So. GalCiv II.

[IceShadow]

This game confuses me.

I mean, I love 4x games, and everyone was talking about how it is the spiritual successor to MOO2, so I went and got it.

I'm falling off my chair from boredom playin the game.

I started on a small/tiny system to try it out. I expanded everywhere I could expand with colony ships, built so many space systems that my logistics couldn't keep up, and developed the hell out of every planet. But even though I've been pouring research into lasers and mass drivers and propulsion systems and hulls and defense and blah blah blah, I can make...one military ship? A defender?

I mean, I can't wage war, I can't really do ANYTHING. The only thing I can think of is that I'm not far enough in the tech tree, but I was like 4-5 hours into the game and still couldn't make any military ships worth a damn.

So I figure the problem might be the small map and lack of colonizable worlds on the default setting. I crank up to gigantic and 9 opponents, I make stars and habitable worlds abundant, and I crank the tech speed to max, hoping to actually get some usable military ships. Now I've been playing another 4-5 hours and I can make...two military ships. A defender and a star fury. Great. Transports are taking forever to build even with a ton of upgrades on four or five dozen colonies and some research into construction to speed it up.

People were raving about this game. How the hell am I playing it wrong to find it so dull? This isn't MOO2. It's slow paced, limited options, and overall dull. Help?

[Samaritan]

I seem to recall having the same issue; I'm trying to recall what it was, but I *think* it was some branch of the tech tree that really breaks out and gives a bunch you starship options. S'been over a year since I played, though...

[Li of Orchid]

"Spiritual successor to Moo2" is a misnomer. GalCiv2, as its name suggests, is actually closer to Civilization than Moo2.

You have to design your own ships. There are very very few pre-designed ships and they all suck, bad. As soon as you learn a new engine, defense, offense, sensor or miscellaneous technology, open up the ship designer and there it will be, ready to be fitted to your fleet. May I also suggest concentrating your research in a single type of offensive and a single type of defense? E.G. If you start researching Beam Weapons, do not bother to go back and research either Missiles or Mass Drivers.

If you can use diplomacy to defer any wars until you see what types of offensive and defensive technologies your neighbors are making, and then pick appropriate techs to counter them, that is for the best. But not always doable.

As for your problems with slow production, that is hard for me to comment on, without more information about what race you are playing, how you are developing your planets, and so on.

[Dindrane]

If you can use diplomacy to defer any wars until you see what types of offensive and defensive technologies your neighbors are making, and then pick appropriate techs to counter them, that is for the best. But not always doable.


Is it possible to win without war at all, as you can with Civ?

[Packrat]

It is entirely possible to win without ever fighting a war, though if you are rich and lack a military people will prey upon you unless you are best buddies.


That said I won my last game without fighting significantly at all, what I did do was when the no 1 and no 2 rivals got into a war start mass producing warships and giving them to the no 2 guy. A short while later he was left with a doom fleet that crippled the formerly no 1 guy, and bankrupted him thus stagnating his economy. And he loved me. I snagged resources as they were vacated by the struggle and modulated the flow of ships to ensure maximum devastation to the worlds of both sides. Eventually I won though influence.

[IceShadow]

There's also completely technological and influential victory options.

I dunno. Maybe I'm playing it wrong; maybe my balanced-approach to 4x games isn't being rewarded here (on each planet I build a starport, then a factory, then one of each of the other main techs, then more factories and labs as I have room). I'll give it a shot again later when I can think of it fresh.

[Jigglypuff]

There's also completely technological and influential victory options.

I dunno. Maybe I'm playing it wrong; maybe my balanced-approach to 4x games isn't being rewarded here (on each planet I build a starport, then a factory, then one of each of the other main techs, then more factories and labs as I have room). I'll give it a shot again later when I can think of it fresh.

You're better off making industrial planets to pump out the ships you need then try and balance each planet. If I'm going to balance a planet all the industrial plants (or at least most) should come first. This will make building the other stuff faster.

The Ai at higher skill levels is absolutely brutal in efficenticy(SP?). They will pump out ships very fast if they want to wage war against you. It's best you follow their approach and have specialized planets for building ships.

As for ships you must build your own. A word of caution on this is save your ships design before you put any engine,sensors, armor or weapons. This will allow you to pull up designs by just being able to manufacture the hull. When I first started playing I remember I build some cool ships but could never make them in my next game because I forgot one thing on them I didn't research.

For me Engines and micronization win the wars for me. If I can jack up a smaller ship with big weapons and engines I win against their bigger ships with the same weapons that cost a lot more.

[Li of Orchid]

There's also completely technological and influential victory options.

I dunno. Maybe I'm playing it wrong; maybe my balanced-approach to 4x games isn't being rewarded here (on each planet I build a starport, then a factory, then one of each of the other main techs, then more factories and labs as I have room). I'll give it a shot again later when I can think of it fresh.

Don't balance your planets so much. Specialize more.

Every planet except the very small ones will need a starport and one factory. On most planets of size 8+, I have at least one Economic structure and one Food structure. On very large planets, I will usually add a second Food structure and throw in one Approval structure. Other than that, decide what you want the planet to specialize in, and fill the rest of the space strictly with the appropriate structures - either labs or factories. Sometimes its nice to plop several Cultural buildings on a key planet close to enemy territory, but that's not really a viable specialization.

That's usually my approach. I supposed you could have more factory-lab balanced planets, but my feeling is usually: why bother? Two planets with 5 labs and 5 factories each will have the same amount of tech production and military production as two planets, one with 10 labs and the other with 10 factories; but the specialized industrial planet will give you an advantage when it comes to building ships. There are also structures in some of the expansions like Power Plants that give a boost of 10-25% to industry or research, as well as Super Projects and Galactic Projects that do the same kind of thing. This makes it even more worthwhile to specialize your planets.

