Newbie

Anyone willing to help/discuss?

There are a lot of really good guides out there.

Here's one I wrote:

https://www.stardock.com/games/article/487922/galactic-civilizations-iii-walkthrough-2018

 

Thanks for the response. I've almost finished my first game (I need to knock out the Iridium Corp before they get an Ascension Victory), and between the guides and just playing by ear, I seem to have the basics down, so thanks.

 

I have another rquestion though. I got the game for free on Epic, and I'm looking at buying DLC but I'm a little confused. I got the game under the impression that it was just the base game, but I have Crusade and Retribution, which seems to be included. I'm not sure about Mercenaries, though? I have the Torians and Arceans unlocked which suggests that I have Mercenaries, but the Grand Bazaar never seemed to be available (I couldn't tell you about the other features). So, do I have Mercenaries and for some reason the Bazaar was just not unlocked? Or is something else happening? Is there a way to tell on my system?

The devs sell the game as a package deal. Base game + Crusade + Retribution. I don't quite remember why at the moment.

I've looked at the DLC you can buy, and it seems that neither Mercs or Intrigue come with the package deal. So no mercs or black market. Arceans and Torians are also unlocked by having Crusade, so its not just Mercs.

1. I would recommend playing as the Terrans or Refuge for your first play through.
2. I generally build large fleets of tiny hulls. 40 ships are generally good, but early in the game you have to make due with what you got, which might mean fleets of 10+. I later switch to carriers, which are basically ships that launch tiny hulled ships. The tiny hulls use your best non-resource-consuming weapons. Weapon type is determined by carrier type. Assault (or default carrier modules) use missile weapons, interceptors use beam, and guardians use kinetic. Carriers automatically replace their tiny hulled ships over time. Be careful with interceptors as beam weapons are missing some non-resource-consuming components.
3. I favor warfare. Best weapons + best logistics + soldiering techs. When picking specializations, I pick range so I get the first shot advantage. I end many fights before the enemy gets to shoot back. Also research engine techs, because slow moving fleets are boring. Range is important too, as you can't fight the enemy if you can't reach them (though well placed starbases help extend your range).
4. Milestones? Well, in my most recent game I had over a half a dozen worlds before turn 41. I was in the process of nabbing more worlds and resources at the time. By turn 70-ish, I had over a dozen planets and many resources. I was doing so well that a civ declared war on me because my military was growing too big too fast. I didn't have planet invasion yet, but I had a decent research base then so I was able to nab it quickly.
5. Nothing comes to mind.
6. I like Star Control heroes and villains. And the Snathi. The Snathi are a force to be reckoned with. I don't like their penalty to hit points, and salvaged ships are often not as good as the ones you can build, but with their salvage ability you have a chance to salvage transports with legions. Not having enough legions does slow down conquering the galaxy.

All that said, I think GalCiv 2 is the better game. Unfortunately thats a game made in 2006. I wish the devs would update it. I'm playing GalCiv 3 because I played 2 until I got sick of it.

The above advice is good. I would shoot for factories first, then first tier engines. I would go as far as eyes of the universe. 
the dlcs I would recommend are if you play big maps, mercenaries, then lost treasures. That will help you explore. 
48 is the number of planets you should shoot for; even though I’ve seen some posts some play with only 15. 
turn your pirate difficulty on rare.

in options turn everything on abundant.

if you don’t want planet build until you get used to it you can automate your planet building under governor options.

make sure to sponsor your shipyards with at least all the planets in the star system, and any close planets up to 5.

every so often after you meet people check your relations with them. If their furious, or hostile with you, you should start gearing for war. It’s ok to wait a little bit before you worry about war. Fewer factions bigger maps means longer before you go to war. Only trade with factions your friendly with. If you don’t they will try to rip you off. 
four factories a planet is good. Hubs are better than factories. 1 point is better than a percent usually. Put like buildings together learn to check the building type. Mouse over to check. 
they say campaigns are a good way to learn the game. 
I would say read the wiki. It is probably outdated by now, but it still gives you an idea on what to do. I would say also read the user guide,

Thanks for your advice, I managed to win it with your great help. It was cheesing it a bit - people kept declaring war on me and losing, until I had two allies left and one neutral, one ally was close to winning by ascension. I wiped out the Slyne and won a diplomatic victory. Amusing as I was not diplomatic in the least.

