Trying my best not to hate "civilization" games...

Well, you need to be more specific about what's going wrong in your game. What difficulty have you been playing on? What's your colonization strategy (if you have one)? What part of the game are you having difficulty with?

There are a lot of posts about how to handle playing the game already in the strategy board that might help you if you don't mind looking for them.

Anyway, the people here are usually quite friendly and helpful, so you post what you're looking for and we'll be happy to help you out.

What you are experiencing is exactly what is supposed to happen!

You are confusing frustration with the fact that the game is challenging you. I know this to be true because if it were not true then you would solve the problem by selecting an easier difficulty level.

Its ok man. Not everyone has to enjoy every game. These games are very much about patience and long term strategy. It is very much a chess match from the first round, so if you hate chess it's no wonder you hate this game.

Don't give up man. I am in the same boat as you. I find that quite regularly I lose at most Civ games (galciv, or the civilization series). I'm constantly trying new things, seeking advice from better players, trying to improve my game.

Right now I'm in my first really good Galciv game. I'm only ranked 4th overall (out of 6 civs, myself included) but I'm in really good position. I'm the number 1 military power, and number one in population, economy, and production. I'm finally in a position where I feel like my civ can really break out and make a difference, rather than just being a speed bump in front of the AI civs on their march to glory.

You should post what you think your biggest problems are in GalCiv, and I'm sure people here could help you refine your strategy.

my bigest problem with Galciv is always money. In a game like civ4 the big problem for me is always mobility.... getting my forces to where they are needed before it is too late! I do not have that problem with Galciv because i can controll where the AI will attack by building economic starbases and leaving certain planets ungarrisoned. Well that works in DL but i dunno about DA?

I always run a deficit for the entire early to late part in the game. I jack up the tax rate if I must. I start turning a profit only when the trade tech starts going around. A couple of trade route's later, things start looking up.

I also tend to get a lot of economic treaties from minor civs. I'll trade them tech for eco treaties, and that always helps a lot, plus they can only have one such treaty at a time, so that deprives everyone else like that. Add another one from a friendly major civ, and that's a lot of money flowing in.



In that kind of game (I've played 2 and 3 but not 4, but it should be similar) every city, at least anywhere near the boarders MUST have a garison large enough to hold off long enough for reinforcements to arrive from elsewhere. This is key. You also should plan where you're likely to need more troops and place them likewise, but keep garrisons anywhere just in case.

Set the difficulty level below tough.
Limit your opponents to 3-5.
Make your galaxy Medium to Large
(not Tiny, Small - its harder; not Huge, Gigantic - its long).
Set everything to Uncommon, with Loose Clusters.
Set anomalies to Abundant.
Play defensively, going for a tech victory
(but take any type that offers itself.)
Build 2-3 extra survey ships as soon as you get Sensors,
set them to Auto-Survey.
Trade with everyone you can reach.
Make little deals occasionally with all parties
(I do them by buying minor amounts of influence points.)
Use your initial money to buy maybe one extra colonist, or your first factory,
but mostly use it to cover your early deficit,
until you get your homeworld in the green.
Concentrate on developments and technologies that make money, at first.
Having enough income is EVERYTHING in this game.
Get a couple of simple warships in orbit as soon as you can make them,
but don't try to build a big fleet at first.

Use all of the above tips, plus those of others, to get a couple of wins
under your belt at a low-to-moderate difficulty. Make the AI
opponents DUMB if you have to. Then build on what you have learned
from those first couple of wins, gradually increasing difficulty.

You will probably actually increase difficulty pretty fast after the first couple of wins, then stall for awhile at Tough,Large, or Painful. You may never want to play beyond crippling, but I bet you'll get up to there, anyway.

drrider

One thing different about civ4 compared to earlier versions is that it does not favour defensive play because of collateral dammage. A large garrison in a city is irrelevant once hit by several artilery units, so your advice is only good for the pre artillery stages of the game.

After artillery comes in, i find the only effective defence is to fortify individual units scattered along the boarders. These brave units usually offer enough of a distraction to protect cities against unexpected AI attacks.

Chess sucks as far as TBS games go. It only comes with 1 map. Only has a handful of unique units. No resource collecting, and you can't build new units. Bah.

I think what the OP mentioned about "civilization" games being brain games is the crux of it. I like strategy games over action games, because I like to be constantly stretching my brain. Real-time-strategy's even better, because you're thinking on your toes and stretching your brain. Some people, action games are more their thing, because they're more into performance, or athletics, or something.

Hi!

I tell you what: after 20 years of typing and using mouse my eye-hand coordination is still at best below average. My fingers hit right keys about 90% of the time, and quite often in wrong sequence. Hence I simply suck at real-time games. I really would like to play a FPS here or there, but when it takes me 2 seconds to aim a gun and I'm dead in half a second, I really can't enjoy the experience.

