Hey guys, I have been away from Galciv since a few weeks after release but recently had the time to boot it up again and play a few rounds and thought I would share my impressions (1.2) and ask questions. Please keep in mind that I play on medium maps with godlike ai.

I like what was done to carriers; the ships they spawn no longer seem to be the most broken thing ever. I still hope that there are hardcaps on them though; I should not get free doomrays IMO. It might be cooler if they were even weaker but you got many more per ship component, but I really do like where it is at now.

Bug: The ai is obviously very aggressive and likes to declare war on me a lot, but if I revert to a previous save (1/2 turns ago) and keep playing the ai seems to forget to declare war again. This exploit means that I can build at my leisure and never be under pressure.

The ai’s research seems to taper off really poorly; it will have 4x my strength and a massive amount of ships, but cannot win a single engagement versus me (I might lose 1 ship after 3 fights). Part of this is the fact that it does not use carriers and I do. It tends to have very good hull size tech way earlier than me, but garbage weapon and defence tech. Basically what I am trying to say is that by turn 80 I have a ridiculous research advantage; I can get anything I want in a couple of turns while the ai is still using harpoons. Its manufacturing seems fine, but maybe it cannot afford the upkeep of higher tier weapons?

Starbases seem completely useless (although I still build them). Please correct me if I am wrong, but they only give me a 20% boost to something when a single building would give me 50% (later-ish in the game). Do they give flat bonuses eventually? I think they give flat approval bonuses but I may be wrong. Is this a design choice to encourage me to build them near low tier planets?

More on starbases; they seem to get blown up extremely easily (low hp?). Does anyone know how their weapons work – do they only have a few weapons that do high damage? If so they will not be able to do anything vs any defence which may be the problem. I still would like to see starbase improvements that provide resistance/defense to planets.

On a side note I have never minded the ‘constructor’ spam since on medium maps there is only so many to build.

Invasions are still a complete joke; 1 transport (with no special invasion tech) can easily (100%) take over a planet with 5x the population. When I invade, I just use biological warfare and win every time regardless of what I am facing. I think that invasions are getting re-worked, but which aspects are?

Bug: Elerium does not like to spawn sometimes, very frustrating.

So thanks for reading, I look forward to the new updates