G'Kar's cheesy way to win

[G'Kar]

The (ch)easy way to victory is to take the maximum bonuses on morale, economy and pop growth. The best races to do that are the Torians and the Drengins which both have a native +25% morale. This bonus won't be lost when you click the "refresh" button during the racial pick selection, so you can take an additional +70% pop growth (for quick cash and attack crews) and +30% economy. Taking the Federalists with +20% economy completes the setup. For the easiest game set anomalies to abundant, allow tech trading, use the fastest tech rate and play against 9 opponents.

Then start your game, take a huge or gigantic map with as many habitable planets that your machine can handle for a maximal score. Set your spending to 100% and concentrate it on military production exclusively. Redesign a colony ship with speed 3 or 4 and some range. In the first turns buy as many factories as necessary to produce one of your colony ships every two turns on your home world. Fill up your existing colony ship to the max and colonize the second planet in your system (this colony ship is too slow anyway). Lower your taxes to around 15% to get 100% approval on your home planet. 100% approval combined with +70% pop growth = population recovery ownage. Put as many people that you can afford in the long run on your colony ships, usually 250-400 million for me.

Don't care about research until you've built enough colonizers, there's nothing (except impulse drive for the extra speed maybe) you really need at this moment. Colonize everything around you, usually it's a good idea to beat the AI to some planets further away before colonizing all your neighbourhood. Some people don't care about the low class planets at first (they might end up in your hands anyway because of cultural flipping), I do because it hasn't been necessary to concentrate on the good worlds to win yet. And the AI gets an influence bonus on the high levels, this can be a pain to overcome.

You'll be running on debt at this stage, that's normal. Having a +300% or +700% production tile on your homeworld will simplify the colony rush a lot (because you save money building less factories), but it's not a must. Note that I build colony ships on my homeworld exclusively, this strategy has worked on maps with 9 opponents and up to 250 planets, it might be different on maps where your expected share of planets is larger (>35 let's say). Send your scout ships around, usually you'll find a few anomalies which give you money (setting anomalies to "abundant" helps, some say that a "luck" pick does too) which keep you going longer. Have a look around, when you think that you've built enough colony ships, change to 100% research and increase the taxes somewhat, 100% approval is a nice thing for the pop growth though. With your morale, economy and pop growth picks, setting your tax level to the right amount won't be much of a problem usually.

Second phase, research and diplomacy wonders. If you want it easy, leave tech trading on, but it works without it (or without using it) as well, although it is harder to do. The first thing you'll want to do, is to rush for the three diplomacy wonders available: Diplomatic Translators, Galactic Showcase and Galactic Bazaar. They'll help you keeping the other races off your back and trade for techs (and other things occasionally) as cheap as possible. Research "Diplomatic Relations" and build the Diplo Translators as soon as possible on your homeworld (switch your spending to 100% social for that), then research the two techs necessary for the other two extra diplo wonders and build them as well. Doing the same for the Restaurant of Eternity can be nice on the high difficulty levels to counter the AI bonuses on influence. It's possible to build all these four wonders before the AI, believe me.

If you've colonized 10-15% of the habitable planets and built the 3-4 wonders I mentioned, you're half done. Start improving your planets a bit, research the techs for some nice buildings (stock markets are relatively inexpensive to research, improved farms, better factories except the expensive industrial sectors). Build a farm on each planet of quality 7 or above, but don't build more than one morale booster per planet, stock markets are more effective at generating money than having a bit higher population count (tax income is increasing with the square root of population). Research the government techs (for even more money) and diplomacy techs to boost your diplomacy values, the aliens will like you more and give more in trades. In short: Research almost everything except the techs that enable you to build powerful ships. The aliens will do it for you and you'll simply buy it for other techs or money from them now or later, they'll be "swayed by your diplomatic tongue". (HoMM 3 anyone? )

Usually these are the last occasions where your match can fail: Either one race ends up conquering most others and gets way too powerful, or too many people declare war on you because you still didn't build a single ship. Hand out all bribes except those to precious too give (planets or techs sensitive to your strategy, like the diplomatic ones), send out freighters (as early as possible in general) to get good relations with some neighbours, don't take the evil alignment because of the diplomatic problems, "neutral" is the most powerful in my opinion, but "good" can be nice as well for the diplomatic bonuses. Giving gifts every once in a while, some money (you should have enough of it) or a tech trivial to you, can be the right thing to do as well.

