Just Bought Ultimate Edition

Hello, welcome to GalCiv then!

Unfortunately I'm probably not able to give you all the details you want, but I'll try to answer some of your questions.

As for the rest, you can try https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Civilizations_Wiki  for some more info.

There is unfortunately no ingame Galactopedia, but there is one available here on the site, try searching for it (you have to use Google with site:forums.galciv2.com added).

For the ship combat there is also some random factor included, but I think the exact formula may depend on which version you are playing (DA,DL or ToA). As you can see there are three types of attack and three types of defense.
If your defense is the right kind for the type of attack the enemy is using (e.g. shields vs beam weapons), you get the full bonus, otherwise only the square root.

 For population growth you get a bonus when your morale is green, and a malus when it's red. If you have the super breeder ability you get another bonus at 100% morale.

The speed you see in the design menu is the speed without any bonus applied I think.
So if your race has a innate +10 bonus on speed, that will give 1 parsec more per turn. Then there are bonuses from techs, like Impulse drive 1 and Warp drive 1 which also give +10 each.
Finally you can get a boost by military starbases that are fitted with the right modules.

I probably never used the options to buy ships with "turnly" payments, but I guess they are somewhat cheaper because they stress your income for longer time. If you want it over with fast you have to pay more for it.

And finally, AFAIK there is no way to see a breakdown of where all your different bonuses come from.

Regards,

El Zoido

You can find the link to the Galactopedia from this link:

https://forums.galciv2.com/306176

Do note that it is not like the Civilopedia, but it will still give you all the data.

Also, do read the wiki - it is extremely helpful.

There are a couple areas in the game like the ship builder where things are indicated in terms of their base level without bonuses applied.  Another area like that is the detailed information screen for starbases.  I agree it could be considered a bug, but I think it's more of an oversight.  The game does have a few other warts like that, but you get used to them and then work around them.

As far as ship speed, there's a 1 or 2 parsec bonus across the board at the start depending on map size.  So, a one move ship will have more than that when it actually gets out there.  There are also ship speed bonuses applied when techs are researched (i.e. Impulse Drive) and special projects built (i.e. Gravity Acclerators).  This is the ship speed "ability" bonus you are seeing in action.

There are two kinds of bonuses, planetary and ability.  Ability bonuses are the ones that apply civilization wide.  You can get a complete in-game breakdown of your ability bonuses in the Stats and Graphs section of the Civilization Manager.  The difference between planetary and ability bonuses isn't always clear, but anything that provides an ability bonus will show on the Stats and Graphs page (with a small number of exceptions).  One note (bug) about the speed ability bonus, it shows up as percent, but it's actually in moves or parsecs.  So, a 10% bonus means +1 parsec, a 20% bonus means +2 parsecs, etc.  And, yes, there's no way to get a complete breakdown for each and every bonus, but really, that information is just unnecessary and would never have been worth the coding required to make it available.  In some cases, it's easy enough to extrapolate based on information available elsewhere in the game.

Hope that helps.

the wiki deThanks for you help everyone!

The wiki is mildly useful, but it is still missing a lot of information. Strange for a game that has been around so long, I would expect fan-documentation of the game mechanics to be pretty much complete.

It is pretty lame that the pop growth is so non-linear,

1 for approval between 41% and 75% inclusive.
- 1.25 for approval between 76% and 99% inclusive.
- 2 for 100% approval without the Super Breeder special ability or 8 for 100% approval with Super Breeder.

 

this means that if you have 99% approval, you get a 25% growth bonus, but by getting just +1% more, pop growth rockets to a 100% bonus.

This means I MUST to micromanage my taxes every turn to keep my taxes as high as possible (until my planets reach the pop cap), while still keeping colonies at max growth - if one colong is off by 1%, then they miss out on a 75% pop growth bonus - lame.

So maps provide an innate speed bonnus? Wierd, if the bonus was at least one for all maps - then it would make more sense to just have the shipyard include that bonus during design - since it is constanmt. as for extra speed for larger maps, this isn't mentioned in the galaxy setup, nor the wiki - wierd.

The wiki also answers my combat question - the damage dealt is simply subtracted from the defense rolled, no conplex formula there.

As for influence, there is no formula listed in the wiki at all. If I double my influence, how does that affect the area covered? How much influence does a starbase generate? etc, the wiki has no answers.

The Galactopedia only lists the tech tree, and your custom ship designs. It doesn't mention game mechanics - like a civilopedia or datalinks would.

