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Reply to What am I doing wrong? (or How I Learned to Stop Whoring and Grow Econ) in Strategies Stardock Forums

I've found that on gigantic maps, and crippling difficulty, whoring is still enough to fund your initial econ expansion. The real secret to gigantic maps, though, is anything which has an empire-wide bonus. When you have 150 colonies, the cost of building a given improvement on each is enourmous. On the other hand, the cost of a constructor which gives a 5-10% economy-wide morale, econ, or tech bonus, amounts to only 1-2bc per planet. The upshot is that only a very few improvements s

Reply to making money as a moneylender in Strategies Stardock Forums

The money system in galciv is a very disjointed; for example, it's just about never worth your while to take cash up front instead of in several installments. If you have a mediocre diplo rating, a computer will refuse a deal where you offer 100bc for 50bc -- i.e. a net gift of 50bc On masochistic the AI rarely gives you much of any cash under any circumstances -- I think they just divide what they would normally give you by a large, constant factor (maybe 10 or 20) An

Reply to Starting Build Strategies in Strategies Stardock Forums

I've found that for the first few turns, the fastest expansion comes from setting government spending to 100%, taxes to 50%, military spending to 100%, and building only colony ships and a few scouts. This will end up producing a great many colony ships in the first few (10-20) turns. Taxes can be lowered later to encourage population growth..

Reply to political parties/abilities in Strategies Stardock Forums

Ah I was wondering about the tribute thing... at the beginning of my final war, I had 7000bc in the bank and was paying 400bc/turn in tribute, and had to hurry to conclude things before I went broke. A typical payment would be 50bc / 100 turns for the defending ships, a starbase, and 1000bc in cash In my opinion, a better way to stop abuse of this sort would be a measure of your reputation -- i.e., killing people whom you owe money makes people less willing to lend to you. Thi

Reply to political parties/abilities in Strategies Stardock Forums

ray, yes this was on a tiny map, but no I did not 'buy planets'. I bought the ships defending the planet, and some times paid 500bc for a core detonation during the assault. I also bought their remaining cash in return for $X for 100 turns, though, so often I ended up making a profit. Do you know if tribute payments stop after the payee has been killed? I assume this is the case, but my monthy tribute was rather high at the end of the game. I also had a fair bit of excess cash at th

Reply to political parties/abilities in Strategies Stardock Forums

a massive diplomatic bonus gets you money and tech of course, but what it is really fun for is conquering other civs, in a three step process: 1. move transports next to all of vicitim's planets 2. convince them to give you all their remaining star bases, war ships, tech and money in return for X credits for 100 turns, where X is usually reasonable. 3. invade all of their (now defenceless) worlds Can any other starting bonus let you do *that* ? The best part is the oth

making money as a moneylender in Strategies Stardock Forums

Or, how to make 8% interest or more on your galciv galactic bank balance one part of this game I don't understand is how the AI decides when an offer of cash payments over time is worthwhile. For example, why is it that the AI will sometimes have no preference between paying you $300 upfront, or $600 spread out over 4 years, or $700 spread out over 10 years? In an earlier game I was playing, the AI actually refused a trade where I offered $100 for their $35 -- i.e., they ref