or whatever homeworld), because it has major influence anyway, as it is your capital. Be sure to build them on tiles with influence bonuses if you have any.
MARKET CENTER / TRADE CENTER / BANK / STOCK EXCHANGE - Believe it or not, these are by far your most important buildings. Build at least one on each planet, unless it's very low quality. Build two or three if you have room for them. However many you build, the first one should always be the third thing you build, after factory and starport (unless there are manufacturing/research bonuses).
If you're raking in enough dough, you can build a huge number of gargantuan battle fleets. If you're not making any money, you won't be able to maintain your warships, even if you can build them. I've had to decommission warships in the middle of a losing war because I simply couldn't afford them.
EYES OF THE UNIVERSE - BUILD THIS. After you build this thing, every single ship and every single starbase will have sensor coverage out to 15 parsecs in every direction. Extremely damned useful. You also can see every ship and starbase on the minimap, which honestly I wish it wouldn't do. That kind of takes the fun out of it for me.
Only one of these can be built, so make absolutely certain you build it before anybody else does.
If you get the random "Hypersensors" event, reload a save file because that completely obsoletes your "Eyes of the Universe" as well as giving the other civs the same sensor capabilities. If you can see the enemy and they can't see you, that is a MAJOR advantage. Obviously you don't want them having hypersensors.
You need to research Sensors MK IV.
TIR QUAN TRAINING - This building gives an incredible boost to your soldiering skills. It can mean the difference between losing a planet and fighting off an invasion. You need to research up the Planetary Defense tree. I forget how far you have to research before you get to this.
GALACTIC PRIVATEER - Building this is supposed to prevent anyone from attacking your freighters. It doesn't always work (a bug I guess).
The exception is if you are playing the "Dread Lords on Parade" scenario. Never build this in that scenario. Although the Dread Lords can't attack your freighters, they'll keep trying anyway. The view will be jerked across the galaxy each time they try and they end up sending dozens of warships all following a freighter along its trade route, one square per turn. This will quickly drive you insane.
You need to research Master Trade.
OPTIONAL BUILDINGS
POLITICAL CAPITAL - Really not all that important, unless you're going for an influence victory or trying to stave off someone else winning an influence victory. It does provide a pretty good morale boost to that planet though. You need to research Star Democracy.
XINATHIUM HULL PLATING / MICRO REPAIR BOTS - If you can build them first and you have room for them, by all means build them. The first one makes your ships a little bit tougher. The second one makes them repair faster. Both also are trade goods, so you can sell them to friendly races.
You need Advanced Hulls for the first. I forget what you need for the repair bots.
GRAVITY ACCELERATOR / HYPERION SHIPYARD / HYPERION LOGISTICS / HYPERION RESUPPLY / HYPERION SHRINKER - Very useful. If you build a Hyperion Shipyard, build it on the planet that is producing most of your warships. Just DO NOT replace your standard starport, because it DOES NOT act as a starport (many people have made that mistake, including me).
You need to research pretty far up the engine, logistics, miniaturization and life support trees before you can get these.
BUILDINGS TO AVOID
ORBITAL FLEET MANAGER / PLANETARY DEFENSE / HYPERION FLEET DEFENSE / OMEGA DEFENSE - Don't build these. They take up space that could be put to better use and only rarely can you predict what planets are going to need them. And honestly, if enemy warships are filling your sky and you can't remove them, you've lost that planet anyway. A fleet manager ain't gonna help.
THE UNITED PLANETS
Always save just before a United Planets meeting. ALWAYS. The United Planets can do things that are really, REALLY stupid. Like, deciding that starbases can only have three modules, while you are trying to fend off a Dread Lord invasion with military starbases. Or all races must operate as an empire, after you've just spent 100 turns researching Star Federation.
There are some decisions made by the UP where it is very important to reload a save to get rid of their decision.
If you've made a bunch of "evil" ethical choices, they could decide to restrict your trade routes. Reload your save if this happens.
They could decide that you should host the galactic prison. You don't EVER want that. There is ALWAYS a prison riot, which puts a fleet of pirates right on top of one of your worlds. Always vote to give that to someone on the opposite side of the galaxy, because you don't want trouble with the pirates. Pirates are the one enemy you should always be too scared to fight with. One pirate fleet can smash your entire military with hardly a scratch.
They could decide that starbases should be limited in their modules. That's bad for many reasons.
