The Galactic Civilizations Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Document. Jan 11, 1995 By Mark Anderson Some editing by Brad Wardell (just an itty bitty tiny little bit). (actually, if there is something that sounds real authoritative and deals with some of the intricacies of OS/2 and GalCiv, it's Brad's fau... handiwork.) Please Feel free to contribute to this document! My internet address is: wombats@nmrfam.wisc.edu Send in all your wishlists, cheats, questions, etc.! ================================================================= Copyright and Distrubition - type Notice This document can be freely distributed as long as you give credit where credit is due. Please carry forward any attributions from work done by those mentioned in this document. The following may or may not be mentioned, but if they are, they are copyrights of the appropriate companies. I may have missed one or two. Sorry. Galactic Civilizations, Drengin, Drengin Empire, Yor, Altarians, and Torian Confederation are trademarks of Stardock Systems, Inc. SDS is the abbreviation for Stardock Systems, Inc. AIMs and AIMsBBS are trademarks of Advanced Idea Machines. OS/2, REXX, MMPM/2 and IBM are trademarks of IBM Corporation. Windows 3.1 is probably a trademark of Microsoft, Inc. Civilization, Masters of Orion are trademarks of MicroProse Software, Inc. Empire is probably a trademark of ... just guessing... New World Computing. ================================================================= This document is broken into the following areas: [1] The Game 1.1 Description 1.2 Hardware Requirements [2] Frequently Asked Questions 2.1 Questions, Answers and other tips 2.2 Where is/are the ???? 2.3 Strategies from Front 2.3.1 The John Martz Strategy 2.3.2 The Brad Wardell Stategy (Draginol) 2.3.3 List of Various Stategy Hints 2.4 Reference to Shaun Burnett's Walk-thru [3] Cheats and Other Black Holes [4] Insights into the AI of GalCiv [5] Data and Numbers (incomplete) 5.1 Technology Tree 5.2 Projects 5.2.1 The BIG List 5.2.2 Project Comparisons - level 1 5.3 Galactic Achievements 5.3.1 The Achievements and Super Projects 5.3.2 Strategies Associated with the Above (rather empty right now) 5.4 Technology and Ships [6] Wishlist [7] Where can I get GC? [8] Where do I report problems? Get help? Praise the glorious designers of this truly astounding game? Get the updates and bugfixes? **************************************************************** THE GAME Chapter 1.1 GalCiv is an interstellar strategy game that puts humanity in the position of getting a fresh start with chance to re-direct the path of humanity for good, evil or shades thereof. The premise of the game has an interstellar colony ship from Earth jumping to some other galaxy via a freak wormhole. This forms the core of humanity. The new galaxy is already inhabited by one to five (player selectable) other space-faring races. The "personalities" of the races can be determined randomly or they can be chosen by the player, but the range of variation is less if this is done. The human player (the actual "alien" in this setting) directs the research paths of humanity, the planetary construction and the ship building endeavors of the planets. More importantly, various "events" occur that require the player to make distinct choices between good, evil or neutral. These choices can affect planetary production or budget levels, but they also affect how the various alien races interact with the human player. The game is allows the player to win by either the classic, total conquest mode or a more cooperative mode of allying with all of the factions of the galaxy. One of the greatest appeals that the game has over other strategy games is that the multi-threaded, multi-tasking architecture of OS2 permits the use of real (whatever that means :) AI. In play terms, it means that your opponents actually use better strategy at the harder play levels, rather than relying on various "cheats" to give them enough advantages to make the game a challenge. The level of "smartness" is adjustable for each race in the game and varies from "brain-dead" to "incredible" in 6 steps. The smartness levels less than "genius" are actually handicapped. Brad Wardell's discussion of this feature is detailed below. The game features economic and population growth models that take into account the level of taxation and the level of happiness of the people. The level of happiness is related to the level of social amenities on the planet as well as the degree of freedom that is availible within the type of government. The game designers admit to being influenced by "supply side" economics, so your strategies in the game should take this into account. The more democratic forms of government (Star Democracy and Star Federation) have a senate that has elections every decade. Your level of popularity determines your level of support in the senate. The senate has the power to reject declarations of war _or_ changes of governmental form. They actually vote on these decisions and are not a rubber stamp for or against your decisions. Hardware Requirements Chapter 1.2 SDS recommends at least a .... (i will look this up), about 14 MB hard disk free (plus the swap space requirement of about 8 MB, but remember that this is a SYSTEM swap space, not just for GalCiv), 8 MB of RAM and all the speed you can get. (not that you need the speed to run GalCiv, it's just that it's more interesting to drive a Lotus than a Yugo.) This is, more or less, the full installation with .avi files, sound and help. ***************************************************************** ******** QUESTIONS, ANSWERS and OTHER HOT TIPS ********** ***************************************************************** Chapter 2.1 How do I ???? The on-line help files actually make some of this faq a bit redundant. Most of the button, menus, windows, etc. appear to be nicely arranged in a hypertext file. Since this is an OS/2 program, help is just another window you can consult during the game. Play with it, it's informative. This is not to say that the help is complete. It is missing some of the "Data and Numbers" stuff I've outlined below, and has two large sections wherein it explains that something goes in this spot. {this was the original on-line docs, there is a new release of the help docs that i've not seen, so this may have changed} How do I find the best planets? Scouts seem to be the best way of locating any planets of worth. Sometimes, if the geometry of the situation is right, you might be able to predict where another race's colony ship is headed and beat them to the spot. John Martz suggests using 2 scouts to block another race from colonizing a choice planet before you do. This strategy works until impulse when you need 3 scouts. There are seldom any planets left to colonize once you get Warp Drive. Other than this, send your scouts out on an ever increasing spiral and send out the colonists. The scout can be sent on a diagonal sweep through a quadrant to pick up >50% of the area in one pass or send it on a U-shaped course to pick up 100%. The path of the "U" can be adjusted to have the scout adjacent to the next target quadrant when it finishes. Two scouts could be used to map a quadrant in one pass. OK, I've found a planet, how do I colonize it? First, build a colony ship, then plot a course for near the system. Upon getting to the system, move the colony ship onto the system/star marker. The planet window pops up and then you can pick which planet to colonize. It used to be that if you had chosen autopilot and marked the actual system as the destination, it would automatically colonize the "best" remaining planet. This may be what you wanted, but I would use a colony ship to rename my planets so I had to plot the final move manually. A minor warning here: don't use autopilot to land directly on a star system, especially if you're trying to boost the population of that system. Land _near_ the system. Sure, you might lose some of your movement, but that is better than colonizing what you don't want to or putting a ship in orbit around the wrong planet. What about the uninhabited planets in a system? I want to use them! Actually, you do, but not directly. The "unused resources" in the system are used as part of the calculations that determine the productivity of the inhabited planets in the system. This is most easily seen in how much a resource allocation icon is good for when flipped between various projects. How does the economic system function? There are four factors that affect the economy directly. 1) the tax-n-spend icon [$]: This icon gives you access to two sliders that control the taxation rate and the spending rate. Each represents the percentage of the availible that you are tapping into, be it taxable income or spending capacity. Set the % at 100 for taxes and you're taking all of the peoples' money. They will not like this. Set the % at 100 for spending, and you are spending at your maximum ability to spend. If you take in more money than you spend, it builds up in a treasury. Aside from overt taxation, your government sponsors inter-galactic traders that give you a cut. This helps fund your ambitious goals of ....inter-species alliance or galactic conquest. It should be noted that Dean Iverson first proposed a model similar to this one to Brad and company. Continuing effors on the part of Steve Lamb, one of the beta testers, helped convince SDS to implement this model in the game. This is a compliment to Dean and Steve since the previous one was a bit...less flexible. 2) the allocation icon [three horizontal sliders]: This icon gives you access to three slider that control the % of your spending that is going into military projects (star ships, including colony ships and freighters), social projects (entertainment centers, antimatter plants) and research (technology advancement). 3) the planets [planets]: Each planet can handle building one project or one ship at a time. If no planets are actually building something, then you are not actually spending any money and any reserve goes into your treasury. 4) the individual planets on the view window have local resource allocation buttons. The four types of buttons are social projects (the cornucopia), military projects (the open-end wrench),research (the OS/2 terminal), and morale (the microphone). By default, the morale icon is chosen whenever the another icon becomes available (this may change in a future release). These buttons are the best control one could have over the spending of your galactic funds. An important note: the microphone is "free", but the others require extra funds to support. Also, the planet's morale is reduced most by choosing the military or social allocations, and less reduced for chosing research. And finally, morale and research allocations cause the least amount of pollution. How do I allocate my funds? Funding is divided between ships (military), research and social spending (planetary construction). In the early game, I've tried pumping out the colony ships as fast as possible with a 60/30/10 split on resources, plus setting my spending level at 80% and keeping taxes at 28%. Observations: it's not a sure-fire plan. I seem to spend too much time playing "catch-up". I need to catch-up in research, social spending and despite the high spending on colony ships, planets. I'm now trying a more even split. Any comments on this would be appreciated. A more successful approach that I have been using lately was suggested by John Martz. Set the the resource sliders to a 25/50/25 split. In John's strategic view, this game is driven by technology. He with the best tech wins, or at least has a good shot at winning. Getting to Impulse as fast as you can is paramount. Now, pump out the colony ships and use you're hopefully superior movement rate to compensate for your lack of omniscience. Remember, the other races start with a galactic map with the star colors already known. On the technology front, shoot for Universal Translator and then Galactic Trade. (as a note, John has said he's been trying a 20/58/22 split and it seems to work just fine, if not better.) Since we're talking economics at this point, what do mean by "supply side economic model"? In one of the phases of the beta, Brad Wardell, one of the