GalCiv availability thread - first impressions

[vee4473]

Well, I like the game so far for the most part.
Still disappointed that there is no tactical combat, but that was never promised i know, and i love civ and there's no tac combat in those either.

Anyway, One thing that I would like to know, is what techs need to be rersearched in order to build the various ships.

For instance, you can research new battle armor of phasers or photons, but when you do, a new ship isn't always available.

I'm wondering if there is a chart or some sort of guide that lets you know that such and such ship is available only after researching such and such.

Otherwise, I feel like I am researching a little blind.

[Nirvana_CN]

Tech tree here

http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpo...ivquickref.pdf
http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpo...lltechtree.htm

[vee4473]

wow, thanks.

that's a great chart. who wrote it?

[Nirvana_CN]

A betatester called JavaScout.

his site is here :- http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpowdrell/

I agree its a great tree.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by vee4473
after further consideration let me say that with regards to the tech tree, it would most definitely be a huge plus if in addition to just listing the various things you can build as a result of a tech, it actually gave a chance to click on the various things to get a description.

yes, it can be better.

Exactly my thoughts. For what it's worth, Civ3 did tech very well, and the in-game tech tree and civilopedia were fantastic.

[PriestOfDiscord]

I agree about the lack of real in-game documentation being a drawback. Otherwise, it is a fantastic game to play. Like MarkG said, this really feels like a Civ in Space. The Events and UP stuff keeps even a game you might have been controlling close. Some of the events they thought up were really inspired, completely new things for TBS. I can't gush enough right now about the game.

[vishniac]

I downloaded it yesterday.
Just read the "Survival Guide" before playing, the learning curve was gentle. However, it seems a bit little. Is that Guide the whole manual (I don't think so) and, if not, where can I find it? Some details need explanation (Yeah, finding stuff in computer files are not my cup of tea!!).

First game, I gave my opponents sub-normal intelligence. Well, sub-normal was far above me: Got kicked out of space by the Drengin! Score:8

Today, Started another game, put them at beginner intelligence. It's much better (thanks to random factors too). I should win by peaceful means soon (uh, I hope).

I like this game. It seems a little 'SMACy': tech description, combat, planet screens, animations...
And, incredible, when I call the Altarians, I feel like I'm talking with Eminem!!

Overall, a good game! And I still haven't seen the best of it by far.

[MarkG]

you can download the pdf manual through stardock central

[The Rusty Gamer]

A listing for GC has appeared on gpstore for New Zealand for early April. Since it hasnt appeared anywhere over here uptil now, I assume it is correct.

So...in just a few days...

[Lemmy]

Finally i got around to posting my little impression here...i downloaded GC friday and played all weekend.

Easy to learn difficult to master:
This is so true for this game.
I played my first game on the easiest diffculty level without looking at any documentation at all, and won. I have been following the game and read the AAR's, so i knew a little bit about how to play the game.
Now i'm in my 3rd game on the 3rd easiest level (Sub-Normal. out of 6 or 7), and it's an even game, no dominance for me or the AI...i can only imagine how higher levels must be

Diplomacy and AI:
Well, i'm only on Sub-Normal, but even then the AI can still distuingish threats some of the time, for example influence boosting starbases in his systems. The AI will say something about it, but for now, it hasn't done anything about it.
It has all the basic diplomacy option, you can trade ships, planets, techs, trade goods, money and influence.
Controlling the AI through diplomacy can be fun. I got the 2nd and 3rd strongest empire to declare war on the strongest empire for a few techs, and they are actively warring each other. They are attacking each others key starbases and planets. Luckily i can see all this, because the 3 civs are located all around me, so my territory sort of is the battleground.

Graphics:
They are the best i've seen in any TBS game. You can see when your ships are damaged by little electric sparks around your ships.
Explosion are nice when a ship blows up.
Everything in it just looks good.

Documentation:
In-game doc like a civilopedia is really missing here. However using common sense will get you far.
For example, i had no idea how to make my ships go faster.
It turned out i just had to research the propulsion-techs, but it isn't mentioned anywhere.

