Galactic Civilizations Unoffical FAQ
by russellmz

Home Starbases Everything you ever wanted to know about starbases. Check out my Help Guide on Starbases too! When a starbase is built on a resource, does it provide a bonus just for that sector, or is it galaxy-wide for that civ? Are starbases ever mobile, or do they have to be turned into Terror Stars to move? Can I build a starbase anywhere? If I build a starbase on a galactic resource and then convert it to a Terror Star, does the resource move? If you build two star bases in one sector do abilities get added up? Any advantage to mulitple Starbases in a single sector? #1 by Citizen David Schapira - 3/29/2003 2:50:24AM yes, all bonuses stack, except for bonuses that only affect that Starbases sefense bonus (those modules of the Defense variety). Keep in mind that there are upper-level caps for military and social productionj for each planet class (these are VERY high, however). If you really want to supercharge your production, build up to three fully loaded production starbases in a sector. (also, a starbase now require upkeep of 10bc now - russellmz) Domestic Policy What are some good beginner strategies? There are a lot of tips on the GalCiv forums. How do I keep morale up? #2 by Veteran mindlar - 4/1/2003 2:57:52 PM The morale problem is something that has been around for quite a while. There are several ways to manage the problems that an empire will face not all of which involve sending your people into oblivion. There are a few ways to effectively raise morale: 1) Lower taxes 2) Build social improvements that help morale 3) Only colonize good planets (i.e. 15+) 4) Research techs that boost morale. 5) Build/buy trade goods that boost morale. 6) Build/improve starbases on morale improvements. 7) Built colony ships/transports to remove population. 8) Spend money on propaganda. 9) Wait for the population to decline (morale 50) Ways to lower morale: 1) Raise taxes. 2) Be destabilized by another empire. 3) Wait for population to grow. (morale below 40). 4) Have a treasury balance below 0. All things being equal, morale will tend to head towards 40-50 if left alone as that is the break even point for the population growth/morale curve. As Horatio said, espionage can tell you who is destabilizing you. You will need to spend a fair amount of money over time, but it is generally worth it. How are population, Planet Quality(PQ), taxes, and morale related? by Avatar Frogboy - 4/10/2003 7:13:59PM If only 100 people lived on a class 15 planet, it would have 89% of them thinking you're doing okay. Think of that as your base morale rating in GalCiv. Less than class 15 planets are just death traps anyway. Class Bonus Morale 15 0 89% 16 7 96% 17 14 103% 18 21 110% 19 29 118% 20 36 125% 21 44 133% 22 51 140% 23 59 148% 24 67 156% 25 75 164% 26 84 173% Getting people on the planet can tick them off. Pop( Penalty 1 -32% 2 -63% 3 -95% 4 -126% 5 -158% 6 -190% 7 -221% 8 -253% 9 -285% 10 -316% Then there's your tax rate penalty. Tax Rate Penalty 10% -1% 20% -4% 30% -9% 40% -16% 50% -25% 60% -36% 70% -49% 80% -64% 90% -81% 100% -100% These are the 3 basic things that affect morale. There are many others including your civ ability, debt penalties, destabilization, etc. But these 3 are the big things. Cool, but How Do I Get Money? Happy People = Money Build economy enhancing improvements and don't purchase them build them. Use the % spending slider to keep your budget balanced Trade, Trade, Trade Sell Tech (and the AI seems more likely to buy it if you do it over time ex. the Altarians wouldn't buy the universal translator for 120BC but would buy it for 10BC for 12 turns). Lower Taxes as your economy grows. Build morale enhancing social improvements as necessary to keep your people happy. So far money hasn't been a problem for me and I believe that is due to the fact that I am patient and allow improvements to be built over time instead of purchasing them up front (which is really, really expensive!) In my current game I've got the tax rate all the way down to 20%, have the spending slider set to a point where I have a positive 100BC/turn, can build most stuff in less than a year (most in less than 6 months) and have a balance of over 7000BC (which allows me to purchase stuff in an emergency). I'm playing as a Diplomat/Trader and everyone loves me - so far anyway! -- Maddog Foreign Policy How do I make an Alliance? Alliances are hard to do. You must have Alliance technology. The empire you want to ally with must also have Alliance technology. Your relations must be close. When you are in the diplomatic details screen (you see the animated head of the other empire's leader) you can choose Alliance under the Treaties list. What are the Belua and Pirates? #2 by Citizen David Schapira - 3/31/2003 3:18:15PM Belua is the space shark. Pirates will appear at various times in the game and will attack freighers and starbases. After getting to Advanced level of espionage