Hey, just bought the game and played it through

No, the game doesn't start getting hard until the difficulty is up higher where the AI isn't handicapped. You should probably jump right up to Painful or Crippling if you're finding the game easy already. If you get overwhelmed at that level, drop it a notch or two.


With tech trading enabled, the AI trades tech like crazy and you'll be wondering, "how did they get that tech so quick?" However, with tech trading off, you lose those opportunities which can be quite helpful sometimes. You really have to try it both ways. I find myself switching back and forth a lot.


Planets flip in a roll of the dice sort of way. Once the influence level is above a certain point, the planet rolls for the flip each turn. The more the influence, the higher the probability. Some planets just get lucky and can take a really long time to flip. Others flip right away. It's quite random and I think it's good that way.

Hi!

Check wiki: Influence. There's quite a lot of other data about GC-2 games there.

BR, Iztok

Alright, a few answers, in no particular order.

-Game Difficulty
At "Normal" difficulty, the AI isn't very good. Its functioning with a 25% handicap to its economy and it isn't playing with the higher level algorythms, like checking to see if you have transports/ships building up near their worlds, which is an easy strategy to overwhelm the hapless AI with, especially with its economic deficiency at that level.

I'd recommend jumping straight to "Tough", since you seem to have some experience playing 4x games, and you'll be bored if you aren't challenged a bit. Tough is the "Full AI" difficulty. It's at 100% economic efficiency (+racials, just like the player in other words), and uses all the algorythms available to it. For a little extra challenge, under options you can enable the longer processing time for the AI to consider it's moves a little longer, but only if you don't mind a bit slower of a game.

After tough, the AI gets some enhancements, I'd say Crippling is where even a veteran can get into trouble based on starting location, and Masochistic+ start getting insanely hard because the AI starts getting big boosts to its miniturization, production, research, and sensors and can see quite a bit more of the map... I believe +5/6 hexes on Suicidal difficulty, which I have personally never beaten with its +400% econ/research/production, 60% miniturization bonus and the sensor buff

Still, I think you'll find Tough to be at least divertingly challenging on your 2nd-3rd run through the game. If you reload ten times to get an insane starting position, of course it won't be challenging, so just a disclaimer there, as like most 4x games the first 100 turns of galciv2 are the most important.

Lastly, the most fun way to play is to randomize the AI difficulties in my opinion (an option when selecting enemy races), which will basically take your selected difficulty level and randomly assign either that level or +/-1 to each AI. That way you won't initially know which ones are stronger and which are weaker, though it should become clear after the startup phase.

-Tech Trading

If you turn tech trading off, the AI won't be able to tech trade either. It will greatly slow down the overall teching of the game, and I personally play with Tech Trading off normally, as I think it's one of the AI's weaker points and too easy to take advantage of. If you are playing the metaverse and trying to attain the highest score possible, I'd recommend leaving it on.

-Influence swapping

Until they get the red rebellion X, they aren't gonna swap at all. As the last poster explained, even then its a random % chance per turn, and if you get unlucky and they are barely in rebellion, you may go as many as 75 turns before seeing a flip. The answer is figuring out how influence works, which is primarily a function of population + influence bonus. Influence Starbases further multiply these bonuses, and are crucial in flipping enemy planets to your side, but even then if you don't have a sufficiently large population nearby, it can be excessively difficult to cause them to influence flip.

Best of luck to you, I'm not sure if you bought DL or got the gold pack with DA included, but I think you'll be amazed at what the new expansion TA is bringing to the table. Every race has a unique tech-tree and plays quite differently. Enjoy!

haha wow, you guys are awesome thanks for the info i think ill go up to tough so the a.i and i are even as far as econ goes. thanks for the quick and detailed responses, ive got a few more q's now if someone doesnt mind.

yea i bought the gold edition, which races get which unique techs? is that explained anywhere?

how do i get levels of espionage rating on enemy planets(e.g im told i need a level of low for, this high for something else etc) i cranked up my espionage spending to 40 bc for about 10 weeks but i still couldnt see the enemy planets influence stats(which require low). i also tried placing agents on the planet, didnt change it.

how can i protect minor races(when i play the diplo civ i'd like to be able to help the little guys) i cant put ships in their planets orbit to defend them, do i need an alliance for this? can my starbases give them bonuses to military?

lastly, can anyone suggest good planet set ups/strategies for cultural domination victories?

and out of curiosity does anyone know what the new expansion will be bringing and when it is coming?

thanks again to everyone who's posted btw

hmm, why didnt my post bump the thread? im thinkin no ones gonna see this now on the second page lol   

Don't raise the research rate, that will only make it worse. Tech trading on or off just comes down to personal preference, basically. I usually leave it on, because I depend on selling tech for cash in the early colonizing phase, to help reduce the effect of the economy "crash" during colonization (maintenance higher than taxes, because population is still low). Also I like being able to gift techs to races that aren't doing very well, when I want them as a buffer or distraction against more powerful races.

