Confused

By ploping down buildings I assume you mean scheduling the builds. It's reasonable to purchase the first factory on your home planet, some people even buy the frist factory on their colonies as well. It all depends on the galaxy size, the strength of the AI opponents and a lot of other factors, but in general it's not a goos idea to buy a lot of buildings in the early game.

As far as scheduling the build order, it is a reasonable thing to plop them all down at the begining and let the planet produce the buildings over time, that way there's less micro management.

There is a lot more to the game than building out each planet the same. There are many different strategies you can play, but regardless, I find it a lot more effective to specialize your planets into research, production and income. Generally, when I start the colony rush, I'll build out each planet pretty much the same, but once I start to get a few planets generating money and ships, I then have the flexibility to start specializing new planets as I colonize them. Over time I'll begin to convert previously built planets to specialized ones of the type that their best suited for and that I need at the time.

Because there are so many different types and sizes of games you can play and many different reasonable strategies that can be used in each of them, it's very hard to give a formula for how to play it. You really have to just dive in and play some and read other peoples strategies and see what works for you.

If you bought the game at the store it's probably version 1.0, you should go to the downloads section and download the v1.4 standalone version there. There's also Stardock Central (SDC) that's an application you can use to download pre-release versions as well as do other stuff. You can do either method but the simplest to start with is just download the standalone Retail Update: v1.40X. There's also a Beta program for the Dark Avatar expansion pack, but you had to have pre-ordered the DA for that and it wouldn't be a good idea for someone new to start out on.

The game has tremendous flexibility and replayability.

You can try to win by influence, alliance, technology, or military. Each has its advantages and challenges. You can play as a "good", "neutral", or "evil" civilization. Again each has advantages and disadvantages.

If you find the game boring and easy, you are probably playing at too easy of a difficulty level. Kick it up a notch or two. At some point the AI's will start to kick you around quite a bit and disrupt your plan and strategy.

As Mumblefratz indicates above, there is a bit more to planning your planetary buildout. Specialization is good, particularly on planets with production and research bonuses. You also need to watch your economy and morale.

The early game is the planet rush. Mid-game is where you flesh out your victory strategy. The end-game is where you execute your victory strategy (or get executed yourself!). Each phase has its challenges.

Have fun. And do download the program update--it changes the character of the game quite a bit.

I believe the point of the game is to have fun. Building empires, crushing opposition, and ruling the galaxy is fun to me.

I got the game earlier this month, so I'm still a novice, and I find myself often playing Large or better galaxies at Normal difficulty with between 5-9 opponents as I experiment with different strategies in developing my empire. One of my favorite things to do in the game is designing my ships to take advantage of enemies' strengths and weaknesses. Of my Metaverse games, I've yet to achieve a victory through military might, and I did have a surprise once when the Drengin surrendered to me rather than let their dying empire be overrun by the Arceans. There are several avenues to success you can explore, with a lot depending on your style of play. With the variety of initial game settings, it's doubtful any two games will play out exactly the same way. And as the others mention above, get the 1.4 update if you haven't yet.

Well thanx everybody for replying!

What makes a fun game for me is an AI opponent that keeps challenging me at every stage but without overshadowing me either. This is very difficult to achieve and i find myself quitting more games because i am too powerful rather than because the AI is too powerful.

I am still searching for that one game where i can truelly slug it out against an equally determined AI. This is the holy grail of Galciv!

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