The Devil's in the Details

from GalCiv2 Forums

I know these questions must have been posted and recieved in numerous places throughout this forum, but, as always, a personal response seems to have a much more powerful message. I have been fully experimenting with the many facets of this game (finally managing to win every victory type and play through every race) and there are a few details which I feel are keeping me from moving up in difficulty (given, I haven't really moved from painful since I got there, I probably could afford to go up a notch or two...)

1- This is probably the biggest issue holding me back...what exactly are the results of setting a focus on one area over another in the planet screen? The only time I have really tested these focus tabs is when I have already put my economy tab at full research...then I just focus every colony to research...the effects of this are negligible at best and I have only (obviously) tried this while in the rush for a tech victory. What I am really looking for is 1)is the bonus of focus worth the loss of other production units, 2) what are some usual strategies for using focus in areas other than research and 3) are the focus tabs more for just fixing the global sliders?...ie- I set research at 100% globally but need industrial production on this ONE planet.

2- Why is it that when I rush my tech tree towards planetary invasion in the early game it is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to research than if I wait until later in the game?

3- Why are most of the useful posting from the (previously) top players all related to DA and DL, even much after TA had been released? Is it a buggier game? Too many metaverse issues?

4- What are the biggest issues that still survive in the 2.03 incarnation of TA...I read a post of a detailed look at the uselessness of ship defenses...have these problems been addressed, as the posting referred to DA if I am not mistaken.

4b-I had heard of many metaverse issues of abusing the scores by just continuing the game indefinately...this seems to be fixed looking at the top ranks...most these players seem to have achieved their victories within semi-reasonable times. (Not looking to start arguments, I realize no scoring system will be perfect...but it looks like they continue to fix it...right?)

5- How do I get the racial victory badge? I assume it involves winning with every race but this could take some time so I would appreciate knowing in advance.

6- Differerence between approval and morale? Seems approval has a larger impact but that's all I can tell.

7- A lot of strategies posted by others involves converting the starting space miner into a colony ship... does this mean that mining is generally a waste of my time? I actually place importance on converting mining bases through the game and I may be losing precious turns for nothing.

Thanks for your time and help, my apologies for not finding these answers myself...I swear I found a few but they were lost in a haze of posts. Hope these weren't too noobish of questions, I swear I have played through my fair share of game beforehand.

strategies
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

2- Why is it that when I rush my tech tree towards planetary invasion in the early game it is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to research than if I wait until later in the game?

Because research gets more expensive as time goes on.

I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it gets progressively more time consuming.

To gain the advantage from the effect I always research the Research tech tree first, up to at least Research Academy. Then I do Xeno Ethics to get Neutral Alignment, then research the NLC.

Once I can build NLC's, I can catch up and surpass in all the other techs very quickly.

If you try this method make sure you research and build plenty of the econ stuff too, because the NLC's are expensive.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

1. This is either if you want a simple planetary adjustment, for example, you play 1/49/50, and you have your CivCap already built out and set to produce one Hull per turn, and it lacks some MP to do so, set focus to it, so you reach what you want and don't have to adjust your whole empire.

It becomes globally important if your either playing on of the all-X strategies (only building either labs or facs) and use focus to get production in an area where you've not built any structures for.

2. Tech Inflation affects the research costs as you gradually research more and more. In TA it's really strong, with "red" techs heavy hit by it, sometimes weapons-costs will increase X8 by it. One reason to research "Planetary Invasion" very early.

3. Seems natural to me, but there is also an TA-only empire; the "Twilight Pub"

4. Ship defenses can be your friend, believe me, esp. in DA/TA. I've read lots of non-sense about it, it'S just that when folks are not able to use them properly they of course fail. Defenses give you a good edge very early on, even off-type defenses. Later on, when the Tech Inflation comes into play, it is *much more* easier to go up the defenses tree, as the weapons-tree. Especially because all AI's tend to research weapons and get stuck with it, and you can usually trade for these techs when your MMR isn't that high or you have an ally.

4b. This *was* right some years ago, under the old scoring system. There have been players who simply kept on playing and their games got bigger and bigger, leading to a 4mil pt game. After that, the games got re-counted by a new system which added another divisor by the turn-number, so that most of the old Million-point games got re-calculated to ~100k games.

5. Yup. Not counting Krynn and Korath.

6. None.

7. If you are actually producing ships why not having mines? They do generate Influence (=Tourism income) as well. With the right level of Miniaturization un-armed Space Miners take no maint, produce a swarm of them and let them roam the galaxy; upon finish convert them to whatever you want, your investment is not lost. Playing around with asteroinds is meticulous, but it's actually a good way to built up new colonies, or force production on a planet that is near to a war or has a good StarshipQuality bonus. Or you let others do the work for you and flip enemy asteroids with a base, that can be done overtly fast.

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