Note: the main feature of the new Twilight of the Arnor expansion is that each race gets several unique techs in the research tree, with the idea being to make each alien race more distinct. With tech trading turned off in TA, the races will be REALLY different from each other in capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. With tech trading turned on, they're a little more homogenized but still somewhat unique due to un-tradable techs. So that's another consideration if you're planning on picking up the new expansion. You can participate in the beta test for it right now, if you pre-order. I think the release (downloadable version) is planned for sometime in January. I'm playing the beta and it's a lot of fun. The unique racial techs really change the feel of the game.



It takes a long time to build up your intelligence level, unless you throw a massive amount of cash at it (which isn't really worth it). I think the idea is that you start to get actually useful info at about the late midpoint of the game, when wars start to break out. Placing agents doesn't add more info (AFAIK). They're used to either sabotage a single building/upgrade on a planet (i.e. take it out of production), or else held in reserve to get rid of an enemy agent found on one of your own planets. Note that each agent is more expensive than the last one, so that's another reason not to throw too much money at espionage in the early game.

From DA (the first expansion) on, you raise your espionage rating by placing agents on that civ's planet hex's. This will disable that square's production, and over time accumulate overall espionage points. The agents only build up these points while active, not once neutralized. At the higher espionage levels you will see messages about that race's dealings with other races, and have a small% chance to steal tech every turn when agents are active. They grow fairly expensive as the game progresses, as each agent costs more than the last, so the best use of them is to slowly build up a fair sized group of agents and unleash them all at once, wreaking the most havoc and acquiring the most info.



As much as I like to roleplay stuff like this, those little minor races are just in a lot of trouble from the getgo. About the only thing you can do (bar going to war with every race that attacks them) is to surround every hex of their world with cheap small/tiny hull ships with minimal weaponry. Still, the best use of minor races is to sell them tech early in the game for an economic boost, and then absorb their awesome planet later on. If you are deadset on helping them, you can send a bunch of ships to their planet and then give or sell them to the minor race.



The best way to win cultural domination victories is basically to build a lot of economic worlds, ironically enough. Get every planet you own to 16 billion population (morale becomes geometrically harder to control after that many), and put as many Stock Markets (highest econ tech building, also gives a small influence bonus) as you can afford without completing gimping your research. My shipyard worlds are always at least 90% dedicated to ship production (only morale/maybe one econ building per world other than +production), so in other words I don't have many, but they can pump out ships at alarming rates.



The new expansion is called Twilight of the Arnor, it's coming out in Januaryish... no final date set. However if you pre-order you can begin playing the beta right away, its a fair way along but still definitely a beta. The main features of the expansion are completely re-worked tech trees for every race, for example the Iconians use precursor technology and can build insanely powerful buildings from very early in the game, especially for research, but at a very high economic cost. Every race has it's own flavor in addition to the Super-Ability which was the biggest difference between the races in DA. It's a total blast, the Drengin use slave-pits which are very low maintenance production buildings that actually decrease your influence, etc etc.

Oh, and it adds Terror Stars, which lets you build a space station that can destroy an entire star system and every planet and ship in it in one shot. On the other hand its defenseless against conventional attacks and can only ever move 1 parsec/turn, so it has to be babysat pretty excessively, and generally built near where you plan on using it.

wow, the expansion sounds like its gonna rock. thanks again for the info, seems like the more i know about this game the more questions i have heh

could you explain to me how the racial bonus defense works? for instance, i picked the krynn consulate who have an innate 50 bonus to ship defense, i then added a 30 percent bonus myself for a total of 80 percent. so having that, would a ship of mine with say 10 shields recieve an extra 8 shields because of my 80 percent defense bonus for a total of 18 shields? or how does it work/differ from hitpoints, and is it on every ship i have as well as starbases?

also, im aware a.i's can only initiate a trade with one another every 8 turns, but are they likely to do so whenever they can? and when they do will they trade one tech or alot of techs? And how likely are they to hold onto a more advanced tech, like if i want to help out a minor race and i give him some good techs, is he just gonna end up trading them away himself to the other races for his own benefit?


