I often take advantage of a war between an AI and a minor race by selling military tech to the minor race. As a result it will take a bigger bite out of the attacking AI's military, and as an upside you get money for the tech you sold.
To build on Khanon's post, the main reason to destroy your own influence starbases after you've flipped all nearby AI planets, is to decrease the cost for the next starbase (cost increases with the number of starbases you already have, though it also depends on your logistics ability). Especially when going for an influence victory this can save you some thousands.
... As for the notion that I should've quickly stolen planets before the Drath got big, the problem was that my forces were spread thin: If I wanted to form a fleet of two or three Cestas, I would have to leave a world or two unattended... For future games, consider it's not always necessary to have every planet defended with massive ships early in the game. Having a few cheap ships to hold off enemy invasions for a few turns until your better ships arr
Some factors to consider when determining your alignment: 1) Your playstyle (evil if you're going for military, neutral/good if you're going for influence, good if you go for diplomatic) and the unique advantages/buildings of each alignment 2) Your neighbours: it may pay off to have the most common alignment if you can use the positive impact on your foreign relations 3) The ethical choices: choosing the evil path gives you some quick immediate advantages But
I would say you're simply stacking too many races + minors on such a tiny map... Tiny maps work fine with up to 4-5 AI's (never tried on anything harder than Challenging though). In addition, diplomacy is much tougher since you're immediately faced with close borders. Some random events are indeed a pain though, it really hurts if half of your planets are given to some new minor race, nothing to do about it unless you want to turn off all random events.
For the entire race. On which planet you put your spies, is just important for sabotaging buildings that are important to the AI (e.g. it's better to put a spy on a Technology Capital than on a Xeno lab) I would advise you to either spend a lot on spies early in the game (because then they're rather cheap and quickly trained) or only once you've got more cash coming in than you need. I feel in the midgame it often drains your economy too much (spending several 100 bc's and it still takes
Can you make sure to save that game, this might come in handy if anyone needs more details later?
Should you decide to join i will go ahead and place you in a team for this round, i may not get time to do it later, but feel under no obligation to fulfill any requirements. It is just a time saver for me.... The random generator has spoken.....the winner is....The Blade Runners..Team B Thanks, I'll gladly join! In the meantime I'm already in touch with Team B <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Smile.gif" border=0 align="
Just to tell you that influence SBs can be very, very useful: just finished 2 games in a row where I won using influence SBs to flip the planets of an entire race one by one. I added defense modules to some of them (the ones closest to my enemy's home planet), which helped them survive an early attack; I didn't want additional warships because of the maintenance cost involved. A mining SB gives you an extra edge (a few % to your economy or military can help a lot), and adding mining
... So for the warfare in DA game I need medium hull with ~3 points of attack (usually single Harpoon), enough defenses on it to block attack from the average fleet my opponent is fielding, and one Impulse III engine... Iztok, one question related to this: what particular precautions do you take to prevent the other AI's from finishing you off once you've won the first war? On Challenging or higher levels I usually have problems
Speaking of Dread Lords, it's almost funny to see that the most effective way to wipe them out when they appear as a random minor race in a sandbox game, is to conquer their planet before they show up with any ships. Once they have ships it gets considerably tougher.
Mystikmind : I would agree galciv2 is superior to civ4, but Alpha Centauri is superior to both! Alpha Centauri is packed so full of wonderful features and game concepts i am suprised it isn't illegal!! Put a smart AI with it and set planet mind worm stacks to single unit damage only and i would have no need for other games. Well, the AI in GalCiv2 puts up a bigger challenge and there seems to be more variation throughout the game. I couldn't choos
I agree to that, the cost increase for spies (or the time needed to train one if you keep your espionage spending maxed out) is too steep. I will often go for maximum spending on espionage early on (costs only a handful of bc per spy + you can take quite a bite out of the early growth of one AI), then almost stop spending until my economy is prospering, then return to an espionage spending of around 20%.
If still possible, I'd like to sign up with my character "Noctilucus".
Ah, the score aspect But still you will have that military to improve relations and prevent the AI's from considering you a sitting duck, so that's what I referred to as "being a deterrent against the AI"
I would also advise you to change your ship design to all attack to take out that Ranger... The amount of damage they will do through his "square rooted" defenses will be significantly higher, and chances are most of your ships won't survive the encounter anyway.
Definitely. Of course the meat of the work is the programming and implementing all the ideas, the game engine,..., but think for example about betatesting to finetune the balance... Hell of a job for games such as GalCiv where the AI needs to be intelligent; just think about those hundreds of games that are completely marred because of stupid AI, etc. Or how any too apparent exploit of the AI could destroy gameplay. In addition, I guess you could also help before the actual development, when
Just wanted to add that it's indeed very, very nicely done, really interesting to follow your strategy in particular on such difficulty level. Excellent idea to include those save games, allows us to see much more of the details that are impossible to type out fully. I hope I'll pick up some ideas to improve and speeden up my early game strategy.
At least since DA in almost all the cases during trading with the AI, the AI's money slider will by default be on the maximum they're willing to give. No more endless increasing the demanded sum by 100 bc at a time to get the maximum out of a trade deal...
I would add: if you develop a weapon, be ready/willing to use it. In the real world this relates to the whole cold war arms race, with both the US and USSR piling up nuclear weapons they will never put to use. In GalCiv II this would mean for example: if you build a powerful fleet, it should be either to use it right away, or to use it as a deterrent against the AI. Otherwise it's just eating your tax money.
... Basically what i do now is have one farm, eventually fully upgraded for a population of 13B and the have only one moral building. With resources and trade goods my morale rating is usually like 70-80 +/-. I used to see the idea that you needed 2 morale buildings per farm. 2 morale buildings per farm to end up with the same morale rating as before the farm + morale buildings I guess that means that before your morale rating was simply
Ummm... why can't you just select one tech, select the money, hit send, then select another tech, select the money, hit send, and keep trading techs one at a time without ever leaving the diplomacy screen. It seems to work for me. That way, you don't lose an opportunity to talk to the AI. Heh, I can't believe I overlooked that when posting here. What happens often though is that in the middle of trading with the AI, I need some info from th
B. nail meet head - I think I haven't been paying enough attention to those 3 sections at the top of the "planet screen".... dunno... lemme get back to you on that one. i think I've been coasting at around 60-70ish% with regard to the 'spending meter'. Later on, when I 'can', I increase it. The one thing I'm having the hardest time with is keeping my people's morale above 50%... I haven't researched ANY of the diplomatic related techs... been staying "evil" fo
... Also simply waiting a while can work as well. That might be the case when the AI's are still busy battling for example. Not sure that it helps for your own autopiloted ships.
Thanks! Will it help at all if I give the AI $1? Also, what's the monetary unit in this game? $1 will be barely noticed (if at all) by the AI, especially considering that giving technologies worth a few thousand at that time won't even change their stance right away. I don't know though whether it's better to give them all at once, or spread it across several months. I think the monetary unit is bc (billion credits)
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