First impressions and getting started

from GalCiv2 Forums

Hi folks - I picked up the basic GalCiv II in Stardock's sale this weekend. My first impressions are possibly somewhat tainted by being a die-hard Master of Orion 2 player, and comparisons are inevitable. Still, I don't think I'm getting into it properly yet so I'm appealing as a n00b for some pointers.

So far I've been playing on basically default settings with a large galaxy. There are not a lot of inhabitable planets - I guess this is because by default the inhabitable planets setting is set quite low. As a result, my people are constantly unhappy because of overcrowding, and there's nowhere to send them. I don't seem to be able to terraform any of the Class 0 planets, of which there are bazzilions. . . can't see a tech in the tree to do it, so I figure this game doesn't do that?

So far on the few games I've played I've started in a corner and can't grab enough worlds to keep up with everyone else - even if I could though, I think I'd soon have rebellion due to overcrowding. All the pleasuredomes I can build don't seem to appease them.

Am I missing something obvious?

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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

...Am I missing something obvious?
End of quote

More like a bunch of not-so-obvious things, especially if you're still thinking a lot about MoO2, which I loved also. The class 0 worlds are indeed unusable, for example. I don't know which version was on sale, but the first expansion, Dark Avatar, did add extreme environment worlds, but you can still see plenty of PQ 0 worlds if you keep habitable planets low in your map settings.

Re people being 'unhappy,' there's a wide range of what 'too unhappy' might mean, but basically you don't want to build a farm on your homeworld ever because it has a much higher starting pop limit than your other colonies. You get a double-growth bonus when you keep a world at 100% approval, but you don't start losing pop until you drop into the low 40s (below 41%, I think). Basically, if you're a hardass, the game lets you whip most of your people without risking serious unrest.

Re starting in the corner, that really depends on your map settings and what sort of corner they generated. I only learned the word recently, but apparently I'm a turtler, so I really like a good corner to start my games. For me, 'good corner' means that it I can get most or all of the high PQ worlds in the area before any other player shows up. But I like gigantic and immense maps, and I'm pretty sure that corner starts grow harder as maps grow smaller.

There's a GalCiv wiki that might help you more than the manual, and the forums still have several experienced regulars who try to answer 'rerun' questions. You can also add site:forums.galciv2.com to the end of your search terms at any good engine and get results limited to this forum. For example, you could enter

population morale site:forums.galciv2.com

And get about 149 hits.