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USER MANUAL

Been having a great time with Civ IV, but I see that GalCiv II is out now and I was a big fan of 1 so I'm considering buying this. Question: is there a decent manual this time around, or even one at all? Please no flames about the case against manuals and in favor of pdfs, it's just a question. Thanks, and hi Brad, good to see ya again. Welcome to the Galactic Civilizations Wiki! We're currently editing 814 articles - feel free to join in! For a game overview, see Dread Lords, Dark Avatar, Twilight of the Arnor and Endless Universe at Wikipedia. Galactic Civilizations III is the largest strategy sandbox ever made. Start with a single world and expand across the galaxy through diplomacy, trade, cultural hegemony or military conquest in this single-player or multiplayer 4X strategy game.

For Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition on the PC, GameFAQs has 34 cheat codes and secrets.

1. Visit to get updates or use the included Stardock Central program to receive Manual: Read the online version of the documentation. That’s enough to feed 10 million people, according to the manual. None of my other planets have lots of farms either, so where is this food. There’s a galciv2 subforum, plus the galatic civilizations 2 website.
2. GalCiv III: Crusade - Player's Guide. Published on Friday, May 5, 2017 By Frogboy In GalCiv III Dev Journals And now.I give you. In Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade we instead let the player choose missions for its planets and shipyards to go on. How is that different than a governor?
3. Galactic Civilizations III. A proper manual that just deals with the differences between Crusade and the base game and which explains how the former works would.

Developed by

Written by Brad Wardell & Steve Rose

Table of Contents

Installation and Requirements

Galactic Civilizations requires a Pentium III level computer running at 600mhz or higher. We recommend a 1Ghz Pentium III level computer or better for optimal performance.

Galactic Civilizations requires approximately 300 megabytes of hard disk space for all multimedia features to be installed. However, minus the multimedia features it can be played with less than 100 megabytes of disk space.

It requires a display of at least 1024x768 to play. You can receive additional updates to the game at http://www.galciv.com.

People often ask if they can play on lower spec machines: I sometimes play the game on my old 266 laptop, and with the video and sound turned off and playing on smaller galaxy sizes, it is OK to play. But you really need some power when you get gigantic galaxies, with lots of planets and ships to keep track off. (Instructions on how to do this are in the technical FAQ in this manual.)

Introduction

Galactic Civilizations is a strategy game in which you take the helm of human civilization in the year 2178. It is a time of great change for humanity as a new technology, known as hyper-drive,has allowed civilizations to travel great distances in a short amount of time. This means that countless planets are now open to colonization and exploration. However, humans are not alone in the galaxy, several other space faring civilizations are doing the same thing. It is up to you to decide how humanity will interact with these other civilizations.

Victory Conditions

Galactic Civilizations provides four paths to victory.

?Political Victory

?Technology Victory

?Cultural Victory

?Conquest Victory

Most players will employ a variety of strategies to win through one of these paths. This document is designed to spell out what these victory conditions mean and some strategies on how to achieve them.

Political Victory

'If you and your alien allies are able to conquer all opposition you win.'

In the diplomacy screen you can see the diplomatic relations you have with other players. At the start of the game they'll be neutral. But with the proper encouragement, you can get to 'close' relations. Only at that point, you can negotiate an alliance treaty with them on the negotiation screen. If you do

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this will all the surviving major civilizations, you will achieve a political victory. Note that you need alliance technology.

Of course, how do you get foreign governments to like you? The short answer is - you make it their best interest to like you. In Galactic Civilizations, that means trade combined with sufficient military power. But trade is the key. By building freighters and sending them to other star systems you can begin to make their economy dependent on trade with you. Over time, their relations with you will improve. The more powerful you are compared to them, the easier this can be.

That said, there are other factors. For instance, if you play the role of an 'evil' civilization, then things get a lot tougher. Good civilizations don't want anything to do with you, even if you do trade it will be a hard case to make them like you.

Technology Victory

'If humanity can research enough technology that it transcends to the next level of existence, you win.'

What the heck does that mean? In short, if you manage to make your way through the technology tree you will eventually reach a technology called 'The Final Frontier'. Research this and mankind moves to the next phase of its existence and wins the game.

Of course, doing this is very challenging since it will require massive technology investment. The best way to achieve this is to make sure you control as many of the technology resources as you can. I have found that the best way to do that is to try to stay out of wars and keep constructors near starbases owned by players who are currently at war and hope that that starbase gets destroyed. Be wary though, the alien civilizations don't take kindly to this so make sure you are ready for the consequences of that.

Cultural Victory

'If you culturally dominate 9/10th’s of the sectors culturally and you are not at war with any civilizations you win the game via cultural domination.'

So how do you do this? Culture. If you control the cultural influence resources (blue cubes on the map) and build them up this will get you a long way towards that goal. Then build star bases in sectors you don't currently have influence control over and build them up with cultural influence modules. Be wary, the alien civilizations are aware of this tactic (since they'll try to do it to you) so unless you are prepared for war, don't be too blatant about this at the higher intelligence levels.

Conquest Victory

'If you conquer all of the alien civilizations, you win.'

Specifically it means all the major alien civilizations. You don't have to kill off every last minor civilization if you don't want to. But you do have to conquer all the major civilizations (Drengin, Arceans, Yor, Torians, Altarians). Odds are though that the minor civilizations will fall along the way.

This path is the most traditional and straight forward so I'm not sure what I can add as advice. Let's see...how about, build really powerful ships and destroy the other side's really powerful ships? Then build transports, load them up with troops and send them over to undefended star systems and invade them.

Our story so far…

The year is 2178. But our story really begins fifty years ago. For this is when humans first came into contact with an alien civilization. The faint signals of an Arcean probe were picked up on sensors in Australia. It didn’t take long for a very basic level of contact to begin between Earth and Arcea. It was the beginning of our interstellar education.

For thousands of years, several interstellar civilizations have been sending probes throughout the galaxy. Transportation between different outposts was done through star-gates.Thesestar-gateswere immense structures that were obscenely expensive to use and maintain. As a result, the civilizations actually have had very limited contact with one another (and none with humans obviously).

Once human scientists understood the concept of star gates and how they worked, they set on a course to try to improve on them. About a decade before the start of the game, these scientists introduce to the galaxy a new technology called “Hyper-drive”,which applied the principles of the gates in a new type of ship engine, making interstellar travel possible without a star gate at each end.

Humans by the 22nd century had concluded that any civilization capable of interstellar travel must certainly have long since grown out of their violent militaristic stage and one of the leading scientists involved with the project shared the design ofhyper-drivewith all five of the major alien civilizations. Almost instantly, communication with the other civilizations came to a halt.

After months of silence, government of United Earth came to the conclusion that hyper-drivewould allow the colonization of the galaxy and what was likely to occur was a race to claim star systems that contained inhabitable planets. It was decided that Earth must not fall behind and the design for a colony ship developed.

This brings us to 2178, the beginning of the era known as “Galactic Civilizations”. The first colony ship has been created along with a survey ship to explore the numerous anomalies throughout the galaxy.

Now the race is on to find and colonize unclaimed star systems with good planets (class 15 or better), find and claim galactic resources (by building constructors that can then build star bases on them), and ensure humanity can survive in a potentially hostile galaxy.

Starting a new game

Upon loading Galactic Civilizations you are presented with 3 options: Start a new civilization, Load a saved civilization, and Restore your last civilization. Loading a saved one will allow you to choose a previously saved game. Restoring will bring back the most recent auto-saveavailable.

When choosing a new game, Galactic Civilizations will ask you to create your civilization:

Designing a Civilization

On this screen, you can decide what kind of civilization you would like to have. Humanity is yours to mold. You can name your civilization anything you want.

You can select your political party from this screen. Political parties give your civilization advantages in specific areas. However, they only good when your political party is in control of your

senate. The starting government type, imperial, ensures you will always have control of the senate at the beginning but as more advanced forms of government come into play, control of the senate becomes more difficult.

The political parties available are:

Federalists

The federalists are big believers in having the government be somewhat distributed. They tend to be fairly expert in financial matters internally. Choosing this party will give your civilization a 20% boost in tax revenue and a 10% boost in industrial production.

Pacifists

The pacifists are strong believers in peace. Any civilization capable of interstellar travel must be peaceful. Disagreements and warfare between civilizations is due to misunderstanding. Choosing this party will give your civilization a 30% bonus to your influence and 30% bonus to your diplomacy ability.

War Party

The war party sees the alien civilizations for what they are, vermin that must be controlled. The best defense is a good offense. The Terran civilization has a manifest destiny to control the entire galaxy. Choosing this party will give your civilization a 10% bonus to star ship weapons and 50% to hit points your star ships get and a 10% bonus to the quality of your soldiers.

Progressive

The progressive party sees things in terms of social progress. The galaxy is probably too big to be conquered with crude weapons and ships. The future belongs to the civilization that creates the most powerful society as a whole and abides by intergalactic laws. This party gets a 50% bonus to social project manufacturing.

Mercantile

The Mercantiles understand the true power of hyperdrive – trade. It is through trade that the galaxy will be united under human guidance. Exporting our goods and culture to other civilizations will make them more dependent and human prosperity for their own success. The Mercantiles receive a 30% bonus to trade via freighters and the value of human trade goods is increased by 30%. As an extra bonus, they give a 10% bonus to espionage.

Populists

The populists are the party of the people. They care. They really do. They believe in focusing on the needs and fears of the people and as a result, they bring a 30% increase to morale and increase our influence by 10%. They also highly encourage humans to be fruitful and multiply which gives a 10% boost to population growth.

Technologists

The technologists are the ones who have dominated the politics of the United Nations for the past few decades. It was their supporters, after all, who delivered hyperdrive in the first place. That is why the technologists give an impressive 30% boost research and +3 to sensor range.

Industralists

The industrialists are the antithesis of the technologists. Why worry about products of the future when you can focus on the products of today? The industrialists provide a 5% economic bonus and a 20% industrial production bonus.

Universalists

The key to winning is really through a balance of all factors. Universalists don’t focus on any particular issue but instead moderate between many views. As a result, Universalists provide a 10% trade bonus, a 10% research bonus, a 10% bonus to ship defenses, a 10% bonus to ship repair, a 10% bonus to starship speed. While some argue that these miniscule advantages they provide are a waste of time, they counter that when combined with other advantages received in the future that they can make quite a difference.

Creating your own human faction

After choosing your political party, you can add up to 10 ability bonus points to key areas of your civilization. This is how you create your own human faction. The cost of increasing each ability varies. The available abilities and their costs are:

Courage

Bravery is not only respected by alien civilizations, but can also give your Soldiers the advantage when fighting a close land battle. Boost this by increasing your Bravery Ability.

Brave (+25%) Cost: 1 pt.

Creativity

Put the Right side of you brain to good use! Creative Empires will have a higher likelihood of making groundbreaking discoveries traditionally unavailable.

Highly Creative (+25%) Cost: 1 pt.

Tip: This manifests in your survey ships (initially USS Hero) finding tech breakthroughs when exploring anomalies.

Defense

Keep your pilots safe with a mighty Defense Ability. The hulls of your ships will be strengthened to protect from enemy firepower.

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 3 pts.

Tip: If your BattleAxe’s defense would be 6, and your have +50% Defense ability, then the ship has a defense of 9.

Diplomacy

Raise your negotiation skills with a boost in your Diplomacy Ability. When trading with other civilizations, you'll have an easier time getting what you want. The better your diplomacy rating

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versus theirs, the harder the bargain you can drive. It also affects your foreign relations as you will tend to be able to avoid war easier (as well as come to peaceful terms) with a better Diplomacy ability.

Talented Diplomats (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Skilled Diplomats (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master Diplomats (+50%) Cost: 4 pts. Expert Diplomats (+70%) Cost: 5 pts.

Economics

Merchandising within your empire will flourish with a powerful Economic Ability, supplying your treasury with additional revenue.

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 2 pts. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 4 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 6 pts.

Tip: Actually increases your revenue from taxation, with no effect on revenues from trade or tribute.

Espionage

Sneaking, Snooping, and Doubledealing all improve by boosting your Espionage Ability. Use it to find enemy weaknesses, or simply to keep tabs on your 'friends'

Advanced (+15%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+30%) Cost: 2 pts.

Tip: Also affects destabilization.

Hit Points

Strengthen your ships with an increase in your Hit Points Ability. With it, star faring vessels will be able to sustain more damage.

Superior (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Exceptional (+30%) Cost: 3 pts. Invincible (+50%) Cost: 5 pts.

Influence

Make it easier to spread the joys of your culture. By increasing your Cultural Influence Ability, word of your empire's mighty society will travel quicker.

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 4 pts.

Commercial Giant (+40%) Cost: 6 pts.

Interest Rates. This ability affects your ability to borrow money to purchase ships and improvements. The better your interest rate ability, the less you’ll have to pay in leases. (Tip: there is no way to explicitly improve this ability in the game, but it is listed here for completeness.)

Loyalty

When your citizens have a strong sense of loyalty towards the empire, outside civilizations will have increased difficulty influencing them. Rebellions will be less likely.

Mostly Faithful (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Devoted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts.

Luck

Strategy and Tactics can only get you so far. At some point, pure luck will play a roll in shaping your empire. An increased Luck Ability will help out in these situations.

Exceptionally Lucky (+25%) Cost: 1 pt.

Tip: The only solid manifestation of this generally agreed is by allowing you more time and better odds during invasions. No other manifestations have been proven, although theories abound.

Military Production

By boosting your Military Production Ability you'll decrease the time it takes workers to complete ships. Half of this ability is provided as bonus production (i.e. production that doesn’t cost any money).

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 4 pts. Ultra (+50%) Cost: 6 pts.

Morale

The cornerstone of a prosperous empire is a happy society. Keep smiles on the general public with an increased Morale Ability. (Morale is the same thing as ‘approval rating’.)

Naturally Content (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Naturally Happy (+15%) Cost: 2 pts. Naturally Joyous (+20%) Cost: 3 pts.

Planet Quality

Keep your planets green with an increased Planet Quality Ability. Colonized planets will be nurtured and cared for, improving their grade.

Green Thumb (+7%) Cost: 3 pt.

Tip: Planet quality has a wide range of massive impacts on the game, to the extent that elsewhere in this manual the designer says the aim of the game is “have the best planets”. PQ (as players abbreviate it) is highly recommended.

Pop. Growth

Strength in numbers: an increased Population Growth Ability will allow your empire to grow and flourish beyond its general rate.

Frisky (+10%) Cost: 1 pt.

Very Frisky (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Fruitful (+40%) Cost: 4 pts. Don’t Ask (+80%) Cost: 6 pts.

Range

Allowing your ships to travel deeper into space, a better Range Ability can significantly extend the reach of your civilization.

+1 to Initial Range (+1 Parsecs) Cost: 2 pts.

Tip: Your range is also extended by colonizing a planet, or building a starbase.

Repair

Chicken Soup for your Ship. Add the proper self-repairmechanisms to your ships with a boost in your Repair Ability.

Gifted (+20%) Cost: 1 pt. Master (+40%) Cost: 2 pts.

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Tip: You don’t get any repair for free (like everything else, it starts at 0), so unless you take this ability at the start of the game, you will first get some repair capability when you learn the relevant technology. Note that ships repair a little faster if they don’t move, and a lot faster while in orbit. Star bases repair just like ships: their ‘repair modules’ enhance the repair ability of all your vessels in the sector.

