All factory? I messed that one up! » Forum Post by manolete75

Don't feel stupid , we all started out this way at some point. just listen to our advice and you'll get a better understanding.

Depending on what type of game or civilization you want you'll need to think up different styles of play. I personally like to play games for enjoyment, it's nice to get a heap load of points but i prefer to enjoy game play. So your first question is, what am I aiming for in this game?

before beginning a game you must create your playing feild. what ever you want is your choice. the larger the map and the more habitable planets means longer game play. the smaller the map and the less habitable planets means short game play. your going to have to learn how patient you are, coz this will affect how you feel about playing long games.
Second you have to pick yourself and who the other races will be. read their stats and their skills coz this greatly relates to how you want to win. it goes like this;

Alliance or Political victory:- You'll need a race with strong diplomacy, maybe research skills too.
Technological victory:- You'll need a race with strong research skills, And maybe economic.
Military Conquest:- You'll need strong weapons, hit point and/or defences, Military production (starship construction) is a must and maybe economic.
Accention Victory:- You'll need military production and a strong economy.
Cultural Victory:- You'll need strong influence and morale.

Most preset races come with certian skills already in place. so you can choose from them. but if you want to start from scratch you can always build a custom race. Just remember all the skills required for vicotries cost skill points. you get 15 to start with. once you have the nessecary skills in place, use whatever remains to purchase other skills. Keep in mind every race is aiming for victory, so other skills are also required to counter their atempts to over come you. there are also super skills, you may only have 1 so choose wisely, read them carefully. later on, when you feel more confident with yourself, you can create races specific to their personalities and mix them up to your desires. let your mind run wild.

Ok not to the acutal game. the first thing to do is balance your economy. you'll need a balanced mix of funds going towards social, military and treasury. keep a little on research to begin with so you don't fall too far behind. The start is always known as the colonization rush. You have to grab as many planets as possible, rush buy colony ships on planets with slow production and leave colony ships to build themselves on more densly populated planets like your homeworld. your starting planets should have an even mix of improvements that cover all areas of development. these are planet improvements you should focus on in you can;

Morale improvements - which allows to keep you population from defecting to other races and allows you to up taxes.
Economy improvements - These will increase the number of bc's collected from a planet, increasing your income.
research improvements - These will improve the facilities of your scientists allowing them to make discoveries quicker.
Population Improvements - these will increase how many people you can support on a planet. the more people, the more money. in some cases, some improvements will increase you population growth.
Production Improvements - these will increase your construction capabilities, so you can build ships and imrpovements faster.
Influence Imrpovements - influence will increase your boarder lines and stop the enemy pushing theirs into your territory. this protects your people from defecting to other civilizations because their 'culturally superior'. with luck you can make other civilization's planets defect to your empire.

After ther colonization stage there will be a moment when nothing can happen till weapons come. take advantage of this to improve your relations with other races and push you research to max. you won't have much need for military production so switch it off for the time begin. have social production running at a reasonable level and research the dominate one. might also be a chance to improve your influence.

When weapons come so will war. this is why you improved relations with other races earlier. 1 so they wont turn on you, 2 so you can turn them againest eachother or againest your enemies. Your research should be equal or superior to everyone elses so you'll have the upper hand. ok now turn all your funds, military, social, research to equal level's and begin pumping out any manor of military ships. All you'll need is a couple of fleets for races to think twice about attacking you. this will also improve diplomacy through fear, gives you the ability to exploit races for money.

Ok now this ends the early stages of the game, now begins the middle and most exciting part. From here on in your empire should be well established. an empire to be respected by others. you can now speciallise planets now. have more of one improvement than another. but remember never make a planet all 1 improvement. take advatage of special tiles with outputs on them. Always think about what could possibily happen. Don't depend on trade as a perminate source of income. you'll do fine. good luck

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My first game, I tried a traditional approach (mixed production and research), and I got my rear end handed to me in thin slices. The scope of my failure was awesome.

Second game, I went all-factories and found it to be easier to manage. However, you have to rethink your planets and raw materials. It's less about military / social / research, and much more about production / economy.

Economy Planet = money comes in. Production Planet = money goes out. That's pretty much it.