project programmers at SDS (and all around decent guy), posted this information in an info file. He has further defined this in the following way: there is an optimum tax rate at which you can get money from the population. The way to get to this value is to realize that (in this game, maybe life?) people are happier keeping their money. That would mean, no taxation, but that is a bit hard on game play. Therefore, there is a level of taxation at which the population is willing to pay taxes and still remain happy. In the game, a happy population grows more quickly, does more work, which in turn, makes a larger base available for taxation. Therefore, at certain levels of taxation, you can actually get more money (after an initial hit) by _lowering_ the taxation rate. If you tax too heavily, you will get an initial revenue increase, but you will eventually get less than you had before you instigated your increased tax rate. How often do these "Allocation Buttons" pop up? Aside from a statement like, "when you have enough people", it is related to the type of government. For the Imperial government, you get a second icon at 300,000 people and one more each 300,000 until you reach 9 icons and 240,000 people. For a Star Democracy, you get your second icon at 200,000 people and one more for each 200,000 until at 160,000, you get your last one. The Star Federation get its second icon at, surprise, 100,000 people and one more for each 100,000. One the planet that I worked this out, each icon was worth 4.33 bc. This amount will vary with the quality of the planet, whether or not it suffered a production hit due to an event, and the number of unused planets in the system. I have had class 10 planets that had more resource points than a class 13 just because of the unused resources in the system. How do I increase the population of my planets? Make happy people. Happy people do happy things, and one of those things is to increase the planet's population. One main influence is taxation. If the tax rate is too high, then the population does not grow, and in fact, even decreases. It is not so much that you're taxing your people to death but that instead of staying in your little settlement, they've joined the Inter-stellar Posse Commitas. A planet is a very big place, and a few hundred thousand, spread out, would be real hard to find. However, be careful about lowering the tax rate since the population gets even more unhappy about raising taxes once they've been lowered than if you had kept them the same. Taxation aside, another method is to increase the moral of the people through various social programs. Planetary programs have primarily three functions: increase moral, increase production or other. Most programs have mixed benefits but some target one aspect in particular. Example: Entertainment Networks. They do not help research or starship attacks, but your people are much happier. If your people are unhappy living where they are, ship them somewhere else; off to war, for example. I've been known to stick them in orbit, waiting for the next war. Reducing the population of a planet is one way to make the remaining people happy. It's best not to speculate why. Reduce pollution. Polluted planets are unhappy planets. Although Earth First! would not be a good name for unhappy people in this situation, the projects your planets are building may have to be put on hold to prevent widespread revolt. Consider building pollution abatement projects. Consider changing your resource allocations to morale and research. And lastly, reform your government. The increased freedoms of the Star Democracy and the Star Federation can generate happier people. However, if you already have low morale (40% or less), going to these forms of government may actually foster widespread revolt. While I've not tested it personally, I am under the impression that Imperial Governments do not suffer revolts. Or, at least, it has to get a _whole_ lot worse than under the other two forms. A GENERAL NOTE!!!! DON'T FORGET THE RESOURCE ALLOCATION BUTTONS!!! The details window of the planet can let you fine tune the amount of resources you spend on various aspects of your planet. (Either hit the [Details] from the View section which is either by hitting [View] on the system window or by a double-click LMB or use the RMB from the systems window. You can vary the allocations between social projects (the cornucopia), military projects (the open-end wrench), research (the OS/2 terminal), and morale (the microphone). Consider allocating resources at the local level instead of doing it galactically with the sliders. (thanks, John) I REALLY CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH!!!!! I used to have a tougher time facing the more challenging opponents (I was getting creamed!), but with more diligent monitoring of the local resources, it has been a very different story. The Allocation Resource Buttons can make or break a campaign! How do I reduce pollution? Basically, you have two choices. Either don't spend as much money on military and social (i.e.-putting more in research) or build pollution abatement projects. If the planet in question has Resource Allocation buttons assigned to military and social projects, switch them to research or morale. Which research path should I select? The beginning is easy. Take General Cold Fusion, followed by Impulse Drive, then Universal Translator and Galactic Trade. Start your trading empire since money is the key!!!!! Then, pick up Galactic Diplomacy and race for Warp Drive (via Antimatter) and Shields (via Deflectors). Then, grab Battle Tech I. Above all, trade, trade, trade. Tech and goods. However, don't trade Battle Tech unless it's with an ally! John Martz first articulated this strategy in several of his posts to comp.sys.os2.games. Of course, there are lots of ways to play the game, this is one that works for many. As a side note, I've lately been going for Cloaking via Planetary Defense. This also appears to work quite well. It also can give you jump on building Tur-Ahn Training which is a very nice Galactic Achievement. What's the best way to conduct a war? Aggressively! Given the design of the game, being the attacker is _the_ bonus. What I mean by this, is that you should _attack_ incoming, enemy vessels, rather than letting them attack your systems and using the planetary defense bonus as your protection. Aggressively does not mean stupid! As John Martz put, "I rarely start a war, but I always finish them." Cover your home systems with one (maybe 2) ships and have a fleet nearby to attack incoming, enemy vessels. It can also be handy to leave one planet unguarded to act as a trap for enemy transports. Some of the personalities in the AI do not see ships sitting in space as a vicious threat, which they are. They only occasionally attack them. Beware of Draginol. This military commander was tweaked just a bit to counter this strategy and makes extensive use of stealth cruisers. How do I make friends and influence enemies? Trade. Other routes of influence are the "secretly declare war" option and the "destablize" option under the GIA. How do I select the best trade routes? Rich planet to rich planet, I think. I must admit to not being very quantitative on this one, but that is what I think I've been seeing, and net posts agree with this observation. Do note, that as your planets improve, you will need to send out new freighters to take advantage of your increased planet wealth. New technology begets new products for trade that in turn require new trade routes to be established. How do I bargain with those dirtba.... the customers? hmmm???? In general, there are three basic characteristics for the race with whom you are attempting to bargain. The first is their "greed" level. I guess this affects how quickly they are satisfied with a deal. The second characteristic is how ethical they are. I suspect this governs whether the initial bid will be reasonable or not. The last racial trait is guillibility, which is easily tied to how tough it is to just plain bargain with them. As a note, your fifth bid is your last bid. If that bid is not accepted, you have lost the deal. One bidding method First bid--bid as high as slider permits. Second bid--only slightly lower than your previous bid. Often, the AI will settle for a bid much higher than its original bid. Third bid--slightly higher than the AI's bid (the AI's third bid). This bid is a more "realistic" bid in the "mind" of the AI, and it will usually take it. Warning: occasionally, the AI will break off trade at this point and start a trade war. Fourth bid--match the AI's bid (the fourth bid). If they don't like your offer after this round, they will almost certainly start a trade war. If their last offer isn't to your satisfaction, DON'T BID--break off negotiations. The above is from John Martz. My experience with this is not so hot. Probably because it conflicts with my normal bidding system of matching increases/ decreases, which seems to get me into a few trading wars now and then. More on bidding and trading The trade system is something that really doesn't fit with the "strategic" nature of the game but is fun (at least, a majority of the play testers thought so) and gives a bit of a break from the general flow of conflict in space. In the bidding process, you can end up with one of three results. 1) you make the deal, the preferred outcome. However, the deal you make will affect how the AI deals with you in the future. If you were an easy sell, that is what they will expect later. 2) you start a trade war. This result is one designed to add some cost and risk to the bartering. Sure, it's a bit unrealistic, but since this is only a hand-wavy trading system, this is probably one of the best compromises available for adding some tension to the negotiations. One advantage to a trade war is that it does hurt the both you and your victi... prospective customer. I've not tried this as a war strategy (seems mildly self-destructive, to say the least) but it does seem to make the more recalcitrant trading partners a bit more pliable in future negotiations. 3) you break off. This has the effect of preventing you from trading with that system for some period of time, it does save you from a trade war and it saves your freighter for some other deal, but it doesn't seem to influence the other race's bargaining pattern. Again, the penalty is a method to encourage you to -deal- with your trading partner. It may not be realistic, but then again, this arbitrary idea that you would just pack up and try a whole new planet just because you couldn't turn a high enough margin fails to take into account the cost of the ship, the crew, the loans...etc. Which planets should be doing what construction? Obvious suggestions: always opt to increase production on a planet, but other than that, chose military projects for the frontier planets and social/research projects for the interior planets. Beyond this, any planet I've colonized has built "Soil Enhancement" followed by "Schools" and then Entertainment Network". The strategy of building Schools and then Soil Enhancement was proposed also. Dave Chaloux generated a quick-n-dirty project comparison table that indicated Soil Enhancement should be of better use for research than Schools. To investigate these schemes, I did some testing on a class 16 planet with one resource unit allocated to social projects. I selected either Schools (S) or Soil Enhancement (SE). I ran this until I was tired of it, about 4 pairs of trials. Other conditions: spending was 68%, tax rate was 28%, social/ research/military was 24/50/26, research path was Gen Cold Fusion (GCF), Impulse Drive (ID), and Universal Translator (UT), no ship building, build Entertainment Net (EN) after the other two where finished, time span - 2179-2202. Results: Soil Enhancement by a nose. After SE was completed, all other projects and research finished 1 year faster than for S. Population growth was a bit faster, about 3-5%, and final population (year 2202) was always higher, by as much as 13k (303k vs. 290k). Another note, population only increases on even numbered years. Last result, the system has a bit of randomness in it. Population growth can vary a few percent, but even when the SE population was initially