Research

Decrease the time it takes to research new technologies with a boost in this ability. Scientists will raise their productivity. Half of this ability is provided as bonus research production (i.e. production that doesn’t cost any money).

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 4 pts. Ultra (+50%) Cost: 6 pts.

Sensors

Extend your sight limitations with an increase in your Sensor Ability. Ships and Planets will be able to peer farther into the void.

Advanced (+1%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+2%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+3%) Cost: 3 pts.

Tip: While there is a Galactic Wonder that affects Sensors, there are no other ways to improve during the game.

Social Production

Boost the speed at which colony workers can complete projects of a social nature with an increased Social Production Ability. Half of this ability is provided as bonus production (i.e. production that doesn’t cost any money).

Advanced (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Gifted (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Master (+30%) Cost: 4 pts. Ultra (+50%) Cost: 6 pts.

Soldiering

Strong soldiers will make it easier to dominate when invading planets . Improve your training skills with a boost in your Soldiering Ability.

Hardy (+10%) Cost: 1 pt. Tough (+20%) Cost: 2 pts. Invincible (+30%) Cost: 3 pts.

Speed

Shift into overdrive with a boost in your empires Speed Ability. Ships will travel at greater speeds, allowing easier tactical mauve ring. (Also referred to as the Navigation ability.)

Extra 1 Parsecs/Month (+1 Parsecs/Month) Cost: 4 pts. Extra 2 Parsecs/Month (+2 Parsecs/Month) Cost: 8 pts.

Trade

By improving your Trade Ability, the about of money you receive from trade routes will increase considerably.

Gifted Traders (+10%) Cost: 1 pt.

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Superior Traders (+20%) Cost: 3 pts.

Master Traders (+30%) Cost: 5 pts.

Trade Routes

A better Trade Rout Ability will raise the level of trust between alien civilizations and your merchants. The initial number of allowed trade routes will be raised.

Gifted Traders (+1 Trade Routes) Cost: 3 pts. Superior Traders (+2 Trade Routes) Cost: 6 pts. Master Traders (+3 Trade Routes) Cost: 9 pts.

Tip: There is a hard maximum of 10 trade routes in the game, and enough technology etc to get to this level, so while this pick can have a significant impact in the mid game, it is of less use towards the end.

Weapons

What good is a War Ship without a healthy set of turrets? State of the art artillery can be given a boost with an increased Weapons Ability.

Superior (+15%) Cost: 1 pt. Master (+30%) Cost: 4 pts.

True Warrior (+50%) Cost: 6 pts.

Tip: If a battleship’s base attack strength is 10, and your weapons ability is at 60%, the ship will have an attack of 16.

General Ability Tips:

?Some benefits don’t really kick in until the later game (like Trade and Soldiering) while others have greater effects early and are worthless during the end game (Range and bonus Trade Routes). Some are more valuable on larger maps (like Range – more space - and Economy – more planets).

?In general, any civilization needs to have some balance in how it behaves – a great military nation needs a strong economy and mighty military production to maintain its warlike behavior. So consider choosing abilities that make up for whatever is going wrong in your games: for example,

o if the other civilizations tend to threaten and attack you very early, take some Weapons

o if you tend to lose battles, try HitPoints and Repair (very powerful together), or some Defense

o if you can’t seem to find enough worlds to settle early on, try Navigation (Speed), or Range

?During the game, you can see your civilization’s abilities on the Stats screen of the Domestic Policy tab. You can see the manifestation of these abilities on the Planet Details screen, and on the Ship Information screen (these latter are cumulative with other impacts on those items).

Choosing your galaxy size

There is also the matter of choosing the size of the galaxy you would like to play. The size of the galaxy helps determine how long the game is going to last. A tiny galaxy can be played in an hour or two at most. A gigantic galaxy may take weeks or months. The galaxy sizes available are:

You may also choose the likelihood of inhabitable planets. The options are:

Rare: Inhabitable planets are very unlikely and each one will have to be fought over.Uncommon: Nice planets are hard to find but they’re out there.

Occasional: There are nice planets available but not in large quantity

Common: There are a lot of common planets but don’t expect every star system to have them.Everywhere: The galaxy is just teeming with life.

Choosing your opponents

Once you have set up your civilization and the galaxy you want to play in, you can also set up how you want other players to behave.

There are five major civilizations in the game. Other civilizations may appear during the course of the game but they do not affect the victory conditions. Similarly, minor civilizations do not affect victory conditions either.

Each civilization can be named to whatever you wish to call them. You can also set their intelligence and their morality. These will affect the game dramatically. Each civilization can have intelligence ranging from “idiot” to “genius”. Warning: Setting to genius should not be done unless you are an expert. A single “genius” player can dominate the galaxy very quickly. Morality is a little more nebulous. It determines the personality of the civilization along with what technologies are available

to it. Alien civilizations make foreign policy decisions based on the ethical values of other civilizations.

Getting around the Galactic Civilizations Interface

When the game begins, you are first given a progress report and then taken to the technology policy screen to choose what to research first. We will discuss the technology screen in detail in “Technology Policy Screen”.

Keyboard Commands

The mouse also provides a large number of options as well.

Mouse Controls

Left clicking on a ship selects it. Right clicking on the map sends it on its destination. Clicking on space and holding down the left mouse button will “grip” space and allow you to adjust your view.

Holding down the Control key (Ctrl) while left clicking on multiple ships will allow you to select multiple ships. Holding down the Shift key while left click-draggingon the map will allow you to also do the same.

Double clicking on a ship, anomaly, resource or star base will bring up additional information on that object. Double clicking on a star will bring up the planetary management screen for the first colonized planet you control.

Tip: To put people onto a colony ship or transport, make sure the planet is not set to “autolaunch” when they are produced, and then click on the ship in orbit. Click on the ‘move out of orbit’ button, and you will see a new slider appear in the bottom right, where you can control the number of people onboard, and a “launch’ button.

Tip: If you are moving the people to another planet in the same system, you don’t need to launch: choose the number of people and click directly on the destination planet.

The Options Screen

Auto Turn

ON – With this option turned on, your turn will automatically end when all of your de-orbitedships have moved. OFF – With this option turned off, your turn will not end until you click the Turn button.

Auto Build

ON – With this option turned on, your military queue will continue to build another ship of the same type once the current project is finished. OFF – With this option turned off, your military queue will be emptied once the current project has been completed.

Draw Grid

ON – With this option turned on, the sectors on the main map screen are divided into parsecs by lighter blue lines.

OFF – With this option turned off, the only lines visible on the main map screen are the ones marking the sector boundries.

End Turn Skips Moves Left

ON – With this option turned on, the turn will end even if you have units with movement points left that haven’t been skipped (space bar). OFF – With this option turned off, the turn will not end until all ships have used all their movement points or have been skipped (space bar).

Galactic News

ON – With this option turned on, Galactic News reports appear in a popup windows. OFF – With this option turned off, you will not see the popup windows.

Follow Autopilot Ships

ON – With this option turned on, the view will automatically focus on, and follow the movements of, your ships on autopilot. OFF – With this option turned off, the view will not follow the movements of your ships on autopilot.

Follow Alien Ships

ON – With this option turned on, the view will automatically focus on, and follow the movement of, alien skips in sensor range. OFF – With this option turned off, the view will not follow the movement of alien ships in your sensor range.

Show Ship Damage

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ON – With this option turned on, your ship will show electricity sparkling over the ship when it has sustained damage. OFF – With this option turned off, the appearance of your ship will not change when it has sustained damage.

Show Human Ship Battles

ON – With this option turned on, the view will automatically focus on any battles that involve human ships, starbases or planets. OFF – With this option turned off, the view will not focus on the battles involving human ships, starbases or planets.

Show AI Ship Battles

ON – With this option turned on, the view will automatically focus on any battles that involve any AI ships, starbases or planets. OFF – With this option turned off, the view will not focus on the battles involving only AI ships, starbases or planets.

Explosions

ON – With this option turned on, ships and starbases will explode when they are destroyed.

OFF – With this option turned off, ships and starbases will simply disappear when they are destroyed.

Active Gov. Ignores GNN

ON – With this option turned on, the active governor ignores the Galactic News reports. (not sure if this is right…) OFF – With this option turned off, the active governor will react to the Galactic News reports. (not sure if this is right…)

Show Anomaly Pop-ups

ON – With this option turned on, you will see a popup with information on the effects of any anomalies that are surveyed. OFF – With this option turned off, you will not see any information on the effects of anomalies as they are surveyed.

Animate Ship Data Win

ON – With this option turned on, the ship data window will be animated.

OFF – With this option turned off, the ship data window will display static images only.

Message Options

The settings in this section affect message prompts that you get during the game and a few miscellaneous options.

Build Starbase Prompt

ON – With this option is turned on, you will get prompted for confirmation when you click the Constructor’s build starbase button. OFF – With this option is turned off, you will not get prompted for confirmation when you click the Constructor’s build starbase button.

Upgrade Starbase Prompt

ON – With this option turned on, when a constructor moves onto a starbase, you will be asked if you want to upgrade the starbase.

OFF – With this option turned off, when a constructor moves onto a starbase, it will automatically display up a list of the available upgrades.

Harvest Resource Prompt

ON – With this option turned on, when a constructor moves onto a resource, you will be asked if you want to build a starbase. OFF – With this option turned off, when a constructor moves onto a resource, it will automatically build a starbase.

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Gov. Overrides Projects

ON – With this option turned on, if a planet completes an improvement in the assigned governor’s queue and has improvements left to build, you will not be prompted to select a new project.

OFF – With this option turned off, even if a planet completes an improvement in the assigned governor’s queue and has improvements left to build, you will still be prompted to confirm the selected (queued) project.

Tutorial Mode

ON – With this option turned on, you will get informative prompts to teach you some of the basic game controls.

OFF – With this option turned on, you’re on your own. There are no additional help dialogues or prompts while playing the game.

User Defined Playlist

ON – With this option turned on, a new button will show up under main menu, Load Playlist (*.m3u format). Once a playlist has been loaded, the game will play the files in the playlist instead of the normal in game music. The files must be MP3 format, 160kbs bit rate (or lower). OFF – With this option turned off, the game will play the normal in game music.

Background Loading

ON – With this option turned on, the game will load necessary files while playing the intro movies (this could cause choppy playback). OFF – With this option turned off, the game will wait until after the intro movies to load game files (increases initial load time).

Autosave Options

This section with allow you to adjust the autosave feature of the game.

Autosave

ON – With this option turned on, the game will automatically maintain two saves of your current game. OFF – With this option turned off, the game will not automatically save your game at any time.

Autosave Frequency Slider

This slider will allow you to adjust the duration between each new autosave. The slider goes from 1 turn all the way up to 24 turns. When a new autosave is made, a backup of your previous autosave is created as an extra precaution against data corruption. The game will only maintain one current autosave and one backup autosave.

Sound Options

This section will allow you to adjust the music and sound FX of the game.

Music

ON – With this option turned on, the game will play the normal game music, or the user selected playlist. OFF – With this option turned off, the game will not play any music.

Sound FX

ON – With this option turned on, the game will play the sound effects.

OFF – With this option turned off, the game will not play any sound effects.

Volume Slider

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This slider adjusts the volume of the music and sound FX.

Elements of the Main Screen

The main screen

This is the screen you will see most often. It includes the main map, the mini map, the graphs screen, the control panel, the star ship bridge panel and the info net.

Colonized star system. Shield indicates that it is defended which means you will need to destroy

those defenses before using a transport to invade.

This starbase is mining a galactic resource. In this case it is a morale boosting resource.

Your current treasury. If it turns yellow, it means you’re losing money.

Pie graph of overall galactic spending by each civilization.

Sector Map. This is a “small” galaxy.

Graphs Window.

Selected Ships Window.

Info Net.

Figure 1 The main game screen

Let’s discuss all of these:

The Map:

The map will display select the USS Discovery, the first colony ship created by the human civilization for colonizing another world. It will be parked just outside the Sol star system where Earth, Mars, Saturn, etc. are located.

A second ship, the USS Hero, is a survey ship that has been constructed at great cost to help explore the galaxy. Survey ships are a special class of ship, they contain equipment and special crews that allow them to seek out strange things and boldly go where no one has gone before. As you begin to explore the galaxy, it won’t take you long to find strange things worth investigating. Move your survey ship into an anomaly and you will discover what benefit, if any, it provides. Anomalies will continue to appear at various rates throughout the game. Many of them provide special ship-specificbonuses. As time goes on, your civilization will research technology that will provide star ships that are formidable military craft in their own right while also allowing them to explore anomalies.

On the main map there are 5 different types of objects that may exist there. Ships and stars are pretty straight forward. Anomalies are special objects that exist on the map that can only be explored by certain types of star ships (ships with a survey ability). Resources look similar to anomalies except

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that if you build a star base on them that has mining abilities, you gain advantages from them. Star bases are built and upgraded with constructor ships.

In all these cases you can find out more information on them by double clicking on the object.

Fog of War

There are two types of fog of war. (1) The unexplored area of the map and (2) The area that your sensors currently can’t detect.

The Mini-Map

The mini-mapon the top right allows you to view the galaxy in different modes. At the top right of themini-mapare small + and – buttons that will zoom in and out of a particular sector.

The bottom buttons provide the following displays:

Normal View: Shows explored sectors and star systems (undefended star systems appear darker).

Sector Owner: When a player achieves dominance in a sector (determined by population) that sector’s color changes to the player who controls it.

Ship View: Star ships are displayed as small triangles. Privately controlled ships appear as a single dot on this screen.

Show Autopilot Routes: Shows the routes currently set for your starships – from the small triangle of its current location to its current destination. (Shows freighters, but does not show trade ships.)

Production View: This displays in circles of various sizes the production levels of different star systems.

Population View: This displays in circles of various sizes the population levels of different star systems.

Tactical View: On top of the Mini-Mapare “Standard” and “Tactical” buttons. Tactical view provides an abstracted tactical display of use in making major military maneuvers.

The Graphs Window

Any civilization you have diplomatic relations with will appear here. You can track how well you are doing compared to your interstellar rivals and friends in terms of population, military might, economy, technology, and manufacturing.

Tip: The graphs are relative to one another, and reflect the current focus of a civilization, not their capacity or history. So if you turn your research spending to zero, these graphs will show a zero, even though you have previously researched lots of techs. This is great for knowing what the others are focusing on at the moment. (cf. Foreign Statistics tab within the Foreign Diplomacy screen.)

The Control Panel

The panel at the bottom of the screen allows players to control what view the game is in. The main map is the default view.

The available views are:

Main Map View: This is the view we just discussed.

Planet List: Displays your list of planets

Ship List” Displays a list of your available ships

Domestic Policy: Set your civilization’s domestic policy

Foreign Policy: Set your civilization’s foreign policy

Research Policy: Set what technologies you want to research

The Bridge/Advisor Panel

Sentry

Guard

Disband

The currently selected ship will be displayed with its name, which you can change by clicking on the field, the class, the number of hitpoints it has, the Attack rating, the Defense rating and what level the ship is. As ships do battle, they gain experience which increases their level. The higher the level, the more bonuses in attack and defense they receive. If you are selecting a star ship that carries colonists or troops, the number on board is displayed instead. You can also press the “I” button to bring up the ship dialog.

Figure 2 If you click on the I button or double click on a ship you can bring up its info panel

The InfoNet

Events occurring in the galaxy that are of interest to you will appear on the InfoNet on the bottom right of the screen. Events can include ships being attacked, new projects completed, new star ships built and more.

If the event mentions a planet, clicking on the event icon will take you to the details screen for that planet.

