What is the difference between the difficulty levels??? A question Im shure millions want to have answered!!!

At those levels, the AI are quite handicapped.
The difficulty level you want is Tough. here the AI is at 100% with no bonuses, as level a playing field as your going to get. From Painful on the AI increases by about 5% per level till Masochistic, from that point they get frighting bonuses.
Here is a link that i think you will find helpful.

GC2Wiki Difficulty Levels

Oh and BTW, the campaign is not where the fun is. Set up custom game and mess with all the settings to get a real taste for the game!

The campaign is fun-but it's not for learning the game; it's designed to be a challenge.

Additionally, at sub-normal levels the human player gets an econ bonus, and at difficulties greater than Tough the human player gets a hidden research bonus that makes keeping up with the AI's research much easier.

But the link Neilo provided is a very good guide.

You liked it? I played the DL campaign, it bored me and i never touched the campaign button again. Perhaps as i delve into TA in the coming weeks i play it's campaign.

  The seemingly impossible rate the AI builds happened to me in both Civ3 and GalCiv2 when I was new to them.  After a while I discovered new tricks or parts of the game which I didn't know much about,  much more so in GalCiv2.

What can I say, I love a good challenge.  Considering it's basically the only place you can have Dread Lords rain troops down on you, it's worthwhile.  They just tend to get steamrolled when they pop up in sandbox.

So the AI wasnt cheating? wierd, how did I get this far behind then? a wiswe man once said that "A computer is only as stupid, as the person who uses it" I wonder if thats the same thing for games.Il try to cilonize the majority of the planets on the map early on, see if that helps, maybe thatl make a difference.

One more question, when the AI invades one of my planets, I loose the fight, even though they are drasticaly outnumbered, even though I am Militaristic and my soldiers are Invincible.

The AI doesn't cheat, at least on the lower difficulties, and it doesn't technically cheat on the higher ones, either; it just has artificial bonuses to make it harder.

There's been discussion previously about the AI "knowing" where things are in advance, but even if that's the case, it's coded to act like it doesn't, at least on anything below Tough.

The reason it feels like the AI was cheating in the campaign is because your enemy starts out in a better position than you in most missions-whether they have higher techs, or ships you can't match, or whatever.  Your allies, on the other hand, start out with next to nothing-just like you-so the campaign is actually easier on higher difficulty levels, so that your allies can grow faster.

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You're probably going to lose a lot of invasion fights in the campaign; the Dread Lords have something like a +500 soldiering bonus, and the tech tree only gives you like 80 or 100 to counter that.  It's also tech-score based, so if the game is treating them as having researched all techs (can't remember), that'll contribute as well.

Their racial soldiering bonus is 750. Plus, they do start with all techs researched.

 

Their AI has been trimmed down for the normal game. If you are not playing metaverse games, you can bring them back to their old self by editing RaceConfig.xml.

Thanks for telling me all this, Good news by the way, I finished the second mission in the DL campaign on tough

I captured 4 out of 6 planets on the map right away, even so, that was a close victory, I cant Imagine how (without cheating) but that monkey empire of enemy allways had the better ships, the better weapons, and I barely managed, even after the Supercapital ship research and desintegrators, even though logic states that I should have outnumbered them 2 to 1, 4 planets against 2, their ships were also faster, tey must have started with a lot of tech already researched then.

Thanks for advice, The best thing I like about games is the Campaign, Im a storyline fan=)

750 soldier bonus??? thats  How did you guys manage?

750 is the base amount. It is actually over 800, because of the bonuses from the invasion techs.

Invading the Dread Lords is quite easy, as long as you have several Troop Transports (and enough escorts to protect them) and Planetary Bombardment researched. Mass Drivers are your friend.

Not getting invaded yourself is the hard part. Even one Dread Transport can be enough to lose a planet if your population is low. Maximizing your soldiering bonus is mandatory in this case. Don't bother building the Planetary Defense improvement, though, as it doesn't work because of a missing line of code. Spread your ships out and use them to scout for transports enroute to your planets. Take those out at all cost. Don't place ships in orbit of your planets, because this will lead the Dread Lords directly to them.

