A little beginner help needed

1. None that I know of. After you have discovered a race you can go to the race diplomacy screen, click on a race, in the upper middle of the screen there is a button you cna click on to see who the race is at war with. I ignore who the other races are fighting with. As long as it is not with me. A little bit of espionage will tell you when they go to war with each other too.

2. Not with out altering the game file with notepad or GalCiv writer. Certian political parties, or begining picks allow you to alter the speed at which your ships travel (parsecs per turn). Colonizing anything below 15 has severe penalities attached to it. If you take PQ bonuses you can colonize PQ 13 and 14. I personally do not. You can extend range based on your strating pics. You can extend your range by building constructors and placing them in outlying areas. If you get an absolutely awful starting place you can use ctrl-n to regenarate a new map a hope for a better position.

Which version do you have? What type of galaxy are you using (size). The game has many nuiances that take a little while to get used to. There is a strategy tab on the bar to the left. Lots of good info there. Also check out the empires tab. Lots of good info there to. While you are in the empires tab feel free to join one to your liking!

1. Unfortunately I have no idea. Do you have AI ship battles on in your options?
2. You possibilities are
- research (check JavaScout's site for relevant techs http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpowdrell/index.htm)
- ability picks or parties with range
- colonizing minor planets (that's what you did)
- building starbases (they can but don't need to be on a ressource)

Well, I can't really answer to this question since I turn off all options related to seeing AI battles.


Nope. It was the only thing to do in a reasonnable amount of time, since you don't want any options that will take more time than researching a tech that increase the range.
I hope you have only 1 colonist in this ship. The only tip I could give you is to wait to colonize the PQ 7 planet (since it will cost you lots of money) until another colony ship can use the extended range.

BTW, Stellar cartography allows you to see yeloow stars on the map. The research path is : com theory > universal translator > nano electronic > stellar cartography.

If you want, you can research diplomacy right after universal translator to benefit from a more efficient governement.

Yes that's a good hint. Build the ship dedicated for the distant planet first. Then build the ship for the range extention with 1 m colonists. Colonize one turn before the other ship reaches the border of it's range (extention needs one turn to be effective). Disband the colony right after the distant planet is reached.

Or is is possible to set the first ship on autopilot and disband the colony directly?

Does anybody know?
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Some people start off by saving, enabling cheat keys to reveal the map, then reloading the save from before cheats were enabled. They don't consider it cheating since the AI already knows where the good planets are at the start.

Personally, I think that's too much effort, so I just reduced the cost of Stellar Cartography to 0. Now all races start with that tech.

Thanks very much.

To bad about that AI speed, but seems there is nothing to do about that. Good idea with the colony ships though
And to understand it correct, then you can build a starbase in some distant sector (within it's range off course) and that will give your colony ship increased range?

I have one more

Travel range! is that also diagonal sectors?

Yes, That's the answer. How do you do that. :notsure: So if I follow you if you reduce the cost to zero you get it without researching. Thank you, thank you, tell me more.

In GalCiv's data folder (C:\Program Files\Strategy First\Galactic Civilizations\Data is the default if you installed it from the retail CD) there's a file called GCTech.TECH. Open that up with Notepad and search for the line that says "TECH 140 StellarCartography". A few lines under that you'll see one that says "Research_Cost". Change it to 0 and everybody starts with Stellar Cartography.

Cheesy? Yes, but no more than saving and reloading after you reveal the map.

And Carlei, having a starbase in a sector is just as good as having a planet there for determining range. But you can build a colony ship faster than a constructor.

I don't think its cheesy and definatly no cheesier then what I do with the reload.. The AI's obvously already have the tech and your the only who does not at Masso. Your just evening the playing field.

And saving alot of time over my method.

Thanks for the tip PJ.

I do that. And I still go to stellar cartography: it is easier for sending colony ships to yellow stars.

Whu? Why do you reveal the map and not keep track of where the yellow stars are?
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Depends on how many there are. If Gigantic map and not rare, there could be over a 100. Lot of stuff to write down.

Have you trying playing the same gigantic game on few days? I can memorize where are the yellow stars for the first turns.
At the beginning of a game I usually:
- save the game
- turn cheat code on
- reveal the Map (CTRL + U)
- get stellar cartography (CTL + SHIF + S for all tech)
- analyse the map on the tactical screen (F9)

If I like it, I reload the game and send the colony ships from memory. It is like :"I have dreamed where we could find habitable stars"

For gigantic maps I usually make the same thing as Peace Phoenix:
- save the game
- turn cheat code on
- reveal the Map (CTRL + U)
- get stellar cartography (CTL + SHIF + S for all tech)
- analyse the map on the tactical screen (F9)

But I do some more
- screen capture with Alt+Print
- paste in a picture editor (freeware like IrvanView is sufficient)
- crop the tactical map
- transform to nebative (i.e. black becomes white etc.)
- sharpen the picture
- reduce the color depth to black and white
- print on my LaserJet

This is done very easy and fast.

