Tiger8

More pop = more money later in the game, when taxes are raised. Most good players expand quickly and deplete the home world population faster than it grows. If you have plenty on the home world, there is a chance you are not cranking out colony ships fast enough. It is good to have at least one billion on each colony so that each of them gets full pop growth too. Again, it will mean more more money later in the game. The other use for pop is troops to load on transports. <br/

For highly populated enemy planets, I sometimes send in a 1000 or 2000 with mass drivers to soften them up. Sometimes they win by accident and most of the improvements are destroyed. The optimal is to get the enemy below 1000 troops so the next wave can go in with traditional warfare. Capturing planets intact can give a huge boost. Often times the enemy has a lot of ship production in the queue that can be converted to a large ship or better almost immediately. Capturing a planet

Get to them fast before they can build up. If you are new to the game, there is so much to cover. Tech choices, sliders, building choices, what a player rush builds all have an impact on how quickly a player can get military tranports to the Dreadlord's system. Get there early and the scenario can be a cakewalk. However, if you are new to the game, and new to this genre of games, it may take a while to get that efficient at the game. Think about the goal, getting a stack of mili

The best work around is to identify all the enemy planets and take them quickly. Emphasis on quick.

Focus on social production. Only research the next industrial tech after one factory has been set up on most colonies. (Thalans start with it, and it is a liability.) Space out researching other building techs such as better labs, so planets do not get backed up on their queues. Other than that, there is not much that can be done--buying gets too expensive when looking at lots of planets. Morale buildings do stack, however, there is a complicated formula so they don't always have

I believe I am average or slightly above average for a 4x game veteran (has at least two other 4x games mastered at top level). What do you mean by 4x games? Like the other answer already said, explore, expand, exploit (?), exterminate. All the Civ games, and the Master of Orion series are 4x games. There are many others, bu

I get Laser II and Impulse, so I can make a tiny impulse ships with a laser. A stack of these will take an enemy planet. Add Basic Miniaturization and I can build a small ship with two lasers for about the cost of 1.6 tiny ships. These small ships can be useful for thirty turns. The next version has two impulse engines for six moves. Usually, I start researching missiles after the laser fleets, because the AIs start researching anti-laser defenses when those initial ships blow up everything

I agree with AngryRussian. The tactical AI is terrible, and strategic is non-existent. It does pose a challenge on the very few occasions when they build fast hard hitting ships in large numbers and has the economy to back up their military. Usually only two or three of the races ever field these advanced kind of ships. The AI typically needs several tech levels advantage plus a 3-fold ship numbers advantage to take me. In my opinion, if it were really a good AI, it would give me a fair fi

I mostly agree with Justas5 and the original poster. To make another chess analogy it is as if a set sequence of opening moves say PK4, PQ4 is always superior, and then other players call this two move sequence an exploit. Ridiculous. There are certainly exploits in the game. There are also many strategic decisions that are totally within the scope and spirit of the game. I haven't tried 1.2 beta, and am hopeful. I have made my relatively easy to implement suggestions on improvin

Mid game: 40% space to engines, 10% to a 1 pt defense, the rest weapons. Sometimes more specialized ships are useful, but the fast hard hitting offense ships are always the mainstay. Transports usually faster than military ships. Constructors and freighters vary depending on how long extra it takes to make a faster, more expensive versions. Cheaper is better and that means very little defense and lots of engines. Bigger hulls are just as good as high tech defense without the rese

Good suggestions so far. I'll add, that the first morale tech is +10 to morale and will help more than any other early tech, because it allows a player to raise the tax rate. The 100% pop bonus early from a 100% approval rate is a huge payoff for a small investment. Try and get to 1 billion pop on every colony early. This means 500 million on every colony ship. With the pop bonus, it works fine. I try to limit early rush spending to about 3000 credits, unless I find more in anomalies. The

[/quoteNot saying GC2's AI should change though. It would require lots of time. Lots. And it's quite good currently. Just some more rules could help (what to do in this or that precise situation) as well as balancing the tech tree (or adding more specific rules), which I guess is what StarDock is doing. /quote] I can not disagree more. It would not require lots of time, just some more creativity, and adding a random element to decision making. I just posted (I think f