Overall, i'd give it a 8.5 out of 10 in it's current shape. If they can solve some UI annoyances, improve ingame docs, and some minor gameplay changes, this will definitely be worth a 9.5, if not 10.

[NeOmega]

I have read:

"No tactical combat" but also
"I had to keep scrambling my damaged ships back to base"

Is it a winner take all battle system (like the civs, where there is a clear winner and loser each battle), or is a batter eachother up and then disengage outcome possible?

Also:

"No ship upgrades" and
"customizing starbases"

So some things are customizable?

BTW, after getting burned by MoO3, I am afraid to open my heart and wallet again to just any old cd in a pretty box. :P

[Lemmy]

Is it a winner take all battle system

Yes, when combat occurs, 1 ship is destroyed, the other lives.

"No ship upgrades" and
"customizing starbases"

So some things are customizable?

Well, yes...it's not like civ that the units have fixed attack and defense values.
Getting certain technologies will increase your ratings usually by 10%.
Starbases can give a fixed attack bonus, this bonus can get higher then +10 offense. Add the fact that the bonusses from starbases stack, meaning your ships potentially have unlimited attack strength. But it will all cost you something, to get a +6 offense you'll need 3 starbase modules upgraded. But instead of those offensive modules, you also could've chosen for modules that increase production, trade or influence in a sector.
The actual ratings of a ship without starbase bonusses can be more then 3 times the base values with the right tech and controlling the military resources on the map.

[Gregurabi]

Actually, I've seen combats where both the attacker *and* the defender perished. I'm still unclear on exactly how the combat is decided (especially: (1) how hit points affect the outcome, vs. the attack/defense ratings; and (2) whether the attacker's defense rating matters; and (3) whether the defender's attack rating matters).

And since this is an "availability thread": I found the game in Babbage's in Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio, US. When I walked in, there were two copies on the shelf. When I walked out, they had sold 50% of them.

[Grumbold]

First impressions:

The manual is very thin on detail. This is compounded by the minimal in game help and a "tutorial" that is reactive rather than proactive, so it never actually steers you into making good decisions. Could I find out if a starbase extended the range of spaceships? Only by building one. Can I find out what a tech actually does? Only by researching it to see what these gadgets it provides actually do, so its too late to research one of the other dozen choices instead.

The game progress seems very stilted. Massive rush at the start to discover and grab your planets then tedium as you shuffle one or two ships around waiting for the finances to crawl out of debt just enough for you to rush-finance your next ship.

Curious economic model. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems if you opt for (say) 50% social spending to get your zero maintenance improvements up fast, any planet with nothing new to buy just swallows the money instead of putting it back in the global pool to offset the debt mountain. All your planets have to march rigidly in lockstep which feels very unnatural.

Enough negativity! Other than these initial reservations it feels very reminiscent of Civ II. Once I've overcome the feeling of not knowing what I need to know I'm sure it will have the same long term appeal.

[MarkG]

Maybe I'm missing something but it seems if you opt for (say) 50% social spending to get your zero maintenance improvements up fast, any planet with nothing new to buy just swallows the money instead of putting it back in the global pool to offset the debt mountain.

well when you're done with the social improvements you should change the social spending to to 0%
duh!

[unic]

Originally posted by Grumbold
First impressions:

Grumbold: The manual is very thin on detail.

Yes... and is incorrect in some aspects. There is an updated one online (see the useful links thread in this forum http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=73513 for that page, and other useful reference ones)

Grumbold: Only by researching it to see what these gadgets it provides actually do, so its too late to research one of the other dozen choices instead.

That is one of my annoyances too, though according to the designers posts, that was a concious design decision, as research leads into the unknown. However, after many requests from people, some sort of tech tree in-game help should be available in the free expansion.

The game progress seems very stilted. Massive rush at the start to discover and grab your planets then tedium as you shuffle one or two ships around waiting for the finances to crawl out of debt just enough for you to rush-finance your next ship.

Hmm... I rarely rush-finance ships - have you tried doing that less? To me, the game seems fairly well-paced until right at the end, when just mopping up the other civs is left. But that might be due to us having different strategies and ways of playing.