They could decide that all races be forced to operate as an empire. Well that destroys your economy if you're already a democracy or federation. On the other hand, they could decide that all races should be a federation (they say democracy, but it ends up being federation). You don't want the other races having that kind of advantage, especially if you're a democracy yourself before this decision. The one advantage the AI has over you is that their economy is better at the higher difficulty levels. You have to be the only democracy just to be able to compete fairly with them.
DEFEND YOUR WORLDS
Never have any colony without a ship in orbit. If there is at least one ship in the starport, the planet cannot be invaded until the enemy destroys whatever is orbiting it. It doesn't matter if it's just a constructor. It doesn't have to be a warship, although having a fighter or defender in orbit is always a good idea.
The defender is not a warship. Do not try to attack an enemy with it. It's only purpose is to keep your planet from being undefended (hence the name).
To avoid losing trade routes when you go to war with someone, send all your freighters to a single race, then keep that race on close terms. I always choose the Altarians, then make sure they are very friendly to me. On the other hand, if someone conquers the Altarians, you may end up losing every single trade route at the same time. So make sure the Altarians are not conquered, even if you have to go war yourself to prevent it.
EVIL EMPIRES
If you end up being evil because you chose all the evil choices, or if you actually choose to align yourself with Evil, make certain you keep your colonies happy. In most games, there is a random event where colonies belonging to evil races will break away and form something called "The Fundamentalists". Another event has worlds breaking away to form the "I-League". If any of your worlds break away, you have to invade them to get them back. If the approval rating on your worlds is above 90%, this generally won't effect you.
SHIP BUILDING STRATEGIES
Do not stick to the core designs. Yes, you *can* play the game without designing your own ships, but you have a much better chance if you do.
If you have a solid industrial base, build heavy fighters (small hull) and pack them with powerful weapons and no defenses. You can smash their fleets, replace any losses and hope they get tired of getting beat.
If you can't keep up with your losses, you'll need to put defenses on your ships. Design them to match your enemy. If his warships are heavy on beam weapons, pack your ships with beam protection. If he's primarily using mass drivers, cover your ships with armor.
The same goes for his defenses. If his ships have heavy shielding or armor, use missiles. If he has heavy point defense, use mass drivers or beam weapons.
At the higher difficulty levels, be prepared for the fact that your enemy will be customizing his new ships to match your tactics. If you're blowing him away with missiles, expect him to start sending out ships with heavy point defense.
If you have researched medium or large scale hulls, build a couple of frigates or battleships. Cover them in defenses, give them a good engine and some life support and at least one really devastating weapon. A quantum torpedo or a disruptor will wreck any ship, no matter how tough it is.
Now, you build a bunch of weak escort fighters. Use the tiny hull design, put JUST ONE of the most powerful weapons you have on it, give it enough engines and life support to keep up with the capital ships and put them into a fleet. If you have room left over, put another engine on it, so that you can move in reinforcements faster. If they want to shoot at your capital ship, they have to fight their way past your escorts first.
The way the game's AI works is, it concentrates the entire fleet's firepower on the weakest armed ship. If your capital ship has heavy defenses, they won't shoot at it first. This is why you cannot put any defenses on your escorts, because they won't be weak enough. Sounds kind of crazy, that you have to intentionally build weak ships, but that's how they designed the game. Just make sure you have enough escorts that your capital ship can kill the enemy before you run out of escorts. Don't make the mistake of building a frigate with massive weaponry and no defenses, because the AI will target it first and just ignore your escorts.
Keep in mind that this works both ways. When you are fighting an enemy fleet, you have to kill their escorts before you can start firing on their capital ships. This is why you HAVE to have escorts for your own capital ships. You can't just put 5 battleships in a fleet and expect it to slaughter the enemy. You'll just throw away battleships to shoot up enemy escort fighters. This is most especially true when fighting pirates, because they can put together fleets of insane size and power.
Once you're into the huge scale hull types, you can start building general purpose warships. Put at least one of each kind of defense and weapon on them. That way the enemy can't specialize on one type of weapon or defense. Or if he does, you can counter it. Your lasers might not get through his shields, but that won't matter to your railguns.
It is vitally important that you put engines on your warships. Ideally, you never let them attack you first. Enough fighters, attacking first and with enough firepower, can blow away an entire fleet of frigates without giving them the chance to shoot back. Yes, you can ignore engines to pack on more weapons, but what good does that do you if you can't catch the enemy, or run away?