Looking up the wiki, it confirms that for small purchases, it is ALWAYS absolutely cheaper to use the second option to purchase your item (upgrade/ship/improvement) - seems like a bug to me, more micromanagement required.

Nobody has mentioned the shipyard build queue - I looked in the wiki, but couldn't find it there either. So it doesn't exist? Pretty lame that you can queue up ccolony improvements, but not shipyards

EDIT:

One more question: How does focusing on one area for idividual planets work? I looked in the wiki - but couldn't find any entry for the mechanics of planetary focusing (where you click on one production area to increase it's importance for an individual planet). There appears to be some inneficiency, but i'd like to know how it is calculated.

Agree, it should have more steps.  Keep  in mind that the bonus applies to planets on an individual basis.  So you could have overall approval somewhat lower, but still have planets with 100% approval getting the full bonus. 

It's only in TA and it's only 1 versus 2 parsecs.  I believe it's because of the extra universe size in that expansion.  I could be wrong though, maybe it's 2 parsecs across the board.  In any case, it's not much.  Later in the game, I'm building ships with enough speed that it's pretty insignificant.

Influence ability is incorporated into a formula that causes other planets to culturally "flip" into your posession when affected by your influence.  It can also go the other way, you can lose planets culturally to other races.  No one except the coders know the exact formula and it's not really important.  When enough influence is exerted on a planet, it flips pretty much at random but the chance increases with influence ability and other influence factors like planetary influence and the effects of influence starbases.  

You have to add influence modules to influence starbases using constructors to make them effective.  The modules are unlocked in the yellow cultural research line.  There's an area of effect you can see when you click on a starbase.  Another race's planet needs to be in that area of influence to be affected by it.  You can overlap areas of influence by building and upgrading multiple starbases to increase the effect.

Any planet with an outside influence factor over 4 is in danger of flipping.  The higher the number, the higher the chance.  The factor shows in parenthesis next to the influence rating below approval when you click on a planet and in the planet screen.  You need a level of espionage against a race to view the influence factor you're exerting on their planets.  You'll see that number rise as you do various things to increase influence and you get a feel for what's most effective.  The most effective thing is to build and upgrade influence mining resources.  That increases your overall influence ability.  Influence starbases would be the next most effective.

I haven't found that to be a problem since I might build one type of ship on one planet and another type on another planet for a long period.  There's a "build until cancelled" feature that covers that.  I believe it's enabled by default. Or, I might crank out warships on all planets, then crank out constructors on all planets.  It's easy enough to queue them manually.  If it was possible to queue ship building, I probably wouldn't have a need to use it.  In any case, there's a governor that allows you to control ship building civilization wide.  I use that a lot.  Governors are located on a page in the Civilization Manager.

Influence ability is incorporated into a formula that causes other planets to culturally "flip" into your posession when affected by your influence.  It can also go the other way, you can lose planets culturally to other races.  No one except the coders know the exact formula and it's not really important.  When enough influence is exerted on a planet, it flips pretty much at random but the chance increases with influence ability and other influence factors like planetary influence and the effects of influence starbases.  

You have to add influence modules to influence starbases using constructors to make them effective.  The modules are unlocked in the yellow cultural research line.  There's an area of effect you can see when you click on a starbase.  Another race's planet needs to be in that area of influence to be affected by it.  You can overlap areas of influence by building and upgrading multiple starbases to increase the effect.

 

Yes, this is mentioned on the wiki, and the manual too. But in the early stages of the game, at least for smaller maps - Tourism is your primary source of income. Since this is created by ownership, which is in turn generated by influence I am amazed no-one can jet tell me how influence affects the area of ownership generated, except in very broad terms that more is better.

Regarding the speed difference - the difference between 2 and 3 parsecs a turn (total movement for ships with no engine) is HUGE, which is exactly what counts in the early game when exploring those anomalies and getting your ownership areas established.

I have found trade to be my biggest source of income early in the game.
Compared to tourism I usually get much more by trade early on, unless the random event happened where your tourism income is increased by some factor.

Anoter thought on the speed difference: While 2 vs 3 is a big difference, it wont stay that very long and the relative difference will diminish.
You also have to remember that area is radius squared, so while you may be a little faster on bigger maps, you also have to cover a much bigger area.

In my case, I rely on cash anomolies.  I build a lot of surveyors that do double duty as scouts first thing.  By the time I can get around to building freighters, I usually have enough planets making money that the income wouldn't be all that helpful. 

