Wurdtoyer,

there's some info that is needed to best help you. Are you playing Dread Lords, Dark Avatar, or Twilight?

So take this with a grain of salt, but this is a very basic starting point for DL and DA.

Race stats/abilities

Terrans DL
Morale +10
Research +10
Trade +25
Diplomacy +25
Hit Points +10%
Trade Routes +1
Logistics +6

3 remaining customization points

Suggestions: De-select Hit Points, Research, and Trade Routes in the Ability Menu (adds 6 ability points for a total of 9). Select 30% Econ, 30% Pop. Growth, and 20% Morale. Go with Federalist Party (+20% Econ). This set up will give you enough economic power to compete with the AI. Use your Diplomacy to stay out of war or to start wars among the AI (if they're busy with each other, they'll avoid you).

Terrans DA
Morale +10
Research +10
Trade +25
Diplomacy +25
Trade Routes +1
Logistics +6

10 remaining customization points

Suggestions: Put 4pts in Economics (+30), 1 in Morale (+10, for 20 total), 1 in Luck (better anomalies and changes attack dynamic to your benefit), 4 in Mil. Production (+50)

Select Federalists.

Again use your Diplomacy skill, now coupled with Super Diplomat, to stay out of war and to get what you want from the AI such as ships, money, and technology.


Starting Out

Turn One

Just close the research screen when it opens, you'll be back to it in just a moment.

Once HW screen opens, check over your bonus tiles. This will dictate your early moves. If you have a bonus tile that is greater than 100% (such as a Precursor Mine/Library or the 200/300 tiles) but NOT a farm/morale/influence tile then go ahead and rush buy on the lowest base cost that structure.

Close the HW world screen and open up the Domestic screen. Set your industrial capacity to 100% and your taxes as high as you can that you still have at least 80% morale (prolly around 35-45%).

Open up the Research Screen. Select either Adv. Propulsion techniques, Universal Translator, Xeno Research, or Galactic Warfare.

use Colony ship to colonize secondary system world, unless a higher PQ is DIRECTLY visible in your line of sight (don't go searching for one, but if you can see it right away, just grab it). Send your Survey Ship on auto-explore. Set Space Miner on auto-mining. Make sure your asteroids are supplying your HW not your secondary.

End Turn One.

Don't rush buy your ships, or, if you are, make sure you Lease them. Even with a 33% production slider, with the 50% (60% with Gal Warfare) mil prod. bonus you should be able to kick out a colony ship ever few turns.

Also, suggest getting the Sensor tech early so that you can send out more Survey Ships. More survey ships means more anomalies, and more anomalies means more money, tech, and various bonuses.


All in all, rush buying vs building depends on what kind of game you are playing and what difficulty level. In my longer Gigantic map games, I hardly rush buy anything early in the game because I don't have to worry about meeting the AI that soon. In my 0yr games I rush buy every single item (both ships and buildings) but I suffer massive debt because of it too.

Go ahead and start a game and post updates roughly every 12 turns. That way we can see what you are doing and give you pointers as you go along.

Best of luck mate!

well higher population on any world will bring you more income; I think what Scintor means is the point that it becomes not economically viable anymore. In DA this is at the 20 Billion mark as above 20B you have to more VRCs (Virtual Reality Centers) and lose on GSE (Galactic Stock Exchanges) where its not worth it (added maintenance and loss of econ boost). This is because morale drops SIGNIFICANTLY after a world hits 21B no matter what kind of morale bonuses you may have.

Most player worlds in DA are put at the 13B limit (one advanced farm), but if you have a 100% farm tile and a morale bonus tile on a world thats a possible candidate for the 20 Billion population level.

I would tweak the above strat by setting your taxes to as low as they can go to get 100% morale. Having your morale at that level doubles the rate of population growth. And the more people you have the more money you have. Do that for many, many weeks and then flip it back only when you really need the cash.

That one trick alone changed my entire game for the better.

you're better off designating worlds for a specific purpose. So World A will be just factories, World B just labs, and World C just econ buildings. You'll get more bang for your buck this way. Let the bonus tiles dictate what that world is going to be.

