(before I go on: I know this game has a long way to go...but I'm lovin' it as it is)
TLDR summary: is a "huge" galaxy too small for "challenging" difficulty setting for a casual player? I'm really tired of seeing "you are weak" in the diplomacy summary and having 1/2 to 1/3 of leading AI empire score even before I've researched a decent weapon.
Howdy,
I'm a casual galciv1 & 2 player from the way back machine and was familiar with various game start strategies to compete against buffed AI empires. In Twilight of the Arnor, I dimly recall my last expansion strategy was:
"do not scout too far...just enough to establish, say, a small globe of about 2-3 colonies of radius around the homeworld. Stay quiet until I have several squads of popgun ships out there"
"set the govt spending to max, research/build a basic military and then sprint for Stock Exchanges before my money runs out".
On Galciv3, I've found Normal difficulty is too easy...I'm always 30-50% ahead of the AI emps on average.
*Challenging difficulty* however is a totally different story...I've never even been in shouting distance of the AI emps. I'm always war bait for anyone with a different ideology and have to play defense immediately. Early into the "age of war" research era, I sometimes see my "medium" ships going up against "large" AI ships and carriers, at which time I usually go and look at the empire score and throw in the towel.
When I "retire" I can see that the history graph always has my empire at the bottom....of nearly every stat.
My typical game setting:
1. Custom race with just about every combo of bonuses tried
2. Four AI empires (I may reduce this to three just to get some "distance")
3. Huge/scattered galaxy, with common occurrence of: habitable planets, planets, stars. Don't want any Empire being stuck in a poor neighborhood.
4. No other game options changed except for Galaxy Difficulty set to "challenging" and remove the "turn limit" victory condition.
Thoughts:
1. "Huge" galaxy seems quite small to me...I'm usually researching "weapon specialization" when I'm discovered.
2. I've tried various startup plans:
a. buy one colony ship, one factory, then set govt. spending set to 50% industry, 50% research, 0% economy
b. Use up the starting cash entirely with plans such as:
- buy 100% factories and enough farms for 12-15 population on homeworld. Set homeworld policy to 100% industry to crank out colonizers
- buy one colonizer, then buy the first factory on each of the next colonies until the money runs out
For now, I'm going to go back to Normal, but with self-imposed limitations such as: set govt policy to max cash, don't build any ships, and press end turn for 10 turns.
2. I may be too elitist for my weapon choices: I don't usually bother building war ships until I have an Age of War weapon researched (particle beam, harpoon, etc.)
2. I'm going to try some other buy-out strategies in my next games:
- buy 50% factories and 50% research buildings on homeworld, and set govt policy to break even but push industry and research as much as possible.
- specialist worlds are chosen among the first four colonies: homeworld = industry, then one colony for: industry (second shipyard), research, and income. The fourth is chosen based on circumstance. Use cash to buy up three factories on each of these worlds to get them started and buy up the buildings with the remaining cash on these four asap. Once fully developed...set each planet to max out the corresponding role.
Everybody wants to have war with me so it just a race to have enough armed ships to survive: get one of the age of war weapons, and one defense type into small hulls asap. But really trying for medium hulls with one each of the defense type.
- heck with it: I will build scads of tiny hulled ships with laser and initial shield tech, much as it pains me to do so. Will this get the "challenging" AI emp off my back so I can play a different sort of early game?