several newb questions

I'm by no mean a veteran but I play this game from time to time and have played it since it was released. For most of your answers you can go to the galciv 2 wiki (just google it). It is very useful to get you started with the game. 

Regarding your specific questions, I believe the answers are as follwed:

1) Yes they apply to every ship and soldier

2) Dunno exactly

3) 15% morale is for every planet within the radius of the starbase, it works just like bonuses from specific buildings on a planet. If you mouse over some of the figures you'll get an explanation as well.

4) Miniaturisation allows you to put more of the same stuff on a ship. So instead of 3 engines, you might now have the possibility of putting 4 engines on a ship after an upgrade.

5) Sorry, while I have bought DA expansion, I havent played it yet. I will soon move to this game.

6) it adds to the emphasized one, but not fully, something is lost I think. It serves the purpose of not losing your production if your not building a ship or planetary upgrade. Some people actually prefer to build planets only with research or factories, so they don't lose anything. For these strategies go to the wiki

7) Don't know, havent seen this before. I guess you have just received a new tech and might be able to get planets if minor race x wins from major race z, but I havent seen that happening before.

8) Go to the wiki for the exact explanation, but in essence population provides tax income depending on the setting of the tax slider. You can get bonusses due to buildings etc.

Good luck and post your game experiences here (I would love to read them). I'm happy to see that there are still people picking up this fantastic game. Perhaps some of the vets can help you further.

PS It is always fun to pay other races to fight each other, so that they keep themselves busy and you don't get involved in a war.

5. You will notice the build time on normal colonization is very slow. Researching the extreme state allows the planet's production rate to increase to normal (IIRC, if you hover over a planet with the first stage of "genesis", it's production rate will be 50% or something). 

2. I believe it's just "filler" material for the game. The more useful pickups from anomalies are 25 % of tech researched, 500 or 1000bc credits found.

Useless ones are 1bc found, morale and loyalty and soldiering ability increased by 1 %. Some others that I can't recall offhand

7. Never seen the gifting of planets you mention, but usually the minor races have now got access to all tech researched by a more powerful civ and are willing to trade them. I never bother with this as their prices are extortionate !

Very quickly some additional answers / comments, hope these help on top of what GJDriessen & shuhelali already posted:


1. Planet quality bonus: increases the quality of each planet. Planet quality equals the total number of tiles of a planet on which you will be able to build after executing all the terraforming techniques (soil enhancement, habitable improvement, terraforming)

2. "Ship will become much more lethal after upgrade": I think this increases the hitpoints of the survey ship.

3. Mining starbase morale bonus: this applies to the basic morale score of each planet. With "basic" I mean the morale score before any bonuses are applied. It's best to take a look at the details of one of your planets and hover over the morale score: this will show a breakdown of the different factors that impact morale (base morale, racial bonus, tax impact, population impact, etc.)
Say for example that a planet's basic morale score is 60 and you have a 10% racial bonus, totaling 66 before you mine a morale resource. If you get 15% bonus from mining the morale resource, this 15% bonus will be applied to 60, not to 66.

6. You can emphasize one of three production types in every planet...
There is a side effect (this is new in TA, compared to the 2 previous expansions DL and DA): when putting focus on 1 of the 3 production categories (social / military / research), there is a 20% on any production points transferred between research and military/social production (so if research decreases with 100 points, there will only be an 80 points increase in mil/soc production). As far as I remember there is no loss on transfers between military and social production.

8. How exactly money making works?
I've read on this forum that tax income increases with the square root of your population (e.g. double the population gives 1.4 times the taxes). The higher you put your taxes, the higher the income. You don't need any buildings to get tax income; however several buildings provide nice bonuses (e.g. economic capital, banks)

9. And the last not so technical question is, are there any strategy guides for the Bug race Thalans? 

I would refer to https://forums.galciv2.com/310907 for a very solid introduction to their strengths, weaknesses and overall strategy to be followed. Of course, don't hesitate to post any more specific questions that you would still have...

2. "Ship will become much more lethal after upgrade" random stuff from anomaly. What exactly that means?

This anomaly give the ship experience. Normal armed ships will level up when they win battles, giving them more hit points. This anomaly gives your survey vessel the same type of experience, but you need to upgrade it into an armed design to get any benefit from it.

4. Miniaturization bonuses - how exactly they work? I did try to compare stuff before and after, but most of the time they were of the same size...

Miniaturization increases the point capacity of your ships, while the modules remain (mostly) the same size. Many modules have their size scaled to the size of you hull, so extreme amounts of miniaturization can actually make the size of components go up.

To use numbers I know without looking, a tiny hull starts at size 16. The first level of miniaturization will give it 18, and the second will bump it to 24 - this is the minimum needed to put a construction, mining, or colony module on it, as all three of those modules are size 20.

