Too Hard, Too Hard, Too Hard!!!

from Stardock Forums
I don't know maybe its just me, but every time I play Galactic Civilizations (2003 version)I can never get past like the year 2190 or somewhere around that year. The Yor Collective totally conquered me. I started the game again only on cakewalk diffuculty and set everyone to pure good and fools. But once again, i was defeated, ironically enough, by the Trojan Confederation, who was set to pure good and fools. If thier pure good, then why the hell did they attack me? I didnt even expand too far and always chose good characteristic options. Pure good my ass. Don't get me wrong, I love this game, but how does strategy first expect me to enjoy it when all that ever happens to me is that I get conquered. I mean when I start I get no good if any techs, but the AI gets like half of them, WTF. It takes me like two years to research one crappy tech, but the AI does it in like one. If Strategy First is gonna make the game super hard for gamers like myself, then they should at least add an game editor like the one on Civilization 3. Anyways I've tried almost everything, except editing my dat files (I dont want to mess anything up) I've even tried the basic walthrough in the instruction booklet. Does anyone have any cheats or help, I usually dont cheat but this game is pushing my patience, although its still awesome. Or any other form of help that would be appreciated. Comment if you like but please help me out first.
1,958 views 60 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't give up, Solider. There are lots of help available either in the form of guides or people in this forum. Do download the strat guide from the download page. That's helpful and so is the updated manual. Cheats will only be available once the free Xpack is released on 16 Sep.

Looks to me like you need to get the hang of expanding quickly. That's key to establishing a solid footing for a winning game. Set your spending and military spending to 100%. Build scouts and colony ships and make a beeline for all yellow stars within range. On Calkwalk, you should be able to get alot more planets than the AIs unless your starting position is really bad.

Don't worry about your social improvement and tech too much at first. Planets are key in this early stage of the game.

I'm sure the others in the forum will also chip it to give you more tips.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Soldier87,

As Ray mentioned, there's probably no need to cheat. If the AI is constantly attacking you, they probably see that you have a weak military. Keep an eye on the Military graph on the right side of the screen, and try to stay near the top or at least in the middle of the pack. Early on, a couple of Starfighters may be adequate to give you a "paper tiger" military that'll keep the AI from shooting at you immediately. When you get Corvettes, build some, and keep them in orbit around your planets. Again, the goal is to look stronger than you are.

After you look through the Orion Sector strategy guide (as Ray mentioned, you can get it on the Downloads page of this site), try to get your feet wet until you have a handle on the basic game concepts. Then, browse through the Strategies forum for anything that catches your eye. If you have specific questions, feel free to post them here.

Good luck, and good gaming.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Soldier87, pure good don't mean they don't attack. They will attack no matter what race they are. My advice is when you start the game, set the military graph to 100 to build colony ships. Grab as many yellow habitable stars as possible. Do not colonize planets that has planet quality lower than 14. Then set the reaserch graph to 100 get all the basic technology as fast as you can. Then set the social graph to 100 to build as many usful planet improvement as you can. Then set the graph whatever you wish to set and see what happens. This should work good in cakewalk difficulty.

As you play along, try to see what tech does what and what planet improvement does what. Galactic Civ isn't a cheap game that just build fleet and attack like most of realtime strategy games now a days. It does require some thinking.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
To start out, try playing on a tiny map with rare stars, hit Ctrl N until you have a nice yellow star near your own. Use your colony ship on that and you won't have any other star/colony ship to bother with.
Do NOT set all the ai's to the same alignment, or they'll gang up on you. Set them to fool to begin with.
Start by changing the sliders so production is set at 100%. Also change the tax rate so that morale is at 100% in the start until you start reaching negtative bc (you start with a lot of money, so you can run a deficit).
Then research things like Comm Theory Univ Translators Diplomacy (switch to republic), Trade (trade with the aliens), and then trade/exchange techs with them, research military techs and build a fleet.
When you want to fight an ai, or an ai fights you, forget their ships, target only their transports and their planet(s).
Hope that helps.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
like someone mentioned above setting the ais to the same morality is hurtful to you.

that took out one of your main advantages (that the ais kill each other too and don't just gang up on you). leave the default ai settings (good, pure good, evil, neutral, pure evil).

this way if one ai gets too powerful you can bribe another ai to attack him. fun as hell if when get the entire galaxy at war with each other while staying out of it.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
All of the tips above are good ones but I would add that starting trade with the other races can be invaluable. The extra money helps _and_ it can make the other race that much less ready to attack you.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I would mention tech whoring - selling your techs. Get in the habit of visiting each AI (especially the minor civs) every couple of tech advancements. Also try not to pick a tech to research that the AI already has, pick another one. Then, trade this tech for the one you don't have. You can get 5 techs for one tech that you have on lower difficulties. Also the payments from selling your techs allows your production to be at 100% for at least half the game, until you get the battleships.

Then, establish many trade routes with a allied civ near to you, and produce many trade starbases. This will keep your economy doing fairly well in the mid-late game.

The military thing has already been stated. An AI which has more military might that you will declare war and kick your butt. The only alternative is to have a large military and keep it growing. Corvettes work well for the game pre-battleship.