The Find Button

This is equivalent to the TAB key. It will find a ship in the galaxy that needs to be moved.

The Turn Button

Tells the game to cycle to the next move.

Tip: depending on your option settings, if some ships have not moved yet, this will either move to the next turn with those ships not moving, or do the same thing as the Find button until all ships have had their orders for this turn.

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Tips:

?In general, any civilization needs to have some balance in how it behaves – a great military nation needs a strong economy and mighty military production to maintain its warlike behavior. So consider choosing abilities that make up for whatever is going wrong in your games: for example,

o if the other civilizations tend to threaten and attack you very early, take some Weapons

o if you tend to lose battles, try HitPoints and Repair (very powerful together), or some Defense

o if you can’t seem to find enough worlds to settle early on, try Navigation (Speed), or Range

?Planet Quality has large and significant impacts on everything else – population growth, morale, taxes – many players take PQ+5% as a matter of course.

?Some benefits don’t really kick in until the later game – like trade bonuses and soldiering…

Your Ethics, Morale, Trade & Culture

Good & Evil

What kind of civilization would you like to create? Galactic Civilizations allows you to travel in either direction. In Galactic Civilizations, good and evil are very specifically defined (lest we get into endless pointless debates).

During the course of your civilization you will be exposed to various events that you have to make a moral choice. These choices determine the course your civilization takes. The choices are not meant to be that significant in themselves but rather provide you with a way to choose your path.

Neither path is better than the other in terms of advantages. But they are quite different in their particulars. Good civilizations tend to get along with other civilizations easier. An evil civilization in a galaxy full of good civilizations is going to have a tough time. On the other hand, evil civilizations gain advantages as a result of their choices along with receiving certain technologies available only to evil civilizations.

On the other hand, good civilizations tend to have an easier time diplomatically but pay a hefty shortterm price for their benevolence. However, they are rewarded with certain technologies that give them special types of improvements that affect the course of the game.

That said, good and evil is not determined by your in game actions. For instance, do not equate “goodness” with pacifism. History is replete with examples of evil that was not externally aggressive. And all it requires for evil to triumph is for good to be idle. Don’t expect good civilizations to not declare war on other civilizations or demand tribute.

Galactic Civilizations doesn’t get into the business of trying to make political statements such as whether imperialism are good or evil. History is replete with examples of otherwise noble cultures making war or acquiring territory from other cultures that were equally “good”. To that end, we have made sure that the line between good and evil is very obvious – the random events in which players can choose which direction they’re going.

Tip: You can see your current morality rating under Stats on the Domestic Policy tab – it ranges from demonic (0) to angelic (100). Humans start out with a morality rating of neutral (50). When your

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morality is over 80, the user interface becomes WHITE, and at below 20, it is RED, reminding you of your (extreme) moral nature.

Tip: Being ‘Neutral’ can seem the best of all worlds – you get the better choices when they matter to you, but stay out of ‘evildom’ by taking benevolent choices sometimes. However, Neutrals don’t get either set of additional technologies, and don’t get as much positive support from the good civilizations. When starting, I think try being Good first – a few non-hostileother civilizations can be important while learning the game.

Tip: The planetary events that occasion these choices primarily occur when you are colonizing new planets (say a third of the time?), and each one only affects your morality by so much, so in a galazy where you don’t settle many planets you might not be able to get out of neutrality…

Morale

Income and expenses are pretty straight forward concepts. But what about morale? What about influence? What the heck are these things? You build all these nice things for your people and they still only give you a 50% approval rating? I should be able to build a gulag and re-educatethem to appreciate my benevolence…

Having a high approval rating is very difficult. That’s because the nicer your planet, the more people who will want to move to it, have children and increase the population. This in turn creates the situation where there’s a lot of people having to share a limited number of planetary services. Hence your approval declines. The population of a planet will grow as long as people are happy and as long as the environment (planet class) can sustain them.

Even the most popular leaders in history rarely enjoyed an approval rating greater than 60%. But if that doesn’t console you, you can always take the path of evil and actually build gulags to send the people to learn to more about your greatness. That’ll improve their approval rating or at least what they answer to polls. And isn’t that what really counts?

Tip: While in deep sleep on a colony ship or transport, people don’t affect morale, so one ‘cure’ for overpopulation is to ‘recruit’ some colonists/soldiers, and put them into deep sleep until they are needed. Whats the difference between colony ships and transports? Either can transport people to another of your planets, but only colony ships can land on an unoccupied planet, and only transports can land on a enemy planet. Note that colony ships can carry an infinite number of people, since there is a set amount of hardware needed for a colony regardless of its size, but transports have limited capacity since they include combat armor/support vessels/etc. Transports take 1000 million, and Combat (or Battle) Transports take 5000.

Tip: In addition to ways to affect your civilization-widemoral ability, and social improvements to affect your morale on a particular planet, you can also use propaganda to prop up the morale on a planet – the slider to control this is on the Planet Details screen.

Cultural Influence

There are other ways to conquer the galaxy than through weapons. Your cultural influence reflect how much the way you live, the philosophies you espouse, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the movies you watch affect alien cultures.

Different star systems have different base levels of influence that are generally based on the quality and position of the star system in the galaxy. This is then enhanced by the population of the planet along with what social projects you build. You can intentionally try to increase your cultural

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influence by building social projects such Cultural Exchange Centers where alien travelers are more effectively exposed to your way of life.

Whichever civilization has the highest level of influence in a given sector (above a certain threshold) gets that sector color-codedto their civilization. If the level of influence exceeds all others by a certain amount, then a given star system has a chance of defecting to a different civilization.

You can magnify your influence in a given sector by building star bases and upgrading them with constructors to have cultural influence modules (more on this is in the Star base section).

Being on the receiving end isn’t a lot of fun though. We can speak from experience when we say that there’s nothing worse than seeing teenagers running around in native Drengin clothing. Particularly since their clothing requires the importation of the Kandarian Silk Lice which we won’t get into here. Suffice to say that this is not a desirable outcome.

So how do you prevent this? Factors that come into play include looking at how much military might is in orbit of that star system. The locals on Deneb IV may think that Arcean music is great (and let’s face it, there is some debate on whether we can even hear all of the chords on a typical Arcean harp). But the locals aren’t going to realistically be able to defect if you have enough battle ships parked in orbit. Another factor is the morale of your planets. Torian blood larva may be taste great but if the people are happy they’re not going to be nearly as interested in joining up with the Torians.

The most effective way to combat alien cultural influences is by building social projects that combat it. Anything that increases your cultural influence will certainly help. But you can also build things that have a propaganda value. I.e. you can build news networks and propaganda centers that will help keep alien culture just that – alien.

This is discussed in more detail with specific numbers in the chapter on Influence.

Trade

Once you have researched Trade, you gain the ability to build freighters. Freighters are a special unit that once built, can be sent to a foreign star system to create a trade route. Once this is done, a trade ship then travels between the source star system and foreign destination star system and back. The income you receive from trade comes as that trade ship moves each turn.

How much you receive from trade per month varies somewhat as the trade ship travels. The further along the route, the more the trade route brings in. For instance, a trade ship may only bring in 1 bc per turn when it first leaves. But on its way back, it may be bringing in 5 bc per turn.

This has an important implication: The longer the trade route, the more the trade route is worth. It also means you can create an effective economic blockade. In essence, you can cripple the economy of an enemy by keeping trade ships from being able to travel the whole route. If a particular civilization can’t keep their trade ships safe, outside their immediate territory then their economy will suffer.

The other factor in determining how much a trade route is worth is the combined wealth of source star system and destination star system. Generally speaking, it is best to have your freighters come from your best star system and go to the best star system in a particular player’s civilization. (Tip: If you decide to have multiple trade routes with the same civilization, it is perfectly OK to have them between the same planets – or not, as you please.)

Trade has a few side effects as well. First of all, both civilizations involved in the trade receive equal compensation from trade. So it’s probably best not to trade with civilizations you later expect to go to war with. Secondly, such trade influences diplomatic relations. Since war cuts off trade between the two warring factions, if your trade represents a sizeable percentage of their income, they are a lot less likely to want to go to war.

Star System notification icons

Some star systems are special to a given civilization or have something special about them in a negative sense. For this reason, there are several different types of notification icons that are displayed near a star system. These include:

Civilization capital. The Sol star system, for instance, has the civilization capital icon by it to represent the fact that it is the capital of a civilization. Losing your capital due to invasion can have very damaging results to your civilization (a whole raft of different unpleasant things can occur).

Tip: You may notice the other civilizations “moving” their civilization capital to the boarder of their expansion (ie newest planets). They get some benefits to their influence and cultural resistance from this behaviour. They are older civilizations emotionally used to the idea of having multiple planets, while we Terrans are still so emotionally tied to the Earth that we would never do this.

Economic capital. If you build the galactic achievement, “Economic Capital”, not only does the tax income of that system double but it shows the economic capital icon by it. However, this also makes it a target for your enemies since it’s a sure sign that this is a wealthy star system.

Manufacturing capital. The system that has this achievement built gets the manufacturing capital icon and has twice the manufacturing ability as other star systems.

Culturally rebellious. Star systems that are becoming dangerously enthralled with other civilizations will receive this icon. This means that the people are thinking about defecting and that you need to do something about it.

Unhappy citizens. If morale gets low enough in a given star system, an unhappy icon will show up by it. This is a good way of seeing if something is going wrong with a particular civilization. If they are unhappy long enough, they may break away and form their own civilization or join the league ofnon-alignedworlds.

Tip: You can’t tell which planets have wonders or trade goods built on them, but they are most likely to have been built on planets with lots of production capacity, which are also likely to be the ones with capitals… A favorite invasion tactic is to pay special attention to the enemy capitals.

Combat

Ship to Ship

When two enemy ships intersect in space, they do battle. Battles work as follows:

Attacking ship rolls a number between 0 and its maximum attack and the defending ship rolls a defense value between 0 and its maximum defense value. The difference between the two is then subtracted from the number of hit points. If the defending ship survives they then reverse positions

and the defending ship rolls it attack value and the attacking ship rolls its defensive value. This is repeated until one of the two ships has 0 hit points and that ship is destroyed.

Ships with a defense value that is greater than their attack value get a special bonus – when attacked, half their defense counts as an attack. A Battle Axe with 3 attack and 6 defense actually gets to roll up to a 6 for its attack roll when it is attacked.

Tip: While combat is resolved one-on-one,if the defender is in a fleet, they do get some bonuses, reflecting the support the other ships can provide.

Tip: If a fleet is attacked, the vessel with the highest combined attack and defense values will defend first. If there are two ships with the same value, then the ship with the highest remaining hit points defends. On the plus side, this means that the damaged ships will be sheltered by other ships of the same class. On the down side, you can’t get a BattleAxe commander to throw his ship away defending a damaged Dreadnaught: the BattleAxe will hide behind the Dreadnaught until the Dreadnaught is destroyed, and only then fight.

Tip: When attacking, you can choose which ships attacks first, allowing you to throw away cheaper vessels to ‘soften up’ your target, but only by selecting the attacking ships individually – if you attack with a fleet, the ‘strongest’ ship attacks. NOTE: In attacking, every vessel in the fleet uses up a movement point for each attack, even if it is not actually attacking itself.

Invading Star Systems

A defended star system has a small shield attached to it. These star systems cannot be invaded. Starships must first take out those defenses. Those defenses come in the form of star ships orbiting the star system that have a defense value. Attacking those starships is like attacking any other ship, move your starship to intersect the star system and it will automatically attack the first starship in orbit.

Tip: Defenders in orbit do get some bonuses reflecting ground support.

When a star system is defenseless, the shield is gone and is ready to be invaded. To do that, you must construct a transport and load troops onto it.

Invading a star system shouldn’t be taken lightly. They can contain many billions of people and invading them can take billons of troops. Transports have little defense so those billions of lives should probably be escorted by starships who can defend them.

When a transport intersects a defenseless star system, the invasion screen will be displayed. This screen displays the advantages of both sides. The attacker automatically gets a significant advantage since transports don’t just come with ground troops but an entire air armada and thousands of ground support craft. But other factors do come into play such as the technology difference between the civilizations, general soldier abilities on both sides and what planetary defenses have been constructed. There is also a luck factor. The battle will not begin until you have pressed the space bar so that you can determine how much luck is involved on the invasion (it’s usually a fairly modest amount but it can make the difference in a close battle).

Tip: A fleet with multiple transports is great to use in an invasion. Let’s say we are invading a system that has 3 planets, using a fleet that has 10 billion troops (10 transports, loaded full up). In this particular battle, 3.4 billion of our troops die clearing away all the defenders. Now 0.6 billion (the

rest of the occupants of the fourth transport) will remain as taxpayers on the planets of the system – 200 million on each of the 3 planets. We would still have 6 transports available to keep moving.

Tip: If you want to add or subtract from any planet’s population, you can land a transport on a planet you control – the transport is available for ‘reloading’ with a different number of troops. Transports are used up when they are used to invade an enemy: the air armada and groud support craft are built into the walls, and when they are broken loose for use cannot be refitted.

Tips:

(1)When you invade, if you have a positive treasury you can choose an Invasion Tactic. Different tactics have different costs and effects – consider wisely, and don’t drive your treasury deeply negative unless it really is worth it to you. Sometimes it is worth sending more troops to preserve the infrastructure of the planet. Other times you just want it gone, and don’t even mind permanently ruining the Planet Quality.

(2)Invasions are fought between taxpayers, not the entire population – some players resent the idea of killing off taxpayers, and try to take planets by influence instead of combat: that way, their taxpayers become your taxpayers.

Star bases

At a relatively low level of technology, you'll be able to build a new ship type called a 'Constructor'. A Constructor is just a special type of a ship that you fly to a particular part of space and then click on it to turn it into a star base.

You can alternatively send it to an existing star base to upgrade the star base. To do this, you move the constructor on top of a star base and a dialog will pop up asking you if you want to upgrade the star base. If you select 'Yes' you are given a list of possible upgrades.

What upgrades you can provide will be based on the technologies you research. The only other limit is the amount of space these upgrades will take on your star base (however, there will be technologies that lower the space things take due to miniaturization).

Star bases can perform a wide variety of actions. But because constructors are VERY expensive to create (they are the true equivalent of a 'settler' people have been looking for) you'll have to make tough choices.

Star bases have these automatic capabilities:

1)Star bases extend your range, allowing vessels to move into sectors you might not have been able to reach before.

2)Star bases affect influence calculations, even without any influence-enhancingmodules (well, only if the starbase is now the closer to the particular sector than any other starbase or planet).

3)Star bases affect your sensors, allowing you to see units moving through an area of space. Additionally, depending on the modules you build using additional constructors, star bases can:

1)If you build a star base on a resource, you can mine those resources for additional ability advantages. Controlling and exploiting galactic resources with star bases can make the difference between victory and defeat. The different resources available are outlined below.

2)Support of star ships in the sector they are in - i.e. give bonuses to the weapons, defense, speed, or hit points of friendly ships.

3)Trade bonuses - when a mini-freighterflies through a sector that has a star base with trade upgrades, it can increase the amount of trade you receive from that trade route while the mini freighter is in that sector. So a trade empire might create a whole line of trade star bases that follow its trade routes.

Tip: Watch the actual movement of the mini-freighters:they don’t always travel in the straightest line, although they do take the smallest number of turns to reach their destination.

4)Influence bonuses. You can build modules in star bases that improve your influence in a sector. Your overall influence determines the likelihood of a star system rebelling to join you without you having to conquer it. So put star bases with influence upgrades in sectors that you want to peacefully conquer.

