Hey there iCapn,

When you click on the 'trade' tab, you are given a list of all your current routes. In the beginning of the game it is 3. If there are any numbers on that list without any info after them, then that is an available trade route.
I think you can put as many trade modules on a starbase as you have available unless the U.P. votes against it somehow.
As for your other questions, I'm not sure. Hope this helps somewhat.

Hey there iCapn,

When you click on the 'trade' tab, you are given a list of all your current routes. In the beginning of the game it is 3. If there are any numbers on that list without any info after them, then that is an available trade route.
I think you can put as many trade modules on a starbase as you have available unless the U.P. votes against it somehow.
As for your other questions, I'm not sure. Hope this helps somewhat.

What I'm wondering is whether trade income enhancements are capped, like if I build a dozen starbases in 1 sector and jack up the trade bonus to 500% does it cap somewhere below that, like it does for production?

I'd also really like to know if research points carry over, as microing the research slider is one of the less enjoyable tasks of the game.

They don't. ANd for micromanaging research slider, there is one bif cavecat: the game memorizes free research and don't recalculate it when you play with sliders. As long as you increase the research, it won't really matter. but if you decrease the research between turn, you will think that you spend enough to get the research the next turn sinc F6 will say so but it won't be the case since it will use a bigger value for free research than you will really have

Thanks for the tip, I already read about the research slider being bugged, so I drop it to 0 then bring it back up on any turn in which I expect a research discovery.

Hmm ... I wonder if it might be possible to make a mod that does that for me ... a "research optimizer mod". That's probably not a game component that could be modded, but you never know until you ask.

Even a mod to the UI that allowed me to see the projected research completion time and change the research allocation simultaneously would be nice, as it would save flipping from screen to screen. Heck, all I really need is for the actual number of research points needed to reach the next tech to be displayed. I could note that value then set research accordingly.

Micromanagement isn't one of my favorite game-winning strategies, but I would lay odds my AI competition "knows" how the formulas work and isn't going to be wasting money over-paying for research.

I suspect you are correct. I base this on the speed with which they can acquire the research to get a TG or wonder.

But, the type of dynamic control you are asking for is not doable in any of the Mods that I am aware of. Mod only set parameters at the start of the game and after that they are followed. Changing the mod during a game was the basis for the Meta explosion recently and the discussion that followed regarding cheese or cheats (but let's not start up that war again )

You suggestions should be made in the GalCiv II suggestions thread. They sound reasonable.

How about skins?

I don't really need a new control, I just need information to appear in a new place.

If the amount of research left to acquire the next tech could simply be DISPLAYED in the Econ tab, the other number I need, actual research dollars for the next turn, is already there, in the upper-right corner, so it would be a simple matter of raising the research slider until the two numbers matched.

I don't know if UI mods are possible or not, but I know a lot of other software has support for UI mods and that these are referred to as "skins".

It would be possible to write a "saved game analyzer" which would report the number of bc's to next tech discovery. If it had a key for re-loading the save file (like F5) it would be at your fingertips just by pressing Alt-Tab then F5.

The procedure would be Save Game, Alt-Tab, hit F5 to re-load the save file, read off the "research points remaining" number, Alt-Tab back to GC, and match the Research econ slider to that number. Inconvenient, but doable.

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Well, you are just missing one important thing : the free research. It is this one that screws the ETA on the F6 screen.

Well as Peace Phoenix said: it's the free research that screws the ETA, but it would be helpfull to have those numbers. That way you could make a reasonable estimate on the amount of free research.

Yes but it's not really free is it, a Mil/Build/Sci split of 33/33/33 costs less per month than 25/25/50. In fact the difference is so pronounced that is is often hardly worth increasing the science percentage as you have to drop the spend so much that the overall science hardly increases at all while the production is significantly cut.

I think the science spend is calculated in the wrong direction. I believe that the current method is to work out the unadjusted spend, then add the modifications, then add the cost of these increases. A more understandable method would be to allow for the modification at the start so a 33/33/33 split costs roughly the same per month as 25/25/50 or 40/40/20 or whatever.

Where there is a situation that involves tricky calculation it should be done by the computer, after all computers are much better at this sort of thing than people are, so why whenever we want to alter the distribution do we have to muck about with this?

I guess that it depends of the amount of free research you get for all of your paid research.
The F4 screen (with the spending rate), show you the paid military prod/ social prod/ research. The modification of the various sliders will affect what it is paid.
In the following example, you divert 100 BC for military prod to research prod , meaning that 100 BC are substracted to the paid militray production and added to the paid research. This can mean that overall spending rate and individual slider are adjusted, but at the end, the paid research has increase from 100 BC while the paid militray prod has decrease from 100 BC.

Now if the average for free research at empire level is that 2 BC in paid research give 1 BC of free research, you will have 50 BC of free research added to your research. So diverting 100 BC from military means increasing the overall research (paid + free) from 150 BC.

But if the average is 1 paid BC give 2 fre research BC, you will gain 200 BC of free research for just diverting 100Bc from military production. So diverting 100 BC from military means increasing the overall research (paid + free) from 300 BC.

What you're saying is that you get 200bc of free research which will cost 200bc, er, hardly free is it? A better term would be "additional" or "bonus" research, the use of the term "free" is highly misleading.

Anyway the distribution is by percentage so diverting a sum like 100bc from one area to another is not, without a load of trial and error, possible. What I'm saying is that is should be possible to do just that.

