Was GC2 made with more care for TBS noobs ?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Is it me or is it nearly impossible to screw up in this game ? In GC1 or other TBS games you could generally overbuild in any area and cause major problems.

For instance in GC1 you pretty much had to prune your military to keep maintenance costs down. Not so here. Building a juggernaut economy is just too easy. The whole economy system of GC2 seems to favor a world of plenty. Everything is cheaper, and money more plentiful than GC1. The starbase costs are so trivial in GC2 as well. Ask me to pay 1000 BC to build something when I have a surplus of 6000BC and currently have a half million credits.

I'd much rather have costs mean something. Make ships about 5x more expensive, and factories much more powerfull to chew up credits.

In GC1 building your 4th or 5th starbase was very costly. To me there needs to some sort of scaling for the costs in the game.

So my question is was GC2 made too NooB friendly ? And if so was it on purpose to make the learning curve of the game easier for a bigger audience?
6,028 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's not noob friendly, that's for certain. Try searching anything like "OMG game is too hard!", since it has a tendancy to bring out the flames from n00bs, and confusion from newbs.

However, I agree that it should be harder to keep a high military. It would stop (or at least harm) rush tactics, and military domination.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree that the econ is a little easier that expected. I have to ask though, what difficulty do you play?
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes and no... there are way to many complaints from people saying either "the AI is cheating!" or "Help I suck!" for this to be a game designed for "noobs" (aren't we all noobs in a sense )

But I do agree that there should be higher costs appplied to juggernaut militaries.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I notice that when I tech to my beloved psycic shredder that I have problems funding my military unless I set up a solid infrastructure pre-empitivly. Maybe you are just better at it than I am, or are making cheaper ships.

Ive read a bit from players who are very good, and beating the game at the highest dificulty rating, and it seems as if they are riding the edge of happy people and good money. I mean that they are doing what they can to sqeeze every ounce of both moral and thier economy. I would sugest that you bump the dificulty up a bit.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Currently play at painfull. Bumping up the difficulty won't really address this. I just think the cost structure of the game wasn't correctly balanced out.

Basically I've never been able to over build my military. Just keep cranking ships out, and upgrade them. I personally think correcting this could make the AI's stronger, as they should be better able to manage the numbers.

I just don't think having so much money that you can generally quick buy a dozen of your top-of-line ships is correct....
Granted I do put effort into building my economy. Anymore I don't even bother taking the federalists, as I know money won't be a problem. I use my points for things that are harder to come by in the game like pop-growth, soldiering, and production.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Oh and I've tried higher levels, and you just start to be able to "feel" the AI's cheating....I like that at painfull I can get a bad to mediocre start, and climb up to win.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my experience, there is a... hump in the game. Where if you make it past a certain point, dictated by the number of AI's, size of galaxy, number of planets, etc, you're pretty much destined to win. The most dangerous parts of the game are the early game: getting ganked by multiple civilizations and so forth for being weak.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I used to overbuild ALL THE TIME. I'd kill my own economy by expanding too fast.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I still have overbuilding issues, although once I get past the first colonization spurt, if I make it, then I'm set and destined to win. Usually, I end up fine because my survey ship finds a couple thousand credits to jumpstart me, but on the two games where that didn't happen...
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It is much much more noob friendly then galciv1 was, that's for sure.

Hell, I can beat Galciv 2 at painful and I can't beat galciv 1 at normal. Goes to show you...
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well in a word, Yes. Tutorials. Wiki. Newb Guides. You can start to bleed your econ with big expensive ships too. For the most part it is friendly to accomodate newbs AND there's also the higher difficulties for hardcore players.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I crank up my tax spend rate to 100%. In my first game, I did not borther with building trade centers and stuff, and I quickly began bankrupt....

This is actually quite different from other TBS games, where $$$ is used only for speeding up production builds and maintaince cost, here you actually need $$ to fund industry and research.

I was conditioned by games like cilization to go for research improvements and industry improvements mostly, while overlooking economy improvements, as you can expect I began bankrupt quickly. Worse i started researching deep into labs... while ignoring the rest.... dumb move...

I don't think you can say this game is designed for noobs, given that your experience with galciv 1 hardly makes you a noob.

For those of us who never played the first game, Galciv's economy system is quite different from civilization based ones and it takes a bit of adjustment. In particular the whole, Social/miliary/research spending which still doesn't seem intutive to me....

The other one that is a stumbling block I think is that you can't build lower improvements, so if you start researching like crazy research improvements techs and reach a high level, you find that suddenly it takes ages to build one and it won't start functioning until the highest level is reached!

That I think accounts for the fact that many players get creamed the first time they play, even though they are veterans of other TBS games. of course, now I'm finding 'tough' pretty easy...