Im trying to decide whether im gonna be playing all my games with tech trading on or off so everyones input and knowledge is welcome.

as for the starting abilities, yes, the way you've hypothesized is how it works. A starting defense of 10, with a +80% ability, will give you a 18 defense. Works the same with the HP, though note that those increases will NOT show up in the Shipyard Creator, ONLY once the ship has been created.

The nice thing about HPs is that they don't take up space on your ships but it is still only a small trade off for lacking defense. I love using the Krynn but I won't personally increase the defense bonus (50% being more than enough generally) but I have used some points toward HP on occasion.

As for tech trading, the AI seems to be pretty willing to trade techs amongst each other though generally are unwilling to trade weapons techs...they quite like to buy them though. I have noticed and am sure of trade amongst the major races but it seems rare for them to trade with the minors, but I could be wrong.

Generally, minors are there for one of two reasons: money from trade (tech or freighter) or to divert the AI's military attention long enough for you, the player, to build a sustainable infrastructure. Minor races aren't very helpful in trying to take down the major powers.

I'm going to go ahead and agree with everything Silverbeacher just said, and add the caveat that I find masochistic games much easier with minor races enabled, as they are kind of a "safe" person to sell technology to and supplement your income to help make up for the bonus the AI receives. This is one of the reasons that I turn tech-trading off, because I for one cannot resist temptation. Also, I feel like tech-trading moves the overall tech-level of the galaxy forward too quickly for my tastes, but thats all personal. I try to avoid taking advantage of the AI's weak points, because I don't play for a score, rather I play to have an interesting experience. I totally respect the people that play for score, I just don't really have the patience and when it takes you a week to finish your masochistic games, you aren't really in the best state of mind at the beginning of each play session to optimize performance

As a side note, I think you'll be pretty surprised next time you play the Krynn in TA, they are the Influence-conquest race of choice, bar none.

once again, greatly informing, thanks guys.

do you two mind if i keep posting new questions here? or am i bugging you lol, because ive got a good enough grasp on things but with games like these i always like to know as much as i can.

like in my current game(third as the korx) i played to their strength and have a great economy going with lots of cash flowing in. how can i get more trade routes? and what are some cool things/good strategies to do as the korx and with my piles of cash

also, any idea what some of the race specific techs will be in the coming expansion?

feel free to ask questions, or peruse the threads and post questions on threads that seem relevant to you (just check the post date, some threads are very old and may be outdated)

Well the Korx start off with all the trade technologies, but with other races you wuold have to research them for more trade lines. Going Neutral as your ethical choice and then researching Neutral Shipping will open up another 3 trade lines IIRC. Sometimes the UP will vote to increase trade lines by a random amount. Finally, you could use your ability points to increase your trade lines but i wouldn't generally recommend it-as they use up a LOT of ability points that may be better spent on other abilities.

Building economic starbases along your trade routes and then placing the correct modules on them will increase the amounts you get from trade revenue.

You can always use your funds to "persuade" another race to go to war with that thorn in your side Or if you are really overflowing with cash, just start buying wonders and ships outright at full cost.

Note that once your treasury hits 20,000BC your income will drop anywhere from 5-60% due to something called "Graft" (basically corruption; you usually will still have income just a much lower one, sometimes however, you may even start showing a loss). Some of the high end players will spend any extra income they have every turn to maintain their income below the 20,000 mark, spending the money on improving their planets, starbases, and ships.

As for the TA expansion, check out the News and Journal sections on the main page; LOTS of info there.

No, I don't mind answering questions at all. I think back to my best experiences with games in the past and they usually coincide with good community experiences. I'll just add that I'm by no means amazingly good at the game, but there are plenty of people on these boards that can answer more advanced strategic questions.

In DA, I found that the best strategy with the Korx was to use your trade routes as primarily a way to avoid war with your most militarily powerful neighbors. Trade routes and treaties create a kind of lasting goodwill, the AI does not like to go to war if its going to take a fair economic hit to do it. Some of my most interesting games with the Korx have involved quickly identifying the biggest military players in the early game, setting up trade with them, and then using my economic advantage (I also invest pretty heavily in diplomacy with Korx) to buy my most powerful military neighbors into wars with eachother. At this point, you can take advantage of your superior economy by either militarily or culturally absorbing one of your weaker neighbors. Keep in mind, however, that you'll have to keep up enough of a military for the early game so as not to appear "too ripe" a target.

