Becoming bored with Galciv, what will make it interesting again?

Harder difficulties?

Mods?

The new Altmeta?

Eh, I never do Metaverse anyway. Mods, well, there's only so much they can do. And harder difficulties will still have the same stuff, different AI.

Play a different race, pick different abilities, reach for different goals.

I'm fairly new at this, but I've already become somewhat frustrated with warfare (and it doesn't help that too many ships on-screen destroy my framerate).

So what I'm going to do in my next game is try to achieve a pure Diplomatic victory. I'm going to have 2 or 3 opponents of different alignments (I think I'll do Altarians and Drengin), and try to win the game by getting alliances with both of them. Of course, this means I'll have to make sure that both civs survive the game, so I think it will be interesting trying to maintain the power balance while at the same time staying on good terms with both AIs.

I'll make an AAR about it when I get started. Has anybody else attempted something like this?

Hi!

I know exactly how you feel. At the difficulty level I play there really isn't much to change in my gameplay if I want to stay alive. This results in always the same way of opening, same tricks to be used, same AIs to be "eaten" ... Yes, I've definitely played too many strategy games. Happens with the age.

The truth is I've been waiting for about a month with starting and actually playing a new game (besides several dozens of testbeds), because the off-type defense bug bothered me too much. Now I'm "clean" of the GC-2 addiction and the Stars! game I'm in just started to get interesting. I'll probabaly wait until DA 1.6 comes out of beta before actutaly starting a new game.

BR, Iztok

Set different goals for yourself.  Design a "role" for yourself and play as that role.  I used to play chess against myself and white would play very aggressively and black very carefully.  I was often surprised how the cames turned out.

If you always win militarily, disable that victory option; see what happens.

i've always thought that there are little or no "milestone" rewards in this game. sure you get to see a video once in a while - but there are no "real" cues that your civilisation is growing.

e.g.s

in the old game sundog, the city you are supporting grows
in startopia, the space station's population go about their daily lives
in pax emperia, you get to see your space ship bombard the planet surface and see the colony (graphic relative in size of the actual colony) get nuked to ruins

in gc2: its all tiles, graphs and text...



actually, scrap all that. i've nailed down why i've always failed to like this game - no matter how many times i tried. its too clinical - devoid of humanity (or alienity?). the videos do not seem to be enough.

case in point: alpha centauri. the AI in that were pro-active. they tried to convince you to attack their rival if they attacked yours. or they tried to slip you some intelligence about another factions intent just to either confuse you or gain your trust.

civilisations. with the little (1 hour) i've tried this game, i thought the rulers at least had some "personalities". in gc2, its just good v evil.

star control. simple but had "character". 'nuff said.

I agree. When you finally master a strategy game, unless you play multiplayer or metaverse, the single games become boring and the only solution is to start role-playing. Hexagon, i'm experiencing the same effect and i'm playing less and less.

Personally, i think the modding options are too static. Whatever change you make, you still win and lose in the same way. This is the reason why i'm waiting for the map editor (see here) and i'm hoping in a future version we will be able to mod, for example, also the mega events or the exact number of random habitable/semi-habitable worlds etc.

I also think, as i said before in another post, that with the almost totally absence of the concept of 'territory' this game misses a lot. If you don't have 'terrain effects' on battles, every war is the same and defensive wars are worth only to take time while you build a more powerful army to attack. I don't know exactly how you could simulate terrain effects in deep space (maybe with more asteroids, with nebulas, with bonuses when you fight in your own territory, with the inability to use particular weapons in some regions of the space, etc.), but i know that 'territory' is something that gives you more strategical options, changes very much every single game you play and keeps the boredom away.

Richard

Play the game naked.

Hi!

Thanks for advices, but role-playing where I'm the only spectator is not for me. I have a much better one solution: I join another Stars! game, preferably with good players, not beginners or intermediates. There no trick works twice, diplomacy is real (sometimes to the point it takes more time to do diplomacy than the turn), anti-leader alliances among "mortal enemies" a regular practice, and games end with consensus without tedious mop-up. Did I mention I just joined one of those?

BR, Iztok

In my last game I played a DL 1.2 gigantic map, everything abundant, loose clusters, very fast research, tech trading enabled, on level suicide against 9 AIs.
In my current game I'm playing DA 1.6 medium map, common stars, occasional planets, normal research, tech trading disabled, on level suicide against 6 of the best AIs.

In the previous game (just like earier games) it was a race to grab the best planets and galactic resources before the AIs. I kept taxes low to keep my morale at 100% for maximum population growth, while I grew my morale and economics. I funded my colonization phase (lasting ~1.5 years) with money anomalies and tech trading which also allowed me to keep the tech lead. Then I switched to researching weapons, advanced hulls, and logistics. Then started building a military, while a researched the planetary invasion branch. Then I started building troop transports and when complete went to war with my nearest weak AI player. I did this repeatedly with each AI, most wars lasting only about a month.