This way I can directly see all yellow stars and the ressources (to work around the bug where you loose the position of ressources during reload). And you can see the position of the majors (where these two ship triangles are). I don't see the planets of the minors (especially the grey Kwilasians) but I don't mind.

I use the back side of the paper for my tech tradeoff. Thus I need one peace of paper per game (and it lasts days, sometimes weeks )

Do you print the map so you get tactical advantage by turning off the cheats then returning to the previos save game and then using it, and after that submitting to the meta or do you just do it for fun Walldorf?

So you double cheat.

Where is the excitment of not knowing and having to react to situations along with planning ahead for them without cripiling other production and research.


~SDC~

I do it for fun and submit it to Meta. Like many others.

True, it is some kind of cheating or cheese. But I don't hide it. I post what I do and when I find tips or strategies I post them as well.

Everybody is free to do the same.

The only way to stop this 100% is to disable the save ability Even without cheat codes you could rushbuy some scouts and explore with some fast turns before you start your game. I did this before the cheat codes were available (they came with 1.1 The Expanded Universe).

But without the save ability I would not play this game. My computer at home is quite old (Athlon 500) and I can never be sure that it runs for many hours without crash

I started to do this long before I even had a Metaverse account. I just hate it to loose the race to the yellow stars every time. I still loose it often but from my point of view on an equal level to AI since they know it per design.

My games last minimum some days but usually weeks. Thus I don't want to be doomed by a bad start position. But maybe I should give it a try

From my point of view there is still enogh excitment in this game
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I enjoy exploring and going into the unknown even if its a bit harder atm.

At Masso the aliens cheat, they know where everything is and send there colony ships directly to the yellows. I consider it evening the playing field. Also you would be lucky to get 1 or 2 extra planets if any at all, the aliens are so good. You would have to play lots of starts that would be unwinable and waist alot of time. No fun doing that.

I only started doing the Stellar Cartography thing after a couple of Maso games. Even with a speed bonus I had trouble getting a fair share of planets. And at Maso level the last thing you need is another disadvantage.

I think I'll make an attempt to go back to playing it "straight" after I finish playing through the AP campaign. (I just got around to buying AP this week.)

So I've finished two games now and won off course

Now I have started a new one with all five opponents on sub normal, and it's going very well, but I have some further questions.

The points you get in the end for completing a game, are those the same no matter how you win? Or does it b.e. give more to win by domination than by alliance?

Is there a way to prevent you enemys to suddenly give up and "deliver" all their planets to another race? This is pretty annoying LOL

In the Metaverse I have finished two games with scores of 4653 and 7114 but my total points are only 8321...why?

Are there some way to protect the small traderships, especially during war times?

When I try to take over a hostile planet what does the numbers mean...(off +6, def +6, tech. 1,78?

How is the advantage calculated?

Do I get a higher advantage if my transports are followed by a lot of combatships, like fregates?

Why do battles have to go so fast

I think the numbers are on the diplomats forum. What I remember is that you get most for military and least for technology.

Additionally ship batlles seem to count a lot.

I did not find a way to stop AI to give up. But sometimes I get the planets. It has something to do with your relation and your overall influence and standing.

The Metaverse calculation is very complex. Basically a period of 30 days is calculated together. The raw points are divided by the square root of the number of games in that period. Peace Phoenix can give you all details when needed

To protect your trade ships you need to send warships. Though it's often better to have roots which do not cross enemy territory.

The advantage values depend on your soldering abilities and the local defense buildings. AFAIK moral and loyality are also important. Basically you have a number and the aliens have one. The values used are choosen coincidently between 0 and your number.

There is no advantage having other warships in the fleet.

GC is not about battles. It's about colonization and strategies
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I have the most points from Aliacne victory, but since the metawerse score for each game is 60k, I'm not sure. If you look at the top players in the metavers, most of their wins are aliance. The reason is that some players are able to acieve a 60k aliance win in 1 hour or even less.

The most enjoyable games in my oppinion are large galaxy, comon planets on cripling or painfull, with all AI's pressent. This make very long games but you get to hammer away on the AI's a lot, while the empires overall state is still the most important factor in winning.

You get the most points by wiping out all other players, then by alliance victory, then cultural victory, and the least points by technology victory. You can never get more than 60,000 points for any game. I'm not sure, but I think an alliance win is worth .9 times as many points as a millitary win, a cultural win is worth .8, and a tech win is worth .7.