New to Galactic Civilizations 2

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hi all. I read about Galactic Civilizations 2 on another forum I visit and decided to borrow it from a friend to try it out. Absolutely loving it so far but Ive just got a few questions.

1. Im planning to order my own copy of the game from this very site. I was planning to get the Gold Edition but I noticed that for some reason X-Fire doesn't support the Dark Avatar expansion which is kinda annoying. But basically Im wondering if Dark Avatar adds much to the game or whether I should just go for Dread Lords.

2. What does it take to be able to offer alliances to other civilizations? I know you can research alliances but sometimes even when Ive done that and even if I give them that technology I still can't offer one.

3. My approval rating on planets sometimes suffers because of over population. The only remedy Ive found so far is to destroy my farms but being a nice guy, I don't like the idea that Im basically starving billions of folk to death. Any nice way to get around the overcrowding issue?

4. Is it necessary to use the ship builder? To be honest I can't be bothered faffing around. I have no interest in designing my own ships. I can't even be bothered like adding a single gun. Is it imperative to use this function or is it just a cute little extra?

5. This question may make me sound really stupid to a lot of you but this is pretty much my first "4X" game. Im more used to the likes of Total War, Europa Universalis and Warcraft. But basically, when I build a research place on a planet, what does that do? Is it helping speed up my current research project or does it do something specific to the planet itself? Same goes for the social and industrial things. Are they having some kind of global effect or are they purely for that specific planet?

6. How cunning is the AI? Ive only been playing on Normal difficulty with randomised intelligence but Im sure Ive seen it do some pretty clever stuff. In my last game I was inches away from achieving a Technological Victory and suddenly even my best friends were attacking me.


There's probably more questions Im forgetting but I think that'll do for now. Been up all night playing the game and Im pretty tired. Thanks in advance!
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1. I'm not necessarily the best person to answer this question because I haven't even yet played a DA game even though I bought the beta 5 or 6 months ago, but I would recommend getting DA. There is a *lot* of new content that you'd miss out on. Also I'm not sure what X-Fire is or why it's necessary but I guess you could still use it for whatever you use it for, just not DA (or DL for all I can tell).

2. You need to have researched the alliances tech but you also need to be close (I think) before he'll accept an alliance.

3. Not really. Morale and population is pretty tough. The only way to avoid it is to be very careful when building farms. Never build on a farm bonus tile. The best bet in DA is probably one farm and max farm tech. In DL if you have enough morale resources to mine you can get by with two farms so you could conceiveably use a 100% farm bonus tile if you wanted. As far as what to do if you do overshoot your pop and need to cut back it's at least a good idea to fill up a transport or two with the excess pop before pulling the plug. Also you really don't have to be very worried about approval on any single planet until it actually get's into the red below 40%. If your overall approval dips too low and you're worried about losing an election then just keep an eye out for the upcomming election in the government section of your civilization manager and reduce your tax rate the week of the election. Once the election is over you can crank your taxes back up.

4. You absolutely need to use the ship builder. The default ships suck big time and are really there only as examples. You need to build your ships with the best tech that you have at the time. You also need to change up weapons and defense types when the AI builds his ships to counter yours. It's really not hard to do. They don't have to look pretty. I usually try to make them symmetrical but if they aren't it's no big deal. But you really can't win with default ships.

5. Building research or industry on a planet only increases the research or production capability of that planet. The exact amount is dependent on how you set your sliders and the amount of research/production that's on the planet. Don't forget that by using focus you can get research out of industry and production out of research. It's just that you lose some efficieny when you do this as well as you don't gain the benefit of the other type of bonus. For example you don't get a production bonus on production gained from focused research.

6. The AI is pretty reasonable. The major point is that it's playing the same game that you are and for it to do that, that's pretty damn good. Certainly as you get better I feel it is necessary to get to the levels where the AI's get some pretty substanstial bonuses to be challenging, but there's a breakpoint somewhere around tough where suddenly the AI takes a big step up. When you first get to that point it can be quite a shock.