GalCiv2 Forums
In this topic we will discuss what kind of galaxy setups you like most. Because there is much options to choose for an scenario it can be hard to be sure that the scenario will turn as you wish it should. What is an epic scenario for you?
My favorite setting is to put habitable planets to "occasional", enable blind exploration and mega events, and set everything else to random. I never know what to expect in games like this, and it forces me to think on my feet. There can be occasional ugly results, like 9 AIs on a tiny galaxy, but even those can lead to some of my most epic games. Basically, the less I know about my galaxy before I play it, the better.
Ok, when I start a new scenario I have been testing this settings now this days;
Galaxy size: large
Habitable planets: abudant
Solar systems: occasional
Number of planets: occasional
Research rate: normal
Anamolys: common
Minor races: 0
Astroidsfields: occasional
Events: frequently
Extreme planets: occasional
I don't have blind explorations and mega events on. Sometimes the "allow surrender" option can be a fair or unfair thing on the game. But now this days I usually have it checked. For the winning conditions I allow all of them but not ascension. I have 6 AIs mostly, the Altarian, the Arcean, the Torian, the Yor, the Dregin and the Korx. I myself are the Terran.
I think it can be more epic with other settings of course but I'm not sure what kind of galaxy setups that would be. But qrtxian, I guess it can be more fun when you don't now what to expect in the scenario. So I will try your favorite setting, thanks.
Please people, if you have any ideas for a good setup option for a scenario feel free to comments. I would like this subject to continue.
I like the folowing
1. Galaxy size Imense
2. Planets ubundant
3. habitable planets- ubundant
4. races 9
5. Scatered star systems
Recently, I (DA) have been playing with the largest galaxy size, all abundant, normal tech rate, all events, suicidal, max minors, and just 5 other empires. Sometimes no megabilities, especially when I want to play Krynn.
I find that the somewhat lower number of major AIs extends the colony rush enough to be more satisfying.
How does the extreme planet option affect planet spawns? Like, does it take ones already determined by the habitable planets option and make a % of those extreme, or does it add a number based on left over non habitable planets?
My completely unscientific observation is that it seems to convert habitables to extremes. If you jack the extremes up to frequent, there should be noticeably fewer regular planets around to grab before you need to research the colonization techs.
For me, epic means big. I've always enjoyed the long build up more than the quick skirmish.
Galaxy size: Immense, Gigantic, or Huge.
Abundant stars, common planets, occasional habitables, occasional extremes - this combo seems to give a pretty good number and mix of planets. Most empires can grab 15-25 planets before needing to worry.
Tech speed of slow seems to work well for the largest galaxies. Otherwise you've got half the tech tree before you even encounter the other races.
In DA and DL I agree with you, but wouldn't things become kind of ugly with slow tech speed and TA tech inflation?
I always go for max score which in DA means:
Gigantic Galaxy
No victories except total conquest
Do not disable Tech Trading
Do not enable Blind Exploration
Allow Mega Events and Super Abilities
Abundant Habital Planets
Abundant Number of Planets
Abundant Number of Stars
Scattered Star Density
(The above settings usually result in about 750 total planets)
Abundant Anomalies (Anomalies are useful)
Rare Asteroids (Asteroids are useless)
Very Fast Technology Rate
8 Minor Races
I then use ARC to confiure my own race as well as my opponent races. I configure opponent races so as to make them as powerful as possible on the basis that the quicker they can colonize and develop planets the faster I can take them away from them.
I configure all opponents as Krynn Super Breeders except for one opponent that's a Krynn Super Adapter. I use the third homeplanet trick to make sure everyone starts out with 3 habital planets in their home system. I spend my opponent ability points on an additional 30% econ ability for a total of 40% econ bonus and the 40% pop growth ability which along with the Krynn's inherent 50% morale ability and Breeder Super ability make them a colonization machine. I also max out each AI's Natural abilities, Financial Resources and CPU Usage and select Federalists for an additional 20% economic bonus.
Mumblefratz, is an accelerated technology rate possible/allowed in a Metaverse game? Assuming your settings are for such a game of course 
Of course. Why wouldn't it be? It's a setting allowed in Galaxy Creation.
Well that was silly of me! I thought I saw a message come up when I first played a Metaverse game and tried that setting saying that Metaverse games could not use a setting above normal for tech rate. And when I set it higher than normal, click Next, then click Back I know it does reset to normal. So that's the setting I've been using.
I just went to check and it resets to normal when I use Next+Back regardless of what rate I set (high, low, random.) And a quick test suggests that the very fast setting results in techs costing about 2/3 as many TP as the normal setting. Yeesh, I could have been progressing in tech a fair bit more quickly.
Stuff like that happens all the time. Just recently I had a game with a reasonable start. I essentially completed colonization of the galaxy by September (year 0) and was on a pop growth curve that would have put me at 12T by the end of year 0 and I was at the point where I had hulls starting to reach my MSBA array when I realized that I had forgotten to create any of the military SB's for my array and when I went to create them I found out that was one thing that you can't do while bankrupt and at that point I was about 10 million bc's in debt and it would take me another couple of months before I could get out of debt.
At least you now know of a quick and easy way to improve your score.