Keep in mind that it is not always the best idea to use the most powerful available weapon. Let me give you an example.
I was fighting the Drengin. I started off with a crappy fighter but eventually was able to build a really good X-Wing lookalike, with a laser cannon on each wing tip. That's a beam attack strength of FOUR. Plus, using the tiny hull, I could put seven of them into a fleet (logistics of 15 at this point) for a combined fleet beam attack of TWENTY-EIGHT. Despite the weak weapons and weak hulls, these were very lethal fleets. Using these fighters, I began to methodically smash the Drengin Empire to pieces. Then I goofed up.
My research went from Laser MK V to Plasma MK I. Plasma beams are twice as lethal as lasers, so it seemed to make sense to start using them. They are also much larger than lasers, so I couldn't use as many.
I put them on small hull fighters, because I couldn't fit them onto the tiny hull. And I could only put two plasma cannons on each fighter. AND... I could only put five heavy fighters into a fleet, instead of seven. The total attack strength of one of those fleets was only TWENTY. For some reason, that just didn't occur to me and I put this new fighter into mass production. And my superior fighter nearly lost the war for me.
It was only the fact that I had beat them down so bad and had a huge numerical advantage that let me win that war. In the end, their fighters were better than mine and I just wore them down with numbers. That was just a boneheaded mistake on my part.
So keep in mind that sometimes it is better to keep the lesser weapon in production, even though you can build something more powerful.
THE DREAD LORDS
If you are playing the "Dread Lords on Parade" scenario, it is even more important that you have fast fighters, because they are so fast that they can just run rings around you. You also can ignore defenses entirely, because nothing will protect you from their weapons anyway. If they shoot at you, you die, and no amount of armor will help. You should ignore building frigates for the same reason, because you can't make it tough enough to survive a hit from one of their weapons. Go for firepower and larger fleets of smaller ships and be prepared for a series of meat grinder battles.
INTERSTELLAR WARFARE
Sooner or later, no matter how peaceful you try to be, you WILL get into a fight. If your military is weak, the other races will try to extort money from you. If you don't pay up, expect an invasion. Sometimes they don't even bother extorting you, if they are vastly more powerful than you. Never let any other race become significantly more powerful than you if you can help it. The Drengin, Korx, Yor and the Iconians are particularly bad about this. I never pay the extortion. I give them the finger and tell them to bring it on. Whether you pay up or not is up to you.
STRATEGY
How you fight the war depends on what you're trying to do.
THE DEFENSIVE WAR
The Drengin have finally realized that you are not scared and will not pay their extortion demands. They think they have the power to crush you like a bug. The war is on.
If you're just fighting a defensive war and have no interest in conquering your enemy, concentrate of keeping sensor coverage around your worlds and smashing their fleets when they move to invade. If you repeatedly smash the enemy, to the point that you become more powerful then him, he will sue for peace. Try to keep him happy from that point on, either with bribes or just by maintaining a much larger military.
Build military starbases around your worlds, arm them to the teeth and install as many ship assist modules as possible. The firepower that a military starbase can give to a crappy little fighter will leave you breathless. I had a fleet of heavy fighters armed with plasma cannons and shields that absolutely slaughtered massive armadas of Drengin and Arcean battleships, all because they were supported by powerful military bases. I still lost the war, but it wasn't because of my strategy. I just didn't have enough industrial capacity or tech to beat both of them at once.
This also works if your enemy's worlds are protected by powerful fleets. Build an armada of fast constructor ships and send them in just behind your warships. Just before you plan to take on the enemy, build a military base and put on all the ship assist modules you can. Make absolutely certain that it will cover the enemy's fleet. You MUST build the entire base and every possible module in one turn, because otherwise they could destroy the base or move out of range of it.
CONQUEST
If you plan to conquer the enemy, be prepared for a long and ugly war. Depending on the situation, it could mean countless invasions and counterattacks against dozens of heavily defended colonies. If you don't have a massive population to begin with, you may not be able to do this. The troops on your transport ships have to come from somewhere. Weaken yourself too far in repeated invasions and you may end up not being able to protect your own worlds. You could also piss off your enemy's friends and end up fighting an alliance of different races.
SNEAK ATTACK
This is going to work only if you're enemy has very few worlds.
