Two Hours of Sleep

Do you have a dual core AMD? If so then you need a driver update to fix a bug. Dual Core Machines may need a driver update

Hi!

... and welcome to "just one more turn PLEASE"!


The Lucky Ranger. AFAIK I got it in only one game. I also don't remember seeing that event happen to ANY player in all my DA games.


No. I never know what I'll get, so I develop my grand stratey after assesing the situation.


If it is very early game, I restart. In mid or late game I reload (have set autosave to each third turn).


They give the other side 10% of the giving-side economy or research. Giving side doesn't lose anything. A mighty diplomatic tool. Use cautiously tough, you can't break the treaty without diplomatic penality from all races.


You need to enhance it with constructors that will add modules. For "warfaring" modules you need to research Space weapons for start, then Starbase Fortification tech branch and/or hull construction branch (starting with Advanced hulls). For ship support modules you need to research another tech branch starting with Starbase Defensese (or sth. similar).


I rarely keep up with AI in the early game. In early game I research just first and maybe second level of techs my empire NEEDS, and rather concentrate on colony rush and building sound infrastructure on my planets. But when that infrastructure stars kicking in, I quickly surpass the weakest AIs and I often also conquer them ASAP, making my empire even stronger. Rinse, repeat several times, win.


You need to research a branch or two that other AIS don't. When you trade one tech, make sure you'll trade it to EVERY AI in the game in the same turn, or else they'll do that for their profit. When trading it helps if you have advantage in diplomatc ability, so try to not sell diplo techs. Also don't sell ground warfare techs and weapons/defenses you're the only one that has it. There's also one trick I've been using, when I allowed tech trade in my games: when AI is 1 turn of research away from a tech you already have, SELL it that tech. You'll make some profit for nothing. However I don't know it that still works. You better check.

BR, Iztok

I've had those kinds of nights before.



Welcome to Galactic Civilizations 2. I hope you enjoy you're stay. Also, for the record, Galciv 2 is currently one of the best TBS games around, if not THE best. So you made a good choice.



I almost always try to beat it regardless. It helps me to improve my empire management skills, and provides incentive to not make those mistakes again.

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Anyhow 2 tips to minimize mistakes, and to survive unfortunate events:

1. Select good starting abilities
Max out economics first, morale second, and put the remaining into population growth. That will allow you to quickly stabalize your economy early in the game, and possibly overwhelm the AIs. Not to mention, it will also help you to recover quicly after a disaster.

I also recommend that you select the Altarians as your race. Their super ability has other good races come to your defense if you are attacked, which will help you a lot since you are new to the game. They also have good inherent bonuses to economics, morale, and research, so you develop those abilities larger than most of the other races.

2. Build up good infrastructure first, not ships.
Don't buy ships early in the game, otherwise your reserves of money will be depleted quickly. You should instead be using that money to run your empire at a loss. Set your spendings to give a big boost to social production and build factories, after about 4 or 5, you should be able to shift spendings to build ships quickly.

There are other ways to do the colony rush, but that should be the simpliest, and least harmful to your empire, way.

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Good Gaming!

When I first started, I never had a victory in mind. I just played and hoped to get a good enough position to get ANY kind of victory. My earliest victories were influence and technological....then I eventually got a couple allied victories, and to this day I only have I think 2 or 3 full military victories.

Then I upped the difficulty level and played the same way. Recently I've been much more comfortable and have been picking a victory type. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I dont, sometimes I just settle for some other victory.

I think I'm just about ready to upgrade to both 1-higher difficulty AND picking my intended victory.

Sometimes I restart a game pretty quickly. If an AI settles a couple key big planets too close to me, I realize that I'm pretty much out of luck and dont bother. Also i just recently found that when you start a game, you can press CTRL+N to make a new map...i do this several times until I find an interesting layout to play. (BE CAREFUL! This will work at any point of the game. Make sure you save often in case you accidentally hit this key!)

As far as research, i just find it's PRACTICE. Everyone has their own idea of how to do things, but you have to figure out ways that work for you. For example, if you upgrade your social production too fast, you will just SPEND more money on production (both in upgrades and actual production costs), which might not be what you want.

It took me a little while to figure out ANY tech strategy that would work. Now I have one and vary it as needed.

Ah, I see. I only updated the Nvidia driver. I'll give that a shot tonight.

Thanks for all the tips and advice. I think I'm getting the hang of this now. BYW, what's up with the Thalens? They've been holed up in a remote corner of the galaxy and when they finally decide to expand, they send a colony ship way across the board deep into my territory to settle on a crappy little PQ3 planet. They've actually done that twice now. It flipped in 2 turns. Meanwhile, they're sitting right next door to a juicy PQ26 (just needs a little gravity research) and a PQ7 that's all ready for the taking. They're not building anything, they're not buying anything... kinda makes me think they're up to something sinister.