At this point, you just have to keep your neighbors so embroiled in war that you can win a cultural victory through attrition. Also, form as many alliances as you can, because Allied civs don't get upset when you culture flip their worlds. Hah. Trade routes are a great tool to improve relations so alliances can be relatively easy to achieve with the Korx, especially if you can put some money on the table.

As far as additional trade routes go, you get some for every trade tech you get. I believe the Korx start with them all in DA, so you're probably just straight up hard-capped at 10 routes that you establish, though your allies will probably establish more with you as its a per-civ cap, not a total between players.

As far as what kind of techs people are getting, I can give you an extremely summarized version from what I recall, though I haven't played every race well enough to memorize their tech tree and they are quite a bit different than in DA.

Terran - Play the closest to standard DA. Have a few unique fleet techs like Fleet Warp Bubbles that you can build on a ship to increase fleet speed, and others that increase attack/defense as a %. Also some unique diplomacy/influence related techs.

Drengin/Korath - Are pretty similar (outside of their super-abilities which are pretty different), they use a lot of very cheap maintenance buildings that allow them to get off to a powerful industrial/economic start. Definitely the "military-rush" civs. The slave factories have some -%influence for each factory, so winning a cultural victory with these guys is pretty unlikely, and you can be forced into war to avoid a powerful influence civ flipping your low influence planets. Fortunately they are pretty war-oriented

Krynn - Have insane moral/influence buildings, I think the last game I played with them I managed to get my tax rate to like 80% with an 75-80% overall civ moral. They also get some unique espionage techs and cheap, insanely powerful influence starbase techs.. the highest gives +100% influence and it can be reached midgame.

Yor - Have a lot of 1 per planet type buildings, like an efficiency center that provides a pretty big economic boost (more than a stockmarket) available pretty early. They also have a few lines of tech that boost efficieny (just a flat +% economic bonus per tech), and some Cybernetic Inguenity line that is a +% research tech. They don't use farms but instead use charging stalks which provide a small amount of food and moral. Like the Korath/Drengin, definitely one of the more military races.

Arcean - Have very little in the way of propulsion tech, but can build navigation centers on planets that increase the speed of all ships built there. Very easy for your early game ships to have 4-5 speed, but very hard for them to ever get much faster than that. Also have weather control buildings that add +3 PQ to their planets (overall gain of +2 counting the fact that it takes a square), but hey if you've got 20 planets thats 40 extra buildings you can make.

Iconians - have a lot of precursor tech available very early. One per planet types, very powerful, very high maintenance. Lets them get a research edge pretty easily but leaves their economy hard to handle until you reach their 1 per planet +50% econ building which helps out tremendously. Also, no real farms like the Yor, so hard to get decent size populations which hurts their economy later on. Their ships have extra HPs and +100% repair speed once teched up so they can be hard to defeat in hit and run tactics.

Torians - Very powerful economy out the gate with super-breeder, powerful morale buildings and big early game populations helps them afford tons of cheap ships. Their research line of techs starts off a bit weak but like the Yor their research line evolves into a bunch of +% bonuses which helps offset it.

Really, there is a ton more but I think you'll enjoy playing it when you get it, it plays like a whole new game.

The AI trades tech like crazy, minors included. To see for yourself, give a minor all your sensor techs. The AI never researches this line. In a couple months, you'll see everyone has them. In DL, there's no limit on how often you can initiate trade so the difference is more subtle. In DA, the limit is there for you, but not the AI (as far as I know) and they trade amongst eachother no differently (at least it seems that way to me). That makes tech trading much more of an advantage for the AI in DA. But, like I said before, you do miss out on some opportunities so it just depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

hmm, ok im getting really confused with the a.i

i have it on bright and its still sucking, every race except the drengin(who are "winning" at this point, with me in second) has absolute shit for fighting fleets. and even though the dreng are rated higher, they dont even have medium hulls yet so i could kick their arse, and i didnt even concentrate on weapons techs. i thought the a.i and the player were completely even on the bright setting.

any suggestions/comments? should i set the bar one notch higher? i just want to be on a completely even fairness level with the a.i, no bonuses for it or myself but it using its full potential. i thought thats what bright was.

or could it have something to do with the face that i have few habiitable planets on my galaxy and the a.i just cant function unless it has alot of planets under its control?

sometimes it depends on giving the AI incentives...I've played games where until I really start kicking out my military the AI will stay on the low end of the mil spectrum...get someone that is starting to outstrip the others and then watch the Arms Race begin. Also make sure you use the "Enable CPU intensive algorithms" for Dread Lords, and if you have the processing power, you can do the same in Dark Avatar (Edit Opponent sub-menus).