5. Extreme colonization stuff. Heavy Gravity Colonization is all clear, I can colonize the worlds I couldn't before. But what's Advanced Heavy Gravity Colonization? My first guess was additional workable fields inside the relevant planets. Apparently not true.

As stated above, social/military production on these planets are set at 50% with the first tech, then increases to 100% (equal to a standard planet) after the second. FYI, the same works in reverse; if you steal or buy the advanced tech without the first one, the mechanics work the same.

and as a minor correction:

1. Planet quality bonus: increases the quality of each planet. Planet quality equals the total number of tiles of a planet on which you will be able to build after executing all the terraforming techniques (soil enhancement, habitable improvement, terraforming)

Not exactly. PQ is the number of currently usable tiles - terraformable ones are not counted. If you have a racial 10% PQ bonus and settle a class 19 planet, you will get only one bonus tile - the 10% bonus gives you 1.9 tiles, which is truncated to 1 rather than rounded up to 2. If terraformable tiles counted as PQ you would get 2 tiles.

Useless ones are 1bc found, morale and loyalty and soldiering ability increased by 1 %. Some others that I can't recall offhand

On small maps those are fairly insignificant. On larger maps, where you might get 30+ of each of them, they amount to something useful.

My newb question:

Is there an easy way to see where enemies ships are? When at war its very confusing finding where the enemy fleets are and if they are coming towards me to attack. I mean it would be nice if it was easy at a glance to tell who a ship belongs to buts its confusing.

Do I really have to examine the whole map each turn or is there a way to highlight threats or something?

I'm (as Terrans) now in this game with Altarians as the strongest opponent, for the moment I'm friendly with them. But they keep sending scary fleets through my territory to attack the Drengin that are on the other side. I support the Drengin to keep the battle going and the Altarians occupied. I like this type of proxy fighting. In the meantime I'm killing off the weaker players and taking their planets.

To answer your question: you can see where ships are heading by clicking on them. i'm not sure if you have to spy on the race first. In addition there's the fog of war. So it might be worthwile to invest in some sensors and put them on a couple of scouts to keep your borders checked. Good luck and post any further questions or game experiences you would like to share with us.

Question from my side: I've the Arceans on my side who I dont' want to attack yet. But they keep building these annoying influences starbases in my territory. Is there some way, besides going to war, to stop them doing this? They have 3 of them close to Earth.

If the Arceans are at war with someone, take a Fighter with enough life support on it and gift it to this other race when the ship is sitting near those Influence SBs. With a bit luck they'll be attcked....

Maiden, thanks for the tip! Unfortunately they are not at war with anyone. They have the highest diplomacy rating

that is cruel (I'll mak a note of that one )

One of the tricks to win a suicidal warfight. Actually people are complaining about the AI's advantage of knowing where all the resources are, but actually, this advantage becomes the players advantage when you use tricks like this.

Let the AI find all the resources, but in the end you be harvesting them!

You can even refine that trick by surrounding that single Fighter with other ships, and leaving only one entrance open which would be blocked by that base. The Fighter then had no other option as to destroy that base in order to get free. Sometimes it won't work though as the gifted Fighter can lock-onto another target (usually an undefended planet) without end.

GJ, don't know if those bases are a real problem to you, as, at least to my knowledge, the AI will never max theri Influencer Bases out and thus, no planets will flip - and surely not your civ cap. And, without destroying them theb these 3 bases are there. But you can prevent the AI from further building any SB by building a one-constructor base (Mil or Econ) and gifting it to the Arceans. It must be in the same sector as the other 3 bases - the AI is also bound by the "max 4 bases per sector"-rule.

If you zoom-out enough the ships will become icons, and their color varies from race to race. This will give you an easy oversight of a larger map. You can also toggle ships on the mini-map, although I have to say it's not always easy to differentiate between some colors...

Wow guys after a few days with no replies I assumed the forum is kinda dead and never came back until now! My bad

Thanks a lot for your answers!

These aren't answers: they're random galactic events !

@Maiden, can you really get only 4 starbases per sector? I never knew this. I guess I never tried this before.

i play with icons 90% of the time, i never understood the need for pretty 3d graphics for this kind of game.

It gives a much better overview when you play with the 2D icons.

Yes, it's true. And because of this, the maximum number SB's in a Military StarBase Array (MSBA) is 24.

I have tried to search for methods to circumvent this many many times, to no avail. Even if you try to gift a starbase to an AI in a sector where he already has 4 bases - the game won't allow it.

If somebody here ever encounters a game where one player has more than 4 SB's in a sector - well... I'd like to know how this could be done

How do you get 24 SBs in one area? What is this MSBA anyway?

How do I build a military starbase array?

double post

Is there a way to turn off Dread Lords in Milky Way scenario?

Oh and one more question. It seems that preconstructed ships usually are better than anything I can do myself. I.e. at one point I had battle axe with 10 beam attack 1 shield defense - while I myself couldn't fit even 10 beam attack on the very same middle sized hull. Am I missing something?

double post sorry