Help! I suck! -and also, a Cutscene problem

The start is the most important thing... so do this at the start: spend rating to 100%, military to 80-100% (leftover for science), pump out colony-ships!

Do not colonize planets with a PQ less that 14 or 15...

Not quite detailed, but that's the most important and most difference making points...

For the cutscene issues, I have no clue...

How about research wise? Do you go for a balance, or what? Cuz I hate trading with the damn stingy AI. I'm more of a "Hacker's Manifesto" guy than a "Greed is good" guy . INFORMATION FOR EVERYONE!

*ahem*

Anyways, I tend to lose in the long run because 1: People are stingy bastards -can I say that on this board?- and 2: Nobody loves me. Can you say 'battleship barrage'?

Oh and btw, if I am not making any social items -buildings, in other words,- then MUST I lower social spending to zero, or will the money devoted to that naturally be rerouted to other places?

I mostly reasearch, what I can need best at the moment. In wartimes these are waepons, when I have excess money then facilities, when I lack morale morale improvements, when I lack money economy enhancements etc... Not to trade with the AI is not a good idea... ever seen the endscreen? Most AI's have only around 1/2 of their techs researched themselves, rest is traded... If you dont trade, you cannot expect to keep their pace. To get friends you shall send as many freighters as possible to the guy you want as friend... this still only works if his alignment is close to yours and it works better with the good guys, if you'r good aswell...

You must devote the social spending to 0 if you don't build social buildings! At least that was case in 1.03... haven't followed if that was changed, since I never selct the "nothing" item but simply stop or slow down the building of the current item...
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Oh and I don't suppose theres a mod or something that makes every X on the map -each representing one resource that you have discovered- a neon pink dot, so that its not completely impossible to notice them on the minimap when playing on a huge/large map?

Don't know if there is such a mod but try using F9 tactical map.

Well, I'm still trying, but the AI still outpaces me in every way. I am maddened by its psychic resource finding ability -the first sign that I get that a resource is even THERE is when I see alien constructors passing by, and they have a knack for stealing the ones that I DO find on my own,- and just plain infuriated by its colonization strategy, which appears to be to rush build a colony ship as soon as I click on a planet to go to, then get there before me, thus 'wasting' one of my colony ships. -and yes, I know they can't buy ships, stfu .-

Hell, just last game I cursed so hard at my monitor that my computer caught fire. It took firefighters from six counties to settle the blaze, and my vast hentai collection went up in smoke :*(.

DAMN YOU GALCIV AI! YOU HAVE MY DIGNITY AND YOU HAVE MY PR0N! BUT I'LL NEVER GIVE YOU MY STARBASES!

FREEDOM!

Success!

Sorta.

I went through this whole mess of making a trade empire, and I was actually working my way toward victory.

Then it happened.

My only neighbor -it had to do with the placement of the star clusters... long story...-, whom I had been allies with from the very start of the game, suddenly declared war on me, despite the fact that I kissed his alien ass so often that I needed skin grafts for my face when he tore me away.

I had JUST gotten battleship tech, while he had had it for a while -but was unwilling to trade it for ANYTHING, the bastard >_<.

Needless to say, I went down with barely a fight. Battle cruisers simply cannot take on battleships ;.

Looks like you are having fun, Seph.

Good to keep an eye on the military graph in the right side of your screen. Likely that your neighbour decided that you are easy meat after building a couple of battleships. The difference in military rating between the two of you must be rather big for him to attack you in this manner.

What is a cut-scene? Is it when you get that BUGS are on the planet message, or when you get the spy info thing?

Its a little ingame video that plays along with music when you, say, conquer a planet, or whatever.

On the next episode of Galactic Civilizations, the Drengin and Yor join forces to put a stop to Sephlock and his Terran Alliance.

-Me, at the start of the game-
"Well hey guys hows it goin? Lets have a barbecue he he he! Nothin bads gonna happen today!"

Yor: "Well you're right human. Nothing bads gonna happen today- right Drengin?"

Drengin: "Well yeah, cuz I'm 'good' haha! Peace bro! Hahahaha"

Yor: "Hahahaha"

Dregin: "Hahahahahaha!"


-midgame-
Minor race A: "Whats going on?"

Me *muttering, intoxicated with power*: "Hahaha they are very weak, I will destroy them all with my.... powerful trade, hahaha, and my super powerful econ."

Minor race B: "Oh no whats that? Oh no its this guy and hes gonna kill us all!"

Me: "Hahahaha zapzapzapzapzapzapzap!"

Minor races: "Ahhh!" "We need help!"

Major races (my 'allies' included): "Hey whats going on over here?"

Minor races: "Ahh, they're blowing up our cities! We need to go to someplace thats completely desolate, and that would never be in real life at all, and huge, and its a bajillion miles wide, and its nowhere to be found in space, but its right over there." -the empty space seperating me from all the resources-

-My most of my ships get blown up, the rest start to run away-
Them: "Oh no, we need to follow him!"

-more carnage ensues-

Them: "Ah, we fought. Now we will show you, who is the most powerful!"

Me: "Oh yeah, we're the most powerful, because we are very strong!"

Me: "Oh yeah well, we're very strong too, hahaha, isn't that right Advisor?"

My advisor: "Yeah, we're very strong, ha we're very strong ha, you can't defeat us because we're strong and we're- our fleets number over one million."

Them: "Oh yeah, well OUR fleets number over TWO million. And we have the power to make BATTLESHIPS! HYAHH!"

Me and my advisor: "Oh my god a battleship!"

Them, scoffing: "What are you talking about? Battleships are nothing!"

Me: "Yeah, he makes battleships, but I can't do anything cuz I'm just a lousy human. Whos losing. *grumbles, then quits*"
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For the cutscene problem, try downloading and running this patch for your MP3 codecs.

http://www.stardock.com/files/ms_mp3codec.exe

Also, WinDVD has been known to take over the bink file associations, which you should be able to fix by downloading and installing rad game tools from

http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

Also make sure that your sound card is listed as the default sound device.

Uhmm Seph email me [email protected] and i'll send you the latest version of the strategy guide. It's not complete yet but almost. It has alot of stuff that should help. Also read the updated manual (look at the main galciv web page) there are lots of tips in there.

I had those same cut scene problems until I bought a new video card (old one was 3dfx Voodoo3 16 MB...new one is ATI Raden 9200 128MB). That solved my problem with the cut scenes.

Elf: Thank you, I appreciate it greatly.

Rob: Likewise, thanks.

Bruin: Uhm. thanks, but ... no thanks . I did kinda figure that would solve my problem, but buying a new video card to fix a bug that may or may not be fixable by other means is just kinda... .

LOL, I didn't buy the card for the cutscenes LOL

I needed the new card to play Rise of Nations and it just happened to help out the cutscenes in GalCiv.

Sephlock: If you're not having the problems that Cari mentioned than it could be just about anything running in the background sucking up too much CPU time... Just the other day I got sick of my bink video sound skipping and poked around, only to find that my problem was a module in my customized shell was set to poll for changes too often. One semicolon in the config file later, and bink videos are silky smooth once again.

Poked around where? BE SPECIFIC! AHHH! !

Gahhh tell me where you poked around! I MUST KNOW!