Having Trouble At "Normal" Difficulty

"The first thing that I feel unsure of is my social project: I'm going for civ-style development: something is being built at all times. Is this a bad idea for GalCiv? Should I only selectively be building planets?"

Definitly - I made the same mistake first.
Building to much social projects in the beginnig phase means
- you lose time in the expansion
- you gotta pay maintance for a lot of stuff when your economy isn't developt

Best thing in the beginnig is usually to flip between 100% military production to bring your colony-ships (and maybe constructors) on the way, and 100% science.

I only to very selective social upgrades at the begining, for example some entertainment for a planet with critical morale.
First when the race for the best planets&recources is over, I start upgrading my planets on a larger scale.

(I'm not quite sure, anyway, if this works on every size/difficulty)

About the tech-trading, yeah, you're right. But I thing, even if you trade techs 2:1, it is often worth it, for you save much time.

The Yellow Sign

Just found something for you - check this thread:
http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GS&id=52553

Lot's of could ideas in there.

I never *trade* techs. I buy them. You can get most techs for a SONG, as long as it isn't a ship tech.

I will trade 2 trade goods (for 1) to a minor AI to get their trade goods.

Make use of your spend and tax sliders. Combined with your M/S/R. I run 100% spending in the beginning, with a tax rate as high as I can stand (to extend the 100% spending craze), with Military set to 75%, Social 0%, and Research at 25% for the initial planet rush. Home world makes colony ships (with about 100 people each), all other worlds make constructors. Well, I might run off one scout each from each new world. But you have to be careful, as scouts cost money, and in the beginning, you won't have that.

I go for Banks/Universal, Trade, Deflectors, and Grav Accel (and then wander towards mostly Battleship). I shift over to running 50% 50% after I can maintain my new colony ship rate (during extended world settling). And in general, I maintain 50-50% split. By use of my spending on only 2, swapping from social 0 and research 50 and back to forth, as needed. Lets me run along.

You will never keep up with the computer population wise, in the beginning. But you can surpass them in time.

Good luck.

Rush for Diplomacy and change to your government to Republic. This can make a huge difference in the long run.

Scott Drummonds

You mentioned "civ-style" play. Try civ style with your tech trades to keep up on technology. Gotta trade 2 techs with Russia for 1 tech, trade the new tech and cash to France for a tech, sell a tech to India for gold. In civ if you don't trade they all trade everything leaving you no techs to offer so you get left behind.

Civ-style tech-whoring is working very well for me at sub-normal in Galciv.

I too am on normal. Here is what I have figured out so far.

1) At the start, my goal has always been colonization. So I max out the military slider and rush colony ships. My colony ships double as scouts, that is until they find a suitable planet.

2) At the closing of the first stage (i.e. you have hit competition on all sides), you will find yourself, a) with a smaller population, a lesser economy, c) fallen behind in tech, but hopefully d) with more systems than everyone else. The goal for this very tough stage is to rescue your economy and start catching up in tech. For this purpose, the slider is set to 50% social and 50% research. I have only found 2 ways of catching up in tech quickly, 1) build up your diplomacy rating and exchange techs/trade goods, 2) there is a random event for the assembly that levels out everyone's techs (sweet event!).

3) At the closing of the second stage, if you become dominant in terms of population and economy, it would be unlikely the AI wants to attack you, and life would be simple afterwards. If you're in a lesser position, then you would probably be doing a lot of trading with the strongest of the AI player to get him off your back. In addition, be prepared for opportunities to capture resources, which are left lying around, as AI players fight each other and destroy SBs. This happens with great regularity. Accumulated, these small gains have become invaluable to me.

Roy

~SDC~

...probably would help:

1. Get some diplo bonuses at the start (diplomacy picks, populists, rush-buying diplotranslator).

2. Set sliders 50%MP-50%R. If map is small, better increase MP.

3. Beeline for trade and build freigters. Send them asap.

4. Find all civs asap. Build some scouts on large maps.

5. Trade techs for other techs, wars between aliens, money, resources and TG (in that order). Can't get tech coz' alien doesn't have any, try to draw them in war. They have some expensive non-military tech and you can't get it? Trade with others, pick some techs/cash and try to buy it anyway. 50% science will ensure that you'll have something to trade on all difficulties but maso. Ideal thing is to have all aliens in 4-front war. When some side getting too powerful, try to keep all majors fighting military leader but not one another. Good races MUST be in permanent war (alliances are bad for survival, ya know).
Sell ALL techs, preferably for small sum for long time. I prefer period of at least 10 monthes. Do not forget minors. They are worse in diplomacy, richer than everyone at first stages and pay generously for many techs, especially defensive military (shields, deflectors, etc.)