behind the S population, it always surpassed it once SE was completed. While either project is good, SE may have just that slight bit of edge in a tight race. Hopefully, your strategy doesn't rely on such a narrow margin! OK, I go out and test this little aspect of the game, and somebody (by the name of Mark Manville), goes and gums up the works by suggesting spending at the rate of 100% (looking at it solely from the research/social project end), building SE, S, followed by University (U) and then going gung ho on the research. I added the alternative test of building EN instead of U, and just going straight for all research and then building. Some things are very clear. While you do get the techs very fast spending all your money and resources on research, you end up lagging so far behind in population that it is not a good strategy. The rest of the results in a nutshell are that U is a wrong choice of project, EN is better. Population stays happier longer and has a higher peak (100%!). Because EN takes 3 less years to build, research is started much earlier and gives you impulse drive by 2194. U gets it by 2198. These dates may be +/- one year, but not four, or even 2. The quickest path to ID is to build SE, S and _then_ go hog wild on research. You can get ID by 2191. By contrast, the first paths mentioned above give you ID by 2194. Building SE, S and then going for research and then attempting to build EN leaves you bit strapped for reserves, so it doesn't get built by 2202. However, this route does push your population in 2202 to as high as 394k. Using EN as the last social project and then doing research pushed the population to 432k. All of these scenarios were simplified by my not including ship building. I also kept forgetting to change that new resource unit that popped up at 300k people, but that happened long after the 200 bc reserve had been depleted so the affect would have been minimal. My take? 100% social to EN, then slam into research until you pick up Galactic Trade and Galactic Diplomacy. As for ships, build what you need. They are a distraction/money sink away from these projects but you _have_ to build them, so do it. And, thanks, Mark! Aside from a Battlestar, are there really any better ships than a starfighter? Yes, there are. From reading the net posts, the most commonly used ships for offense are Battle Hammers, Interceptors, and Battle Ships. Interceptors, with their superlative speed, are good for scouting out what, if any, enemy ships are approaching the area. Use the interceptor as a lure to drag the enemy ships away from the vulnerable system. Interceptors are just good enough to try and whomp the occasional transport. However, they will often take damage from these attacks, so caution is advised. Battle Hammers are a poor man's battle ship. Yes, they can take out a Battle Ship now and then. But, they will often take damage from such an encounter. The AI will usually not attack a ship at full strength but seldom lets a wounded foe escape. The Battle Ship (and its off-spring) is the queen of the battle field. Keep one or more handy near the home worlds for defense and send the rest out on conquest. Watch the damage they accumulate. If one takes too much, send it home for repairs. They cost too much to try and rebuild from scratch. In addition, Battle Cruisers are a good ship when you can't build Battle Hammers. They are cheaper than Battle Axes, with a better defense and higher speed. For defense, the Defender, in orbit, is a good ship. If you opt to be a good player (or you manage to trade for it), the Corvette is an excellent ship on defense. In orbit, it can take the occasional Battle Ship. This is definitely worth it! As for the other ships, one of the most important is the transport. Although I have yet to use this strategy, it would seem that building some transports on a planet when it's not doing any other projects is a good idea. You can blast the opposing star fleet to radioactive debris but you've done nothing unless you can invade! Note that all ships in orbit are considered to be defending that planet/system so that you can lose those ships if that system is attacked. And for completeness, the colony ship is, of course, without peer for being important! Next, try the freighter. Without enough revenue from trade, your dreams of empire will most likely come to naught. I would suggest holding a few freighters in reserve for the inevitable lose of a trade or two during a conflict. OK, I built my silly transport, how does it work? First, load up the transport with enough troops. A transport can hold up to 500 legions. When clicking the RMB on a transport in orbit, one of the options is to [add troops]. Note that troops come from you planets population. Next, Ground combat! Take the transport to the enemy system and move it onto the system marker. If there wasn't a shield attached to the lower right corner of the system marker, then the Ground Combat window pops up. The window is divided between you and your opponent, each showing the number of troops involved and a flashing pair numbers that represent some sort bonus factors. When the moment is opportune (i.e.- you have a higher bonus than the enemy), click the LMB in the window or hit the [enter] key. The bonus range is influenced by your technology advantage over your opponent. It also reflects the fact that you control the space over your opponent's planet. The actual casualty ratio reflects the ratio of the combat bonuses and how well the planet was defended by projects such as the Military Academy, Ground Defense, etc. (as a note, some people are finding that a fully-laden transport appears to be a fairly potent attack vessel. don't count on this. this was a problem in one of the rounds of the beta, and it was generally believed to have been fixed. it will doubtless get "fixed" again soon. Supposedly, any ship with a 0 attack should lose a combat if it attacks.) What about the other ships? (this is also a request for experience) The destroyer looks interesting. Faster than a battle cruiser, but not as defensible, slower than an interceptor but better armed...is it worth it? I'm trying them out and we'll see.... Stealth cruiser...zippo for defense, but packs a whollop and is fairly cheap. plus, the enemy CAN'T track them! Good for sneaking around and whompin' the back country or ambushing that marauding battleship. They appear to be worth their cost. In fact, coupled with the Phasing Dread, they can make a potent attack force for an invasion. A Phasing Dread can take out a Battleship in orbit. Of course, it does lose now and then, but at 130 cost to 600, it's a bargain! I'm getting some crazy swapper growth. What did you guys do? Can't you write a simple video game? Where's my lawyer??? Swapper growth was one of the most trying problems we had with GalCiv. Because there are few large scale games (at the time of GalCiv, there are no others that we know of), many of OS/2's more obscure API calls were not well tested. As a result, tiny leaks in OS/2 never got caught. Lucky for us, GalCiv uses those calls a lot and those tiny leaks add up. There are, however, some solutions to the problem (if you are getting it). #1 Make sure you have GalCiv v1.01c or later. It works around most of OS/2's leaks. #2 MOST IMPORTANT: Set your swapper file size to default to at least 8 megabytes. This can be done by going to the config.sys and changing the second number in the swapper path statment to 8092. We do not know why this works but in my experience, this completely eliminates swapper growth. I theorize that once your swapper starts to grow in OS/2 (particularly OS/2 3.0) it will just grow and grow and grow. By the way, this advice applies to every OS/2 app, not just GalCiv. #3 If you are still getting growth, try turning off the sound and making sure Fastload (Windows) isn't activated. #4 If none of the above work, contact IBM or SDS or AIMS. I haven't bought GalCiv yet. What other games is it like? It is most like Civilization with respect to the fact that you are trying to create a civilization. It is like Empire in terms of how you work you strategy. Each ship is its own unit. It also combines some elements of Masters of Orion since you can win the game by forming a united galaxy and diplomacy is a much more important aspect of the game than in Civilization or Empire. I really like GalCiv but I miss the feature in Masters of Orion where I could design my own ships. Is there any way to make GalCiv more like Masters of Orion? REAL SOON, 1995, SDS will be releasing Shipyards for GalCiv which will be an add on that lets you do just that. When Shipyards is installed, a new button will appear on the icon bar that will let you create new ships. Your opponents will also be able to build their own ships. You can even choose how your ship will look like. One added feature is that you can "steal" ship designs from your opponents. Is it easier to win by being good or evil? Where's the payoff for being a good guy? Being a nice guy has never meant that you get rewarded. It works like this though, good guys are treated better by other nice civilizations. Being a bad guy offers a lot of short term benefits but good civilizations will likely come after you while other evil civilizations won't lift a finger to help you. There are about a dozen technologies available only to good guys (there are also about 10 technologies only available to evil players too). I've been hearing a lot about GalCiv but where I live there are no stores that carry OS/2 software. How can I get GalCiv? The best thing you can do is to try to get your store to carry it. However, if that doesn't work, you can order it from numerous sources including SDS. SDS's number is (313)782-2248 (FAX: 313-782-9868). All you need is a credit card (or you can order it COD). They'll need your name, address, city, zip, credit card number and expiration date. A distributor called Micro Central will be the place to tell stores that they can get it from. I don't have OS/2, just Windows 3.1. Will there be a Windows 3.1 version of GalCiv? No. How do I repair my ships? Take them home. A ship can only be repaired by placing it in orbit about its home-WORLD, not system, nor any other planet in that system. The easiest way to do this is to hit the [GO HOME] button on the bottom of screen in the ship status display window. What does it mean that this game has a configurable set-up? For me, it means that I can move the quadrant map to the left hand side of the screen, move the button bar to the middle and over-draw the graphs and button bar with my star map. If I need the other two, I use the RMB to pop them up. Who the hell is this John Martz guy??? Some GalCiv god-wannaby or what? Actually, John's just someone that was willing to engage in a few rounds of e-mail discussions of strategy and tactics for GalCiv. Since he's said the most to me about strategy and such, he appears here quite frequently. If you want to have your name in here (i could remove it too, if it's here and you don't want it.) just give me some faq stuff. Besides, this way I can't be blamed for anything other than typos and such 8). What is the "Dynamic Mapping" option that I find? Simply enough, "dynamic mapping" means that your star map only grows in size as you explore more area of the map. This can be very handy in a large or huge galaxy when the initial star map would then be a more managable size while you're trying to explore it. This also works to your psychological disadvantage (if you don't use quadrant #s) as you might not have a good idea as to your position in the galaxy and where you will probably find your nearest neighbors. However, it does have the disadvantage of making it awkward to send a ship to someplace that you have yet to explore since since you can't just click on the star map for that far away quadrant and then just use "autopilot" to send your ship there. How do I start an alliance with another race? First, you must be friendly with them. On the GIA window, their feelings toward you must be all the way over to the right. Second, you must have the technology of alliance. If these two conditions are met, then a GIA option will appear win the window when you ask to talk to one of the races. It will be the final option on the