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No, I says that for spending an additionnal 100 BC on research, with a ratio of 1 paid BC gives 2 free BC, you will have a bonus of 200 free research. So, for finding tech, the overall research has increased of 300 BC, since the research cost is in BC, but for your budget, you have just spend 100 BC.
So the 200 BC free research are just that: free since they don't appeared in your budget, but have a value in BC when determining what is needed to find the tech.

I hope this is clearer.


Agree with you on this point.

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Hear, hear!

I think for a non-micromanage game, there is far to much mincromanagement, and it's far do difficult to do.

What I mean is: There are so much wasted BC on production and research that in it is important to use a significant part of the time used playing to minimise waste. This is particularely true in the early game, later when your economy is stronger, a few 100 wasted BC/turn is not all that significant.

When the player tries to minimise waste by adjusting the spending sliders, the turn to completion bug means that he/she have to use pen and paper and a lot of viewing the individual planets to keep track of/calculate witch planets will complete their production that turn.

Wouldn't it be cool if someone designed a strategy game that didn't rip you off if you didn't micromanage the various budgets every turn?

That's really what it comes down to. Practically every strategy game ever designed will rob you of your hard work empire-building if you don't also work even harder managing production-per-turn, based upon the near-universal, seemingly-arbitrary design decision "you can't take it with you" -- from one turn to the next, that is.

That means the really good players don't just envision, design and build a powerful civilization, they fiddle with every control, every turn, cutting out the waste deliberately designed into the system.

I can't help sometimes thinking the people who come up with this stuff find it quite amusing.

MoO 1 was the exception. If you paid for 2 ships in 1 turn, you got 2 ships. If you paid for 1.5 ships, you got 1 ship and credit for half of another. "Too simple," people complained. I guess one never appreciates what one has until it is gone.

In GalCiv if you pay for 2 ships you get 1. If you pay for 2 research items you get 1. Forcing us to spend money on "Nothing" in one place just to build something somewhere else is really over-the-top; I don't think any strategy game has forced that decision down people's throats.

GalCiv's trading and diplomacy knock the socks off the competition -- even Alpha Centauri. The common-sense way techs are treated, as just another commodity unless they have direct military value, is refreshing, and makes techs something you can use for more than just "teching up" to some super-weapon.

But I also long for the management ease of MoO 1, where you didn't have to micro just to get what you pay for. A game that challenges our ingenuity is fun; a game that rewards actuarial endurance is not.

Hmm... interesting. This morning I was thinking of ways to reduce micromanagement in GaalCiv, and could not remember witch game let you build more than one ship each turn (Thank's iCapn for the answer too that question).

My suggestion is to have a build-que for militarry as well (and let it default to the last built item if the list was empty) and let any excess production carry over to the next item. If this item is also completed let it be built. When the social que is empty the excess should go into either moral-boosting production, research, or military production.

Oh well this belongs in a differnt thread.

Where "excess production carry over" belongs is IN THE GAME, as it was in MoO 1, the original "we won't rip you off as punishment for not micromanaging" strategy game for folks like me who hate micro but will begrudgingly do it anyway if we HAVE to in order to play the game well.

** rant off **

Even SimTex dropped the ball: in Master of Magic production doesn't carry over, meaning to squeeze the most out of your cities you must "rebalance" their farmer / worker ratio every turn. For sanity's sake I only did this when I actually needed more food, but since I built gigantic armies I always needed more food.

In MoO 2 they didn't rip you off, but they did restrict builds to 1 per turn, forcing you to micromanage a critical path. (Put a starbase in the queue then insert stuff in front of it until the SB could build in 1 turn was generally the way I did it.)

I don't think GalCiv needs a build queue -- you have Governors for that -- but it would sure be nice if I didn't have to spend so much time fighting waste. Should I really be forced to spend money on "Nothing"?

With the elmination of bribes that last more than 50 years, money no longer means much. Trade in techs. Just manage your sliders to stay above -500bc and let the rest take it course. The only thing I micro manage is the total spend slider until trade results in postive cash flow and I am at 100% spend. After that, usually a few years, money ks not a problem. And, I don't establish trade routs, only the AI does.

Do you mean you don't build freighters?

Don't forget that you don't necessary have to BUILD freighters to establish trade routes. You can BUY them from AI.

At present, in most cases, I neither build freighers nor buy them. If the game gets close on money, which most often it does not, I may build freighers, which by then only take a turn or two, and send them to the most hostile AI.

This works well on small map (5x5). But on gigantic (28x28), it is another story: you must take in account that there will be lots of turns before the freighters reach the AI.
More, the trade income on gigantic is very nice due to the length of the trade routes

You can probably get away without freighters if you use lots of mods.

A quick look at the threads about what mods people use gives this quote from Weyrleader:
"I have all of them loaded and use them all, well, they are available to be used."

I make no judgment (I use a few mods myself) but I suspect that Weyrleaders strategy would flounder on a virgin un-modded version.

As I have expounded at length before, I feel that a lot of the (micro/macro) management problems would be solved by giving the governors the distribution sliders instead of them being global (er, galactic??). Then you could have some planets for military production, some science bunnies, and under-developed planets could max on social production.

Actually, I have a machine that does not have any mods and I occasionally play on that machine. My strategy still works. Not much difference between the two.

But PPs comments are real and important. On large maps, trade routes take a while to establish. I play "huge" maps. The problem with buying a freigher is you don't know where in the Galaxy it will be and iti may still take a long time to even get to the nearest planet and then not the AI you want to trade with.

Not right: if you right click on the ship in the diplomacy screen before adding it to the exchange table, you will see where it is located.
Very nice if you have stellar cartography and know where yellow stars are