I've watched Stardock's YouTube tutorial videos, played through the tutorial itself, watched some "Let's Play" videos, etc., but I'm still missing something basic. In every game I've played, even on the easiest difficulty setting, I get my ass handed to me in pretty short order - I seem to start out okay, but it's not long until I rank dead last in every category compared to other races.
The main problem seems to be ship production. By the time I've got a couple of star bases built, a colony ship or two, and maybe half a dozen small ships to defend my home world, another race declares war on me and shows up with a fleet of fifteen ships. Even if I manage to hold off that attack, another of a similar size shows up right behind it and I have no way to defend my world.
I need to find a way to increase the number of ships I can build quickly so I can at least defend myself properly. As it stands now, I'm generally beaten even before the galaxy has been entirely revealed. Any tips for this perennial interstellar punching bag would be appreciated.
Create (or Edit) a race and give them Colonization Trait (this gives you back Admins each time you colonize a planet). This is basically easy mode because you will have many more planets than any Civ that does not have it. Gives you a great production advantage.
Another thing I do (as I like bigger ships) is (while not at war): I will colonize a planet in a star system that has more than one planet and assign/create a shipyard. (repeat five times, assigning it to the same ship yard) so you have five planets assigned to a single shipyard, then you move a shipyard to each star system, and once the shipyard is within five spaces of the planet, anchor it and create Colonyship and make landfall. This will allow you to easily assign more than five planets to a ship yard. Note: this is a trade off for building bigger ships over smaller ships. AI seems to prefer smaller ships.
Always assign any planet to a shipyard that has space as ALL planets have ship constructions which is going to waste if not assigning it.
I almost never come out ahead moving shipyards. With the time it takes to move them, and the lost production in the meantime, it's better off just producing a bunch of shipyards. Less lossy. I will have a few mega shipyards putting out the big guys, but a bunch of smaller shipyards can just run treasure hunters, which you can combine into mercenaries. Plus if you've got the Malevolent trait, those ship construction inefficiencies get multiplied by +100%. And with treasure hunters, each point of ship construction (gross) translates to 1.2bc.
The one time I benefit from moving a shipyard is if it's just placed wrong, and I can move it 3 squares to shave some % loss off. Then I might produce a second shipyard in that solar system, unanchor one. Shift sponsorship to the new one when I'm ready. But even that is expensive--the math has to compute.
Hi cxp36,
The secret is to maximize your homeworld asap and I really mean asap. It depends on race and traits, but essentially you want to rush-buy key buildings like Manufacturing Capital (if you have 'intuitive' trait you can rush-buy this building on the 1st turn!), Technological Capital, Durantium Refinery, later you might want to add Thulium archyve/Hyp.Matrix as well. Grow population as quickly as you can to 25b++, send your initial colony ship to planet and cut 2b of population there. By turn 40-50 you should be rockin' medium ships popping out every 2-3 turns from a single planet. If you get your hands on Prototype Antimatter early you could snipe down AI shipyard with 3 small ships, this is basically game over for AI. Also, AI will remain neutral towards you until you research universal translator, delay this tech if you want to postpone war.
The best thing for you would be to hook up with someone for a multiplayer game. There's a whole bunch of people who play against godlike AI regularly, that's where I learned how to properly play the game.
You also have the lets play crowd n youtube.
He literally stated that in the very first line of the post lol...r u drunk again
Depending on your preferences, another strategy is to play on a larger map with fewer opponents. This will give you more time to develop your empire. Increase the number of AI as you get better at the game. I like to play on a big map with rare habitable planets. I pick bureaucratic as a trait and I seldom have a problem with admins.
If you can get your home planet production up to 100+ in 50-60 turns, you can usually control the game.
He stated Stardock youtube videos
I was taking about Macsen Let Play, Mal - YouTube, and Hadtian - YouTube.
Are you playing Crusade or the base game? If you're on Crusade, and the race you're playing doesn't have a shipyard at the start, rush buy one on the first turn. As you colonize the next 4 planets, update the shipyard via "manage" to use the production from them. No need to build other shipyards until you get some more planets.
One other thing is to use the design and optimize the designs for the tech you have. There are no "radar/awacs" ships in the base designs, and having a small outer wall of ships that can see 8 or futher really helps you respond to incoming threats from enemy fleets.
1. Make sure you are customizing your race to benefit from bonus production, and pick up one of the abilities that aids in expansion by providing administrators.
2. Are you assigning multiple planets to each shipyard? You should aim to max out at 5 planets for each shipyard. This will help getting out ships faster.
3. ASTEROID MINING BASES!!! I cannot emphasize how important these are. They provide raw production points. They are extremely powerful. Mine these as fast as possible!
4. Improve relations with surrounding races through trade. if you are trading with a civ, they are less likely to attack you.