In order to keep your research up-to-par, you basically have to:

A- come up with HUGE amounts of production, and
B- amass bonuses anywhere you can

To tackle A, you have to have a ton of factories. To pay for a ton of factories, you have to have an incredible economy. So this is where it all starts.

When making planets, remember that every planet you own will have, at minimum, four squares claimed: Initial Colony, Starport, and two Factories. No matter what your planet ends up doing, it has to have at least this much.

So, your planet types will be essentially split between Production planets and Economy planets. Choosing which is which is easy, then. Of the four mandatory squares, two are factories. For a production planet, these two squares serve the planet's main purpose. For an economy planet, the factories are taking up space but not serving the essential purpose. In other words, the economy planets need more total squares to fully develop. Hence, your general rule of thumb: assuming a bare planet (no bonus tiles to complicate things), larger planets -> Economy planets. Smaller planets -> Production planets.

Note also that the money sucked in by a medium-sized Production planet can easily eat up the surplus of two large-sized Economy planets when Production is at full-tilt. So pick the planets you colonize and develop appropriately. Don't be afraid to pick up a small planet and then just leave it undeveloped if you don't have the Economy to support its development. If left alone, a planet with nothing more than an Initial Colony will be profitable. Not by a huge amount, but it's money in your pocket AND it keeps the AI out of that planet.

To tackle B, you need spaceship range. Go surveying - anomalies can give you a racial research bonus (or just put cash in your pocket, which helps with A above). Grab those Research resources first, develop them early. Start wars over them if you must. Blow up someone's Research starbase, take the resource, flee home and cower in anxious silence until such time as Diplomacy allows you to sue for peace. Build Economy starbases. First, look for clusters of planets that will let your starbase cover 3 or more planets and build those early. As your economy progresses and you have the leeway to build more disposable constructors, start building starbases that can cover 2 planets.

In terms of how you used the planets, you did it right. All of your planets are essentially available for Research; there's no real difference between one Production Planet and another Production Planet. Early on, when I had to get planets up and running with a quickness, I would wait until the planet was "established" (i.e. five/six tiles developed) before turning Research Focus on, but once it was on, it was pretty much on for good.

Later in the game, when I had more time to wait out colony development, I would turn on Research Focus before the second person got off the colony ship (the first person is the one who flips the Research Focus on, right?). After that, the only time I ever turned off Research Focus on any planet was when that planet was building a Galactic Achievement, it was near the end (5 or 6 turns away), turning off Research Focus would speed it up by a couple of turns, AND I was in a rush. I think it happened like twice (Galactic Bazaar and uhhhhh something else that seemed important at the time).

Keep in mind: even with this, my production far out-stripped my research abilities. I spent a lot of time waiting for a bunch of research projects to complete before I had anything to point my Military-Industrial Complex towards. But I was also far ahead of the AI, so I could afford to wait.

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First of all, thank you very much;both of you, for taking the trouble to give me the detailed replies.

mADDyman, sir, thank you for the encouragement. Hmm so I would be better off making the first couple of planets a mixture of improvements, right sir? I did it absolutely wrong in specialising from the home planet itself didnt I! I guess I tried to use one slider setting to be permanent while I really should have fiddled with them a lot as the need for prod/research. I think sir, that I dont have a problem with having to be patient about the game, I like to take a long time playing GC2 but then I havent tried anything other than the campaign.

hairlessOrphan, thank for the reply sir, I couldnt stop myself from laughing when I read the first sentence hehe. Well the difference between us is that you learned from your mistake while I seem to be just confused. Do you mean sir, that I was doing it right when I built all the planets to be production planets and just put the focus on research? I dont know why but even with the focus on, I was getting a miserable rate of research-some planets had zero research points even after improving all the available tiles-maybe the PQ was too low or something?. If I may be so bold, could I express my confusion about something you said.sir? "Later in the game, when I had more time to wait out colony development, I would turn on Research Focus before the second person got off the colony ship (the first person is the one who flips the Research Focus on, right?). " By saying 'first person' and 'second person' do you mean the population transferred from planet to another by the colony ship? I apologize for the question but English is not my first language and I do have a bit of a problem with the language at times. Sawwy.

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Quoting manolete75,

reply 3

Do you mean sir, that I was doing it right when I built all the planets to be production planets and just put the focus on research?