In DL you can use lots of small or tiny ships, only outfitted with weapons, to swarm the Dread Lords, because they don't have any defenses on their ships. However, this tactic doesn't work in DA and TotA, because of changes to how the battle system works.

I have played around 8 games on tough in a large galaxy with 9 enemies, I expanded very well, I owned around 30+%

of the entire galaxy, right from the start, I started the research, I didnt research unnecesary stuff, and went on to millitary devealopement as soon as possibe, I built factories, research labs and right from the start, trading centers, to get economy, Logic says I should have the upper hand in research, production and construction. When my spend is at civil production 50% and research 50% researches like professional ship construction, that grants + 10 or 15 to ship hull toughness takes about 14 weeks, I think thats good.

I didnt win 1 war!!!, not to mention 1 game, a player with far less planets sends fleets at me that dont stop coming, and I even Haveing a good economy and spend 70% of my income on millitary (during war) simply cant produce as fast, my fleets eventualy wear out, not to mention that the monkey Empire ALLWAYS has the better Ships, my civ specials are

+20% guns

+30% shiphulls

+15% Bravery

+30 Soldiery

+10% Military construction.

Logic sais I should have the badest Badasses in the Galaxy.

My question is, why is an enemy empire with less everything (without cheating) giving me such a sensual sensation? 

What am I doing Wrong??? There must be a reson. Please help. I dont want to try anything below average and fair, there though doesnt seem to be anything fair on the tough difficulty.

It sounds to me like you're not researching fast enough, actually.  Could you post a savegame so we can take a look?

Click on an enemy ship, and click ship details.  What weapons/defenses are they using?  What weapons/defenses are you using?

Either it's not researching fast enough or it might be that you're not trading technologies with the AIs (which they do a lot in between them), that speeds up your technological evolution a lot.

you have a point, I dont trade tech at all. but how does that explain the fleet size of my enemies? and I dont research defences, I decided its better to have Larger Hulls and more GUNZ!!!  

 

How do I post the save file? cant figure the option, image, code, yes, but doesnt say much about insert file?

and where do I find the save files? Its Dread Lords.

You'll need to host it somewhere.  Would be a good idea to zip it first, too, to reduce the size.

Your save files should be in \My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2; I think that's where they've always been, even in DL-at least since about 1.3 or 1.4.  If they're not there, give your save file an interesting and unique name and have Windows search your hard drive for it.

MediaFire or FileFactory should still be good, and Rapidshare is always an option.  I used to use MegaUpload myself, until it got taken down recently, and some other sites have disabled sharing since.

Spending every penny on production isn't going to help if you're fielding ships with 10 attack when your enemies have 80, for example.

I'm not concerned about you not trading tech; at Tough, you should be handily outresearching the AI and they shouldn't really have anything you need.  I'm concerned that you don't have enough research output.

What are your habitable/planet/star settings, by the way?  Rare, uncommon, occasional, common, abundant?  How did you determine that you have 30% of the galaxy?  If you've gotten used to the idea of only having half a dozen planets, if that, from the campaign, the larger planet counts with more abundant habitables may be causing the AIs to pick up more planets than you, if you're stopping colonization too soon.

I think I figured the problem, thanks Sole, im on a game right now and Im doing fine, because I trade tech, that speeds up research a lot, Ive got good ships and a decent enough output in productin, Im still slow though, I think thats because I preselect all the structures on the planet straight from the colonisation, I guess that slows the buildup down a lot, rather than haveing them built one after the other. I have about an equal amount of factories and research facilities, a few markets and a farm, depending on the bonuses, but I think I halt my own output since all the buildings are constantly upgradeing, and construction is everywhere at once. , I wont host files since im doing fine right now. Thanks people=)