Inadequate Starting Locations

Especially with the minors collinizing everything in sight! (Barstards! Thats what I do! Pardon the French)

Ctrl-N might give you a better start (just hit it befor you press the turn button when the game starts up) . . . Anoying I know but that's just the way it is . . . location, location, location!

Oh also, all this stuff about the minors, majors and everyone but the the Humans knowing where habbitable planets are is a load of malarkie! As things are now it won't be long in reality before spectural analysis can reveal to a useful extent the terraformus of the 150 or so planets we are already aware of in our little corner of the galaxy . . . In other words just save a nice start, map the area with a few scouts and re-load . . . thats what I do, it doesn't take anymore than 5 minutes and gives you a decent start 9 times out of ten . . .

Good Luck!

[Message Edited]

Thanks Ginata. I too had a sneaky suspicion that the coumputer players know in advance where the planets are, I see them sending colony ships directly to planets in my area, and there were no scouts before them.

I will try the scouting an area then rebooting, I used to do that with Space Empires. But in that game players were deliberately placed far from each other to start the game.

I often wonder how the computer players can fill the skies with colony ships, when I have only built 1 or 2.

You can even hit Ctl-N a few turns into a game (haven't tried it further into a game than that) if you find yourself in an untenable position.

Rather than search and restart, I do this:

//------------------------------------------------------------------------
TECH 140 StellarCartography
//------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name "Stellar Cartography"
Model ""
Tech_Requirement ""
Research_Cost 1
Overview "This technology allows us to locate habitable yellow stars."
Description "Thanks to improved instrumentation, we can locate nearby stars that are likely to have habitable planets. Promising stars will show up with a lighter gray on the mini map."
Tech_Category 4
ENDTECH

- then I make Stellar Cartography my first search priority. Even with very low Research funding, it gets completed by the end of the first turn. Much more realistic since, as GeB says, we can pretty much do it with today's technology. However, Stellar Cartography doesn't seem to reveal Minor race stars, plus you'll have to zoom in to be sure of some stars.

End transmission.

~SDC~

Remember you can also Save your game on the first turn. Enable cheats and then Press Ctrl-U (reveal the map) or Ctrl-Shift-S (research all techs inc. stellar cart) and then save that to another file and then reload your original game. You can then just refer back to your saved cheat game to see the map (including resources).

I like the start of the game when you don't know what is out there - it's one of my favourite parts of 4x games. But occasionally I just feel lazy and do the above. Saves a bit of time with scouts.

Captain Bizzare's method is much more elegant though.

I've played over 40% of my games without scouting the map with ships and reloading. Just start and go. That makes it harder, but I agree in principle with Ginata, the AI's always having full spoilers is a bunch of malarkey! In Civ3, I'm completely anti-spoiler, and so are other Realms Beyond players, but we have softened our stance for GalCiv because the GC AI gets such a tremendous advantage off its full map spoilers, and it's no fun to have the whole game turn on whether or not you guessed correctly about which direction to send your first colony ships! We want strategy, not crap shoots.

It has been ages since I did not scout for the majors by checking influence in various sectors, though. If I find one on top of me, and I'm not up for the added burden, I will Ctrl-N. You can hit that at any time, so beware! Don't hit it unless you mean it! There is such a thing as having your own territory, but that is true of less than half the maps, as I average more than one Ctrl-N per game, lately. Only once did I have to do it more than a few times, but that was noteworthy. I went more than a dozen maps one time where every single map, I had a major right on top of me. On Large, no less. Perhaps you hit a bad streak like that, since I do commonly see maps where I have some breathing room.

There have been been a couple of rare/uncommon maps where, after scouting, I even went so far as to use a dummy colony ship with 1 mil colonists to temporarily extend range to reach distant planets I couldn't otherwise get to -- something you could never plan for without preknowledge of the map. The difference between having four worlds or five can be huge in some games, or between five vs eight. Then abandon the range-extender once the distant colony is grabbed.

More and more, though, as I play, I am making do without the map-n-reload crutch. Some maps, the terrain is lopsided or the habitables at the far edge of your range, and the player is TOO disadvantaged to compete fairly vs AI's with full map info, who can not only beeline to the habitables, but beeline to the one habitable that extends range to unlock several more for them, on lower fertility maps. That is like exponential advantage vs the player. And yet, playing with higher fertility, you can send colony ships to almost every star and not suffer, so that is also partially the answer. Increase the fertility, you will more often do OK without spoilers. I certainly have a higher ratio of needing spoiler information on low fertility, though even there I will sometimes force myself to make do. Forego those juicy diplo picks for +sensors or +speed, and build some scouts very early to race out ahead and see how many colony ships to send where. Toughing it out can be more fun.

Pre-scouting the map is a bit cheesy, in other words. That's no problem for a game where the AI's already have that benefit, though. What's good for their goose is good for our gander. The Metaverse openly encourages you to go back and try a map again "if you think you can do better" at it. And yet, for tournament play, that would not be kosher, unless everyone was allowed to do it. And since I have had in mind being able to compete tournament style -- since Realms Beyond has a long-running Civ3 tourney and may start one up for GalCiv -- I have tried not to lean too heavily on the map-n-reload crutch. I want to be able to play without that if and when the option is not on the table!

Spoilers make an absolutely HUGE difference in this game. So much so, spoiled vs unreloaded games belong in a separate category, in my view. At least I think of them differently in regard to my own playing.

Robert, I suggest you try Influence Scouting. Check the influence of stars/sectors near your start point. Influence will be high for the sector a major starts in, and low for an adjacent sector. Zero for sectors with no majors with two sectors. The larger the map, thus, the longer it takes to find them, but what matters most is the sectors near you. If you scout like this, you don't have to leave the planet or reload. You can at least tell how close the majors start, and whether or not they are "too close" for your liking and you want to Ctrl-N to get a different map. You may also decide they are closer than you like but you know which direction to expand first (toward them) to get your fair share of worlds. That at least takes some of the edge off their full spoiler advantage.

Oh, and one more thing. If you want a fair share of the land grab, you need to go all military out of the starting blocks, to build and send out colony ships as quickly as possible. Grab planets first, everything else second.


- Sirian

In civ3 the ai knows where the resources are, so why reload in Galciv and not civ3 when civ3 ai has a bit of the same advantage? I never revealed a map. Never. Don't go and say you don't like a cheesy thing if you do it half the time!
If you want equal sectors, use cheat keys + Ctrl-L. You'll get separate sectors.
If you want to try differently, play ai's below genius and reduce colony ship range to 0. Everyone will have to wait until they found a +1 range tech before they can expand beyond their home sector. Note that genius+ ai's have a +1range bonus which spoils it.