Gameplay aspects I don't understand

I'll take a stab:

1) go to the shipyard screen, select your ship type and select upgrade. Slap on the new engines and the gear you want. Now all planets making that design will switch to the upgraded one. Now, you can double click one of the old designs, and select upgrade, you can select the checkbox to upgrade all ships of that type.

2) i think i answered that in one

3) Morale, influence, influence starbases. If the morale is good it should be ok, but if its smack dab in the middle of anothers territory its in danger. Your cultural influence is compared to the opponent. Influence star bases with lots of the cultural modules (such as when you research the diplomacy and majesty line of research) is a great help.

4) life support, which is around the sensors tech tree ( i don't remember the exact one), without life support you're usually allowed only .9 from the farthest outpost (which can be a starbase).

5) % increase on any trade route that the starbase's sphere of influence (the highlighted circle when you click on the starbase) covers. Thus if you add trade improvements to an economic sb make sure the planets near by are doing the trading

6) Umm.. not sure how to answer it, when you get into a war or annoyed at another opponent take your ship and click on their ship, battle ensues. You can search through the forums to find more detailed information on how the attack/defense works out. All ships are allowed to go anywhere, and usually will not attack unless you're in a state of war with somebody. To invade planets you need transport ships. The goal can be anything you want that suits your playing style.

If you're new you might find playing the campaign first a little easier. It introduces a couple concepts unique to dark avatar. When I first started with GC2 I simply made a large galaxy with one other opponent to get the handle on colonization and such. Or set up about 4 opponents and put it on the lowest difficulty setting. There are a couple of strategy guides linked to on the forums that you might helpful.

And only you know if this response was helpful Have fun.

1. The "+10 Speed" bonus given by some engine techs increases your race's overall ability, so ALL ships instantly get +1 move point, regardless when they were built. They also unlock new types of engines which may be smaller or faster (or both) than existing ones; these need to be specifically added to ship designs to give any benefit.

2. Upgrading lets you convert a ship into a different design on the same size hull, so you can save money and preserve any experience it has gained in combat. You pick which kind of ship you want to change it to, and how you want to pay for it (instantly or over time in various payment amounts). There is a checkbox above the 'new class' list that lets you upgrade all ships of the same type at the same time. The information in the top right shows you the stats of the ship currently, and of the upgrade target you've chosen, so you can compare.

3. If a planet is surrounded by enemy influence (if it shows a ratio of 4 or higher, it is in danger of flipping), you need to increase your own influence ability, or if it is too much of a difference to make up, build influence starbases around the planet. Alternately (preferably, even), capture nearby enemy planets to eliminate their influence in the area entirely.

4. Life support modules let you travel further from your planets or starbases. Any starbase can extend your range.

5. The trade route gets the bonus when the little freighters that ply the routes after they are established are in the SB's area of effect.

6. Battles occur when you try to send your ships onto the same tile as enemy ships, or vice-versa. If you want a military win, you will need to build Transport ships, load them with troops, and send them to enemy planets whose orbits you've cleared of defense ships. If you send enough troops, you can capture the planets. But there are ways to win the game without doing this, by research, allying with everyone, or spreading your influence over the whole map.

1. Certain technologies will automatically increase the capabilities of your ships, but if the research provides a specific component like the Photon Torpedo, you must design a ship with Photon Torpedos and build it so that you have a ship that uses that weapon. For example, you begin the game with the HyperDrive, you research New Propulsion Techniques to open up new engine possibilities. Next up is the Ion Drive which allows a ship desined with it to move faster than an older ship with just the HyperDrive. Next up is the Impulse Drive, this is an ability tech that will increase the speed of all your ships regardless what engine is installed.


2. The ship Upgrade button allows you to upgrade a single or all ships of the same type to a newer version that you have designed. For example you have two different types of fighters based on the small ship hull; Fighter MK I amd Fighter MK II. You design Fighter MK III to install newer engines, and weapons. In a single stroke, you can upgrade all your Fighter MK I to Fighter MK III. If you also want to upgrade all your Fighter MK II, then you need to repeat the step.

You cannot upgrade a fighter that uses a small ship hull to a dreadnought that uses a huge ship hull.

You need to go to the shipyard to design custom ships. There are a series of buttons on the bottom of your screen, click the one on the right hand side.

