Impressions, criticism and gripes about GalCiv2

from GalCiv2 Forums

First let me say that, after having played a game through from start to end, I really like it. Please take the following points as constructive criticism and not whining. However, there are some items in the game I just do not like or understand and would hope to see them corrected in a future patch possibly. They are:

1. Fleet management. Its like hell, at least for me. Most of the times, when selecting a ship or a fleet, the previous is not deselected. Thus when I move the fleet, the other fleet moves too. Worse, I do not even know sometimes which fleet was selected. Especially problematic on a gigantic map. Please make it so that selecting a ship or fleet automatically deselects the preceding. Workaround I use is to select a planet inbetween, but when I forget to do that... chaos...

2. If you want to group together several fleets (which does not work as of now, all fleets move independently) all fleets in the group move with their own speed. This leads sometimes (quite often) to transports being unprotected... Please make it so that a battlegroup (group of several fleets) can be selected to move with the speed of the slowest vessel in it. So the fleets stay together. Otherwise its one heck of micromanagement... This does not mean the fleets should also attack together, just move together.

3. To make a game more structured, it would be nice to be able to see when clicking on a goto mark (the blue circle when you told a vessel to go somewhere) which vessel or fleet it belongs to. Kind of goes with point number one.

4. I would like to see battles with space stations. When you spent hell to upgrade them, then I at least want to see when they are destroyed. Also, space stations are pretty weak regarding what goes into them when they are fully upgraded. A fleet which costs a lot less than the space station in total can easily eliminate it. Solution could be to give the space station first strike or better defenses.

5. Colony management of the AI is weak. On painful, I conquered a class 26 planet. That was well behind enemy lines. The AI built on the planet 10+ cultural centers and built some silly item on a space with 100% research bonus. I would have used that differently. Also on other planets that I conquered, the AI did not do that well of a job (however, I must say luckily, as the game overall is difficult).

6. Upgrading ships: I do not know exactly why when upgrading a design you are given several choices of the preceding ships of that class. If I upgrade a design I do not want a choice what to upgrade, I just want to be sure that my colonies built the new design. So the choices for me are really confusing.

7. There should be an option to turn off the AI making new designs. I mark them obsolete anyways. Moreover, it should be easier to save designs to use in another game (I think there is an option for that but it has not worked for me thus far).

8. I really sometimes wonder if the planetary bonuses of buildings are computed correctly. Especially for approval and morale enhancing buildings. I often build approval and morale boosting buildings and nothing whatsoever happened. On one planet, I even had a +300% bonus - it was a class 12 planet, and had a sports arena on that tile and on two other tiles, tax was at 35%, population at 17 (which gives penalties, I know) and I had a fully equipped moral resource and a few galactic boosts in addition to a race morale talent. Morale was constantly at below 40%. Other, much worse equipped planets were far better moralewise. Just one example. It would be nice to have a detailed plan how or why that is, not only the mouseover where you do not really see what goes into the bottom line as all values are aggregate.

9. Fleet gatering points (or whatever they are called, eludes me at the moment). It would be nice if one could not only set or delete them, but also move them. Like drag and drop. Or to put two of those points together, merge them. With just the two options set or delete, if you want to change something, you have to set the rally points (ah, remembered again) all over again. Tedious.

10. Moreover, when setting a rally point for a planet, I would like to see the location of the planet and that of the rally point on the map that pops up.

11. Savegames. Sometimes, when saving a game and then reloading, the other races (major and minor) had other techs than they had before the saved game. I do not know if this only applies to the techs, but I would expect the same scenario after saving a game and then reloading. This is as of now not the case.

12. New minor civs. This is really just an aesthetic point, but when a new minor civ comes into the game, I would like to see the planet they are on change in appearance. You did a great job in making the planet pictures match the planet class, but for the new minor civs, they are often on a small brown hunk of rock which is then a class 15 planet.

13. Last point is for multiplayer But on this i will not elaborate

Thanks again Stardock for making such a good game. I hope some of these points above will be looked at. At least for me, the game would then be even better.