As for your military rating, which is still at zero, try to rush (= trade mostly) the missile branch of the weapon tree (best "bang per space" ratio) once you're done with the most important "civil" techs described above. Once you have some decent weapons available (near the end of the branch), design a huge hull with as many weapons of this type as possible and buy ten of these ships. Put them in orbit around a planet with the spin control center and the omega defense, and voila: Your rating should be doing a whole lot better, you might even be the king of the galaxy (on paper...). Upgrade the weapons used to Black Hole Eruptors when possible. Don't build these paper tigers too early though, because the others will be reluctant to trade even more weapons techs then.

If somebody declares war on you, try to mobilise your allies (you'll have some if you did everything right), trade for all weapons and ship techs you can get and fend them off. With a cautious defending strategy (going to offensive if possible, but the AI bonuses on Suicidal are nasty) you should be able to get rid of the wars plaguing you. You might even end up conquering the attacker. By the way, wars (with or without your participation) are the best opportunity to snatch up the resources on the map, sooner or later you should have them all. Parking a constructor near every resource isn't a mistake. Maximise these bases on the first occasion.

Given that you survived until then, just wait for the tech tree to be finished and your colonies to be in the best shape possible: Usually I put 2-4 factories, one farm, some research buildings and stock markets for all other tiles on the planets of size 7 and above and I build or buy stock markets (or labs occasionally) for the smaller ones. You'll end up with a lot of money this way, equipping a few planets with lots of factories and massive farms of surrounding starbases can be a good idea for shipbuilding though. Once this is done, design and build/buy some good ships (depending on your future enemies' designs) - military resources help a lot at this stage - and conquer them all. The tactical AI has holes, it is well possible to win against larger foes. It just takes time, a bit of strategic thinking and can be time-consuming.

Okay, I'll stop here for the moment, this is a lot longer than I expected it to be already. I know that this is only one way to win, but I know that it works on even the highest difficulty levels. It can be considered cheesy for some details, but I wouldn't consider it horribly exploitive (I don't like these things either). There were exploits far worse, and I can say that I contributed to get rid of them on the developer's forums. I'm not doing games like this usually, this would be boring, but it's fun to "beat the game" every once in a while and I do it occasionally to submit a high score to the Metaverse. My games "just for fun" look differently.

I realise that my "walkthrough" might be a bit too sparse or too general for some people. I've got a lot of experience with GalCiv, playing it since GalCiv 1 and including the later stages of the GalCiv 2 Beta, so I might have implied some details not known by everyone. If that's the case, simply ask specific questions and I'll try to answer them. Or talk about your own strategy, there are things to learn for everybody, and many points in "my optimised strategy" aren't my findings either.

Edit: I'd like to add that I was inspired to think and write about this strategy by Zanza's thread.

[mib]

Tsk tsk... Turn off alliance victory and set all other races to be allied to you from the get-go. Easy game there. As long as you don't get culturally conquered.

[G'Kar]

Originally Posted by mib

Tsk tsk... Turn off alliance victory and set all other races to be allied to you from the get-go. Easy game there. As long as you don't get culturally conquered.

Not possible for Metaverse games.

[mib]

Originally Posted by G'Kar

Not possible for Metaverse games.

Ah, that's right! You little cheaters... You used to be able to before 1.1...

[G'Kar]

Originally Posted by mib

Ah, that's right! You little cheaters... You used to be able to before 1.1...

I never did that, too easy really. I like to use game engines to the max occasionally, but I usually draw my personal line on the right side of the border to Exploitia (see above - I hope).
I even bugged Brad long enough until he made the AI not trade resource bases away for a trinket.