Tertullian

I normally play on challenging myself. I've played a few games on Tough and agree that the AIs easily take the lead in the early game. It became rather discouraging to me when the AI picked up more planets, more research, more ships, more of everything it seems... But by honing my own strategy I was able to stay in the game and after a year or so I was able to turn the tables on the AIs and take the lead in economy & research and win the game. But it takes patience and a willin

Dear John, The replies to your original post were designed to be helpful, not abusive. Many posters (apparently not yourself) have had difficulties understanding how these particular game concepts work, and so Reply #2 was a (rather kind) effort to ensure that you do understand these concepts. Yet you have returned this kindness with insults. For shame. Personally, I would have responded to your reply (#4) in some detail, but do not intend to be abused by you in turn.

Just left-click with your mouse when the intro screen starts and it will send you to the main game menu. Happy hunting.

I thought the show was a shameless self-congratulatory "advertisement" and retrospective. I was quite disappointed. And I am a fan of the series.

2-3 years = 100-150 turns (one turn per week). That being said, it is quite the fast victory anyway given the map size and difficulty. Personally, I enjoy a bit of a longer game so that I can get fully into it.

Of course, we could play by the rules that member states of our wonderful UN abide by. Resolutions are meaningless and can be violated without cost to the transgressor!

Hey, didn't I read recently that Dell bought out Alienware? Or was it a similar company?

I've seen other posts with exactly the opposite sentiment ("it takes too long to get into contact with other races"), although there does seem to be a general desire for larger maps. I've heard map size is more limited by computer power than anything else (in the largest map with abundant stars/planets late in the game with hundreds of ships on the map it does take a while to process a turn once you hit the turn button). Some thing's I've done to delay the "first contact" time

Actually...I like the idea. Although a stiff pre-payment penalty must apply! Say you borrow 1000bc to repay over 100 weeks at 20bc per week. A week later, pre-pay the loan for 1100bc. The loan (shark) company loses out on its payment stream of 20bc/week, but gets a 1-week profit of 100bc, and can now loan the 1000bc out to another loser at hefty interest rates. Makes even more money for the loan shark.

It is a function of your logistics--the higher your logistics, the lower the cost for new starbases. I also don't know the formula, but do know they can get expensive if you've been neglecting your logistics research!

I agree. It would be nice to be able to sit down without playing the game when I am in an "artistic" frame of mind and design some cool ships that I can then use in the game later when I'm playing. When I am playing the game, my focus is on beating up on my enemies and not on making nice, pretty ships. It slows down gameplay tremendously to stop and design a new ship.

I sometimes build what I call "commando" ships. These ships have 3-4x the speed of my normal fleet but are lightly armed with no defense. They are designed to slip quickly into enemy territory to knock out undefended transport ships, constructors, starbases, and freighters and then to get out--all in the same turn. This slows the enemy down in their attack and also starts killing his infrastructure so that he is easier to take down.

I've never seen the problem discussed here. I've played all map sizes with several different settings of stars/planets. And the placement of all races is pretty random and reasonable.

The range value of a particular life support varies based on map size--a larger map will give you longer range values for a particular ship design than a smaller map size. I believe this is by design. Have you taken this into account?

I apologize in advance for hijacking this thread a little bit, but on a related question: Is there a "one click" way to upgrade all ships of the same type in a single fleet? There are times that I have lots of ships (>50) of a single type, most of which are defending planets. But some of them are on the offense fleeted up for battle. I only want to upgrade the ships in the fleet, not all of the others (saves cash). Right now I'm doing it in the fleet management screen,

Hit this guy with a raiding party of 8-10 small ships loaded up with lasers and he is totally toasted. Bye-bye super-dreadnought.

Sounds like the AI has hit upon a pretty good tactic... build lots of small (cheap) ships with heavy offense, no defense. They'll die with one attack against them, but they will also take out almost anything out there given the simultaneous attack on both sides. This is also what I typically do--load up my small ships with offense, and my larger ships more balanced with defense about 1/4 of the firepower I expect to encounter from one ship (i.e., if my enemy ship has 8 attack,

In the U.S. when you combine local taxes (including property taxes), state sales taxes, federal taxes, and other hidden taxes (individuals ultimately pay the corporate taxes through increased product prices for example), then for a middle-class person you can easily hit 40-50% overall tax rate (particularly if you live in a high tax city/state like New York City). When averaged out over the whole nation, the federal tax receipts (excluding local and state tax receipts) amounts to about

You can read the individual campaign scenario descriptions/introduction by going to the .xml files located at (asssuming default GC2 program installation location): C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Data\English\Campaigns The files are titled Mission**_Text.xml where ** is the mission number the "a" ("b") designations are the follow-on mission where the prior mission was a win (loss) I think. There are a total of 10 missions.

I've rarely gotten this far in the game before winning (or losing), but... If you have a high PQ planet (>20), with those 300% farm bonus tiles, and... you load them up with stock markets (each of which gives a 10% morale bonus), and... you get a couple o' morale resources, then... I think you can handle a 30+ billion population... and really rock on your economy... Theoretically.

I first research Galactic Warfare, Space Militarization to get the 20% bonus in miitary production so I get colony ships built faster. Then Planetary improvements to get 10% to social/military/research. After that I go for Impulse Drive to get faster ships. And keep plugging away at it intermittently until I get to Warp drive. In this part of the game I vary my style--finish up the Sensors line of research to get Eyes of the Universe, get range improvements and logistics improv

Basically one recipie for a good economy is to keep morale up (I like >90%) to enhance population growth bonuses. This helps maximize my population and taxes. Then I ensure that I build a lot of the trade center type of structures to give economic (tax) bonuses. Don't go overboard building factories--this will eat you alive in terms of your economy. I give each colony 1-3 factories, depending on PQ. Then I designate some colonies my to be manufacturing powerhouses where I build

Use transports--I've done this before and it works. It may also work with colony ships--haven't tried that.

If you are not building a ship in your shipyard, there are no expenses for shipbuilding. Once you start building ships, the cost of that military production is now added to your overall economy. This will drag down your economy. I suspect what was happening is that you were not building any ships, then started building ships in all of your shipyards--this can cause a big swing from surplus to deficit. If you want to keep a surplus when your shipyards are busy, you will need to

I agree with what was said above. Also, to get the most bang out of your research you should specialize in one weapon type early on. Then in the later game stages when your enemies have defenses for this weapon type, either research your own defenses to their weapons, or branch out into a second weapon type.