Finally purchased GalCiv2

Published on March 27, 2006 By camomilk In Turn-Based

I've been following Galactic Civilizations 2 for close to 2 months now, and I finally purchased it last week.

There were 4 reasons why I didn’t buy it when it came out:

I didn’t want it to get in the way of homework
I had other games I was still playing (Civilization 4 and Beyond Good and Evil)
I’m not exactly rolling in money
No multiplayer

Last week was Spring Break, which takes care of reason #1. I also came into some money, which takes care of reason #3. Reason #2 was also taken care of, let me explain:

My video card fan has been making a rattling noise ever since I upgraded my power supply 3 weeks ago. On Monday my computer black screened when I attempted to play a 3D game, and I found that the fan had given out completely. I also noticed that one of the power connector pins on the video card was burnt completely black. I went to a local computer store and picked up a replacement fan. When I installed it I switched the power connector cords between the video card and the CDROM drive, just to see if anything new would happen. Now my video card works fine, but my CDROM drive isn’t recognized, so I cannot play any game that requires a CD. I finished Beyond Good and Evil (another game with blessedly no copy protection), and was still hungering for a good game, so I bought Galactic Civilizations 2 from Stardock Central and have been playing that.

So far I must say that I’m happy with the purchase and am having a good time with the game.

Comments

sushiK

on Mar 27, 2006

I got it last week and have been very satisfied with it.
It has the feel of a game that one could play for years still enjoying each game.

I still can not figure what planet population does or what food does.
I don't even make farms, should I?

Malekish

on Mar 27, 2006

Farms determine how many people are on a planet, by default a planet can produce enough food to support 5b people (10b on your starting planet). More people = more taxes = more income but more people also = less morale.

You have to play a balancing act, you want more people (especially with 1.1 changes!!) but too many will make it hard to keep them happy.

Note about 1.1 changes, when a population is very low the population will increase very slowly, this is important if you're cranking out troop transport ships, you'll quickly drain your population down and have a hard time replacing it. It also means a "failed" invasion will be more devistating, the target planet will lose a lot of population and have to regrow them.

Question

on Mar 27, 2006

planet population increases you Tax base, more ppl=more taxes, but it is not linear(10 billion ppl is only like 1.8 times the tax of 5 bil)

farms increase the population cap on your planets. 1 ton/week of food = 1 bil population civ capitol pruduced 10t food, colony capitol pruduces 5 ton/week. if you build farms you get more ppl, more ppl pay more taxes, however more ppl are harder to keep happy, so you have to build recreation facilities.

I use high tax rates, so on a 5 bill pop planet I need 2 recreation facilities, but if I build a farm(+5 bil ppl) I need another 2 rec facilities, so the inrease in population requires 3 tiles, I only build farms on planets with 14+ tiles, or planets with recreation bonuses.

also, later in the game when my rec centers have been upgraded to 2x the bonuses I often add a farm to my old 5 bil pop planets.

Hope that answers your questions (oh ya, I'm still playing version 1, so things may change a bit soon)

sushiK

on Mar 27, 2006

I've played the game on Normal and have still not found Farms to be useful.
I leave the planets at the default +5 bil and then I dont need a ton of Rec failitie which mean more facorties or even Markets

sushiK

on Mar 27, 2006

If having a higher population meant getting more resource squares to use then I would understand, but having a higher pop seems like mork work since you have to build more rec facilities to happy them

sushiK

on Mar 27, 2006

I only build farms on planets with 14+ tiles, or planets with recreation bonuses.

Good point with this though

camomilk

on Mar 27, 2006

I'm on mission 3 of the campaign, and farms seem to be useful for planet specialization.

I have 3 planets, a manufacturing planet, a research planet, and an economic planet. On my economic planet I built 2 farms ( on tiles with %100 and %300 bonuses for food ) and 4 trade centers, and from that revenue I am able to keep my industrial slider at %100 of tax revenue and still turn a profit.

DrAtomic1

on Mar 27, 2006

The bigger the population the bigger your income.... Soooo farms are good....

Just get as many morale boosts as you can and you'll be fine.... In my current game I have a 37 billion pop planet @ 100% happiness with only 5 Zero G centers (a lvl 26 planet). As a rule of thumb I use one farm, two morale centers (without boosts, a few boosts and one is enough).

Also having an one farm minimum per planet grants me with excellent defense through numbers when my planets are attacked and I can easily chain produce Troopships (current endgame design troopship carries 3000 @ speed 26) allowing for wiping those pesky bigmouthed computer players with easy.... They declare war on me? Fine... I move my fleets in to wipe their fleets and planets from defenses and then grab 5 - 15 planets a turn... Have them ready to pay up bigtime in a handfull of turns for declaring war on me... Defense... bugger it... Let numbers do their work, the game has me as Evil anyway....

PrimaryUser

on Mar 27, 2006

I try to follow camomilk's approach suggested above -- use a planet specialization strategy, with one planet (preferably a high-class planet with at least 15 tiles) being your economic capital. You can have a technological capital and a manufacturing capital on other planets as well. Later in the game you can add a political capital.

Planet specialization is similar to city specialization in Civilization IV. I've found it to be a good approach over the long haul.

Captain Rocky

on Mar 27, 2006

To Whom It May Concern:

My Galactic Civilizations II Saved Games Won’t Load! This is the 2nd time that I started a bran new game and it won’t allow me to reload the saved game once I turn my computer off and then reboot the computer again the next day that I want to play. However, while the computer is on (the same day) I can reload any of the previous saved games. I just purchased this game about a week ago and the campaign that I played did NOT have a problem with reloading the next day any saved game. However, once I started playing the stand alone scenario the problem show itself. This is very frustrating, especially once you start a gigantic galaxy and have several hours wrapped into a game. I figured, well ok, I won’t play on the gigantic setting. So I played again on the large setting and bang the same thing happened. I am using the new version downloaded from the web site.

I hope you can help me fix this problem. I truly would like to be able to reload my saved games. I am using a Dell Laptop that we just purchased a couple of months ago. Again, it worked fine for the Campaign but for normal games it won’t load.

Please help me solve this problem.

DrAtomic1

on Mar 27, 2006

@Captain Rocky
1. Be sure to run the updated version (ie download the patch).
2. Safe the game manually (from options menu).
3. Try loading the previous savegame.
4. Test loading a game (simulating your nextday sequence).
5. Check your puter against virusses (http://housecall.trendmicro.com)
6. Check your puter against spyware (http://www.spybot.info)
7. If all fails email your savegame to support.

Marcathonas

on Mar 27, 2006

And for farms, never forget that more people=more soldiers. Without farms all your planets are sitting ducks

Alfonse

on Mar 27, 2006

Without farms all your planets are sitting ducks

Shoot down troop transports before they reach your planets, then.

I've only ever been invaded once, and that's because it was a distant corner of the map, and I had no idea that the enemy I had just attacked had a troop ship nearby. I survived, but barely.

I don't agree with the idea of making planetary invasions harder. They're already barely worthwhile; it's usually more efficient to nuke their military ships and conquer them with influence. Especially if they have multiple planets in the same system.

However, I must say that the best part about being neutral is being able to use gas/mass drivers on invasions with few consequences.

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