5)You can also upgrade a Star base into a terror star. If you achieve terror star technology, several new star base modules become available. Once those modules have been added, the star base becomes a weapon of mass destruction that can destroy entire star systems, and can slowly move!

Figure 3 Terror stars destroy entire star systems.

So if you see that Terror Star under construction, you'll have to make some tough decisions.

Resources

The galaxy has several different kinds of resources. To utilize these resources, you must build a star base on them. Star bases can have mining modules added to them to extract increasing amounts of the galactic resources which add to your civilization’s abilities.

These resources include:

Morale Resources. These resources contain a special type of fluid that increases the health of any living thing. The net result is that the more you mine them, the more of a morale boost your people will receive (and hence a higher approval rating).

Economic Resources. These resources contain a type of metal that is extremely valuable in trade. The net result is that the more of these you mine, the greater your economic ability is increased.

Military Resources. These resources contain a special type of energy that magnify your weapons and shielding on your ships which makes them stronger and more powerful. (Tip: If another

civilizations ships seem far more powerful than you expect, look around to see if they have Military Resources being mined, and destroy the starbase responsible.)

Influence Resources. These resources can increase your civilization’s cultural ability. Mining these will be important to any civilization that is hoping to convince other civilizations to defect to them peacefully.

Research Resources. These resources are contain a type of crystal useful for vastly increasing the effectiveness of your existing research computers. The net effect is that you gain in your ability to research.

Life Force Resource. These are very very rare and for good reason. They are crystals that magnify the life force of any living thing they are near. The net result is that they improve the quality of your planets.

Tip: A favorite tactic is to keep an eye out while enemy civilizations are fighting: if a resource becomes available, send a constructor in to claim it before the ‘victor’ of the space battle does. Of course, if you re at war with anyone, you better protect it… - Terrans have even been known to bribe civilizations into a war so that they can snaffle some ripe resources. Fortunately, so far other civilizations have not been known to execute this dastardly tactic, although there are rumors that they may be learning how…

Star System view

When you click on a star, the planets within it will be displayed on the right of the screen.

Information displayed here includes the planet class (red number). Planet classes range from class 1 to class 20. The higher the number, the better. There are rumors that planets higher than this can exist but this has not been verified by our scientists.

Influence of star system. The higher, the better.

Planet class. The higher the better. Anything over 15 is considered “good”.

Who owns the star system

Population in millions

Current morale as a percent.

Figure 4 When you click on a star system, the planets within are displayed.

By putting your mouse over a given planet you can get an idea of what the surface is like.

Figure 5 Typical view of an earth like planet

Single clicking on a planet will bring up the planet view. Incidentally, double clicking on the star will bring up the planet view of the first colonized planet in the star system.

The Planet View

The planet management window displays key information on your planet.

Figure 6 from the planet view you can determine what military and social projects you create.

A planet can construct both a military project and a social project at the same time. The speed in which these get constructed depends on your overall spending level as well as what ratio you are spending on military vs. social vs. research. How many industrial units are being spend per month is displayed in the form of shields, hammers, and beakers depending on which category they are going into.

In the display, industrial units are displayed in the form of (X + Y). For example, your military production might say Military (4 + 1) for a total of 5 industrial units being produced on military projects. However, your treasury is only deducted by 4. The +1 represents a bonus production.

Improvements in efficiency, productivity, etc. can provide you with free industrial units.

The display also shows what planet class it is. The higher the class, the better the planet. Class 15 and higher are consider desirable.

Morale indicates what your approval rating on that planet is. Anything over 50% is considered good. Morale affects the productivity of your population to a slight extent. The happier your people, the harder they work. Morale can be improved through the building of entertainment related social projects.

Tip: Improvements, Resources, and even Galactic Abilities make it possible to increase outputs over the limit of the inputs, which means a planet can spend more than it brings in. The excess automatically comes out of your treasury. See the Spend Rate on the Domestic Policy screen.

Building Things

When you build a ship or a social project, the amount of time in months is displayed. However, you can instantly build something by contracting it out to one of the 4 major human sub-contractors.Thesesub-contractorswill build it for X up front plus Y per month for Z months. Depending on your current financial situation, different choices will be appropriate at different times.

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Tip: Subcontractors won’t deal with you while your treasury is below zero, but they will let you spend more money that your have. Beware!

Social Projects

There are four types of social projects that can be built: Planetary Improvements, Galactic Achievements, Galactic Wonders, and Trade Goods.

Planetary Improvements

These are things like libraries, news centers, soil enhancements that improve the quality of your planet in some form or other. The effects are limited to that planet.

Galactic Achievements

These tend to be much more powerful in their effect than a planetary improvement but they can only be built one time per civilization. A good example of this would be your various civilization capitals such as Economic Capital, Manufacturing Capital, Technology Capital, and Political Capital.

Galactic Wonders

Much like the achievements but even stronger. These can only be built once in the entire galaxy.

Trade Goods

Trade goods are a different animal all together. Essentially they represent your civilization “inventing” something. Only one civilization can own such an invention but that civilization can license it (from the diplomacy screen) to other civilizations. It is treated much like a galactic wonder whose effects can be given to other civilizations as well. For that reason, they are in many ways more powerful than galactic wonders though their effects tend to be less significant.

If you build a trade good and provide it to another civilization, they will receive the benefit of that trade good forever. You can’t change your mind, and even the destruction of your planet that originally produced the trade good will have no effect. (In essence, when you give them a trade good, you have given them the plans/formula, etc, and they now produce it automatically forever more.)

If the planet that constructed a trade good changes hands (from conquest, rebellion, or trade), no one can trade that trade good to anyone else ever again – those who already have it, have it, and no one else can ever get it. In particular, the conquering civilization does NOT get the benefit of the trade good simply by virtue of conquering – you need to trade for it before conquering the planet.

Tip: trade goods are very valuable, and most civilizations will do a lot to get a couple – like provide a lot of technology, or declare war on some other civilization – or make peace with you. That’s why they are called “trade goods”.

Details view

By pressing the Details button, you can find additional information out on the planet as well as assign a governor to the planet. The details view is mostly for providing additional information and tweaking things for your planet. For instance, from the details view you can provide propaganda to your people. This won’t have much affect in making them happier but it can have some. Where

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propaganda has a major affect is if you are being destabilized by a foreign power (we’ll talk more about that shortly).

Tip: When you conquer a planet, one of the first things to do is go into the Details view and destroy any buildings that you don’t want to pay maintenance on.

The Planet List

By pressing the planet list button on the bottom of the main screen you can list the planets in your civilization. This display shows what they are currently building.

Clicking on a planet will take you directly to the planet screen for that planet.

Tip: If you click on the item being produced, a menu slides out letting you change what is under production, without having to go into the planet details screen.

The Fleet List

By pressing the fleet button on the bottom of the main screen you can list the star ships that are in your civilization. This view can do more than just display ships. It is designed to allow you to send those ships to the part of the galaxy that you are currently viewing. To do this, click on the arrow button to the right of the ship read-outon the list. (Tip:double-clickingon a ship in this list makes it move now if it has movement orders, or makes it active if it does not.)

Domestic Policy

The domestic policy screen is designed to allow you to control all aspects of your government’s home affairs. This includes your tax rate, your spend rate, how you spend your money (domestically), your form of government, governor management, trade route management, vital statistics, and graphs.

Economic Policy

Figure 7 The economic screen.

Where your money can come from

The main sources of income are:

1)Taxes.

2)Trade.

3)Tribute.

Taxes and trade are pretty straight forward. Tribute comes in the form of other civilizations paying you money. This can also go negative if you are paying other civilizations money instead.

Where your money goes

Most of your money goes to pay for the production of ships, planetary improvements, and researching. Over the course of the game, other expenses will arise such as how expensive ships are to maintain and how expensive social improvements are to maintain. Ship maintenance is kept in the military category. Maintenance refers to social projects maintenance costs.

Tip: Be careful of maintenance in the early game. Scouts cost 1bc per month each, and StarBases 5bc per month each – if you have too many of them, you may not be able to build anything. If this happens, destroy (or trade/sell/giveaway) vessels until you can afford the maintenance.

Another source of expense is the GIA – The Galactic Intelligence Agency. This is money spent spying on other civilizations and destabilizing them. Additionally, leases can become a significant expense if you have purchased ships for a small amount up front but a monthly lease fee.

Your civilization can go into debt. What occurs eventually is that the longer your civilization is in debt, the more unhappy your people become. At –500bc(billion credits) spending on planets stops.

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Tax Rate

Your tax rate determines what percentage of the income of your people (and corporations) that you are taking in. The higher the tax rate, the more income you will generally get from taxes. However, the higher the tax rate, the more unhappy your people become and you will actually see cases where income will become lower. That’s because your population will report that it is decreasing. Your reported population is purely the number of tax paying citizens. As taxes go up, more of them go bankrupt or simply hide their income from the government resulting in the loss of tax payers. So there is a sweet spot that you will have to find. Generally it’s between 20% and 50% depending on your circumstances.

Spend Rate

The spend rate is what percentage of your manufacturing and technological ability you are using. This is heavily influenced by what types of improvements you have made to your planets. After all, you can put your spend rate to 100% but if you have no factories and other things to actually do the spending, you may not actually end up spending that much.

Tip: If you need a low spend rate to balance your budget that means you have more capacity for production than you can fund. To be able to produce more, improve your economy (including certain improvements, mining economy resources, and improving your government type), get more trade or tribute, or even raise taxes. Building still more production capacity won’t give you any more outputs. On the converse, if you can have the Spend Rate at 100% and still make money, build more capacity by building social improvements, starbase modules, and for research, mining resources.

Spending Ratios

The spending ratios determine where your spending is going by percentage. The sliders are ratios. Therefore, what matters is how they are related to each other. Put all three sliders to the top and you’ll be splitting your income 3 ways equally. So to use them properly keep in mind it’s their relationship to one another that matters, not their absolute slider height.

That does not mean that the outcomes achieved in the different areas will be in the ratios you specified. Let’s say you’ve built a research center on all your planets but no factories: with the same proportion of your income going to both research and (say) social production, you will actually produce more industrial units of research than of social production. You can’t see this on the Domestic Policy screen, since it just shows the same expenses in the different categories. You can see the industrial units a planet produces on the Planet Details screen: the little icons are one IU, and the big ones are ten.

The Galactic Senate

Your political party and civilization bonuses require that you maintain control of the senate. This is done by keeping your people happy…or at least keeping them happy during an election year. Elections occur every 4 game years. By default, your form of government is Imperial and hence your party will have 100% control of the Galactic Senate. It becomes an issue when you upgrade your form of government. Then the elections will be held and other parties will vie for control.

Forms of Government

By default, your civilization is an Imperial form of government. However, as time goes on, other forms of government will come on-line.

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These governments come with their own pros and cons. On the one hand, they usually give you an economic advantage. On the other hand, they require that you control the galactic senate to make use of your political abilities.

Here’s a sampling of forms of government:

Imperial

This is what you start out with.

Republic

This is where Earth has begun to allow its colonies to have representatives in the senate. This has the benefit of increasing your economic power by around 20%. However, if you lose control of the senate, you lose your political party bonuses.

Democracy

This is the next step up. This is where each of your colonies is a quasi-sovereignentity with its own rights. Earth remains the supreme voice of your civilization. It is harder to maintain control of the senate but you receive a 40% economic bonus.

Federation

Earth begins treating the colonies as equal “States” in a federation of planets. Your civilization will receive a 60% economic bonus but it becomes very hard to maintain control of the senate.

Governors

Governors are there to reduce micromanagement. Very often in strategy games the game is fun early on when you are just building up your empire. But during the later parts of the game, the micro management just sucks all the fun out.

Governors are designed to let you control your planets on a macro level. There is no artificial intelligence, you remain in complete control. The difference is that your orders are now carried about in groups rather than one planet at a time.

When you click on the Details view on a planet, you can choose a governor. The name of the governor is meaningless in itself. What matters is what you have assigned those governors to do from this screen.

On the Governor Management screen you select a governor and then tell that governor what he is to do. You can direct him to build your social projects in a specific order. Any planet with that governor will then automatically build social projects in the given order.

Similarly, on military projects you can tell every planet that has that governor to build a particular ship at once.

Tip: Many players use one governor for combat-ship-producingplanets, and a different one forconstructor-buildingplanets (using their better planets for warships, and the rest for constructors) – clearly the constructor building planets don’t need social improvements for improving combat vessels, like a shipyard. Use the governors to NOT build certain improvements on planets where you don’t need them – it is rare to have an economy that can afford to build everything everywhere.

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Trade

By default, your civilization will be able to have 2 trade routes. Trade is a very tricky thing from a political standpoint. Getting alien civilizations to let you have a cultural and economic presence requires an immense amount of negotiating skill. Other technologies can provide you with more trade routes (and choosing the mercantile political party will allow you an additional trade route). However, you can never have more than 10 trade routes.

This screen displays what your trade routes are doing:

The key information includes:

Established (Est.)

What year the trade route began. Older trade routes tend to provide more revenue than newer ones (i.e. there is a bonus given).

Origin

What star system it starts at.

Destination

What planet it ends at.

Distance

How far away it is in light years (moves).

Value

The current per month income from that trade route.

Additionally, you will also be able to turn on and off trade embargos. If you don’t want a particular civilization trading with you, then you can keep them from doing so. When you trade with a particular civilization, it gains just as much from the trade route as you do.

The “All Routes” button displays not only your trade routes, but also all the trade routes other civilizations have established with your planets.

Domestic Statistics

On the domestic statistics screen you can see everything you ever wanted to know about your civilization (and then some). You can see what your civilization abilities are, your economy, your society (are you good or evil, etc.) along with a run down on your military relations with other civilizations report. The more often you’re at war with a civilization and the longer you’re at war with them, the more of a lasting problem relations with them will be, this will keep an eye on that.

Graphs

The graphs screen is designed to allow you to get a snapshot of how you compare to other civilizations. It displays bar graphs of how you are doing at that moment.

These graphs include:

?Population

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?Treasury

?Total Income

?Research

?Influence

?Ethics (Evil to Good)

?Manufacturing

?Military

?Overall popularity

?Trade Power (Income from Trade)

?Overall Happiness

Use these graphs to see how you’re doing compared to other civilizations.

TIP: How the Economy Works

The inner workings of the economy are subject to revision ('tweaking' is the word the developers use) from version to version, so Stardock have not published the actual formulae used in many of the calculations. This outline identifies the major elements involved, as well as any additional information that the developers have let slip...

Bonus Modifiers

Bonus modifiers come in three types:

?those that affect your entire empire (starting bonuses and resources being harvested by a starbase, wonders and trade goods are examples) - visible in under Abilities on the Domestic Policy screen

?those that affect all planets in a particular sector (usually from starbase improvements); and

?planet specific bonuses (from events and buildings for example).

The aggregate of these bonuses is shown on the Planet Details screen under bonuses. For example, I had a planet with +75% manufacturing from improvements, and +90% production from Starbases in the sector, and its planet details screen showed Production +165% (the terms production and manufacturing mean the same thing). I had no empire wide bonuses affecting production in that game.

All bonuses are applied to the base rate - so if a planet has an income of 20 bc/t, a 50% planetary bonus gives a +10 bc/t, and an empire bonus of 10% gives +2 bc/t. This means you can safely calculate this as a bonus of +60%, since you never get a bonus on a bonus.

