Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice?

Did you try the GalCiv2 Wiki?

Post your questions, describe your problems in-game and you will get an answer.

Question: Is there any consolidated source of strategy information?

I've mined the wiki but found very few actual strategies, mostly just the same info as found in the game's manual.

Question: With the changes to GalCiv2 with the latest patch, what impact does this have on early game building/colonization/etc?

I mean, I hate to just start repeating questions and then getting the same variety of responses and just add yet another thread that is briefly helpful but then is difficult to find for a future person searching for advice... why isn't there a single place with multiple strategies and evaluations of each? Or is there something like that that I'm not aware of?

why isn't there a single place with multiple strategies and evaluations of each?

A good question, but the answer is simple: There is none because nobody did it (yet).
There a lots of different strategies in GalCiv 2, more than in some other games. I guess that's why a "world formula" for GC2 hasn't been formulated yet.

Question: With the changes to GalCiv2 with the latest patch, what impact does this have on early game building/colonization/etc?

On one hand you have a better economic base with the improved starting planets. On the other hand, keeping approval up is harder because of the morale changes. I found myself to build an occasional morale building in the early game, something that I never did before. Overall, the inital strategy hasn't changed much though.

Is there any consolidated source of strategy information?

As you've already found the answer is no.

Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice?

The reason is that it's so hard to write up. It's very difficult to write up a simple cookbook strategy guide, there are too many ifs, ands, and buts. When you do come across a strategy guide they can often be based on a very reasonable premise and seem to be relatively simple, but when you actually try to implement the strategy you find out very quickly that it's far easier to say than to do.

The beauty and difficulty with this game is the wide variety of potentially successful strategies. This leads to problems. You can't simply take a good idea from one place and another good idea from another and put them together. You need to look at your strategy as a whole and make sure it fits together. Also, not all advice given is good. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

I'm sorry I have no easy answer for you, the best advice is to listen to other peoples ideas, use the ones that work for you and ignore the ones that don't. Also, it can help to join an empire, if you aren't already in one. It's not really a matter of having any real "secret strategies" it's more a matter of people sharing a common goal being a bit more helpful to one another than they might otherwise be without the common goal.

Post your questions, describe your problems in-game and you will get an answer.

I agree that this is the way to go, however you won't get an answer, you'll get ten different answers and they'll often conflict with one another. But you're much more likely to get good results by breaking down your questions into bite sized chunks and then wading through the response's for ideas that you like.

With the changes to GalCiv2 with the latest patch, what impact does this have on early game building/colonization/etc?

This question, for example, is definitely answerable, whereas your first was not.

I'm still trying to adjust to these changes, but I find myself building far more advanced markets for early income than I used to. I also find that I can't seem to keep my approval up to levels that I used to. This means my growth rate is lower and therefore the rate at which I can colonize is slower. I used to make my home planet my manufacturing capital fairly quickly and pump out a colony ship with 500 colonists every other turn. In v1.31 I still make my home planet my manufacturing capital but I adjust the sliders more towards research and produce a colony ship every third turn. To make up for this slowdown, I try to get my first one or two colonies up and producing colony ships as soon as possible (it probably takes 8 months or so). On any colonies other than the first one or two I build factory followed by three or four economic buildings. I pay to rush build on my first one or two colonies but never rush build on any other colonies until much later in the game. I still take the 70% pop growth racial ability and the 30% economic ability and take the Torians for their free 25% morale bonus. Hope this helps.

The beauty and difficulty with this game is the wide variety of potentially successful strategies. This leads to problems. You can't simply take a good idea from one place and another good idea from another and put them together. You need to look at your strategy as a whole and make sure it fits together. Also, not all advice given is good. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

And the different game settings you can adjust don't make it easier, the civs bonus... and starting position, relation to other civs, finding credit anomalies or not, random events

I found myself reading through a lot of threads around here to help me push the difficulty level higher than Challenging.
I did a couple of Normal games, pushed up to Challenging and did not have major problems. Being able to play on Tough was.. well it was tough
I lost my first game and retired from some others until I got the feeling and was able to face the other major civs.
Now I think I can manage this difficulty level, but yet I did not play on a bigger galaxy than Large.

I love this game, many options, many different scenarios, each game being different from the precedent.
I get low scores but who cares as long as I win
I will progress with some more time.

