Galactic Civilzations II: 21 Feb

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-10 01:56am

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote: 3. When invading- don't use anything but traditional invasion or information warfare. The cost of a transport ship is trival compare to the benefit you get out of capturing a fully fuctional planet. It takes a long to rebuild a planet with the other combat options, and with some of them (such as mass drivers) the planet will never return to its fully productive state.

On the other hand, if you're sure that you won't take a planet in one go, even with mass drivers, use mass drivers or whatever the first time, and in the second use traditional or information warfare, and the target planet will be captured intact.

Or at least, the last time I recalled.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-10 01:59am

One question though:

Can you raise the approval rating of one of your own planets by using your own influence or economy starbases?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 02:24am

I use mass drivers to lay waste to space: I attack the colony with mass drivers, take it over, then burn it to the ground. I don't have to defend it, noone can steal my tech out of it, and the planet is likely useless. I win.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-10 02:47am

So, does anyone use missiles? What are they like compared to mass drivers and beam weapons?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 02:51am

I usually start with missiles, since it's easier to get a high attack rating with them. By the time anyone adapts (and I've seen the AI design ships with 2 beam attack and 20 missile defence to stop my photon torpedoes) I've got enough of a base to either trade or research anything I want.

They do more damage, cost more and are physically larger. They're fastest to research (one tech less per development level) and easiest to counter (cheapest defence tech). I think it's cool: they're cheap and nasty but effective.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-10 06:29am

We knew that not having multiplayer in the game would affect reviews. There's no way around it. We are still certain it was the right decision.

First, it allowed us to make the game and sell it for $40 rather than the prevailing $50. The sales figures seem to back that up. Simply put, we just didn't feel that players should have to subsidize the small % of people who play multiplayer. If there's demand, we can always add it later. The Metaverse, as mentioned, required we put in the plumbing.

Secondly, we simply wanted to focus on the single player experience. Seems like more and more games forgo the single player experience in order to put a checkbox on multiplayer. Or put another way, we think there's a significant number of people in recent years who feel like we do -- that single player strategists have gotten a bit shafted in favor of satisfying multiplayer. We'll likely add in multiplayer in some expansion if there's demand, but we wanted the base game to focus on the individual strategy gamer. Whether we made the right decision is ultimately up to you.

It's a very good review though in terms of outlining what you can expect in the game both pro and con. Despite the mark down for no multiplayer, IGN still gave GalCiv II the Editor's Choice Award.

*cheers*

That's right, fuck multiplayer. Because I certainly am not going to miss it.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 06:32am

I actually feel the way many do about multi about tactical battles. As I mentioned earlier, I've never, ever had a battle result I didn't understand. Unlike Civ games, crap morons never, ever win against superior ships. I only lose when I don't notice they've changed their defences, or been reinforced. If they added tactical play, I would never use it, so I'd rather the devs spend their time on other things - similar to the loss of multi for improved single player.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-10 06:40am

Stark wrote:I actually feel the way many do about multi about tactical battles. As I mentioned earlier, I've never, ever had a battle result I didn't understand. Unlike Civ games, crap morons never, ever win against superior ships. I only lose when I don't notice they've changed their defences, or been reinforced. If they added tactical play, I would never use it, so I'd rather the devs spend their time on other things - similar to the loss of multi for improved single player.

Indeed. If my ships are outdated and/or lesser, they always make what would work as suicide runs again the enemy and that's it. If we're evenly matched, it becomes a question of numbers, initiative, defense, and tech.

The only results I feel that could be better/more intuitive are ships vs. starbases, but maybe that's because they pack deceptively gigantic firepower into their frames at middle levels of combat.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 06:47am

I'd like them to fix the cinematic camera: in starbase battles it parks it INSIDE the structure much of the time. And starbases are so cool to watch...

No I will not steer the camera myself! They don't call me an 'armchair' general for nothing!

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-10 06:53am

I'd like Cinematic Camera to actually focus on something. As far as I can tell, it just flicks between random view modes.

I prefer Top-Down 1 or Top-Down 2 or Free Camera myself.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 06:55am

Sometimes - SOMETIMES - cinematic works really well, at least with larger fleets. It's pretty mopeless most of the time, but it means I don't have to steer it ...

