XenocidalManiac

Reply to odd low-morale planet in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Two major things that you get-- first, if you colonize a planet like that with so many people, morale can be low due to overcrowding. Second, you've just pulled 1 billion productive citizens from a very good planet, to move them to a planet where they aren't as productive. Morale reduces with increased population, so that PQ 15 planet may simply be unable to support 1 billion people without significant investments in PQ improvements and morale improvements. Much easier to ju

Reply to Colonizing PQ 13 and 14 planets in Strategies Stardock Forums

Also, if you took the PQ 5% bonus at the start of the game as one of your picks, definitely grab all the PQ14 planets, since they will, as soon as you complete soil enhancement, skip straight to PQ16!

Reply to odd low-morale planet in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'd never colonize a planet with much over 200 million, rule of thumb, unless it's something like PQ26. My colony ships are all about 25-125 million, depending on the population of the planet of origin and the PQ of the destination.

Reply to Trade revenue not very high? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Trade revenue often isn't as crucial as the good will you get trading with an AI. They like you MUCH more if you are trading with them, and especially if they are stronger than you, you want them to like you. Selling tech for cash is one of the easiest ways to keep your economy up and win, at least up until "masochistic" difficulty level, when nearly all the AIs just won't give you money any more. Until then, I mostly sell tech for cash and use trade for secondary cash and to make the AI not

Reply to Colonizing PQ 13 and 14 planets in Strategies Stardock Forums

No, the AI doesn't know something you don't, or it would certainly colonize those planets on masochistic where it gets a huge PQ bonus. Feel free to grab those planets when convenient after the initial wave of the land grab, and they are also VERY useful in the late game if you are following a strategy of cultural assimilation. If you have most of the influence wonders and resources, all you may need to grab a few AI planets is a little open PQ14 in their sector. The cost does go away

Reply to odd low-morale planet in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

That would be nasty if it was somebody else's colony in the first place, and you took it over all unaware that it had a monster negative hanging on it like that. There should be some way to see that kind of thing, but I'm not aware of any way. If you can't get morale up to a decent level, all I can think is that the original colonization took a morale event. But you're right, the population shouldn't have grown to 3 billion at 1 morale, and presumably you didn't colonize it with more

Reply to Using More Than One Governer? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Saw that, it would explain an oddity I saw in my last game (also reported on the bug thread) where the other races were terraforming their planets when they didn't have the technology. Love the description of Mr. Ford as a double agent LOL I won't be using him in the game I'm starting next...

Reply to Easiest Game Possible..? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Have you looked through some of the older posts in this forum? The start is huge-- here's a good set of posts about how to get off to a good start: http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?id=90861&BID=GS&page=1#117676 On easier levels, get off to a good start so you have more planets than any AI, then trade techs until you are equal with any AI, and then sell your next techs you research to all the AIS for modest cash over many turns. This lets you crank up your spending to 100% at reason

Reply to Sector Questions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

A sector is the map grid. 12 moves across, to make this MUCH easier, go to the menu screen and select "show grid" Makes is much easier when I'm scouting and want to cover as much ground is possible, then I can easily send scouts doing three space diagonals and cover a whole sector in a sweep!

Reply to Minor race? Look out! This time they were powerful! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

What did the Carinoids want to attack the Drengin? Sometimes they're willing, and usually the more powerful side needs less of a bribe...

Reply to Bug Reports for 1.13 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

On the invisible ships-- don't know if my experience is consistent, but I see it under 2 conditions--first, my game has been active for many hours without restarting galciv (I run on a laptop, so I sometimes have a game sitting in the background for days), and second when I have a type of ship I haven't previously had in the game. Usually I get invisible capital ships, occasionally I get an invisible defender or something if my survey ship finds one late in the game and I never had one previous

Reply to Bug Reports for 1.13 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Not sure how they're doing this-- just finished a gigantic crippling game, and late in the game I had a huge lead in tech and culture, and I was using that lead to flip over planets. I started to find, as I flipped Torian planets, that they were partway through Terraforming. Odd, since they didn't seem to have Terraforming (I could trade it to them if I wanted to). Later, I started flipping planets and found that if I looked at details, Terraforming was already complete. Still, the Torians d

Reply to Metaverse game count oddities? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Looks like it's fixed now-- you jumped up to 27007 points!

