jujumbura

I suppose it's somewhat presumptuous to say that they suck, but honestly I've never heard anyone say anything other than that they [b]DO[/b] suck. I was unconvinced myself, and recently tried making a concious effort to place defense modules on my exposed Starbases as they became available. I think one of them held off an attack in the early game, but after that they just get obliterated by any decent fleet. I'm curious though, as to why this is. I have 2 theories: A

@ Alfonse : I agree with you partially, but not entirely. Polish is about making sure that every feature you have works properly, and has sufficient support to make it intuitive, accessible, and most of all FUN. I agree that every game should have this. But many of the features I described, particularly the ones that require lots of flashy content, are not really polish. They are "spectacle", designed to lure people into the universe through sensory stimulu

I've been following Galacti Civlizations 2 for a long time. Probably not as long as some folks( never played GC1 ), but I remember reading the developer diaries on this website before it went beta. I still have this reccolection of somebody mulling over STL containers, and how they don't really like to use them ( which makes me chuckle a bit :D ). When the game was finally released, I was very excited, and impressed by what this "indie" team had produced.&nbsp

That's a great piece of advice, IMHO. It makes the prospect of a backwater Factory World much more appealing. Normally I always opt to turn those places into Research / Cash farms, but with infrastructure like this, they might actually be able to get ships into place.

I'm actually pretty surprised that Economy doesn't affect it. I was just in a game where we had a massive Econ Boom, and during that period my Influence increased greatly. After it ended, my Influence shrunk back down. But I suppose this might just be because during that time I was making more money, and hence spending more money on Production, which I assume affects my Embassies. Is this what was happening?

These are one of the coolest-sounding things in the game, but I haven't really found a use for them yet. I've tried making them, but I can't say that I've noticed the effects. It may be that I just didn't have enough modules or didn't understand how they really work. So here are some questions in that regard: Ship Assist Modules - What I'm assuming here, is that if I enter combat with another ship/fleet while my ship/fleet is inside the

Well as long as we're here, are there any other "not immediately obvious" factors that can affect the spread of Influence? What about: - Approval Rate? - Economy? - Military Presence? - Non Influence-specific Starbases? - Asteroid Mines? Thanks as always!

Thanks for all the clarifications Willy! Also, this one specifically: [quote]As in all other cases, an influence base is most effective when in contact with the target - either friendly or not. Build it close to the planet and you should be able to hold open a "bubble" of your territory.[/quote] Regarding the "bubble". Sometimes that bubble doesn't end up where I want it to be. For example, the bubble might not cover the asteroid fields, or a planet I'm tryin

Thanks Sole! Lots of great info there. As a followup, I'm also curious about how my Influence interacts with the Influence of my opponents. Do the Influences actually "push" on each other, or do they just stack and the highest value controls the square? Is it a simple matter of "in this square my IR is 10 and your IR is 6 therefore I control this square" OR Is it like "my nearby Influence is stronger than yours, so I am redu

I feel like I understand Ifluence partially, but not toally. I'm pretty solid about how each region of the map has different Influence ratings from the different factions, and that whoever's rating is the highest "controls" that region. And I know that there are various things you can do to increase your Influence in a given region. But what I don't get is how you get your influence to spread [b]outward[/b]. I can see that it happens, but I'm wondering what the ca

But that's an example of a pretty Discrete event. I'm not surprised when someobody declares war and people start forming alliances, what surprises me is when no major events have occurred and all of the sudden I'm on a certain race's shit list =(

This is something I always seem to run into at different points in the game. The basic gist is, I will be on good terms with another Race ( sometimes [b]very[/b] good terms ) and all of the sudden their Relationship Meter starts to drop a point per turn, and then they declare war. What irks me is that I don't feel like I'm doing anything particularly different from back when they liked me. It's not as though I've started raiding their Starbases or something. I have s

I've found it's a bit of a balancing act. My first few games I always fell short in the colonization dept, so I made it a priority to go build up a big research inftrastructure and grab Aquatic / Extreme colonization ASAP. That actually works pretty well, provided you're not next door to a Drengin, or other uber-hostile race. Even then, you get a pretty solid grace period as a head start. If you're the first to land a given Extreme type, you usually get a treme