Income

Total tax revenue is the sum of the tax revenue of the planets in your empire. Tax revenue comes from two main sources: income from population, and income from the planet (this is based on PQ). Tax revenue is affected by economy modifiers (for the planet, system and empire), and then by the tax rate. (The other incomes you get are tribute and trade, both adequately explained elsewhere.)

Remember that population in GalCiv means 'taxpayers'. Population will seem to go up and down due to taxpayers entering or leaving the economy… As an aside, it is interesting to note that only taxpayers can emigrate to the stars, or be shock troops for an invasion!

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Examples: In a game with total economy modifiers +50%, and a tax rate of 40%

?PQ 15 at population 110 million gives an income of 4

?PQ 20 at population 110 million gives an income of 11

(lesson: grab the better planets first! The goal isn’t to try to colonize the most planets, the goal is to control the very best planets.)

?PQ 20 at population 32 million gives an income of 12

?PQ 20 at population 1.41 billion gives an income of 25

?PQ 20 at population 2.14 billion gives an income of 34

(lesson: population growth is essential to long term large incomes - just watch the morale impact)

Waste

There are mild reductions in revenue when the income is over 2 x PQ

There are more severe reductions when the income is over 4 x PQ

Survival

There are reductions in income for planets under PQ15, reflecting the difficulties of generating taxable revenues in such a hostile environment. Under PQ 15, life support costs 5bc per month, and under PQ 10, it costs 10x the government level (so a federation colonizing a class 4 planet would be paying 5 + 10X4 per month = 45 per month).

Tip: Why would I want to colonize planets under PQ15? Several reasons:

(a)To extend your range or sensors for a long or short period

(b)Because you intend to improve the planet until its PQ is 15 or higher

(c)To exert additional influence.

Does Morale Impact Income?

It is rumoured that morale affects income as well, but it is unclear whether that is only indirectly through the number of tax payers, or whether there is a direct effect as well.

Graft

If your treasury exceeds 25,000 you start to take a slight graft penalty. There is a crime fighting ability that can decrease graft but it’s very hard to improve that ability. But if you’re letting your treasury build that high, there’s something wrong with your government anyway.

Production

Production can be thought of as the application of income to the three different areas: military production, social production and research. The actual outputs (industrial units, represented by shields in the planet display) produced in each category will be a factor of the income applied to that category and the modifiers applying to it, potentially with some effect from waste at high levels.

'Free' IU

Planetary production bonuses (from a Manufacturing Center, for example) are actually provided as 2/3 needing funding and 1/3 being free. So if a planet would have had 90bc/t going toward social production, and was getting a 20% boost from a Manufacturing Center (ie an extra 18 IU), now the planet will produce 108 IU at a cost of 102 bc/t - 1/3 of the extra IU are free, and do not require

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funding, but 2/3 of the 'extra' IU do require funding. On the planet display, this planet's figures would read 102+6 - the figure after the plus sign is the free IU.

Note: everything here is rounded down - a planet that would produce 100 IU (10 more), with a 20% boost will still only produce 118 IU (100*.2x.66 rounded down is 12, and 100*.2*.33 rounded down is 6 - you can think of the other 2 IU as 'waste'.)

Bonuses from starbases work the same way, but 1/2 are provided as free IU, with 1/2 requiring funding. With research, a full 2/3 of bonuses are provided as free IU, with only 1/3 requiring funding.

Waste

IU start to be penalised at 10 x PQ – the planet is already covered in factories: it is hard find room for more!

Free IU start to be penalised at 3 x PQ

Research Example

Lets say my planet is supporting a Medical Center, a Research Lab, a Information Net and a Research Center. I am paying 11bc/turn in maintenance for these improvements, so whether I am using them or not, this is a cost I am incurring. This reflects the costs of having all those professors at universities, with equipment etc, but if I am not pumping any of my economy into research, this capacity is idle.

Now let's assume I use the income redistribution sliders to increase the (civilization-wide)ratio of my expenditure on research to the point that this planet is now producing 100 IU of research.

The cumulative effect of the improvements listed earlier on this planet mean I get +73% to research (assuming no other bonuses affecting research). I get 2/3 of the bonus free (assuming waste has not kicked in yet).

So my display reads 68+32, and I am actually paying 68bc/t for that research. (Plus, for competeness, I am still paying the 11bc/t for maintenance of the capacity, so I suppose the full cost is 79 bc/t.)

Explaining the Spend Rate slider and Total Active Spending

Total Active Spending is based on actual expenditure, which is not simply related to income.

From the social production example above, 90bc/t going towards social production will actually cost me 102 bc/t and produce 108 IU - so at this level of expenditure, I will be spending more than my income, due to the bonus modifiers being applied (and the better your bonuses, the more you can exceed income by). This is great for surge spending, but obviously needs to be managed.

Another way of looking at the research example above would say that I wanted to pay 51 bc/t towards research, but it cost me 68 bc/t (because of bonus research I had to pay for) and produced 100 IU (including the free bonus research).

In addition to the spending from income redistribution, I also have other expenditure categories - things like maintenance (please note that starbase and ship maintenance is listed under military - only building maintenance is listed under maintenance), leases, GIA spending etc.

This means that even if I leave the Spend Rate at say 50%, changing the Income Distribution sliders will change not only the outputs, but also the cost! If this sounds like Yorian to you, don't worry - all the calculations are done for you, so you can just experiment with the sliders to see their effect.

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IMPORTANT: Active Spending is also negatively impacted by the tax rate - at rates over about 35%, you get less output per dollar used, on a sliding scale. For me, this is the most important indicator to keep taxes low – it is a sad state of affairs where I call 35% taxation 'low'! – but often just don’t worry about it: it is a small impact in the scheme of things.

Galactic Civilizations 2 Manual Pdf

General note: If you are making a profit with expenditure at 100%, get more bonuses (from social production or starbases). If you are making a significant loss, increase your income (easiest from trade and tribute, but population increases will help too). Overall, don't worry too much: I often have situations where I am spending all my income at 40% expenditure. However, if you have this as a recurrent problem, watch those expenses - leases and unnecessary maintenance (maintenance on buildings or ships you don't get much value from) can effectively wreck your economy, and hence your empire.

Setting Foreign Policy

Foreign policy is about managing your relations with other civilizations. Much of your foreign policy is therefore focused on learning as much about other civilizations as possible in order to determine the proper course of action. In Galactic Civilizations, it’s not a matter of having 5 generic alien civilizations and another half dozen minor civilizations that all act the same. Each one is unique and has dozens of settings (determined at the outset of a game) that determine their behavior. Therefore, your job as a diplomat is to find out what makes them tick.

If you are taking the course of a “good” civilization, no amount of appeasing and reason is going to make an evil civilization behave as you would like.

Relations

The Relations page of foreign policy will outline your current diplomatic relations with a given major civilization. It ranges from “at war” to “allied”. If their relations with you are above Cordial then you are considered to be a “friend”. The better your relations are with a civilization, the more likely they are to help you (even covertly) in times of need.

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Tip: To ally, you need to have researched the technology “Alliances”, and be in a “Close” relationship – just being a “Friend” is not enough. If you are the weaker of the two civilizations, you may also need to ‘sweeten the deal’ to get them to agree to an alliance.

Foreign Statistics

Learning about the various statistics of a civilization will help you figure out their strengths and weaknesses. The more you invest in espionage, the more you will learn about them.

Foreign Reports

Your espionage agents can eventually provide you with in depth reports on different civilizations. These are invaluable for deciding what kind of people they are and what the heck they are up to.

Treaties

Another key piece of information are treaties. What are the relations between the various civilizations. Think twice about attacking the Yor if they are friendly with the Arceans. Even if the Arceans don’t declare war on you, you may find that the Yor seems to have an endless supply of money and material to fight you with.

United Planets

The United Planets passes laws that govern everyone that is part of it. You don’t have to be part of the United Planets. But without membership, you cannot trade with other civilizations. This screen will display the various laws already enacted so that you can keep track of what policies are in place.

Minor Civilizations

The smaller civilizations are only different from major ones in that they don’t count towards game winning conditions. They are also less likely to colonize other planets. Other than that, they are identical to the other civilizations. This screen will allow you to interact with them if you choose to.

Tips:

?Minors are more generous spenders than major civilizations if you want to trade technology.

?A possible tactic is to have lots of trade with minors so they have lots of money to buy things from you…

?Another reason to trade with minors is to give them resources to fight off the influence effects of major civilizations – or even build them a culture-improvingstarbase in the right place, and then give it to them.

?If a major civilization is attacking a minor, consider liberally supplying war vessels, technology, and even cash – think about Vietnam or Afghanistan to see the effects this can have on the major power.

Espionage & Destabilization

You can spend money to learn more about a target civilization (culminating in stealing their technologies) or you can spend money to destabilize them. Destabilizing is in effect spending money to make their people unhappy which makes them more inclined to defect to a rival civilization.

Espionage is important because often times having enough intelligence on different civilizations can keep random bad things from happening. There are terrorist plots, intrigues and other things that are somewhat intangible that having a reasonable level of intelligence on those civilizations can protect you from.

Tip: The amount of benefit you get for the money you spend is related to their population size, and a variety of constants. Once you have established a certain level of espionage, you can reduce your expenditure on it, to just keep up with their population growth (if any).

Destabilizing is extremely powerful but beware, it can permanently damage your relations with that civilization. Use destabilization only as a last resort where you plan to annihilate that civilization.

Tip: At higher levels of intelligence the other civilizations will react to the morale problems caused by the destabilization even if they don’t know who is doing it. This includes building social improvements, lowering taxes, and using propaganda. (The better the AI, the more efficiently it will react, and the more finely tuned will be its reactions.) So spending on destabilization may just make them redirect some resources from other things, rather than wrecking their economy or leading planets to defect.

Diplomacy

When you press the “Speak to..” button on the star system view or in the foreign policy view the diplomacy window is brought up.

Figure 8 If we could talk to the aliens..

Other civilizations are not only snappy dressers, they have very complex personalities behind them. Each civilization has its own unique strategy engine working behind it and hence how it will react to you may be slightly to dramatically different than how others would react.

You can trade a wide range of technologies and treaties that you can negotiate. Your ability to convince them to do what you want is largely based on your diplomacy ability.

Setting Technology policy

When you begin the game, you are asked to choose a technology for your researchers to look into. Each of your planets contributes to this research (shown by the beakers on the planet management screen). Some technologies take longer to research than others. But technologies are what give you new abilities, new ships to build, new improvements to build, new trade goods, etc.

Events & Ethics

During the course of the game your civilization will have to deal with unexpected events. These events largely determine the shape of your civilization from a moral/ethical perspective. When looking back on history, it is easy to condemn the decisions made by men and women in the past. But when confronted with difficult choices, the more brutal path may make the difference between survival and oblivion.

For example, your colonists discover that one of your worlds is already populated by a pre-industrialsociety. What should you do? On the one hand, they were there first. You could only colonize parts of the world not already in use. But doing so would cut the planet’s productivity in half. On the other hand, you could enslave them increasing productivity. It’s a harsh galaxy that isn’t terribly forgiving. What if being nice led to a hostile empire conquering Earth?

The choices you make in these situation modify your civilization’s moral rating. Some civilizations are evil. Others are good and most are somewhere in between. These differences represent the foundation of their cultures. The way different civilizations behave is highly dependent on this and how they treat you depends on this relationship. Take the path of evil and the good civilizations may band together and attempt to conquer you to force a “regime change”. Take the path of good and you may be weaker but gain the support of other civilizations in a time of need.

What technologies are available to you is also dependent on this. Some technologies are only available to good civilizations and some are only available to evil ones.

Influence

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Your influence represents how much sway you have in the United Planets. It also determines how much impact your culture has on other civilizations. The higher your influence, the more star systems near you likely to ask to become part of your civilization.

Influence works as follows:

Each star system has an inate amount of influence. A typical star system has no influence at all on its own. But those with good base planets may have an influence rating of 2 to 3 points. Once in a great while, a star system may have been home to the precursors (an ancient civilization that once controlled the galaxy thousands of years ago) and those star systems are much higher in prestige to control and therefore provide much more influence.

This base influence in a star system can be modified through the building of wonders and planetary improvements. They are also modified by your civilization’s influence ability which you gain through the research of certain technologies.

Your influence is calculated each turn and builds up until the United Planets Security Council is in session at which point you can use it to vote for a particular policy. You can also trade influence like a form of currency in the diplomacy dialog.

Sector Influence and Defections

Influence also works on other star systems directly. In any particular sector, if your influence is much higher than the influence of a civilization that owns a planet, there is a chance that the planet will ‘defect’ – come to join your civilization. When it comes time to try to see if someone is going to defect, it checks to see if there is a big difference between your influence and theirs – if there is, the planet starts to have to make a 'saving throw' on your influence. The bigger the difference, the harder it is to make your saving throw at which point you'll get a warning and a little skull and crossbows shows up by the star system. Miss your saving throw twice and the system defects.

During the “saving throws”, your planet’s Cultural Resistance helps, as does having combat vessels in orbit, and the morale on the planet. (Tip: if any planet in the system defects, the whole system defects – sometimes a ‘no hoper’ colony should be scrapped to let the rest of the system stay loyal.)

Calculating Sector Influence

1.Your civilization's total monthly influence (i.e. all your star systems added up) / (Number of sectors in the galaxy).

2.That is then modified based on your diplomatic relations - the idea being, if everyone hates you, that's going to put a damper on your ability to culturally influence everyone. Similarly, if they've never heard of you, that's going to have the same impact. So when you meet civilizations, your influence will take a big jump. And as your relations improve, so too does your influence. But warfare will bring a damper to it.

3.Then it looks at how far away from a starbase or star system that sector is and the further away, the weaker your influence is. Note: it uses the average of the (distance to the closest starbase or star system) with the (distance to the closest star system).

4.It looks at what starbases are doing in a given sector. I.e. are they magnifying influence there.

5.Then it multiplies that amount by 5 (you'll see why in a second).

6.Then it adds the influence from the adjacent sectors to the total without mutiplying them by 5 (this way, local influences weigh much more strongly but what's happening in other sectors matters some too). There are 8 adjacent sectors – unless you are on the edge of the map – so that is a weighty matter.

Example:

(This example is not meant to suggest that you loose one point of influence for every sector – just to have easy numbers for the calculations which do show influence dropping with range.)

There is a planet worth 2 influence to you in the centre square, and to its left is an enemy planet, although the sector belongs to you. For simplicity, assume that besides the 2 influence for your planet, the rest is from your civilization’s influence attenuated by distance. Looks like you have a great source of influence off the grid to the lower right, and distance is reducing the influence you get.

Lets assume that after steps 1-4,your influence in a particular 3x3 grid is as follows: [5][6][7] [6][9][8] [7][8][9]

Now, when we apply steps 5 and 6, the middle sector’s influence goes to (5+6+7+6+8+7+8+9) + (5 x 9), which is 56+45 = 101

In the neighboring sector (to the left) where the enemy planet is, the grid looks like: [4][5][6] [5][6][9] [6][7][8]

Now, when we apply steps 5 and 6, the middle sector’s influence goes to (4+5+6+5+9+6+7+8) + (5 x 6), which is 50+30 = 80

Now assume you build a starbase in the same sector as our planet, and upgrade it to a trade centre – this will improve your influence in that sector by 25% at step 4. What is the effect on the sector with the enemy planet? It goes to (4+5+6+5+(1.25*9)+6+7+8) + (5 x 6) which is 82.

