Fundamental Strategies

from Stardock Forums
I've been playing GalCiv for about a week now in nearly every non-working/sleeping hour and I'd have to say that I've either got the worst luck or that the game doesn't stand up to any of the 4x strategies of games that have come before.

If you try to build up your home world and branch out from a good foundation you look around to find that the computer has taken all of the habital planets. Peaceful expation appears to be out and by the time you research transports to try military expansion the AI has the technological advantage and you're throwing your troops onto their swords. Not to mention that economically you're extrememly far behind because of the single focus to try and get transports.

If you rush build colony ships and expand to 3 or 4 nearby stars your economy doesn't seem to keep up because by the time you've got the ability to trade the AI is outstripping you in every way. Leases are a deadly drain at the beginning of the game if you hope to keep up.

Just when I think I've found a strategy that might work from a fundamental point of view a random event comes along and screws it all about so it's unclear whether it works or not.

It appears that for any well tuned star system local star bases are important. However a lot of time and money is spent on building constructors for the upgrades neccessary to make star bases useful.

Driving population growth also appears important but I've found no cohesive way to keep the population continually on an upward motion. It seems to level off at times for no apparent reason. If it levels off too long, everything else suffers which primarily means your economy and manufacturing.

Frankly the game has become extremely frustrating and I am on the verge of calling it wasted money and finding other more entertaining ways of spending my time. I've looked through the available manuals and online documentation of which there really doesn't seem to be any real good pointers on how to get started. I'm hoping that some of the more successful players can shed some light on how this game can be played without the extreme frustration that it currently generates.
267 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
If you haven't taken a look at the strat forum, I'd give that a try. There are a few threads there that you can take a peek at that should help with your problems.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I seriously reccommend just sticking it out and trying for a little longer. Set the AIs all to fool to start with, and then once you've won a game that way, gradually move up. Everyone else has had the same problem at first with learning how to run their economy without ruining it, but you'll probably develop your own strategy as well with a little more time on the easy levels.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
You say that you're either unlucky or the game's flawed.

It's your gameplan that's flawed.

I'm hardly a great strategy gamer but I can give a bunch of Intelligent AIs a damn good thrashing - sometimes :)

The most important thing in the first few years is to keep you population's morale at 100%. 100% morale doubles your population growth, so every turn, adjust your tax rate just high enough to keep morale on all your planets at maximum.

You're going to lose money initially, but I've found grabbing about 6 systems in a large galaxy and growing your population in this way should keep you from getting torn to pieces by Intelligent AIs early on.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Few basic things.

Lower difficulty. At "fool" level, you should have little problems no matter what.

Expand. Lots and early. Take only 15+ planets (until you know what you are doing). Cut back on on research and especially social buildings (don't spend anything on social until the colonization rush is over).

Trade. Actually, Trade should be pretty much the only thing you should research at the start as a newbie. Trade can easily double your income. Also, you can sell technologies to other civilizations for low amounts of money streched over many many turns.

Once the colonization rush is over, and all good planets in reach are taken, work on keeping up peaceful relations with your neighbours (trade, trade, trade), and switch to a mixture of research and social. Build constructors with your excess military ressources, but don't overdo it, especially not at the start.

Don't build everything. In fact, don't build much. You definitly want all planet quality improvements, and of course every building that requires no maintenance. Besides that, you will mostly want economy and moral improving buildings.

Lower your taxes. Your taxes (and buildings) directly influence your approval rating (and moral). Moral directly influences population growth. At 50% approval, you will find you have very little if any growth. Try to stay at 70% or so.

Lower your spending slider. It's not supposed to be at 100%, unless you have a killer economy, which you most likely won't have. I've gone as low as 20% on average games, especially if you don't have good trade routes.

Adjust the sliders. At the start, you will probably want to go 80% military and 20% research (until you've got trade), and spam colony ships. Once colony rush is over, you will want 30% social, 20% military and 50% research or such.

I think if you follow this advice, you will find out that soon you will have won your first game (especially if you play on "fool") and you will soon find yourself raising the difficulty over and over as you learn the tricks of the game.