newbie asking for advice with war

Obviously, if you shift focus from research towards military, your research is going to suffer. But in the long run you're far better off taking more planets, thus increasing your overall economic base.

The idea of GCII is not to completely max out the tech trees (I know I never have), and unless you're playing on one of the bigger map sizes or on the fastest research, you should be able to finish the game way before you reach the top weapon techs.

Unless you declare war on someone's ally, you should be safe from other civs ganging up on you (unless your military is completely destroyed during the war). There is an algorythm that makes them attack people who conqour too much, but by the time that kicks in, you should control enough of the galaxy for it not to be a problem.

Transports full of soldiers decrease your taxbase and thus your income, but you have so much cash, that you really don't have to worry about the economic penalties of going to war, since you can operate at a deficit for ages.

So basically- yeah, go for it. Target whoever is the weakest and take them out. Rinse and repeat until the galaxy is yours.

A few things, the first is that 1200 bc per week isn't that much. I'd think as you've described it you should have about 100 to 150 planets and your income should be more in the 50,000 to 100,000 bc per week range. Knowing it's possible is half the battle, I'm sure you can figure out what you can do to increase your income.

Secondly, you're hurting yourself by keep your treasury high. There's a bug that causes your income to be reduced by about 30% if you keep your treasury above about 20K. You can tell by looking at your domestic spending page with your treasury above 20K and comparing when your treasury is below 20K. You need to spend yourself down to below the 20K level each and every turn.

Buying ships is indeed costly, but what else are you going to do with the money, I know my bank doesn't accept bc as legal tender (to bad it doesn't though). You can spend your money more effectively by buying ships when the planet is almost done building them. Another way is to have your planets build the bare hull and use your money to upgrade to full fighting configuration. Upgrades cost far less than a straight purchase of the ship.

As far as tech research goes 25 weeks for majesty in the late game is not very good either, I would expect closer to 5 weeks with the number of planets that you have. You should probably try to specialize your planets more with dedicated research planets, dedicated ship production planets and then a whole lot of dedicated income planets. Don't waste space on the planet except for buildings that do what the planet is dedicated for. I never build farms on research or production planets, only income planets. A production planet has only factories and maybe your manufacturing center. A research planet has only research buildings and research bonus buildings like tech capital and omega research center.

The research and production planets need to be surrounded by economic starbases with the 7 manufacturing modules it take to max out the manufacturing / research bonus to 24% per SB. You can usually get 16 SB's like this for a 384% bonus applied to a nice clump of planets. Don't be afraid to set up more than one of these SB arrays (I currently have 5 such clumps of planets in my current gigantic suicidal game). Using these strategies I've gotten single planets that generate 11,000 RP's per turn and planets that can build a 4000 bc dreadnought in two turns. If you have planets like these, I guarantee you won't be afraid to go to war with anyone.

Conceptually, these things sound easy but there's a lot to them. It will take time for you to figure them out as well as add your own touches to them, but just keep trying and you'll get there.

As far as advice for your current situation, large hull, decent miniaturization and a decent weapon is all you really need. You need to have a number of fleets of ships and a large number of transports already built up before you want to start the war. Also always do a save before begining a war so that if you get into something over your head you can go back and make better plans. That's always a good way to gain some learning experience.

You'll also want to max your logistics but you can actually be researching that during the war and your fleets will become stronger as they can contain more ships. Also in the middle of the war keep on producing war ships and don't stop till you're sure you're going to win.

Thanks to you both .

Yeah. I haven't messed around with more than 1-2 economic starbases around a system, so I'll have to try that out - it sounds really, really cool .

Also, "mumblefratz", you said to get rid of farms and just focus on specialization of the planet? k. That sounds pretty cool.

I know, though, as you've seemed to mention that I need to build everything Before I go to war, and I've read else-where that having a good manufacturing/farm base for transports is good .

So, yeah. from what I hear both of you saying, is that I should probably rethink my "enter" strategy, shift some planets' focus and just go for it, yes?

I guess another question might be, at a later date, should I thus also build all the trade goods on one planet, etc., etc. (as in, build all the cultural stuff on an "important" planet, rinse, and repeat, until all of my systems have planets with a particular specialization?)

But, yeah. After I finish some work here, I'm definitely going to go back to my save game and see if I can't re-arrange some things and then attack .

Again, thank you both Very much for the advice. It found a nice home .

-Joren

Well there is a balancing act that you need to do. Your income planets need farms and are your source of troops so they do need some manufacturing, but only enough to produce a transport in a reasonable time. Actually, I'll often only have a starport on the income planet and produce the transport on a production planet then fill them with troops from the income planet. I sometimes have dedicated troop transport planets that are a bit of a cross between income and manufacturing planets.

When I start the game my planet build is more generalized where each planet does a bit of everything. It's only gradually over time that I begin the specialization. I always keep a core of perhaps 30 to 50 planets that can spit out transports, but I play on gigantic maps with 500 planets. That leaves a lot of room for specialization. It reasonable to keep 10% to 25% of your planet total generalized so that you can better react to changing requirements. Also your income planets probably don't need any extra defense, but be sure to dedicate a few top line fleets for the defense of your SB array's, the AI loves going for these in times of war. Don't waste any modules on SB defense, just dedicate a fleet (or two).

