Overall scoring method, Industrial Sector and other issues

Maybe experienced players can comment

from GalCiv2 Forums
Just completed a game (DA 1.6a) playing Krynn on Masochistic, medium map, 4 AIs, anomalies and asteroids occassional and everything else default. Ended up as a diplomatic victory, not that I planned it that way . A few things intrigued me and I thought I'd ask the more experienced players to share their thoughts on this.

And before anything else - 1.6a works like a dream - no crashes etc - really smooth.

Scoring method:
The 4 AIs were Arcean, Torean, Yor and Terran. The Yors came out flying and took up many planets in the initial phase. The Arean were not far behind and ate up the Toreans to become the biggest. The Terrans who were very low key for the initial part soon woke up and started to really ramp up their military production.

At some stage I managed to get everyone to fight with everyone else and as a result the Terrans and Yor were greatly diminished. I then got into an alliance with Arcean. And then it was only a matter of time....

What surprised me, though, is the final score.

My score was 9960 (quite low? sorry - no metaverse, havent done one so far, but no cheats, no Ctrl+N).
However, the Arceans were ahead in every single category - tech, military etc. And their total score was less than mine!! How does that work?

Industrial Sector:
It seems that IS sucks. I had a pretty good economy going till I researched IS and all of a sudden I found my expenses mounting sharply dipping into red. Its not that I had ramped up ship mfg so much that costs had gone up. I seemed to me that the culprit is IS. Can the more experienced players comment on this please?

AI startup advantage:
I got one planet with a 100% research tile on HW, thats it. But the Yor and Terrans had several planets each with a lot of bonus tiles. In one case 700% research and 300% research and in another case 700% mfg!!! Is this how the AIs are boosted at the higher levels? Or is this just random?

Ramping up ship production:
With most planets in the PQ 7 or 8 range ramping up to 11-13 post terraforming how does one ramp up ship manufacturing so that large ships can be turned out at least every 2 turns? I dont think I have yet figured that out and I was taking 6 turns for the Overlords. Somehow the way the game played out I couldnt get around to making too many constructors (had fallen way behind in military and had a lot of catching up) but are they essential?
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
What surprised me, though, is the final score.

My score was 9960 (quite low? sorry - no metaverse, havent done one so far, but no cheats, no Ctrl+N).
However, the Arceans were ahead in every single category - tech, military etc. And their total score was less than mine!! How does that work?

Simply: you won, and got additional points for that.

It seems that Industrial Sectors sucks

Very true. After a bad experience with ISs in one of my games, I avoid building them on regular tiles (only using them on bonus tiles).

(AIs got) In one case 700% research and 300% research and in another case 700% mfg!!! Is this how the AIs are boosted at the higher levels? Or is this just random?

AFAIK random. They just got luckier with the planet draw. On higher than "tough" levels they got bonuses to almost everything, up to 400% at suicidal.

how does one ramp up ship manufacturing so that large ships can be turned out at least every 2 turns?

Next to impossible without lots of bonuses on a ship-producing planet, and very strong economy to sustain such a money sink. For a manufacturing capital you need a decent planet (class 10+, OFC bigger is better) with some heavy bonus tiles (one 300% is usually not enough). A moon and a production-boosting event at colonization also help you decide if planet is worth specializing in production. On this (these) planet(s) you build mostly factories and power plants, maybe 1 or 2 the most needed "wonders" and a farm, nothing else. Then you boost that planet's production with as much econ starbases with production-enhancing modules as you can fit in a given space (up to 24 in best cases!), and you have a planet with several thousands points of production.
However you need to know that for each manufacturing planet you need several money-making planets - the higher the production, the more planets you need to feed that humongous money sink (up to 10-to-1 ratio). Quite often I don't go in such an extreme, and use several less specialized planets, that produce in peace time constructors, troop transports (who ferry population to less populated planets, of just held the excess pop in space), and fake defenders, but can still produce in 5-10 turns a 1000BC worth medium or large hull (I like slow-tech and small games, so my games are usually over before ultimate weapons are researched, and ships costs go into tens of thousands BCs).

BR, Iztok
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the quick response. Makes a lot of sense. Will avoid IS like a plague .

I did figure that I need supporting econ planets but didnt figure that it had to be of the order of 10:1. Will try it out.

It also seemed to me that unlike in earlier games the AIs were not researching planet colonisation techniques to start with but are focussing on weapons. Have you seen this too?
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
I did figure that I need supporting econ planets but didnt figure that it had to be of the order of 10:1.

Please note I wrote UP TO. My usual ratio is significantly lower.

in earlier games the AIs were not researching planet colonisation techniques to start with, but are focussing on weapons.

Evil civs (esp. Drengin, Korath and Yor) most of the time focus on warfaring techs. Good civs give more focus on other techs, often so much that they're completely overun by evil civs when the war breaks out. But Altarians are specialized for extreme environment research - in one of my never-ended small-sized suicidal game with the slowest tech they colonized a radioctive planet at turn 17, when I just started researching Extreme Colonization tech.

BR, Iztok