1. How do you win a tech victory? Do you just research everything? The key targets didn't seem to be on my tech tree.
2. Do the percentages on the victory screen mean much? My tech went to 23% but seems frozen now. Military says 52% but I haven't even been at war and nobody has been defeated yet. Doesn't seem to add up?
3. What should my currency income be looking like? I have multiple trade routes and things, but it barely seems to budge. Nothing I build seems to increase it significantly faster.
4. Does having a large military provoke the AI? I thought having a big stick would intimidate them, but they seem more likely to declare war on me.
5. On the faction attributes screen, it gives various plus or minus numbers. I get the gist, but if it says that my ships are fragile, -2, what does that actually mean? How much weaker does that imply?

I actually enjoyed the game more than I expected. In some ways, I actually prefer it to Civ VI, even if the UI is less beginner friendly. It's a shame it's not on the Switch!

I'm tempted to get GCII, my machine struggles with III, and I'm wondering if the older game would go easier on it. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could cope with a game that old. I was looking at Star Control DLCs. What about the Rise of the Terrans?

 

To win a tech victory you have to research 3 or 4 techs some of which are not available to you until the Age of Ascension, then build an Ascension Gate on one of your planets. If you hit the escape key and choose Victory Status, then click on Technology Victory, it will show you which techs are required.

You can significantly increase your income through tourism if your cultural influence is high enough. Each tourism planetary improvement is only 1%, but since it's calculated based on the total number of tiles under your influence it can really add up. Much better than trade for me.

From my experience, having a large military does prevent them from declaring war on you up to a point. I assume that's when the threat is high enough to outweigh other factors, or where they figure they don't have any other choice.

Sorry I can't address your other questions. I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

3. Negative treasury inflicts penalties to production. Its a -50% mod to research, social production, and ship production. This is after all other calculations, so it will hit you hard. Don't let it to reach that point. Raise taxes if you must. Be careful with rush buying and stuff. You start with a lot of money, so try to hold on to it until you got a basic economy going.

An income of a few hundred per turn allows you to do some upgrading of starbases and building mines on asteroids. Later its easy to have a few thousands per turn. I usually find that this takes care of itself after your population grows and you conquer some planets.

4. I think so. I find that the AI often declares war on me if I'm not at war with someone yet still growing a large military. It seems to be a desperate attempt to take you out before you get too powerful to fight back against.

5. If you try to create your own custom civ, you can hover your cursor over the various stats to see what they do. In regards to fragile -2, its a -30% mod to hit points.

GalCiv 2 was a good game. It will play a bit different. Unfortunately, the community has moved on to GalCiv 3, so it might be difficult to get help. Maybe I'll hang around for a few weeks just in case you have questions.

Lets see what I remember about GalCiv 2. Trade was a bit more profitable. Building starbases costs a lot of constructors, 1 constructor for the starbase itself, then 1 constructor per module you wanted the starbase to have. There was no limit to how many colonies or starbases you could have (there was no admin points to restrict growth). Having a larger military did cause the AIs to not declare war on you (unless you provoke them with some obvious aggressive action). It would allow you to get away with build influence starbases near their world and culture flipping them.

You had to split your spending between military, social, and research production. This meant that 100% research would require you to have 0% social 0% military production. This production would cost you money. The max you could spend in a field was determined by the planet improvements you had. So if you built a lot of labs, you could spend a lot of money on research. Factories and labs had high maintenance costs, so be careful you don't build too many.

I could give a long post about factions to try as a beginner but I find the Torians to be quite OP since they have the Super-Breeder ability which helps population(and thus social/ship/researxh production) grow very fast. They also have a very OP improvement the healing waters which provides morale boost and had a adjacency bonus in every category essentii eliminating all negative side effects to building it.