I've never thought in terms of tourism income and expanding influence to increase it early in the game.  Tourism income is definitely helpful, but I just run in the red with dependance on cash anomolies until I heve enough population for planetary economy to kick in.  The trick is to hold off on building anything on low population planets until that happens.  Building costs and maintenance kill you early in the game.

Or play Super-breeder with a morale bonus race

Googly, the game won´t give you exact numbers on influence, so all you can rely on is the Minimap - when "Ownership" is toggled. Since influence relies on  1. planetary inhabitants  2. starbases  3. buildings/modules that area of Influence will increase/decrease over time, it is esp. helpfull to keep an eye on the threshold where your influence borders with the influence of a neighbouring race.

And yes, Tourism can be a great source of income esp. in the beginning of smaller/medium sized maps, so if you see somewhere an area which is not covered with any influence yet just built a one-constructor-base there to get an extra bc's per round.

However, if your intent is to culture-flip planets, you´ll need to built an Influencer-base directly to that planet and have modules at least over +200%.

btw, foreign Mines can more easily be flipped, even when they are far distant.

But they won't be of much value in that case, will they?

Right, the AI usually doesn´t bother researching into the Mining techs, so expect only +1 from these mines. Well, it´s not much, but at least, this +1 is missing from the AI´s production, and that alone is a gain. So if you don´t wanna bother with mines, simply decomission them then. But if someone wants to go into the draging micromanageing that mines bring up, then I see some real advantages in them:

1) You can adjust military production to the very point where the number of flasks matches the cost of your ship evenly, that way you don't have to pay for wasted military production.

2) You can focus research all over the galaxy to a "hot spot", where maybe a strong warship would be useful next round, or on a new colony helping it to build-out all tiles.

3) You can create immensely strong production-planets, even on low PQ planets, it just needs some sort of power plant et al.

And also, the production they bring in is pretty cheap in comparison to factories. With some miniaturization a mining module can be stucked on a tiny hull, and these kinds of ships are without any maintenance costs. So what you pay for is just one ship for a multitude of mines, and later on that very ship can be upgraded to something else. Further keep in mind that the AI usually doesn´t bother to destroy the mines, so even if one loses planets this production stays stable.

btw sorry for hijacking this thread

Further keep in mind that the AI usually doesn´t bother to destroy the mines, so even if one loses planets this production stays stable.

 

But wouldn't those mines flip pretty fast if the planet were conquered?

Not very fast, especially if you have other planets nearby.

Yeah well it depends on some factors, and that might be totally different from game to game, but yes, if those mines are really near to a planet they will most likely always adhere to that planet´s owner.

But there are also (sometimes) asteroids far away from any planetary influences [The last 3 Tournaments in ToA are prime examples]. Those can be yours, even if you are currently uncapable of invading/conquering the enemy. There are 2 different tactics that might be used.

The first is a passive approach, and uses the fact that enemy miners refrain from mining in a foreign influence zone. So if you see somewhere a middle/large asteroid belt/field somewhere in the black, and you know you can´t exploit it right now, then simply send a fast constructor there building a Inflluencer SB. The AI will then ignore these mines.

The second is more risky, and involves some more constructors. First you ignore that field, and let the enemy mine that field until all mines are finished. Then built a Influencer SB there, you don´t have to built it out, a +100 will do it fastly, after some time usually every turn a mine flips to you. This is very nice then   but I would use that tactic only on a "friendly" race, for it may take a year until a field is mined-out & flipped, and you wouln´t want those mines to support the building of warships that are then sent against you, isn`t it?

Indeed, because a conquered planet is low on population (=influence).

I see you have shifted back to DA in your last 2 games - anything special up?

I just tested an adapted gameplay which I learned during the last ToA session. Did help a bit, ~10k more. Will try in DL also. And still have some 3 or 4 ideas in head which have not yet been tested. I mean, if you go to all necessary milking and micromanaging this is really worth 10k sometimes, but I´m still 30k short which tells me I´m basically overlooking essential things.

But honestly, that WE brought me a good deal of insights of the society-scoring mechanism et al, I wouldn´t have noticed these things on a normal map/game. For a ZYW can easily and similarily be re-played, just with one or two things consciously changed - and then you simply observe the outcome and adopt to that game which brought the most points.

"Fascinating"

Keep it up - here's something that will help -