So you suck at 4x games. So what! Enjoy what you don't suck at. That's the secret of happines.   

BR, Iztok

I find that people often approach this kind of game wrong. They often want to get in and just start winning against the AI on a middle level difficulty or better....This is a path to frustration. You have to build up to it.

If you actually do want to try to enjoy the game here is what I would recommend.

1) Make it your goal to get in a very easy game or two, so that you are not struggling with the interface, just the game. I typically play my first game on a new strategy game with the AI turned down to the very lowest setting and on a very small map. I am very good at this style of game and I have been playing them for twenty plus years, but I still have to learn how to control everything. I'm just looking to find out where all the knobs are at and making sure that I know how to do all the basics that I know will be necessary in a larger game. Browse through the menus and click on buttons just to see what they do. Do any crazy thing you can think of. You are not trying to win, but trying to learn the interface. IE How do I build a warship? Invade a planet? Colonize a planet? Adjust the economy? What happens with taxes at 100%? 0%? etc.

2) Now that you know the interface, it's time to learn how the AI plays. Play on the second or third smallest map (because you don't want to be in an involved game at this point) and turn the AI up from dumber than rocks to small child (only move up one or two difficulty levels). You are going to have to start to react to the AI, but you want an ineffective, slow to react AI. You find out useful things, like you absolutely must build your own ships as the stock ships are crap. This is where the fun starts....AI does X, you need to figure out some response that can effectively deal with that. You still really want the AI to be very easy to beat as you have no idea how it's going to act and you are moving into learning the AI strategies.

3) Play for challenge. Now you know the interface and the basics of how the AI will act. Find the conditions you enjoy (map size, planet density, etc.) and crank up the AI until it's a fair challenge for winning the game. It is a mind game, but it should be one that you have a decent chance of winning or losing now....And hopefully fun.

Still, given all that, it's not for everyone. You may find that you just don't like thinking through plans that may take hours to work or have an affect....Truthfully, it's not for most people in the world. I hope it is for you, as the larger the number of people who get into these games, the better the community as a whole. And for those who do like it, it's very fun!

Hi!

That reminded me on my game I posted in the AAR section: Thalans' long struggle. From it you can see what long-term planning means. To quote me from Stars! AH forum: "A patience is a virtue I've learned the hard way."   

BR, Iztok

I was always rather good at chess, but not great at it. It's not THAT complex on the board, actually, but in the abstract. It's about depth of thought, planning, patience, proactiveness, timing and, wherever you can use it, psychological warfare.



"want to smash your computer or your own face."

Well, that's masochistic. Maybe you should try micromanagement in strategy games, it gets the best out of whatever you have.



Patience comes when you know what your doing, and have some idea of when it will be done.

Hehe, I don't do very well at chess and don't enjoy it that much, but I really enjoy GC2, go figure.

I can tell you the one thing you said that tells me why you (and me) are no good at RTS.... "after 20 years"! If you want to become good at RTS, i recommend waking up one morning and be 10 years old again!! Also some people just seem to be 'gifted' players at RTS, i remember well those guys in my days of playing quake 3 online, you know the ones, they are so damb hard to kill!! I found my ways of holding my own tho once i learnt the maps.

Like I said, I'm no GalCiv pro, the game I'm currently playing is the first time I've ever done well (playing on challenging, large map, 5 civs besides myself). But if economy is your problem, here's some tips I picked up.

Don't blow your entire wad of cash at the beginning buying colony ships. Sure, you'll probably pick up the most planets the fastest, but then you have lots of colony maitenance costs, plus you'll probably be building either ships, infrastructure, or both on those planets, putting you further in the hole.

Instead, buy very little. Either 1 colony, or a factory, or maybe both, but no more.

Then there's the tax trick I read. Set your taxes so you have 100% approval. Keep it there as long as you can in the start. Your population increases much faster when you're at a high approval than when you're at 50%. Somewhere lower than 50% and you actually start losing population. So instead of spending all your money on rushing colonies or constructors, use it to grow your population in the beginning (increasing your tax base).

While you're doing this, research some financial techs. Or some happiness techs. Happiness techs will allow you to have the taxes higher while still maintaining 100% approval, and financial techs will multiply your earnings per planet when you plop down the buildings they give you.

Once your taxes have reached 0% and you can't lower them any more to maintain 100% approval, consider selling some minor techs to the other civs for as much as you can get, just so you can stay at 100% approval for just a few more turns.

At this point it's time to bring the taxes back up. Hike them up so you're sitting somewhere around 50-60% approval (50 is ok if you're still the dictator, if you've moved on to another government type I'd say 60 minimum... I've lost elections even at 60 from time to time). If you've done everything right, your increased population should put you in the green. If you're still losing money, it will probably only be a very little bit, and you may need to decrease your industrial output a little for a few months to compensate, while you continue to research financial and happiness techs.

