GalCiv2 Forums
Seemingly, the Thalians can only build 4 buildings at the start of the game. With any other race, I can fill my production slots on every planet. Any world I seem to colonize with the Thalians appears useless. Maybe I am just an idiot? Feel free to call me that if so.
The Thalan factories and labs are entirely unlocked via research-industrial adaptation and technological adaptation (hyper fusion reactors --> artificial gravity --> planetary adaptation --> stellar production --> industrial & technological adaptation). They don't start with them.
In addition, the Thalan factories and labs do not follow the classical formula of increasing production and maintenance as you go up the tree-rather, they all provide the same production (or research), but start with high maintenance which reduces with each subsequent stage.
Galactopedia might help.
It's a good idea to use your starting miner to build asteroid mining bases as the Thalans (or with the Thalan tree), rather than converting it to a colony ship.
Do note also that Thalans do not get farms in their tech tree, and will have to tech trade for them.
It may also be relevant that the Thalan tree is limited to Traditional Warfare, Gas Warfare, and Information Warfare, so using any other invasion tactics is depedent on trading for or stealing tech from other civs.
I think that choice varies a great deal according to your map settings, etc. I play Thalans more than other civs, and I've found it more useful to have that 'second' colony ship in hopes of getting a swell spot to put the Hyperion Matrix. With that matrix somewhere other than Thala, you usually have two good production worlds well before any other civ does, and hopefully you had a good research bonus tile to put it on.
The Thalan tech tree also taught me the value of leaving worlds unimproved for long periods--they make cash but don't burn cash via production atop the initial colony.
p.s. I agree about Galactopedia being very handy. In addition to being searchable for all civs, you can see the build costs for improvements that are not available in the Research window in the game. It helped me learn things like not researching Xeno Banks until I'm ready to go straight through to Stock Markets--the banks are almost twice as expensive to build.
If there aren't any planets to colonize, it doesn't matter. If there are, that extra 12-15 production on your homeworld is a Godsend during the rush.
Thank you very much. I am ridiculously bad at this game despite my desire to figure it out, just needed that nudge in the right direction. Appreciate it.
Very interesting to see you advocating early asteroid mining. Most of the other heavy hitters seem to scoff it. Is this a Thalan-only thing from your POV, or are you more generally discouraging the miner-to-colony upgrade tactic?
I also really wonder about whether the >Tough AI bonuses are a factor in your take here. Early in TA, I used my free miner to mine. But after I got infected by the miner-to-colony thing, I became pretty convinced that having two good production worlds early was worth more than one world with a few mines, and two colony ships basically doubled my chances of finding a Hyperion Matrix sweet spot.
Yes.
Although, to an extent, it's also a TA thing, since it's rather difficult to kick out 200BC colony ships from the homeworld every turn without them.
I don't worry about finding a good spot for the matrix-I'll just slap it down on the first planet I run across. It's more important to have it up and running than to have it in an ideal spot. So I don't need a second colony ship to place it.
Half the time I even place it on Thala.
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