Some questions about the early game

could use some hints

I'm enjoying the game so far, but I feel terribly overwhelmed. I've listened to all the tutorials and they make sense, but I'm still just going around, finding planets, colonizing them, and then just building a crapload of buildings on them, without really knowing what they do.

For instance, I understand what a farm does, it allows you to have more people (shouldn't that be 4 billion people, rather than 4 million?). But what does a factory do? Is that production local to your planet? Or is that production throughout your empire? Same for research? I assume that's throughout the whole empire? What does an embassy actually do? Makes other races feel more comfortable, well great, what good is that? What's the effect? Should I only build that on planets with actual contact, or on others too?

What happens when you research improved areas, do the buildings on a planet automatically upgrade? Or do you need to do so manually?

It also seems to take a LONG time before you finally get some ships built. I understand the initial turns are typically just waiting for stuff, but waiting 28 weeks for a scout seems rather excessive? I can buy one, which I've been doing, but still.
Similarly for planetary upgrades, a farm takes 30 weeks, a factory 30+ etc... Am I doing something wrong, or are the first few years just clicking "end turn" 50 times in a row?

Also, what's a good balance to build on planets? Should you immediately just chock a planet full of stuff, or go slow, and keep space open for other buildings later?

Why does my flagship not have any weapons on it? Is that because I haven't researched any yet? If so, how do I later add weapons?

It's a fun game, but ... wow. Either I've really started sucking at turnbased strategy, or this game is far more complex than some of the others I was used to

Creston
8,526 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
- Yep, billion instead of million

-factory increases production (military and social) only on that planet. Click on the planet summary to see to combined effects. Look for "industry: xx mp"

-lab: same for research (but of course all your planets' research is piled to get techs)

-embassy increases influence of that planet (the aliens being more comfortable stuff is just flavor text)

-you can turn on the auto-upgrading for planets, otherwise you have to do it manually. I think it's on by default.

-you may want to increase your spending, 28 weeks for a scout seems a little long.

-you can always demolish buildings later, so why not use a planet to its maximum as soon as possible? But that's just what I think, I might be wrong.

-the flagship seems to be unarmed and that won't change by researching weapons. You can later upgrade it like any other ship if you wish (I assume... haven't tried it yet).




Reply #2 Top
ditto ? I have a list of questions the manual & tutorials don't even address? I'm in the campaign, and not sure how to progress to the next quest, too much to type up now, maybe tomorrow??
Reply #3 Top
Also, what's a good balance to build on planets? Should you immediately just chock a planet full of stuff, or go slow, and keep space open for other buildings later?


Build it all up now, Your citizens wont give a crap about your "Save the planet program".

(Empty spaces are useless except for building)
Reply #5 Top
Aye I've played GCI for a bit and was OK. Playing this on normal I won a 3 race small map without any fighting for the first real game I played. Cultural victory...no-one conceded planets no-one fought....just trading and a few influence battles with starbases. I did better than I thought.

Long story short, I'm nearly clueless as to what I was doing.

At the end of the game I had full info on all races so I took a look around most planets were 1/2 developed...so normal was taking it easy obviously so any harder and it would have been hard.

Side note in trade talks with the other races...without any espionage you can get an idea what the other races are doing. For example in my game I didn't research any weapons...when I did trade talks I saw every race had lasers so i focused on shields. one race in particular had logistics II and lasers III so it was obvious he was building up. Apparently not for an attack though but if something went wrong in their government....never know.

Starbases I haven't figured out yet and appear to be VERY important..

I'm not new to 4x games or to GCiv....but this game is much more complicated than it appears on the surface and you can get very deep into it...isn't quite the rock-paper-scissors I find most to be. I was gald to see it was quite easy to have a non-violent game. But I sure wanted to waste that minor race on that class 17 planet...I applaud my restraint. (Having he Strongbad icon I think is what saved them )