list. Sometimes, one of the races will actually ask you to ally with them. How do I end an alliance with another race? There are two ways to do this. Both involve using the GIA options. The obvious way is to talk with your ally and then tell them that "you're not doing your part". This will end the alliance. If you choose to destabilize your ally, then they will tell you that they have discovered this and that if you don't stop, they will consider this a provocation for war. Whether you stop or not is irrelevant because the alliance has ended. How does one STEAL technology? I am spying like crazy, when do I get to steal tech?" Once you have stolen enough data from the civilization to have all 6 info categories filled, you will begin to randomly steal technology from time to time. The reasoning is that before your spies can rip off tech, they have to know everything there is to know about the civilization to blend in enough to steal ultra-high-tech stuff. **************************************************************** ***************** WHERE IS/ARE THE xxxx? ********************* **************************************************************** Chapter 2.2 note of chapter 2.2 content: if there is something you had a devil of a time finding, and think someone else could be spared lots of pain because of your insight, tell me so i can stick your hint in this section. - autopilot on/off? Under the floppy disk icon is the setup button. This button pops up that function and other useful functions such as sound, avi, etc. - background process control? Under the floppy disk icon is the setup button. This button pops up that function and other useful functions such as sound, avi, etc. - place to reform my government? Under the icon up from the floppy disk icon is the reform gov't button. It's the "Reports" icon that looks like a sheet of paper. - reports of how I am doing? There are four types of "how am I doing" information. All of this information resides under the "Reports Icon" (the sheet of paper). The first option is the "Top Five Planets" listing. One should strive at all times to keep this free of alien riff-raff. A second option is the "Demographics" listing. This is a screen of statistics such as % of galactic population, absolute and % production values, etc. A third option is the button that compares humanity to all of the other races in the game. It's a relative scoring that shows how much you're pumping into R&D relative to your competitors. The fourth option is the score button which also gives you a good/neutral/bad ranking. - listing of my ships? The icon with the Earth over a triangle is the fleet icon. From here, you can click on a ship and then either pull up the ship display window (if it's in orbit) or it will plop you into the quadrant that the ship occuppies and highlight that ship. - place to find out how much damage my ship has taken? There are 3 ways to find this out. One, use the RMB to pull up the ship control menu. Two, look at the strength number at the bottom of the screen. Three, look at how many black smudges are smeared across the ship menu at the bottom of the screen. The more smudges, the worse off the ship is. - that planet that was preparing to rebel? Click on that planet in the GNN window when it appears. You will then be flipped over to the planet menu to deal with the problem. For getting to a planet in a more general way, use the icon with the planets on it to pull up an alphabetical listing of all of your planets. - the listing of all of the trade routes I have? Click on GIA and then you will find a small button at the bottom of the window. Once in this menu, you can prune away trade routes that you don't want. This can be especially important if you're trying to improve trade with one race but don't want to lose trade with a different one. You would then kill a route with your intended partner just to be sure the new route is a replacement for that race. The danger is, of course, that you may actually bargain for a worse deal than you already had. That's life. ***************************************************************** ******* Strategies from the Front ******* ***************************************************************** 2.3.1 John Martz (my paraphrasing of his stuff) (soon to be released by SDS as "Martzian") John has two main elements to his strategy (and I hope he corrects my mistakes!) 1) a strong research program, and 2) an aggressive military strategy _used_ _when_ _needed_! The research plan is a race to acquire Battle Tech I so that the military option is viable. The basic outline is to research Gen. Cold Fusion, Impulse Drive, Universal Translator, Galactic Trade, and Galactic Diplomacy. Once you have achieved this base, you can start your trade empire to fund more research and you can start to trade tech with the other races. I'm not clear if the next choice is Deflectors then Shields or Anti- matter and then Warp Drive. My guess is that it would depend upon whether or not you needed techs to trade. If the other races already have your level of technology, you will need something fast, so Deflectors and Shields can give that to you. What you want to trade for would be Phasors (to build Interceptors), Star Democracy (to improve your government and get the chance to build the Galactic Stock Exchange), and Nano- Electronics (for Environmental Controls to help reduce pollution). This is not to say that you should turn down a deal, just that you will most likely get this stuff as trade rather than having to research them yourself. If you get trapped in an early war, by all means, deviate from "the plan" to pick up something like Phasors so that you can defend yourself. Note, of all of the tech trading that you do, don't trade Battle Tech I unless it is to a really friendly race or an ally. Even then, be aware that once they have, it can be given away to someone else and you won't have a say in it. After Battle Tech I, it's your call. There are lots of branch points, but this should be a strong base from which you can start. The military plan centers around the game mechanic that the attacking ship has a large advantage over the defender. This means that an Interceptor (3/3) can often take on a Battle Ax (8/2) and win! Therefore, once you have a planet with some ship in orbit to "cover" it, make sure that you have one or more ships nearby to pick off incoming enemy vessels _before_ they attack your planets. In the earliest phases of the game, the Interceptor can fulfill this role. Later, you'll want a Battleship back there. Once you have the techs, the Battle Hammer (the "poor man's battleship") is a good auxillary ship as can be a Battlecruiser. Use Interceptors to spot enemy vessels far enough out that you can plan your moves. Sometimes, the enemy vessels will chase the interceptor. Use it as a lure! Either to distract the enemy until you have enough defenses or to lure it into an ambush. IMPORTANT NOTE: keep an eye on the damage that a ship has accumulated. Send it home for repairs once it's taken a few whacks (<50%?). It is very much cheaper to repair the ship (free, except for maintenance costs) as compared to building a new one from scratch (say, 600 for a Battleship). Use Defenders and Corvettes to cover the systems. A Corvette in orbit can take on the occassional Battleship and best it! An additional nasty thing to do is to leave one system undefended - i.e.- no ships in orbit. This will lure enemy transports (usually, UNESCORTED!) to the planet. Take the sentry ships and have your own version of the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Not only does this shoot up the enemy's ships, but it also drains down the populations of his planets - tax base included! Avoid fighting a multi-front war. Consider asking for peace and if the costs aren't too steep (don't be proud!), accept them. Send marauders deep into the enemy's territory. Don't ever let a freighter escape from you! As always, TRADE-TRADE-TRADE! This is both techs and for freighters. On the tech side, never forget to offer for trade a new tech as soon as you've completed it! It is also good to go on the occassional fishing trip between times. You never know what you might get. As for your merchantile fleet, be sure to watch with whom you are trading. If you're going to go to war with a race, make sure you don't have any lucrative trade routes with them from which you've grown use to having the income. Always keep a freighter or two ready to open up a new route if you lose one directly by going to war with that race or if one that you had with someone else is captured by an enemy race. Try to make your trade routes to internal planets of your stellar empire. This lessens the chance that you lose them by a quick, surprise assault. Try to trade with a race that has good planets but doesn't border one of your suspected foes. You can also use your trade routes to make another potential enemy hesitant in attacking you. As always, keep an eye on the other races via GIA. Don't attack someone without first finding out if they have an ally with which you don't want to get in a war. Try to play one alliance off against another. Again, make sure that you don't ally into a war, unless that is what you really want to do. For the care and feeding of your planets, note that there are pretty much two classes of planets (unless your are very unlucky), interior and front. All planets get the following projects built, in this order - Schools and then Soil Enhancement. Then, planets on the front get Ground Defense while the interior planets get Entertainment Network. In general, the planets on the front will concentrate on military porjects and those in the interior will get social and research oriented projects. Of course, never neglect production, since you need a good base on which to build more stuff faster. Also, don't forget the Resource Allocation Buttons! The only time you would leave them in moral is to stave off a revolt or try to clean up some pollution (but you could also opt for research). Otherwise, the front planets are geared towards social, and military when those ships are needed for the war, and the interior is pretty much committed to social allocation. If you have a system with two or more planets in it, consider committing the weaker of the two solely to research. Use the larger one as the major player in the defense of the system. I hope this covered the major points of John's strategy. 2.3.2 Brad Wardell (this is included with minimal editing at this point) There are a lot of ways to do well in GalCiv and even more ways of doing poorly. I read John Martz's strategy which is a very good one for doing well at the game but there are some things you should know. The SDS/AI v1.01 which is the AI included in the retail version does have the AI personalities at a disadvantage so that users wouldn't get trounced by it too bad. Judging by the volume of posts talking about the AI and their reviews of it, I think it safe to say that most people are finding it very challenging. But like any game, the longer you play, the better you get and weaknesses found. As the FAQ of GalCiv mentions, there are a couple of things we didn't let any of the personalities in the 1.01 AI do. Such things include: o Buying ships via purchase now o Changing their planetary resources o Resource penalities (not only does the AI play by the same rules but it doesn't even get as many resources as you do until the Genius Level) And a number of other minor traits. In v1.02 of the AI which is in gcfix02 and the soon to be released via BBS/FTP gcfix03 (aka GalCiv v1.02) has the new SDS/AI v1.02 in which we allowed ONE of the 6 personalities to be able to do the above 3 things. The results are almost alarming. We only let them do those things on "Smart" or above so that new users aren't discouraged by being creamed by the AI over and over. As mentioned in AIMS product literature, once users have gotten good enough to beat the game on the most difficult level, SDS (Stardock Systems) will enhance the AI further. The number of strategies of winning the game are too many to count. Let me tell you the way I play the game. I usually play in a Medium sized galaxy and set the players to all being "Smart". I don't race for technology or even planets so much. I choose