Noob questions about DA gameplay

Hello. I recently bought Galciv2 and Dark Avatar with it and has found it to be an excellent Civilization 3 clone with several improvements over Civ. It is also a much more complex game, and I therefore have some questions about it.

1. What does the Diplomacy skill do? Does it simply make the AI less greedy when bartering with them?

2. Last game, I managed to ally myself with the Korx, the Humans and the Goyaith, a custom pacifistic race, but the Drathi and the Arcaens simple wouldn't become friendly enough to ally. I picked "neutral" as my alignment. Is this the reason they wouldn't ally or should I just suck up to them more?

In the end, I just defeated them and won the allied victory.

3. After adding stronger weapons or engines to an existing ship design and clicking save and overwriting the old design, an upgrade screen pops up with the option to upgrade all my existing ships of that design. It would be cool if I could just upgrade them into the updated design, but that option isn't there. Is this an oversight on the side of the programmers or am I missing something? I can still upgrade old ships to a the new design with the same name in the normal game screen, but I don't see the point of this particular popup.

4. Alignment and ethical choices. Does it really matter what ethical choices you pick? I mean, I can pick whatever alignment I want as soon as I research Xeno Ethics anyway, doesn't this mean I should always pick the "evil" option for the bonuses when the ethical popups appear?

5. The UN and Influence. I assume that the number of "votes" you get in the UN has to do with your total influence and not the number of people in your civilization. Is this correct? If so, is the Influence option on the barter screen designed so you can trade your UN votes to other civs or is there another use for it?

Also, is there any way to pick what topics the UN votes on or is that entirely random?

6. Trade goods. What are the bartering uses for them? Can I trade them to my allies and then they get the bonus for having the good too? Why doesn't the AI seem to want to give very much for them?

7. Why doesn't the AI EVER use any kind of armour on their ships? It seems a waste to create a whole tech tree that none of the AI opponents uses at all.

8. Production times. Are they determined by the COST of the complete ship in BC or by the total SIZE of the components on it?

Thanks for your time in advance. I'll post more questions as I come across them.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I tend to think of GC2 as a "better son to Civ" than Civ 3 is

1. Switch "less greedy" to "more impressed with you" and I think you have the basic idea of diplo skill. IIRC, diplo skill can help you be less irritating when you make demands or reject demands. I'd also guess it means you get more bang-for-buck from gifts to AIs.

2. Alignment can affect relations w/ AIs, but in my experience it is oftene outweighed by other factors. I've been aiming for diplo wins in my last several games and I suspect that the "normal" course for that goal leaves you needing to wipe out a couple of AIs or at least help your allies clean up for you.

3. I'm misreading you, or you've slightly misread that dialog. The one I'm thinking of gives you the option of *decomissioning* all the ships of the class you just upgraded. I'd like a "Don't ask me again" check box b/c I've never once said yes to that option.

4. You get a "rep" from those events even before you formally pick an aligment, which can have diplo effects. You also have to pay lots of BC if you want to choose an alignment very different from the average of your choices for those events.

5. The underlying math is lost on me, but the influence you trade is indeed UP voting strength. Re UP "participation," so far we have no way to know about or influence what will be decided at a meeting. They're close to being random events.

6. I like to build as many Trade Goods as I can, because they give bonuses to your abilities. When you trade or give them away, the recipient gets the bonus also but only the owner of the planet can trade or give away the good. I tend not to trade or give them to AIs b/c I like having the advantage to myself, but they can be helpful when finagling stuff out of minors.

7. Play more games. You'll see armour on AI ships eventually. Especially if you play on Tough or higher, build a strong fleet, and arm your ships with kinetic weapons.

8. AFAIK, production time is about how many BC you can pump through a given starport. Size only matters in that big ships tend to cost more, at least when you pack them full of your best tech. A tricked out medium hull could cost more than a bare bones large one.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

Hello. I recently bought Galciv2 and Dark Avatar with it and has found it to be an excellent Civilization 3 clone with several improvements over Civ.

Personally Galciv 2 reminds me more of Alpha centauri than any other game, because Alpha Centauri has a similar but less sophisticated ship designing platform along with a similar weapon and defense type system.

Anyway, civ3 is a good game - i have been playing it again recently although i think i need to update it or somthing because my air defences are not working at all. Even the samm missile batteries are dead! and their bombing the shit outa me!! hehehe but it is still fun.

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