I'm actually very curious how you all accomplish this (after the colonization phase, of course. I understand the basic idea). I've tried this in a few games, both intentionally and inadvertantly and I have found that while I've had an early advantage, I can't hold it long enough to make a large enough impact, and generally end up losing via attrition. The only way I seem to hold the middle-end game is to set the races against eachother.

I don't think you can generalize and say you should always stop colonizing before the AI. It depends on the map and your race. For example, if you're playing Korath, don't even bother colonizing. Why colonize when you can spore?

LostHero, would you mind providing us with some screenshots of you using this strategy? Sounds intriguing.

A similar strategy used to work in... hmm... Civilization II, I think it was. A wall of cheap caravans would prevent the enemy from moving past them. The enemy could attack them, sure, but they would be immobilized unless they did so, both physically and diplomatically. Later in the game, when the wall is less useful, you would move the caravans back toward one of your cities to assist with building a wonder.

That said, I find it hard to believe that a similar strategy would work in any version of GalCiv2. The Colony rush is called a "rush" for a reason...

yeah it works and i think i can recreate that event. give me a couple of days though, it wasnt easy. i'll also get you a picture of the recent strategy i tried. hope this all helps you.

LostHero (tainted with a give of incredible power).

Why o' why would you think i would want to join your empire? Do as you wish and play as you wish, but i just can't believe your wall of ships tactic on suicidal.

Show me a screen shot and i'll eat my words, untill then i will assume you are talking out you arse!!



Good point. As the Korath i will take the immediate star systems around me but once my research is 2 to 3 time the AI i will stop colonizing and start pumping out lightly armed spore ships. In the early stages the AI rarely has more than 4 or 5 in attack, so a similarly armed and defended spore ships makes short work of your enemy.

Provided it's not the Yor. I hate their Super Ability.....

alright neilo, give me time and i will prove to you it's possible.

ghostwes, until i get the screenshot heres a quick draw up of what i did.
(didn't acutal look like this)

hope this gives you a basic idea of what i did.

There are several ways, but they all involve moving against the AI to some degree while it's looking elsewhere.

For me, I usually move straight into social build up. This leaves me with a core of several planets capable of producing ships in a reasonable time (Especially with the Artifical Slave Center). I do NOT build up every planetary square. This core also lets me out tech at least some of my neighbors with the all factory strategy and focus. This becomes an advantage that the AI never recovers from...I flip over to military techs and a military build up with the remaining 75% social spending.

Depending on the map type, sometimes I just move straight to troop transports and start eating planets as they colonize them within my border and leave 2 or 3 Swiffers (named after the throw away floor cleaning brooms) to sweep any transports they send my way out of the sky while letting the colony ships continue through (and pick up their tech for free).

Truthfully, by the time the first real ships are coming on line they are almost indestructible. By the time the first ships are at the border, the second set is coming out and they are indestructible for a while...

And definitely keep them fighting each other!

it is very hard, you must play on a large map.

build colony ships and send them to colonize 3 sectors away. whilest doing that you must send small 1 man crafts to block the other from entering your area by lining them up as shown in the diagram above (not a good picture but it was the best i could come up with on such short notice). after that you can start to colonize the planets inside your boundries, remove the ships and ta da you have a vast empire.

I don't see where you find the time to build all those ships. When I start a game, I'm cranking out colony ships, constructors, and survey ships as fast as I can, and I don't have the starports or the money to put out anything else.

However, sometimes I can outmaneuver the AI on a much smaller scale, usually with the survey ships. You can place your ship between the AI and his target, and make him fall short by just one movement point. I get an extra anomaly here-and-there that way all the time.

I've used a stategy similar to LostHero's on a much smaller scale. I've screened uncolonized planets near me while you send my colony ships grab planets further out. The AI gets flummoxed when confronted by a line of ships, seemingly regardless of the difficulty level.

I admit that this is a cheesy tactic. I personally think ships of different races should be able to enter and occupy any square so long as they are not at war with a race in the square.