Cold Fusion and then Impulse Drive to get my ships faster. I try to pick very very nice planets or stars which have a lot of decent planets. Once I colonize, I immediately go for Univeral Translator and then Galactic Trade. I then begin a great trading empire with all of the players. You can have 10 trade routes max and I give 2 very profitable ones to each player. I should point out that you will probably want to continually update your trade routes because as the planets grow, your deals with the local star system merchants will be more profitable. At first, deals of $20 will have to be acceptable. But once everyone has gone to a democratic form of governmetn and populations for star systems explode, you will want to start killing off trade routes and go back and re-negotiate your trade route. Deals of $150 to $200 per route are not uncommon. If you do 2 of those with each player, that's a good $300 to $400 per player. However, I usually, at this point, don't evenly divide it (only early in the game). I choose the most powerful military powers to trade with since you usually have 2 power houses and the other 3 are relatively weak, that comes out to being nearly $1000 with each of the two power houses. This puts you in a situation where they cannot economically afford to go to war with you and the AI knows that. Keep your fleet relatively powerful and have Battle Hammers or Battle Ships patrolling your quadrants space so that if someone should be unwise enough to go war with you, you can help take out their forces. During this time, I'm getting about $2000 from trade (assuming I'm not at war). I pump that money into espionage. Once you learn the 6 categories of a particular empire, you will begin to steal technology. It comes in spurts. Don't be surprised if you pick up a good 3 to 5 technologies in a single turn when you hit the spying jackpot! This way, I don't have to spend tons of money on Research but can put it into social programs and keeping a decent miltary which I can fund with the $2000 in trade I get. Another important point is that I play as a NEUTRAL player. This is important because if you are a goody-goody, the bad guys will come after you no matter what since they know that good guys will go after evil guys. Moreover, if you play as an evil civilization, the good guys will come after you even if they know they'll get blown to bits because it's, well, "the right thing to do". Playing as a neutral allows me to stay out of the wars and watch the empires trash each other. I can take sides and put money into destabilizing. Since the tough empires trade so much with me, I can get away with destabilizing for a long time and watch their empires fall apart due to rebellion in which I quickly send in the troops to capitalize on their loss. THIS IS IMPORTANT! It is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTT easier to conquer a star system controlled by rebels/pirates because they are disorganized. If I were simply to go to war with one of the other empires, I would take massive casualties. Anyone who's played the game long enough knows that when star systems have populations of 4 million people, it's a major undertaking to invade them. But a population of 4 million in a rebel star system where the defenses are scattered and in disarray, I can take them over with less than 2 million troops easily. In contrast to John Martz's strategy, I believe that MONEY is the key to winning GalCiv, NOT technology. WARTIME BEHAVIOR: The different AI's rely on commerce to different degrees. Denethor is the trading nut of the pack and will finaance wars by trading with friendly empires during war time. Make sure that you destroy his freighters if you are at war with him. It's a lot worse to have a few freighters get by then a few battle axes. CONTROL THE QUADRANTS If you are in a quadrant with lots of other empires in them, make it your #1 priority to control that quadrant so that you can get the benefits of controlling a quadrant (tourism). Build wahtever improvements, achievements, super projects, whatever to get your population high enough in that quadrant to control it. Make sure you have a chance at doing so before you do that since you don't want to fail and send more money to an enemy. In Conclusion: There are lots of strategies in GalCiv that will let you be successful. I choose CF, Impulse, Univeral Trans, Trade, Dip., Star Democracy, Photons, Instant Comm., Federation and then go for more weapons. I trade as much as I can and in TWO stages. I wipe out my early trade routes once the stars have reached critical mass so that I can estabilish very profitable NEW trade routes with empires that are more powerful than I am militarily. Once I do this, I can effectively control them (depending on the difficulty level) via economic pressuring. Let the others wipe each other out and deplete their resources and then turn on the destabilizing with civilizations that displease me and take over rebellious planets with minimal casualties and no warfare involved. I'd be interested to hear other strategies. With 6 different AI personalities and the options available in the game itself, I imagine there are a LOT of different ways of being good at the game. Brad 2.3.3 List of Various Strategy Hints ----from Will Herrera I have found one particular strategy that works very well in preventing invasion in most cases when money is available (and I keep a thosand or more in reserve: 1. Post sentry ships in EACH quadrant you control and in every quadrant between and adjacent to the ones you control. Use fast ships with good attack; you can partially ignore defense capability in the sentry ships, although the Phoenix and other high-level attack ships tend to be too expensive and too under-defended to just sit on sentry duty when one or two Interceptors or a Battle Hammer can often do the job. Use Interceptors first, then Battle Hammers, then Avatars, etc. These ships are your early warning system, since they tell you when ships come through and let you take out passing enemy vessels before they reach your plantets. In many games, you can _always_ prevent invasion of your planets in this way; destroy enemy transports before they reach a defenseless world. 2. Post Defenders (two or more) on each world. If these are taken out by enemy vessels, immediately buy new ones. Usually the AI will send troops in a wave AFTER the star is defenseless. By then, you have a new Defender, and your sentry ships will have remove much of the invaders (expect some ship casualties if the enemy has better ships than you do). And a tactical note: 3. If a planet is beyond hope, abandon it just before it is succesfully invaded. No technology will be stolen by the enemy, and if it is a planet with few remaining resources it may sit ignored by the enemy AI and can be re-colonized later (is this a bug?) ---- from John Altstadt Here are some additional strategies that people can try out while waging war: 1) Surround the stars of defenceless enemy systems to prevent anybody from poaching while you are bringing in troop transports for the ground war. Of course, you will want to poach on the conquests of other races. 2) The Mongolian Hordes: (I found a couple of bugs in the last beta doing this.) This works best in a huge galaxy any you must start your civilization on an edge or corner. Build enough ships that you can make a wall around each star system at least one layer deep + spares. Expand the walls until they meet and you eventually have a wall that runs from one edge of the galaxy to the other. Slowly sweep across the galaxy, taking over any star systems that you come across. Transports will be able to move around in the cleared area with no fear of being attacked. Note that this is _very_ costly in the early stages due to high ship maintenance costs vs. the low number of planets under your control. I am amazed at how well you can simulate classic infantry manuvers with GalCiv. This could be a good primitive (as in historical) war games tool if you could get two large fleets of battle stars up against one another. ***************************************************************** ****************** WALK-THRU ********************** ***************************************************************** Chapter 2.4 The Galactic Civilizations Walk-Thru Shaun Burnett (residing at widow@u2peoria.org or sburnett@heartland.bradley.edu) has put together a walk-thru for beginning players, especially those with no experience with other strategy games. The walk-thru is not in the faq because Shaun and I decided it would be better to keep them separate. This is nice because maintaining this thing is enough work! I did learn some stuff from the walk-thru, I hope I managed to incorporate the appropriate information into the other sections of this faq. You can find the walk-thru at all fine ftp sites....well, most likely at ftp.cdrom.com and, if I understood things correctly, at the AIMsBBs (see the bottom of the faq for info on how to get to that board). ***************************************************************** ************* CHEATS and OTHER BLACK HOLES ************* ***************************************************************** Chapter 3 There are at least two little "holes" in the game for unscrupulous players to exploit. Or frustrated players.... Or those days you just wanna trash the galaxy and you don't care how you do it....Or.... 1) "REAL" Warp Drive If you move your ship out the corner of a border quadrant at the border, your ship will appear in the next quadrant in the same square you attempted to "leave". This is obviously a way of moving REAL FAST (done in a Dave Barry voice). 2) Population Growth via "Shore Leave" If you remove all the troops from a transport, leave and then return that ship to its homeworld, it will instantly gain another 20,000 troops (20 legions). Repeat as needed. As a note, this is also a bug. In the bug state, your transport full of legions gets "repaired" to the 20 level. (this may not be true in the GA, i need to check this out more closely) 3) Prescience You can always save the game after it starts and then map out the universe. It would probably be easiest to do a and then annotate the print-out. Then, restart. Since the AI doesn't cheat, you can be a true prophet and know exactly what is going to happen. 4) Lease to own If you suddenly find that you need a big ship, buy it in parts. Start with a cheap ship, buy it, and then just incrementally increase the cost of the ship to a different design, buy it, etc. This will work out to be much cheaper than paying for the full cost in one fell swoop. ***************************************************************** ******** Insights into the AI of GalCiv ******* ***************************************************************** Chapter 4 The following is courtesy Brad Wardell of Stardock Systems, Designer of GalCiv. Brad hides at 22wardel@cs.wmich.edu. I did some editing. The AI: The AI is split into two modules: SDSAI.DLL which is a general artificial intelligence engine that we'll be using in other products and GCAI.DLL which is specific to GalCiv. The key thing to remember about the AI in GalCiv is that it does not make a distinction between you and the computer players. It uses the same code as the human players does for moving ships, building projects, etc. It plays by the same rules except for a couple of important differences: #1 The Computer players are NOT currently allowed to purchase ships. We felt that it would make the game too difficult if the computer players were allowed to (like you can) just use their treasury and buy a ship every turn. If people are able to beat the AI regularly on the higher levels then we may reconsider this but for now, this human advantage is in the GA. #2 Human players cannot send the AI nasty messages like the AI can to you. This is obviously for entertainment value. Human players also can't ask for help from friendly players in the form of "give us ships". This may be added in a v1.1 or something. #3 The computer players start out with a planet whereas you start out in a space ship. This is for plot reasons. Unlike the betas, in the GA you will have the possibility of having type 16 planets in your starting quadrant (in the betas, you only got class 12 planets guaranteed). #4 