On my end, I read a lot of information here and it helped me understand some aspects of the game, gave me some new views and things I never thought about.
At the start of a game, I constantly play with the production sliders.
One example: pushing Research up to get something in a few turns, and when only one turn is left, I adjust the slider to the lowest percentage where I still get the Tech in 1 turn, to not waste Research points.

Good luck finding your way through the harsh space age!

No one has mentioned it yet, but the Empires collect their own versions of "best strategies" some of which is posted here and there in the open, but some is not and is only available to empire members. The Diplomats have some of the best players in the MV and have a private collection of outstanding strategies, hints, and tips. Some of this is in the open in the empire-neutral threads at the Core (www.thegalacticcaore.com). Drop by and join the Core for a good time chatting with good players. Join the Diplomats, or another empire if they fit you better.

There are a few good threads that deal with initial game strategies.

However, there are many strategies that will work and so it is hard to pin down a single "cookie-cutter" approach. Further, as you go higher in difficulty levels, a strategy that works at one level may utterly fail at the next more difficult level.

Thanks all for the responses... What you say makes sense, as far as to why I am having such a hard time finding strategy resources, but I at least understand it now. I'll try to explore with a few more games and decide if I can come up with some better specific questions or examples and see if I can't finally get better at this wonderful game

Thanks again for your responses, everyone had something interesting to say and I will be following pretty much everyone's advice. (Including checkout out the core )

PS: Also, if anyone wanted to link me to a few of the aforementioned really good strategy threads, I'd appreciate it... I've been lurking and searching all week and have only got to play half an hour's worth of GalCiv2 this week, hoping to make up for that this weekend and don't know if I'll have the patience to actually search some more before I do.

If not, that's no big deal and I understand that all our time is valuable, but several mentioned that they're out there and so I figured it'd save me both time searching for them and then time evaluating which among the many that I find are among the "better" strategies, in regards to general applicability. Thanks much!

We have a lot of very good strategy tips on our main thread in the Metaverse forum. You can read these tips without becoming a member of The B C Space Orcas. I have to admit though that we do have some secrets that we have not left open to the general public. Join us and save a whale or two. You will also get almost instant responses from us as to any questions you might have. Hope to see you soon in our website. Bye for now,TBAY.

Yea there r tips a plenty if u read through the B.C. Space Orcas thread. No need to join but please consider it.  

I am constructing a list of 100 tips (1 per day), check it out u may learn something new. They r pretty much random tips, but when the 100 is complete I will try to put them all together in one post, for all. I believe the final 100 will turn any beginner into veteren, but be warned they will contain spoilers for those who like to discover the game themselves.

My friend just started playing last night, and I was trying to give hime some tips on getting started. I learned a few hours in that he had set the starting universe to its largets size and the density/quality of planets to next to the lowest level. He also had the max number of AI opponents.

Most of what I'd told hime turned out to be false. Building colony ships early was energy as finding new worlds to colonize took forever.

Just an example of how any strat guide is facing an uphill battle.

One of the strat general guides


You might find some valuable information. It helped me a bit. Don't take everything as "the truth" but I personnally found it helpful.

edit: it's outdated, it applied to 1.2 I think, not the current 1.31 version

One example: pushing Research up to get something in a few turns, and when only one turn is left, I adjust the slider to the lowest percentage where I still get the Tech in 1 turn, to not waste Research points.

Don't do this. Research points wont get wasted, except you're at the end of a tech branch. In fact you can research multiple techs in one turn.

Research points are carried over to the next researched tech?
Good to know. Thanks.

All you need is a push in the right direction. There's so many strategies that work, you really have to find your own. It's like learning a lot of things, people can tell you how to do it, but inevitably, you have to find what works for yourself. A person could defintely write a whole book on the subject. It's more than just a game, it's a complete environment.

Research points are carried over to the next researched tech? Good to know. Thanks.

It is sort of hard to be real specific on this topic but here's my observations;

At the beginning of the game, the RPs will be carried over to the tech that you choose to research next. It will not show up in the tech research bar on the main screen but it is there. I'm pretty sure it works this way for at least the first 12 turns or so -- at least it does for the way I play my first 12 moves.