(For comparison, in the sector with the starbase and the planet, influence has gone from 101 to 111, since the 5 x multiplier is applied to the influence as modified by the starbase.)

Tip: Especially at higher levels of intelligence, the other civilizations are very sensitive to you building cultural influence starbases in their sectors, and may at times threaten war if you don’t hand the starbase over – where it would help bolster their influence!

The United Planets

When you research the technology “Diplomacy” you are automatically inducted into the United Planets. Other civilizations are inducted as you meet them.

Generally speaking, the United Planets is a great way to try to mold the galaxy (and the game) to your liking. Want planetary bombardment units to soften up the enemy? They’re illegal at the start but maybe that will come up and you can vote for it. What about making it illegal to attack freighters during war? Or requiring universal truces for 10 years? Even wealth redistribution can be permitted. Use your influence to take from the rich to give to you.

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The amount of votes you have in the United Planets is based on your influence (which was previously discussed). The United Planets comes up every 4 years by default (though can be voted to come up even more often).

Tips:

?You cannot control what issues comes up for vote.

?Consider supporting a friend, rather than letting an enemy get a benefit: but beware, sometimes the friend will be voting for you!

The Metaverse

Galactic Civilizations is a single player turn based strategy. However, for users who want to compete with other people from around the world, the Metaverse is provides a close approximation to that level of competition. When you finish a game, you can submit your score to the Metaverse. Your score is a form of currency. The more points you have, the higher ranked you are and the larger your empire is in the Metaverse. As you gain points, your title increases. Tip: Note that posts to the Forum include your medals in the signature, so people can evaluate the experience of the person giving the advice.

Players can also band together to form empires. The points of those players are put together into a single imperial score which is displayed on the galactic map as a single empire. Empires will have their own statistics on games, strategies, and journals and more.

GalCiv is also capable of downloading strategies automatically from the net. Submitted scores include basic information on what strategies were employed (what technologies were researched and in what order, what ships and improvements you built in what order, your style of playing, your moral strategy, the type of strategy employed overall, etc.). The GalCiv AI can then download this information from the Metaverse to improve both the quality of the AI and the humanity of it.

Eventually, Stardock hopes to allow players to literally choose a player from the Metaverse to play and simulate that player (roughly speaking) in a game. The only thing missing would be the time waiting for others to move and disconnects!

Scoring

The scoring formula is subject to change, and when it does all existing scores are recalculated using the new formula. The original formula was something like

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(GameDifficulty * SizeOfGalaxy * (Player01 * Intelligence01) * (Player02 * Intelligence02) *... * (Player05 * Intelligence05) * sqr(HistoricalPopulation) * VictoryCondition ) / CurrentGameYear

where the VictoryCondition is a number reflecting how the game ended (YouLoseCondition = 1, MilitaryVictory = 10, EconomicVictory = 20 etc). Dividing it by the GameYear was to encourage fast wins.

The formula has been modified a few times already, adding value for the technology gained, as well as increasing the value of a quick win, increasing the value of high intelligence opponents, and decreasing the value of population (in the original formula, an easy game in a gigantic universe got a much higher score than a masochistic game on a large universe, for example).

In overview, the best summary is to say that how many points you get on a game is dependent on these factors:

1)Did you win?

2)If you won, how did you win?

3)What were the intelligence of the AI you played against?

4)How long did it take you to win?

5)How many people were born into your civilization per sector?

6)How much technology did you amass?

7)What version of the game did you use?

These factors are combined together to generate your score and submitted to the Metaverse at GalCiv.com.

Some notes on scoring

Your total scores are divided by the square root of the number of games you play. The more games you play, the higher your score becomes but there is a slight consideration of how many games you’ve played so that the top player isn’t merely the person who has cranked out the most games.

Additionally, scores age. Each month, your scores from previous months will lose a small part of their value.

However, you can only submit ONCE per game so loading a game, submitting it and then reloading and winning again won't get you duplicate wins, it'll take the first one you submitted. [Tech note: each game has a unique ID, generated when the game started, which is passed to the metaverse, and needs to be unique for that player.]

Registering

You have to separately register with the metaverse - at the top of the metaverse screen (http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/) is a link to the registration page (http://www.galciv.com/playerreg.asp).

(If you bought retail, use the serial number on the CD jewel case. If you bought online, use the serial number you were emailed. If you have lost the serial number/jewel case, but are using SDC, use SDC's 'Lookup Serial Number' function.)

Upload From A Different Machine

(1) Save the game a turn or two before victory.

(2)Copy two files from that game: the *.SAV file (showing the name of the saved game) along with the folder of the same name. These are found in Data->SavedGamesfolder. [With a gigantic galaxy (and lots of ships etc), one of my saves was 3.8MB. It zipped down to 154KB. With a tiny galaxy, a game was 1.2MB, and zipped down to 22KB.]

(3)Go to the machine that is connected to the internet, and install the game there (ie. copy and paste the files into that same location on that computer). Launch the game, play the last few turns again and submit the score.

Debugging Metaverse Submission

When you finish the game, GalCiv will detect an active internet connection. If it finds one, you will get the Submission screen. (If it doesn't, it will go back to the original startup screen - the one that says New Game, Load an existing game, etc.) After the submission screen, it will go straight to the startup screen - there is no acknowledgement of the submission (ie. no 'it worked' or 'it failed' or etc).

TIP: Always retain your last save until you have actually seen your new score on the metaverse. That way, resubmitting it won't take long.

Submission screen? What submission screen?

The submission screen has some summary detail about your game (size, opponents, win type, score, and space for you nickname and email address). If you don't see the submission screen, then GalCiv has failed to detect your internet connection.

o If you're running Seti@Home it only works if SETI is in screensaver mode.o If you have a firewall, you may need to DMZ through it.

o Ad protection software or similar in the background can stop it working.

oIf the internet connection has been active for awhile, sometimes the game doesn't recognize it. Alt-tabout, and either browse a few web pages, or disconnect/reconnect to internet. (This may be related to IP sharing over a home network.)

I get the submission screen, but my scores don't show up

oIf you cannot submit and your alias has more than two words in it, try changing your alias to only one or two words.

oThe fields in both the Metaverse submission and the Stardock registration are CASE SENSIVITE. Even the email address field.

oIf you are using the AOL browser by default, but have IE on the machine, log on through your aol browser. Then click on the blue e. When explorer loads go back to your game, and submit. This usually bypasses any incompatabilities with the AOL browser.

o Check that IE isn't set to 'work offline'.

oIf you registered on the Metaverse site and later then bought Drengin.net, that's the problem. Reregister with the Drengin key and it'll find your games.

o It has worked, but doesn't for this particular game:

oThe most common cause for this is people trying to resubmit a game that has already been submitted. Each game has a unique ID generated for it at the very beginning.

The metaverse only accepts one game with that ID from you.

oMetaverse ignores any submitted game that was modified by hacks, cheats, or trainers. Note that some 'mods' fall foul of this verification process. ('Mods' that have the 'Stardock approved' label will be OK.)

FAQ

Q: Because I bought online, Metaverse and Forum profiles show my real name, and I want to be anonymous.

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A:Follow these steps:

(1)Create a new forum posting account (don't put your real name anywhere in there)

(2)Go to the metaverse section and click 'Register your player'

(3)For 'Player Name' put in the nick for the new, anonymous forum account you created in Step (1), and put your game serial number where it asks for it

(4)When a game ends, use your new Player Name and put the e-mailaddress used to register that new name.

Q: My Metaverse submission name isn't the same as the Metaverse display name - how can I fix this?

A: This is the difference between Metaverse registration (http://www.galciv.com/playerreg.asp) and the StarDock.Net Account (change via SDC, or www.wincustomize.com).

Q: The information I see in the Metaverse is different to the information I saw in the end game screen - what's happening?

A: Metaverse always uses the latest scoring formula - you may wish upgrade your version of the game. (Note: This means that SDC users - who have the most recent version - should usually see the same values.)

Tip: Final Words: Strategy

This isn’t the place (and I’m not a good enough player) to try to do a comprehensive strategy gyuide for this marvelously replayable game – situations are very fluid. Here are a couple of tips, though:

Strategy will vary depending on galaxy size, number of planets etc – be cautious while evaluating other players’ ideas, as they may have assumptions that are not clear… For example, on smaller galaxies many players believe in spending their starting cash buying 4 or 5 colony ships in the first few turns to grab early planets, and dealing with the ongoing cash flow problems later. On gigantic galaxies, most good players don’t do this at all: they need to produce more colony ships than this strategy would allow, and can’t afford the ongoing repayments.

Note that a tip someone else thinks is wonderful may be because it often comes up due to their playing style – with a different style, you may never have the particular problem, and so not think much of the tip…

At the start of the game, build improvements like Soil Enhancement, Habitat and Banking, which improve your economy with no maintenance costs. Be more cautious about improvements that cost maintenance in the early game.

When sending colonists out in the early game,

(1)remember that taking one planet in a system lays claim to the whole system, so you can just take the best planet at first, and “backfill” the other planets later

(2)consider the number of colonists to use carefully: too many (depending on the planet quality) will lead to low morale and some dying off, and too few will lead to slower population growth, and an inability to use this planet to send out further colony ships.

[I am a little radical in this matter – I send

?1 pop to PQ15 planets (these don’t produce any colony ships),

?115 pop to PQ 16-18(these may produce 1 pop colony ships to take PQ 15 planets), and

?300+ pop to PQ 19+ (which can produce 115 pop colony ships for PQ 16-18planets).

These numbers are based on the income generated by pops at the start of the game.

Most other players prefer to leave Earth with a large population, and send out 100-300pop ea, depending on how Earth’s population growth is going.]

Remember to use the spending sliders: focus your spending on military for a few turns to churn out colony ships, or on research to grab that important tech. When you don’t have an urgent goal, a somewhat even spread (subject to your style) is a good idea. Learning to use this slider a lot is one of the key tricks to getting better at the game.

In the mid to late game, consider using your better planets to products warships and your lesser planets to build constructors. The non-militaryone won’t need expensive ship building improvements, saving you a few bc.

Consider “rushing” to particular trade goods – some to deny them to the enemy (Tri-Strontiumand Grav Accel), and others because of the wonderful trades you can do, like getting alien civilizations to attack one another, or trade you lots of technologies.

If an enemy is using influence against you, countering with influence is likely to be difficult and unlikely to work (although it willhelp in the short term). Consider countering with combat vessels! Similarly, a militarily-superiorenemy (or friend) can be conquered by influence…

If you get in a rut, try playing very differently – go for a type of win you haven’t played tried before, or change your morality considerably. I am usually an goodie-two-shoeseconomist – I win because my economy – and production – massively overpowers my enemies – so I favor appeasement tactics until I have significant forces. But games when I attacked early (and or play evil) provided key insights to improving my game, as well as an unexpectedly large dose of fun!

Do not hesitate to move up or down a difficulty level depending on what is happening to you. If you just cannot win, drop down a level… the learning you do while winning is much better than rehearsing your errors at a higher level of difficulty (and that wall you are hitting your head against hurts so much). With each new release, many of us find the AI a bit harder, and drop down a level so we can win, and then slowly move back up. If you are finding it easy, do up a level of difficulty: this game gets very very hard, as the AI gets very very good.

Basic Walkthrough

When you first load Galactic Civilizations you are presented with the main menu. Choose create a new civilization. The next screen allows you to pick your political party and your civilization advantages. For your first game, none of these things matter that much. You will want to pick a tiny or small galaxy, however for your first try. The next screen allows you to pick your opponents. Put their intelligence to “idiot” so that you don’t have to worry about being conquered early in the game.

Once you are in the game, you will be greeted by the status report screen that gives you an outline on what has occurred. When you are done there, close that and pick a technology. For starting out, we suggest choosing Communication Theory since this will lead you to be able to researchUniversal Translators which allow you to speak to alien civilizations.

Once you are actually in the game, you will see that you have two ships. The first one is a survey ship called the USS Hero. This ship can explore anomalies. Anomalies are the various weird visual

elements on the game screen. These will give your civilization or your ship additional abilities. LEFT-CLICKon your survey ship and thenRIGHT-CLICKwhere you want to send him. LEFTCLICKING will select things andRIGHT-CLICKwill send them to where you want them to go.

On the colony ship, select that and look around for a yellow star. Yellow stars tend to have higher quality planets in orbit. If you don’t see any, look on the mini map for a near by sector that has lots of stars in it. Send it on its way.

Now click on “Sol”. This will bring up the Terran home star system. Now click on Earth. The early part of Galactic Civilizations is largely about claiming as many of the good planets as possible. To this end, you will want to build colony ships quickly. The way to do that is to select a colony ship and then purchase the ship immediately. Hurrying production will cost a lot more than waiting for it to be built at a normal pace but time is of the essence early on.

When you click on the purchase button, you are given four choices in vendors to provide the ship. Early on it’s more important to keep your treasury up as opposed to worrying about your monthly lease fees. For that reason, you will want to choose Mitrosoft as the vendor. Mitrosoft products tend to be less expensive initially but you end up paying for it later on. Send these colony ships out as long as there are habitable planets available for colonizing. But don’t over do it, you don’t want to end up having your civilization go broke due to leases later on.

Once you research Universal Translator, you may want to research Diplomacy. Diplomacy will give you the ability to research Interstellar Trade (“Trade”). When this has been accomplished, you can built freighters. It’s a good idea to build a couple of freighters early on so that you can get a financial boost to allow you to pursue your strategy of galactic dominion. Once the freighter has been built, send it to a foreign star system that has a high population. This will initiate the trade route (you’ll see the small trade ship begin flying back and forth each turn).

At this point, it’s probably a good idea to start thinking about defense. To get some basic defenses going, research Defense Theory and then Deflectors. This will make the new Defender class star ship available. Defenders are…well good at defending planets. You should also keep an eye on the arms race via the graphs window on the right side of the screen. Choose military might to make sure the other civilizations aren’t outclassing you too much militarily. Civilizations you are trading with tend to be friendlier but it’s all a matter of degree. Defenseless civilizations become prey to the more powerful ones.

You are now moving towards the next phase in the game. Where the early part of the game is about grabbing as many good planets as you can, the next step is trying to claim the limited number of galactic resources. Galactic resources can vastly improve your abilities when exploited by star bases and upgraded with mining modules. Only constructors can do this. Constructors are expensive which means you’ll have to make a tough choice – build up your trading empire? Build up your military? Put your effort into researching? Put money into social projects? Or build constructors?

If you choose to build constructors, simply send the finished constructors to resources that do not yet have any star bases on them. Building more constructors and sending them to existing star bases will prompt you to upgrade them in various ways. What path you take here depends on your strategy.

Now you’re ready to compete in a hostile galaxy. Here are some other tips:

On keeping your people happy

Don’t worry too much about keeping people’s morale terribly high. Even the most popular leaders have a hard time keeping their approval rating over 55%. Try to keep it over 50% so that you have a good chance of winning elections.

On increasing your influence

There are social projects that can build up your influence. But more importantly, you can add modules to your star bases that will magnify your influence in a given sector. Remember that new modules become available when you research new technologies.

On Taxing and Spending

Just remember that your spend rate determines what percentage of your industrial capacity you are using. Many new players mistakenly believe that if they put their spend rate to 100% that they should have a balanced budget. If your industrial capacity is weaker than your financial power, you can have a 100% spend rate and still make money. That means you need to build more factories and power plants. Additionally, higher taxes mean lower morale.

