Konichi wa, Good day, from an ex-pat drifter now in Japan. I think that I may have posted my last game, at least for a while. I will be interested to see how fast my score drops off. Thanks for the long post.
It is interesting to see how differently we play. The beauty of the game is the variety and richness of the system. Whether you play as a beginner or at the maso. level, there are just so many ways to approach each outing.
I used to play a bit like you, though not as well. Then, I stumbled upon a post by a player who kept 1-2 planets, traded, diplo'd, and sat on the side-lines. The system almost works on maso., but you need at least 3-4 planets by the end of the colonization phase. It does work on mid-level games.
The hardest part of the game for me to learn was how to trade effectively for tech, (as well as what the A.I. likes for tech) and how to keep the other empires happy. It took a while to figure out just how to survive as a pacifist. Then, when I discovered that I could buy fairly advanced starbases, and not for a lot,(often 6-7000 BC) everything fell into place. Owning all of the blue and yellow resources on huge or large maps makes a 4-5 planet human empire quickly able to colonize PQ 13-14 planets and flip the A.I. planets like crazy. Buying up research starbases stalls the A.I. tech growth in an impressive manner, as well as boosting your own.
I try to get all the wonders, I never sell them or give them away. They keep the population happy and boost influence too much for a un-armed, zero-military empire to give away. Once up and running, my huge amount of trade with the empires that are least friendly with me keeps them afraid to go to war and lose lots of trade $$$.
I often play the whole game without any saving other than auto saves. If my little auto-explorer gets killed, I will go back to the latest auto-save. Or if an empire goes from "wary" to "at war" without at least being "hostile" for a turn or two, I'll go back.
Best of luck, and have fun. I think that GalCiv is one of the best computer games I have ever played, going back to Apple II GS days.

I am reborn here at Gal Civ 1

Dragonshrike,

Greetings from the ex-pat in Japan. I applaud your continued climb. I know that soon you will be number seven. I may return to GalCIiv I, but not for a while. I tried a few other casual strategy games, then went to GalCiv II. It is the same, yet very different.

I have played 4X games for well over 20 years, and much prefer the diplomatic approach. I don't really like to fight. I was in the Navy for ten years, part of it during Vietnam, and was held captive by the Russians at one point, although I was soon released. Surprisingly, several Russians risked their lives to save mine in the capture process. Long story. Anyway, I have been a peaceful person ever since.

In GalCiv II, I can't really find a way to win without having to do a good bit of fighting at some point. To get much of a score, a LOT of fighting is required. This rubs me the wrong way.

No longer does the AI ignore low PQ planets. They'll grab them in a heartbeat, and can boost them up to productive planets very quickly. No longer can you jump in and colonize low PQ planets, long ignored by the AI, in mid-game.

The game has a paper-rock-scissors approach to combat, so you have to be very aware of what the other civs have for offensive and defensive abilities. A lot of time spent in the tech tree for missiles can be all for naught if you meet a civilization on the other side of a huge universe and they have spent their money researching the missile defense tech tree.

The importance of influence and morale has been reduced to great degree. Blue and yellow resources mean much less. Also, the game is much slower to play, due to far more decisions to be made per turn. The use of governors is of limited value, so there is much more mouse clicking each turn. Very large universes, with lots of planets, can bring my fairly fast and new machine to a slow crawl late in the game when every civilization has ships all over the map. There is far more scrolling across the map to be done on the larger levels than in GalCiv I.

After playing four games, I was able to comfortably play on the "tough" level and post four scores of about 30,000 each on GalCivII metaverse, which put me at #530 on the list. Then I decided to take a long look at the forums to try to find a way to improve.

There was a lot of information, but also a lot of "gamey" stuff. GalCiv II has no upper limit to a score, unlike GalCiv I, which has 60,000 as a limit. Scores of the top players can be 400,000 PER GAME, and some are well over a million! Also, GalCivII allows players to create their own races. As a result, a few months ago, the top players found they could edit the core files of the game to make very tough AI civs, but ones who would never leave their home planet and could be, more or less, emasculated. These AIs posed no threat, were great to conquer, and gave super high scores. It still took a lot of work to crank out these million point games, but they were really "cheats" that the Stardock techs were too slow to react to, and have still taken no real action about.

As a result, there is now no way to effectively play the game and shoot for a top 50 metaverse score, as you and I did on GalCiv I. Think of Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire hitting 200 homers in a season, while you and I hit 50. We can never hope to get even close in a career. A million point game may take a "cheater" 25 hours to complete, but I can't crank out a single 30,000 point game in less than ten. At some point, I may be able to do a 60,000 point game in 5-6 hours, as I could at my best in GalCiv I, but even so, a file-manipulator is putting points on the board at far, far more than twice that rate, per hour played.

I want to give GalCiv II the benefit of the doubt. I really want to play the game for fun, but posting a good score on the Metaverse is part of the fun, as well. Unfortunately, there are many other "gamey" practices in GalCiv II, such as building a ton of military bases and cheap ships with offensive weapons, for no reason other than to gain a higher score.

I played GalCiv I for well over 500 hours, maybe closer to 750. It is is as one of my top ten favorites ever, maybe top five...can't say the same about GalCiv II.

Dragonshrike,

Greetings from the ex-pat in Japan. I applaud your continued climb. I know that soon you will be number seven. I may return to GalCIiv I, but not for a while. I tried a few other casual strategy games, then went to GalCiv II. It is the same, yet very different.