Simply move a huge fleet of troop transports near your enemy's planets, launch a massive surprise attack against any of their warships in orbit, then invade. If you do it right, the war is over before you have to press the TURN button. This avoids that highly annoying habit they have of surrendering their planets to some other race. It also avoids you taking heavy ship losses, because you only have to fight those warships in orbit around the planets, plus anything within immediate range of your transports. When all their planets are gone, their warships are automatically decommissioned.
At the higher difficulty levels, don't expect this to work very well, because the AI may realize what is going on and launch a preemptive attack on you.
PROTECT THE DAMN TRANSPORTS
You absolutely, positively HAVE to escort your transports. One transport per fleet, with as many escort fighters as will fit. There is nothing more galling than losing two billion troops in deep space to an ambush.
Custom design a transport, based on a medium or large hull and with heavy armor/shields/point defense and then escort it. Even if the Combat Transport becomes available, don't use it. Yes, it's powerful. By the time you can actually build the thing, it won't be powerful enough to defend itself. Do not use a cargo hull, unless medium/large scale hulls are unavailable. One hit will kill a cargo hull.
PLANETARY DEFENSE
Like I said earlier, don't waste planet tiles on defenses. If an enemy is closing on a planet, buy a cheap fighter on that planet so that the planet is not "undefended". As long as any ship is in orbit, they cannot invade that planet until they deal with the ship in orbit. At the very least, this can buy you a few turns.
If your planet has warships in orbit, don't leave them there to defend from orbit. Launch all your warships - all but one anyway - put them into a fleet and try to attack first. You'll have a much better chance of removing the enemy that way, even without an Omega Defense or Hyperion Fleet manager. Even if you can't kill them, your warships still will do more damage to the enemy, which helps you the next time you face that particular fleet. You might even hurt him bad enough that he withdraws the fleet to do repairs or to reinforce.
This especially applies to Dread Lords, because usually they do not put defenses on their warships. Sometimes they'll put shielding on them, but that's usually restricted to defenders and troop transports. If you can attack them first, you can usually destroy anything from a frigate on down, even with the most primitive weapons. If it's a battleship or a dreadnought, it's better to just run and try to preserve your warships. If they want that planet and they send dreadnoughts, they'll take it and your fighters aren't going to help things.
The exception is if you have several fleets of fighters available. Then, by all means, throw them at the dreadnought and hope you eventually kill it. Just don't be surprised to see it smash four, five, six or seven fleets before it dies.
A really slick trick that someone on the GalCiv msg board told me about is, you can build a freighter packed with engines and a pop gun weapon like a particle beam or laser. If nothing else, you can outrun the enemy and blast his troop transports. The Dread Lords don't escort their troop ships, although sometimes they'll be in a stack with another warship.
DESIGN A NEW DEFENDER
The default Defender is a piece of garbage. One particle cannon and no defenses. The enemy can throw a spitball and kill that thing. Design a small hull ship, install massive armor/shielding/missile defense and one good weapon. You can safely ignore engines, sensors and life support, because this isn't a warship - it's strictly for planetary defense. Just be careful you don't make it so expensive that it bankrupts you to keep one in orbit around every planet.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE THE PLANET ANYWAY...
The Terran Alliance Navy stood and fought to the death to defend your world. That was very brave of them. Make sure you name a school after them.
In the mean time, the enemy has smashed your defenses and troop ships are filling the sky. The planet is lost. This is when you do exactly what the Russians did to the Germans - slash and burn.
Destroy every factory, every farm, every stock exchange, every embassy - EVERYTHING. Don't leave the enemy anything on that planet that they can use. Most especially, destroy the starport. If it has a bonus research or manufacturing tile, build something useless on it, like an embassy. Chances are the enemy will never get around to replacing it. You sure as hell don't want to give him a bunch of Industrial Sectors when all he can build for himself is an enhanced factory.
If you can afford it, design a fast troop transport with as many troop modules as you can fit on it, buy it (don't build it), pull out as many of your people as possible and run for the nearest friendly fleet. You can always try to use those same troop ships to retake the planet later. If you haven't researched planetary invasion yet and can't build troop ships, build a fast colony ship instead. Chances are the enemy will catch and destroy it, but they will exterminate your colonists anyway, so it's worth the effort. Just make sure you do this BEFORE destroying the starport.
If you think you can retake the planet in the next dozen or so turns, don't do this, because you'll just end up screwing yourself.