The Aliens already know what color all the stars are in surrounding quadrants.. This is a huge advantage since yellow stars almost always have a nice planet in them. This was put in for plot reasons (beta 1 testers complained that it didnt' make any sense for the AI not to have mapped out most of the galaxy (afterall, we earthlings have in our native galaxy over the milenium). Other than that, the AI follows the same rules. If you find that the AI is doing something you deem unfair, email me with a bug report because that is what it would be, a bug. The AI doesn't distinguish between you and other players for among other things, the possibility of adding modem/network play in later versions (should the game do well in the market). GC/AI: The GCAI is what we could call the politicians. IT decides when to go to war, how to talk to you, how to approach you in dealing with things. It takes into account when dealing other playres (including you): Their good/evil alignment. Their relative military strength. Trade agreements and how nice things went. Their aggression level. Their cooperation level Their ethical level Their greed level Their insanity level* (the computer looks only at its own. It doesn't know the other players' insanity level) (all of these they look at their own level and the other players). * note, the AI may not KNOW all of these about a player, they go with what information they have available. All of the above information is available to the human player either directly or from spying. In fact, none of the above things require you to even spy on them, since you can find this information in the GIA window and under the espionage/military window under the GIA. Good guys tend to bond with other good guys. They don't worry about how tough or powerful the other good guy is (in general). Keep in mind, only REALLY good guys will totally neglect your military or trade with them when deciding to be nice to you or someone else. There are 20 shades of Good.....EVIL (You can select 5 differenet level of Good or evil for them but if you let it randomly choose, it will have a finer granularity). Really bad guys will look a bit more favorably on other really, really bad guys but they don't tend to bond as well as good guys do. Bad guys may not declare war on each other but they will also not ally together quite as often. Still though, the end result can be a game with Good vs. Evil if you select extremists. The down-right neutrals (shade 10 out of 20) only care about trade. You want a Ferengi-type race, choose a neutral. The EXACT neutral type has extra logic to make it a fence sitter. There's, of course, a lot more detail in this but I don't want to spoil the game too much ! SDS/AI: The GCAI are the politicians, the SDSAI are the generals. The GA version of GalCiv has 5 different release level Personalities or Advisors. You can imagine each personality being a separately programmed entity. They share some common code for things such as dodging obstacles and finding undefended star systems that they know of, but most of what they do is unique. This is important because if people say, "The AI was dumb, it chased my scout all over the place while I trashed the rest of them, heh heh", they really should say "Advisor N is dumb, they did ..." because the others may not (and do not) do things the same way.. Some Personalities go for having a large trading fleet, others will play vulture and will quit colonizing quickly and then build trasnports (gee, I bet none of you guys did something as low as that, eh?). The Advisors Code names can be found by looking in the Espionage Window under "Military". The names are: Sauronir Denethor Draginol Mascrinthus Calor Not all of the personalities will use Terror Stars, for example, because of their destructive value. People who die as a result of being killed on a transport (when you destroy a transport) or on a planet due to a terror star are now counted as part of the overall casaulty list. So if you get Terror Stars (or the AI uses them), you'll know how many troops (in legions: 1 legion = 1k troops) have been destroyed. End submission by Mr. Wardell ***************************************************************** TECHNOLOGY TREE (or "Can I get Artificial Life if I can't Phase properly?") ***************************************************************** Chapter 5.1 **** under construction **** **** please bear with us *** Nano-Electronics -> Nano-Frequencies -> Brainwave Mapping -> Instant -> Cure for Depression Communications -> Star Federation -> Nano-Metal Composition -> High Density Metals (destroyer) -> Tri-Strontium Alloys -> Large Scale Building (battle hammer) Brainwave Mapping Large Scale Building -> Terra Computers -> Advanced AI's -> Hyper-Computers -> Interspecies Philosophy General Cold Fusion (small fighter) -> Impulse (transport) -> Anti-matter -> Warp Drive -> Hyperspace -> Hyperwarp (if a good race) Phasor (interceptor) -> Turbo-phasor (battlecruiser) -> Advanced Phasor (if a good race) (corvette) -> Mega-phasor -> Antimatter Weapons Photon Weapons (star fighter) -> Sensors (battle ax) Organic Manipulation -> Genetic Mapping -> Transporters Universal Translator -> Galactic Trade (freighter) -> Galactic Diplomacy -> Alliances -> Star Democracy and there's more... BIG NOTE! missing the evil technologies! there are lots of them, such as Galactic Collusion, Distruptors, Master Race, Thought Control, Clever Chip, and more! ***************************************************************** PROJECTS - (or "Gee, we need 0-G porta-potties. What does it do and how do we do it?) ***************************************************************** Chapter 5.2.1 The BIG List The following is an alphabetized listing of the various projects that can be built on a planet if the technology is available. The project names were, in some cases, abbreviated to near obscurity. I was attempting to get enough room on the right-hand side to put in the technology necessary to achieve the project. They didn't fit, so I duplicated the list and used full names. The various abbreviations for effects (first list) are as follows: TI = Trade Increase; Mor = Morale; Ship A = Ship Attack; Ship D = Ship Defense; Gnd Def = Ground Defense; Res = Research; Env = Anti-pollution Effect; Maint = Maintenance; Cost = Cost in bc. It should be noted that since I usually play the good-guy role, the projects here include many of the projects that only "nice guys" can get to such as Advanced Hospitals. In GalCiv, what technologies are available to you depends on whether you are good or evil. In a future round of the faq, I'll either list them separately, or mark them as good and integrate the evil techs into the list. Production Ship Gnd Project Name | TI Mor| A D |Def|Res|Env|Maint|Cost| --------------|-----------------|---|---|---|-----|----| Adv Hospital | 15 05 10 | -- --|-- | 05| | 4 | 900| Adv Mil Trn | 15 -- 10 | 35 --|60 | --| | 0 |1100| Adv Poll Ctrl | 30 10 20 | -- --|-- | 01| 10| 3 |1500| Antimtr Plant | 83 33 50 | 02 --|-- | 02| | 4 |1000| Cont Environ | 30 30 -- | -- --|-- | --| | 0 |2000| Currency Sys | 25 15 10 | -- 01|-- | 01| | 3 | 500| Defense Sys | 06 01 05 | 10 15|45 | 01| | 5 |1100| Entertain Net | 37 02 35 | -- --|-- | --| | 4 | 100| Environ Ctrl | 05 -- 05 | -- --|-- | --| 3| 2 | 500| Fusion PP | 35 25 10 | 10 --|-- | 05| | 3 | 500| Gal Curr Exc | 72 20 52 | -- --|-- | --| | 5 |1000| Gal Ent Ntwk | 35 -- 35 | -- --|-- | --| | 4 | 500| Gal Info Net | 22 10 12 | -- --|-- | 30| | 4 |1000| Gnd Defense | 04 -- 04 | 03 03|50 | --| | 3 | 200| Hydroponics | 30 10 20 | -- --|-- | 10| | 3 |1100| Im Poll Ctrl | 15 05 10 | -- --|-- | --| 5| 5 |1000| Info Net | 10 02 08 | -- --|-- | 10| | 2 | 100| Int Security | 06 01 05 | 02 08|-- | --| | 1 | 300| Mil Academy | 10 -- 10 | 15 05|50 | --| | 2 | 380| Mutat Ctrl | 40 10 30 | 01 01|-- | 02| | 1 | 900| Multimedia | 20 05 15 | -- --|-- | --| | 4 | 800| Phasing PP | 40 20 20 | -- --|-- | 20| | 10 |1000| Planet Poll | 10 -- 10 | -- --|-- | --| 3| 1 | 500| Schools | 06 02 04 | -- --|-- | 15| | 0 | 50| Soil Enhan | 32 02 30 | -- --|-- | --| | 2 | 50| Treat Ctr | 17 05 12 | -- --|-- | --| | 3 | 600| University | 10 05 05 | 02 --|-- | 20| | 2 | 200| Virt R Ctr | 60 10 50 | -- --|-- | --| | 5 | 900| Evil Projects - I have yet fully to map out evilness. Collusion Mgm | 20 20 -- | -- --|-- | --| | oops| 600| Comp Surveill | 21 01 20 | -- --|-- | 02| | 6 |1200| Elite Gnd For | -- -- -- | 05 05|55 | --| | 5 |grrr| Secret Police | 25 -- 25 | -- --|30 | --| | 5 | 700| Advanced Hospitals - Viral Elimination [good] Advanced Military Training - Terror Star Advanced Pollution Control - Planetary Destruction Antimatter Plant - Antimatter Weapons Computer Surveil. - Adv. Surveillance (via Terra Computers)[evil] Collusion Management - Galactic Collusion [evil] Controlled Environment - Replication Currency System - Star Democracy Defense System - Planetary Defense Elite Ground Forces - Master Race (via Genetic Mapping) [evil] Entertainment Network - (given) Environmental Controls - Nano Electronics Fusion Power Plant - General Cold Fusion Galactic Currency Exchange - 4D Phasing Galactic Entertainment Network - Star Democracy Galactic Info Net - Terra Computers Ground Defense - (given) Hydroponics - Organic Manipulation Improved Pollution Control - Planetary Destruction Info Net - Terra Computers Internal Security - Sensors Military Academy - Shields Mutation Control - Evolution Control Multimedia Center - 1D Phasing Phasing Power Plant - 3D Phasing Planetary Pollution Control - Artificial Planets Secret Police - Thought Police (via Brainwave Mapping) [evil] Schools - (given) Soil Enhancement - (given) Treatment Center - Advanced Pain Treatment University - (given) Virtual Reality Center - 3D Phasing 5.2.2 Project Comparisons - level 1 This was contributed by Dave Chaloux There has been talk by various people around here of developing planets in different ways. For example, you might develop some planets to concentrate on research. Using the info in the FAQ, I created the following table that tries to show how much benefit you get from the various improvements per 100bc spent. You will note that there are a few key improvements that are MUCH better than average. Note that research is the sum of research benefits + production. This may not be the right formula as I maybe should have multiplied. I really can't tell without seeing the code which is right. Either way, it wouldn't affect the order given very much. I could add in evil improvements if I had the data for it. This should help you decide what to build first. (i have one comment to add to this, and that being the maintenance costs of a project should also factor into the analysis is some way. as an example, Controlled Environment has a 0 maint. even though it costs 2000, over a long game, it becomes a very cheap investment because of this. why harp on the maint. costs? easy, in a long game, they are your major expense, be it either from planet projects or ships.) ================================================================ Production: Trade: Morale: Soil Enhance 64.0 Fusion PP 5.0 Soil Enhance 60.0 Entertain Net 37.0 Soil Enhance 4.0 Entertain Net 35.0 Schools 12.0 Schools 4.0 Schools 8.0 Info Net 10.0 Antimtr Plant 3.33 Info Net 8.0 Antimtr Plant 8.3 Currency Sys 3.0 Gal Ent Ntwk 7.0 Gal Curr Exc 7.2 University 2.5 Virt R Cntr 5.56 Fusion PP 7.0 Entertain Net 2.0 Gal Curr Exc 5.2 Gal Ent Ntwk 7.0 Info Net 2.0 Antimtr Plant 5.0 Virt R Cntr 6.67 Gal Curr Exc 2.0 Mutat Ctrl 3.33 Currency Sys 5.0 Phasing PP 2.0 Mil Academy 2.63 University 5.0 Cont Environ 1.5 University 2.5 Mutat Ctrl 4.44 Virt R Cntr 1.11 Fusion PP 2.0 Phasing PP 4.0 Mutat Ctrl 1.11 Currency Sys 2.0 Treat Cntr 2.83 Gal Info Net 1.0 Phasing PP 2.0 Hydroponics 2.73 Hydroponics 0.91 Treat Cntr 2.0 Mil Academy 2.63 Treat Cntr 0.83 Gnd Defence 2.0 Multimedia 2.5 Adv Poll Ctrl 0.67 Planet Poll 2.0 Gal Info Net 2.2 Multimedia 0.63 Multimedia 1.88 Adv Poll Ctrl 2.0 Adv Hospital 0.56 Hydroponics 1.82 Gnd Defence 2.0 Im Poll Ctrl 0.5 Int Security 1.67 Int Security 2.0 Int Security 0.33 Adv Poll Ctrl 1.33 Planet Poll 2.0 Defence Sys 0.09 Gal Info Net 1.2 Adv Hospitals 1.67 Adv Hospitals 1.11 Cont Enviro 1.5 Environ Ctrl 1.0 Im Poll Cont 1.5 Im Poll Ctrl 1.0 Adv Mil Trn 1.36 Adv Mil Trn 