What am I doing wrong?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I got the game a few weeks ago and I think I've figured out most things, but even when I set the AI players to "sub-normal" they always seem to advance so much faster than me. Not only that, but around the time that I have 8-10 colonies, I start losing huge amounts of money every turn and nothing I do seems to change it.

Maybe my brain is stuck in too much of a "master of orion 2" mode and I'm doing something wrong :\

Basically, when I start a new game, I usually set industrial capacity to 100% and taxes to 33% straight off, because it does not cost too much per turn and I figure it'll help me jump-start. On my homeworld, I'll buy a factory and queue up an entertainment network, then fill the rest of the tiles with a roughly equal mix of farms, labs, and factories, and let that run it's course while I putter around with my flagship looking for another suitable planet. Even just 6 or 7 turns into the game, if I bump into any of the other races I can already see they are far more advanced than me. They will be building industrial and economic capitals by around the 25th-30th turn.

Eventually I'll have 10 colonies or so, and this is where the real trouble starts. Unless I've found some particularly lucritive anomalies, my treasury will be down to 800bc or so. Even at 20-30% industrial capacity, every turn I take will cost me ~80bc unless I raise taxes very high (70% or more) and drop my approval rating very low. As I understand it, though, a low approval rating means your population grows much slower... and fast population growth is really my only hope for getting out of this mess! blagh!

Around this time I retreat to the shipyards and live out the rest of my days designing different ships.

I've tried building more entertainment networks (3-4 per colony) or more farms (one for each lab or factory) but neither seem to help.
8,358 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Buy modified scouts and colony ships to grab more the galaxy early. Trade with the AI. Trade Techs. Build economic improvements and starbases.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Forget the modified scouts. Only get one of those and it should take no more than 2 turns. Build transports and head them off to different stars around you. Use the minimap and try to expand near any neighbors you have to try and grab any planets they have.

MODIFY YOUR COLONY SHIPS WITH ENGINES! I cannot stress that one enough.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sounds like you are building to many ships, perhaps? Keep in mind each ship costs $$$ in maintanance, so, I would suggest focus more on research and economic buildings, build more starbases and freighters, and only build a limited number of larger warships until the end-game.

Good luck! The game is challenging, but, that's part of the fun. Keep trying different things, read the posts here in the forum, and, keep at it!
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
First: DONT BUILD FARMS

Population above 5 billion quickly murders your approval rating, which murders your production, which murders your tax revenue. When starting out with the game, never build farms. You can more than sustain massive war going star empires without a single farm. Can farms help? Yes, but untll you get the flow of the game down, leave them alone.

Next: Always start with "Stellar Cartography" if you are using a custom race. You need to know where the planets are as soon as the game starts so never start without it. As has been suggested, you should be sending colony ships out like mad that first few turns. Custom build a colony ship with a single colony pad, a couple life support and at least 2 or 3 engines, as many as you can fit on board. After you instruct the colony to build it, buy it for full price, and do this everytime you find a new world to colonize.

Send the colony ships out to nearby stars, and do the same with your flagship. Personally, I dont bother with the level 4 world in my home system until later, it isn't worth a colony ship at the start. Any world you find of quality 9 or more should be colonized as soon as you can get a ship to it.

Some of this might be obvious but the starting land grab is the most important 20 turns of the game usually.

A few pointers for the midgame:
Do not over build. Yes you need good production, but not every world should be maxed out as builders. Social spending is a little broken right now, and any unused social production is lost (you still pay for it) building multiple massive research and manufacturing worlds early on makes it hard to target the spending since the money allocated to production gets divided around your whole empire.

It is tempting to fill every space on a planet with stuff, but trust me, only build what you need.

Last but not least, watch your relations with the other races, if you see one starting to dip and you can't risk war with them, send them stuff to be friends. Aside from certain random events (radicals assassinate one of their leaders and i get blammed for example) I have never been attacked without warning. Military is expensive early one so avoid building one as long as you can.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It doesn´t seem you are building any economical improvements on the planets ? I did also get financial troubles after a while in the games, especially when playing on higher AI levels. Now my priority is always first factory and the it is economical improvements. Otherwise you will soone be bogged down with maintenance for factories, research centers, entertainments and all of your ships so build stock markets and such things. Add economical starbases around your best planets, build freighters and improve trade routes with economical starbases. After a while you will get a stabilizing economy. Otherwise, sell technologies to other civs for money.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It seems like you're possibly making colonies too fast-each colony has a maintenence fee, so if you get to the point where that fee exceeds your tax rate you're really screwed. Dont lower your industry slider if you can help it... even going into the red (-500) and popping back up is probably preferable.

I'd also say you want to specialize your planets (research, factories... etc), and most ppl like to use big ~20 size planets as people farms - like 3-4 farms+entertainments, rest markets (enough factories to get going too).

Losing like 80 bc a turn isn't too bad, just try to absorb the cost, with a skipped turn every so often to go back up from -500. Eventually, if your approval is reasonable, your pop will catch up and your income will go up.

As a last resort-- consider starting with full econ bonus and be a federalist
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my first few games i couldn't keep up with the AI and ran out of funds quickly too, but managed to adapt. Here's my strategy: (i play in a huge galaxy with 9 civs)

* i take 20% econ bonus as an ability
* set military spending on 100% (industrial spending 100% and taxes so that approval is about 50%), this runs a deficit
* buy a factory or 2 on the home planet and buy the fastest colony ship every 2 turns (much cheaper to buy them this way)
* grab as many planets asap, go for those closest to your opponents first, with priority to high quality planets
* once all the planets are taken, set taxes so that approval rating is 100% (doubles population poduction), and adjust spending so that you lose the least amount of cash, you probably won't be able to break-even, or even lose a lot of money, don't worry you'll get that back real soon
* watch population boom for 10 turns or so or till you hit the -500bc mark, AI will be too busy to declare war any time soon anyway
* set taxes so that approval is about 50%, your huge population should get you loads of money now
* switch to social spending and research and build 2 factories and a research center and an entertainment center on each planet
* don't overdo on factories and you should be able to keep industrial spending on 100% and still make a profit all through the game
* research democracies and stuff relatively fast for econ and production bonusses

i ease through my games on challenging, i haven't tried this on higher difficulties, but it seems a solid strategy