3. The chances of a planet defecting to the other side basically depends on the amount of overall influence in the sector and more importantly the amount of influence in the star system. If a star system has 2 planets inhabited by the Torins and you occupy just one planet, then there is a good chance the Torins will eventual have enough influence to flip your planet.

A few things that affects defection are as follows:

a. Population size
b. Innate loyalty of your citizen (this is one of the race options when you develop a customized race)
c. Structures that increases your own influence like an Embassey or the Restuarant of Eternity wonder (or something like that)
d. Build an Influence Starbase whose area of affect includes your planet.
e. Research techs that increases your Influence ability.

4. You need to design a ship and add more Life Support Modules and/or research those techs that gives you more advanced Life Support modules. Military starbases and planets can extend your ship's range because they also serve as re-fueling stations. Therefore the further out your bases and planets are, the larger your ship's range will be.

You will need to research Basic Logistics first before the technologies for improved Life Support can be researched.

5. I think for every economic station in the path of one of your frieghters will increase it's trade route profits by whatever percentage based on the economic module you install.

6. There is really no details to give. If you want to attack a ship simply move your own ship over the same space that is occupied with the ship you wish to attack. When the combat screen appears (only if both sides are fleets, not just a single ship) all you do is sit back and watch as the ships automatically attack each other. There is no option to retreat.

To invade a planet you will first need to destroy any ships in orbit. Then send in your troop transports with enough soldiers to effectively win the ground combat. While space combat is 3D, ground combat is simple 2D and gain you simply sit back and watch.

Combat ususally happens when a race declares war on you, or when you decide to declare war on someone. The senate must approve a declaration of war after you decide to attack, but before combat takes place.

Well battles take place if you're at war with someone (or if 2 or more AI's are at war with each other).
If the AI declares war on you then you don't have a lot of choice.
But if you are the agressor then declaring war is simply up to your goals and what you want to do. What kind of victory do you want? Is it an advantage to you at the time. I learned this in my last game when the galaxy started going aflame in war and I didn't have planetary invasion tech yet. That really hurt me early on and I eventually got crushed.

I'll give you a quick example of my current game.
Tough or Crippling level (can't remember), large galaxy, 8 AI's, common habitable.
I was near the middle with the Drengin (ouch), Terrans to the right, Korx and Torians to the left, everyone else farther out.
Got a good start with 3 decent planets and a couple marginal. A minor was next to me as well a couple systems away that one of my marginals were in.
I'll get to the attacking. I made sure I got planetary invasion early on so I would be ready to take advantage of a situation. This allows me to invade planets with transports.

First invasion: The minor next to me had a juicy planet but I normally don't want to take over minors because they are good trading partners. They were between me and the Korx and the Korx declared war on them. Great, all I need to lose cultural control of that system. So I build a transport, send in 2 attack ships and declare war. Took the planet and that minor was done. It was a nice juicy class 16 planet anyway and the influence boost from it really pushed the Korx borders back.

Second invasion: I had found two nice planets on either side of the Drengin but they were "special" planets (heavy gravity and toxic). I traded around and researched to get both techs and settled immediately with my colony ships I had parked in each system.
So I had the Drengin partially surrounded and they only had 3 planets in their core area, 3 more scattered about. If you've played the game long enough you know the Drengin will eventually declare war on you. Here they are pretty weak. Large military for their size but I match that easily. I've got to take this chance to take them down before they rolled over someone. So I prepare by building up a couple extra fleets and transports. I declare war and move in and take their capital first. They fight back and I take heavy losses but hold. They quickly fell after that and I took all worlds but one that was too far away. They eventually surrendered to the Arceans.

3rd invasion: So now I control the entire center of the galaxy and much of the bottom. Korx at it again and they declared on the Torians. This made me take notice. Torians have hardly any military. Basically none. I don't need the Korx to double in size ether, they are strong enough. So despite the fact the Torians are my allies I can't allow someone else swallow them up. So I break my alliance and declare. I quickly move in with transports and fleets and take out what little resistance there is and take 5 of their planets with 4 turns. Their last planet they surrender to the Korx. But I got most of them first. I now control most of the bottom of the galaxy and my influence engulfs even the Korx home systems.

That's where I am at now. Basically I had to take advantage of the situations at hand. My goal is an alliance victory since I'm ally with 3 of those that are left but I won't let that sway me from battle again should it be best for me to do it. The Korx may need to die soon before they grow too strong.