In my currently game the colonization rush ended quickly with so few habitable planets (except for the extreme planets). Without tech trading, the Ultimate AIs were able to grab the extreme colonization techs before I. Also, without tech trading and without 2500BC money anomalies, it was much more difficult to get my economy in the black with maximum production and espionage spending. Also, since the AIs in DA 1.6 are much better at developing their planets, I was far behind the AIs in research and in building a military. In order to keep them from declaring war on me I bribed them to war with each other. I used economic/research treaties and money to bribe the Drengin and Korath to declare war on the Altarians, forcing the Drath and Torians to come to their aid (the Thalans remained neutral). This game is playing much differently than my past games with me on the defensive! I picked first strike as my super ability but I'm basically playing the role of the Drath until I'm ready to go on the offensive with fast high attack fleets combined with Eyes of the Universe. Sadly, I don't see the Drath making this use of their super ability and they are not spending enough on research.

Actually, the lack of territory bothered me as well, and I found an easy fix.

I reduced everyone's Range value by -100%. It seems to work okay, giving about a sector and a half range from your planets. It also makes Range items on your starships more important, and the idea of building bases to leap into battle. On the smaller maps you only get neighbours harassing you, and on the big map, everyone seems to last much longer, as they are more isolated from each other. I even managed to research some hazardous planet technologies to use before an AI could get the planets in my area.

Joey.

As you can probably guess from my ranking, I've found gaming the game for points to be entertaining. The whole "I've won the game, but is Y worth more points than X?" thing can keep you busy for quite some time. Mostly because it forces you to really learn every part of the game and use it for maximum advantage.

Personally I don't think you will find fun with this game anymore until the next expansion or a big update . Ive tried all the above suggestions but I have stopped playing . It's a fun game for a good long time though . I'll play a couple of games when ever they have new updates and i'll buy an expansion the next time they have one also , but I went back to EVE online for entertaining myself in-between updates for Gal Civ.

"This is the reason why i'm waiting for the map editor"

It's actually not that difficult to create maps without an editor. It just takes Notepad and some patience.

Pretend you're a race of interplanetary cavemen, making thinking buildings

I think they ruined the game. They nerfed the speed. You cant save more than 20,000bc you get big penality. How can u buy a ship that costs 80,000bc if u can't get over 20,000. Moral is horrible, no sence of getting the resource there is some kind of cap, also which makes farm usless. Should of left the game alone. Just fix the bugs but no they had to screw the whole game up. So many other things too.

Everything that made this game great they crushed, ruined or f'ed up. but yet still can not complete a game on gigantic maps cause it still crashes.

Have you ever considered that it isnt the game, its your strategy.

They nerfed the speed because the AI can't deal with fast ships. You could fly right past its patrols because the AI does not research sensors. This was due to the perform hit of the AI studying more of the map, for the same reason sensors are capped at 15 radius. Try medium rather than gigantic maps.


In my last game I had a net income per turn of >170,000BC at one point (until maintenance costs on my growing fleet brought it down) without an economic penalty. You just need to spend it so you don't carry a balance larger than 20,000BC to the next turn. I did this each turn except once when my 4yr old daughter hit the Enter key at the start of one of my turns; my economy took a big hit that turn!
Rather than buy a ship outright, try buying a partially completed ship.

How is it my strategy if I never lost a game and I play on suicidal.

play on medium map I guess i'll just cut my lefyt arm off too

Where I can see where the OP is coming from games like these and their "TECH TREES" that are LINEAR and the same structure everytime get boring. Now, if anyone has played the new CIV IV you would have found they changed this tech tree linarity by allowing you to advance beyond having to do everything in a specific order. What these types of games tech trees need is breakthru teching at various random times in the game. Yeah it can give someone an advantage, but, that's the fun and challenge of breakthru teching. It could be an "option" for those that just can't stand for someone to get an advantage on them without linear grinding. I get tired of linear teching up myself. It's always the same tech tree with the same old techs and in the same old order every game. Sure, you can change which techs you pick first, but, they are always the same techs on that same tech chart in the same place. Plus once you figure out a winning tech strategy it's pretty hard to change. So, I propose many different tech trees for these games like say 50 different ones and the order is different nearly every game. At least 50 games for sure. If these could be made random and cost various different costs and add breakthru techs as well games like these could last forever.

The original MOO did something nice with the tech tree. Not everything was available to all players and you never knew which ones would be available to you.

For instance:
You research the current planetary development tech. On the next level there are three techs:
Markets
Factory
Research Labs

Only one show up as available for research. If you race is "creative" then two are available. It effectively gives you a different tech tree every time. Some techs are never available in any given game.

Bored, take a look at Galciv library!

A stupid thing I made:

Frogboy: As we look at brand new stuff-

Citizens: Blah!

Kryo: Hey, this is new!

WheelofFire: You are all Fraktards!

GeneralEtrius: You are all cool! (Seriously!)

Anyway, I once played Master of Orion, but Galciv 1 and 2 rock!

Power to Galciv

Etrius

(I don't know why I wrote that)

I like Alpha Centauri's teching up much better. You pick a "catagory" not an actual tech to spec. You might get what you want and you might have to tech it several times to get it. Blind teching is the most fun and Alpha Centauri gives the players the "option" to use blind teching or specific teching. I prefer to play blind teching myself. If I recall Master of Orion II had some simularities to blind teching as well. Think I'll go play some Alpha Centauri now.