LibriumArcana.Games

Post here what you do to win in this game! List details like size of galaxy, difficulty and number of opponents etc.

I wanted to ask a question for those who have played it: do Influence starbases built around your planets help with morale/approval or what not? I was planning on building a few of them around my planets and naming them Disneyworld, Partytown, or various other names.

Because I don't really build influence starbases. I always turn off that victory condition.

BTW, version 1.1 is out.

Influence is not really dependant on the location of the starbase, meaning that you can slap them up deep inside your territory and it doesn't really matter. Unless there's been a big change in the latest patch, Influence is like water coming from a faucet. It flows everywhere, starting from your homeworld. The more you have, the better you are.

Military bases, however, are critical to place in strategic locations to aid in ship movement, defense, and so on.

Trade bases must be put near major trade lanes. The more bases you have along the lanes, the better.

I like influence victory. You don't have to crush everyone or ally with everyone, you just have to have a Brisbyland and McWuncler's in every major planet.

Even without the victory condition, influence is pretty bad-ass, as you can culturally conquer enemy worlds through influence.

I thought that Influence starbases have to have the planets they affect inside their radius. Which makes sense. Otherwise Influence is way too overpowered.

I believe this is in the v 1.1 patch, at least. Though I can't recall anything specifically mentioning it.

The reason why I ask about Influence base placement is that I read somewhere that it counters enemy empire's influence affecting your planets. It doesn't raise your own approval or morale per se, but counters a rival's higher influence effect on your planets. This can prevent rebellions.

EDIT: Also, Influence is tied into your population levels I believe. The more people you have the greater your potential influence. It's similar to tax, you get more money if you have more people (but you have to have entertainment centres and so on to counter the approval decline).

Well, the easiest test I can think of is to put an influence starbase next to several enemy planets that have low approval ratings. If those planets go down, then you'll know what's up. Also, keep an eye on the influence overlay on the minimap, to give you an idea of how influence is shaping up.

So influences acts like culture in Civ?

frigidmagi wrote:So influences acts like culture in Civ?

Yep. Worlds will even give up and join you if you overpower them enough.

Sadly, no Elvis-Bombs.

Gal Civ offers such a variety of game styles, why constrain yourself to one?

My preference is that regardless of what method of victory I choose, in a straight scenario I build infastructure, infastructure, infastructure. Get that tech base up, get the superior production and research facilities, and be ready to go all US 1941 on anybody who declares war on me. Oftentimes I won't have the most powerful fleet around for extended periods in the game, but once I go to war, I usually do so with the biggest and most powerful vessels, on a crash building program.

Technical question now that I got the game.

How should I start off? at what settings?

Really... it's completely up to you. What you find useful, or necessary to your strategy.

Here's what I run with: I play human, Large galaxy (not too big, not too small), 7 opponents (I get rid of the insects and the Korx), anomalies, stars and planets are set to abundant, but star spread and habitable planet occurence is set to occasional. My tech rate is set to slowest, influence victories are turned off, and no minor races/blind exploration are turned on (no minor races means you won't be bothered by those goddamn annoying one planet wonders who don't bother colonising the galaxy but DO bother grabbing resources, while blind exploration means you don't know who your neighbours are immediately upon entering a new game).

I tend to play as the Mercantilist party pretty much all the time. For abilities I choose speed and sensors, and anything left over gets put into one point spends for things like luck or courage.

At the start you have to sweat with your economy going into the red several times before you get a chance to send off freighters and make money. I sometimes ctrl-n to generate a Earth with some decent production tiles. Buy the first factory, set tax rate to ~40% and spend rate to 100%, where it stays from start of game to finish. Set my survey vessel to auto-survey (A) straight away, and leave it alone. Use my colony vessel as a scout. I pick a direction that looks good - because I set abundant stars/planets but mid habitable planets, there are plenty of stars to explore but not a lot of colonisable worlds, thus I increase my odds by heading towards a cluster of stars; sometimes it pays off sometimes it doesn't - and the first planet with a PQ of 10 gets colonised. Meanwhile Earth is producing a mix of scouts and colony ships. I don't drain my population quickly. I tend to build a scout-colony-scout-colony, and I don't buy immediately but wait until I need the ship before rushing it.

