Where do I go to learn how to play GalCiv? Plus some gameplay questions inside!

from Stardock Forums
The manual's biggest problem is not it's obsolescence, but it's anemic size. I am baffled by many game mechanics the manual does not explain. Where do I go to figure out how to play this game?

Here's a few of my questions:

1. What exactly are unique trade items for? They seem to have no relation to trade routes. Is there a way to gain steady income from them? Or are they only used as a diplomatic bargaining tool? Why are unique trade items built by more then one civilization? Does it matter which planet or star system builds a trade item?

2. What are all of the factors that effect planetary moral at the time a colony ship creates a new colony? I established a colony on a class 15 planet and the morale was immediately 100%. I then established a colony on a class 14 planet one turn later and the morale was immediately 0%. A one point class difference caused this? If not, what else?

3. The spending slider on the economy screen: what the hell it is a percentage of? I am going to take a guess: is it merely a percentage of total production capacity? Or does it encompass other factors? There is an in-game summary message that suggests if the expense slider is 100% and I still have surplus income, then I need to expand production facilities. But I have the opposite problem, I must constantly reduce spending, I have it at 18% now to avoid a deficit and I really don't understand why this is happening.

4. What happens when either the military or civil production queue is empty? In other words, if I don't need to build ships at a certain planet, and I leave the queue empty, it doesn't seem the military spending that planet would have received is redistributed to other planets that do have a military project. Does this mean every queue must always have something in it or the spending simply disappears?

5. I have a universal translater, but when I talk to the Drengins they are still speaking gibberish, "Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra". Any idea what they are talking about ;)
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Viewing this forum from a browser gives you access to the GalCiv online Encyclopedia (the left button at the top of the forum) which contains lots of documents that are very useful in understanding a lot about this game. But to cover your questions:

1). Trade goods (not trade items) are for trading with other civs. They are like patented processes that you can license to others for trade items they have, like money, influence points, ships, techs, or planets.

2). Without knowing how many colonists you have on the two colony ships you used it is hard to be sure, but I assume the first colony ship you are talking about is the one given to you by the game and the second one is a ship you built. The complement of the USS Discovery is 100M Colonists, and the second ship has what you loaded onto it (which I would suspect was in the 500-700M range). A new planet of class 15 or class 16 will do well with only 100M population, but could run into serious morale problems if the population was 500+. Another factor here is the tax rate. The lower the tax rate the higher the morale, but the less revenue to use for production and other expenses.

3). The spending slider is, as you guessed, is the percent of your manufacturing and research capacity do you want to put funds into.

4). I think this needs to be examined again by Stardock. I have raised this problem before.

5). Is that just the Drengins? Did this happen on the same turn you completed the research for the Universal Translator? Does this clear up on the next turn?

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
to Lucky Jack:

1. So "trade goods" are only used in the diplomacy screen? Does it matter what planet I build the trade goods on, and why do multiple civs have "unique" trade goods?

2. Load colonists? Well you got me there, I didn't know you could or had to load colonists on and off the colony ship. I'll have to see if I can find that in the UI. I don't see how my tax rate effected this, they planets were colonized within one turn of each other, the tax rate didn't change in between.

3. Thanks for confirmation, but it doesn't answer the problems I am running into. Why I have to have my spending at 18% to avoid deficit, and why I have to keep reducing spending every turn. I am not even building production and research improvements!

4. Ok.

5. This one was a joke, hopefully at least one person out there will get it. LOL
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
If you give a trade good to another empire, do you lose the trade good? (I haven't tried this yet.) Or do they get a copy that they can then trade to other empires?
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Augusten,

Sorry for missing the joke. Cpt Picard would be proud of you. He would be angry at me for having skimmed over it so quickly that I didn't recognize it.

1. Trade goods are built only once. Once a race has built a trade good, no other race can build it. It doesn't matter which planet you build it on, but I would recommend building it on the planet that has lots of production capacity. I am not sure what you mean by "why do multiple civs have "unique" trade goods?". If more than one civ builds the same trade good then it is a bug (report it and the people at Stardock will fix it).

2. When you de-orbit a colony ship a window should appear on the right bottom prompting you do specify how many colonists (or troops for transports) to load. If you just clicked on the "launch" button you would find that you sent half of your planet's population off with the colony ship.

3. The spending slider is only part of your question. You need to look at your total income as well. That is affected by your tax rate and what trade income and tribute you have comming in. Without more information I can't tell you why you can't get the spending rate above 18%, but I think if you look at these other factors you may find the answer for yourself.


~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
FFAristocrat,

If you trade a trade good to another race you are selling them a license to produce that good for their own use. They can not trade the license. Also you can trade each trade good you create to as many races as you like.

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Lucky Jack,

Well, since I have been launching colony ships without changing how many were on board, it may explain a lot of my problems, colonizing and economy-wise. Thanks!
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Did you try reading the Survival Guide? When you click on the game on your desktop, it should bring up a menu that includes the survival guide. If not, there's an HTML in your galciv directory that has it and it walks you through the game in much more detail than the manual.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I can't find the Survival Guide HTML anywhere on my computer. I chose the "download only" option for the game, used the Stardock Client to download it, and it has installed the game under Program Files in Drengin.net\GalCiv. I've looked in all the game directories (I downloaded the bonus pak and multimedia as well) and there is zero HTML in the game directories.

Could you put a link to it somewhere on this site? I'm dying to read it. Thanks! Oh, and the game is awesome. :D
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Frogboy:

I used Stardock Central to install. No icons were placed on my desktop and the only icon in my start menu is to launch the game itself. I looked for a readme.txt file for answers, but didn't see the gc_quickguide.html. Now that you pointed it out, I found it, and it does help. Thanks.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Did a little more searching...I don't have any readme files in any of the GalCiv directories either. As with Augusten, I downloaded and installed the game with SDC, and it didn't create a desktop icon for the game, either.

LOL, I keep going back through the folders, thinking I may have seen it but my eyes are playing tricks on me. Still no survival guide (:(
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
The gc_quickguide.html doesn't appear to be on my system either. I downloaded and installed from the California server on the 25th.

~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Me too. No gc_quickguide. Everything else about my downloads appears to be fine. Brad, can you provide a link so we can download this?

~SDC~
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Correction. I downloaded it Monday the 24th. I forgot that I was up until 2 or 3am that night.

~SDC~
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
The quick guide is only installed with the Retail version of the game. If you grabbed the large install file or bought the game in a store then you have the quickstart guide, if you downloaded through SDC then you do not. It is currently not posted on the web anywhere, but I believe one of the Stardock guys said it would be on the GalCiv web site by the end of the week, so it should be available today or tomorrow if that's true.

~SDC~
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks. I was mildly worried that I might be missing other files.

~SDC~
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
"3. Thanks for confirmation, but it doesn't answer the problems I am running into. Why I have to have my spending at 18% to avoid deficit, and why I have to keep reducing spending every turn. I am not even building production and research improvements!"

There might be a lot of reasons why you are running into deficit, but here is how I avoid it...I try to trade my technology with as many civs as possible. Trading tech doesnt mean you have to be ahead by miles..even 1 tech can be exchanged for many with differnt civs. After you do that you should be with 2-3 techs that some particular civ doesnt have. So what you do next is sell all your surplus tech to that civ (for tribute). Try to do that as many times as possible. I am playing my 4th game now with all the AI set to intelligent and i manage to have my spending at 100% all the time :)