0.91 Environ Ctrl 1.0 Defence Sys 0.46 Defence Sys 0.55 Research: (Production + Research) (just Research) Soil Enhance 64.0 Schools 30.00 Schools 42.0 Info Net 10.00 Entertain Net 35.0 University 10.00 Info Net 20.0 Gal Info Net 3.00 University 15.0 Phasing PP 2.00 Antimtr Plant 8.5 Fusion PP 1.00 Fusion PP 8.0 Hydroponics 0.91 Gal Curr Exc 7.2 Adv Hospital 0.45 Gal Ent Ntwk 7.0 Mutat Ctrl 0.22 Virt R Cntr 6.67 Antimtr Plant 0.20 Phasing PP 6.0 Currency Sys 0.20 Currency Sys 5.2 Defense Sys 0.09 Gal Info Net 5.2 Adv Poll Ctrl 0.67 Mutat Ctrl 4.67 Hydroponics 3.64 Treat Cntr 2.83 Mil Academy 2.63 Multimedia 2.5 Adv Hospitals 2.22 Adv Poll Ctrl 2.07 Gnd Defence 2.0 Int Security 2.0 Planet Poll 2.0 Cont Environ 1.5 Im Poll Ctrl 1.5 Adv Mil Trn 1.36 Environ Ctrl 1.0 Defence Sys 0.64 ***************************************************************** GALACTIC ACHIEVEMENTS (or "Inter-stellar Merit Badges Made Easy!!) ***************************************************************** Chapter 5.3.1 A general note on these descriptions: they do _not_ include any definitive strategy hints. The "worth it" and "what if my neighbors build one" notes are quick and dirty hints but should not be used to make a real stratigic plan. The game is probably too new for any suggestions on _the_ best achievements or _the_ ones to avoid or restart, etc. Occasionally, I did say something to that effect, but that was only if you absolutely had to have that achievement to make your game. Cloaking Device - need: Cloaking cost: 2000 bc expiration date: NONE! bonus: 30% ship attack, 1% defense worth it????: yes, plus the big bonus of all ships that are built are now equiped with cloaking tech so they can't be tracked! what if my neighbors build one?: don't worry, every one has secrets. Controlled Wormhole - need: Spatial Rifts cost: 1400 bc expiration date: ...forgot... bonus: +50% trade! and 10% research worth it????: maybe...depends upon if you're racing for the tech that ends its useful life. what if my neighbors build one?: I don't know. Crystalai - need: Advanced AI's cost: 4000 bc expiration date: none bonus: adds +1 to all inhabitated planet class worth it????: it's a LONG project! But it is worth the increased population growth. One thought, you might delay finishing this one until after you've settled all the planets you wanted to settle using the Terraforming tech. what if my neighbors build one?: anyone can improve their homes through their local Planets-R-Us dealer! Dinosaur Park Wonder: Replication cost: 2000 bc expiration date: Artificial Planets bonus: +50% production worth it????: if you're racing for Artificial Planets, then this is not the project for you. what if my neighbors build one?: sorry, only one per galaxy. Copyright. Deep Thought - need: Terra Computers cost: 2200 bc expiration date: Omni Computers bonus: +40% research for _ALL_ planets. worth it????: Definitely one of the Wonders for which to strive. The 40% research boost is wonderful. (what? me? pun? nyah.) what if my neighbors build one?: The galaxy can only have one Deep Thought. Eyes of the Universe: Sensors cost: 1000 bc expiration date: none bonus: none worth it????: in a huge universe, probably so, especially if you push straight for it and gain its use for colonization. Otherwise, it's of limited use. what if my neighbors build one?: you're blind. Galactic Stock Exchange: Star Democracy cost: 920 bc expiration date: NONE! bonus: +50% trade worth it????: Without a doubt! The only drawback is the pollution it can create on a very productive planet. Poor baby. what if my neighbors build one?: too late. you lose. start over. HyperSpace Project- need: Hyperspace cost: 1000 bc expiration date: none bonus: none worth it????: if you're at war, the +2 move can be a real nice advantage. If you're foes have it, you are at a real disadvantage, so you'd better get building! what if my neighbors build one?: read the above carefully. Life Creation - need: Artificial Life cost: 2600 bc expiration date: oops! bonus: +25% morale, +30% research worth it????: the morale and research bonuses are nice. The project is a bit expensive but if you want to stay ahead...? what if my neighbors build one?: don't know that one either. Nano Robot Wonder- need: Nano Electronics cost: 500 bc expiration date: Terra Computers bonus: none worth it????: sure, why not? not much more expensive than a fusion plant and gives more output. But, if you're after those info nets in a big hurry, don't bother. what if my neighbors build one?: no problem, build your own! Peace for a time- need: Interspecies Philosophy cost: ???? expiration date: ???? bonus: ???? worth it????: no clue. I've never had a chance to build this project. Wild speculation? It can only be built by alien races. That would be cool....in a way. what if my neighbors build one?: You're assuming you can. Trison Ring - need: Large Scale Building (I'll say!) cost: 1200 bc expiration date: none! ha, ha, ha, ha bonus: +40% trade, +1% defense, +10% research worth it????: YES! Just like the Galactic Stock Exchange, build it! what if my neighbors build one?: too late. Tur-Ahn Training- need: Planetary Defense cost: 1100 bc expiration date: Replication bonus: +40% attack, defense, +100% ground def. worth it????: if you are at war, want to go to war, or fear being at war, don't hesitate. what if my neighbors build one?: hope they are your friends. Utopia Colony - need: Utopia cost: 6000 bc (ouch!) expiration date: there is one.... I think. bonus: +20% trade and morale +5% attack, defense and ground def. +20% research. worth it????: it gives a lot of bonuses. It costs a lot! It comes very late in the game. More experience is definitely needed. what if my neighbors build one?: I hope everyone can have a utopia! There will be other evil Wonders (Super Projects/ Galactic Achievements) you can build too but those are not mapped out. 5.3.2 Strategic Planning with Super Projects I want to get some more discussion as to the virtues and deficits of the various projects. The easiest is Tur-Ahn Training, but what of the others? (Help me, Mr. Wizard!) A couple of quick suggestions: If there is an Achievement that you REALLY want to build, but don't have the tech for yet, start one that you can build and then switch to the project you want. One warning, DON"T FORGET ABOUT IT! Nothing worse than accidently building what you didn't want and then having someone else scoop you on what you wanted! Don't be too concerned about building the generic Achievements. You can always pick up the generic ones when you feel you really need them, but once a unique one has been built.... Tur-Ahn Training, the Trison Ring and the Galactic Stock Exchange come to mind. ***************************************************************** **** TECHNOLOGY AND SHIPS (or "something clever goes here") ***************************************************************** **** Chapter 5.4 (currently COSTS are prone to errors, i'm doing it from memory) (mainly trying to rough it out) Name | A D S V M Cost | Technology ________________|_____________________|_________________________ Avatar | 20 20 11 3 20 800 | Avatar Tech Battle Axe | 8 2 6 1 2 180 | Sensors Battle Cruiser | 5 3 8 2 2 150 | Turbo Phasors Battle Hammer | 9 3 12 2 2 220 | Large Scale Building Battle Ship | 12 6 20 2 10 600 | Battle Tech I Battlestar | 50 50 100?| Near Omniscience Colony Ship + | 0 2 50 1 0 35 | {given} Corvette | 3 6 6 2 3 100 | Advanced Phasors [good] Defender | 2 4 5 1 1 50 | Galactic Diplomacy Destroyer | 5 2 5 3 4 135 | High Density Metals Dreadnaught | 14 7 20 2 12 650 | Battle Tech II Excaliber | 30 20 60 20 12 | Excaliber Tech Freightor ++ | 0 1 10 1 2 80 | Galactic Trade Interceptor | 3 3 5 5 2 55 | Phasors Paladin | 16 10 40 3 18 700 | Ranger Tech (?) Phasing Dread **| 10 1 12 2 4 130 | 4D (?) Phasing Phoenix | 12 1 5 | Disruptors [evil] Ranger | 15 10 30 3 14 700 | Ranger Technology Scout | 0 0 0 5 1 18 | {given} Sensor Bouy | 0 0 0 1 0 10 | {given} Small Fighter | 1 1 1 1 0 25 | General Cold Fusion Star Fighter | 3 1 6 3 1 30 | Photon Torpedos Stealth Cruiser*| 9 1 4 2 3 100 | Cloaking Terror Star *** | 10 10 20 0 250 12k?| Terror Star Transport +++ | 0 1 20 1 1 60 | Impulse Drive A - attack factor. A ship with a 0 attack should not win a conflict if it is the aggressor. D - defense factor. A non-zero defense means that a ship could survive an attack and the attacker could be destroyed when attacking. S - strength. More or less, how big, massive, strong, etc. the ship is. Note that colony ships and transports have a variable strength to reflect their varying size. In combat, a high strength can sometimes "overcome" a superior A and D. V - velocity. Because I already used S for strength. Base speed to which improvements in movement technology are added. Note, you don't have to rebuild the ship to get the improved speed. The new designs are faxed to the ship and implemented immediately. M - maintenance. How much it costs to keep that ship functional. Maintenance costs are not optional. The only way not to pay the money is to decommission the ship. Cost - What it costs to build it in the first place. Technology - What you have to know to build that type of ship. * Stealth Cruiser - This ship "cloaks". Basically, this means that it cannot be tracked once it is spotted. ** Phasing Dread - Same as Stealth Cruiser, I believe. I really need to check on this one. *** Terror Star - Terror Stars are unique among the combat ships in that they _eat_ star systems. Great for that wiping out that pesky outpost that is not worth gaining control of but is a nuisance none-the-less. Also good for really cutting into the enemy's capabilities in a big way. Note, Terror Stars are very vulnerable to attack and make lousy ship-ship attackers. Use them to simplify the star map, not whomp an incoming star fleet. + Colony Ship - Base strength is 50. This represents not only the size of the ship, but the number of colonists on-board. More colonists can be added if a larger starting population for the colony is desired. Note that each time you build a colony ship, it requires 20k colonists from the home planet. The additional 30k are a freeby (busy, busy). ++ Freighter - Nothing fancy, this is just the ship you must have to set up a trade route. It contains "goods" and once you establish a trade route, the ship is no longer under your control. Loss of the trade route for any reason does not make the ship reappear. +++ Transport - Base strength is 20. This represents not only the size of the ship, but the number of soldiers on-board. More soldiers can be added if a larger starting population for the colony is desired. Note that initial 20k soldiers are "free", they don't subtract from the colony's population. ***************************************************************** ********************* Future Wishes ***************************** ***************************************************************** Chapter 6.0 (as a general note, if someone thinks some of these ideas are bogus (especially mine, since i only sorta thought about them), feed back would be nice!!!!!) Player Options (those changes affecting the player only) - let the player ask for aid from the other races (net) - the windows for fleet display and the planet display should be sortable on any of the columns in the display. (i.e.- ship name, planet name, production, location, ship class, etc.) (net) - let the player choose the military advisors of the alien races. Go for the ultimate punishment of chosing the nasty AI for all the opponent races (or the opposite). (John Martz. The masochist! (ok, he's says he's not a masochist, just wants the challenge.)) - the naming of the star ships should allow for the place of origin to be displayed _without_ having to pop-up a window. This is vital information! (John Martz) {this is pretty much taken care of by the [GO HOME] button on the bottom of the screen.