[Dulahan]

No, definately not a successor to MOO2. I agree. There's STILL not a worthy successor to MOO2 out there. It seems like every other game just gets it wrong. Or worse, tries to emulate MOO1 more than 2. GC2 has so many things I should like, but without being able to control combat? It just leaves me going "Meh."

What's the point of the cool Ship Design stuff when you don't even get to control them? It's pretty much just spaceship porn, really. Very, very cool design porn to be fair, but still just spaceship porn. I played the fuck out of it for like 2 days... then never touched it again.

[Juriel]

What's the point of the cool Ship Design stuff when you don't even get to control them? It's pretty much just spaceship porn, really. Very, very cool design porn to be fair, but still just spaceship porn. I played the fuck out of it for like 2 days... then never touched it again.
This.

For a while the starship design managed to distract me from noticing how boring the game actually is.

[IceShadow]

I don't care for designing starships. I just want functionality.

[Dulahan]

I don't care for designing starships. I just want functionality.
Yeah... without even that? It's probably just not the game for you. Just like it wasn't for me.

[IceShadow]

This game really really REALLY makes me want to play Twilight Imperium. But I don't have people to play it with. >.<

[eskatonic]

I don't care for designing starships. I just want functionality.

That's what killed the game for me. I don't want to have to design my ships. At the very least, I want templates, which I can then tweak with new tech. Designing from the ground up how they look was a huge turn-off. I hated the tool, too.

I liked GalCiv I, though. But even it was no MOO2. :)

[Li of Orchid]

That's what killed the game for me. I don't want to have to design my ships. At the very least, I want templates, which I can then tweak with new tech. Designing from the ground up how they look was a huge turn-off. I hated the tool, too.

I liked GalCiv I, though. But even it was no MOO2. :)

I gotta admit, I stopped playing other races besides the Terrans, because I didn't want to keep designing the same ships over and over, just with different looks.

[vitus979]

That's what killed the game for me. I don't want to have to design my ships. At the very least, I want templates, which I can then tweak with new tech. Designing from the ground up how they look was a huge turn-off. I hated the tool, too.

From what I remember though you *could* just use the base hull and maybe add on one or two spars so you had enough hard points to put any number of things on the ship you wanted in any configuration you wanted. I did that myself after ship creation got boring. The ships looked ugly, but they got made really quickly.

[Victim]

From what I remember though you *could* just use the base hull and maybe add on one or two spars so you had enough hard points to put any number of things on the ship you wanted in any configuration you wanted. I did that myself after ship creation got boring. The ships looked ugly, but they got made really quickly.

Some of the basic ship templates don't look so bad by themselves.

[IceShadow]

That's what killed the game for me. I don't want to have to design my ships. At the very least, I want templates, which I can then tweak with new tech. Designing from the ground up how they look was a huge turn-off. I hated the tool, too.

I liked GalCiv I, though. But even it was no MOO2. :)

You can just double-click and it'll put stuff on for you. So that's not too bad.

[Unseelie]

You can just double-click and it'll put stuff on for you. So that's not too bad.

And with the expansion, which made the game more interesting IMO, all of the base ship designs also exist as templates (just hull design & extras), and you can add your own.

[Allura]

You can just double-click and it'll put stuff on for you. So that's not too bad.

That's basically what I do when I play. A base hull, double click to put on as many weapons/defenses/whatever as I want, and go. I hate having to redo them for every little incremental upgrade, though. I'd rather be able to set proportional sliders for weapons/defense/speed, for instance, and then have it auto-upgrade. Maybe I'll go suggest that in their forums.

FYI, the expansion that's coming out is supposed to dramatically tweak the tech trees, to make them quite different between races. That might help with some of the ship building boredom, because each race will have a combo they drastically prefer. It may be too late for me, though (I've basically stopped playing). I went back to civ4, since at least I don't have to build ships.

[Eurhetemec]

"Spiritual successor to Moo2" is a misnomer. GalCiv2, as its name suggests, is actually closer to Civilization than Moo2.

This is exactly it. GalCiv2 is a game that has been rather egregiously mislabeled by various fans. Comparisons to MoO2 are absolutely invalid on all but the most basic "they both have sci-fi themes" level, it really is just "civilization in spaaaaaaaace".

Still waiting for someone to make a real spiritual successor to MoO2, sadly.

[GremFarlim]

Really overall I liked Gal Civ II, but I found it just didn't hold my interest like I hoped. I still plan to actually finish a game some day.... but I have so many other interests going right now I can't convince myself to play it. I thought it did a fairly decent job in the 4x category. However I found it was much much better once the expansion was installed. I tested a few games without the expansion and didn't really like it. Once I had the expansion installed, I really liked how the tech tree's flowed and it made a hell of a lot more sense.

[IceShadow]

Really overall I liked Gal Civ II, but I found it just didn't hold my interest like I hoped. I still plan to actually finish a game some day.... but I have so many other interests going right now I can't convince myself to play it. I thought it did a fairly decent job in the 4x category. However I found it was much much better once the expansion was installed. I tested a few games without the expansion and didn't really like it. Once I had the expansion installed, I really liked how the tech tree's flowed and it made a hell of a lot more sense.

That could be the issue. I'm trying it without any expansions. I'll give it a go with the first one.

[Allura]

FYI, I actually went over to the GalCiv website with the intent of posting that idea about sliders for ship construction to the forums. Turns out the upcoming expansion, Twilight of the Arnor, includes AI ship design for the player. The beta that includes it is actually available now if you pre-order the expansion.

I have the first expansion, Dark Avatar, and I definitely prefer it over the original. Also, I found that the campaigns are worth going through; they tend to "force" me to play different styles then I usually do, and sometimes I don't really want a sandbox game, I want a goal.