Help!

from Stardock Forums
I am having serious problems getting anywhere with this game. In the smaller galaxy sizes, things seem to go ok. It's quite easy to win with the AI on Fool. I played on this level to win by Military, Culture and Tech... so I could see how they all worked. I have even won with them set to Normal... still not very high I guess, but I haven't tried anything higher yet.

I decided to try a Huge galaxy with Normal AI and I have yet to get beyond the first stage of the game. I am always behind in Tech, in 75% of the games I start the AI out expand me by at least 2-to-1, and on top of that, they seem to build Starbases at an alarming rate. In the one game I got off to a good start in... my fringe systems started defecting to the Neutral race, due to low Morale I guess.

I tried buying colony ships to expand faster in a few games, but that sinks my economy like a rock. I always research toward Stellar catrography first. The AI seem to know where every good system is without searching, which doesn't seem right for any AI level.

I don't understand the Morale at all... the AI never seem to have problems with it, and yet my planets are rarely above 60%. If I build a Morale structure, it works for 6-12 months and then Morale falls back off. What's the point of paying the maintenance cost of these structures? I've given up building them for the most part... they aren't worth the cost or maintenance. I've seen mention here that higher population means lower Morale... not sure why that would be. How is planetary crowding defined? What's the max population for a class 20 planet and does Morale change linearly along the occupation %? Meaning, if the max population is 20 billion, and my population is 10 billion, does that make my Moral 50%?

I managed to get a fairly equal expansion in one game and started to build Constructors for a starbase. Soon after, the only race I had contact with (the Yor) declared war on me. He sent over 30 ships toward me, and I had only about four defensive ships in the entire empire. How is the AI building this quickly? I expect this kind of disparity on the extreme difficulty levels, but they are putting out colony ships, constructors AND military ships with ease! All while out researching me at the same time.

Even the Neutral races seem way too powerful. I have yet to build a Trade Good in a Huge galaxy. Most of them are built by the Neutral races. Every other race gets to the Economic and Manufacturing capitals before I do, and I put 50% of my money into research. Another example... in one game I started with a neutral race in a neighboring sector. After getting Stellar Cartography, I started working toward Transports hoping to snag his system quickly and easily. When I started that research path, he only have a single Colony Ship at the system. It took me just over three and a half years I think, to research the tech and build a Transport. During that time, the I-League was formed. I sent a scout over, and now the system has 2 Colony Ships and 10!! Defenders. Where? How? The mind boggles!

I don't know what bit of obvious knowledge I am missing, but hopefully someone can give me some ideas, because the game is anything but fun right now... it's downright annoying. Here are the settings I have been using for my Huge galaxy games:

Uncommon planets Scattered placement
I play with Universalists and Green Thumb, Creativity and Luck. That's +50 Luck total... but it never seems to do me any good. :( My starting planets are usually 20 or 21, but I rarely have a larger share of the population according to the pie chart. In fact, the Arceans ALWAYS start out bigger.

AI: Yor, Arcean, Altarian and Torian all set to Normal. I got rid of the Drengin because they always seem to spread faster than anyone... most games saw them with 40-50% of the pie chart by the end of the expansion phase. They seem to do this in smaller galaxies too. I guess they have some sort of +300% population growth advantage or something... it's definitely big.

Economy: 35% tax, default spend rate (40% I think), 25% military, 25% social, 50% research. On a few games I tried putting Military at 35% and social at 15% but this had no significant impact on my expansion rate.
167 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Mate, have you thought about joining G.R.O.S.S.?

Where do I start. Every strategy is unique to the player. Having said that, there seem to be a few flaws in your early game strategy that can only but lead to defeat. Check out the ANZAC or G.R.O.S.S. threads for some player's strategies (in amongst the crap).
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm no expert, my best win is on 'Challenging' so far, but here's a few thoughts:

1. Most people seem to think that Stellar Cartography is a waste of research points, by the time you get it your scouts should have found all the habitable planets within range of your colony ships. Personally I prefer to head straight for trade, your trade routes should be providing a large part of your income later in the game and the sooner you start the better, IMO. This is not a hard and fast rule, other people have had success with other opening research strategies.

2. Your first 1000 bc is for spending, you can do this by using it to directly buy stuff or by running on a deficit. My peronal preference, and again it's a preference not aa rule, is to set tax to 50% and spending to 100% for the first few turns (until I'm broke), setting the production sliders to 80% military, 20% research and 0% social and set Earth to producing colony ships. The first few colonies produce scouts, 2 or 3 is usually enough scouts, your survey ship will probably find more and then switch to constructors and when available defenders. Colonise as fast as you can and prefer a new system to planets in your existing system, you can come back for those later.

3. Don't build every structure on every planet, balance the benefits of the construction against the maintenance cost.

4. Morale is a function of tax and population, the higher your pop. the lower the morale, the lower your tax the higher your morale, again it's a balancing act.

5. Enemy AIs will attack you if they think you're weak, in the short term you have to ride this oy either by having a period of miltary build up yourself or simply paying off their blackmail demands. If you intend going for a peaceful win, trade with them as much as possible, they're less likely to attack a trading partner as in this game both parties benefit from trade.

6. Use the minor races to swap or sell technologies, unless you have a considerable diplomatic advantage you may think you aren't getting a good deal, but the minors aren't your competitors, apart from in the race to trade goods and wonders and you can normally get the trade goods off them later in the game, they can't win and they won't declare war on you so don't worry about letting them have technologies you wouldn't like the major races to have.