Does the AI play to win or are they just doing their own thing?

In DL I always disabled all victory conditions except for military conquest, as I was playing for high scores, Tips for Maximizing Your Game Score. With DA I'm playing for fun so I've enabled all victory conditions; I don't know if it possible win a military conquest without first triggering an influence victory.

In DL I was easily able to beat the AI on suicide with the mixed (factories and labs) strategy with tech trading on. In DA with the AI improvements (e.g., planetary development) and tech trading off, in my first game using the mixed strategy I was not able to catch up and was overwhelmed by the number of ships from the Drengin when they declared war on me. In my 2nd DA game with tech trading off and the all factories strategy, I expect to win. If the AI could also fully fund its production centers (which it could under my suggested model, where factory and research output are independent) then I likely would not be able to beat it on suicide. This would give advanced players more of a challenge.

I choose my game strategy and challenges when I setup my game. I'm currently playing a DA 1.6, suicide game on a medium map, common stars and planets, abundant anomalies and asteriodes, and very fast research against 6 Ultimate AI opponents. I choose two of the best AIs from each of the ethical alignments: Altarian and Torian for good, Krynn and Thalans for neutral, and Drengin and Korath for evil.

The first strike advantage that existed in DL prior to 1.2 was disablizing. I was able to complete the entire DL campaign in DL 1.0X without losing any combat ships(just constructors); even the mighty Dread Lords were no match since they rarely got to fire their power weapons and by then my, all attack no defense, ships had enough HP from experience to absorb the hit. The first strike advantage is back in DA as the Super Warrior ability which I choose for my custom race. The combat model has changed in DA and defense is now much cheaper than in DL, so I want to see if it is still too powerful. There are reports that it is not very useful in DA but I think those were the result of the off-type defense bug which the devs claim is fixed in 1.6.
For my other race abilities I choose:
Speed +2 (8 points, expensive but given the size and cost of engines in DA, I think worth it especially given my first strike advantage as I can build ships without engines and reasonable speed).
Luck +25 (1 point, well worth it since it boosts your average attack by 12.5%, e.g., if your weapon has attack strength 12 instead of scoring 0-12 you score 3-12, which is very useful combined with my first strike advantage)
Population growth +40 (5 points, growing my population quickly helps me grow my economy and quickly replace population after I've loaded 3 Billion onto a troop transport)
Morale +10 (1 point, helps keep morale 100% for double the population growth)

I'm keeping notes and making screen shots so I can post an AAR(after action report) when I finally complete this game.

Oi, I just got the game too and I'm having a couple of those days, Atm my eyes are bloodshot because of how tired I am... SOOOO ADDICTIVE... I'm not new to the TBS' having played RTW, M2TW and CIV4 plus maybe a couple others but this is the only one thats activly driven me into sleep deprivation...

I've been playing computer games and authoring computer programs even since I got my first computer a Franklin Ace 100 back in 1982! Back then my friends and I hoped to someday develop computer games for a living but the reality is that is a small part of the computer industry so most of us are working in other niches. Today at age 41, I'm married with two young daughters so finding time to play GalCiv II is hard. On a week night I might get home around 8-9 p.m. and after getting my daughters to bed and having dinner, I sometimes start playing at 11:00 p.m. with the intension of going to bed at 1 a.m. But then that evil robot says a few more times wouldn't hurt and 1 becomes 2, 3, 4, ... I pay the price the next day! I'm too old to do that on a regular basis.

Hi!

No, you're too young. Wait a few years and the price will be significantly smaller. I'm speaking from my own experience. I'm now at the stage where I can normally function in the next day having 2-3 hours of sleep. Nowadays my eyes need more rest than me.

BR, Iztok

This is exactly why I always turn tech trading off! Remember kids, just say no to tech whoring!!!

... Yes. I also, am a loser. But look at my profile though. I'm also SEXEH.

I'll get my 1st noob post over with right now. Yep, I've been running on about that much sleep lately...did a 14 hour stretch yesterday. Still need to figure a couple of things out. Played out Disciples II front, backwards and sideways off and on for the past few years and this is a great game to move over to. Many sleepless nights with DII also (looking forward to DIII)

Wasn't that the one where you typed in programs from that magazine, what was it ... or was that the radio shack model? I had a Franklin something in 1983 and did some Basic stuff once or twice. Tax spreadshhets worked out preety well. (heh heh) Brings back memories! Just so happens I'm getting more than 2 hours sleep these days. Six is mucho bettero!
R U any relation to "Fat whatsisname" from that secret agent film series?