Great come-back win

from Stardock Forums
This hasn't happened to me in other strategy games, but I had a terrific come-from-behind win last night. I was sensing a build up from the Altarians and spent lots o' time trying to build an alliance with the (gulp) Drengin. I built the alliance and summarily received a beating from the Altarians, where I began losing many planets. The Drengin came to my rescue giving me enough time to try to recover and slowly attempt to re-grow. At two later points, I again got beaten down to one square of influence, but eventually held out long enough to go for the alliance win, after I focused on my military.

It was wonderful to have three times felt like I was finished, but through perseverence, come back to win. Outstanding fun!

The only thing detracting me from euphoria was the real lengthy end game. It was pretty clear that I was going to win, with myself and the Drengin (allied) as the only other major powers and the Altarians unable to get a ship off the planet without my pinging them away. It took an awful long time to create enough Combat Transports to capture every single colony on every single planet. I truthfully just began blindly selecting any research project and did nothing on Social queues just so I could get to making enough colony transports.

Everything else, though, about this particular game was superlative!

-Anxiety
295 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
a lot of people miss that experience (even me) cause we tend to give up when it looks like the ai is gonna win.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
This game has more opportunities to sieze victory from the jaws of defeat (or defeat from the jaws of victory) than any other.

The simple loss of a Military Starbase shifts the balance of military power.
Loseing an Economic Starbase or being hit with a recession if you've got your economy stretched to the breaking point with no way to absorb it.
Bribing an enemy to attack an another enemy
Achieving a local military superiority against a generally superior foe and using it to force a peace which buys you enough time to bulk up.

Many many many ways. One of my personal favorites was sacrificing the Mighty Drengin on the Altar of the Caronids by giving the Caronids tons of tech, and ships (especially Soldier Tech to make invasions costly). By the time the Drengin managed to exterminate the Caronids, they were broken and whiny dogs eager to please their new master...
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I think one of the biggest reasons you can come back from bad situations in GalCiv is that the AIs don't attack the player irrationally like in many 4X games. So often there is some angle you can play that will let you buy enough time to get back on your feet.

For example, in many 4X games past a certain point the AIs will never make peace with you, regardless of your relative power. But in GalCiv you can get a peace treaty by having a military advantage. One way to get that advantage if you are too weak to create it yourself is to have everyone else attack your enemy and thus lowering his power indirectly.

I've often found that because I play a long-term strategy (I go for infrastructure and infra-tech over military) that buying time is the most critical component of the game, and that GalCiv is 'sane' enough to allow me to do this by using *gasp* strategy. :)
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm really seeing all of your points very clearly now. Happily enough, I also see that my (minor) gripe on the l-o-n-g endgame may have been addressed in this latest version, whereby the AI is more likely to surrender when the outcome is inevitable.

Man, I love this game...
-Anxiety
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Hi!

I had a great experience the other night. I was manipulating the Peacekeepers and the Planet of the Apes, oh... I rename all the races btw .... if you know the genre you can figure out who is who in my game... ,
to fight eachother, keeping each alive as the other gained an edge, by supplying ships or tech or money. And boom! I went to talk to the Planet of the Apes and this is what they said.

"Oh, we may not look cuddly, but we love you so much that if you were really here we'd want to snuggle!"

I laughed my Fracking Arse off! :D
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
In my last game I had two of the major races throw in the towel pretty early. I got about 10 free planets one time and the other race gave about 8 planets to a race with only 2. That last one made no sense. We were allies though and I went on to win a cultural victory???