Never expect to win an invasion. Never expect that you can hold onto the planet. Never fight to the death with every warship you have to protect any particular world, as long as you have other worlds somewhere else. If it's gone so far that you have nothing left to defend your worlds, it's better to deny your enemy the factories on those planets. This applies even to the homeworld.
Unless you're down to your last star system, you can always pull off a miracle comeback. I've done it. Or someone else might declare war on your enemy and start tearing him up on the other side of the galaxy. Or the UP might decide on a galactic cease fire. Or a pirate fleet could spawn right next to his troop transports. Anything is possible.
THE PROXY WAR
At the higher difficulty levels, one race that is hostile towards you could end up supplying massive numbers of warships to your enemy. I had this happen with the Arceans. I had fleets covering every single one of their worlds, had destroyed every Arcean warship in the galaxy, and yet they still managed to come at me with massive fleets of battleships. It was because the Thalans were arming them.
Of course, this works the other way around too. Let's say you want to get rid of the Drengin or the Korx, but you don't want to risk open war. Chances are very good that someone else will be at war with them, because nobody likes these particular races. The Altarians, in particular, tend to be in a constant state of war with the Drengin and Korx.
Instead of fighting them directly, fight a proxy war. Build massive battle fleets, move them near to the action, disband the fleet and just give them over to whoever is fighting against the race you don't like. Don't sell them, because you could end up bankrupting your new friends. Give the warships away. At best, they will conquer the race you don't like and end up being very friendly to you. More likely, they will severely weaken them and the enemy will sue for peace. If they've been weakened far enough, it might be safe now to invade them yourself. At the very least, they are no longer a threat to you.
NEVER GIVE OVER YOUR BEST WARSHIPS. If you are playing right, you should have better technology than anyone else. Never give away or sell warships you can't beat yourself, because you never know when your new "friends" may decide you're next on the agenda. Or you could get a random event where your ambassador insults their president and they declare war. Never give away warships you can't destroy yourself, because you may end up fighting them later.
Never arm the evil races. Ever. No matter what the circumstances are, it is much better to have a powerful Altarian Republic next door than a powerful Drengin Empire. Don't give them weapon techs, don't give them warships. Trust me on this. If they beg for help, give them a little bit of money. It's harmless and it improves your relations.
CULTURE WAR
I never go for cultural victory, simply because it's way too easy. Just find and mine influence resources and build a couple of influence starbases. You're guaranteed to win and it's really no fun.
On the other hand, sometimes the other races will drop influence starbases next to your worlds. This is an aggressive action, just short of open war. However, it is not worth a shooting war to remove them. If you don't mind cheating, just teleport the thing somewhere else. If you do mind cheating, find someone they are at war with, put a fighter next to the base and then give it to their enemy. They'll destroy the base for you. This also works well if someone has a resource you'd rather be mining yourself. Just position a constructor next to it, hand over a fighter to someone and wait a couple turns.
Be certain that the fighter has enough life support range to be immediately useful to whoever you give it to and be sure you park it right next to the starbase before you give it away.
ENTANGLING ALLIANCES
Another victory that is just way too easy is the diplomatic victory. Too easy and no fun.
As a matter of fact, you are far better off not allying yourself with anyone. It seems like a perfect way to keep potential enemies from attacking you, but in reality it's just a pain in the butt. It commits you to going to war with someone who attacks your ally, and that someone could be vastly more powerful than you. Or they could be your biggest trading partner. Or their empire could be right next to your's, and you certainly don't want trouble with the neighbors. Never ally yourself with a minor race, because the major races always go after their planets.
If, for some reason, you have ignored this advice and find yourself in a war with someone, but you don't want to go to the trouble of actually fighting, there are a few options.
The most obvious is simply to make peace. As long as you are more powerful than they are, this shouldn't be a problem.
If they are on the other side of the galaxy and they won't make peace, just do a little raiding and make sure all of your colonies are protected. Let your ally do all the fighting.
The best way to do this is to pack a cargo hull with engines, life support, sensors (if needed) and one weapon. Send it out and start hitting enemy freighters, starbases, troop transports and any other unarmed target. A cargo hulled vessel is too weak to fight a real battle, so don't ever attack anything that can shoot back.
Be careful attacking freighters though. If you cause them to lose a trade route, you could tick off another race, because that hurts their economy. If it's just wandering around without a trade route or it's going to another race that you also are at war with, by all means attack. Otherwise, leave it alone.