On maintaining relations

If you’re an evil civilization, you’re going to have a hard time getting along with others no matter what. But otherwise, you can keep your relations good through trade, gifts, and generous negotiations. The AI remembers how it’s been treated in diplomatic discussions and bases its behavior based on that.

Reference

In this section we will give you some of the early parts of the technology tree along with other key data that allows you to get a better idea of which strategies to take.

Technology Tree

A copy of the current technology tree can be found at:

http://www.galciv.com/survive/docs/gfx/techtree.jpg

Galactic Civilizations Tutorial

When you load up the game for the first time, you’ll want to start a new game. The first screen will ask you what political party you want. There’s no wrong answer on this part. In terms of spreading out your 10 freebie abilities, sensor range can be pretty helpful for new players since it allows your ships to explore much faster. You can’t really go wrong with the others.

Choosing Opponents

The AI in Galactic Civilizations is no slouch. So don’t pick “Smart” for the intelligence of a computer player unless you’re quite experienced. If you’re new, choosing “idiot” for intelligence is probably prudent.

In terms of whether they are good or evil, that depends on how you want to play. Good civilizations tend to stick together, evil ones don’t but are more likely to pray on the weak than a good one. An

easy (though potentially boring) game would be to play as a good civilization with other good civilizations.

We suggest you play a small galaxy for starters. The game supports galaxy sizes up to gigantic but those games take months to finish versus a small galaxy which can be finished in an afternoon.

Starting out

You’ll begin the game with a summary of what’s been happening prior to the game starting. Then you’ll be asked to choose a technology. We suggest you pick COMMUNICATION THEORY since that will lead you to a Universal Translator which allows you to communicate with alien civilizations.

When you begin you’ll have a colony ship and a survey ship.

LEFT CLICKING on things will select things.RIGHT CLICKING on things will send your selected ship to that destination. You can also hold down theLEFT MOUSE BUTTON to grab the screen and drag it around as well as moving the mouse to the edge of the screen.

You can also use the cursor keys to move a selected ship around.

Look for YELLOW stars. These are the ones most likely to have good planets in orbit of them. Look for planets that look nice. Class 15 is good. Class 20 is better. Anything higher is miraculous.

Your survey ship can be sent to pick up space debris. Space debris can provide your civilization with bonuses of various sorts. They’re basically there to make exploring the galaxy more interesting.

You can DOUBLE-CLICKon any stars you control and it will take you to the first colonized planet in that star system (single clicking will bring up the solar system and allow you to click on the planet you want).

The Planet Screen

On the planet screen you’ll probably want to build more colony ships. We suggest you purchase a colony ship right away. Don’t wait for it to be built on its own. Choose an improvement to build as well.

…TIME PASSES…

The early part of the game is largely about getting as many of the good planets as you can. The next phase of the game is usually concerned with trying to get those galactic resources. But this is a lot trickier of a strategy because while you’re building constructors, you’re not building freighters or defensive/offensive ships. Keep an eye on the military might graph on the right. The aliens will look for civilizations that are easy prey.

You can maintain better relations with civilizations by sending freighters to trade with them. The money from a trade route goes both ways. If their economy becomes dependent on trade with you, you basically own them. So pick carefully who you want to trade with.

As you build star bases, focus on what strategy you want to work on. If you are going to try to be the economic czar (which makes it easier to win via the political victory) then build star bases along your trade ship’s routes and upgrade them with modules that boost trade revenue.

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If you’re going for the cultural domination path, upgrade your star bases with modules that magnify your influence in those sectors. You can actually get star systems to defect to you if you have enough influence in a sector they have a planet in. Be wary though, the aliens won’t just lie down and let you walk over them. If they feel culturally threatened they may either try to counter what you’re doing with their own star bases or take them out through more violent means.

Winning/Losing the game

Eventually the game will conclude. One way or the other. Using diplomacy is a great way to even the odds since you can trade things for money and other goods. Prop up your friends by giving them star ships in their time of need (they’ll do the same for you).

When the game is over, it will ask you to submit your score to the METAVERSE. The Metaverse is an on-linemultiplayer network in which players compete for control of a virtual galaxy. It does this by using the points you submit as currency in this galaxy so make sure you submit your scores, even if you lose.

Exploring

Now it is time to explore your surroundings. For this you will use your survey vessel, and if you have one, a scout. The survey vessel is one of your most important vessels, as it is the only ship available to you at this time that can explore anomalies. Use your survey ship to look for more suitable systems to colonize, yellow stars being the most likely to hold suitable worlds. Make sure not to lose your first survey vessel, it being your oldest vessel, it will benefit from all ship bonuses that many of the anomalies will provide. Given time your survey vessel will be powerful enough to take on fleets of battleships single-handedlyand will be the pride of your fleet for years to come. .While looking for new worlds, keep your eyes out for anomalies and galactic resources. Anomalies provide bonuses to your civilization in terms of permanent stat increases (extra attack/defense, bonus to soldiering, research etc.), free ships, decreasing time on your current research project and even wormholes that transport your ship to the distant reaches of the galaxy.

Galactic resources are colored geometric shapes on the star-map.Building starbases on these resources will provide a boost to your civilizations abilities; you can right click on a resource to see what kind of bonuses it provides. To build a starbase simply send a Constructor to a resource and answer Yes when the starbase build prompt appears. You can upgrade your mining operations (and other elements of your starbase) by sending more Constructors to add additional modules to the starbase.

Colonizing

After locating a suitable class-15or above planet with your sensors, you'll want to establish your first colony. Move your initial colony ship to intersect the appropriate system. A dialog will appear giving you a chance to rename the system. Confirm your choice of name and then move the mouse cursor over the planet in the system you wish to colonize and click to select it.

The early phases of GalCiv favor an aggressive production schedule of colony ships to expand your empire. Since the alien civilizations have had thousands of years (in some

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cases) to explore the galaxy with remote probes, they already know where all the best planets are located and they will actively pursue them. In the initial years of the game, you may wish to adjust your allocation of resources to favor military projects and research (into Propulsion technologies) to ensure that the Terran Empire doesn't become a forgotten backwater in a corner of the galaxy.

A Game Play Example: The Mirror Universe

by Brad Wardell (Designer)

Introduction

Remember those Star Trek episodes where one of the characters ends up in a mirror universe? Everyone that you're used to seeing as a good guy is evil and vice versa. Can that be done in GalCiv? The answer is yes.

In this game, I decided I would play as a good guy but with a twist --I would change the default alignment settings for each player to being the opposite. The Drengin would be good. The Altarians evil. The Yor, normally evil would now be good and so forth. My goal was to try to go for cultural domination of the galaxy. A goal that would involve putting virtually all my technology and industrial resources not towards the military but towards culture. To work I would need to avoid getting into wars, make sure I had powerful friends while I quietly took over the galaxy by building a series of star bases that had stores, culture exchange centers, etc. on them to magnify my culture.

This is also the first game play example that makes use of the GalCiv BonusPak. The BonusPak is something we developed after we went to manufacturing as a freebie expansion pack type thing to thank users for purchasing the game.

Here's how my adventure went...

First thing I decided to do is create a civilization that had higher morale than normal. With 30 abilities to choose from, it's very tough to pick which ones to focus on. But my strategy would require that I spend a lot of time in debt which tends to hurt morale so this way I could offset that.

When set up, I had picked the 'Pacifists'. Their bonuses would increase my natural influence and diplomacy in the galaxy which I would need to avoid war.

Here's where I set the various players to being the opposite alignment than usual. But I did something else, I set the intelligence levels to be different on some races. Whereas some are 'Intelligent' which is quite tough, the Yor are set to only be bright. This would have serious repercussions later on.

And off I go...

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By playing as a good guy, I would win the favor of the good civilizations. They would be less likely to go to war with me (in theory). Plus, as a backup plan, I could ally myself with the good guys.

Again, as I land on planets I come across various unique things. There are a lot of these and some are less likely to come up than others.

Ah the evil Altarians. Bit of an attitude change. Only thing they're missing is a mustache.

Okay, time to try out the built in MP3 player in the BonusPak. The music in GalCiv is outstanding. But I've heard it for 18 months now. So I am loading up a playlist.

Ah evil Torians. Not so cuddly now. Now they're interested in eating my skin!

And the Yor. No longer interested in converting me into bone flecked jam, now they are happy to report that they exist to provide 'pleasure'.

The benefits of high influence, I am able to get my way in the United Planets.

Evil Altarians. Bastards.

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The Drengin and Altarians spend a lot of time at war with one another. The Altarians are pretty tough because they got a really good start. I have a sensor drone broadcasting live images from the front. Lots of action.

Time to get some basic defense. Even the best diplomat can't be completely undefended.

The Altarians come after me. It is so weird hearing the Altarians speaking this way. Of course, I also tell him where he can go..

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Now I'm setting up my governors. I don't have that many planets but I have certain basics I want them all to build and I don't want to have to mess around with them manually.

I'm not exactly a power house but my diplomacy ability is strong enough to keep me out of trouble still.

The Altarians keep trying to intimidate me. They fail. Though actually I am a bit worried. So what I end up doing is using my considerable wealth to purchase ships from other races. In GalCiv, you can buy pretty much anything. And ships are one of them. So I use my diplomatic skills to acquire enough military might to keep me safe.

The down side of doing that is that it makes me go broke. Which in turn causes me to lose the election which in turn makes me lose my political abilities! I lose not just my +20% to influence, but I take a -20%penalty. In effect, my influence is nearly halved!

The Arceans are fairly neutral. But they're worried about the Altarians as well.

But the media seems fixated on the Drengin. With the Drengin and Altarians battling it out, it could go either way. It's very close.

Meanwhile, several of my worlds start inching towards defecting. My influence is so low that my people start to lose faith. A new election is only a few months away so I do what any politician would do, I lower taxes to increase my approval rating.

And it works!

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The dying Torians. Not much left now but a few crumbling old buildings. And the owners of them left and formed the Torian Imperium.

The Drengin have been busy. They've allied themselves with the Yor which brought them into the war against the Altarians. The evil Altarians lost the evil Torians and are now alone. Things don't look too well for the Altarians now.

Battleships arrive.

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I start focusing on social programs. Not just because they make my people happy (though I learn bitterly at the end that social programs, gone too far, can bankrupt a civilization) but to generally build up infrastructure for later on.

The Arceans are ticking me off. I know I had planned not to go to war but these lamers are too uppity. Who do they think they are? Trapped in the corner, they'd be nothing if it weren't for my money.

The Arceans just have the worst diplomacy. Everyone is ticked off at them but no one is going to war with them yet.

They come back again and try to intimidate them. Last straw.

I'm not strong enough to take on the Arceans. But I know someone who is. A certain someone who

depends on me for a third of their revenue...

Heh Heh.

Crap. The other side of the coin. The Altarians and Drengin are at war again and I get dragged in. So now my fate is hitched to that of the good Drengin Empire.

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And the Yor, friends of the Drengin and therefore friends of mine help me out but don't get involved directly. The ships are critical though --4 Dreadnoughts, and a half dozen cruisers.

Okay, I admit, I'm a little bit lame. The Altarians are down for the count but I really can't deal with them right now. The Drengin won't care about this as long as they don't need my help.

I capture an Arcean planet and steal their technology.

The Arceans though manage to find a powerful starship. Will it be enough?

Yes and no. Humans at strategy games tend to make peace so that they can rearm and repeat. The aliens in GalCiv will do this too. If they can. Of course, the Drengin are still all over them. I just love seeing the aliens grovel though.

Mmmm. More trade routes. Now I can work on the Yor. They will ally with me, or they'll be

culturally assimilated...

Meanwhile... I build up to attack them. The Arceans, though not as intelligent as the other civilizations, recognize this and point out their unhappiness. But they're too weak now to do anything about it.

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And then I strike. Good by Arceans...

By now my goodness has changed the interface of GalCiv to reflect my benevolence.. I am also building a lot of missiles (new unit in the BonusPak). Missiles are cheap but you have to be careful, they give you the illusion of power. Like real missiles, they are one shot deals.

The cultural domination starts to work. Influence is a tricky thing. One undocumented thing about it that I need to add to the GalCiv encyclopedia is that your influence is also affected by your overall popularity with other faces. It's kind of intuitive but it isn't explicitly documented. If everyone hates you, your influence on them will be much less. Now, in this scenario, with only friends left, my influence is very high.

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Taking a look at my new planet. Mmm propaganda.

So close, if I can get the Yor to ally with me, game over. Cultural Conquest would be a lot more work. So I'm going to try to get the Yor to like me enough to ally with me. Not an easy task.

So here's the problem. The Yor only get 9% of their income from me. If I'm going to become an ally, that needs to change. I need to trade with them. But I've used up all my trade routes already.

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A new minor race shows up. They're pretty deviant I hear..

So now it's time to switch production. Now, I could go to all my planets and do this manually. Or I can do it through the use of governors --everyone that's building a Dreadnought will now build a constructor instead. One click.

Next step, where are my trade routes? Ideally I want a trade route that is a straight line so that I can build star bases. Here's the deal, in GalCiv, when you make a trade route with your freighter, a trade ship travels back and forth. The money you get each turn depends on how far along on that route. But you can also increase that amount by having star bases in the sectors those trade ships travel. Not just any star base but ones with trade centers and such added to them. If you do this enough, you can greatly increase your trade revenue. So this is what I plan to do: Build a straight line of star bases between Earth and the Yor home world where the trade ships travel and add tons of trade modifying modules to them. This will increase my trade with the Yor and make them more likely to want to be an ally.

Early on the process, my total trade is 582.

So I start adding trade posts and other modules to my star bases along that trade route.

I also use a captured Arcean sensor drone to keep an eye on that Jarkians and Drengin.

Trade per turn now up to 796. And I reached Star Federation so my economy is even stronger than before.

Up to 20% of their income. Relations are now improving.

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But I do want to get to higher level weaponry so I research Organic armor.

My plan has an unexpected snag. The galaxy has entered an economic boom. This is normally good but the result is that my trade, as a percent, is significantly lowered. Combine that with the Yor's huge military buid up and things look bleak.

But you know what? Starbases have a dual role. They can also be used to magnify culture. Now, this is a bit of a gambit. But because my star bases are already built up with economic enhancements, I might be able to sneak cultural improvements onto them without the Yor noticing. One must be subtle. If the starbases were purely culturally oriented, then that would be pretty blatant. So let's see how that goes. Plus, the Yor are set to 'bright' and not 'intelligent' so they're not quite as smart as the Drengin.

So far so good..

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Earth is looking good.

Arrgh. Space monster. But I have missiles near by so I wipe him out easily.

Now we'll let Nike and McDonalds and Disney do the conquering for me.

Day 2...

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Here's where I left off.

I'm pretty close to winning via a variety of ways.

I shift-Dragto select a bunch of units and send them over to be near the Yor, just in case. Not in their sectors mind you, just nearer.

Look at that fleet. I don't want to have to battle that. Can I conquer the Yor non-violently?

Success!

The Yor are not amused. They see through my plan. But it is too late. Even though I am forced to hand over that star base, the cultural inertia is too far in my favor now.

Here's why: The loss of those planets has caused the Yor to go bankrupt. They have too many expenses and while they have tried to downsize their military, it's just too late. They have too many leases and expenses and such built up throughout the game to adjust to the loss of so many worlds so quickly. All without firing a single shot.

The Independent League shows up as the Drengin and Yor and myself being to face money problems from all those social programs.

So close...

One...more...sector..

Here it comes! Only 9 months left and I win.

The last gasp of dying regimes.