Hello folks, So I'm trying out building an "economic planet" as reccomended by a few posters earlier. But I'm having some difficulties. The planet I chose had an Agro bonus tile, and I built a Harvester on it, raising my population cap from 8 billion to 22 billion. Problem is, the population REFUSES to grow beyond 6.9 billion! My approval is currently at 89 percent, which isn't perfect but it doesn't seem like it should flat out prevent birth. I've even t

Hmm. So is it better then to have specialized planets for economy, military, research, etc, than to have planets that are general-purpose? It seems like it might be really hard to get an idea of where your credits are going....

Well, I know the [b]basics[/b] of generating income. I know that I earn tax revenue for each citizen on my planets, and I know that I earn additional income through trade. But the problem is, I always find myself reaching a certain point in the game where my income just doesn't hold up to my expenses; [b]particularly[/b] in terms of the maintinence cost for upgraded planetary facilities. The second biggest factor is my fleet costs, but this is being behind 2 or 3 civ's milia

An addition to the planets questions: Does having a farm make my population GROW faster? Or does it just allow it to exceed whatever the current max is? Maybe its an illusion but it always seems like my people breed a lot more when I have a farm... Thanks as awlays, jujumbura

Hello All, I've been absent a couple days, trying out some of your suggestions. They help immeasurably, as you can imagine My time has gone to that, and programming my "for work" game. BUT! It's back to the GalCiv2 questions, if you can stomach them: Diplomacy 1) Which of my actions actually affect my relations with another race? Do I lose/gain faction just by putting u

Wow this is fantastic info. I’ve been totally clueless about most of this stuff, it helps so much. OK, if you’re up for it – onto SHIPS 1) Is it just me, or are the default ship designs totally insufficient? I haven’t spent much time in the designer tool, and as a result I don’t really have much in the way of custom ships. After Star Furies, its YEARS before I get access to a new ship design. I get lots of new military techs, ( weapons, armor, engines ), but the pre-re

Thanks a ton for that info Kid. My next big quandary: Planets 1) For one reason or another I ALWAYS get hosed in the initial planet race. Is it possible to win when I start with four planets colonized, and my neighbor starts with, say, 8? 2) What is a good way to use planets like Mars with only 4 buildable tiles? 3) Should I ALWAYS build a starport on every planet, even if it doesn’t have many factories? Does having more than one starport on a planet in

Hello everyone, I’ve recently picked up GalCiv2 again after about a half year of neglect. When I first played it, I found it really difficult to infer what I was supposed to do to succeed, as opposed to something like Alpha Centauri. But I keep hearing about how deep and well done the strategy is, so I’m back for another try. If any of you could answer some of my questions here, I’d greatly appreciate it. My first big issue: Starbases. 1) Does having two econom

Hello all, I'm a bit confused about how to properly utitilize the influence starbases. From what I understand, influence is represented by the colored borders around players' territories, and the influence starbases help expand that region. What I do not understand is how to place these starbases. The ecnomic and military starbases work on my own planets/units, and I can see their advantages in the planet details tab. But are influence starbases supposed to affect enemy

So, I preorded Galciv2 a month and a half ago via ebgames.com. But as of yet, my order is stil listed as "waiting for product". Is this the case in the actual Electronics Boutique stores as well? Do no retailers actually have the hard copies of the game yet? Or is the online order proccess just exceptionally slow? jujumbura

I'd like to respond to the post of apoc527, if I may. Because I think he touched on something that sums up my personal feelings about multiplayer in the strategy environment. "Lots of things are really cool in a single player game, but only for a time." That is absoutely true. What is entertaining for the first 20 hours of gameplay will quickly lose its novelty. This is why most RTS, which have really pretty simple mechanics and rule systems when you boil dow

Nebulae would be cool, but I'm not sure how they would implement that as terrain. It couldn't mess with sensors as you're viewing from a galactic point of view, unless they made that area always greyed out, so you couldn't see what was in the cloud unless you had a survey ship or sensor drone planted there. Interesting possibility for ambu