I'm confused

There's a lot of questions here. I'm not sure whether you're playing DA or DL. Also the galaxy size makes a big difference as well.

Anyway as far as money, build more stock markets. Keep building stock markets until you're sick to death of stock markets. Don't bother with trade, in DA it's supposed to be improved but in DL it's a waste of time.

As far as morale, you need to research all the techs and build all the wonders. Also, morale resource mining is huge, so is all other resource mining except perhaps influence.

I have no clue what your issue with combat is. It's not making much sense. If you have defense for your opponents weapons and they have less (or no) defense for your weapons then you'll win. The only possibility is logistics. If they have far more ships in their fleets they're probably going to win.

Hope this helps some. You usually get better responses if you can limit your questions to a single topic. It can get frustrating starting out. Just stick with it, ask questions, use some of the advice and play more. Eventually what was hard becomes easy.

Or if you can split it up into separate questions. Also, some actual numbers would be nice. Logistics, total attack\defense and what type. Stuff like that.

Like Mumble said, stock markets > all (well, usually ) They will make a PQ5 planet from a waste into a money making colony (not much, but some is better than none).

One thing that you may want to look at is your spending and how you have it split up. A lot of people here have many strategies and methods for shifting the overall focus of your spending.

Personally I don't use trade routes. I stick to stock markets. However, if you want to you can also make some trade routes then put economy starbases next to them to raise the profit from those.

The military part of your post is really confusing. Can you re-post and clarify that? A couple ideas right now that you can try is to build some ships that balance power and cost. These aren't specifically to use as attack ships. Rather they will raise your military rating and that will help keep the AI off your back more.

If you are still having troubles with wars, take a look at the ethical choices that you are making relative to the rest of the races. You don't want to go evil if the competition is the Torians, Altarans and Krynn. Opposite ethical races have a much higher chance to go to war. I have had the Altarans break an alliance with the Yor because I was good and went to war with the Yor.

OK if by DL you mean dread lords then that's what I'm playing. Now If all I build is bank centers won't that effect things like research? I mean research starts off really slow if I don't build research centers won't my research rate stay slow?

Yes when we mention DL we mean Dread Lords, DA is Dark Avatar...For being the same game there are a number of important differences between the two.

It may help if you knew where your money is going to. To the right of the money sliders is a basic break down of where all your money is coming from and going to. Check if there are any dis-proportionally large amounts going out. There isn't an economy that these guys here cant fix!

You're right though, you will need research and manufacturing on your worlds. Normally I don't recommend this for new players, but think about making worlds specifically for one thing. Like a research planet, a building planet, and a economy planet. Remember that taxes are going to be the back bone of your economy so try to get your planet populations up!

Combat... were going to need some numbers, fleet sizes, weapon/defense numbers, that sort of thing. The title of the weapon isn't as important as the stat associated with it. When it comes to ground combat, are you using more than just the traditional setting? Mini-soldiers can be exteremly effective!

OK if by DL you mean dread lords then that's what I'm playing. Now If all I build is bank centers won't that effect things like research? I mean research starts off really slow if I don't build research centers won't my research rate stay slow?

Everything is a tradeoff. Yes more economic buildings equals less research buildings. However one point is that you can get research from factories if you set the planet to focus on research. I usually build research only on research bonus tiles, otherwise I build factories and use focus to generate research when I need to. I also enhance this by building uber-research planets with 16 economic starbases surrounding them. Econonmic starbases with the manufacturing modules will boost a planets production and/or research by 24%. 16 of these give you almost a 400% production or research bonus. If you set up a few planets like this you can concentrate on income on all your other planets. That's how I do it anyway. Also once you get into your first war and start conquering planets you pretty much "steal" a tech for every planet you take. This gets you caught up in tech pretty quickly.

I also second Teancum's suggestion of using mini-soldiers. I use them pretty much every invasion. That's another reason to have money hanging around although being evil (which I recommend) you can build a wonder that gives you free invasion tactics.

I'll provide some advice.

#1: Economics are life:
This can't be stressed enough. If you are having trouble economically, you are going to have trouble with nearly every other aspect of the game. Since you are new, I strongly suggest you invest your ability points by first maxing out economics, then morale, followed by population growth in that order. This will provide you with the raw economic power you need to better survive against the other races.

#2: Keep your enemies close:
You should always try to pick what wars you fight in, and not let the AI choose them for you. The best way to do this is try to remain on good terms with those who are capable of giving you a good beating. This means trade routes, diplomacy, and the odd gift. Everyone else makes good targets.

#3: Be nice:
Regardless of how much power you have, you still try to be nice to everyone you are not at war with. There is no reason why to make the other races hate you when you are not fighting them. Though they might not be a threat now, but when you are losing a war, the last thing you want is for everyone to remind you of how much of a bully you have been.

I hope this helps.

I use mini-soldiers pretty much every time I have to fight. They give a good advantage and aren't all that damaging to the planet. I can't build 16 economy bases around something when there isn't even 16 resources to start with. It looks like maybe I don't have to have a resource to set up a starbase. I'll try that next time in the game, Obviously if I can do that it is a huge advantage. I don't necessarily go around beating up civilizations for the fun of it although it is sometimes fun. Typically if another civilization has something like an influence star base affecting my planets in my star system then I might destroy the base if I'm having difficulty keeping people happy on the planet. Right now I have some free time so I'm going back at it.