Why not just take the *!#$%@ planets? Or, just use far less ships to SURROUND the planets. The wall thing still doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

I'm not too crazy about the blockade strategy myself, but I do like to toy with the AI some as it's convenient, and one trick is to steer the AI toward all the crappy planets. He has the colony ships, they're going to colonize something--you just try to blockade him into colonizing the trash. Plus, I noticed from doing some espionage that, once the AI sets his autopilot, that's where he's going to go; so, if you can make that path hard to get to, you can really buy some time. If you simply colonize a planet before he does, all he will do is redirect his colony ship somewhere else, before you can do anything about it.

So if you do some blockading, it'll work, just not on the big grand scale that's being proposed here. I don't think that's the best use of your limited economy.

This is my point. The amount if ships one would need to pull this off on a gigantic map is unthinkable. Your economy would be in shambles, and on suicidal, i just can't see how one can outproduce the AI at the start of the game. Matching them is hard enough but for the first 10-15 turns they are just relentless.

The only way i see this working is on a map no bigger than medium, no more than 2 civs, and no higher than challenging.

And i use the term "working" lightly, as this should never be ones reccomended way of out colonizing the AI.

True, very true. In early game i never build anything unless it is a colony ship or a survey ship. Even constructors get the boot until about 3 months in, which at about the same time i will have some attack 5 fighters too.

If the AI is still colonizing or he has resources i want.....well by this point, what's mine is mine....and what's his is ...mine too!!!!

CornhuskerMac you might be right there! why not surround the planets! i like you thinking. make ships no addons, they are so cheap. hardly affect your economy.

nelio i'm am amazed you've lasted this long, so i guess you have qite a few skulls hanging over your fire pit.  

Cost of colony ship in early game: 70-125.

Cost of 8 empty tiny hulls: 200.


I don't see why it isn't just better to build colony ships.

Going to war early is a great tactic...but it does need one thing. You really need to have a far better diplomacy skill than your intended enemy, that way you are the one dictating when he war ends, ie, when and if they get too much for you, you can bail when need be.

If you can take a few planets and destroy whatever ships you come across the AI will fold easily. I don't mean to stay at war the whole game from this early on, but i find it far easier to out colonize the AI when my right foot is stuck up his ass!!!!!!

Also it is important to build Diplomatic Translators. They are a must!



Me and Lord Kona have been known to avail ourselves of some Drengin Ale whilst cleaning or skulls, i mean, trophies.....Until of course he passes out....he is such a terrible drunk!!

You can reuse the tiny ships, but once you use the colony ship it is gone. It's possible that you could blockade, colonize, repeat. Also, you don't have to use your star planets to make 25bc ships. Any planet could do that in a couple turns.

I spam tiny hulls with survey modules already (this is with the +2 speed racial bonus), so I can see the benefit to an extent. It's possible you might be able to upgrade them all to 1-attack/1-defense ships later on and bring on a military starbase. It might be worth a try if you decide to go Neutral. I don't see myself doing it on Suicidal anytime soon, except maybe on a Tiny map.

yeah right, i was play just before hand:
a colony ship costs 978 Bc
a small ship chassis costs 29 Bc

round them and it would look like this

a colony ship costs 980 Bc
a ship chassis costs 30 Bc x8= 240 Bc

quite a difference


mind if i join you and Lord Kona, are Archins the type of race you hang with...


I have quite a few skull myself.

Your numbers are off by quite a bit dude. Are you modding?

no, im just adding the additional price charge by the galactic building parties! they charge at least double of what you normaly pay for a ship

I've been watching this entertaining thread and have noticed something.
Lost Hero mentioned on another thread having serial issues and not being able to update. So I would assume he's playing ver. 1.0x , which is quite a difference from the patched game. That could explain some of the difference in strategies and numbers.
Still, I definately don't think "the wall" would work to well on 1.5.   

Thanks for the screenshot, LostHero, but what I actually wanted was proof that the strategy works, ie a screenshot of an actual GalCiv2 game. I do understand the strategy in theory, but I have doubts that it will work in practice, or, rather, that it would be worthwhile using.

I'm working on it but the dread lord arn't giving me any peace. i probably isnt worth using unless the map is absolutly perfect (rarely it is).