I'm not very good, but I want to get better!

Your best bet is to read through a lot of the posts in the Strategy forum; lots of good stuff in there.

Also it's better to ask more limited and detailed questions about one particular aspect of the game that is most giving you trouble. Generalized strategy can be easy to give and often impossible to actually follow because of the limitless details that are impossible to convey but essential to the success of any strategy.

Even something as general as "How can I colonize faster" is still a more productive question that you can get some more definitive answers for than something as general as "How do I get better".

In any case the rate at which you can colonize planets and more particularly how fast you can get them profitable is indeed a major indicator of a better player. As with everything the particular game settings make a huge difference in your effective strategy but for many different game sizes and settings he who colonizes faster is a better player. A minimum to shoot for is to be able to produce a colony ship every other turn. Also the development of the 1st colony into a 2nd home planet can usually increase this to close to a colony ship per turn.

This is only one specific example. The more detailed and limited in scope your question the better your answers will be. Also take all advice with a grain of salt. Most advice will be good but still may simply not fit in with your "style". If it doesn't work for you then don't worry about it, try something else. However you can find that things that didn't work for you in the past may work for you in the future once other parts of your game improve, so be sure to revisit old suggestions every now and then.

The most important thing is to keep trying. Keep frequent save games and try different things. If something doesn't work out go back and try it again and see if you can do it better, or go back and try something entirely different. The more you play and experiment the more you learn.

I think, to minimize your frustration with losing all the time, your best bet is to lower the difficulty till you can win. The more you play, the better you get, generally. By all means, read the posts on this forum, they are tremendously helpful. Also read the AAR's. They give great strategy tips. Again...as stated above...there isn't a key to winning at this. Its a strategy game and as such, it requires you to use strategy.

Thanks! Great advice! I think I'll browse through the strategy forums, try out a few things, and then post again with more specific subjects.

I love this game too. I tend to post a lot about what I don't like and neglect the things I do like. It's a wonderful intricate game with tons of different ways to play and lots of ways to enjoy it. It's a hard game to master. I'm so amazed that every time I play, I find new ways to improve and new things to try. So hang in there and just keep playing. You'll discover a lot of little things that add up to a better overall game. Also, like Mumblefratz said, post here about specifics and we'll try to help you find your game best we can.

Have fun!

Ha! I've been perusing the forums for awhile now (only registered after I bought the game).

I just plain suck at games like this and am relegated to that fact.

...I still like playing, though, even though the game has beat me in under 2 years on "Normal" play. *sighs* lol

As far as I can tell, the difficulty level is not the only thing that determines difficulty. If you play with multiple opponents versus one opponent, the size of the galaxy, whether things are rare or abundant, the number of minor races, all play into the real difficulty level. Also, whether you choose good or evil factors in. Good luck finding a strategy to win. I'm sure just by browsing the site you'll find a lot of stuff that you never would have thought of on your own.

Oh, for sure... I usually run Neutral align...sometimes take a Good choice or Evil on rare occasion, depending on what's happening. I play the Terrans because, as I've found, I invariably lose no matter the race I take when I go for Conquest, so I go for Cultural/Influence wins. It's my greatest success.

I play on Small maps and set everything else to Random. That's how I usually learn...by having the game throw different small things at me.

I just played a game on a small map, normal setting, I changed up from Federalist to Universalist and reset bought abilities to include Creativity, Luck, and Influence boosts. I ended up with 8 NPC races. Early on in the game, I acquiesced to every demand made on me by other races and by the time I was 4 hours into the game, the other races were paying me tribute in BC's. heh. I finally won, again with a Cultural victory, my first win on "Normal" difficulty.

The thing is, I'm terrible at micromanagement, min/maxing, etc. It's a big part of why I don't htink there's a strategy game out there that I've ever been able to win since the advent of the home computer on above Easy or Normal setting, depending on the game.

It doesn't stop me from loving the genre. It just stops me from excelling at it or "playing with the big boys"...

Hello there...
What size galaxy do you play, and how abundant are the planets? These two things have a huge impact. Advice that is good for a huge galaxy/abundant planets is not good for small or medium galaxy and occasional planets.

For example, Mumblefratz makes good points about colonisation and gives a target production rate - but this just isn't going to work with 5 races in a medium galaxy and occasional planets. In that situation, you are doing very well if you have 3 or 4 planets after the colonisation rush.

What is it that kills you? Do you run out of cash and production ceases, are you wiped out in the first war that comes along, do you hang in as a minor influence or what? If you look at the timeline screen, which factors are you furthest away from the AI races in?

