There are a lot of really good guides out there.

Here's one I wrote:

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/487922/galactic-civilizations-iii-walkthrough-2018

 

The devs sell the game as a package deal. Base game + Crusade + Retribution. I don't quite remember why at the moment.

I've looked at the DLC you can buy, and it seems that neither Mercs or Intrigue come with the package deal. So no mercs or black market. Arceans and Torians are also unlocked by having Crusade, so its not just Mercs.

1. I would recommend playing as the Terrans or Refuge for your first play through.
2. I generally build large fleets of tiny hulls. 40 ships are generally good, but early in the game you have to make due with what you got, which might mean fleets of 10+. I later switch to carriers, which are basically ships that launch tiny hulled ships. The tiny hulls use your best non-resource-consuming weapons. Weapon type is determined by carrier type. Assault (or default carrier modules) use missile weapons, interceptors use beam, and guardians use kinetic. Carriers automatically replace their tiny hulled ships over time. Be careful with interceptors as beam weapons are missing some non-resource-consuming components.
3. I favor warfare. Best weapons + best logistics + soldiering techs. When picking specializations, I pick range so I get the first shot advantage. I end many fights before the enemy gets to shoot back. Also research engine techs, because slow moving fleets are boring. Range is important too, as you can't fight the enemy if you can't reach them (though well placed starbases help extend your range).
4. Milestones? Well, in my most recent game I had over a half a dozen worlds before turn 41. I was in the process of nabbing more worlds and resources at the time. By turn 70-ish, I had over a dozen planets and many resources. I was doing so well that a civ declared war on me because my military was growing too big too fast. I didn't have planet invasion yet, but I had a decent research base then so I was able to nab it quickly.
5. Nothing comes to mind.
6. I like Star Control heroes and villains. And the Snathi. The Snathi are a force to be reckoned with. I don't like their penalty to hit points, and salvaged ships are often not as good as the ones you can build, but with their salvage ability you have a chance to salvage transports with legions. Not having enough legions does slow down conquering the galaxy.

All that said, I think GalCiv 2 is the better game. Unfortunately thats a game made in 2006. I wish the devs would update it. I'm playing GalCiv 3 because I played 2 until I got sick of it.

Thanks for your advice, I managed to win it with your great help. It was cheesing it a bit - people kept declaring war on me and losing, until I had two allies left and one neutral, one ally was close to winning by ascension. I wiped out the Slyne and won a diplomatic victory. Amusing as I was not diplomatic in the least.

1. How do you win a tech victory? Do you just research everything? The key targets didn't seem to be on my tech tree.
2. Do the percentages on the victory screen mean much? My tech went to 23% but seems frozen now. Military says 52% but I haven't even been at war and nobody has been defeated yet. Doesn't seem to add up?
3. What should my currency income be looking like? I have multiple trade routes and things, but it barely seems to budge. Nothing I build seems to increase it significantly faster.
4. Does having a large military provoke the AI? I thought having a big stick would intimidate them, but they seem more likely to declare war on me.
5. On the faction attributes screen, it gives various plus or minus numbers. I get the gist, but if it says that my ships are fragile, -2, what does that actually mean? How much weaker does that imply?

I actually enjoyed the game more than I expected. In some ways, I actually prefer it to Civ VI, even if the UI is less beginner friendly. It's a shame it's not on the Switch!

I'm tempted to get GCII, my machine struggles with III, and I'm wondering if the older game would go easier on it. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could cope with a game that old. I was looking at Star Control DLCs. What about the Rise of the Terrans?

 

3. Negative treasury inflicts penalties to production. Its a -50% mod to research, social production, and ship production. This is after all other calculations, so it will hit you hard. Don't let it to reach that point. Raise taxes if you must. Be careful with rush buying and stuff. You start with a lot of money, so try to hold on to it until you got a basic economy going.

An income of a few hundred per turn allows you to do some upgrading of starbases and building mines on asteroids. Later its easy to have a few thousands per turn. I usually find that this takes care of itself after your population grows and you conquer some planets.

4. I think so. I find that the AI often declares war on me if I'm not at war with someone yet still growing a large military. It seems to be a desperate attempt to take you out before you get too powerful to fight back against.

5. If you try to create your own custom civ, you can hover your cursor over the various stats to see what they do. In regards to fragile -2, its a -30% mod to hit points.

GalCiv 2 was a good game. It will play a bit different. Unfortunately, the community has moved on to GalCiv 3, so it might be difficult to get help. Maybe I'll hang around for a few weeks just in case you have questions.

Lets see what I remember about GalCiv 2. Trade was a bit more profitable. Building starbases costs a lot of constructors, 1 constructor for the starbase itself, then 1 constructor per module you wanted the starbase to have. There was no limit to how many colonies or starbases you could have (there was no admin points to restrict growth). Having a larger military did cause the AIs to not declare war on you (unless you provoke them with some obvious aggressive action). It would allow you to get away with build influence starbases near their world and culture flipping them.

You had to split your spending between military, social, and research production. This meant that 100% research would require you to have 0% social 0% military production. This production would cost you money. The max you could spend in a field was determined by the planet improvements you had. So if you built a lot of labs, you could spend a lot of money on research. Factories and labs had high maintenance costs, so be careful you don't build too many.