7. Read the Strategy Forum here for tips from people a lot better than me :) . Also take a look at Brad's sample games in the Library.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm, that seems like a problem. If taxes and population determine Morale, why can't I set tax rates per planet? It's a balancing act that you can't win on at least some of your planets it sounds like. :(
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Hm, I just finished a game on Huge/Tight/Common, all AIs on normal, and the game was basically in-hand for most of it except the early stages. I used Federalist, max Econ bonus, rest on Research if memory serves.


The first phase was exploration / colonization. Spending needs to go to 100%, military needs to be emphasized to crank out colony ships until the supply of unavailable "nice" planets (say, PQ15+ early) peters out. Survey ship ignored anomalies at first, to maximize speed of identifying the nature of local star clusters. Colony ships were also sent exploring, rather than waiting for the survey ship to do it all. I did *NOT* buy colony ships except the first, since I could crank 'em out fast enough without that so long as each colony ship only held ~100M or even less so decent pop was maintained.

Early research was aimed at getting the first four trade goods: Medical Theory / Basic Environmental Control for Aphrodisiacs, Industrial Theory / something (metals?) for Frictionless Clothing and Tri-Strontium Alloy, Communications Theory / Universal Translator for Diplomatic Translators.

Once colonization slowed, funding shifted to Research until all four trade goods were accessible. Then, I shifted to Social to get them built, buying outright when they got cheap enough -- I intended to recoup the cost by licensing them away. With this tactic, I got all four; the only trade good in the game that somebody beat me to was Ultra Spices.

Stellar Cartography was ignored except as something to pick up later to sell to the AIs.


As for morale... morale will naturally go towards 50 if unmolested because high morale leads to high pop growth, which leads to crowding and competition for resources and general unhappiness. By the end of the game, I *was* maintaining an average > 90%, but it was *extremely* expensive to do so, and my economy would have collapsed if I hadn't been bankrupting the Altarians through a couple of thousand BCs a turn of tribute. The morale-building structures MAY be worth building, however, if somebody's destabilizing you or the planet is otherwise in an ugly <50% mood, and even 100% propaganda (details screen) isn't enough.

With ships... perhaps the AI focused more on production enhancers than you did. Get those Manufacturing Centers, Fusion Power Plants, et al up; create as many trade routes as you can so you can fund them all; build starbases with production-enhancers in every occupied sector if you can, and get all the Economic and Military resources that you can, as well. In my case, I was determined to play as Evil, and had ample trade going on with the Drengin and Yor. Of course, in the end I betrayed them in order to prolong the game so I'd have a chance to research Final Frontier.

With research... you should be trading frequently. While AIs, even at normal, seem extremely reluctant to hand over tech that gives you a new ship class, you can frequently make deals for others... and once you buy a tech from an AI, consider selling it to the others before the AI itself does.





Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Well morale on the individual planet affects population growth too, i.e. the higher the morale, the faster your population grows, which in turn lowers morale. However unless the morale is so low on a particular planet that it causes riots, the universal morale is more important, as that determines whether you win elections or not. Ideally you should control universal morale by using taxation, wonders and trade goods and micromanage it on individual planets with morale booster buildings. I forgot to mention that planet quality also affects morale, which is why you probably see lower morale on a PQ18 planet than on a PQ24 planet.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm no schoolboy but I'm doing alright.....
dont worry about morale above 55%. Its nigh impossible to keep it over that galaxy-wide for any length of time. Actually, as long as you dont go below 50 overall you are okay.
Use transports to keep population in line, which keeps morale up. They dont cost (at least in 1.03 they dont I think) and you can always use em for invasions later.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, thanks for the suggestions so far. I am learning to micromanage the economy screen better at the beginning of the game. Operating with a negative income for several turns is definitely ok... I like that approach better than leasing ships. Using just that bit of advice I can win much easier with Normal AI on a Tiny map... at least Culturally. I still got beat to some of the Trade Goods though... seems like it is a bit harder to get them all on a Tiny map... fewer planets to build with.

The Planet Quality attribute doesn't seem to do much... I quit taking that and concentrated on Economy and Research. I'm going to play around with some other things though to see what they might do.

I going to change things a bit and try to win Militarily and forget about Trade Goods and other research. I'll try this instead of jumping back into a Huge galaxy game... shorter games are better. I haven't gotten an Allied victory yet... none of the AI have ever seemed willing ally.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
To get allies, you need them to be Close or better. Generally, this seems to mean that

- You're doing significant trade with them so that a fair part of their economy depends on you.
- Relations have been peaceful with them, at least recently, and you haven't been abusing them (e.g. destabilizing...).
- There's no serious alignment problems; if you're Demonic, the Good AIs will tend towards hostile, but the Evil AIs might send you messages about how y'all should work together to ensure that the galaxy is full of misery and suffering.


PQ will help you proportionally to the goodness of your planets, and if memory serves GalCiv rounds down, so it might not help as much early unless you get lucky PQ-wise. But a high PQ world -- I've found PQ 26 worlds occasionally, and there's an event which turns one into a PQ 35 (!!!), although I've only seen it happen right next to an alien's home system -- will gain more, and should be able to support a huge population with good morale. In addition, PQ is used for computing how much taxes, production et al you can get before penalties kick in (so you can't take a PQ15 world and turn it into a monster with, say, a half-a-dozen mining starbases in the same sector; you'll see diminishing results).