Almost; sorry, I used the wrong words. I should have said, "In terms of how you used the *production* planets, you did it right." The Production planets should be almost entirely factories. The planets that focus on Economy should have trade buildings (Trade Centers / Banks / Stock Markets), a farm to boost population (the sweet spot, for me, was 14b population max, which you can reach with one farm once you research the farming techs), and an enterainment center to keep that population happy. You can go higher than 14b-16b if you don't mind the hit to approval. I tried to keep my approval at or near 100% so I could quickly replenish population if I needed to send several billion soldiers off to war. These numbers were also with a tax rate at 49%.

Quoting manolete75,

reply 3

I dont know why but even with the focus on, I was getting a miserable rate of research-some planets had zero research points even after improving all the available tiles-maybe the PQ was too low or something?

That should never happen. A newly founded colony, from day one, should produce 2-3 points of Research with Focus on. The Initial Colony tile does that by itself. Make sure your production slider (the one right under tax rate, not the Military / Social / Research sliders) is at 100%.

Quoting manolete75,

reply 3

If I may be so bold,

Of course. But you don't have to be so polite. I'm American; I expect people to swear at me and demand things.

Quoting manolete75,

reply 3

could I express my confusion about something you said.sir? "Later in the game, when I had more time to wait out colony development, I would turn on Research Focus before the second person got off the colony ship (the first person is the one who flips the Research Focus on, right?). " By saying 'first person' and 'second person' do you mean the population transferred from planet to another by the colony ship? I apologize for the question but English is not my first language and I do have a bit of a problem with the language at times. Sawwy.

No, sorry. That sentence was a bad joke. That would have been clearer if English was your first language, which I had assumed incorrectly. So the fault is mine, and I should apologize. But I'm American, so I won't. That was also a bad joke - see, I don't learn, either!

What I meant is that the first thing I did, the instant I got control of a colony (by founding it with a colony ship, flipping it through influence, or conquering it through violence), was set Focus on research.

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Ooops! I am sorry about the joke thing *really embarrassed* Well sir, if I set the production slider to 100% my treasury takes a very bad hit. Btw I apologize quite often- even to lil kids like my neices-I am a bit eccentric I suppose

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Well sir, if I set the production slider to 100% my treasury takes a very bad hit.

Which is why he recommended that you run more economic planets and less production planets. But you were still doing essentially the right thing on your production planets.

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Yeah, production hurts. But it's necessary - and, in fact, it's one of the two biggest strengths behind the all-factory approach.

Here's my understanding of production:

Ignore all bonuses for now. I don't fully understand the math behind them all. But production is fairly straight-forward.

Manufacturing buildings have a base mp rating. MP = manufacturing points. The most basic factory can generate 4mp per turn (that's the 4 next to the mp icon when you click on a factory in the colony screen). An Initial Colony can generate 14mp per turn. A Civilization Capital can generate 24mp per turn. But these ratings are your *maximum* mp's per turn.

The actual production you get per turn is first multiplied by the production slider. If the production slider is at 100%, then you'll get 100% of your max mp. So if you have an Initial Colony at 14mp and a factory at 4mp, your max is 18mp. Production at 100% means you get 18mp that turn. Production at 50% means you get 9mp that turn.

The next thing that modifies your actual mp production is your military / social spending. Let's pretend you're playing a regular, balanced game (not All-Factory, so you've got a mix of factories and research facilities). Normally, then, your sliders would be set at something like 33 military / 33 social / 34 research. Both military and social spending are mp production spending, so add those two sliders together to get 66. That's the percentage of the mp you generate *after* the main production slider takes a cut. So, with Production at 50%, and military and social at 33 each, you get:

(18mp X .50) X .66 = 9 X .66 = 6mp. Out of the 18mp maximum from the Initial Colony and one factory, you only spent enough to generate 6mp.

This is why people use an All-Factory (or All-Research) strategy. It's impossible to set the three spending sliders to 100% military / social AND 100% research, so if you've got both kinds of facilities built, it's impossible to get 100% usage out of all your tiles. But if you're ONLY building factories, you can squeeze the maximum mp's out of all your tiles by setting Production spending to 100% and then setting your sliders so that military and social add up to 100 and research is 0. Now you're getting all 18mp out of that Initial Colony and one factory.