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-10 06:59am

Question for those who are following the deveploment : are there any updates planned for the ship creator ? Turning hardpoints is a serious PITA right now.

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-10 05:11pm

Jesus fucking Christ. Has anyone gone up against the Dreadlords yet? I just got to the campaign mission where they are first on the map and before I could get my research up enough to even get planetary invasion to try and make a mad dash to take the target world, me and my two allies were completely saturated by Dread Lord ships(have 40-70 level lasers, 60+ HP, and no def) None of us can build anything that can even kill their ships in waves of fleets. They land on your worlds with an invasion force of 10. Their odds are 300-600v3-6. Although I did have weapons tech from the previous game, I may have to just replay it and spend an hour researching beam and shield techs for this one.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-10 08:11pm

I only played the campaign for a bit. Not having trade and having such horrible odds just owns me every time: in that first Dreadlords mission, I lost so many times I eventually just accepted it at moved to the next mission. WHICH IS EVEN HARDER.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-10 09:50pm

Just a general thought- I don't like the concept of "influence" and "influence victory". The notion that your civilization will have so much "influence" that the planets of other civilizations will just spontaenously up-and-join is, well, fucking stupid. I didn't like it in Civ IV and I don't like it here. "Influence" should define your borders, but it should never be able to take over another planet- around another civ's planet there should be a small, impenetrable influence barrier that just can't be overcome. This will help establish proper borders.

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-11 12:17am

Well I got past the next two campaign missions. The tech loss thing has to be a fucking bug, cause I don't see how the fuck this could work otherwise, usually the only thing I'm doing in the campaigns is working dipomacy tech trade so that my allies have enough power to beat the Dreadlords while I am going in to debt just to maintain a megere fleet that barely defends what little planets I have. The only game I was a significant force was in the 6 or 7th where you have a large map. And even then its only because one of the races got Dreadlord level Doom Rays and I was able to drain my vaults and tech to sucker them out of it.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-11 01:40pm

Yes, I'd like to complain about the Campaign Missions, too. They're a good idea, but the Dread Lords are just too good at mass producing their ships. Feeble little captured planets with Younger Race economies shouldn't be able to handle them, there should be a strict number of Dread Lords with few new ones made at all.

Instead, the Dreads double in number every few months just like everyone else, apparantly.

http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=104115

Some good ideas on how to beat them can be gleaned from this post.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-11 03:13pm

I upped the difficulty level and now I get wtfpwned. (oh, the patches seems to have fixed that bit with invasions with mass drivers failing doesn't affect planets)

First during the initial land-grab rush, and then later on when everyone else seems to grow exponentially in military power through some mysterious means. For the land-grab rush, I think some races just get lucky enough to start relatively isolated; others just get crammed together. I think anything more than four or five AIs on anything smaller than huge galaxy is a bit much.

So any tips on how to survive the early and mid-game?

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-11 03:24pm

Shinova wrote:I upped the difficulty level and now I get wtfpwned. (oh, the patches seems to have fixed that bit with invasions with mass drivers failing doesn't affect planets)

First during the initial land-grab rush, and then later on when everyone else seems to grow exponentially in military power through some mysterious means. For the land-grab rush, I think some races just get lucky enough to start relatively isolated; others just get crammed together. I think anything more than four or five AIs on anything smaller than huge galaxy is a bit much.

So any tips on how to survive the early and mid-game?

Above five AIs, set it on Huge. Above seven, Gigantic is a must.

For high numbers of enemies, set it on Loose Clusters or Scattered for Star Formation. Otherwise, powers start too close.

I play on Normal-ish, but this seems to work for Normal. (Or Challenging with less than five opponents, which I can manage).

Design a fast colony ship, first turn. Buy one each turn and send them to star systems. Fast Constructors are needed on the turns where your survey ship finds resources.

Set the Survey Ship on Autosurvey, but make sure it's also going to scout planets and such so you might have to manual it for a while if it wants to go to some wormhole. You need to Autosurvey so you can find anomalies, so that you can get extra cash (+1000 Bc is awesome) to buy more colonies.