Anyway, take all of that with a grain of salt. That's what I've been doing lately with good results, but like I said, I'm far from a pro.

I'm on 'obscene' level in DL. But even tho i am a veteran, i have to say that one thing has never changed through all the difficulty levels and versions of this game ever since i was a newbie.... that is that the economy sux! It suked in Galciv1, it suked in Galciv2 DL even more, and i hear it sucks even more in DA. It sucks on easy, it suks on fool, it sucks on maso, it suks in the rain and sunny weather, it suks in England, it suks in France, it even suks in Finland too! It suks up, it suks down, it even suks inside out! yep the galciv economy just suks lol  

Actually, I like it. It's different, and involved a different way of thinking, thus providing a different challenge. I think it boring if all strategy games do things the same. The Galciv economy is quite different, but it is entire workable, if you just forget about how it works in all the other games.

"I'm just wondering who exactly these games were targeted at. Certainly not me."

They're targeted at me and others. I really suck at FPS and frankly, just don't see the point of most of them, let alone why they are so popular.


"my bigest problem with Galciv is always money."

Taking the advice from earlier posts as read, which offer interesting insights for winning your first games, you've hit on something i hit on too.

I found Money is the main difficulty to overcome in GalCiv2 actually. You somehow need to run your economy, with little income, until the majority of your planets have > 3 billion population. Once you reach that point, you'll probably be close to, or making money and can maximize the strategy of your choice. You can make money other ways, but they are harder and more complex. Economic buildings are handy, but not absolutely necessary immediately, especially if you have taken economic/morale bonuses.

So, knowing that i've tried to get as many worlds with 3+ billion as quickly as possible. 3+billion is a rough estimate of when a planet can support itself, assuming it's not too built up. Somewhere, somehow, in many games i will hit a point where i just can't afford everything i'm trying to achieve anymore, don't have anything left to trade, the AI has no money to offer where i can trade and i get stuck. If you're playing near your limit, this should probably always happen at some point. Probably after 6 months, but less than a year. The trick is... to have your population and thereby your economy, be growing sufficently before that point that it can Quickly take over and make you profitable by suddenly screwing them for tax & lowering production total for a short time (going broke = 0% production).

In my first game this was because i had spend and built too much, so was costing myself to much, before my population could build up. It's really tempting to overdo it at the start. At lower levels there is no need to run a defecit. If you are running a loss at those levels, just stop and build an economy building until no longer losing money. At higher levels you Will need to spend more than you can earn to win and so run a defecit, but overall i know for the first 6 months / 10 planets i can't run much higher than -200 for very long and not more than -100 at the start. To achieve even that i have to sell practically everything to the AI for mostly rock bottom prices. If you run a much greater deficit (-500+) for more than a short time, you will go broke and likely worse - even lose money whilst already broke and at 0% production. This generally only happens if you have too many leases and not enough population, or have concentrated to much on the expensive industrial/research buildings and ignored the balancing enonomic ones. Knowing that i altered my strategy to initially have 100% approval at almost all times, this really boosts your population growth, even without bonuses. Obviously bonuses help, but arn't strictly necessary on Population. In the end population will Cap at probably under 20 billion (16 billion, 2 xeno farms, is a good aim point). However, population bonuses will mean your empire becomes profitable that much faster, this makes aphrodisiac something to consider buying (long term lease) as within a few turns the extra population generated will pay for the lease.

Oh i guess that Basic Factories and Basic labs are better for large planets near the start, because they cost less - they only really cost space & actual weekly expenditure. Once you're broke, they cost 0/1 maintainance only. Upgrade them later to something decent. Someone correct me if my guess is wrong.

I have NEVER had that issue, even in my first play-through of the game. Of course, I admit that I take to these games very easily. I've never played with an AI setting of less than the normal one, even for my first time, and actually found my first game boringly easy.

It all depends on how well the game is organised and backed up with a good tutorial/manual. I find most games are at least playable first up but there are generally a few things you want to know and cannot find out without help from a forum or other outside support, Galciv is one of those. A game like Civilisation 4 on the other hand, gives you such a nice manual that it leaves you wanting for nothing which is the way it should be. On the other extreme end of the scale there are games like Startrek Amada which are so hopelessly explained that you cannot even get through the tutorial and end up throwing it in the crap game pile (speaking from experience).

The documentation for GC2 seems to be okay to me. It's probably not great, but decent at least. I had some questions about the new Dark Avatar features when I first played it. I found the answers in the .pdf manual that sits in the game directory. There are no in-game tutorials for the Dark Avatar features, but they are documented in the user manual.

but would somone who is new to DA and having not played DL, be able to have all reasonable questions answered in the pdf manual?

Manual? Why would I need the manual? Seriously, I glanced through it a little, but basically, just picked up the game and played, like I always do for 4x games.