14,631 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Is there a way to Upgrade all your ships at once if you want? Right now I have to select a ship and have it leave orbit buy itself and upgrade it that way.

The manual says you can upgrade the whole class at once if you wish, and mentions that the best way to upgrade them is while they are in orbit of planet. Can't figure any of those two out. Not that I have enough money anyway ever to actually upgrade ships.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
When you go to the shipyard screen, select an existing design (custom design). Make changes and then save. Use the same name for this newer ship and you will be given a screen to upgrade. There is a check box that says "upgrade all ships of this type".

Be VERY careful not to upgrade your ships while engaged in a war with enemies in the area. Your ships hull points (or is it hit points) are reduced to 1 while upgrading (can take a couple of turns in some cases). I had a couple of capital ships destroyed by some POS fighter this way
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah ok, is that the only time you can do that? Cause that sounds very expensive. I never have more then 2000 Anyway. LOL.

Always usually just make a whole new ship since that seems to be quicker then trying to make good money, then upgrade existing ships. + the bug where you try to Redesign an old ship, and you can't get the old parts off is annoying. I know the work around but it still a pain to find all the parts manually.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
4. I would like to see battles with space stations. When you spent hell to upgrade them, then I at least want to see when they are destroyed. Also, space stations are pretty weak regarding what goes into them when they are fully upgraded. A fleet which costs a lot less than the space station in total can easily eliminate it. Solution could be to give the space station first strike or better defenses.


Hmmm, I see space station battles all the time. It's pretty sweet seeing my fully upgraded station take out enemy fleets with it's huge laser turret. Make sure you have all the various battle view options enabled. I also think there is one that's something like "only show fleet battles when both are fleets" or something like that. Basically you want that turned off so you'll see fleet battles even when the other side is a single ship or space station. FYI that military space stations can be pretty powerful, at least that I've seen.

5. Colony management of the AI is weak. On painful, I conquered a class 26 planet. That was well behind enemy lines. The AI built on the planet 10+ cultural centers and built some silly item on a space with 100% research bonus. I would have used that differently. Also on other planets that I conquered, the AI did not do that well of a job (however, I must say luckily, as the game overall is difficult).


I'll agree here. I can't tell you how much it sucks to take over a planet that has a 300% manufacturing bonus tile that the AI put an Economic Capital on (which you can't decommision). Ouch.

7. There should be an option to turn off the AI making new designs. I mark them obsolete anyways. Moreover, it should be easier to save designs to use in another game (I think there is an option for that but it has not worked for me thus far).


Ships you design will appear in your next game *if* you play the same race. I found that out the hard way when I played as Human the first game and my ships didn't show up the next when I played a custom race. I now just play my custom race every game and it's cool seeing my custom ships show up in the tech tree along with the new feature of showing what other techs I need to build it again. After my current game is over I'm going to load up an earlier save and design a bunch more ships with the various technologies so as games go on I'll have less to design and spend more time playing. I do like to design the ships but over time it will get old.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
11. Savegames. Sometimes, when saving a game and then reloading, the other races (major and minor) had other techs than they had before the saved game. I do not know if this only applies to the techs, but I would expect the same scenario after saving a game and then reloading. This is as of now not the case.


This is a hangover from GC1 - whenever you load a saved game the AIs get an automatic "diplomatic phase" allowing them to trade anything and everything, regardless of the point within your turn that the game was saved. This was implemented to reduce the effect of various save / reload for best result exploits that were being used.

Unfortunate when you have to reload due to a CTD, but is still the simplest solution to the many possible exploits utilising save / reload.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm going to load up an earlier save and design a bunch more ships with the various technologies so as games go on I'll have less to design and spend more time playing.