on another civ., do I have to keep spending to maintain it or can I cut espionage down to 0? From: Brad Wardell (bwardell@getridofthispart.stardock.com) You can cut it way down, but espionage does tend to fade over time since it's based on how much you spent versus their population. Brad What good is espionage and destabilization? #4 by Avatar Frogboy - 4/8/2003 10:11:03 PM Destabilization is cummulative. The longer you do it, the more it hurts them. Does trading techs to other AI make people that don't like them unhappy? #1 by Citizen BuzuBuzu - 6/5/2003 10:45:41 PM The enemy AIs are not privvy to what techs you trade with other AIs, so they shouldn't get mad if you trade something to one of their enemies. How do I initiate UP issues? Unfortunately, you can't. I think they will be modded eventually. Why does the Senate vote against my war? #1 by Citizen Horatio - 3/29/2003 8:07:17 PM you need to boost your approval rating - declaring war is like a mini-election. try lowering taxes and/or building morale improvements or increasing propaganda. What do the trade goods that I "build" do? (Aphrodisiacs, Frictionless Clothing, etc.) The freighters trade "misc. goods" regardless of your "Trade Goods" status. Trade Goods are things you INVENT which have significant impact on your civilization (Aphrodisiacs - 30% pop growth, Frictionless Clothing - 20% morale improvement IIRC, etc.). These INVENTIONS are unique to your civilization and you can "license" them to others via the diplomacy screen (once you license them the other civ benefits from them as you did). EX: You click on your Aphrodisiacs and then click on the other civs $ section and tweak the numbers until the bid is in the green which means acceptable (100 bc for 50 months as an example). -- Joe M. How does Sector/Cultural Influence work? Brad explains in an article. Research About tech... Here is Za H's Tech Tree Image Mirror at Tripod Mirror at galciv.bsd.st JavaScout's amazing Galactic Civilizations Database lists all the techs, their atrributes, and also has tech tree images. Ships Why won't my survey ship Auto-survey after I order them to? If there aren't anomalies around to survey it can't survey them. Brad Why do some of my ships and star bases have small electricity bolts flashing over them when there have been no battles? If you learn a tech that increases hit points, then the total hit points go up but your current ships stay with their current hit points and show up as damaged. They will repair themselves over time. Todd Fleet Questions answered by Brad Wardell: So why don't you have fleet combat in GalCiv? Because we don't want fleets to be a tactical advantage. Why not? Because then the game would end up where you had a handful of "Super fleets" ala MOO or HOMM that go around the game. Why would that be bad? Because GalCiv's map is free form. It's not a bunch of jump points or very distinct paths. Ships can move anywhere. A handful of super fleets would take away a lot of the strategy of the game because GalCiv is ultimately about clashes of civilizations, not tactical combat. It's about who is building the superior civilization. Therefore we want our game to be won by the people who can create the strongest economies, the most powerufl industries, the most advanced technologies. Not the guy who has managed to out tactically fight. Rommel was a great tactician but the allies were the ones with such immense logistical superiority that they had enoguh spare room to send over chocolate bars and cake across the ocean. Planets In the planet view screen, what does it mean when some icons are lowered? #1 by Citizen Cataleptic - 3/31/2003 11:04:54PM Big ones are worth ten small ones. What does population represent? Planetary poulations are not the real population, just the number of tax payers (citizens). Brad AI Does the Ai cheat? At levels below Intelligent it receives less than a human from taxes. At Intelligent it receives the same. Above it gets more. Also, the AI knows where all the yellow stars and galactic resources are, but this is explained in the backstory as they traveled the stars much longer than humans. Note: Frogboy's numbers may be higher for the upper level AIs now since there have been several updates to make the AIs tougher. #10 by Avatar Frogboy - 4/3/2003 5:25:02 PM AI does not exceed range on ships. Every time someone has emailed me about this "bug" or "Cheat" I've found that there is a starbase or something that the AI has built to extend their range. Similarly, AI doesn't know where ships are outside its sensor range. I wish it did because about 30% of the time spent CPU wise by the AI is calculating whether a given ship is in sensor range. AI has to research the same techs you do. AI doesn't know the quality of planets before hand. It only knows where yellow stars. #7 by Diplomat Louis-guy reid - 3/29/2003 7:25:58AM Here is a report of Brad's comments on intelligence Intelligence One of the things we did