BeastCruiser

Join Date 01/2011

Decisions --- The Recipe for Success

The "Quality planets on discount offer" craze and where to sign up

Don't worry folks, this one is not "Yet Another Nooby Question" but a contribution in its own right. At least it's an attempt to share some of my GCII experience so far.

I messed around with colony ships lately and found out that it is possible to get a planetary decision each time. The recipe is as follows:

* You must have more than one ship in space.

* Play until one planet is within reach of your colony ship.

* Don't move any ships, you can manage your planets if you want, then quicksave.

* Now colonize. If you don't get a planetary decision(PD from now on), reload.

* Most of the time, you won't get another PD. Reload and try something else before colonizing: moving a different ship first, or assigning an autopilot route to it will count, too.

* Try colonizing again. If you're lucky, you'll get a PD now. If not, reload and try something different. I was able to get about two PDs in three attempts. The fun part is that both the type of event and the bonus/penalty figures are somewhat random. You can get a +42% planet quality boost from a "Precursor Artifact" event. Other goodies I managed to get (event keywords provided in parentheses):

* +40% production (PreIndustrial Aliens)
* +7% influence (Alien Mechanism)
* +14% population (Ancient Ruins)
* +19% morale (Oceanic Creatures) (is that 100% instead of 81% approval or do entertainment networks provide +5.95% morale instead of +5%???)
* +60%(!!) research (Sentient Pods)
* +55% "ship bonus" (High Tech Ship) although I'm not sure what that one does. It didn't add to HP nor to ship building, not even on the planet I colonized (yes, I bought a shipyard and a fighter).

Other goody events are "Worm Beings" for PQ and "Precursor Workshop" for production. Trying to imagine one of these (esp. +60% research) on a planet with an according "+300%" square makes me all Pavlovian.

For most of these, you'll have to pick the "Evil" option. But if you want to be good, or have to (on those "befriend a do-gooder" missions), try to pick an evil choice where it counts, and pick the good ones elsewhere.

I hope that's of some use for the fledgling GCII players out there.

~Beast

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I'm not sure what the point of doing this would be. If you want to cheat, you can just use the cheat codes.

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The ship bonus is applied to the attack and defense factors of all ships built on that planet.

Note, that the ship will carry that % bonus forever. That is, if you build it with 10 attack and 10 defense, it will begin with actual 15/15 then when you upgrade later in the game to 100/100, it will actually be 155/155. Additionally, if you build it with a one point weapon and defense, it could still be 155/155 later when upgraded.

One of the Holy Grails is a high PQ planet with a high ship bonus with one or more high bonus production tiles. In an extreme case, it might be worth trading away your manufacturing capital so that you could rebuild it on that Holy Grail planet!

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If you want to cheat, you can just use the cheat codes.

I could, but planetary decisions are less of a cheat than cheat codes... because you don't really bend the rules (except for the retrying). You merely make the good things happen more frequently. Some call it a cheat, too, but at least you don't bypass the rules. It's up to the individual whether to use cheat codes, PDS, or to abstain from both.
You can think of it as the "neutral" option if you want.

Note, that the ship will carry that % bonus forever. (...) One of the Holy Grails is a high PQ planet with a high ship bonus with one or more high bonus production tiles.

I gather that building mostly empty hulls there (Attack 1, Defense 1, the rest is added via Upgrade) would be a way to get even more ships from that planet.

A high-PQ planet with one of the PQ-raising events would be a good choice for a commercial capital, esp. with morale-enhancing squares.

I have some new data, and will update my original post in a week or so... for example I have verified that the +morale bonus is a straight modifier to current (planetary) approval, not a +% to the morale bonus of buildings. And I have found that sometimes the "neutral" penalty is more severe than the "good" penalty (sometimes on the "Stone Age" PD).
~Beast

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The trick of building deliberately cheap ships at the high ship bonus world and then upgrading it is most often needed when the high bonus planet is low PQ.

That is, the best use would be to build one ship per turn or, failing that, one ship every other turn. So, one would work backwards from what the best ship could be then upgrade it the rest of the way. Since upgrades are costly, getting as much cost into the ship during construction to reduce upgrade costs can yield substantial savings.

With a Holy Grail production planet, one might be able to build most or all of the desired ship w/o mush or any upgrades.

Assuming a logistics value of 60, one could then gain a new maxed out fleet every 6 turns.

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qrtxian

Join Date 03/2010

+30

This is what I refer to as "illegal time travel". It's not technically cheating... but it's sure not playing 100% fair either. And it's not the "neutral" option - that would be, in my opinion, abusing ctrl-n to get a really good homeworld, as that's only done once, instead of between every single planet.

I wonder how many other people do this? Might shed some light on people who claim even the higher difficulty levels are too easy.

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In an extreme case, it might be worth trading away your manufacturing capital so that you could rebuild it on that Holy Grail planet!

Wait.... If you trade away a planet with a capital you will then be able to rebuild that capital on another planet? I've been here a long time and never heard of this.

If so, how many times could you do this? Imagine building capitals on PQ1 worlds and giving them to Minors so you can later have A LOT of capital structures.

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I wonder how many other people do this? Might shed some light on people who claim even the higher difficulty levels are too easy.

They ARE too easy

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In long wars with the largest galaxies, I have captured multiple capitals from an empire that had never been in a previous war. I have assumed that the empire built another capital soon after I captured a previous one.

A similar DA trick is to build the MCC on a low PQ planet for the eco bonus even though it actually prevents almost all culture flipping.

Then, when you want to flip some planets, pull off all but one in population from the planet with the MCC, gift/trade it to a minor, flip some planets, then trade to get it back. It works because the AIs tend to value planets based on population.

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There are many ways to "cheat",

I guess we all have our own way of enjoying the game.

I like to just let everything go to hell and see what happens.

A bit like playing nhl 95 and taking the nordiques to the stanley cup. man that team really sucked

I choose the basic setting and then whatever happens never reload never re do something. The only reason I save the game at all is in case of a game crash. Otherwise just like in real life.

Not to say that in some game I do no reload just that most of the time I enjoyed the hardship of deaing with what happens.

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