 

As others have stated the colony rush is quite important. Run early game at max efficiency and with a deficit and fund your empire thru anomaly exploration. If you get stuck with a bad starting position invest in military quickly or researxh precursors worlds and exotic world colonization to nab planets that aren't immediately available for taking at turn 0. 

 

Cheers!

How do you do that? I've researched a bunch of tech, but nothing obvious is coming up to build. I have lots of tiles (I'd estimate between 30%-40% of the map is my colour at the moment), but my income is still pretty tame, about 110 gross and 30 net. I could rush a whole ship in the entire game at this rate! I haven't dedicated much in the way of planet tiles (I'm going for a tech victory so while I've built some markets, mostly I've gone for production and research), but I've maxed out my trade licences with no techs on my list to research to get more. I'm also unsure of whats happening- I researched a tech that said I'd be able to build trade stuff in starbases, promenades and such but none of my SBs come up with the option to build a trade based rings or modules?

Seems to kind of match what I'm seeing. Still, it's odd to me that they only seem to declare war on me when I outgun them. Everyone was fine, but then the Terrans warned me about the Krynn building up, and when I checked I saw that they were hostile to me, so I built up two pretty large fleets (comparative to the other factions, anyway) to be ready to defend my distant colonies on their border and shot up from being ranked dead last in military to first. I then later mistook the Krynn for Iridium Corp on the dip screen so I built up another two large fleets to defend my home territories before I realised my mistake. Then the Iconians declared war (not sure what motive they had, I was quite happy trading with them and had no fleets on their borders) but they didn't seem to have any fleets at all. Within 30 turns I had taken out 2 starbases that were being a pest for a long time, all their home colonies plus one of their furthest plus sundry SBs, so now they're down to two crappy colonies i  the middle of nowhere. I've only not taken those because it means crossing Iridium Corp territory with large fleets, and I'd rather not annoy them. Seems a strange decision, to declare war on the largest armada by far with no ships to defend yourself. 

Ah ok thanks, I get it now that numbers are necessarily scaled, but each one just corresponds to a different degree. So 1 could be 10% and 2 could be 15%, not necessarily 20%.

With regards to DLC, is it easy to disable one? I'm thinking of buying the Steam bundle since the DLC I want on Epic is about the same as the discounted bundle with everything on Steam. However, I'm not sure I'll like Intrigue, so would it be easy to disable it? I'm mostly a console player, so I don't do much PC gaming,

Here are the tourism improvements you can build.

Paxton's Emporium, unlocked by Universal Translator.
Port of Call, unlocked by Interstellar Tourism.
Extravaganza, unlocked by Open Immigration.
Boyer's World, unlocked by Wonders of the Galaxy.
Restaurant of Eternity, unlocked by Pilgrimage.

As best I can recall, all civs can try to build Paxton's Emporium (it's a one per galaxy improvement), but the other techs might be limited to carbon and silicon life forms, and might not be available to synths.

To use those you have to build Economic Starbases with colonies in their area of effect (Mining Starbases can't build those Economic improvements and vice versa).So if you have a trade hub that you're sending all your freighters from, build a starbase nearby and then put all the trade modules on that starbase to boost trade income from the colony. Same with research and manufacturing - there are a lot of modules available for Economic starbases that can provide big mid and late game boosts, especially where you have 2 or more colonies in the AoE of a starbase.

 

Trade needs to scale much better as the game progresses. It's OK early game to cover up some deficits as you expand and try and keep morale up, but it becomes irrelevant economically mid game (but is still useful for Diplomatic purposes).

Ah, now that makes sense, thank you! I wish they'd have it just greyed it out and have a tooltips explaining what the requirements are or something. It would make learning the game much easier.

In my current game, I'm making more money from GDP than tourism. I think I get that from high raw production.

I keep my population high with good morale. That would require cities and that requires farms that produce food. I also boost the level of cities, which increase the cap of population on that world. Irrigation, hospitals, and farms give 2 levels of population to adjacent cities. With the right techs, you can also improve the colony capital, which increases the base population.

A warning though, you can't have a population higher than the planet's PQ. Terraforming increases PQ, so thats a way to improve poor worlds.

I research government techs which often improve raw production. In retribution, I'm getting +40% raw production from government techs. You can get another +25% from having a high morale.

