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Hey guys.

I've been lurking around here for quite a while now and figured it was time to post as I have a few questions that have been bugging me.

After being turned off this genre after my long time anticipation of then bitter bitter disappointment with MOO3 I'm glad I gave GalCiv2 a go. I've got a bad case of restart syndrome but I've spent the past few months playing games becoming familiar with the mechanics and restarting with improvements on my mistakes of the last game.

Anyways yesterday I started my first Metaverse game (though for all intents and purposes it seems identical to sandboxing - I hope it counts. (Yes I've never seen the victory screen) I do so in the hope that I'll become motivated to actually play my games through to the end.

When I opted to start playing Metaverse I patched up to the latest version (I have Gold Edition Dread Lords - No TA Beta)

Well onto my questions, apologies if I ask anything that is available on the forums I have tried to scan through many posts yet have not found the answers I was looking for. I did try looking through patch notes but did not see the answers there either.

1) Set as Homeworld. What happened to this function? Its greyed out now. I can see how abusing the button could be a problem but I did like the option to move my capital to one of my juicer planets. The morale and innate food bonus in particular. Surely instituting a cost to move it would be a better solution than blocking the option altogether?

2) Along a similar line I noticed you can no longer decommission projects like the Economic Capital. Is this intentional? Again I liked having the option of moving it to a better planet if one became available. Having to hold back these buildings on the off chance a better opportunity will come along seems to stifle my options.

3) Stuff randomly disappearing and appearing. This did not used to happen before I patched up but now objects seem to phase in and out of the universe. Sometimes this is only cosmetic such as starbase/miningbase graphics disappearing but I could swear that anomalies I've already cleared have reappeared later on. Sometimes the ships I dispatch to collect them stop as though they have been beaten to it but the anomaly is still there and requires issuing a repeat order. Perhaps this caused by the anomaly graphic being invisible but several hours into a game and all sentient life in the galaxy trying to kill you makes one paranoid.

4) This is perhaps the question I would like answered the most. What the hell is wrong with the Governors. I've restarted a game more than once due to this. Now I don't want to go through 20-30+ planets and tell each Governor to stop auto upgrading. Because auto upgrading is good. As long as I am careful to cycle through all my colonies after a major production tech and correct what I want and I don't want upgraded things are peachy.

But sometimes the Governors hold a secret meeting and decide its upgrade everything day. Just out of the blue every single planet randomly switches back to upgrading every nailed down board to the highest tech version available. If I catch on fast it is not tooo much of a problem but there are some issues. If I'm 5 turns into building a Basic Factory on ArseEndoftheUniverse IV I do not want to Governor to decide that this brand new colony could really use a shiny Industrial Sector instead.

Cause Industrial Sectors go up to 11 right? Who cares about the massive upkeep and build time right? It will sure show the Joneses on ArseEndoftheUniverse III a thing or two about how to build a colony. But after the Governor has scrawled Industrial Sector in crayon on top of Basic Factory if I correct it back to Basic Factory the existing work is lost. I could probably screw up my eyes and pretend its money lost to corruption or incompetence but then theres the other problem.

I have to go back through 20-30 colonies and remember what my master plan on each of them was and correct them all again. This can be really tedious work not to mention disruptive if you are in the middle of an exciting war or something.

So does anybody know either what triggers this? Or how to prevent it such as a handy acid breathing sharktank for over eager Governing?

I think I had more questions but this is getting rather lengthy for a first post so I'll conclude it here. Cookies for all who read this far.

Edit: After observing several Governor rebellions in a row I believe its caused by planets culture flipping to me. I've had a few turn in rapid succession and its stasis locking some of colonies from developing because I keep having to cancel the Industrial Sectors and revert them to Basic Factories :(

8,009 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Welcome from out of the darkness so to speak.

You did say Dread Lords (DL) not Dark Avatar (DA) correct? Also the latest version of DL is (I think) v1.5. If you're actually playing DA or the DL version isn't v1.5 then you should mention that.

1) Set as Homeworld works fine in Metaverse games. Are you sure you're not in a campaign?