} - there should be an increased number of options availible for the player under the GIA button. These should include, but not be limited to, requests by the player for aid; requests for territory and/or money as a settlement for stopping a war (this should include lump sum and "leases"); mutual treaties (ie - in a 2-on-1 war, you _and_ your ally would negotiate an end to the fighting); "giving" technology to another race; foreign aid to another race; treaties such as non-aggression pacts, warship size limitations, planetary colonization agreements, etc.; and any other options we can imagine! (net) - there needs to be notification given when a new planetary resource icon becomes available. Maybe this could show up on the Planetary Resource window? (Greg Stewart) - Create an automatic trading routes. Many times one may want all trader ships created on one planet go to A SPECIFIC planet without having to get the ship out of orbit and then select auto and point to the planet where it is to be sent. This is a real pain and the most fun in the game is making decisions not worrying about moving ships. (reyes01@ibm.net) - A smarter secretary of the treasury would nice. Instead of warning you that your treasury is low when it dips below 50, it would be much more useful if it warned you that at the present rate of loss (say 200/turn), you will be broke next turn. On such nasty occasions, the treasury would slip from >50 to <0, obviously without warning. (mill0440@gold.tc.umn.edu) Alien Options (those changes affecting the other races only) - each race should have its own grammer. It should not necessarily be tied to any given race all the time. (me) - more races for opponents with pretty pictures. Obviously, this is a CD-ROM option given all the various resolutions that this game supports. Maybe have the format for the pictures and their number known, so that anyone can edit a race. (net) Both (ah, obvious) - multi-ship movement such as escort, fleet movement, and have this reflect in the combat in some way. A fleet of ten starfighters should be more of a force than ten individual starfighters. Escorting ships should be attacked first, or maybe even get first attack? (net) - projects should have variable affects on the different planet classes, possibly at different times in the planet's history. Examples: Entertainment Networks should be more effective on poor planets than better planets. As the pollution level increases, the effectiveness of an Entertainment Network should get better, but not enough to offset the pollution losses. (me) - mining outposts, or resource allocation outposts should be availible as either projects or military ventures. These should be used to exploit other systems that don't have "habitable" planets. They should increase production without pollution but should create more unhappiness at the home system. (net) - espionage should give the alien trade route table as one of the possible outcomes. From here, the player could use "destabilize" money to indirectly disrupt trade (a steady decline in income or maybe an abrupt ending of the route) or assign ships to play pirate on one or more trade routes. Conversely, a player should be able to pull ships off the "line" to guard trade routes, either directly or maybe in a "Q"-ship role. (me) Game Characteristics (changes that affect game play and environment more than any particular race characteristics.) - reduce the amount of "vacuum-effects". What I mean by a vacuum-effect is the Trison Ring description. In this description, it claims that the three planets were consumed in making the Ring. If this is a real effect, then the Trison Ring should only be built in systems that have three or more planets of the type that can be used to build the Ring and the system display should remove those planets once the Ring is complete. In the best of all possible worlds, the system display should include a separate graphic for a Trison Ring. - the rebel planets need more personality. It should be possible to negotiate with the rebels. Possible results would be trade, non-aggression, chance to join the player's government. (net) - related to the rebel planet personality is the idea that if enough planets go into rebellion in a particular race, than those planets can form a new, independent government with its own personality with a possible minor shift in the race personality. (me) - GIA espionage information needs to be expanded. The current information, while interesting, is not all that useful. If the above treaty suggestions are added, then better intelligence is necessary to check those treaties. Examples of needed additions would be production/project/ population read-outs on individual planets; number of ships in the fleet and a listing of types of ships with maybe the addition of rough estimates of numbers (%s +/- 10?, based on GIA spending levels, tech level differences?); estimates of planetary defense fleets; etc. It should be possible to target a given planet to discover specific information about that planet. It would also be good to tie the reports of racial standing with the other other races to only those races of which you have intelligence data. (net) - wars should have more effect on the population than just a draw on the economy. There are two main paths this idea takes, one for democracies and one for totalitarian governments. However, in both governments, the longer the war, the stronger the needs and desires for peace. First, the democracy: if the democracy is at war with a neutral or good race, then the rising tide to stop the war should be much stronger. Only evil governments should be the targets of sustained conflicts, and then only if the race has engaged in genocide should there exist strong enough support for a really sustained and nasty war to the bitter end. This assumes the democracy is winning. If it is losing, then the population should have some sort of siege mentality and be able to "tough it out". If the government is totalitarian, then the population's will is much more ignorable, but there should be some chance for the creation of "rebels". Recall that a planet in rebellion does not necessarily mean that the population of that planet has had a change of heart. It most likely means that the local government has declared its independence from the central authority for its own needs. (me) - to stay on the topic of war, I find it a bit disconcerting that it is so painless to go to war with a former ally. Maybe it's just my altruistic viewpoint. Consider that after making an alliance, fighting other races for decades (if not a century or so!), you just tell them, "You're not doing you're part" and then the alliance ends and you go about declaring war on them and then trashing them (that was the goal of that, wasn't it?). Somehow, this seems akin to me of the US deciding to invade Canada or Great Britain in this day and age. Even ignoring the general moral/support hit the government would take for this action, the economic devastation alone would raise a hue and cry that would sink the leader attempting such a plan. Remember, such an action would most likely come from someone playing the "good" path of the game. I think that there should be some mechanism to make alliance breaking reflect more the _type_ of government the person is attempting to play. (me, obviously) - not all technologies are equally good for all races. Again, this follows the idea that good and evil races have different needs. For a good race, the building of Collusion Management should have a negative effect on citizen happiness. The same should be true for evil race but for different technologies. The Info Net is one example of a technology that should increase the chance that a planet goes into rebellion if the race is evil since this Net would allow the local cronies to be more able to band together, ignore the far-off central government and exploit the local resources. (me) - there need to be some technologies that are present for the "neutral" races that would benefit their particular needs. (net) - there need to be more options for government types. Suggestions would be the space equivalent of a merchantile government (obviously one for a neutral race), a socialist variation (happiness as the democracy but resource allocations as the dictator?). (net) (attributions: if the item was plucked off of the net and I cannot recall the source, I appended "net" to it. Otherwise, the suggestion will have one or more names associated with it. Why all the bother? I believe in giving credit where credit is due. This game was programmed by real people (Brad, too) and has had lots of input from us, the beta group and the growing list of new admirers (everybody just loves this game, right?!). I think this tradition should continue! I would also like to point out that all of the (me) attributions are due mainly to A LACK OF INPUT....that's not too subtle, is it?) (it is getting better, though:) ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** ***** Places to buy Galactic Civilizations ***** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 7.0 QUESTION: WHAT IS "GALCIV" AND WHERE CAN I GET IT? ANSWER: You can get GalCiv (Galactic Civilizations) from a number of sources. This handy document will help you find a place to get it. This list is by no means complete and more places will or are carrying it than this list mentions. Timur Tabi is compiling a list of sources which this list borrows from. DESCRIPTION: Galactic Civilizations is an OS/2 strategy game written from the ground up to take advantage of OS/2. It allows you to colonize or conquer an entire galaxy filled with alien civilizations that are controlled by an advanced artificial intelligence engine that plays by the same rules you do (unlike most strategy games). Galactic Civilizations Price: $59.95 for 1 unit. $54.95 for 3 or more. Shipping: $5 in USA, $10 outside USA Package Includes: GalCiv box Install Guide Hypertext Manual Disk 4 HD 3.5 inch floppy disks with Galactic Civilizations game. Requires: System running OS/2 2.x or 3.0 (Warp) Mouse, VGA or better Recommended: Sound Card 486DX processor or higher SVGA Sources for GalCiv: ----------------------------------------------------------------- - Stardock Systems Inc. PROS: Gets revenue to the developers of game quickly which allows them to get started on more OS/2 games. Offers same day or next day shipping when units are in stock. Ships outside USA. CONS: Not a retail chain. Stores are looking to see how well GalCiv sells at retail. ORDER FORM: Name: __________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________ City/Zip/Country _____________________________ Daytime Phone:__________________________________ Payment Type [VISA] [Mastercard] [COD] [CHECK] Credit Card Number (if applicable) ___________________ EXP _________ Stardock Systems Inc. 13405 Addison Gibraltar MI 48173 PHONE: (313)/782-2248 FAX: (313)/782-9868 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Indeliable Blue PROS: Is quick to fulfill orders. Great OS/2 supporter, experienced with dealing with OS/2 software. Ships outside USA. CONS: Same as above. CompUSA: (Special Order Only In Most Cases) PROS: Ordering from them allows them to see that their is demand for OS/2 games and makes it more likely that they will stock it. CONS: Length of time between order and arrival unknown. Egghead: (Some places have heard of it, others haven't) PROS: Same as above CONS: May not have heard of GalCiv at all which makes it difficult to get it. Software Etc. PROS: Same as Above CONS: None so far. ---------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to add to this list, email wardell@ibm.net. ***************************************************************** *** Where do I report problems? Get help? Praise the *** *** glorious designers of this truly astounding game? *** ***************************************************************** [8] Not that this is not already in the various documents with GC, but here it is again, because this is also the spot for bug reports and updates. AIM is also responsible for the marketing of GalCiv, such as distribution to various retail outlets, box, manual and promotional matters. John Schaeffer Internet: aimgames@xmission.com AIMsBBS 801-572-6353 8-n-1 2400 to 14400 Fax 801-571-8625 OS2BBS DEV1024@Hone82 Information: 801-572-4018 In addition, the Usenet group, comp.sys.os2.games has a wealth of experienced and opinionated (meant positively, guys!) people that can offer advice, help and other useful tidbits. The newsgroup is also where I announce new versions of the FAQ. I also recall someone having constructed a Web node for galciv but I cannot recall the address. sigh.