How do you use your High-Class Planets?

what type of upgrade are one it?

Does it have any bonus tiles? That will often dictate what I use it for. Otherwise, if its near the frontlines, I might make it a shipbuilding planet. If its tucked into a corner I might leave it as a research or money planet. Be aware if its a lab planet it'll be expensive. If you only have a few planets, make it a econ world so the others can crank out ships etc.

I generally use my largest planets for forge-worlds, unless there are some excellent bonus tiles. Even then, with a class 30+ I still might use it for industry, because its so damn big. The location of the planet in the galaxy is also a small consideration.

Sentient species taste better...

It's position, for lack of a better description, is roughly halfway between the center of the galaxy and the edge, probably a prime shipbuilding location. It is one of the few linkpoints to the center of the galaxy (tight clusters) and has zero special tiles, oddly enough. I guess with a size 36 planet, I don't need special tiles, but still... you'd think one of them would have had something.

So maybe go ahead and build my Manufacturing Capital on it and turn it into a giant forge? Pity there wasn't a random planet event to give me a +60% starship ability, or a resource or something nearby it. Still, I really can't complain about a planet that big.

Myself, I would use it for an economic capital.

However, 36 is a LOT of space, so I might branch off into some industry as well.

Why not all three?

12 factories, 10 labs, 1 colony capital, 1 manufacturing capital, 1 research capital, Omega research center, 1 power plant, 1 research coordination center, 3 three-Billion pop farms, 4 stock exchanges and the finishing touch, the economic capital. If you play your cards right you can have it built up to full potential in a year(52 turns) or so. If you want a focused research/manufacturing/economic world then that depends on your map and difficulty.

Me too. A pity that the economic capital is only a double strength stockmarket instead of multiplying the effect of all economic buildings on the planet as the manufacturing or tech capitals do. Then it really would be a no brainer. Even so I still prefer an economic approach.

I used to make such worlds into uber tech capitals which surrounded by 16 economic starbases for an additional ~400% research bonus along with whatever research resource mining I could get could easily generate 10K RP/week and above research levels. However I more recently favor out researching the AI's by just taking most of the planets in the galaxy.

As far as using these kinds of planets for manufacturing I find them to be overkill. Also I prefer to have a core of good production planets that all produce at about the same level, usually around 400~600 MP's per week. The very high PQ planet isn't necessary to achieve this level.

However all of the above is usually predicated on large galaxies with large numbers of planets that give you the flexibility to specialize planets. In smaller galaxies with fewer options you don't look a gift horse in the mouth and you thankfully take such a planet and usually put a bit of everything on it.

Hi!

It entirely depends on the game situation: what special tiles it has, what bonuses, how many other habitable planets are close, how many habitable planets I can expect to get, what will be my econ...

IMO very big planets are especially good for making money, because you can afford on them two farms (making pop bigger --> making base tax revenue bigger), and each market you put on it multiplies that bigger base revenue.

Other than that I can't remember anything more what's not in mumblefratz's excellent post above.

BR, Iztok

I'd just turn it into an research planet. If your ships are using black hole eruptors when the enimies all have stingers, it dosent matter how many ships they have you still murder them

I can see achieving such levels but how do you fund them? It seems to me like that would kill you economically, especially if your funding a space fleet as well.

You're not kidding. It can be quite costly to "turn on" such a planet once it's built, however I have always focused on income as a prime motivator.

I think my strategy has been well documented over the years throughout various threads but I'll try to summarize for those that haven't been around very long.

This is primarily a huge/gigantic galaxy strategy basically because you need a large number of planets as well as a goodly number of economic resources to mine to make it work. Some aspects of it do translate to smaller games but clearly bigger is better when it comes to income.

Basically I use income instead of production. I start the game in pretty much the normal manner focusing all of my initially colonized planets on factories and production. I tend to cut my colony rush phase a bit short just so that by the time the colony rush is over my planets are already at full productive potential. Basically I favor quality over quantity although the other way works as well, albeit much differently.