Reply to Aldarian Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My strategy so far on maso has been basically to keep relations decent while getting the influence wonders and vulturing the influence anomalies until I get at least culutural maximizing, and then start with the flipping. What's your typical approach?

Reply to Metaverse game count oddities? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

They do reduce, but that doesn't explain dearmad's total. Something's quite wrong. Going by the formula where you add up your total points, and divide by the square root of games played, 5151 is far too low. Even if you only count the last TWO games, and still divide by the square root of 12, I get 7289 points.

Reply to Aldarian Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

So how much do you use influence starbases? Do you have the option of building a bunch of party palaces to just flip a number of Arcean worlds over to you? Cheesy, but effective. Then you can flip a set of worlds, and even give one back to them, knowing full well that it will just flip over to you again anyway...

Reply to Randomly generated minor races start off too weak in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Agreed, at times I wind up conquering them even though I wouldn't mind a trading partner--just because I know if I don't that one of the AIs will. If that's not the intent, they need a little more to start with, something like what you have with some variance depending on game stage.

Reply to how do you defeat big maso civs?? in Strategies Stardock Forums

I have usually found that if I build about 4 starbases with cultural maximization, all the cultural palace mods and party palace in the same sector, adjacent but not in the sector of the alien civs planet that they defect soon. If they're not all in the same sector it isn't as effective. If they're not in a sector adjacent to the one you want, they're useless. If you've built control the cultural resources and have built all the wonders, you don't even need them. Look for a PQ 13 or

Reply to Aldarian Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I usually go for military victory just for the points, though I may not play that way during the game. My last game I decided to see if I could win a cultural victory without using cultural starbases! Found that it was a challenge, but that you can do it if you get all the cultural resources, build all the related wonders, and colonize some low PQ planets next to alien territory! Then I declared war on the Drengin just as their last planet seceded so it was technically a military vi

Reply to Aldarian Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

In sight of the top ten! With GROSS and the Evil Empire pretty much static in scoring right now, Aldar could make it to the top ten-- another overlord would be helpful, of course... That would certainly be an occasion to celebrate in the usual Aldarian way.

Reply to Freighters are good! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

At higher difficulty levels, freighters are also *crucial* to keeping relations with the aliens at a reasonable level. They are much less likely to go to war with you when they know that it would cut off a big source of their own income. At crippling and masochistic, it's pretty much standard strategy to get trade going ASAP with the biggest, most threatening AI.

Reply to Help ! I am losing badly... After 3 games, this is getting long... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Also, make sure that when you launch a colony ship you don't put much over 100 million people on it in the early game (more only if you know you are sending this ship to a very high PQ planet, like a 26). The default when you launch a ship is to send half the sending planet's population, which can lead to sending 600 million people to a planet that can't handle it, and morale goes in the dumper. If your money indicator in the lower left hand corner goes red, you running a negative bank

Reply to The Space Shark(s) ate my Fleet! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Early on, you don't destroy them. If you can, put a star fighter or such three spaces in front of it, and slowly lead it toward alien space. Lure it toward an AI space station on a resource you want, for example. Now you can destroy it without getting into a war! Don't bother attacking them unless you have several corvettes or a frigate. NEVER let them go on offense against you!

Reply to Kingdom of Aldar Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

February 1, Drengin snarf day, celebrate by watching the game--and you know the rest.

Reply to Newbie questions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The key on trades that wasn't immediately obvious to me-- select what you're trading, and then select different things for the alien side on the right--if the text in the middle goes green, they'll take the offer. Try trading for modest amounts of cash over a year or two instead of one lump sum. Research the non-military techs, techs that show as green and yellow on the tech tree, since the AI doesn't make them a priority (and so doesn't have them) but will trade for them. Certain military te