Also regarding the point that Maiden made in the other thread. Even if there's only one Library per TA immense galaxy you can still reach comparable levels of research with two 300% research tiles or even one 300% research tile and two 100% tiles. Your research ramp up will be a turn or two slower but you can still get to the equivalent of a Precursor Library without one as long as those combinations are not ridiculously improbable as well.
I'd like to see an option that allows you to offset the start date of your opponents. This wouldn't necessarily be in a Scenario setting; it'd probably be in the Race setup section (as that is the most logical place to put it).
Anyway, for example: you could start your less intelligent race(s) out ahead of yourself and your more intelligent one(s) afterwards (or whatever you choose).
I realize it's not quite in keeping with the story line; but then I kind of like to begin things at the beggining.
SK
Right now I play a scenario with this settings;
- galaxy size: gigantic
- habitable planet: common
- number of stars: occasional
- number of planets: common
- anomalies: rare
- tech rate: slow
- asteroid field: rare
- star density: loose cluster
- extreme planets: rare
- events: rare
- difficulty: crippling (my first time playing this difficulty)
and with mega events, blind exploration and all the victory possibilities (not ascension) enabled.
5 major races terran, toria, yor, drengin, altaria, with intelligent: genius and super abilities enabled. 2 minor races.
I play as the Arcean Empire.
What I want to find in my scenario is a epic and balanced feeling. But I find the opposite of it. The balance is really lacking by this scenario, example the terrans right now has a tech production up to 900, me and the other races have up to 100-400 tp. And the races I'm at war with (the Torians and the Yor) overwhelmes me with small star ships, even as they have almost as many planets as me. And it is just early in the game.
There is so many chooses on galciv 2 game settings, and I find it hard to figure what's the best to choose for a balanced and epic feeling. When I mean a epic and balanced feeling, I mean fair odds and challanges. At the moment of the game I probably will lose, because my military might versus the toria and yor outclasses mine.
Thanks for your patiance and understanding!
Hello galciv players! 
I just want to inform you guys that this setups have been really enjoying for me:
Galaxy Size: Large
Habitable Planets: Occasional
Number of Planets: Occasional
Star Density: Tight Clusters
Anomalies: Abundant
Number of Astroids: Abundant
Technology Rate: Normal
Number of Minor Races: Random
Number of Major Races: 9 (full slot)
..and the other one:
Galaxy Size: Medium
Habitable Planets: Uncommon
Number of Planets: Common
Number of Stars: Common
Star Density: Loose Clusters
Anomalies: Common
Technology Rate: Normal
Number of Major Races: 9 (full slot)
By this setups the scenario won't let one or two races get overpowered, all races get almost equal position in the early game that is to say.
/ Have a good one!
This is a post I almost made and I want to be in, what I do is get:
Galaxy: Largest
Planets: Medium or one above Medium
Habitibal [typo] Planets: Medium or one above Medium
Asteroids: Highest
Minor Races: Highest
Tech: Slow, wanting a challenge when meating other races, Normal to keep citizens interested, Fastest for a great advantage. You chose, I want to know.
Stars: 3/4 or Highest
Density: Packed or lowest for time and seperation to have an easy time managing your race, loose for sometimes mostly getting stucked in corners or have some brigdes of stars for trade or battles with other races, and scattered for having a hardest time.
Events: Highest
Difficulty: the wierdest thing, I had a race as normal, and another as fool, yet normal got only 2 planets from the whole game, fool had 20. I got confused. So i'm not sure.
Races: Matters on what you'll like, but i'll make Altarians and Korx my friends, unless you got a freedom fighter race, have korx enemy so you get to use battle tactics such as "destoy the korx supply line" or something.
Blind exploration on if you want to just explore or off to suddenly figure out you may create an army or a trade with the upcoming race.
Victory conditions: Matters on what you made friends or enemies, accession for a 110 weeks or over game, possibly.
Enables: Tech Trade (don't use too much or the races will hate you) Mega events, super abilities.
The number one thing to not do when creating a race is don't put the max population growth and the torians super abilities. I done it before, my race was more unhappy than my race could expand, no matter what I done, I also got a question, on the TA campaign, the mission where Tandis gave you the arnor battle cruiser, I can't beat it no matter what, please help! Also, what do I do to play the editors. I can't play the editors or use anything in the editors, its like it don't do anything. Thanks for the help and giving you help possibly.
Also, I can get you a pure good and sudicial setting for the metaverse. I'll start handing out the way when my questions are solved.
I think you're correct, that event won't happen if you have a high enough level of information on your opponents (i.e. spying).
Diplomatic Assassination is a random event that occurs with a civilization you are trading with. The level of espionage or level of relations with that civilization or relative strength doesn't matter. In fact, the first two times it happened to me was by a civilization that was an ally -- which really surprised me. Some civilizations had higher and others had lower military power when the assassination occurred. I have learned to keep some fleets in reserve even near my allies just in case this event occurs.
Mega events are a specific set of events intended to be destabilizing, but they don't include all events that might be destabilizing - the Diplomatic Assassination event above is a "normal" event that can't be turned off. You can find them listed in your English.str file (open with Notepad or something similar) or you can search the forums for threads on them. Note that, contrary to what some of the threads say, the infamous "Jagged Knife" are a mega event and shouldn't appear if you disable them.
That's very handy to know. The Jagged Knife totally ruined one of my games...I had auto save too infrequently and just gave up.
On an immense map, how many years does a typical game run?
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