do during the release candidates is make the game much easier to win on the lower levels. We found that experienced strategy gamers would get creamed even when the AI was set to "fool". But at the same time, at the medium to higher levels, the AI is much more intelligent than it was in the betas. In fact, the beta GalCiv AI was, well pretty crummy compared to the gold version in terms of intelligence (not saying the gold is "harder" to beat, but that the AI is more intelligent in how it behaves). In the betas, each AI level simply increased the intelligence rating of the player by say 15 points. Here's the problem we had with that: You'd play on "normal" and get a challenge and then you'd up it a level and get creamed. So a lot of the extra month of development was spend play testing and adding more difficulty levels. So now each computer player can indvidually be set to the following difficulty levels: [IntLevel0] 4 Fool [IntLevel1] 14 Beginner [IntLevel2] 36 Sub-Normal [IntLevel3] 42 Normal [IntLevel4] 50 Bright [IntLevel5] 60 Intelligent [IntLevel6] 65 Genius [IntLevel7] 100 Incredible With the corresponding intelligence being 4, 14, 36, 42, 50, 60, 65, 100. We may tweak these or add more after released based on what you guys say. So now, you have sub-normal, normal, bright, intelligent and genius quite close together. I have not personally won with all the AI's set to genius on a medium sized map or higher. And incredible is just, well the AI gets lots of extra stuff. Speaking of extra stuff, how do the resources get handled? The intelligence ratings do two things: 1) They determine how much money they get from colonies. So in pColony->CalcTaxesCollected() at the end it gets: ulTaxes = ulTaxes * (40 + ulIntelligence); So at intelligence = 60 (intelligent) it's getting the same from a colony as you. At Genius it's getting a bit more. And at incredible, all bets are off. The other way intelligence matters is that it determines whether the AI is going to a) Do a thorough analysis on what players are doing Which AI scripts are available to use, and c) Determines whether the AI is going to do anything about it. Example: An AI with intelligence 60 will be able to check out its sensor areas and see if you are building up for an attack, fortifying starbases, trying to culturally dominate it, etc. It will then have to roll to see if it is going to do anything about it. I.e. "Do I recognize this as a threat or am I too dumb to see this?". If it rolls that it is going to recognize the threat then it has to roll whether it's goign to actually do anything about it. And if it is going to do something about it then it rolls to see if it will tell the human player about it (if it's a human player that is the threat). IF the AI FAILS the roll, the human player gets a message from the AI letting it know it's on to what it's doing. Otherwise it quietly lowers relations and prepares for a war. If you play on say Genius, and build up star bases and ships in a sector you're planning to attack you'll notice ships from other sectors quietly coming in to fortify. Fighters shadowing your transports. Etc. But on lower intelligence levels, none of this happens. Which is one of the changes. So when you get the game, on Fool and Beginner you should be able to play the game without getting creamed now. This is different than it was in the beta when fool was = Int 15 and the next one up was 30. by Avatar Frogboy - 3/5/2003 4:02:14PM Adrenaline Vault reviewed GalCiv, and all but stated that the AI cheated. This was amended fairly quickly after Brad explained that the AI was not cheating in this Avault thread. Why is it that the Torians totally dominate the galaxy but are unable to successfully invade planets? #1 by Veteran Za H - 5/11/2003 2:44:37 PM It might need fixing... or not The military snafu you have just witnessed is an integral part of the Torian AI. While they are very good at managing their empire, they are designed to be lousy invaders. Torians don't build many transports, and the few they do build are never escorted. As long as you don't get carried away and think the Yor or Drengin will make the same mistake, you might want to use this to your advantage against the Torians. Galactic Civilizations Universe What are Galactic Resources supposed to be? #1 by Avatar Frogboy - 3/13/2003 2:55:34 PM Without giving too much away, resources are essentially artifacts from the precursors. But that's back story that we don't really go into. In the game they are just anomalies that have specific properties. Why do Humans and Altarians look alike? Same link as above, but later on in the thread Brad explains some of the backstory. In the beginning... More backstory from Brad. Mods & Modding How do I change the Drengin diplomacy screen music? You can copy another race's music file and rename it to the Drengin music file. Play the race.mp3 files till you find the Drengin one, delete it, and copy one of the others. Problem