I have played 4X games for well over 20 years, and much prefer the diplomatic approach. I don't really like to fight. I was in the Navy for ten years, part of it during Vietnam, and was held captive by the Russians at one point, although I was soon released. Surprisingly, several Russians risked their lives to save mine in the capture process. Long story. Anyway, I have been a peaceful person ever since.

In GalCiv II, I can't really find a way to win without having to do a good bit of fighting at some point. To get much of a score, a LOT of fighting is required. This rubs me the wrong way.

No longer does the AI ignore low PQ planets. They'll grab them in a heartbeat, and can boost them up to productive planets very quickly. No longer can you jump in and colonize low PQ planets, long ignored by the AI, in mid-game.

The game has a paper-rock-scissors approach to combat, so you have to be very aware of what the other civs have for offensive and defensive abilities. A lot of time spent in the tech tree for missiles can be all for naught if you meet a civilization on the other side of a huge universe and they have spent their money researching the missile defense tech tree.

The importance of influence and morale has been reduced to great degree. Blue and yellow resources mean much less. Also, the game is much slower to play, due to far more decisions to be made per turn. The use of governors is of limited value, so there is much more mouse clicking each turn. Very large universes, with lots of planets, can bring my fairly fast and new machine to a slow crawl late in the game when every civilization has ships all over the map. There is far more scrolling across the map to be done on the larger levels than in GalCiv I.

After playing four games, I was able to comfortably play on the "tough" level and post four scores of about 30,000 each on GalCivII metaverse, which put me at #530 on the list. Then I decided to take a long look at the forums to try to find a way to improve.

There was a lot of information, but also a lot of "gamey" stuff. GalCiv II has no upper limit to a score, unlike GalCiv I, which has 60,000 as a limit. Scores of the top players can be 400,000 PER GAME, and some are well over a million! Also, GalCivII allows players to create their own races. As a result, a few months ago, the top players found they could edit the core files of the game to make very tough AI civs, but ones who would never leave their home planet and could be, more or less, emasculated. These AIs posed no threat, were great to conquer, and gave super high scores. It still took a lot of work to crank out these million point games, but they were really "cheats" that the Stardock techs were too slow to react to, and have still taken no real action about.

As a result, there is now no way to effectively play the game and shoot for a top 50 metaverse score, as you and I did on GalCiv I. Think of Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire hitting 200 homers in a season, while you and I hit 50. We can never hope to get even close in a career. A million point game may take a "cheater" 25 hours to complete, but I can't crank out a single 30,000 point game in less than ten. At some point, I may be able to do a 60,000 point game in 5-6 hours, as I could at my best in GalCiv I, but even so, a file-manipulator is putting points on the board at far, far more than twice that rate, per hour played.

I want to give GalCiv II the benefit of the doubt. I really want to play the game for fun, but posting a good score on the Metaverse is part of the fun, as well. Unfortunately, there are many other "gamey" practices in GalCiv II, such as building a ton of military bases and cheap ships with offensive weapons, for no reason other than to gain a higher score.

I played GalCiv I for well over 500 hours, maybe closer to 750. It is is as one of my top ten favorites ever, maybe top five...can't say the same about GalCiv II.
[Message Edited]

I haven't played GC2 at all, though I picked it up at a local game shop for like 5 bucks over the holiday break.

GC1 is incredible. It might seem dead right here and right now because everybody's off playing the sequel and posting in the sequel's forums, but the game is certainly still played and regularly comes up in mainstream strategy forums as a top 5 favorite/best ever. So the game's legacy lives on, and while I don't suppose there are more than a few hundred regular players worldwide at this point, how could I say for sure? There might be a bunch more than that. I've only recently regained Internet access (and hence Metaverse access) so I don't know if people post their games much anymore.

I'm now a member of a number of local and cyber strategy game clubs that regularly duke it out online in everything from Starcraft to Dawn of War and even the occasional MechWarrior 2 slugfest (great game if you can build a retro rig or finagle a modern rig into running it, and yeah it is still played online!), and GalCiv1 is still played routinely by many of these guys.

Why? Because even all these years later it's still damn fun, very easy to get into and get lost in, and is endlessly entertaining. Same stuff that made it a hit early in the last decade. Just keeps going!

I'll move on to GC2 one of these days. It seems super cool, for sure, but different from the classic GC1 with which I've become so intimately familiar. GC1 and Civilization Revolution (yeah, on the XBox) got me into 4X games and I've spent the years since reliving the ghosts of the genre (Master of Orion/Magic, Space Empires, Civs 1-3, Alpha Centauri, Shogun TW, etc). I was quite alive and intellectually capable of playing those games while they were around and in their glory days... I wish I'd gotten into them sooner. I guess they always seemed boring from external observation... bad assumption on my part.

Anyway, Stardock made an amazing game here and it's not dead. It takes a lot for a game to be dead (unless it's low-budget true-blue indie game... then a lot of different things can kill it fast), and even older obscure shooters nobody ever played, like Chaser, are still played online today (I was playing on a CTF server just a few days ago!).

Long live GC1!!! Hurrah!!!!!!

Actually GC2 is pretty much dead as well.

The GC2 forums are linked in to all of Stardocks 12 or so forum sites and so there's a bit more traffic on the site itself but as far as those people that are still playing the game it's very small.

Very sad really.

I have been away overseas, and then I started playing Angband again (not a 4x game). I may start back up again.