Curious economic model. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems if you opt for (say) 50% social spending to get your zero maintenance improvements up fast, any planet with nothing new to buy just swallows the money instead of putting it back in the global pool to offset the debt mountain. All your planets have to march rigidly in lockstep which feels very unnatural.

There is a long, sticky (Top) thread, encouraged by the designer, on the galciv forum discussing how to address this, so I expect that will somehow be changed in a while. However, I guess it's not the top priority for now, with CTD's and AI exploits and the demo and other stuff going on. Meanwhile, you'll just have to try to balance your spending so that not too much is wasted.

It seems getting into debt is a problem for you, and as it seems to take a game or two to start managing economy decently, here are some (hopefully helpful) suggestions:

* Generally, avoid lease-buying (rush-building) until you know how to manage economy with it

* Get your maximal # of trade routes up and running as soon as possible! Short-term, they don't do much, but the longer you have a trade route, the better it will get.

* Sell techs to minor (and major) civilizations. Especially near the start of the game, I use this much... towards the end, trade and taxes is usually enough to keep my spending slider at 100%

* Don't colonize low-quality planets - they will cost you too much. Unless there is strong strategic reasons, I usually think anything below Planet Quality 15 is a big No-no, and I have seen good players advising to avoid 15's and 16's too unless there are good strategic reasons to have them.

* Balance extending your industrial capacity with your economic capacity; if you build manufacturing plants, not only will their maintenance cost you, but to use the increased production capacity, you need to be able to afford it!

* Don't build high-maintenance buildings (I try to avoid anything above 1 in maintenance for quite a bit of the game) without good reason.

* Trade techs to the other civs! (I know I already said this... but in the early game, it's really the, in my experience, easiest way to get extra money. Not as over-powered as it was before the updates, but still a good way to earn extra money to get through the build-up time before your economy becomes self-sufficient).

* Oh, and don't hesitate to lower your spending slider for a while if it's needed...

... that's my (rather basic) advice from my games so far.

/unic

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by MarkG
well when you're done with the social improvements you should change the social spending to to 0%
duh!

Markos if you don't know what I mean, read unic's post, but I suspect you do

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by unic
Hmm... I rarely rush-finance ships - have you tried doing that less? To me, the game seems fairly well-paced until right at the end, when just mopping up the other civs is left. But that might be due to us having different strategies and ways of playing.

I thought this was pretty mandatory for the early planet rush. If you don't buy colony ships on the never-never then there are no worlds left by the time you can afford to purchase from cash reserves.

There is a long, sticky (Top) thread, encouraged by the designer, on the galciv forum discussing how to address this, so I expect that will somehow be changed in a while. However, I guess it's not the top priority for now, with CTD's and AI exploits and the demo and other stuff going on. Meanwhile, you'll just have to try to balance your spending so that not too much is wasted.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

It seems getting into debt is a problem for you, and as it seems to take a game or two to start managing economy decently, here are some (hopefully helpful) suggestions:

Not really a problem. Just a bit irritating that this seems to be the way to expand (unless there turns out to be merit in having less planets.)

[Fried-Psitalon]

I purchase my first ship outright (no lease) and then purchase my second on the longest-term lease plan. After that, I set social to 0 and research/military to 50/50, and every single planet builds colony ships regardless of population- this usually nets me as many or more colonies than anyone else around, particularly since I use the PQ +15% bonus which opens up more worlds, makes them produce more effectively, and so on.

::shrug::

I play Gigantic maps and this strategy has currently netted me roughly double the number of colonies of my nearest rival on "Challenging." (Granted, I've only met 3 of 5 so far.)

[unic]

I don't lease or purchase any ships... instead, I set military spending up to 100% - with that, I produce a colony ship every 2-3 turns, which so far seems to be sufficient.

Also, I set any newly colonized words to produce constructors, so by the time the initial colonizing rush is over, and I put military spending down, I usually have a couple of those finished, and more near to completion.

Of course, as I gradually increase the AI level, this might not work... but I easily out-colonized the AI on normal level (which is as far as I am now - increasing it one step after each game) and it might depend on galaxy size too - I play on Medium or smaller, so far.

/unic