Everything changed !

just teaches you to always update your game!!! the game has changed from day one, if you've been playing 1.0 until now, you've been doing yourself a major diservice for a LONG time.

Wow, you really have been living in the stone age when it comes to Galciv.

I really haven't played past tough, still feeling out the game if you will, however, I have yet to lose.

I am sure others have their strategies, and perhaps they are better, but I find mine works for me. It may not work for you.

I never use credit. I always buy straight out.

On my first turn, I raise my taxes to 50%, raise research and social spending to 50% which drops my Military spending to 0. Total spending goes to 100% and stays until I start to lose more than 50bc a turn, then I adjust it accordingly.

I design my new colony ship and then out right buy it.
Make sure when you design you colony ship, speed is the focus.

I go after anomalies and pray for cash.
I focus social spending on the starting planet and build 3 factories.
During this time I pump out as many colony ships as I can until my money runs out. Usually have about 400bc or so left when I quit buying colony ships. If I hit some good money with the anomalies I build more.

Once I run out of cash I drop my social spending and research sliders to 25%, slide the military to 50%, and start to build my colony ships.

I usually do not pay to much attention to my financial situation until after the colony rush. There have been a few games that I ended up in some trouble. Took a few months to get out of. Being friendly to the other races helps.

Once the colony rush is over I focus on social development and increasing my population.

Once I am in this part of the game, it starts to dictate my strategy. Each game I have played has been different, and I do reanalyze and refine my strategies while the game progresses. I like to be able to adapt to any given situation. I usually like to go for complete domination but I will stay on the cusp of all 4 ways to achieve victory until I am sure I can dominate.

This works for me. Hope it may help some.

1.0 was so much worse than 1.4, welcome to the good game

I sorta do the opposite of Quixen.

This works for me up to Tough (haven't worked my way higher yet).

Keep sliders at 33/33/34% for balanced production/research. Buy/build factories on home planet so that I can pump out a colony ship every 3 turns. (Buy the first one on turn 2, the second on turn 5, and by then I'm set at my regular build rate). Lower taxes to keep home colony at 100% morale to get the population growth bonus to feed my colony ships whilst maintaining population stable.

After factories, focus on building econ buildings, with the occasional entertainment building to raise morale to support higher taxes.

Yes--customize the colony ship for speed, although my initial research focuses first on getting the production bonuses, and next on getting Impulse Drive.

By the middle of the colony rush I am raising taxes slowly to either 39% or 49% but still need to watch my spending, slowly going from deficit to surplus without lowering the %production slider as population grows and builds up the tax base.

One of the great things about this game is there are so many different ways to accomplish your success. In Masochistic and higher, the colony rush is insane. I buy a lab first, put my sliders to 100% research, and get impulse drive?(I never remember, the first drive tech that gives you 2). My taxes are set for 100% morale, so I am losing money. I too pray for money on the anomolies.

Once I researched a better drive, slap a pair of them on a colony ship(more if you are Yor) and start pumping them out. My latest game I was able to build 1 every turn on my home planet, and didn't do too bad on the rush.

From there I keep morale at 100% for as long as I can afford to. The increase in population is where your money comes from. The planets are building a couple factories and at least one trade center.

At painful and below, you should be able to get the lion's share of planets and resources early on. Remember, population=bc.

Up until now, I've been playing version 1.0 of the game.

Let me guess...

You always knew you were too cheap to buy the game but now you understand that you're too much of a fraktard to play the game.

If you managed to get 1.4 legally then welcome to the forum.

And another lesson that helped me be a lot better, make sure you are trading techs with the AI(unless you turn it off). They are definitely trading with each other, that's why they are so advanced so fast. Buy a tech from one, and then sell it to the others. They will trade for it eventually so they might as well buy from you. Things like weapons, logistics, and hull sizes they won't give up so easy, so spend your time researching those, and buy a lot of the others.

It looks like I'm in need of some serious strategy modification

I agree with the reply above admiring how many *different* strategies can work with this game. I get at least as much time on the still-not-boring clock from mucking around with my strategies as I do in trying to get good enough to crank the AIs up another notch. Your "problem" is a good one if you like the game still.

If you end up buying the DA expansion, I do recommend keeping up with the updates. The Stardock folks are likely to expand the expansion more than other companies "improve" a whole new version of their games. The AI improvements in DL from 1.0 to 1.4 have been impressive.

I haven't upgraded because I believed that changes are merely "cosmetic", like in some other games. I don't like to read over the monitor so I usually skip those "what's new" lists...
I'm also not the kind of guy that has all programs up to date.
But in the case of GalCiv II I see that it was a mistake.
I will start playing from normal to above and modify my strategy accordingly.The first thing I noticed is that economy and morale are now tougher to keep up at high level.I agree that game this complex can be played in many different ways and I will certainly try out some of your suggestions.
But the good thing is that, with this upgrade, it's like I bought a new game !