General Tips for a Newbie

Hello there...

1) There is a good guide ( by Draginol?) online here somewhere that gives you good tips for the first few moves - good place to start
2) Depends on your cash situation. If you have some spare, DA and TA are even better
3) Not sure what you mean - you choose which retch to research in the tech screen, and you can fliop from 1 branch to anotyer at any time
Have fun!
Cheers

1) Troll the forums. There are tons of posts and the tips for beginners are so numerous you might be better off asking specific questions about economy or warfare.

2) I think DA is an absolute must to play GalCivII. They fixed (and added) so many things. I can't ever see myself going back to before TA, but I don't see it as a necessity if $$ is an issue.

3) Meaning you want the ai to choose the research for you? Or do you want to start with everything already researched? Either of those I would say you really don't want to play this game that way. Research is a huge part of what makes GalCiv interesting and if you do get TA, it fundamentally changes the game.

Perhaps you are saying you want to research one full branch and don't want to have to choose the same branch every time one finishes . . . ? If so, I don't think you can, but I've never tried. I wouldn't recommend attempting to play the game this way. Perhaps on the easiest level(s) it may work, but I don't think it would work on Normal or above.

For your first couple or so games, play at a low difficulty to get a feel for the game's mechanics at your own pace.

1. Expand. Most of your income will come from taxes, and to get a lot of taxes, you need a lot of people. Send your colony ship to a nearby planet, and start making another one at your Starport. More planets mean more people, but also mean higher maintenance costs. Try to grab two or three other planets at the very beginning, and then stop making colony ships. This should be enough to get a feel for things.

2. In the beginning, since you have very few people, you will make very little money. However, your initial funds are there to make up for the inevitable loss of money at the start. Open your Domestic panel, and set the Production slider to 100%. Keep the tax rate low at the beginning to encourage population growth. Watch as your population rises and your income improves. Eventually, you will start making consistent profit.

Adjust the sliders according to the situation, but you should aim to be able to keep the Production slider at 100% more or less throughout the entire game. Once you have a decent population, gradually raise the Tax rate slider. Doing so will decrease your Approval rating, but as long as your Approval is higher than 50%, your population will grow. Higher approval means faster growth, of course.

3. Planetary improvements (i.e. buildings) increase your industry and research output.

Industry (also called Manufacturing) is divided into Military and Social production. Military production affects the rate of ship building, while Social production determines how fast you can build improvements on your planets.

Research output determines how fast you research new techs.

Obviously, more military and research production is better, right? However, most improvements have a maintenance cost. If you have too many, you might not be able to afford the maintenance. If you have too little, your industry and research will be retarded. Build a few improvements at first, and wait for your population to grow before building more. You might have a nice planet with a very high Planet Quality (i.e. a lot of tiles to build on), but attempting to fill all the tiles at the beginning is usually very bad for your economy.

Buy your first few Factories; this will drastically reduce the time it takes for you to build other improvements.




The expansions drastically improve the game in almost every imaginable way: AI, gameplay, graphics quality, memory efficiency, etc. After playing Twilight of the Arnor, I cannot, in any way, imagine playing without it. This latest expansion gives every race unique technologies, which drastically change your strategies for playing with each. The way you play as the Torians will differ A LOT from how you play as the Terrans.

Bear in mind that you need the Dark Avatar expansion before installing Twilight of the Arnor.




Not sure what you mean here. If you're asking if you can queue research so that you can research Shields I, II, III and IV one after the other automatically, no you can't. And typically, you wouldn't want to either. A lot of the tech paths are LONG.

If you have any other questions, ASK! This community is very helpful.

At first, THANKS to you all !

1) I think the Tips will help.

2) I heared that a german version of the two Add-Ons is coming in this month. I think I'll wait until they are released. ( Does anybody know a fix date ) ?

3) I meant what Zettai Baka said. I thought that I could click on Shields III in the research tree and the game automatically researches Shields I+II.

Thanks to you all again !

I don't know a date, but you might want to take a look at this thread.

1) Buy the colony ships with the initial 5000BCs upfront. Crank out research to 60%. Rush grab everything you can before Ais. Settle out quietly for a few months while focusing on being ahead in techs. Stage wars or deal away fast and solid for higher influence numbers -- DL/DA.
As for TA; watch the economy, find the advantages (yours or theirs, btw) in any of the 12 different tech-trees. Exploit whichever suits your choice of strategy for the quickest winning conditions. Any delay would possibly mean a HUGE fight till the end or total defeat. They'll rip you apart if you're too far behind or become a threat to their aims.

2) Patience... make it worth the investments. TA is simply an entirely more complex challenge. DL is not that much of a piece-of-cake either; a fairly good introduction to the more powerful DA.

3) Nope... one by one. Choose wisely. Attack or Defend. Repeat; **DO NOT** fall behind.

Get some mods from the library. Enhancing the experience waaaaayyyy over default values (in mines, anyway).
Enjoy.