At some point in the game the RPS are carried over to the next tech in the same tech branch as the tech that just got research. It'll usually show how much in the tech research bar in the tech screen and the one on the main screen too. The RPs will still be in that tech later if you choose to research something else in another tech branch.
Not really sure how soon this starts but it is pretty early in the game.
And yes you can get multiply techs in 1 turn -- I've gotten 5 or 6 at least doing a new branch late in the game.

Don't do this. Research points wont get wasted, except you're at the end of a tech branch. In fact you can research multiple techs in one turn.

Well that is generally true except for the first propulsion techs (up to impulse drive I think) if I have correctly understood what I have experienced

Here is some advanced advice

The prime thing to understand in GC2 is that while there are many ways to win, you have to be coherent in your strategy. you can't be good at everything early on. you have to choose a strategy that fit your play style

for me, it all start with custom ships. understanding how you can specialize ships.

some of my favorites:

vulture: cargo hull, the smallest possible weapon (only need 1 point of dammage), the rest is mostly for drives (speed) and a little for range and maybe sensors (but not really needed, read bellow) - purpose: destroying defenseless ships such as colony ship, transport, freighters, scouts, constructors.... it's part of a denial strategy. you're oponent will not be allowed to build trde routes, starbase, etc...

scan ship: cargo hull, only one drive, no range(usually - except for deep scan ships) the rest is all sensors (survey module cheaper early on) - purpose: those ships have hugue scan radius, you can think of them as modile undefended scanning starbase. their scan reach can be larger than one quadrant. you can see ships approaching from 10+ parsecs and get ready for them. full border protection

intervention fleet: 2-3 drives, 1 armor of each type (if possible), range needed only for assault fleet, the rest is for weapons. purpose: attack and retreat. as a result your fleet don't get destroyed, they take turn. they get experience and hit points. and they are really worth upgrading.

you can check for my other posts for some hints on race design. I'm mostly an explorer and like speed (through ship design, not race habilities) and big orion-like planet

I'm no metaverse grand champion (I'm ranked like 143 or something, and my one man empire is around 42) but I manage to have fun and to win, and outside of getting a few tips from these forums I have learned everything through trial and error.

I can consistently beat 9 AI opponents on painful setting (currently working on higher difficulty settings) and the economy is always one of my best areas.

1. Trade - always fill your trade routes and use economy starbases. If you conquer a trading partner, or plan to, have some freighters ready and pre-positioned to take up the slack with another civ. Try to spread your trade around so that you have some flexibility and it won't be a disaster if you end up at war with a given civ because they are your only trading partner.

2. Population growth - build at least 1 farm on any mid or large size planet. Pop growth bonuses are helpful, be it an initial race bonus or from aphrodisiac etc.

3. Stock markets - obviously helps.

4. Morale - keep your morale up. The higher your morale the better your population growth, the higher you can keep your taxes without negative consequences etc.

5. Economy and morale resources are great if you can get them, max out the bonuses from them with modules.

6. Temple of Evil / Good / Neutrality - these can shift some of the AI opponents tourism income to you depending on their alignment, though I've never actually tracked how much it adds up to very closely.

If you are a beginner, try researching diplomacy techs and forging alliances while you are learning the finer points of the game and seeing how different building strategies pay off for you (as opposed to trying to be a warlord and take on everyone militarily). Also, try playing the game with some specific parameters set for the map - like uncommon for habitable worlds and planets, but on a big size map. This will give you some breathing room to try things out without the AIs right on top of you or turning into juggernauts with 100 planets each.

Try reading through this.
Its very very long so may have what your looking for. I havent read all of it myself, but give it a go

http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/galactic_civilizations_ii_dl.txt

http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/galactic_civilizations_ii_dl.txt

I refer to this all the time. I have it printed out and frequently thumb through it while playing a game. Some of the data is old and there are a few actual errors in it but it's the most comphensive thing I've seen. Here's the link.

WWW Link

http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/galactic_civilizations_ii_dl.txt

I refer to this all the time. I have it printed out and frequently thumb through it while playing a game. Some of the data is old and there are a few actual errors in it but it's the most comphensive thing I've seen. Actually you need to follow the link below and then click on the FAQ's tab.

WWW Link

Awesome link munble. Thank you very much.

Here's a guide with lots of pictures that could be useful to you.

Dark Avatar Visual Guide