How do I say diplomatically I love you?

from Stardock Forums
Ok, bored, feel like sharing

GalCiv is probably the only 4x style game I have ever played where it is possible to actually win via diplomacy (by this I mean not “win” as in a victory condition, but rather aligning the galaxy in a favorable position via just diplomatic discussions with the AI)

My latest game, while I have the most powerful fleet in existence, everyone in my battle fleet is a rookie, having never fired a shot in anger! (and they never will)

So far through diplomacy I’ve:

- Sold, at reasonable rates, almost every piece of technology I own, within reason, to three weakest AI players who consider me a god allowing me to pump my spending up to 100% yet keep taxes down to almost nothing.

- Paid the second most powerful AI declare war (twice) on the first most powerful AI thus expending both their massive fleets on each other rather than on me. They made a peace treaty once, and I got them to declare war immediately again, so they don’t trust each other any more

- Tripled my research capability by basically buying everything anyone else researches

- Maintained a balance of power amongst the AI by supplying the weaker ones with the wonders, ships and technology they need to keep fighting amongst themselves

- Sold all my old ships (again to the underdog) freeing me from having to maintain the pieces of junk, making the AI love me, AND keeping them fighting

Boy I love diplomacy! There is a lot to it if you dig in

Some questions though (which I have guessed at but are not too sure)

1/ Trading “wonders” - I assume if I buy a wonder it means I gain the benefit of that wonder for my race (By wonder I mean things like “frictionless cloth” and the like)…Does anyone know what happens if the race is conquered by another one, do I lose that wonder or not?

2/ Influence - I often allow an AI to pay me in “influence” which I assume is votes for the galactic senate. Having those votes are often vital, I lost a game once when the damn AI all voted to limit space stations to 4 modules

3/ Long term payments - I made the mistake of getting a minor civ to pay me 1000 bc for 5 turns for some research, and the sods lost their only planet the very next turn sticking me deeply in the red. I assume they fixed that bug where a dead civ would continue to pay their tribute long after they were gone. Was this in 1.02?
:)

Great game this, and I don't play 4x games as a rule
503 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
1. They're called Trade Goods. By buying them, you get their benefit, but you can't sell them to another race. If the owner of the good is conquered, you still keep the benefit.

2. Yes, the Influence you trade through diplomacy are United Planets votes.

3. I don't know, but some recent threads say that bug still exists.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks :)

You can tell it's a good game when you gather "stories" when you play it (like the time I accidently turned "evil" due to NO attempt on my behalf, really, I was TRYING to be good, THEY wouldn't let me)

Bit sad when you get the warm-and-fuzzys thinking about a game while at work
Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, getting "stories" is fun. I once failed to take over a planet with troops, but I got rid of most of the population. I send over another Transport, and right when I'm about to invade, the planet suddenly defects (culturally) to me. I must have scared them. LOL
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Haha, so true.

I once created 5 dreadstars and deployed 3 of them towards the three remaining civs (I had to toast the 4th civ when they found that rare artifact of power). It was slow moving them but when a dread star would enter a system adjacent to systems with other populated worlds the worlds would defect to me right away. It was sweet. LOL
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I was destroying the Altarians and had them down to one planet and I was sending transport after transport. They were getting weaker with each attack. I could taste victory! Then their leader came on and said he was surrendering to the Yor pretty much just to piss me off. It worked. I spent my entire economy and used all my military but I wiped the Yor off the map just to make sure tht I had takne care of the rest of the Altarians.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
A funny story of mine is when I had two planets fairly close together, one I conquered from the I-League. The morale was low on that one, but on my other planet I had a pretty significant, loyal following.

Next turn, conquered planet defects to I-League. Build up fleet to retake... before they get there, planet defects back to me due to cultural influence. Pull fleet back... two turns later, morale still low, planet defects to I-League again... Finally, after culturally forcing it to defect back, I built some morale boosting social projects and raised propoganda up some.

But I wanted to tell that planet to just make up their minds! ;p
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Totally off topic, but as long as we're telling stories:

I decided to play my first game using random alignments. Random my hairy butt (sorry for the image). One neutral, two chaotic Evil, and two Pure Evil. Three pure Evil as soon as I realized that there wasn't going to be *ANY* payoff to being good in this galaxy.

I start in the bottom right corner in a medium cluster of stars, the Yor start in a small cluster bottom right, and then, in an almost continual group of clusters across the top, you have the Altarians, the Torians, and the Drengin, with the Arceans just below the Altarians.

I spread out, but I don't have the best starting position, so the Torians are out-breading me despite my +15% PQ and +10% pop bonuses. The Drengin decide that I need to go, so declare war. I'm holding my own, not even dreaming of making an offense, when the Torians decide that I'm endangering their trade, so also declare war on me. At this point, I'd be in serious trouble, except that I'm pushing out BattleHammers as fast as I can. They can't cross the gulf between the clusters, so the AI has to attack with frigates. Long, nasty war resulting in a lot of new space junk but not anything else. The Drengin finally accept peace (they had a smaller empire, so the war had wiped out their starship reserve), offering over all of their tech and money. This puts me equal to the Torians in military tech and I was already ahead of them in other tech areas. This seems to have helped, as the Torians then asked for peace, and handed over all their money to get out of the war. You know, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not going to pay for peace to someone that hasn't shown any interest in going on the offensive :)

Anyway, since I didn't have a single military resource, my ships were rather outclassed, so I started building a picket fence all the way across the (large) galaxy, two SB per sector, with full defensive an military modules, so that if another war broke out, I would have someplace to draw the line in the sand. Well, the Torians took offense to the fact that my line in the sand was going to come within two sectors of their space. Don't know, I think the Arceans are the ones that should have been worried, as the line was going to chop off a third of their empire. Or the Yor, who were completely on "my" side of the picket fence. This time, they were throwing Dreadnoughts at me. Fine by me, I hadn't built any yet, but I had the tech and started cranking out dreadnoughts. In fact, about as soon as they reached the front lines, I switched over to Avatars on my heavy planets, and constructors on the lighter ones so that I could add the two new defensive SB modules to the line. Just about the time the Avatars started getting into combat and the starbases got upgraded, Overlords became available. Just about this same time, I started seeing Torian Rangers, so he's still got a little way to go before Avatars.

About this time, the Yor come begging because they're not doing well in their war with the Drengin. This despite the fact that they haven't lost a single system to the Drengin, but have lost 3 to me culturally.

At the current time, I've got overlords cruising around the Torian empire whacking ships as soon as they get built. My invasions are failing misserably. It seems one of the unexpected results of the morale-nerf is that the AI population on all the planets are going through the roof, and the Torians are hard to invade, since they've got at least 30b people in every star system, more in the ones I want. Thinking it's time for a culture-bomb, but I'm really enjoying the crush-them mindset I'm in :)

Oh, and the Altarians got the "they will rule the universe if you don't do something now" event, but don't seem to be doing anything with it. They started off bottled into three sectors because of borders with the Torians and Arceans, and starting right in the corner, and haven't escaped yet.