GalCiv2 Forums
I bought this game yesterday and I am a bit lost. I watched the tutorials and read the manual. But I am still lost
I have been playing Civilization for a while so I know the basics. But would it be better if I start with the campaigns? Or Single player is the best?
Having never played Civilization, I'm not sure what the similarities are. I can say that most of my thoughts on how to play GalCiv2 were comically wrong in the beginning. I played around and got fairly frustrated when I couldn't figure out the command to colonize a planet. Once I realized that there's no such command, things got better for me. 
I started with the campaigns myself, but looking back, I think I learned more and appreciated the game more in the sandbox games. Particularly, the Metaverse sandbox, which is basically a high score list where people can combine their scores in teams for a collective high score. It adds another dimension to it.
Essentially, you'll want to colonize planets in the beginning and keep an eye on your economy. You'll need to find a balance between expanding, research, manufacturing, military and economy. Luckily, there are quite a few ways to balance those things, depending on your personal style.
Do you want to be aligned with good, neutral or evil? Perhaps something inbetween two of those alignments? Does that even matter to you?
Play around with some sandbox games and ask specific questions. There are a lot of us who are more than willing to help if we know how you'd like to proceed. An evil player like myself also can give some hints for good or neutral games, so don't be too concerned with the alignment that shows up in the forums.
Have fun.
The GalCiv Wiki can help with some basic info about the game, although a fair bit of the content is also in the manual. If you're running Vista or have .NET installed on an older OS, you can download the free Galactopedia and use it to learn about the tech tree(s). And Motti is right about asking specific questions around here. You can also search the forums via a good search engine by adding site:forums.galciv2.com to your search terms.
Thanks for the replies. I think it will take me a long time to get used to the various concepts here. Unlike Civilization, the concepts here are not very intuitive,
For example when I start my planet, I dont know how many labs to build vs factories. I know it all depends on your strategy, but still .....
I think I'll just keep reading, and playing
There's debate on this, as due to the slider system, any amount of labs combined with any amount of factories is less efficient than all labs or all factories, but keep in mind that labs are civ-wide, while factories only apply to the planet. (Actually more complicated than that if you consider focus, but let's keep it simple.) What this means in general is that it's better to cluster factories and fill in labs in the spots that are left, so long as you only cluster factories up to the production you need, since a ship that is 100 production will cost you 150BC to build if you have 150 production on the planet (funded, anyway, and not counting any bonuses because half of a bonus is free).
But don't neglect your economic buildings, either.
Also, one huge difference between the civ games and Gal Civ II is the way the economy works. In Civ, research, income and production are three completely separate things. In Gal Civ II, every point of science or industry costs you one point of income, although if it's generated through civ bonuses, it only costs half for every bonus point generated.
This means that your income must keep up with your production and science combined, at least once the game gets going.
Nothing better as we'd be taking all the fun part away from you! Get familiar with the essentials first, and if you get stuck on a particular (even if it sounds a bit silly) issue do not hesitate shouting outloud about the BUGS here... if they aren't, most of us will be more than happy to share our thoughts and prove that, sometimes, real code bugs are waaaayyyy different than a slight lack of gameplay comprehension.
Complete an entire tech tree, treat yourself with a clear win for each types of conditions, crank up the difficulty levels progressively and once you start losing too often after 'Challenging', -- come back here to explain why in your opinion.
Enjoy.
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