How much further to go ?

How much further to go ?

from GalCiv2 Forums

Some time ago i bought GalCiv based on the IGN review and was suitably impressed at how much better it was than MooIII. I'm a builder at heart, strugglign to force myself to war and once i sat down to play properly, having done my research, i picked a Huge/highest pre-expansion setting. I was well on course to victory when i hit the wall that is the amount of work to bring a huge game to a conclusion after having 'achieved effective victory'. I'm not so interested after having done that and for personal play should probably have chosen influence victory, but those don't score so well apparently, so i abandoned my first game a year or so ago. I also found 'very fast research' to be 'too fast' for my personal pleasure.

Coming back recently after several detours & an expansion i chose to play a smaller world. Tiny for a warm up, then on small, all on suicidal, with very slow research. I've found i learned things from all 3 games and am learning in my 4th also, so i wanted to find out how much further i have to go. I'm not sure it's so good to play your first games on suicidal, but it's hard to resist throwing yourself in.

My 2nd and 3rd games then, both small/suicidal/8/abundant/lastest expansion patch/very slow technology scored 50,000 then 75,000 respectively. I've seen talk of possible 1 million scores for huge and i know that's something i will never compete with, simply for the time it takes and the amount of micromanagement. I don't see much talk of small/medium/large here though, so i must ask ? I find it more enjoyable to take a slightly relaxed approach, whilst still paying attention to new details i'm noticing and caring that 'i could score if i wanted to'.

In that respect, i wanted to ask, how much further do i have to go before i am getting towards being somewhere near a decent player ?

My 1st 2 completed games it took around 4 years to bring the galaxy under more or less complete control. My 3rd game, it was a little under 3 years. How fast should i be aiming for ? Did i read a 1 year victory (tech) is easy ? Also, playing with very slow, how much will this hurt ? I remember posts indicating a large amount of points from military score, yet that's been at most 2x the least of my other scores previously, is this within expectation ?

My strategy for these games has been to build towards a profitablity in my empire, whilst selling everything i can research to finance that & fund appropriate opponents to weaken eachother & stop them attacking me. That point has come before Psionic Beams in these games, at which point i stop selling generally. The use of my very little spare cash, is to ensure i'm not at war by... paying everyone that would think about it to fight eachother. That's been the real core of it, get them to fight, pick up 1/2 the planets/resources with a small elite force near the end of the war. Repeat until won.

Any thoughts on how far - and which directions i should travel - would be kindly appreciated.

Rexpen.
6,340 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
how much further do i have to go before i am getting towards being somewhere near a decent player ?

Winning three small-universe games on suicidal puts you in the top 5% of players. How much more decent player would you like to become?

BR, Iztok
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You're kidding, right?
I mean, what Itzok said is IT!!

(I would like to hear how you fare on Gigantic, Rare everything, Very Slow, Max opponents, Max minors however.)

(hint: that "Rare everything" makes the game shorter in a way similar to smaller total size, and makes the colony rush not-so-important, but it also makes your little bit of the galaxy look very tasty to all the other boys and girls.)

drrider
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
I would like to hear how you fare on Gigantic, Rare everything, Very Slow, Max opponents, Max minors however.)

IMO that's the easiest setting to play a suicidal game. At least both my gigantic maso games and the recent huge suicidal were with rare everything (no minors though - they make game even easier: more class-15 planets available, already with some infrastructure built), and that one maso game NEVER felt even close to maso to me, and the huge suicidal either not suicidal. Huge distances between stars made early attack ships obsolete when they came to target (if at all ), AIs acted quite passively, and (since planets are so rare) taking out one HW in most cases removed that race out of the game. Differently than us live players are AI players not known to be good at going for the throat (HWs).

BR, Iztok
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmm...my several Obscene attempts were on those settings, and the AI were anything but passive.

Now, I'll concede that at least 2/3 of those 6-8 games included the Korath, and in the others the Arceans acted pretty Korathian. What I percieved was that EVERY war involved going for an HW, except for those that involved seizing a class-15 minor, and it was always the AI who were ready first to begin 'planet ownership revision'. Give either the Korath or the Arceans 100% advantage (or 200 or 300) in planetary resources before mid-game and they are nigh unstoppable.

And interestingly, I didn't seem to have much problem with those settings at Maso, either.

drrider
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
What I percieved was that EVERY war involved going for an HW

Because there was not much else to take. But did they follow with their troop transports, like I did? The biggest joke is I followed drengin's warships. 've removed Arceans, Iconians and Humans from the game, all right before drengin's nose, after they destroyed all their defending ships, without me firing a single shot, or moving a single "warship" (armed cargos ) off orbits of my three planets. And Drengin still liked me. Probably becaue I "helped" them to fight their enemies. Three times!

BR, Iztok

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for your responses, appreciated

'How much better ?' Mmmm, i like to have enough of an understanding that i could (if i ever had time) write a small guide on how-to-beat-suicidal-in-your-2nd-game and have that be clear, yet flexible Apparently i'm ranked 48 presently, which seems amazingly high considering. I assume that means the community is smaller than some other games, but that should also make it friendlier, are these both so ? I would expect to find myself good, but not top level, with a very good technical understanding, but missing some of the artistic peculiarities of gameplay.

I would say anyone coming from, say a decent Civilization background, should be able to beat suicidal (small) on their 2nd game, with 1-2 days research on these boards before starting, the 1st game just sandboxing an understanding of the pecularities of actually playing in this game. It also seems i can do the early decision maths not in mil/soc/res/pop but in Turns*Worlds, which i find much easier to guestimate. I like the difficulty level actually, it's not unreasonably hard, but is also seems it could be unforgiving if you let it get to far ahead.

I finished my 4th game, 92,000 score (small) and started a 5th, probably my last small for the moment. As per your suggestion i might move up, but not to gigantic, maybe large first. I remember hitting the wall of micromanagement in gigantic and want to build up, rather than go to far to fast. Also i'm worried about how when i move up the 1st 5 turns will change from Buy to Build and if i remember correctly there was alot of maths to work out the optimal choices. I might get stuck unable to decide and flip-flopping rather than measuring, in order to avoid work. On a small universe you can play it by ear and just buy 2-4 colony ships and maybe a constructor as needed.

I enjoy how there is alot of inobvious detail that comes out only as you play. Pay #1 to make war on the alterians and get bonus wars for free. I noticed this playing the alterians, found out how useful that superability is and how useful wars that you're not a party to are. They taught me that taking advantage of other people's wars, jumping in late and gobbling the planets/resources as someone else clears the way is an important tactic, just as the previous post says. A game winning mid game tactic i've used to go from last place to top-5 in my games so far infact, followed up by large & psionics to finish the push. It's nice to have several such possible-but-not-quite-overpowered options. I hope they don't over-nerf too many in future I would never have considered heavy diplomacy important without that inital game. Fit a constructor module onto a small or tiny hull rather than cargo and save money. There are some holes, but for the complexity of options available those are relatively minor and the complexity enables this wonderful series of discoveries.

I think from my last game i've discovered that scoring and winning may be different things and that starting a game with one objective will not automatically achieve the other. I think i may go down the play-to-win rather than play-to-score road for now. I think it's within my ability, play-to-score seems, well, much more technical and less open to interestingly playable strategies.

I should probably think about what empire at somepoint as well, rather than just an empire of 1

Thanks again,

Rexpen.