Also, if you want the AI to really give you a challenge, especially in DA, make sure you edit them to actually USE all ability points. Just like you the have ability points that can be spent, so go in and make the Korath super attackers or increase the Altarians research ability and watch the AI really start moving.

I will say that I still find that the AI tends to try build ships that it can produce quickly and in bulk as compared to single massively powered ships (such as a human player might)

The AI also has more opportunity to grow and establish itself on larger maps, so be aware of that also.

If not of that does the trick, then up the difficulty. You will, unless you are just an amazing player , find a level that you shouldn't be able to just run rampant on.

hmm, whats the difference between the next level higher than bright and bright itself. the wiki mentions something about the a.i is fully something or other at the level after bright, but does it get any unnatural bonuses unfair to me?

heres a quote from the wikipedia article
"The game's maximum skill level ("intelligent") is two levels above "normal". the article mentions the 4 dif levels after intelligent but those give the a.i unfair bonuses.

so is the level after bright(the intelligent level they refer to) the completely normal, standard and fair playing field for the a.i and the player?

I think names for the difficulty levels and AI intelligence are a bit ambitious. DA is a notch or two harder than DL, but I think things could be shifted a level or two. The game doesn't really get hard until the AI starts getting bonuses. Even so, when it comes to fighting, the AI could be more agressive. It sounds like you should be playing at least on Painful. Also, don't randomize intelligence, play with all races at the intelligence set by your difficulty level. Just keep cranking it up. I'd be surprised if you found the game easy once you get up there.


Well, standard and fair isn't the way to look at it. The AI needs those bonuses to compete with the human player. The AI in this game is good, but it's not as good as a human brain. It's more a matter of ramping up the AI to compete with your skill level, regardles of how that's done.

at Bright in DL the AI is still nerfed a lil bit, at Intelligent it uses all of its algorithms and full economic potential. At above Intelligent those algorithms are in place and it starts getting mostly economic and some increases to its abilities.

I don't remember the exact correlation in DL, but in DA I find Genius the level where the AI is at least on par with me.

Bright is still stupid AI, but no econ penalty. Go to intelligent/tough.

That's the max SD can do keeping the AI and human on same playing field.

Setting the difficulty on Tough (all races intelligent) is as good as it gets without bonuses. Make sure you set the "force max cpu" option. It has the computer spend more processing time on the ai.

There is a big jump when you go to obscene for overall game difficulty, if I remember correctly. You might try a small game just below obscene and if it's still feeling easy, popping it up one should fix that.

Also there are a couple of AARs that can be useful once you hit a point where it is challenging. I would suggest my own (which has saved game files) and Wyndstars Altarian AAR, both are at the Suicidal difficulty level.

On the trade thing. You can look in debug.err file (text editor) and actually see all the AI trades that occurred during your last game session. I found this to be really useful in understanding just how the AI was using it and gives a good feel for how much of an advantage/disadvantage it is.

alright ill stick with tough then for now


lol and another issue that just happened in my current game. we found some galactic "peacekeeping" robot fleets that were SUPPOSED to only attack military vessels outside their own territory.

well

they systemiatically exterminated every. single. ship i had, on my own planets in every solar system, they annihilated my economy starbases and trashed my freighters. i was left with nothing, nothing but my planets themselves. im surprised these "peacekeepers" didnt genocide my population while they were at it.

wtf

is this a bug?

The Peacekeepers seem a bit ... overenthusiastic ... in their methods. I haven't had that event yet, but do a search on the forum, there are several threads about this event.

Basically, you have 5 options, all based on the fact that everyone else is equally disabled. Listed from hardest to easiest

1 - Influence Victory. Nearly impossible, as you can't build influence bases. Crank out embassies on your planets and boost your population as much as possible, and hope planets feel like flipping.

2 - Tech rush. Stop trying to build anything, and research like mad until you can build ships to beat the peacekeepers, then roll over them. While you're at it, roll over your neighbors, too   

3 - Hyper Transports. Max out engine, miniaturization, and soldiering techs, then build insanely fast transports. All of the AI planets are open to invasion, as long as your transports are fast enough to evade the PKs.

4 - Diplomatic Victory. Bribe people into alliances. Unless you have a good diplo race, this is going to be a chore, so maybe use the hyper transports to knock off anyone who won't ally.

5 - Tech Victory. Start converting your planets to as much research as you can pay for, and go for broke. If you play with tech victory turned off, this is obviously not an option. Still, probably the fastest way to win.