Anyway, so I finish the colony rush with perhaps half of the planets that the average AI has but each of my planets has about 10 factories and I can quickly outproduce and conquer my first victim. All planets that I capture get immediately converted to 100% income only planets consisting of a single farm and otherwise all stockmarkets. I will place a research building on any 300% or 700% research tiles but that's it, otherwise all conquered planets get converted to 100% stockmarkets. Once I get to the point of 50 or so of these type of planets you begin to make significant amounts of money, easily into 100K~200K per turn levels. Once I reach this point I convert my original planets to income only as well and simply buy all my ships directly. It's inefficient in terms of absolute number of bc's spent on ships but far faster and it snowballs very quickly. In this case I end up with sliders set 100% to research with what few research building that I do have and otherwise buy everything. In a gigantic galaxy with usually 6 economic resources my typical mid game income is pushing close to 1 million bc's per week, towards the end of most games this gets closer to 1.5M per week.

Anyway with income like that there is no issue funding uber research planets. However with income like that there's really no need for uber research planets.

But then who are you buying the ships FROM?

Even your closest ally won't sell you food, but there's some mysterious group out there selling you limitless supplies of top-of-the-line warships and prefab buildings no questions asked?

Sorry, but that kind of thing bugs me. This game has a fine engine that could easily create a reasonable facsimile of a space colonization scenario. But it doesn't. Once you've played for a few hours you find it's really a game of utterly abstract sliders and some bizzarre building material called "credits" that ties all of your so-called "colonies" together more closely than offices within a single corporate headquarters building.

I tune in to see what the next expansion has planned, and I find it's another set of research points tacked on to an already bloated and incredibly repetative unbranching "tree," along a bunch more buildings that will again be tied into the "economy" of the game in a way that won't make any rational sense until some players ferret out the arbitrary mechanics of how the heck it really operates.

I'm sure the stuff that's being added is fine, but I REALLY wish the designers would consider re-vamping the way this game works from the ground up. I'm sure the sliders, the economic system and all those jury-rigged contrivances seemed like good ideas when they were implemented for specific purposes. But if this was originally intended as some sort of space colonization strategy game, I'm afraid that got left behind quite a while ago.

I know some people enjoy the act of "playing the system" for its own sake, and figuring out the applicable code as a game in itself. But after a certain point, a game ends up looking like it must be more fun for the computer than for anyone who wants some sort of versamilitude. And I think GalCiv has passed that point.

For the people who love the sliders and credit systems as they are - and if you also enjoy the pretty pictures of planets and stars as an added bonus - more power to you. But speaking as someone who is interested in a space strategy game, I don't see any real reason to try this new expansion.

Hi!

From himself. What's 40k BCs for a fully-blown dreadnaught when you earn 1,500k BC each turn?

Don't be concerned with such trivialities as is the Real Life. This is a game, that can be played many ways, buying the universe being only one.

BR, Iztok

Yea, me too. When playing with a lot of planets, it's easier to manage things when planets have similar MP. I usually put a number of factories on ultra high PQ planets, but otherwise, stock markets and an econ capitol if it's available. I probably wouldn't put a tech capitol and labs on it. I'm not building labs as much as I used to. I'll build a lot of labs on a medium class planet with a tech capitol, but otherwise, I've just been putting labs on bonus tiles.

I'm a newbie, but I looked at this as buying the ship's from the private sector, i.e. Boeing or Rockwell Collins. You can even issue bonds and buy the ships with future debt attached to them, i.e. the other options with a lower initial cost but with costs each turn for a specified number of turns. When you build it, I'm assuming that you have a government which owns the means of production.

Of course this is also an economy in the year 2225, so who knows what kinds of advancements/declines in economic thought, resource ownership, etc. might have taken place.

Bottom line though, from what I can tell reading the forums and playing the game a few times, is that there are many ways to conquer the galaxy. One can focus on research, manufacturing, economy, defense, or use a combination of the options available. My first win in GalCiv2 was an influence victory. I don't think my strategy in that game would work with tougher AI opponents but it was interesting to push the borders of influence of one of my opponents so that there own planets weren't even in their own sphere of influence.

I found it interesting that the poster above who knocked the game didn't tell us what he was looking for in a space strategy game and what game he felt met those needs. I question his motives for posting on this board when he has only negative comments on a forum that is designed for those that want to learn how to better play the game. Does he work for a competitor? Or does he just have a need to be negative about things and feel superior about his own tastes?

Anyway, thanks for everyone who posts good tips, strategies, and helpful hints as well as those who answer the questions from those of us who are just learning the game.