Big J Money

Join Date 04/2006

Come on an' help me play this game a little better

A few general strategies would be appreciated

I play the game on normal, and it seems that a Diplomatic win with the humans isn't *usually* too difficult. However, there are a few aspects of my game I want to work on before I increase that difficulty slider. One thing that always bothers me is how I'm always the person with the lowest amount of votes. My population and influence are always hurting. Will this affect me at higher levels? I have not figured out how to ever win the colonization race, even though my transports are faster! I can only attribute it to bad luck for so long. Should I be purchasing my colony ships? What else should I blow my starting cash on?

Also, now that I'm playing the patched game, I notice that pop growth is significantly more a game factor than ever before. Is there a minimum you reccomend popping a planet with? Also, is it possible to have your growth exceed 0.2b per turn with high bonuses?

Two newbie questions as well: 1) Do I only need to cover planets with my economic starbase, or the actual trade vessels on their routes? 2) When I form a trade route, is it always from the planet the freighter was built on?

Thanks for any advice. A strategies forum would be nice one of these days.

=$= Big J Money =$=

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Yes, you MUST buy some colonyships in the beginning, otherwise you will always loose the run, the AI does it and so it is about 10 turns per ship faster than you

Your question on the economic starbases depends on the effect, for increasing the traderoutput, the starbase has to be placed beside a tradingroute, it's unimportand if this is one field of the route or the planet or 30 fields, the tradingroute has to "touch" the starbase-area. But if you want to increase the planets output e.g. social production, the planet has to be inside the starbases range. It's a very good idea to place the starbases so you have several planets inside one starbase.

As far as I know the traderoute starts from the planet the frighter left the orbit. So when you build the frigter on Earth and send it to Mars, the traderoute would start from Mars.

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Yes, depending on the size of the map and the number of planets, buying your first few colony-ships is the way to go.
What else you should spend it for? Constructors to be able to rush to the space-resources as those are extremely valuable later on.

If there ain't much to colonize or there's no resources to send your constructors to, you can also rushbuild some basic buildings like a factory that will give a significant increase in building speed over nothing at all.

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As far as I know the traderoute starts from the planet the frighter left the orbit. So when you build the frigter on Earth and send it to Mars, the traderoute would start from Mars.

I have come to different observations with that, as I tried to do exactly this. The trade route at the end still was established between the planet, that build the ship initally.

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My strategy is to keep people 100% happy for the beginning and buy several colony ships without stressing the population too much so it'll grow. I imagine on the harder levels that won't do so well since you have less money. On normal it's okay.

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There is/was a Strategies forum - (and many others too) it is listed in the pull down box below the main GalCiv2 forum post list.

However last week something broke - and it just takes you to a blank page now. Hopefullly they will get it back. It had some giood stuff in it.

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I use the +70 growth rate option. It allows me to expand with the only bottleneck being colony production. No more worrying about running out of people. Same goes for building transports.

I also usually buy 3 colony pods right off the start, wait till they get 1 billion people then buy them a factory (to make sure they have the population to support the added maintenance costs). After that I usually put out a colony pod every 6-7 turns sometimes faster depending on my money situation. Anomolies with cash are your best friend.

I usually also keep the moral at around 75% unless I need production fast or I can't grow anymore.

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You might try sticking with low taxes at the beginning for as long as you can, even if it's draining your treasury. Your pop will grow much faster if they happier, which means your economy in general will also grow faster...if you can keep them up over 90% happy for a while it will pay off.
If you want fast influence and better cash flow, you can try buying embassy & market buildings for your main (high population) planets early on. It's hard economically to sustain a large rush of colonizers, cuz you'll run out of cash before you run out of things to buy...but ya gotta do it as best you can. Also, avoid building on 300% bonus tiles until later when you have a large positive cash flow...just one of those can kill your whole economy at the beginning of a game. You can build more than one market center to help cash flow early, too (and later on, when they have been improved to banks, you'll be rolling in cash).
On new planets, try having them focus on social production until they've got a couple factories and some key buildings done. Research planetary improvements & several levels of market/economy tech early in the game and also some xeno factory tech to get things off to a good start.
Okay those are just some ideas, hope they help!

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I start my taxes at 50%, and build the entertainment center right after the farm. And the farm does not go in until later. The population will grow the same amount no matter the starting population. And the farms will do no good until the population gets to at least 5B. So building the farm to early is a waste of money, time and resources. And the morale does not go down until the population gets to high and needs the entertainment center. So with the 50% tax at the beginning I still get about 85% approval. And the percentage goes up to 100% very soon. If it stays too low just build the entertainment building earlier.
If you keep the entertainment factor high enough you can raise the taxes to 75& or more and still keep 100% approval,
and I have never noticed a marked population increase when I lower the taxes - it has more to do with the approval rating than the actual tax rate.