I can't build 16 economy bases around something when there isn't even 16 resources to start with.

You don't need a resource to build a starbase. If he is able to, maybe Mumblefratz has a way to dig up that old screenshot of his with his bizillion starbases all over the place. This would probably help to clarify things a bit when it comes to the starbase building aspect.
Again, you do not need to have a resource available to you in order to build a starbase. Building a starbase on a resource gives you that obvious advantage of making it yours as well as gaining whatever bonus it gives you.
Hope this helps a little for you.

OK how do you do espionage on minor races? It's easy with main races you just slide the bar up but in the minor races screen you don't have that.

spying on minor Ai's is impossible..

Again, you do not need to have a resource available to you in order to build a starbase.

To expand a little on what Sir Evil was saying, you have 3 other, distinct types of Starbase you can build besides the Resource Mining Starbase. These Starbases include...

1. Military Starbases. Once built, you can build more constructors to upgrade this Starbase to give you an advantage in ship fire power, Defensive power and speed. You can also upgrade the weaponry and defenses on these bases so that they are more capable of defending themselves.

2. Economic Starbases. These are used to increase Research, military production and social production on planets that fall within their influencing radius. If upgraded with trade modules it also helps boost trade revenue along the trade routes which also fall within this radius. Like Military Starbases they also can be upgraded with fire power and defense modules.

3. Influence Starbases. These are used to increase your overall influence within the galaxy as well as a particular area. They can help "flip" a planet to your control. The also can be outfitted with fire power and defense modules.

In order to build one of these Starbases, move a constructor to a fitting location and notice the light blue radius surrounding the ship. This will be the area that it effects with its abilities. Looking at the ship menu at the bottom, you will see a few tabs which allow you to command your ships. Sentry, Guard, so on and so forth. Click on the one that constructs Starbases. You will be asked which type of Starbase you would like to build, select one and presto... 1 spiffy new Starbase. You can upgrade your Starbase with multiple modules. Each being carried by a separate constructor ship.

See this link for more information on this topic.
GalCiv2 Wiki Starbases
Hope this Helps.

Still when my fleet meets theirs I don't even get a shot off

As for this problem, and using only this quote, I would like to venture a guess at what your problem might be.

You may be playing the version straight from the box and have not upgraded to 1.4X. In the original box version, The attacking side fired first and any ships left on the defending side then returned fire. If there were no ships left, the defender did not get to return fire. That was changed in the newer versions of the game so that the attacking and defending forces fired at the same time.

This would be my only guess as to why your ships are not returning fire. It also makes me wonder if you are designing your own ships or just assuming since you researched those technologies they automatically get placed on the ships you build.

If this is the case, they are not automatically added. You have to build your own ships and put these weapons and defenses on them. If this is not the case, I do apologize for bringing this up, I was only basing my comments on the quote above.

If you have not updated your game to 1.4X, I would suggest doing so as soon as possible. You will love the changes. If you do not design your own ships... You should begin to do so immediately. This is a huge advantage over the standard model ships you are given to build.

First problem this newbie has is making a profit in this game. I research trade to the max and have all the routes allowable. Other than taxes what can I do? My approval keeps dropping more and more even though I have researched and built reality centers. The only thing that makes moral go up is starting a war which leads to my next question. Why do I keep getting beat up? I research shields to the max so I have ultimate invulnerable shields and armor to the max of ultimate kanvium or whatever it is. I'll have phasors or better and anti-mater torpedoes. According to my spies that supposedly know more than they rulers do they haven't researched pass shields II. No better than plasma weapons and no better than basic armor. Still when my fleet meets theirs I don't even get a shot off and my fleet, usually consisting of multiple large ships having multiple ultimate shields and multiple top of the line armor gets obliterated. I'm tired of paying people off to leave me alone. Not this veteran. Embarrassing. I have shock troops and built a qua-ton or whatever it is for soldiers. Still they some how come up with an advantage of 15! Then again ship maintenance is so high and I suck at making bc so the whole thing's pointless. Somebody have pity and give me just a hint or 2 please.

This is just my take on ship design and functionality, take it with a grain of salt.

Early on defenses are fairly useless you get better results making the ship hit harder with its initial punch.

As your defenses rise to the 4 and above range they begin to be useful.
Design at least 3 seperate ships of the same class, one for each defense type so that you can counter whichever weapon type the enemy is using (in my games missles have been the most common weapon type for enenmy ships). The important thing to remember is to pay attention to what weapons and defenses your enemy is using and build accordingly. For example, if the enemy uses beam weapons and missle defenses, then your ships should be armed with either beams or guns and have only beam defenses in order to maximize your defense (WARNING !!! be careful not to over build any sinle type of ship, you could get into the sad position of being thrust into a conflict against an opponent who uses guns, when all your ships have only missle defenses).

Focusing on one weapon type to get it at least midrange in tech quickly usually helps stay ahead of the other races ( I almost always go with gun weapons since the AI seems to dislike researching armor)


The last thing I will say is about size of ships. The larger the hull, the bigger the maintenance bill. I have had good success with building small ships with lots of firepower, sure you will loose some ships but they can be replaced easier.
Since they cost less you can afford to leave one to guard all your front line planets from unopposed landings




I hope some of this helps.

To expand a little on what Sir Evil was saying

Thank you for explaining my comments a little more in depth. I was hastily typing away, and actually, I am not that great at 'conveying' directions. Clarification is always appreciated Quixen.