I like to create base ship designs with just the eye candy but no components. I have a Star Falcon = Light Fighter, Star Hawk = Heavy Fighter, Star Eagle = Frigate, etc. with just wings and lights added. Then while playing a game, I'll load up say the Star Hawk, add weapons, defenses, an engine, and life support, then save it to say Star Hawk MkIV.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm gonna add:

1. I would LOVE to be able to upgrade ships from the ship selector or the context window. This is basically because I have to break fleets to upgrade. It makes logical sense, but if I have a lone ship, I can upgrade -> upgrade all and the fleet will upgrade along with it. However, if I don't have a lone ship, I have to break the fleet since neither the selector or the context window while in a fleet will allow for it.

2. This may or may not exist already, but JUMP GATES! For Starcraft fans, think of this as a Zergling Nydus Canal. Put the build-time high so there's no major exploit (I'm pumping out Constructors every 3 turns currently and I'm totally owning the galaxy with starbases).

3. Handicaps. I've been playing a tiny galaxy and the game's been going on for about 3 days now. If the galaxy was bigger, I wouldn't mind (and quite frankly, I haven't been aggressive 'cause I'm having so much fun), but I'd like the ability to set handicap bonuses. For example, on a tiny galaxy, the ability to set research rate +50% faster than normal across the entire galaxy. It'll make the game go much faster. Negative is good, too, if you wanna draw out your games even longer (i.e. military production halved).

Outside of that, I have absolutely no real gripes with the game. I do find weird things like taking a class 16 from the AI and finding that 10 of the 16 tiles are filled with entertainment centers (wtf), but that doesn't bother me. I love the humor, and the ship designer itself gets the GOTY award from me. haha
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
DuneTiger, I think the Technology Rate bit when setting up the galaxy will let you swing the research faster or slower.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
DuneTiger sez:
I do find weird things like taking a class 16 from the AI and finding that 10 of the 16 tiles are filled with entertainment centers (wtf), but that doesn't bother me.

My guess is that the AI turned that planet into a cash cow. The more population a planet has, the more money it generates, but the harder it is to keep the overcrowded inhabitants happy. If you turn one of your planets into a massive population centre, you'll need a lot of entertainment centers to keep morale up, but it can be worth it for the huge tax revenue.

An additional bonus: since there are so many registered voters living on that planet, you can afford to have relatively low approval ratings on all your other (less populated but more industrious) worlds and keep on winning elections with advanced governments.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
2. This may or may not exist already, but JUMP GATES! For Starcraft fans, think of this as a Zergling Nydus Canal. Put the build-time high so there's no major exploit (I'm pumping out Constructors every 3 turns currently and I'm totally owning the galaxy with starbases).


Actually, story-wise, the HyperDrive human developed is a miniature version of a jumpgate/stargate. They were able to do it because they possess the technology to provide energy for the miniature version.

With that said.. there SHOULD be a technology where the civilizations goes back to jumpgates as to provide near instantaneous transportation between colonies.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Jumpgates...if I remember correctly... were not instant transport in the fluff. It took years to travel the gates.. but it was still infinately faster than regular travel.


Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
My main concern is about technology tree : I have print the poster and wrote down some notes to know what to research to get this or that, but I find it too bad when there should be an ingame way to help find requirements for these stuff (I mean not giving a list of requirement when clicking on a given technology but a real tree function).

Except that, I must say that Stardock is really amazing as a game company (support, listening, fixes frenquency ...) : some of the biggest one should take lessons !
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
In reply to the first post:

4. Uncheck show only fleet battle.

7. It's not designing ships, these are "core ships" that you unlock.

9. Yes, it'd be nice to move them, but you can get almost the same result by making a new one then going to the goveners screen and telling all ships going to rally point x to go to rally point y.

11. When you load a game the AI checks his diplo options again and may take action.

Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Jumpgates...if I remember correctly... were not instant transport in the fluff. It took years to travel the gates.. but it was still infinately faster than regular travel.


They were also not very energy-efficient. I just figured enlarging a hyperdrive to the size of a stargate should allow near instantaneous travel or something that will give a new option to gameplay.. especially useful on large maps.

Might be abused easily as well, I suppose.