JMiddleton

You have the option of decommissioning the old ship and building a new one - slow, inexpensive and you lose the experience bonuses. Buying the upgrades is fast, expensive and you keep your experience bonuses. Both options are useful tools when developing your strategy. Upgrading isn't that bad once you have your economic engine running smoothly - your treasury will recover very quickly if you keep it below 20,000BC. I just wish there was an "upgrade as many as I can afford" option so I didn't ha

I play on a 52" HDTV using a Gyration mouse as my main controller. I used to try for symmetry but getting components to mate with the hardpoints using this mouse is an exercise in frustration - the capture window is much too small. The ships you get by double-clicking components look strange but this is a science fiction game. Alien naval architects may think they look perfectly normal!

One of the nice features in GalCiv2 is that you can win without firing a shot. The non-military victory conditions won't appeal to everyone but those who pursue them will have kinder words for the neutral and good alignments than most who have posted here. If Metaverse scoring encouraged the non-military victory conditions the tone of this thread might be quite different.

The technologies I have available when I need to build a ship will vary from game to game depending on trades, how many research bonus tiles I find, etc... so I design new each game to get the best ship I can build with the techs I have. They aren't pretty - I normally just double click and let the system place components but it only takes a few seconds to design a new ship that way and they work just as well.

Neutrality Learning Centers are available early in the game and basically double the research capability of a neutral player once the research academy's are upgraded. This confers a significant advantage by mid-game. If you don't exploit it the evil races will use their bonuses to overwhelm you in the end game.

Influence/diplomacy gives you several advantages: - more tourism income - better deals when trading with other civilizations - reduces chance that your colonies/mines will revolt - increases chance that AI colonies/mines will revolt to join you - improves relations with other civilizations reducing chance AI will declare war on you I always build embassy's on the bonus tiles and upgrade to cultural exchange centers by mid game.

By turning off the graphic enhancements you are throttling your video card so it doesn't draw as much power or generate as much heat. Hard to believe that GalCiv II exercises the card more than some of the other games you mentioned. 8800 should have a thermal probe accessible from the nvidia tab on the display properties advanced page. I think this is called display preferences in Vista. To clean boot run msconfig, choose selective startup and uncheck the load startup items bo

The best real estate in my corner of the galaxy always seems to require extreme colonization but I wait until I can research the tech in less than 10 weeks before going after it. By this time my economy is solidly in the green and I have enough military tech to keep the AI off my back. Once I have extreme colonization I evaluate all the planets in my region to decide which type to do first. If the Iconians or Yor are next door they will often scoop the planets they have a native ability to colon

I had the same issue when I started playing the game. Traced it to an overheating video card. Replaced the fan and haven't had a problem since.

If your population declines then, presumably, your approval will rise - my assumptions are - the decline only affects the planet with low approval. - you retain your existing entertainment structures and trade goods. - your treasury maintains a positive balance and the tax rate remains constant. In theory population should be stable once approval reaches 40% unless you raise taxes or run a deficit to drive it lower.

Is it better to have 24 billion unhappy taxpayers or 20 billion happy ones? As long as your overall approval is sufficient to retain control in the Senate what is the downside to low approval on a single planet?

I find that the technologies I have available when I need a new design can vary quite a bit from game to game - sometimes I trade for weapons and propulsion tech, sometimes I have to research it myself - so I rarely reuse ship designs. It takes less than a minute to create a new design if you leave out the eye candy. I do have a naming convention which speeds things up and makes it easier to keep track of my fleet. I call small hulls Fighters, medium hulls Corvettes, large hulls Cruiser

Right now, Starbases are militarily significant in the early and mid game but easy prey in the late game. Most of the posts in this thread see this as a bug but it may also be considered a feature - forcing you to change strategy once technology advances to the point where Starbases can no longer defend themselves. Realistically, there is no way for a base to defend itself against a fleet of late game battleships - you need to intercept and destroy that fleet with one of your own before

I'm pretty sure they steal them. In a recent game I decided to go for a technology victory, even though I had close relations with all other civilizations and could have ended the game with a diplomatic victory. Around the time I completed Beyond Mortality, a new minor race appeared - Vegans as I recall. A few turns later, as I was researching Technology Victory, I got a popup that the Vegans had Beyond Mortality! I was only six turns from the victory (massive technology infrastructure

I like to play clustered galaxies and tend to build economy starbases where they will benefit several worlds. I build influence starbases in border areas where the AI influence is stronger than mine. I rarely build military starbases. I do fortify my starbases and find that they are a significant military force in the early to mid game but have to be defended with a fleet if you get into a war in the late game.

A small hull with a pair of Stingers represents a lot of firepower in the early game. A few of these will give you the dominant military. I put them in orbit around my most important planets to prevent a sneak attack. Later in the game you have the option of upgrading them using your latest technology. That can be expensive but it's a fast way to move your military back into the lead if you have neglected it for a while.

From a game play standpoint, I think it would be nice if players could design their own starbases, the same as their own ships. The SB would have access to any of the weapons and defenses you have researched plus mission specific modules like trade, econ, diplomacy, resource mining, etc... They could take advantage of advancing miniaturization technology and could be upgraded the same as ships to incorporate your most advanced technology. I also like the idea of a fleet management module allowin

In my experience the lower PQ planets tend to have more than their fair share of bonus tiles and the lowest PQ planets, 1-2, develop into at least PQ 10-12 with terraforming techs. It's nice to have at least one high quality planet for your econ capital but you can get by without it - just needs a different strategy!

The nice thing about upgrading is that you can keep basic, low maintenance hulls in orbit and make them state of the art warships in a single turn if the AI declares war on you - assuming your treasury can take the hit. It isn't particularly realistic but can be a useful strategy.

Many of us manage to play the game regularly and for hours at a time without encountering any errors. The problem would appear to be unique to your environment. Try using msconfig to clean boot the system and see if the problem goes away.