6. While starting #5, beeline for shields, then basic enviro followed by Phasers (aliens need effective tools to kill one another, right?). Sell everything. Tribute cash flow helps to keep spendings on max. If you have surplus, start spying. I usually move sliders by two bars. If some cash left, consider starting some wars between aliens, or destabilization of the most powerful one.

7. As soon as you get Shields, build battleaxes empire-wide. Try to be the leader in military strength. When all techs mentioned above research and some fleet is up, change to 50%SP-50%R and build habitat/soil/entertrainment/banking. If you have Advanced Trade, consider switching to 100% SP and cranking out all availible TG and wonders. Buy all techs you can while doing that and immediately sell them to others.

8. Now you can plan what type of victory you want. I usually grab all minors when get battleships (and weak majors too)

If you're lost... I haven't restarted single Painful/Crippling game so far with that strat.

I don't follow a lot of this advice. Important notes on some of the above strats:

* Tech trading won't be close to even unless you have a TON of diplo bonuses. But it doesn't need to be. As long as you make yourself the "hub" of tech-trading, you can pull yourself ahead despite the disadvantage per-trade. Also keep in mind that some techs are WAY overvalued...don't bother trying to trade for them. Examples: ship techs (esp. deflectors), govt techs. If you beat the AI to these techs, you can really gain when trading them.
* As you raise the difficulty, bribing the AI to go to war gets difficult...
* I don't build defensive ships or large ships unless I'm at war. If I need military strength to scare the AI's, star fighters are the best deal overall, so until I hit battleships I usually have an army consisting entirely of Star Fighters, and acting entirely as a deterrent to keep the AI's off my back. It's cheap and effective.
* Pop. Growth: Having morale below 54 on a planet halts growth. Having it at 100 doubles it. Keep your taxes low and your population will skyrocket.
* Early-game, don't build social improvements with maint. costs unless they have enough econ. bonuses to pay for themselves. See my posts in the other threads here for more early-game build-list advice.
* Sliders: During the expansion phase, I deliberately fall behind in tech so that I can churn out more colony ships than everyone else and build my navy of constructors and star fighters. So my military stays at 80+% until a year or so after every habitable planet is colonized. Taxes are set to keep morale at 100 on all my decent planets. Note that I take speed picks...without them I wouldn't make it to enough planets to need quite as many colony ships as I tend to make. I also play on abundant, where my early-game strat really shines. I don't even START on social stuff until I'm down to mopping up the last few secondary worlds on my systems.
* Finding other civs: not so important to my strat because I typically don't have much to trade early on. But it's still vital to explore to find those resources, so I know where to send those first few constructors. Resources can provide upwards of 60% bonuses EMPIRE-WIDE when fully mined, so it's absolutely vital to snap them up early, and then later whenever they're freed up.

-EtherMage


~SDC~

Scott,

I think, from the above threads, you can see there are many varied strategies to follow in GalCiv. Having read the forums and played it for awhile, however, there are certain "basics", i.e., fundamentals, which will hold true throughout the spectrum of possible starting conditions.

It is important to note these, because much advice will be predicated on the starting conditions set. To wit: a game on Tiny/Rare is far different from one on Huge/Abundant and, even with all other settings being equal, 5xBrilliant/Incredible AI's are far harder than 5xFools.

That said, here are some "basics" to focus on:

1. There is a set of fundamental buildings you will want on each planet. Generally, the cost:benefit:maintenance ratios are all so favorable that their advantages outweigh any detriments in 99% of the cases. These are:

a) Fusion Power Plant, Manufacturing Center, Anti-Matter Power Plant;

Banks/Stock Markets;

c) Soil Enhancement/Habitat Improvement;

d) Research Labs.