I scout as early as possible. Grabbing choice resources is a necessity. If there are any near your territory get a constructor onto it ASAP. I use scouts to explore the empty sectors because it's a waste to use colony ships to scout those areas.

Colonisation:

High PQ worlds, PQ14+ get turned into Economy/farm worlds. That is, the main things you want out of these planets is a high population for tax, and to do that you need several farms and morale centres (because high population tends to get people depressed I guess), as well as markets for the economy increase. If there are any production bonuses I'll build it up, but the overall direction for these planets is to basically make them commerce planets.

Mid PQ worlds, PQ9-13, are the factory worlds. This level PQ is good for factory worlds because you can only build so many factories before the effect diminishes. These manufacturing worlds will have a starport so they'll be your centres of ship production. Having economy starbases in range with manufacturing bonuses helps increase the effect even more.

Low PQ worlds, PQ8 or below, are the research worlds. This is because research isn't dependent on population (so i hear), so there's no point in making a high PQ world an academecian's paradise. It's a waste (those worlds are, as said above, better used as the commerce centres of your empire).

The computer *WILL* colonise any worthless rock on the map, yes that means that if you don't take Mars they will. Mars is a crummy PQ 4 world that I would love to give it to those xenoc scum, but it's right next to my homeworld so it's kinda stupid to have them settle there. Fucking aliens, they think they can go wherever they want, fuck that shit.

Another thing: if a moon is orbiting a world that means you get a bonus to production. If the planet has a ring you get a bonus to research. I don't know why, it just is.

EDIT: Important, be careful of what you research. Nothing is more annoying when you're specialising your colonised planets than researching a factory upgrade. The governor automatically puts it in queu, which is slightly annoying when you don't want to upgrade immediately. Also, if you're building social projects you will burn through your treasury pretty quickly. Let the first or even second project complete before stopping projects altogether. You want to go easy in the early game with building infrastructure because you can't afford everything all at once.

Hotfoot wrote:Influence is not really dependant on the location of the starbase, meaning that you can slap them up deep inside your territory and it doesn't really matter. Unless there's been a big change in the latest patch, Influence is like water coming from a faucet. It flows everywhere, starting from your homeworld. The more you have, the better you are.

Not in 1.1 atleast, clicking on my influence starbase shows an overlay that details the affect range.

Lack of money as much of it is being spent on maintenance of colonies, help?

Ace Pace wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:Influence is not really dependant on the location of the starbase, meaning that you can slap them up deep inside your territory and it doesn't really matter. Unless there's been a big change in the latest patch, Influence is like water coming from a faucet. It flows everywhere, starting from your homeworld. The more you have, the better you are.

Not in 1.1 atleast, clicking on my influence starbase shows an overlay that details the affect range.

I don't know if that's where it affects planets, or where it can increase the influence of other planets though. I'll scan the GalCiv forums eventually for an answer though.

Lack of money as much of it is being spent on maintenance of colonies, help?

You have to pace yourself. You can't just colonize twelve worlds and develop them all at once.

It was more initially, when I had three worlds and they were all struggling to expand.

Oh well, now I got the advantage, time to clean up my first game.

Hmn, stupid question, what tech tree unlocks the differant types of Starbase modules and do differant trees unlock differant modules.

If you select a tech in the tree, it will tell you what it develops, or at least it should.

Different branches open different modules.

I'm asking because while I understand roughly which, I'm not exactly clear on what modules an Influence starbase has.

Ace Pace wrote: Lack of money as much of it is being spent on maintenance of colonies, help?

I pointed this out to you: your treasury gets drained fast if you start social projects.

Here's a tidbit: if you are building *nothing* in both social and military, the production gets turned into money.

I'm asking because while I understand roughly which, I'm not exactly clear on what modules an Influence starbase has.

There are two trees: the diplomacy tree, and the morale tree. They're both 'Yellow' tech.

From memory the diplomacy modules have a bigger percentage bonus but fewer actual modules, while the entertainment modules are more numerous but have smaller effect.