solved. ...GalCiv\galciv\Event Music How do I convert files into the type used by GalCiv?? Rad Game Tools. Not the most intuitive program, but it works well. Has utilities to fool around with bink and pcx, and many other file types. Convert files button on lower left. Miscellaneous How do I remove a race from the initial game? Right click on the galciv icon, click properties and add a w after the target. So it will look something like this: "C:\program files\stardock\galciv\galciv.exe" w How do I remove a race from the initial game? #5 by Citizen DMF - 5/19/2003 9:33:42PM Click on the portrait of the Ambassador on the racial setup screen. First click shows the bio, the second disables the race. Any way to bypass opening cutscenes? #1 by Citizen RustyBlade - 4/1/2003 2:57:40PM Just rename the BIK files you want to skip by renaming Intro.bik to say for instance Intro_Disabled.bik . That way it will be easy to put it back if you want. Brad mentioned in the readme that people with slower machines could delete the BIK files to get old computers to run smoother. But I would rather keep a copy of the original with it remamed. #2 by Citizen Stevious - 4/1/2003 3:19:59PM Besides the Intro.bik RustyBlade mentioned above, you can also rename sf_intro.bik and Colony_Leaving.bik to bypass the Strategy First movie and the other opening cutscene (colony ship being built). What is and where can I find the Galactic Battle Simulator? This neat tool lets you estimate the probability you will win a fight. Can that squadron of Battleaxes hold off that Dreadnaught? Find out... How do I stop Proxomitron from blocking Stardock Central? You need to add galciv.com and wincustomize.com to the bypass list as well as sdcentral and sdcentral2. Here are the appropriate lines from my Proximotron bypass.txt: [^/]++sdcentral.stardock.com/ [^/]++sdcentral2.stardock.com/ [^/]++galciv.com/ [^/]++wincustomize.com/ R. N. Dominick What happened to the Universalists political party? Was not added initially although it was in the manual, but is now in the latest patch. How can I change resolution? You can't, it is locked at 1024x768. You can try and download the windowed version and see if that helps. I heard the readme states it is in different resolutions, but that is incorrect. Sheesh, do people actually read those things? How do I get the mp3 player to play? #2 by Senator CariElf - 6/3/2003 8:27:29 PM 1) On the options menu, set User Defined Playlist to ON 2) Save a playlist in the .m3u format from winamp or another mp3 player program to the playlist directory. If it doesn't save the full path information, the mp3 player may not find your files when it goes to play them. 3) Click the Load Playlist button that now has appeared on the Options Menu. At the top of the Load Playlist Dialog there is an entry field. You can change this to be the directory where you store your mp3s and it will create a defaul playlist as Sigma_7 said, or if there is an m3u file already there it will see it. Where may I download the patch? The latest standalone patch is usually not the latest one. You can go to the same page for Stadock Central which lets you get the latest incremental patch. Where can I get the Unofficial Strategy Guide? A fan-made guide. Avaliable in several versions at The Orion Sector. Make sure to look in the News Archive if you can't find a version you can use. What are the Cheat Keys? Make sure to go to hit Escape during the game. On the Options screen on the left there is now a new option "enable cheat keys". CTRL A adds hit points, move points, attack and defense points CTRL B battleship CTRL C clone selected ship CTRL E decreases morality CTRL G increases morality CTRL H heals ship, restores move points CTRL J make all human colonies complete their social and military projects CTRL L assign all the worlds and resources to major races CTRL M money (adds $1000) CTRL O add anomaly CTRL P increase the class of the planets in the selected star system CTRL S research current tech (if shift key is also held, all techs except final frontier are researched) CTRL T teleport CTRL U clear FOW CTRL V create random ship CTRL Y create colony ship Note: Don't try to submit a score to the Metaverse once you enable cheat keys. It will report it as 0.

You can re-post this FAQ anywhere so long as the information is correct and you link back here in case there are any updates. See any errors or have suggestions? Feel free to email me at russellmz at myway.com (replace at with @, no spaces in email. Done to avoid spam email harvesters) .

2003
4/1 - started at geocities.com/russellmz
4/3 - updated
4/4 - updated
4/6 - updated
5/2 - updated
5/26 - updated
5/31 - updated
6/1 - updated
6/4 - the colors man, the colors
7/9 - geocities listed terms used on search engines that referred to my faq. added some info to answer those terms.
8/17 - frogboy (aka Brad Wardell) posts a fleet FAQ
9/24 - posted on russellmz.joeuser.com 10/21 - added cheat key list