2) You never could decommission super projects, trade goods or galactic achievements. All of your capitals (econ, manu, tech, political) are super projects and have never been able to be moved, built over or decommissioned. AFAIK the only way to get rid of them is to have the planet invaded with a damaging invasion tactic like mass drivers and then they can get destroyed, but usually everything else on the planet is destroyed except for the super projects, etc. You can also destroy colony in the details screen which turns the planet to a PQ0 with no buildable tiles but I've never found a need to do this.

3) Again no clue. I've never seen this behavior. I'm not sure what's going on here because everything you're reporting either never worked the way that you mention or have never been reported before. Are you sure you're not playing DA and rev'ed to the "bad" v1.80e version instead of v1.80g?

4) I do believe that you are playing DA and not DL although the points I made in 1 and 2 shouldn't make a difference between the two. However the ability to go back and build a factory once industrial sectors (IS) are researched is a DA only function.

Anyway, the only way to disable auto-upgrade is to change the setting in the planet details screen on every planet you own which is a pain that's not worth the effort. As an aside usually never build IS because I feel they're not worth it. Manufacturing Centers is usually where I stop building, howver you still need the IS tech to be able to max out resource mining starbases.

As far as deciding to upgrade randomly that isn't the case. It's only as you acquire a new tech. Note that you can acquire a new tech through espionage and invasion as well as your own research so this could possibly be the cause.

As far as cultural flipped planets, they will continue building whatever they have queued up when you get the planet but can never cause another planet to start upgrading.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
but I could swear that anomalies I've already cleared have reappeared later on.
End of quote

This Was in a patch I thought for DA where it was changed that anomilies re-appear after time so they can be exploited again.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Anomilies have regenerated as long as I can recall in DA. What was added by a recent update is standby mode. A ship in auto-survey mode will announce that it's going into standy when it can no longer find any anomolies. Unless you take it out of standby, it will automatically re-engage auto-survey when an anomoly pops into the galaxy. Very handy.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes I have Dark Avatar. I was not very clear before when I said I had Gold Edition Dread Lords (though I think in my stupor I assumed Gold Edition would imply the existence of DA)

I am very certain im not playing campaign. I took a screenie of my preferred Capital planet in my current game showing the greyed out Set as Homeworld option. Every planet looks like this.



My main menu screen states I am patched to 1.80g. Maybe theres a problem on my end with video card drivers as I'm running in a unusual configuration (Dual 8800s in SLI)

Apologies for my mistake on super projects. I could have sworn they could be torn down. Seems a bit odd that you can capture several but never relocate your own. Even the Egyptians managed to master the art of relocating the Political Capital ;)

Perhaps redirecting a galaxy worth of mail is too daunting a task.

How odd that you used to be punished so harshly for upgrading your tech! As I joined the game well through development I was under the impression that managing your various tech level structures was part of the original vision of the game.

So in the example of production buildings its better to spread out over a large area several basic factories than the latest and greatest because they have no upkeep cost.

I saw the upkeep costs as being the penalty for structure density. This made sense on both a gameplay and realism level. Again apologies for my misconceptions. Yes I too prefer manufacturing centres and reserve industrial sectors for bonus tiles and the like when building that densely has a tangible reward.

I also prefer to build up a colonies production capability over time with a range of lower tech facilities rather than attempt too much capacity at once. Otherwise you just have a colony having a lengthy drain on your economy until it one day jump starts.

Obviously the galaxy wide Governor resets are not random. They feel random however. I've gone through 3 of them in a last 10 turns or so and its really ticking me off having to go through and correct them all each time it happens. I have colonies stagnating because of the fact existing work can only be upgraded not downgraded.

If it was possible to tech down then the problem would only be the micromanagement but as it stands several worlds may as well have been building nothing. Does this still happen in TA? It would be a big selling point to me if this issue was fixed.

A simple dialog box appearing when an upgrade occurs asking if I would like the Governors to autoupgrad would fix a lot of heartache.

Regenerating Anomilies 0.o

Wow okay. That seems a bit potentially overpowered (the impact of 25% research and 1000 BC in particular) I guess I'll have to stop removing the survey module from my specialist sensor ships.

Thanks for the responses guys :)
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Lurkers don't cloak. They burrow. Noob.