Also don't be in a rush to heavily upgrade your buildings. Some of the very high end structures only give a small benefit compared to their maintenance cost and you would be better off just sticking with the lower level structure. For example, I won't research Industrial Sectors until I am showing a healthy income like 5000BC or higher.

Oh, and as far as starting buildings, in the initial stage of the game, I put down:

Factory (maybe two for my first world or two)
If there are any research or manufacturing bonus tiles put a lab or factory
Two or three economy buildings
And then I'll fill it up with labs

As your worlds expand convert those extra labs into farms and morale buildings.

Oh, and oftentimes I don't even bother with a starport on most of my initial colonies. And my PQ4 planet will get all factories and a starport. As I move up the terraforming branch it becomes my world that builds all of my galactic achievements.

That's about as basic as I can put my beginning strategy. BTW, since strategy has so much to do with my settings, I'll share what I play. I play Tough or Painful on Large and Huge maps with maximum AIs, adundant anomolies, and random everything else.

Hiyas, I just got Galactic Civ II a few days and have a few starter questions. They’re so basic that I almost don’t want to ask:

Don't forget to sent your colony ship back to your homeworld to maximise your number of colonist.

Q: How do you do that? My colony ships vanish after creating a colony.

I particularly like the bit about shuttling population from one colony to another to maximize growth.

Q: How do you do this? - using new colony ships or some other ship type like transports?

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

Answer Q1: before you use the first colony ship click back on your homeworld to land the colonists that were on it to start, then relaunch it with max colonists. The initial colony ship does not start with max colonists on board.

Answere Q2: you can use either a transport or a colony ship to move people between two already colonized worlds. Just launch with max pop from one, and land on the low pop planet. Next launch from the low pop planet w/ 1 colonist on board (won't launch w/ 0), and return to the high pop donor planet to repeat.

Great info, thank you Dax99, Ragnar1, and Loupdinour (rhymes with soup du jour??)! This is really going to change how I play. Shesh - I wonder how many other basic functions I don't know yet, and don't even know that I don't know yet! Lol!

You guys are fast - this is a great board. I have another question. I've been reading up on colonizing un-colonizable worlds. I thought they would remain so, but I'm seeing that there are techs that wil let me colonize them if I research them. Just want to confirm - this is true for DL? or only for other versions?

Btw - I'm playing my first game of Gal Civ II DL right now. I have familiarity with the genre from playing MOO and MOOII. (MOOIII was pretty much a bust for me.)

Wow, thanks again. Shame about DL not letting me research techs to colonize the initially ucolonizable - that would have been cool. I have the Gold Edition of Galctic Civ II and I *think* it's supposed to include DA, but I don't see the option whe I launch the game. I'll just stick with DL for now.

I also played DII a while back. OMG I can't even count the hours I spent doing Hell Meph runs, Cows, Baal runs etc so I could amass SOJs. Had a 98 light sorc and 96 FW FO sorc with all the bells and whistles.  

Cheers!

*edit - i just realized you mentioned DI not DII - that;s old school, man. That was awesome at the time, too! FRESH MEAT!! Used to sweat when I heard that

oops ... um, i just checked and I don't have gold, just DL. scanning the manual again i saw nothing about miners, so i assume that's in DA only. is DA the later version?

I've played a few games now. I am addicted. The governors are very useful when the empire becomes huge.

BIG QUESTION: In DL, can I upgrade all ships of one specific design at once? Like, can I upgrade all my Wasp 1's to Wasp 2's without clicking on each and every one of them? Please say yes and tell me how! In my current game I'm going with swarms of small and tiny.

Thanks again, all   

You just saved me a ton of clicking, my friend.   

A Trade Good is there to "Trade" - you own it, rather like a copyright on software. Someone wants to use your software, they pay, someone wants to use your Trade Good they pay for it. Like the software, you still own the Trade Good.

The brackets mean that planet currently has no military or social production on the go, the figures inside them are the levels of production being wasted because of it. Its a king size hint for you to go look at the Planet and do something about it to prevent wasted resource.

Regards
Zy