This galaxy size/habitable planets has a bearing on Khanon too. If you want to keep the management overhead down, try a small or medium galaxy with only occasional planets. It changes the whole feel of the game. It is not less exciting!

I agree, this is an incredibly good game - and part of that is because it accommodates very different styles of play by changing a few environmental factors.

i agree completely. when planets are relatively uncommon, i find the micromanagement less of an issue. each planet actually stands out in my mind, and it's not too difficult to keep track of them on a turn-by-turn basis. it also gives a totally different feel to the game, when everything is smaller. i've been playing GC2 since it came out, and messing with the settings (and mods) is what's kept me playing more or less regularly since then.

Believe it or not, the easiest game is gigantic/abundant because you have tons of planets to make things like building ships and making money easier. The problem with gig/abun, is there are soooo many resources, it's impossible to manage without a a good system. It took me quite a while to work up to it. Conversely, a harder game is one with a small number of habitable planets and most or all of the races enabled.

I would suggest playing with as many habitable planets as possible, but run down the size of the galaxy until you find the number of them comfortable. Playing with smaller numbers of planets in larger galaxies creates reliance on fast ships which makes the game harder, especially in DA where engines are a lot more expensive. Also, it takes a good number of habitable planets to make playing with all 9 races easier. Play with 3 or 4.

I normally prefer gigantic/abundant games, but recently tried tiny/rare with max number of civs and minors, and it gave a great "knife fight in a phone booth" feeling, which was an interesting change from what I'm used to.

There's people who are fantastic painters who, no matter how much you try to teach them, couldn't balance a checkbook that had no checks and no atm card or deposits made to it ($0 in and $0 out).

There's highly skilled accountants who couldn't paint a recognizable picture if it was a paint-by-numbers and there was only 1 number on the canvas and 1 color in the paint tray.

I'm a writer...

hehehe

me too! personally, i despise the question 'what do you write?', so instead i'll ask if you'd care to share anything, but leave open the option to answer the dodged question if you'd prefer.

"There's highly skilled accountants who couldn't paint a recognizable picture if it was a paint-by-numbers and there was only 1 number on the canvas and 1 color in the paint tray."

That's me! But it doesn't help me with strategy games.

I mostly write fantasy. I enjoy doing sci-horror on occasion even though I'm not as "fluent", shall we say, in that genre.

At any rate, about the only thing I could share is a short story that I wrote for Warcraft. Though it's incomplete (you join the scene "already in progress" and the end, of course, is wide open), it would give a general idea...

(edited to add: the reason it's the only thing I could share is because it's the only thing I've done in awhile that's of the entertainment variety that I still have copy around for. I do tech support nowadays and only dabble in my "great love"... Due to a pressing need to pay the bills after marrying young and having a child right away, I left the dreams of living the life of a novelist far behind me in favor of not living in a cardboard box while waiting for my "big break". Now, when I write, it's things like fanfic, though I do have the classic "great unfinished novel" somewhere in a box and done the old fashioned way; on a typewriter. At any rate, writing is really what I'm best at. Perhaps when I retire, I might actually finish the novel... It's not that it's taken me forever to write. It's more that my hopeful future was interrupted by the basic needs of life. hehe)

*sigh* lol I tend to get long-winded...

Me either, and therein lies the problem. If it did, I'd be golden.

Seriously though...

I love city builders, empire builders, turn-based, and realtime strategy games. If you were to check my collection, you'd see a nice variety going all the way back to CG games for my old C= VIC-20 and 64.

I'm terrible at them and just do not have a head for min/maxing and micro-management. I've tried to follow guide after guide and tip after tip. I am relegated to the fact that I'll always be a mediocre player when compared to most everyone else.

This, however, doesn't stop me from enjoying the games.

I nominally set the games on easy until I'm comfortable with that, then I try to move upo to normal difficulty. I like setting things to Random. So much so do I prefer the "random" settings, I try to focus on games that have true (enough) random map generation, not just a random selection of a pre-made map. This is where I derive most of my enjoyment...out of the game not always being exactly the same. If the maps are always the same, and I can't win, I get frustrated.

Like I told my wife last night after I got well into the campaigns of the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War series, "I like 40k! On normal setting, it's hard, but not too hard for me to win...I get so frustrated when I just can't win and I can't stand games that are so easy I almost can't lose."

I've found myself, using small map, normal difficulty, and all-random in GC2, having to abandon games early on because of getting into frustrating "no win" situations...for me, they are no-win, anyway.

CB's, EB's and RTS combat games are my favorite games from an enjoyment standpoint. From a skill standpoint, though, I'm far better at things like Scrabble. hehe