How do you do that? I've researched a bunch of tech, but nothing obvious is coming up to build. I have lots of tiles (I'd estimate between 30%-40% of the map is my colour at the moment), but my income is still pretty tame, about 110 gross and 30 net. I could rush a whole ship in the entire game at this rate! I haven't dedicated much in the way of planet tiles (I'm going for a tech victory so while I've built some markets, mostly I've gone for production and research), but I've maxed out my trade licences with no techs on my list to research to get more. I'm also unsure of whats happening- I researched a tech that said I'd be able to build trade stuff in starbases, promenades and such but none of my SBs come up with the option to build a trade based rings or modules?

Seems to kind of match what I'm seeing. Still, it's odd to me that they only seem to declare war on me when I outgun them. Everyone was fine, but then the Terrans warned me about the Krynn building up, and when I checked I saw that they were hostile to me, so I built up two pretty large fleets (comparative to the other factions, anyway) to be ready to defend my distant colonies on their border and shot up from being ranked dead last in military to first. I then later mistook the Krynn for Iridium Corp on the dip screen so I built up another two large fleets to defend my home territories before I realised my mistake. Then the Iconians declared war (not sure what motive they had, I was quite happy trading with them and had no fleets on their borders) but they didn't seem to have any fleets at all. Within 30 turns I had taken out 2 starbases that were being a pest for a long time, all their home colonies plus one of their furthest plus sundry SBs, so now they're down to two crappy colonies i  the middle of nowhere. I've only not taken those because it means crossing Iridium Corp territory with large fleets, and I'd rather not annoy them. Seems a strange decision, to declare war on the largest armada by far with no ships to defend yourself. 

Ah ok thanks, I get it now that numbers are necessarily scaled, but each one just corresponds to a different degree. So 1 could be 10% and 2 could be 15%, not necessarily 20%.

With regards to DLC, is it easy to disable one? I'm thinking of buying the Steam bundle since the DLC I want on Epic is about the same as the discounted bundle with everything on Steam. However, I'm not sure I'll like Intrigue, so would it be easy to disable it? I'm mostly a console player, so I don't do much PC gaming,

To use those you have to build Economic Starbases with colonies in their area of effect (Mining Starbases can't build those Economic improvements and vice versa).So if you have a trade hub that you're sending all your freighters from, build a starbase nearby and then put all the trade modules on that starbase to boost trade income from the colony. Same with research and manufacturing - there are a lot of modules available for Economic starbases that can provide big mid and late game boosts, especially where you have 2 or more colonies in the AoE of a starbase.

 

Trade needs to scale much better as the game progresses. It's OK early game to cover up some deficits as you expand and try and keep morale up, but it becomes irrelevant economically mid game (but is still useful for Diplomatic purposes).

In my current game, I'm making more money from GDP than tourism. I think I get that from high raw production.

I keep my population high with good morale. That would require cities and that requires farms that produce food. I also boost the level of cities, which increase the cap of population on that world. Irrigation, hospitals, and farms give 2 levels of population to adjacent cities. With the right techs, you can also improve the colony capital, which increases the base population.

A warning though, you can't have a population higher than the planet's PQ. Terraforming increases PQ, so thats a way to improve poor worlds.

I research government techs which often improve raw production. In retribution, I'm getting +40% raw production from government techs. You can get another +25% from having a high morale.

I often mine asteroids, which give 1 point of raw production if they are close to the worlds they supply.

I don't build a lot of factories or labs as they have a maintenance cost. I build many markets instead.

I also don't build many ships that have maintenance. So my military is all tiny ships and cargo carriers.



You can uninstall them. You should be able to open up steam, select the game, then open properties. You should see DLC as something you can manage there.

I can now build the economic rings, although money is still a bit sluggish - 300 net per turn. However, that's ten times what I was getting before, so definitely an improvement.

Is there a way of queuing research? It's a little frustrating having the screen come up every other turn asking me what to do next. I'd prefer to choose what I want on the current screen and then not be bothered for a dozen turns or whatever.

Also, is there a way of recycling units? I'm getting to the point where I think my current units will be obsolete, but I don't want to lose the resources. I could upgrade them, but that costs a couple hundred credits and so that means I can only upgrade one ship per turn and would lose all my income...I'd rather get my durantium back and build new ones, it's not slower, but I'm running out of ships to build anyway (I don't want to antagonise the Iridium with too large a fleet) and I'm finding durantium is very much a limiting factor at the moment.

What are some tips for building carriers? I'm generally building them with my largest hulls (huge now), but some say to use cargo hulls...which is better, and why? Or am I coming at it completely wrong? I have zero maintenance ships now, so maintenance isn't an issue, although build times are horrific...

As Divine Wrath pointed out, yes, you can queue research, but you have to go to the "Tree View" to do it. Bottom left button on the default research window.

As do I.

Maybe I said it wrong. No, technically the 'lost' legion gets moved to the transport when built, but if you cancel the transport before its finished, you won't get that legion back.

As for upgrading, you can over stuff a transport with legions by repeatedly upgrading it. Each time you upgrade a transport to a transport, a legion is consumed in the process, and then when the upgrading is finished, it gets added to the pool of legions the ship carries, even if that pushes it past the maximum.