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VICTORY! I only had to destroy 35 ships throughout the entire 2 day game. It was a very close thing and quite a challenge. It takes a lot of diplomatic juggling to do so. It also required some good geography, I was able to trade with races unmolested and the extra 2 United Planets given trade routes put me to the maximum 10 trade routes which I used to good effect.

Submitting my score to the Metaverse.

Yay, I'm in the top ten. But look at those bastards. Yea, you know who you are! Gamma team indeed! They all banded together to create their own empire. That's why they have their own symbol.

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In GalCiv, you have both individual rankings and empire rankings (think 'clans'). My empire 'Arnor' is lonely now but you just wait! :)

There's my profile. Your hall of fame is kept track of on the web. That way, let's say you play GalCiv on your laptop as well as on a second machine. You can have a single global high score list to see how you're doing. Plus, I've won my first medal for being in the top 10. GalCiv tracks I think the top 5,000 players. Might be higher than that (might be top 10,000). Right now it's pretty easy to be in the top 10. And I'm still ranked an ensign for now.

Conclusions

Often times one plays strategy games and the only realistic way to win is through conquest. But there are other paths available in GalCiv. They require skill but they're also a lot of fun. It also requires some tactical knowledge such as figuring out where to send those freighters and then positioning your starbases in the right way. And it takes real strategic planning. I was only 6% of the way through the technologies in GalCiv when I won. Two days. In GalCiv, you're not meant really to get all the techs. You pick which path you want to take. I chose the path of cultural dominator and went for it. It was high risk though. The Yor had overlord battle technology which in essence meant that they could easily have conquered me. So why didn't they? Because I was allied with the Drengin. And while the Drengin were allied with the Yor as well, they wouldn't have necessarily, or even likely sided with them because the Drengin needed my trade.

So there you have it. Visit us at www.galciv.com if you want to learn more about the game.

Getting Support

Technical support is through Strategy First (www.strategyfirst.com). However, players are also encouraged to check out the main Galactic Civilizations website (http://www.galciv.com) where the development team is available at and other players can talk to you on the forums to help you out with problems. Software updates will also be available on the GalCiv website.

Using Stardock Central

Stardock Central (SDC) is a free, late beta product providing several different centralised functions for a variety of Stardock and Dregin.Net products - not just GalCiv. Its design, development and

maintenance are the responsibility of different people, and we (GalCiv players) are only one of the constituencies it is designed for. Unfortunately, it was not designed for novice computer users.

SDC permits easy access to interim releases to the game. The user launches SDC, and it compares the version you have with the version on the servers, and if there is an update, offers an update button. If the user chooses to update, the update is downloaded and installed. Very quick, clean, and efficient.

Without SDC, a user can only download patches from the public website (from the download section of http://www.galciv.com) - these patches come as ZIP files, ready to be installed. Since there is additional overhead needed for these downloadable files, they are provided on a less frequent basis - ie. SDC users may get a patch several weeks before it becomes available as part of a public download. (At the moment, SDC updates average fortnightly, while public downloads average monthly…)

The downside: it can be a tad difficult (I am not going to repeat the other words people have used) to get registered correctly using it, which is necessary before you can use it. But if you go through a little pain upfront, operation seems seamless and smooth once you get it going.

Major Features

SDC provides a competent Download Manager. For example, while downloading, transient internet conditions mean one file vanishes. Normally your install would abort and you would start again. But with SDC, just press install (or update) and it continues from where it left off. This is true through ISP outages, reboots, whatever. (In the worst case I have heard of, serge had to to re-click'about 10 times' before he got it all.)

TIP: If you have the option to update a product, in the bottom left of the screen is a 'history' link - this actually tells you what is in the update, so you can decide whether you want it or not.

Tip: Why wouldn't I want an update? You may not want to take an update until the end of your current game. Sometimes a change in the engine does weird things to saved games (although I have played through several updates without really noticing.) Also, Stardock does not guarantee that a patch will retain older saved game file formats - so you could lose access to your existing saved games. Note: you cannot uninstall a patch. You would have to uninstall the whole game, reinstall, and only patch to the desired level. Final comment: later patches require earlier ones, so if you have a reason for not wanting a patch, resolve the issue and get ready to move on! Patches are worth it!

SDC provides one way to access the FORUM - the discussion boards for GalCiv. (You can also access directly through a browser, or via other software that can use a newsgroup server, such as Outlook Express.) When you access via SDC, you are automatically logged in by SDC, and your posts carry an additional icon indication that it was submitted via SDC.

SDC provides a way to access the Stardock CHAT servers (they can also be accessed in other ways). This is particularly useful for LIVE help getting SDC registered properly, and GalCiv up and running. It is most responsive during US working hours. Be nice, though: while SDC staff are friendly and helpful, and would like to ensure that you get to enjoy the fruits of their labours, Stardock isn't actually responsible for this sort of support (a company called Strategy First is). So they aren't really being paid to do this. - But they are willing, so...

SDC also has WebBrowser, News and Support pages with obvious functions.

Here's how you use it.

To download the latest version of Stardock Central go here: http://www.galciv.com/download.asp

[1] After you install, it will ask you to create a Stardock.net account. This information will allow you access your games from any computer, participate in message boards, and streamline any technical support you may need.

If you need to edit your account later, you can go to the Tools->EditStardock.net Account...

When you finish creating your Stardock.net account we'll send you an email that lets you validate your account. Once you do this, you can continue to the next step.

[2]Register GalCiv with Stardock Central. You do this by going to the Tools->RegisterProducts menu item. On here, simply copy and paste the serial # you received in your email and then press the 'Register' button. This is important because if you do not register your product, you will not be able to see updates.

[3]Now you're ready to download. Galactic Civilizations is part of Stardock's Drengin.net suite of games. Click on the software button and then click on the Drengin.net tab. Stardock Central will scan your account and make available which games you have access to and shareware/demos of ones you do not.

For your convenience, we have broken Galactic Civilizations up into a few modules that can be installed at different times (other than the actual base game of course). Each module has its own version number.

To update or install, select the module you want and then press the Install or update button on the left side. Alternatively, a button will appear to the right of the listing on the screen (see screenshot) and you can choose that.

Tip: Registration

OK - why is registration so hard? Some users have a serial number (from an email), others have a product key (from a jewel case), and some have both. Some only have GalCiv, while others have purchases Dregin.Net. Some start with GalCiv, and 'upgrade' to Dregin.Net. Some are already registered users of SDC, others have never used it before. And the list goes on. The key issues/tips are:

?You will be registering Stardock Central, registering GalCiv OR Dregin.Net, and creating a MetaVerse account. All of these entries need to mesh for things to work properly. The easiest way to do things, is to determine upfront to use one email address (you could use up to three), one nickname (you could have a couple of different ones) and just get it all working. Otherwise, when a screen asks for an email address, you might be like me, and put the wrong one in… I went for 2 email address and had some pain - I used the CHAT server to get some help, and they told me where I was entering the wrong one…

?When you put the serial number or product key (these terms mean the same thing) into SDC, make sure you select the correct product from the applications drop down before sticking in the number. (TIP: You may need to try a few combinations: I have both my Dregin.Net and GalCiv keys entered, and all is good. Others have reported things working with one but not the other - but which one varies! NOTE: Just registering Dregin.Net seems to be enough for some people!)

Debugging

?SETI@home - Compatible only if SETI is in screensaver mode. Otherwise, SDC wont work.

?Some people have reported that their firewall product blocked SDC - works fine for me, though.

?For further help, you have 3 good choices:

oAsk for help on the FORUM. Prompt responses, but mainly from players who have no special knowledge or ability to help. But if someone has had your problem, they may resolve it for you very quickly.

oUse the 'Support' tab of SDC to send in a support request. Can be a little on the slow side - my last one took about 5 days to come back - which is a problem if the issue prevents you playing at all. (For less critical things, pretty good, I thought.)

oUse the CHAT server (discussed above). Once I tried during working hours on a weekday, this was great for me. The expert I needed was not online, but someone else went and got her, and she sorted me right out. Highly recommended for critical issues that are preventing you from playing the game.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I purchased GalCiv at the store and when I go to update the base game it wants to download some 80+ meg file?

A: Sometimes the order in which these things are installed matters. Probably the easiest and least painful way to get around this is to simply reinstall from the CD (or the setup image you downloaded) and then re-installStardock Central from scratch. While there may be a simple solution to your specific case, doing this is almost certain to solve the problem and is quicker than trying to trouble shoot the reason it's trying tore-downloadthe whole game. To repeat: reinstall GalCiv from the CD and then reinstall SDCentral. It is the SDCentral setup program that does the detecting of what version of GalCiv is already installed and prepares it to not have to download as much.

?Also, make sure you are installing and not downloading and archiving. If you try to ‘download and archive’ it will always grab everything.

?(Note: Most downloaders install SDC, and then install GalCiv, and everything is fine. This sequence is only offered for people have a problem as the quickest way to fix it.)

Q:Help! I can't see new versions!

A: Make sure you have entered in your serial # into the 'Register Products' area.

Q: I lost my password to my Stardock.net account!

A: We will soon have a way to look this up within SDC, for now, go here.

Q: How can I tell exactly what build I have installed?

A: Go to Tools->Settingsand choose display revision numbers. (Tip: From inside the game you can see major revision numbers on the top of the Options screen.)

Q: When I am downloading it aborts for no apparent reason!

A: Sometimes a download will time out, especially over a bad connection. Just try again. It will resume where you left off.

Q: Can't I just download updates as a regular old 'patch'?

A: You can. But they are not updated quite as often due to the nature of putting together patches versus updating the Stardock Central base.

Q: I heard there's a 'beta' update of GalCiv available, how do I get that?

A: In Settings you can turn on 'show prerelease versions'. Note: Only users with Drengin.net accounts (see www.drengin.net) can obtain betas.

Q: I wanted to do an update, but something else happened – help!

A: DON’T doubleclick in SDC - by default, doubleclicking an installed application doesn't update it - it uninstalls.

Q: How can I change the default directories for SDC?

A: For temp files and install files - in the SDC, Under tools->Settings->Advanced.

To change where the application installs, either set the installation path in Tools ->Register Products, or set Tools - settings - General tab to 'prompt for installation directory.'

Q: Can I download again?

A: Yes, you can download multiple times, including on other computers.

Q: How about backing up the download, so I don’t have to download again?

A: If you're using Stardock Central, it literally comes with an archiving feature designed to let you do your own CD ROM backups. This means once you have downloaded, you can backup that download so you never have to do it again!

Technical Frequently Asked Questions

The animation is very choppy when I first load up the game.

Galactic Civilizations is very multithreaded. This means that the game multitasks within itself. However, on some systems, the background loading of the game components slows down the game animation. Once you are in the game, you can open up the options menu and choose “Turn off background loading”. This will make the game take somewhat longer to first load but there won’t be background processing while the game is playing its intro cut scenes and such.

I would like to run Galactic Civilizations on an older computer. Is there anything I can do to do this?

Yes, most of the hardware requirements of Galactic Civilizations revolve around the multimedia. You can delete the .BIK files (or move them somewhere else) and this will remove the videos. Some parts of the game may look static or strange but it will allow you to play on an older system. Check the Galactic Civilizations website for other tips (www.galciv.com).

Tip: Just turning the sound effects etc off in the Options screen is not quite as good as deleting all the sound files… I did all this, and played quite happily on my 266 Laptop up to medium galaxies. It started to get a bit slow towards the end of the medium games. (I did have lots of RAM, and a very up-to-dateoperating system, so your mileage may vary.)

When I go to the planet screen and some other screens I hear crackling on my speakers.

Some sound drivers do not properly support multiple streaming of MP3s within the same process. If you update your sound drivers to the latest version and make sure you have DirectX 8 or later installed this should take care of it.

Tip: I got this on my laptop even with the sound turned off, until I deleted all the video and sound files. Then it didn’t seem to care that I had the wrong version of DirectX.

The game keeps returning to desktop unexpectedly.

Makes sure you are not running the debug (or developer version) of DirectX 8.x. There is a bug that is fixed in the release version of DirectX 8.x that causes Galactic Civilizations to crash. (Tip: you might also think this is happening if you try to run the Windowed version and don’t have your machine in 16-bitcolor mode.)

Can the game be modified by users?

Yes. In the DATA directory you will find .SHIP, .EVENT, .SBMODULE, .TECH, and .IMP files. You can modify these to add more ships, events, modules, technologies, and more. (Tip: Beware, though: many changes you can make here will be detected by the MetaVerse, and prevent the score being counted. This is to maintain the integrity of the high score system. You can get your “mod” approved by StarDock, though… Note that mods from other players (including some of the developers) are available for download from www.galciv.com).

Credits

At Stardock

Designer / Project Manager

Brad Wardell

Gameplay Programmers

Cari Begle

Scott Tykoski

Brad Wardell

Engine Programmers

Mike Duffy

Cari Begle

MP3/Networking

Ian Hanschen

Computer AI / Economic Engine

Brad Wardell

Graphics Design

Alex Gounaropoulos

Scott Tykoski

Animation

Paul Warzecha

Alex Gounaropoulos

Intro Cut Scene

SPIN®

Additional Graphics

Russ Schwenkler

Music

Eric Heberling

GalCiv OS/2 Music

Eric Johnson

Metaverse Programming

Pat Ford

Johanne Chainé

Writing

Brad Wardell

Scott Tykoski

Alexander Antoniades

Biz:

Larry Kuperman

Kris Kwilas

Angela Marshall

Belinda Banks

Kim Kolaz

Website Design

Johanne Chainé

Renato C. Veras Jr.

Pat Ford

Licensed Technology

(www.radgametools.com)

Beta Testing

Stardock would like to thank the hundreds of external beta testers who helped out throughout the beta cycle. In particular we would like to thank:

Gherardo Albano

Alexander Antoniades

D Dominic Breeze

Jean-PaulCardinal

Christopher Conley

David Craft

Pierre Fricke

Frank Fujita

Jay Greogry

Chris Hamp

Nathan Hogue

Fredrik Jacobsson

Adam R Kelm

John Kistler

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Jeffery s Legere

Frank Leon

Martin Leuschen

Kris D McCann

Brian McClure

Paul McEvoy

Ian Meddings

Simon Morgan

Robert F. O'Connor

Paul Ollenberger

Laurence Parry

Christopher Prahl

Kenneth Rabe

Emily Rogers

Dave Rosen

Rob S

Bill Sawyer

John Schmid

John Sherrill

Tony Smith

James Thibault

Matthijs Vermeulen

Steve Williams

Jonas Wills

Special Thanks to

Java Scout (Trevor Powdrell)

Azakain (Brian Hively)

Strategy First

3rd party Producer Nabil Yared

3rd party Executive Producer Adam Phillips

Product Manager Prokopios 'Pro' Sotos

Director of Marketing Steve Milburn

Assistant Product Manager Ryan Bastien

Packaging and Design

Philippe Brindamour, Julie Binette, Anne Lalonde, Marline Belanger

Web Design

Hugo Trepanier, Serge Mongeau

PR Associate Kelly Elkins

Marketing Associate Raluca State

President

Don McFatridge

Senior V.P. Brian Clarke

V.P. Acquisitions Steve Wall

V.P. Creative Development Richard Therrien

Galactic Civilizations Iii Manual

V.P. Product Development Chuck Kroegel

Galactic Civilizations 2

V.P. Finance Sonia Langlois

Galactic Civilizations 2 Manual Online

V.P. Systems Dave Hill

Galactic Civilizations 2 Manual Pdf

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