During the post-expansion part, have 2 factory worlds per 6 or so, plus your Homeworld which is usually pretty good at that too. Make constructors with one so that you can make starbases (a good military one and an economic one near your homeworld and your commerce planet (if you can fit both in the same radius) is a must.). The other one builds defenders or some cheap shitty ship so that you can garrison all your worlds with four or five of them to ward off expansionist powers. Use your Homeworld or another generalist world to build whatever else you need like AWACS ships to get rid of Fog or something.

During warfare, switch all three worlds to ships. One of my worlds in my current game can make my standard Medium-hulled Cruiser in 3 weeks or churn out 3-billion capacity transports every 2 turns. (During a war with the Torians, I actually had to stop building Transports because I almost depopulated the planet).

My ideal breakdown for worlds:

Per 6 Planets, Class 8+
1 Generalist (Homeworld) Give it a manu bias so it can build ships too.
2 Manufacturing
1 Research
1 Commerce (all markets, eco capital, and entertainment + 1 farm to pay for manufacturing)
1 for whatever seems expident.

Generalist Planets are my planets that can manufacture ships within a few weeks but are slow at it. Instead, they have a bit of economic and a bit of research, but mostly use the manufacturing so I can have mega-social production and get wonders quickly.

Manufacturing Worlds are basically a Farm with an Entertainment Center and Starport, surrounded by factories and a manufacturing capital on one of them. They manufacture ships quickly, but are very expensive, thus the Commerce World to help it out.

Research Worlds are the same, but with Labs and a Tech Cap. Starport.

Commerce Worlds have all Markets and Eco Caps. No Starport.

All Planets, Class 7- (Marslike, usually)
Research Colonies. No starport, just a Farm, an Entertainment structure, and as many labs as you can fit. Focus on research and then forget about them.

EDIT
The only problem with this strategy is that if you lose one of your specialized worlds, you're pretty fucked. Commerce worlds are needed to run manufacturing worlds and not go bankrupt. Research worlds are needed to make newer ship types and better specialized world structures. The Homeworld, ironically, is the only one that can be lost.

Make sure, if possible, that you can put your Homeworld and your Eco center within an Economic Starbase radius. Also put a military as close to all of the major worlds as possible, and upgrade it so it can be a major defensive tool for buffing your fleets.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-11 03:34pm

I was thinking of setting my homeworld as a purely manufacturing planet with factories galore so that I could pump out a colony ship every five turns after I buy myself into the point where I can't just buy any more colony ships. And later, upgrade some of those factories into other stuff. Would that be okay?

(I find five AIs on huge to be a bit cramped.

)

EDIT: Oh, it was six, not five.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-11 03:40pm

Shinova wrote:I was thinking of setting my homeworld as a purely manufacturing planet with factories galore so that I could pump out a colony ship every five turns after I buy myself into the point where I can't just buy any more colony ships. And later, upgrade some of those factories into other stuff. Would that be okay?

(I find five AIs on huge to be a bit cramped. )

That might be, but you'd lose money real fast. I had just one Class 11 Manufacturing World in my current game. It has 1 Initial Colony, 1 Xeno Farm, 1 Multimedia Center, 1 Manufacturing Capital, and 7 Enhanced Factories.

It cost me 120 bc a week to run, but made ships in just a few. It was only mitigated by the fact that I made around 80 from a world that was the same but with economic structures.

A good idea to test for Economic Worlds would be multiple farms with their nescessary entertainment structures and less markets. That could increase taxpayer numbers and thus money to run the factories.

Five AIs cramped on Huge? Nonesense, I'm playing a Five AI game on Large/Normal. Maybe at Intelligent or so it gets more hectic.

I had 5 worlds counting a Class 6 one when done expanding, and so did everyone else but the Yor who started in one of those shitty no-star places on the map (they have 2), and the Drengin who were blitzkrieged by the Torians after they got 4 or so. The Torians had about 7, counting the one they conquered from the Snathi, and the Terrans have like 7 or so. The Arceans have 5, too, but they're better at manufacturing loads of ships than me.

Of course, I said the Torians had. Now they have 0, and the Terrans have 8. And the glorious Cosmos Soviet Socialist Republic has 11...