Ok thanks for both your responses, (edit: wow while typing this I got 2 more responses, reading them now) they are very helpful. I think I got the concept of upgrading ships and battles, though I'll obviously need to experiment with that. I still have a couple questions   :

7. Since the trade bonus of economic starbases only apply when the freighter is in range of the starbase, is it a better idea to place the starbase near your enemy, since the bonus will be greater?

8. I wanted to establish a trade route with another civ, but my freighters fell just short of the distance to the nearest planet. I needed to extend their range. So I created a new freighter design using the cargo hull, adding a trade module and stuffing it with as many life support modules as possible. Then I built the clunky thing, but it wouldn't travel any further. So do life support modules only add range to certain ships? Or is there something I didn't do right?

9. "+10 speed" bonus translates into +1 to all ships. So there's a 10:1 ratio on the speed bonus techs give?

10. What does influence do for my colony? How can I see what my influence is causing? Or more precisly, what is the different between morale, influence and diplomacy?

An easy way to extend your range is to send a constructor out there and build a starbase - I build Influence ones, don't bother upgrading them, they're just for extending my range. Alternately you could plunk it down by an enemy, create a ECON starbase, whatever. This is handy not only for freighters but for reaching, say, galactic resources (so send two constructors)

Influence brings in tourist credits ($$$) in addition to being a formidable weapon for instigating rebellions on other planets. If you see the Skull & Crossbones on an planet then one is brewing there.

Morale is the general happiness of your citizens. Diplomacy is how favorably you're viewed by other races (and thus affects not only trading & treaties, but when or if they're going to attack you). Influence is a statistical number representing culture itself - how pervasive yours (or their's) is.

Wow that's a really cool example, thanks a lot. AAArgh stupid school why can't I play this game right now!!!

i don't think so, because there are also industry/research bonus modules that will affect your planets inside the AoE. plus, i like having the bonus near my planets; it's helps level out the boom-bust cycle of trading. but it's up to you - i have on occasion literally covered my trade routes with bases.



it's just a display issue. yes, there's a 10:1 ratio, but you'll never get anything less than a 10 point bonus in a single shot, unless you're modding things. anything that displays +1 ship speed also means +10 to your speed bonus.



influence is how strong you (pop) culture is. morale is how happy your people are. diplomacy is how well you can smooth-talk the other empire's leaders.

influece seems to have a minor positive affect on morale, but doens't do much for your colonies directly. you get tourism money, which is a very small amount. mostly influence is to flip enemy colonies and asteroid miners.

high morale helps keep your colonies from flipping. it also improves population growth and helps keep your political party in power if you have a democratic form of government.

diplomacy helps you get better trades with your enemies, and helps keep them from going to war with you.

i don't know about the range issue; maybe there is a max range each ship can have. just build a starbase halfway there; that'll do the trick.

7. As long as a trade route pass thru an economic starbase's influence, the freighter will generate more revenue. Having an economic starbase that is closer to your intended trade partner will not generate any more revenue than a base that is in your territory. But it will extend your range. Too far from one of your sectors is a bad thing when you get yourself into a war. You'll need to beef up it's defenses.

8. As stated above, build a starbase closer to your intended trade partner. More advance forms of life support will provide extended ranges.

9. Um... yeah I guess.

10. Morale - How happy the citizens are.

Influence - How much the citizens likes their own culture / civilization.

Diplomacy - How well you deal with other race when negotiating or trading.

Each planet has influence points (IP) and next to it in parentheses is the influence impact from another race. Not sure on this but if it gets to 10% of what your IP is, then the planet can eventually defect.

Even if a planet has 100% morale, a planet can still defect. I tested that scenario.

no, i disagree, that's not what influence is. influence is how much other citizens like a society's culture; how much the society's own citizens like their culture isn't really reflected in GC2, except perhaps in the mild morale bonus you get from higher influence.

Dystopic is correct.

Influence does not show how much your citizens likes their own culture;
Influence is your affect on other races.

In addition to what is mentioned above, here is a bit more about cultural influence (I think this is all correct or pretty darn near close):

The boarders that you see on the main and mini maps are based on the strongest influence of a major race, yours or an AI race. Minor races have no influence to speak of, no influence boarders and can not be culturally flipped by influence.