TACTICS
This ain't Star Trek, where Captain Picard gives the order to fire phasers once every five minutes and hopes the shields hold. There is no retreat. There is no surrender. This is a fight to the death. When two fleets engage, only one of them is coming out of it, and sometimes neither side survives.
Gal Civ II is very realistic. You can only move as fast as your engines allow. You can't see the enemy unless your sensors can see that far. This applies to you and to your enemy.
The ideal is for your warships to have overwhelming firepower, more speed, better sensors and to be able to attack first in every engagement. It doesn't matter if his weapons are more advanced, as long as you can attack him first.
The most important advantage you can have is sensors, which is why it is vitally important for you to build that "Eyes of the universe" thing. Otherwise you have to sacrifice firepower for sensor range. Or you have to build fast scouts and keep them near your fleet to find the enemy. I fought a war with the Yor that went on forever, simply because they could run out of my sensor range before I could react to them. I ended up having to produce a huge number of scouts with very long range sensors.
If you find yourself fighting the very race that beat you out of building the "Eyes of the universe", then you are in trouble. Either find a way to make peace or build fleets that can move better than 15 parsecs per turn. And don't expect to win that war, because I am very serious about the advantage sensors give you. Try to fight them to a draw so they'll make peace and then keep them friendly. Your only other alternative is to invade the planet where they built it so you can have it yourself, and I'm honestly not sure if that would even work.
When your fleet is close to the enemy, you have to turn on the grid. Press CTRL + G and a grid appears over the galaxy. Each grid is one parsec. If your speed is 5pc, that means you can move five squares in one turn. Keep this information in mind when moving your fleets around. Even if the enemy is faster than you, you can still lead them into a trap and bushwhack them.
Never, EVER move your fleet at its maximum speed, unless that speed is very slow or you have a scout ahead of you showing that the way is clear. If you can move 10/pc per turn and can see out to fifteen, you still might land yourself right next to an enemy fleet and not have any movemenet speed left in the turn. Always move at half your speed at a time to make sure the way is clear. Keep doing this until you have no more movement left for that turn. Don't ever let yourself fly right into an ambush. Don't ever be so eager to attack an enemy that you end up within their range at the end of the turn without any movement points.
Keep this in mind, because it will trip you up. Although you don't actually move, it counts as one movement point when you attack. So if you can move at 4, move 4 squares and land right next to an enemy, then all you've done is delivered yourself into an ambush. You can't move into that fifth square to launch the attack. Your turn is over and the enemy can do whatever he likes with you.
THE TRAP
The best way to lead the enemy into an ambush is to trail a scout in front of him. The AI is obsessed with killing scouts. By focusing on their fleet with the mouse, you can see how fast they can move. Put a scout just outside that range and they will move toward it. Keep moving the scout closer to your fleet. In most cases, the enemy AI ignores putting sensors on their warships, which is a major mistake. They'll chase that scout right into an ambush. Just make certain that the scout has enough speed to stay ahead of them.
Let's say you have a fleet speed of 4 and the enemy can move 6. But the enemy can only see out to 6 or 7 parsecs. On the last move, they should chase your scout into a position where your fleet is only two or three squares away from them. Their turn is over. They see your fleet now, but they can no longer move to attack or to run. You pounce on them and hopefully smash them into rubble.
COUNTERING THE TRAP
Sometimes, the AI can be really, really sneaky. They will put a single fighter somewhere and have an enormously fast fleet just within movement range of it. If you attack that fighter, an enormous fleet will pop in from out of nowhere and slaughter you. Be especially careful if that one fighter belongs to pirates. The pirate AI is *VERY* good and very sneaky.
If you ever see an enemy fighter just sitting around doing nothing, be very cautious before attacking it. Move a scout forward and just barely keep the enemy fighter within your sensor range. Scout everything within 30 parsecs in every direction from that fighter. I've never seen any ship move faster than 27 parsecs/turn, so scout around at least that far. Be patient - move your scout ONE SQUARE AT A TIME. DON'T let the enemy see you or your scout.
If you DO spot an ambush, here is how you handle that.
Move a fighter ahead of your fleet. If you can move at 7 parsecs/turn, keep the fighter about 6 parsecs ahead of your fleet. Make sure that your one fighter can kill the enemy fighter, or put two or three fighters into a small fleet. Kill the enemy fighter. The enemy thinks he's sprung his trap and will pounce on your fighter. In all probability, that fighter is dead. That doesn't matter.