Research works the same way, except with tp instead of mp. With an All-Factory approach, your research spending is 0%, so the tp you generate from research structures is 0. Therefore, you have to use Focus to squeeze out tp to get research done.

Focus takes 25% of your other two production categories and diverts them to the Focused category. In the All-Factory case, it takes 25% of your military and social mp production and converts it to tp. So let's pretend, again, we have one Initial Colony and one factory. 100% production, sliders at 1/99/0 (or 50/50/0, any setting where military and social add up to 100 and research is 0). You get 18mp. Focus takes 25% of that to convert to tp. So that's 4.5. BUT GalCiv doesn't round, it truncates. In other words, 4.5tp becomes 4tp. 3.2tp becomes 3tp. 9.9tp becomes 9tp.

SO! If your Production is not set at 100%, you can see how Focus tp could become 0... If your colony generates less than 4mp (after being sliced up by Production and slider spending), then you get 0tp out of Focus (and then you better not Focus! Because it still takes the chunk out of the mp! So if your colony is generating 3mp, Focus would take 0.75 mp out and convert it to 0.75 tp. Then it takes the 2.25mp you're left with and truncates it to 2mp, BUT it also takes the 0.75tp and truncates it to 0tp! So you gain nothing but lose 1mp).

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Focus takes 25% of your other two production categories and diverts them to the Focused category. In the All-Factory case, it takes 25% of your military and social mp production and converts it to tp.

Except that in TA focus was slightly nerfed to 80% effectiveness. It now removes 25% from A but only grants 20% to B.

Also as a side note this only applies with military <--> research and social <--> research. The transfer via focus (at 50%, by the way, rather than 25%) between social and military (i.e. social <--> military) remains unchanged.

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Oh. Well, that sucks. This sounds like it was just to combat All Factories / All Research?

Rather than editing (and lengthening) my absurdly lengthy post above, I will instead merely add a correction, here:

In order to gain any tp out of Focus, your colony has to be generating at least 5mp. AND the cost at this level is 2mp for 1tp (ewww). Which is funny, because at 14mp (Initial Colony at 100% Production), the cost is 4mp for 2tp. So during the initial colony rush, if you're not ramping up production and all of your colonies are just an Initial Colony and Research Focus, you might be better off cutting Production to 72%. Spend less and convert 3mp to the same 2tp.

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This sounds like it was just to combat All Factories / All Research?

That's the general consensus around the forums, yes.

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*Sits open mouthed at all that math- I suck at math brrrrrr!* Thank you both verymuch for taking the time to give me detailed explanations/directions.*Saving the page so I can read it again and again and hopefully assimilate enough to stop getiing my behind kicked*

Btw, hairlessOrphan, dont worry about typing out too much- I actually need for things to be put one foot awat from my eyes and have me hit over the head with a hammer before I notice things,sir *Shrugs*

Sole Soul, ty sir, for chipping in and sharing your knowledge.

I may be a tad slow on the uptake but I still appreciate your help very much, both of you

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Ummm, is it a good strategy to make a war-ship with lots of engines to get them near the battle field fast and suddenly upgrading to a ship with an engine or two but bristling with guns? *Dont look at me like that, I thought it was a good question*

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Quoting manolete75,

reply 12

Ummm, is it a good strategy to make a war-ship with lots of engines to get them near the battle field fast and suddenly upgrading to a ship with an engine or two but bristling with guns? *Dont look at me like that, I thought it was a good question*

Only if you can do so in a way to prevent the AI from attacking it while it's upgrading. And unless you are fighting in your own back yard, it may take several turns to upgrade.

Add the cost of doing so, and it's not usually worth it. It can be in certain situations, though.

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*sigh* I knew the idea had some kind of inherent flaw in it. Thank you sir, for the reply and explaining why it is not that good an idea to do what I thought of doing.

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here a tip on attacking the enemy;

Have your ships in position to storm the enemy base before hand. like have fleets next to their planets and/or ships so you can swoop down in 1 turn and take them by surprise. I've taken over enemies in 1 turn and taken no more than 10 turns to accomplish my goals. but in all cases i have diminished their forces down to nothing within the first turn. purely by surprise and superior numbers.

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Whee thanks for that tip sir You mean you actually defeated the opponents in no more than 10 turns?*faints* OMG how the heck did you do that sir?