5. Design ships efficiently! You should almost never build the base ships provided, even the colonizer and starbase ones! Redesign them, strip out the extra sensors and other modules, make them cheaper to produce.
6. Maximize production on your first few worlds. Get production buildings up quickly and leverage adjacency bonuses.
I have only played a handful of games for Galciv, but this stuff all jumped out at me as super important. there are probably other optimization strategies that help as well.
Personally i like to pick up mercenaries. The super is great. The prospector is also good. Added manufacturing, and production this way to. There are colonization events that give you engines go for the best. Lets not forget about brindles observatory get it.
I agree with the Admiral about picking up one or two of the early game mercs, and I like the ones he mentions. The only problem I have with Brindle's is that instead of revealing an unknown empty planet that you could colonize, it gives you one that has a population that far exceeds its population cap and thus it starts off with the population dying off and an approval of 20% if you're lucky.
Thanks for the responses. I've played the game a few more times, and while I'm improving, the basic problem remains: I lag behind in everything. Last in military, research, production, you name it. I can't keep up with the other civs, and in the end I'm always simply overwhelmed by larger fleets because they're ahead in tech and logistics.
@Elm84, that sounds like a great idea, but I've never seen the option to build the Manufacturing Capital or any of the other buildings you mention. I usually play as the Terran Resistance, so maybe I need to try playing as another civ to get those buildings built early.
@Franco fx, I think that's the approach I'll have to take - I had the same thought, because as you say it would give me more time for the civ to mature and for me to get better at the game.
@gyan42, great tips. I've always played with the "ready made" civs and ships, so maybe the key is learning to tinker and make an original ships and custom race. After reading your post I made sure I was mining asteroids and I traded a lot of tech. This got me farther, but I was still easily overwhelmed by sheer numbers in the end.
If I can figure out how to get ahead in research and at least keep up in production, I might have a chance, but as I'm still playing on Easy, I feel I'm missing some very basic things about the game. Next game I'll try to incorporate mercenaries - I was tempted last game but the other civs had beat me to the best ones.
If you were going to customize try aquatic, xenophobic, and inventive. This works good for me. I heard that the Arceans are the best on the game. Remember customize your ships. You don't necessary have to go wide if you settle your citizens on your home planet. I would go scientific. Remember laying down factories first gives you a build advantage. Pay attention to adjancencies remember them game to game. Some adjancencies work one way other's work both ways. Flat numbers are better than percents. PAY ATTENTION TO BUILDING TYPES. If you are not playing the Yor cities are good for adjancencies. If I was you I would pick Slyne for this reason I would rather give up a few starbase, and factory upgrades for the duranthium instead of a flat food amount. Duranthium still most important either way. Pick adjancencies with as many surrounding tiles as possible. Asteroids are better for production than population. After I go for the Brindles I would use a colony ship to get rid the excess population, and research diplomats thEY Seem work well to help aVOID WAR. Pragmatic seems to have a nice option to avoid war for 50 turns I wait to be cooled first. Spies and leaders are good if you are going wide. All the above starbase advise are good. One thing to remember about ship construction is if you are not using it it's not like before it gets wasted instead of going to social. Keep an eye on your distance from starbases. Pragmatic have a good option for this to. Grab Duranthium Elurim, and anti matter as fast as possible. Duranthium grab as much as possible it comes in handy. Your going to need some promethium later on. Besides the hyperspace project anti matter makes good engines. Not all planetary resources seem helpful pay attention to what works for you. Lets see if this helps.
Now about diplomacy it is both a curse and a blessing. It matters how they feel ABOUT YOU. Open borders treaty be nice. Declare friendship as often as possible. Remember if they have a lot of a resource they will practically give it away. If they are almost out they will not reasonably trade it. About espionage do it to the most advanced guy. Try this and tell me if this helps.
I second the suggestion to try a custom race. Try the Wealthy trait (last time I checked it had +1 raw production, which can be huge early game) and/or Xenophobic (which if I recall correctly has a huge boost to research and social production with a penalty to ship production; but with advanced research you can make up for the ship production), and/or Intuitive, which gives you a big initial research boost, or Ancient, which is a big middle game boost to research with each precursor artifact and anomaly that you control).
I think Arceans are the best in the game if you have Techapods. Or double Xanthium. Their starbase bonuses are just nuts, even without either.
Ditto the Xenophobic. The Iconians are Xenophobic (not Arceans), but I like Xenophobic if you you pick Militaristic in a Custom race to partially offset it. If you pick that and +10% raw production, you are only down -20% in shipyard production (-50% + 20% militaristic + 10% raw). A few more bonuses and Malevolent 3 trait, and you won't even notice it's penalized. I just rush-buy my first colony ship.
Now I've got a question: where should the Aquatic Biospheres go? Around the Antimatter plant?
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