A good general strategy is to acquire the applicable techs for each of these and build them within the time limit imposed by your starting treasury of 1000gc (with spending set at 100%). This will give you a foundation for an Empire capable of pursuing its economic, manufacturing & research goals.

The above is the order in which I build them, but some more experienced players differ.

2. It is not necessary to settle every colonizable planet you find. Indeed, one of the "tricks" to GalCiv is, you are better off with 3-4 excellent planets than 10 mediocre ones in the early game.

"Mediocre" planets are PQ15-17; "Excellent" planets are PQ20+.

This is because of the way economics work. Your ability to spend is constrained by two key factors: Morale and Income.

Income is generally derived from trade, tribute and taxes. Trade is cyclical and varies over time. It also equally benefits your partner, building his economy to the same degree. (This can be a problem with the major AI's at the higher difficulty levels - you are "feeding" a potential enemy. For this reason, most expert players trade primarily or exclusively with minors.) Tribute is dependent on having techs or goods to barter, and a rich enough AI target willing to take the deal. (This, in turn, is heavily dependent on the relative diplomacy skill between you two.)

Taxes are dependent on the size of your population and the rate they are willing to tolerate. Generally, you will have a "core" set of planets that will take rates of up to 50-55%, with one or two colonies that will drop to 10 morale or less and revolt. It is this situation you will want to avoid until the mid-game, where the best planets will have their infrastructure built and growth/expansion will take precedence.

To do this, allow your starting position to determine your colonization strategy. Eart will start anywhere between PQ15-20. Additionally, one or two other planets in the Sol system may be inhabitable. At the beginning, colonize only those planets with a PQ equal to Sol's.
Back-fill any others later. Sol starts at PQ18 (its average)? In an "uncommon" galaxy (the average, mid-range setting), you will (generally) come across 5-6 planets of equivalent value. Build that number of colony ships and send them out.

Sol starts at PQ20 (it's highest base value)? 1-2 "in-range" planets will (usually) be equivalent (or PQ18-19 - close enough for the Terran Government). Sol starts at PQ15 (its worst base value)? You will have plenty of colonization opportunities - about 10-12 neighboring planets. Build plenty of colony ships.

Adjust the above numbers based on your starting galaxy settings - Abundant will produce more, and Rare less, colonizable planets overall; Tight Clusters will "pocket" you and limit your expansion capabilities more than Loose Clusters or Spread.

The objective here is to have a number of planets relatively equal to each other in PQ/pop growth which will stay fairly even in morale, allowing you to set taxes at a high enough level that you maximize early game income while keeping spending at 100% to build infrastructure, without having 1 or 2 low-quality planets drag you down and prevent Earth from being fully utilized.

You will find your Empire progresses much faster in the beginning doing this. Early game, GalCiv is not about the most planets - it's about the best ones.


3. Use the sliders extensively. You do not have to raise taxes to increase income - you can lower spending to reduce outflow, and/or propaganda to selectively raise planetary morales.

Also remember science is an Empire-wide aggregate. Combined with the relative abundance of science-bonus improvements in the game, it is very easy to outstrip your budget even at a 25-33% setting. If you are running a deficit, science spending is usually the reason.


4. The early game ends once you have:
(a) colonized those planets = to or greater than Sol's PQ, and
(b) parked a colony ship by those systems/planets of inferior PQ you wish to backfill later (i.,e, before the AI beats you to them).

At this point, shift your overall goals to:
- develop and maximize the # of allowed trade routes;
- build SB's with trade-enhancing modules in those sectors your (and your partner's) mini-freighters are travelling through;
- improve government's (each gives a +20% boost to tax revenues);
- increase diplomatic skill (to facilitate tech-exchanges and purchases);
- beging spending on espionage (to see what % bonuses other AI's have, and avoid potential bad random effects).

Hope this helps.

~SDC~

Def Zep, I have to disagree with you about MFC's being a "core" building. In my games, I generally don't build them on planets below class 20 (w/both PQ enh's, of course). Simply put, you almost always can't USE enough of the additional manufacturing capacity to make it worth the maintenance to build them.

-EtherMage


~SDC~