When you start a new game it is pretty easy to see your influence boarders, the sharp color line with your color drifting back to your home world. As you build any type of starbase (Influence Starbases have the greatest affect on territory), research techs with influence bonuses, construct influence producing buildings on planets and colonize new worlds you will see your influence boarders will grow. There are also events that can effect your influence both good and bad.

As you colonize new worlds, you typically want to colonize in your own area of influence or in black/open space (no major race has a signicant influence). As neighboring races get closer and influence boarders bump info each other you can usually colonize words a few spaces on their side of the line, but this can sometimes be dangerous, especially as you go further into their area of influence. It can be dangerous because if you use the default colony ship, you have at most 500 million colonists on that ship, maybe less if you were not paying attention. Even if you upgrade your colony ships you will probably have at most 1 or 2 billion colonists. Depending how old the other colonies are, they may several billion people on the AI worlds. Their influence would overwhelm your few colonists. This would cause you to need to build/buy influence enhancing building (embasies, cultural influence centers, etc) to protect the planet, rushing more colonists to the planet to increase influence or building an Influence Starbase and at least several influence modules.

I am comfortable with alien race influence being under 3.0 on my worlds. Any influence under 1.0 should mean I have the strongest influence for that area. Influence over 1.0 and another race has the most influence in that sector. Influence above 2.0 I will watch but may not act yet. Influence of 3.0 or greater, it's time to protect myself by following the steps above. As mentioned in a previous post, an influence of 4.0 or greater means that the planet could be culturally flipped to another race. The higher the number the greater the chances, but it is not a guarentee, only a probablity, but stick around long enough and it will happen. I don't want to see 4.0 or higher influence on my planets, but I do want to see it on alien planets in my area of influence. Some races are more prone to defect (Thalan I believe for 1) others are less likely (Altairans), this will either speed up or slow down the process.

One more thing, your area of influence on the map may not be all connected. Your first few colonized planets may not be immediately connected until their population grows some. Also, you may skip over an opponent to settle in another area of the map. For example, you may be in the lower right hand corner of the map. The Korx may inhabit the middle right of the map. On the otherside of the Korx, in the upper righ hand corner, you may find find 1 or more unoccupied systems. If you can get several colony ships to that area fast enough you can set up a second area of influence on the top of the Korx. As you do research and grow your influence could cut into the Korx's are of influence in the middle of the map and you start squeezing them with your greater cultural influence. You can use Influence Starbases to accelerate this affect on the Korx so that their planets start to fall into your area of influence and then those planets will eventually flip towards your race. This is an excellent way to fight the Korx or any other race without open conflict - dazzle them with your superior culture and they will beg to join you.

Just make sure your military is strong enough, but thats another post...

Hey!

6) I think the battle mechanic was covered pretty well. War in Galciv has mulitple objectives. You can pretty much taylor your wars to the way you wish to play.

The main mechanic is to take over planets. Building transports (research required first) is the best way to do it. I've found that it is really hard to wage war in the "realistic" sense (Ie, declare war, have several battles till one race is winning, sign a peace treaty with consessions from the losing race). Usually, when you engage the AI in war, its until either you or the AI die off.

However, you don't alwyas need to maintain a major fleet or army. You can use diplomacy to get other races to attack eachother. Build war ships and sell them to both sides. As they lose starbases you can come in and claim the now empty resources. It's easier to flip planets when the populations are lower.

I recieved an Alliance victory this way, I convinced the remaining races(my allies) to attack the most powerful race(korath). I sold my allies many many warships, using the money to fund better weapons research. While the Korath certinaly had a better fleet (greater than the 5 of us combined), they did not have the industrial ability to keep up with the 5 of us nor the population to invade 5 different civs.

Hi!

There's a hardcoded max range limit of 7 sectors. No mater how many life-support modules one puts on his ship, it can not go further than 7 sectors from nearest starbase or planet of the same player.

BR, Iztok

Thanks to all for your explanations! Ugh got to wait for the weekend to play some more...   

However two of the explanations I got for the influence of trade posts on routes seem to be conflicting:

- 7. As long as a trade route pass thru an economic starbase's influence, the freighter will generate more revenue. Having an economic starbase that is closer to your intended trade partner will not generate any more revenue than a base that is in your territory.

- 5. The trade route gets the bonus when the little freighters that ply the routes after they are established are in the SB's area of effect.

So, is the effect only when the freighters are in range of the starbase or simply when the starbase's influence includes the trade route?

A bonus is only gained when the little freighter is in the starbase's AoE.