I often mine asteroids, which give 1 point of raw production if they are close to the worlds they supply.

I don't build a lot of factories or labs as they have a maintenance cost. I build many markets instead.

I also don't build many ships that have maintenance. So my military is all tiny ships and cargo carriers.



You can uninstall them. You should be able to open up steam, select the game, then open properties. You should see DLC as something you can manage there.

I agree with Devine wraith somewhat. I think se factories(hubs whenever possible) raw production and economic buildings seem to be a good money maker. Tourism is better than trade mid to late game. I build Paxton emporium.

I can now build the economic rings, although money is still a bit sluggish - 300 net per turn. However, that's ten times what I was getting before, so definitely an improvement.

Is there a way of queuing research? It's a little frustrating having the screen come up every other turn asking me what to do next. I'd prefer to choose what I want on the current screen and then not be bothered for a dozen turns or whatever.

Also, is there a way of recycling units? I'm getting to the point where I think my current units will be obsolete, but I don't want to lose the resources. I could upgrade them, but that costs a couple hundred credits and so that means I can only upgrade one ship per turn and would lose all my income...I'd rather get my durantium back and build new ones, it's not slower, but I'm running out of ships to build anyway (I don't want to antagonise the Iridium with too large a fleet) and I'm finding durantium is very much a limiting factor at the moment.

What are some tips for building carriers? I'm generally building them with my largest hulls (huge now), but some say to use cargo hulls...which is better, and why? Or am I coming at it completely wrong? I have zero maintenance ships now, so maintenance isn't an issue, although build times are horrific...

You can scrap individual ships by selecting them and pressing the delete key. You can scrap fleets by selecting a fleet, click details, then click decommission. You don't get resources back when you scrap ships, starbases, or planet improvements. Heck, I even tried upgrading ships; the resources are not refunded nor used used as credit for the upgrade.

You also don't get legions back when you scrap transports. In fact, you lose 1 legion every time you add a transport to a shipyard build queue, but don't cancel them because you aren't getting your down payment back. You can scrap constructors, colony ships, stellar architects and get your you admin point back, but once you build a starbase, colonize a colony, or built a hyper gate, you can't get the admin point back.

Yes you can queue research. You can select the tech you want to research up to. A warning though, as the game will select the top most specialization when you queue research past it. Make sure you really select it because it doesn't offer many hints that its queued.

I use cargo hulls for my carriers. I don't think carriers should enter battle so its perfectly fine for me to leave them undefended in the back of the fleet. I haven't fought a carrier battle where I lost without having the all fighters get destroyed first. I throw a few modules for range because range can be a problem. I use assault carrier modules (which are carrier modules without a fancy name) because missiles allow for the first strike and because they get high a capacity version. I kill the enemy with overwhelming firepower, killing them before they get a chance to shoot back. Consequentially, I don't care about defenses; just fleet size.

As Divine Wrath pointed out, yes, you can queue research, but you have to go to the "Tree View" to do it. Bottom left button on the default research window.

Oh right. Yes you need to do that. Sorry, I change that every time I play. Didn't even cross my mind.

As do I.

DivineWrath - For the record, you do not lose a legion when you queue a transport.  One gets earmarked for the transport ship (as it must have at least one legion).  Once the ship is built, the subtracted legion is on the transport.  If you fill it up to full (with 5) only 4 more are subtracted from your pool.

The bug is when you upgrade a transport.  It will still subtract one from your pool for inclusion on the ship, and add it upon upgrading (which is not necessary, as there is at least one on the transport being upgraded).  This way, you can actually get 6+ legions on your transport ship.

Maybe I said it wrong. No, technically the 'lost' legion gets moved to the transport when built, but if you cancel the transport before its finished, you won't get that legion back.

As for upgrading, you can over stuff a transport with legions by repeatedly upgrading it. Each time you upgrade a transport to a transport, a legion is consumed in the process, and then when the upgrading is finished, it gets added to the pool of legions the ship carries, even if that pushes it past the maximum.

Ah I never noticed that about deleting queued transports losing the troop.