Oh and read my strategy guide :)
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh and read my strategy guide
End of quote


I did! It really gave me a lot of help early on!
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah speaking of money, how much does the ai get to begin with? I swear I was playing for like two minutes before I ran into the Yor's and they had like dozens of ships and a huge population. I tried some of the above tactics and they worked somewhat. They just delayed the inevitable, I built up my forces first, then my research, still around the year 2200, i got killed. I hope the expansion pack will add some kind of editor like the one from civilization 3. Or at least make the ai a little easier on me.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Gibbie,

Can you post a link to your strategy guide?

B
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
If the other strategy guide doesn't work, try the Cranking guide. Follow it exactly. Let me know how it works.

http://ebzeromatrix.tripod.com/GCCG/GCCG.html

B
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
You can find a link to the Orion Strategy Guide here:

http://www.angelfire.com/rings/fellowshipgalciv/strategy.htm

Gibbie was one of the authors!
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
...try the Cranking guide. Follow it exactly. Let me know how it works.
End of quote


Don't forget about the anomalous scores you might get.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Another thing that might help with your military might is parking your warships in orbit. Their attack value increases while orbiting a star, thereby increasing your military might. It's not much, but it might make the difference whether or not the AI decides to exterminate you.

~SDC~
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
I HATE THIS GAME WITH A PASSION! WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I BOUGHT THIS GAME? HOW CAN THE DESIGNERS ECPECT ME TO ENJOY THE GAME WHEN I CANT GET PAST THE YEAR 2200 (IF IM FRIKIN LUKCY!) EVEN MY SO CALLED ALLIES STAB ME IN THE BACK. I MADE ONE SO CALLED PURE GOOD GUY, HE F***ING TOOK OVER EVERYTHING AND DECLARED WAR ON THE OTHER GOOD GUYS. I CANT EVER EXPAND PAST 5 TO 6 SECTORS. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IVE TRIED EVERYTHING INCLUDING THOSE DAMN STRATEGY GUIDES. THE WORST THING IS WHEN I GET DEFEATED, IT SAYS "MAYBE IF I WENT TO GALCIV.COM I WOULDVE SUCCEEDED"! Now dont get me wrong you all were nice enough to help me and I want to thank you for trying. BUT IVE HAD ENOUGH. IF THE DESIGNERS ARE GONNA MAKE THE DAMN GAME TO FRIKIN HARD TO BEAT FOR GAMERS WHO ARE NEW TO THESE TYPES OF GAMES, THEN THEY SHOULD PUT A FRIKIN WARNING ON THE BOX INSTEAD OF ALL THE COOL PICS AND CONCEPTS. Such a waste though. This game looked really cool. It plays greatly, but i aint gonna try one more time just to get mocked by the f***ing game. Hopefully the desingers wont make the next game (if it is right they should do so) "unbeatable or unjoyable" for gamers like myself. Once again thanks for trying everybody, i appreciate it. If you ever run into the people that designed this game tell them i said high! Thanks for trying. But ive tried everything, but got defeated like 100 times. Im done!
[Message Edited]
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
Let me rebuff my remark, I'm beginning to hate it. I had to complain, sorry, i edited it once to bleep out the foul language. But the i guess i cant edit it more than once. Anyways, what i said about trying everything and still failing. The game must hate me or something. It's just not fun when i dont have some sort of hint of the chance of winning. I mean even if i make everyone fools and only one good, they still all turn against me. Nothing works so far, thats why i ask for cheats or an editor.
[Message Edited]
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
You will get your Cheat codes on 16 Sep, Soldier, once the Xpack is released.

~SDC~
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
It's not like I wanna cheat though. I hate to cheat until i beat the game at least once or twice. Then i usually cheat to try and do stuff i cant do without cheating. But i still think that cheating is low if you dont use it to test your game or see the extras that you normally cant unless you dedicate your life towards it, thats probably what itll take for me at least to even try and get halfway through Galactic Civilizations. At first the hardness was a welcome challenge, kinda like Civilization 3. But it can be too hard. Especially if your new to the type of game. But there is a very thin line between a good challenge, and absolute insanity. I'm glad this game isnt a sellout wannabe strategy game, but at this difficulty, its reminding me of X-Com UFO defense, (remember that game and its insanely hard difficulties even though it was a masterpiece kinda like GalCiv).
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Nothing wrong with using the cheat codes to learn the game, Soldier. :)

Give yourself PQ100 planets and loads of improvements and learn about combat or tons of invincible ships so that you can get the hang of researching and building without getting squashed by the AI.

~SDC~
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
Yo Soldier, send me a save game. There might be something relatively simple that you're doing wrong that I could tell you how to fix. There are a lot of little sliders and things and if one of them is in the wrong position it could really mess up your game.

[email protected]

Oh, and if you do send it, tell me in this thread. I very very rarely check that account unless someone tells me they've sent something to it.
[Message Edited]
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
Do consider sending the save Soldier so that vincible can give you specific advice.

If you are sending the save, make sure you send both the "savegamaname".sav and the savegamename subfolder in galciv/data/savegames folder.

~SDC~
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't worry, the game is not designed to be unbeatable. It is in fact very beatable. You just need to find your strategy. I lost my first game to, got my ass completely kicked. Don't lose hope.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
Aren't you SUPPOSED to get your arse kicked when you play this for the first couple times? ;)
I know I did, over and over again. Eventually, you find out what you are doing wrong and things become much easier. I kept colonizing every star I came across and didn't know why my economy sucked. :(

Don't give up hope, Soldier, you can do it. Ray is right, sending your savegame to vincible is highly recommended.

~SDC~
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Problem is a couple of times is OK, but he seems to have tried more than that.