Firstly, for those who think the AI is somewhat weak - compared to what? Seriously, if someone can name a strategy game (apart from chess, go, etc.) where the AI provides more of a challenge (without cheating) then please tell me as I will try and acquire it ASAP. AI is relative - it is good or bad depending on what the current standard is, and at the moment Galciv2

Practice the early game. Start a few games and quit after the colony rush is over. See how much tech you can acquire from research and/or trading. See how many people, planets and income you have. Experiment with different rush buying patterns, and see which ones have better results, a player can rush buy ships, or buildings. Experiment with different tech paths and see how that unfolds. Learn about the slider settings and how to use them intelligently. There is a lot to expe

For any person who enjoys 4x games, GC2 is a must have. That said, with all the press about the AI, I find it average. Stardock is still tweaking it and hope to have a better version in the next release 1.2. In my opinion, after beating the game on the highest level after owning the game for a few weeks and reading the comments here, Stardock hasn't and will not deliver any holy grail as far as AI. Again, that's my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the AI is about as good as other 4x g

An easy feature I would like (and a must for multiplayer if there is one) is no flagship at the start of game. Also if there is a multiplayer, no starting colony ship, and a different starting amount of money, perhaps even a handicapped start with better players getting less money (eg player ratings could be expressed as a handicap based on starting money).

Yeah, it is scary. Best to disband the gifted ships ASAP.

I agree with the original post. Neutral is way overpowered. Good is pathetic and really doesn't buy any extra allies. Evil has some advantages but they are like 20% of neutrals. It makes me have doubts about the design team, when they make such clearly badly skewed decisions. I'm sure they debated them, but it is not even close. If there were a multiplayer, the top players would pick Neutral every time and race for NLCs to stay on top of the research curve. Any player picking on

Only the Yor seem to value soldiering techs. It makes sense that certain civs like the Altarians would not be interested. It does make them relatively easy to conquer though. The defense thing, I disagree. Most games, I put minimal defenses on my ships. By concentrating on offense, I build more ships, that do more damage and can win the game much earlier. If a player can afford the time to research top level defense techs and have the production to crank them out in numbers, th

Medium, suicidal, five enemies, abundant stars, abundant planets, average habitable. This lets each AI have a good chance to expand, each getting 6 to 12 planets. Lately, I am turning tech trading off, and tech rate to slow. This makes the game easier at the top level. The game crashes too much to play on the gigantic map. Each turn takes a while and going back to an auto save even four turns back is too much to want to continue after a crash.

On the highest levels, a player can not afford to delay building colony ships. So while this is an interesting and viable tactic on tough and below, I would not suggest it for players at crippling or higher. Only on gigantic maps do I find survey vessels to be worth the time and effort. Otherwise a 4-move flagship (Impulse tech) finds its fair share of anomalies. The survey vessels need speed 4 to make a real dent. It would be very interesting in a multiplayer version to

Four suggestions to add more character to the races: 1) Have some races have a "bloodlust" flag. Once the flag is on, they will pursue war until one race is eliminated from the game. It might be themselves. Have a 50% chance that this flag is enabled at the start of the game. If so, do not declare war, but act as if war is declared and just attack enemy ships and planets. 2) Have some races with a 50% chance at a "pacifist" flag. Do not build any military ships until enemie

Stardock is aware of the problem. They are addressing this lag in AI redesign in release 1.2. The beta 1.2 is scheduled to be available by Friday 5/26. Keep your fingers crossed. There is a lot on their plate, and there are always unintended side effects.

To me, the money thing was one of the most puzzling aspects to the game. There are several remedies, do all of them and cash flow will be fine. Taxes are proportional to population. High approval means more population growth. Best solution is to have 100% approval very early to have a much bigger tax base later. Also shuttle colonists around on transports or colony ships so each colony has at least 1 billion people. Planets below that in pop don't get full growth. Selecting the Federalist

Approval can also play a role when a player changes to a more advanced government (Republic on up). However, it is pass or fail, with 50% being the cut off. If the approval is under 50% empire wide, there will be production penalties. Also someone else mentioned the possibility of revolts if there are several planets below 50% even if the overall empire rating is well over 50%. That said, the population boost is a big bonus. It means more money and more soldiers to load on transpo