Various newbie questions

from Stardock Forums
Hello all. I got this game for Christmas and I'm already having some success playing on Normal, but I have several questions:

1) Within the first 20-30 rounds after the game starts, any major civs I happen to be in contact with usually experience a huge jump in Influence. This isn't a big problem--with "normal" development of my civilization, planets, etc, I catch up; the catch-up tends to be gradual, not a spike like theirs, and the development makes sense for the remainder of the game. But what causes this spike for the AI civs?

2) Is there a way to determine where your bonuses come from? For instance, if I have 84% Research, is there a way to tell if 20% comes from civilization bonuses, 20% from techs, 4% from anomalies, 10% from trade goods, etc?

3) Is there a way to see what trade goods I have licensed?

Thank you for your help!

208 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
1) Invariably, a quick upspike in influence comes from building a starbase on an influence resource and adding several mining modules in quick succession. The only other way is to build influence wonders and trade goods, but that would be reported to you. The AI is fond of building constructors to go for the galactic resources, and tends to build a pack of constructors quickly and send them all to the nearest resources, to mine it and add defenses, which are useful only in the early game, but prevent someone from taking out the base with a corvette or two.

INFLUENCE RESOURCES, the most important acquisition in the game, most of the time. Military resources are next. Both of these stack without limit, so the more you have, the better. Also research resources, which give BONUS research, handing you free progress toward your teching -- useless in the late game, though, after you've done most of your research. (I've won a huge map tech win on maso with only one planet by monopolizing all the research resources and mining them fully). Economic and morale resources are important, but there are caps on their effects, so having one fully mined is usually about the limit on their value. Of course, for high fertility maps, NOT having one economic resource can really hurt, but even there, there's little use to having more than one.


2) No, there isn't. :)

3) Nope. Well... there is, kinda. If you can't build it, because someone else already did, and nobody is showing it for sale, then you've already bought it.


- Sirian
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
INFLUENCE RESOURCES, the most important acquisition in the game, most of the time. Military resources are next
End of quote


Hehe you will find sirian and i disagree about almost everything except politics. I virtually never mine military resources, and only go for culture resources if I am specifically pursuing a cultural victory. On the other hand, Morale and Economy resources are essential for victory for most styles I play. Ray the Wanderer once told me he thought Research resources were the most important for early game advantage.

The thing is, with GalCiv there is so much flexibility built into the system that you can tailor your focus to suit your style.

About spiking graphs, if you are seeing all the AI's spiking up and back down together, there is something funky about how the game calculates influence that sometimes causes this. Doesn't affect anything except makes the graph look funny.
Elemental: Reforged