What does matter is that now your enemy is sitting within range of your fleet and can no longer move to do anything about it. Whale on them.
THE AMBUSH
Let's say you're playing the Dread Lords scenario and they are much, much faster than you are. You can still ambush them, because they ignore sensors.
With the Dread Lord scenario, you spend most of the war on the defensive and are just trying not to get conquered. You have to produce a fast scout with as many sensors as possible. Make enough of them that you can form a picket line, where any ship coming toward your worlds will be spotted well out.
When you see them coming, look to see how fast they can move. Usually they can move 4 parsecs per turn, although their escorts can move 10/turn or better. If it's a stack of ships, be sure to look at every ship/fleet in the stack, because sometimes there's an escort in there.
What you want to do is position your fleet so that, eventually, they will land right next to your fleet. Try to guess which direction they are moving and count five squares ahead of it. Move toward that square. Don't worry if you can't get there immediately. The next time they move, count ahead another five squares and alter course.
Eventually, they will land directly in front of your fleet, but they won't be able to attack because their turn is over. Attack and hope you can kill them. This works best if you have three or four fleets, because you WILL end up having to exchange one fleet per enemy frigate until you can research more powerful weapons. A fleet of five heavy fighters throwing Harpoon missiles or Photonic torpedoes will smash a Dread Lord frigate before it can ever fire back.
CHEATING
Most of the following info comes from https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Cheats
You want to play in god mode? Sorry, ain't gonna happen. But you can cheat and give yourself godlike technology.
Find the following file on your hard drive: C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\GalCiv2.exe
Right-click the file and drag it to your desktop and make a shortcut (don't copy or move or you'll break the game). Right-click the shortcut, click PROPERTIES and change the target information to the following:
"C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\GalCiv2.exe" cheat
Use that to start the game and now you can use cheat codes. The most useful cheats are:
CTRL + C
CTRL + M
CTRL + R
CTRL + T
CTRL + SHIFT + R
Here are most of the cheat codes:
CTRL + A : Upgrades the selected ship's quality, hit points and movement.
CTRL + B : Spawns a battleship. Don't get excited - the core battleship is junk.
CTRL + C : Makes an exact copy of the selected ship. For instance, send one constructor out, make 61 clones, then build a military starbase with every possible module all at once.
CTRL + F : Shows the game's frames-per-second. Works with or without cheat mode.
CTRL + H : Repairs any damage to the selected ship or starbase
CTRL + I : Shows information box for selected unit. Without cheats, this doesn't work without having intelligence on the owner of the unit.
CTRL + J : Completes the next social and military project in the build queue on every world in your civilization.
CTRL + L : Assigns the remaining planets in the galaxy to the major races.
CTRL + M : Adds 10,000 bc to your treasury
CTRL + N : Restarts the game with the current setting. Works with or without cheat mode.
CTRL + P : Increases selected planet's quality by one. Doesn't seem to actually do anything to the planet.
CTRL + R : Completes research on the tech currently being researched.
CTRL + S : Does a quicksave. Works with or without cheat mode.
CTRL + T : Teleports the currently selected unit to the point where your cursor is. DO NOT TRY TO TELEPORT A PLANET OR STAR.
CTRL + U : Removes the fog of war. In other words, you see everything - all at the same time - without the need for sensors. I don't recommend it, as it isn't very fun and it dramatically slows the game.
CTRL + V : Prompts a United Planets meeting.
CTRL + W : You lose - next turn.
CTRL + SHIFT + B : Spawns a starbase. You cannot control which sort of starbase it is.
CTRL + SHIFT + D : Adds a new minor race to the game. Doesn't always work.
CTRL + SHIFT + E : Triggers a planetary event.
CTRL + SHIFT + H : Damages the selected ship.
CTRL + SHIFT + J : Completes other races' projects (could be wrong)
CTRL + SHIFT + R : Completes research on all possible technologies, giving you godlike power. If research victory condition is enabled, it completes all but technology victory. Pressing CTRL + R will complete the last one and you win the game.
CTRL + SHIFT + M : Triggers the ethical alignment screen, where you choose to be "good", "neutral" or "evil". Gives you quite a lot of other technology too.
CTRL + SHIFT + W : Selected enemy ship or planet becomes your's.
CTRL + SHIFT + Z : Enables autoplay / quasi-hot seat game. The AI takes turns without waiting for you. (I have no idea what this means, but it's listed as a cheat).