Trade goods are global and can be built anywhere. I like to "build" them on otherwise not very useful PQ4's also maybe PQ5's. I usually have to buy them outright because these planet's take forever to build something. The planet specific bonus buildings obviously have to go on the planet type that needs that type of bonus.

You can get carried away building *everything* prior to war but it's far better to start a war with too many reserves than with too few.

At low levels you can get away with deficit spending but I suggest you avoid it because it develops bad habits that can hurt you as you move to higher difficulty levels. Also I never buy anything on the credit plan.

Also at cakewalk the AI is highly penalized. Your next game should jump right up to the 100% AI level. I think that's the "tough" level. You may need to play at that level for awhile, but it's a much better game, and once used to it you can gradually move up even higher.

Pump up research, forget military and production, except for insane numbers of resource starbases and economy starbases (econ starbase bonuses stack in sphere of influence, withonly 4 bases allowed per sector, you can stick extra ones on just the other side of a sector line to jack up planetary bonuses to over 200% production and research). Skip the military techs. Build little or no ships (maybe on border worlds). Max out your planets, research all the trade good techs, build them all. Then trade your trade good for all the available military techs your opponents have (they'll only do it if you have little or no military). Now your planets are built to the best of everything, your research is crushing them, they have no techs you don't have, they do not have all the planetary improvements that you do, and you can finish out the military tech trees and start cranking unstoppable fleets. There is one drawback or caution... be ready at any time to hurry and buy ships if the AI decides to attack you before you hit the military extraganza phase, or you'll die very quickly. I have tried this at every level except the highest two and it always works, mostly because the AI calculates that you are a no-threat pushover and doesn't consider the massive tech gap or insane production potential. Within 10 - 15 turns you'll have the most massive military in the game, rivaled only by stupid pirates who pretty much always have fleets comparable to yours late in the game.

wow.

This is all so very helpful - now I have Two recommendations for the stackable trick. Maybe I should just put a military starbase as the fourth to protect the econ's, but "mumble" seems to think ships will suffice .

Anyway, I probably will build defense modules early game on econ's, because, like "proloton" said, pirates are either very or pretty close to your military tech might / .

Dang. this is all a lot to absorb, but I hope to do well next time I load my game .

To sum up, I guess I'm still at the "generalized" planet stage and need to start specializing . Thanks again all for the wonderful advice, I mean it .

-Joren

You can't go wrong following mumblefratz' advice. I know I've improved my game by reading some of his forum replies. Remember though, that it does depend on the type of game you play. Mumble typically plays gigantic/abundant all games, which require different strategies than say a medium/normal type game.

And one of the beauties of this game is that there are so many different ways to play and still conquer. Some are easier than others, but a good challaenge can be more fun. Proloton's strategy is one I haven't tried before, but it sounds interesting. It would never work in my current game though, where I turned tech trading off. I am playing at masochistic, so the AI has bonuses, and it's been a constant fight for my life. I am still pretty sure I will win, though.

The most important thing I learned is to get your population up as fast as you can, since it is so important for your economy. Once I got that concept down, I was able to take on the higher levels, where I would have failed before.

Maybe I should just put a military starbase as the fourth to protect the econ's, but "mumble" seems to think ships will suffice .

I hope your not suggesting that a military starbase will protect things in it's area of influence, because it won't. Starbase of all types only attack ships that directly attack them. Period. A military starbase would just sit there like a useless piece of metal as all your econs around it are destroyed. A good fleet near important bases is the best way to protect them.

There's a bug that causes your income to be reduced by about 30% if you keep your treasury above about 20K.

Umm, I think that's "works as designed" and not a bug.

Another way is to have your planets build the bare hull and use your money to upgrade to full fighting configuration. Upgrades cost far less than a straight purchase of the ship.

I really like that technique. I fill the empty hulls with engines and life support so that they can scoot quickly to trouble areas, then upgrade based on the mix of weapons and defense that the enemy happens to have at the time. I also like to purposefully create colony ships that convert to transports at the last minute, too. heh.

Actually, I really like the empty hull idea. It never occurred to me to do that. And I already keep empty hull designs all tagged with the word BASE (insert ship name). That way I never lose the design. It would be great to just upgrade empty hulls as needed. Wow. I cannot believe I never thought to do that. It seems obvious once someone states it. That would be cheaper than what I do now.

Remember though, that it does depend on the type of game you play.

Absolutely true. But it's even more than that. There are many different potentially successful strategies which at times appear to be mutually exclusive. One of the issues you face is that you get a lot of advice and almost all of it's pretty good, but you need to use your own judgement and you need to come up with a unified plan. I might have an idea that works for me with my strategy. Someone else has another good idea that works with his strategy, but when you try to do both together they don't work.

All this is a lot to absorb and some of will work for you and some won't. Things that won't work for you now may work for you later as your own strategy evolves. This game is very complex. No one can just give you the formula that works. This is good in that it keeps the game from getting old but bad when you're starting out and just want to know what you should do. You'll end up loving it.

It's also worth noting that you don't need to go into such hardcore and radical strategies on the lower difficulty levels. I'm sure that they're very effective, but you don't really need to make things so complex if you're only playing up to Tough level.