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well it involves alot of weapons, ships, troops, preparation, planning and overall dishonesty. I place my ships inside the race I want to take over. Placing them right nect to fleets and planets I feel pose a threat to my transports. carefully I spread my forces out evenly so they can overpower my enemies. I have my troopships waiting at maximum range from each planet, (usually it's 1 troopship per planet). then I press enter. it is that turn I declare war, that's when I start counting the turns it takes to take over an enemy. I first destroy all fleets in the nearby area, I have a 93% scusses rate when it comes to fleet combat (yes i actually did the math for that), once that is finish i destroy all ships orbiting a planet, then I finish them off with my transports taking over all of their planets in the same turn. Most the time I fail to kill them in 1 turn but sometimes I pull it off in 1 turn.

The secret in war is to be absolutely ruthless. from square A you have to deal them a crippling blow in order to win. Strike them down as fast as possible, don't give them a single chance to escape or strike. This is the true art of war. With each victory I grew stronger, also pick you opponent wisely. Turn others againest them aswell if their armies are too strong. overwhelm them in every way possible.

Most the races i take over are allies to begin with until it's eventually their turn to sucumb to my power.

there are 2 ways to go about this. You can either go for the weakest race first by yourself, or you can go for the strongest race and turn all other races againest them aswell. You have to control the galaxy to win it.

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Goodness gracious! I hope you never try to take over this planet sir(I mean in real). You are really good at this thing-I am glad that this isnt a multiplayer game that I'm playing, I dont have to face people like you!*gulp*. I am trying out the campaign in the lowest difficulty setting and I still havent succeeded in winning. I only manage to get 3-4 planets for myself and I dont have a good economy or production planet at all. I mean, I try to specialize as in the all factory idea but I cant pull it off successfully. I end up having to place factories along with labs and morale buildings everywhere due to tile bonuses, I am still trying to have a couple of economy planets and a couple of production planets *sigh* I wonder whether it is possible to specialize when in small galaxies? I am trying this'n'that to have a good economy and production. Currently the only way I can survive (barely) is by using a cheat! I need to read a lot of posts on here to understand more about the game, I think *heavy sigh*

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

I am trying out the campaign in the lowest difficulty setting

That's the problem right there. You shouldn't attempt the campaign until you can beat sandbox mode pretty easily at a decent level. The campaign is harder than the sandbox.

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Oh! um sir, by decent level you mean the 'normal' setting? or higher than that? Anyhow I'll try what you said,sir

*edit* Is it possible for me to upgrade a ship to a colony ship/transport? If yes, how do I get people aboard?

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Yes, normal level at a minimum. In sandbox, nobody starts with ships that can kill everything you own. They can still build them, but it will take them quite a while.

Yes, you can upgrade any ship size into a colony or transport - space permitting of course. To load them up, just send them into orbit on one of your planets (make sure it has enough people to load it) and then relaunch it. You do not have to leave it in orbit for a turn or anything silly, just orbit and launch.

This is often used in reverse to populate new colonies (put a transport in orbit around new colony, launch with 1 person aboard - leaving the other 999 behind. Send the ship back to reload and repeat, or to use it in its intended function.

Be advised, if you upgrade a colony ship or transport into something else (that is, other than a colony or transport), you will lose the population on the ship. If you go from a transport to a colony, you will keep only as many people as the colony ship can hold.

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Thank you for the reply,sir. I hope someone would repair the search function, it is not working for me atleast. I once saw a post (here or in the gametalk forum) about what things should be present in a Home planet,and what things every planet needs to have no matter what it is being used for,but I cannot search it out- it just keeps telling me that no matches were found.

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Is it possible for me to upgrade a ship to a colony ship/transport? If yes, how do I get people aboard?

well any ship of the same hull type can upgrade into another ship. i'm not sure about colony ship > troop ship or vice versa, they both carry citizens but i'm not sure whether they transfer during the upgrade. but if you have a ship that doesn't carry passangers and upgrade it to a colony ship or troop ship then you have to land it on a planet to pick up passangers.

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Oh a ship can only be upgraded to another of the same hull size/type sir? I didnt know that mhmm. Thank you so much for the post sir.

*edit* Would it be a good strategy to build all labs at first and gain an edge in research and later on, decommission the labs and make factories ? Or would that be too time/money consuming to be a reasonable option?

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*bump*

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