My build order is this.
Buy a factory right off the bat. Then build the spaceport, then 3-4 more factories. Then the money center. Then the farm, entertainment, and an embassy. The labs I usually buy as I can afford them. I try to get three or four early on to get the research going.

If the planet has a research bonus I build the lab first to get my research abilities up to par. And I always research the research facilities first, followed by Xeno Ethics, go with Neutrality and then research the NLC. Once those start going in the research picks up to a very high level. And research gets around 60% on the sliders until I get all of that, the Xeno economic and industrial stuff, and some weapons techs. Once I can build a decent ship I transfer the main focus to social to build up the factories and labs quicker. And when I need to build ships I switch production to around 75% military.

And I buy anything as and when I an afford it, especially labs and factories. I just cycle through the planets and build the first on the list and go to the next until I get too low on money. And keep adding labs as you can. Good research is the most important thing in this game. You have to keep ahead of the others in weapons tech. Second to that is industrial capacity, so get the Xeno industrial as high as you can as fast as you can. If you do that you can pump out ships in just a few weeks if you have 5 or six factories on a planet.

Build only 1 farm per planet, and never on a bonus tile. That will hose your approval every time. Especially once you do the Xeno Farms. And be sure to match the Xeno Farm level with the Xeno Entertainment level, or have the entertainment level one higher. That will keep your morale at or near 100%. The ratio is usually 1 entertainment building per farm. With one farm and the Xeno Farms you will get around 20B on a planet. And more than that is very hard to keep happy.

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So with the 50% tax at the beginning I still get about 85% approval.

Your race must have some insane morale bonuses. I play as the Yor and my aproval drops to about 37% if tax is set to 50%.

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Hehe i usually press CTRL+N until i dont get saom manufacturing bonuses on my homeworld, when i got one in the first turn i buy factory buy ,2 colony ships , set spending to 100% lower taxes so that my approval is 100% on newly colonize planets ( large pop growth bonus) and then pray that i find some anomalies with cash

if i find even 1 with 2500 im saved... i try to leave the 2000 from starting cacs co i can keep my 100% spending all the time.

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Your race must have some insane morale bonuses. I play as the Yor and my aproval drops to about 37% if tax is set to 50%.

Approval depends on many other factors than taxes, although taxes are definitely a big factor. When you build entertainment centers and/or choose the "Neutral" ethical alignment, your approval may remain high despite taxes. I've had times when my taxes were at 69% (wartime), and since I ran under a Federation gouvernment, I had to keep above 50% approval (60% to play safe).

Approval, Trade and Research are my criteria for Neutral alignment.

As for the topic...

Here are my two cents, my "winning" (egrem) tactic.

Buying colony ships is definitely important in the beginning. I try snatching planets as early as possible, regardless of whether they're in "enemy" territory or not--it's too early for planetary invasions anyway. However, if my own system has an extra planet (say, Mars), then I forego on that. I'm not going to waste a Colony Ship on a planet with PQ < 6 when there's good potential outside. If another race decides to park on Mars, then let them: influence will take care of them soon enough.

If you want to churn out more ships, set your main planet to focus on Military Production. Sure, you'll take a hit on your research, but the Colony Ships are more important. You're investing into the future, so speedy research can wait a moment. Buy a few factories to support your military; 2 or 3, depending on taste.

So now you have a plethora of nice planets, and everyone is out looking for more. This is the time to snatch those galactic resources. What's worth more: a planet with 8 PQ or dips on an Economy resource?

Right. Crank out those constructors as soon as you can. If your other planets are getting their starports ready, switch them to Constructors. Yes, the Drengi may have that PQ 10 planet, but you will have the galactic resources. Nice trade. Those you can't reach now, you can buy off later.

See that guy yelling his lungs out at you? The one with the red face? That's your Finance secretary. He just had to "raise the ceiling" for the fifth time. Crank up research again and go straight for Trade. Do not pass Go. Pick some starports and build freighters. Raise your taxes to cover for losses until your approval hits ~52%; the rest is coming out of your (social) spending.

After your freighters are going around bringing in trade income, you'll still find yourself low on cash. Maybe you just got out of the reds again. Now is the time to go for better gouvernments: switch up to Republic, but watch your approval! Don't raise taxes again--you're at 50%, remember?--instead cut on spending until your first election passes.

By then, your population should be large enough to support your economy.

Egrem. Should.

Hope you get something useful out of this,
Tarbo

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