Also, don't depend upon conquered worlds. They take a long time to jumpstart, and usually aren't very well specialized. They're all generalist worlds, usually, unless they contain tile bonuses.

EDIT-

Also, if your survey ship is lucky enough and you play with Abundant Anomalies like me, you actually should be able to fund your colony ships past the first few on exploration alone.

I was able to kickstart my Homeworld and colonize three worlds on the first 5000, then use the proceeds from exploring with the SSS Proletariat [my "Flagship"] to fund the next two and construct about four starbases in the process.

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-11 04:17pm

Knocked down the next campaign mission after the one MRDOD posted a link too.

This one was a breeze, you have 4 allied civs against just the Yor and the Dregin. My second colony had a precursor mine on it and allowed me to build entire invasion fleets in a few months. It was nothing to take their homeworlds and they quickly surrendered.

Then I got a look at the next mission. I'm all alone against the Dregin, Yor, and Dreadlords, with the Korx and Drath neutral. With the objective of capturing a planet. Atleast it'll likely be controlled by the Yor so it won't be too difficult to make a mad dash run at.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-11 05:38pm

MRDOD wrote:Five AIs cramped on Huge? Nonesense, I'm playing a Five AI game on Large/Normal. Maybe at Intelligent or so it gets more hectic.

I had 5 worlds counting a Class 6 one when done expanding, and so did everyone else but the Yor who started in one of those shitty no-star places on the map (they have 2), and the Drengin who were blitzkrieged by the Torians after they got 4 or so. The Torians had about 7, counting the one they conquered from the Snathi, and the Terrans have like 7 or so. The Arceans have 5, too, but they're better at manufacturing loads of ships than me.

Of course, I said the Torians had. Now they have 0, and the Terrans have 8. And the glorious Cosmos Soviet Socialist Republic has 11...

Only 5? Interesting. Do you use below-common settings for your planets and stars?

I used abundant habitable planets, common planets and common stars and I'd be lucky if I could grab sixteen, everyone else would get 20 or 25 worlds in the initial rush.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-11 05:39pm

Anarchist Bunny wrote:Knocked down the next campaign mission after the one MRDOD posted a link too.

This one was a breeze, you have 4 allied civs against just the Yor and the Dregin. My second colony had a precursor mine on it and allowed me to build entire invasion fleets in a few months. It was nothing to take their homeworlds and they quickly surrendered.

Then I got a look at the next mission. I'm all alone against the Dregin, Yor, and Dreadlords, with the Korx and Drath neutral. With the objective of capturing a planet. Atleast it'll likely be controlled by the Yor so it won't be too difficult to make a mad dash run at.

That's the one right after you find out the Drengin and Yor were running a distraction, right?

If I recall correctly, the one you're playing now was HAAAARRRD. You have to rush really really fast, and even when I did that some Dreadlord frigate killed my invasion force.

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-11 06:08pm

Shinova wrote:
Anarchist Bunny wrote:Knocked down the next campaign mission after the one MRDOD posted a link too.

This one was a breeze, you have 4 allied civs against just the Yor and the Dregin. My second colony had a precursor mine on it and allowed me to build entire invasion fleets in a few months. It was nothing to take their homeworlds and they quickly surrendered.

Then I got a look at the next mission. I'm all alone against the Dregin, Yor, and Dreadlords, with the Korx and Drath neutral. With the objective of capturing a planet. Atleast it'll likely be controlled by the Yor so it won't be too difficult to make a mad dash run at.
That's the one right after you find out the Drengin and Yor were running a distraction, right?

If I recall correctly, the one you're playing now was HAAAARRRD. You have to rush really really fast, and even when I did that some Dreadlord frigate killed my invasion force.

I don't know, I think the last one I played the Drengin and the Yor were trying to take advantage of being weakened after a mission where you had to capture a system with 4 Dread Lord world.

I made a shot at it, didn't rush fast enough. I started out with Medium hulls and disruptors so from the start I was able to make a ship that in a fleet could take Dread Lord's little ships in a fleet. I would of been able to beat it, had my money not run out due to having absolutely no economy.