The Official Post your Save Game Thread

For those of you who are late game feel free to post in this thread a Dropbox link to saved game adn I'll try it out.

From your saved games, I can see how other players play the game and use this information for everything from game balance, AI improvements, performance optimizations.

Most of the reason why Galactic Civilizations II has good AI is because of players sending me their saved games and explaining their strategies.

49,394 views 56 replies
Reply #1 Top

What constitues a late game save?  I have a saved game that is over 300 turns in, but I have only 5 cities, none higher than level 3, and practically no army to speak of...

Reply #2 Top

I'd like to post my save game here but, umm, what's the dropbox ?

Reply #3 Top

Same thing here, I play a game that have 750 + turn now but don't know how to post it :).

Reply #4 Top

This is the first time I've tried using one of those file hosting sites. Usually game forums have the ability to attach files to posts, apparently you can't do that at this site. If you open the files let me know if it works properly or not.

By the way, my system is win7 64bit, 8GB ram, Nvidia GeForce 240 video card, and intel i5 core 650 @ 3.2 Ghz processor, not that this should affect the saved files.

These are both files from the same game, the top file RKK 01 I saved last week sometime, it's around turn 320/350. I think there were 4/5 AI left in the game at that point. One of these was a "one-town-wonder" which I skipped most of the game since it was zero threat. Two of the others I was at war with and had smashed quite a bit; I think one only had one city left, the other had 3 or 4 cities left.

The second file is about turn 450, about 100 turns after the save above. There are only 2 AI left in the game. Tarth is the strongest and should put up something of a fight. I have most of the tech advances and I've started researching the spell of making. I'm mainly just resting some wounded guys & regenerating mana on some magic users who have used up a lot. I could've smashed Tarth earlier, but I'm just not in a big rush. I'm 100% certain I'll crush them fairly easily. I mainly just wanted to see how the spell of makng works since I've never tried that victory type before. I have at least 2 generations of heirs and you can see for yourself how mega strong they are.

You may want to check out my unit design screens and see how I've designed them, especially archers. The Archer I, II, III and Horse archer I, II, III are designed with varying degrees of heavy crystal usage, the Archer + and ++ was designed specifically to be as stong as possible while using only one crystal, since I usually run out of crystal but still want fairly strong archers. The main difference is that I can typically get a better attack strength using crystal, hence crystal-heavy units are usually better on attack which is obviously important, especially for archers. I also have macemen designs, but frankly I rarely use them since Archers always win the day. Archers vs Macemen is no contest in the game-as-is. I love my horse archer III, but at 1300 bucks and 162 crystal per 8man squad (something like that) I just can't build too many of 'em.

Once my military machine moves out, the whole world will tremble and Tarth will beg for my infinite mercy, muhahahahaha }:)

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?15wdq7gbe38ph6a

 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/15wdq7gbe38ph6a/RKK_02.EleSav

 

By the way, now that it's popped into my mind: If you peruse the cities & heroes you'll notice that many of the heroes are duplicated. I noticed this last night when I recruited my 3rd Muerthaa (or whatever it is). I went back & checked my cities one-by-one because I though she looked familiar, and sure enough, there were 3 of her !! This was also the game that my Porypheria (heir) was duplicated, and when she is in the same location with her "twin", odd things happened to their mana like suddenly resetting to zero. You'll notice that many of the female heirs have "tight" boots. When they were first made available they only had one mp & "tight boots". I made sure I bought them horses, although "travelling boots" were not on sale in the item shop for some reason for them?

Reply #5 Top

Quoting Glowing_Ember, reply 2
I'd like to post my save game here but, umm, what's the dropbox ?
End of Glowing_Ember's quote

Try setting up an account on mediaFire, it's a free file hosting service & was fairly easy to sign up for & use. Here's the link:

http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php

 

Reply #6 Top

http://www.mediafire.com/?67822kn29g2643h

The save is from just before casting the Spell of Making and winning.

Summary:

I met Perdain early in the game, and crippled them so baddly they never recovered with my soreign and four foot soldiers. They took all but my capital (I only have the four good soldiers) but I got it back after taking their capital.

The leader of Umbar was in my land, and I killed him for arcane research to get the spell of making and being attacked by one darkling very third turn was annoying.

I got Sarog and the sword of Pardain.

Cast the spell of making and win.

---------------

As a note a mod I am working on was interferring with building the structures for the creatures you get in the diplomacy tree, but the only thing that would have changed had I been able to build them would be my army would have two dragons.

Reply #7 Top

Hi Frog,

I went onto a domination victory from here.  By the way, I was trying to do the master quest, but couldn't figure out where to go next.  In addition, you'll notice my Sagog's egg quest is broken in this game too.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9317559/Trojasmic.EleSav

Reply #9 Top

I'm still hoping that someday Stardock games will be successful enough to support direct attachments on the forums. Storage is steadily getting cheaper, and it eventually should be worth it to Stardock to encourage us 'fringe' folks who won't bother with extraneous clicking, typing, and risking system security and/or personal privacy just to be able to post a link here.

someday someday
Reply #10 Top

I'm not affiliated with Dropbox but everyone here shoudl definitely try it. It's a real game changer IMO.

http://www.dropbox.com.

 

Reply #11 Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 10
I'm not affiliated with Dropbox but everyone here shoudl definitely try it. It's a real game changer IMO.

http://www.dropbox.com.
End of Frogboy's quote

Beg pardon if I seemed to accuse you of some collusion with dropbox. I'm simply one of those folks who is both lazy with browser UIs and picky about third-party whatnot.

Reply #12 Top

this one is in the mid 600 turns, big problem is that I have almsot no economy.  I have taken an island and have my Sov there, the East has only the Krax, and the west is myself, Gilden and Umber.  I am friendly with all of them, could probably do a aliance victory right off.  One neat thing is one of my dynasty has become the ruler of Pariden after it was detroyed.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12725289/Dark.EleSav

Reply #13 Top

Did you play my save yet?  Did ya?  Did ya?  How about now?  Play it yet?  That land bridge I created to connect the continents, was a Hoover Dam like endeavor of magic.  And did you see how one of my grand kids became the ruler of the destroyed Pariden kingdom?  Check it out Brad.  Now.  Now.  Check it out, take a look.  No reason to ignore mine because I am currently posting from a mental hospital.  That last part is true, but, I promise, I just work here...

Reply #14 Top

Lord Xia, I haven't had a chance to try it but I'm excited to see it!

Reply #15 Top

Oh, also, you might want to check out that one of my kids (grandkids maybe) wife has a double that is standing in the middle of my Kingdom and cant move. 

Reply #16 Top

This is a game I was playing and made an AAR/diary (sort of) out of.  There's a save file every 50 turns up to turn 250 in the zip.  I know it's not as long as some people but the game is effectively over.  I included all the screenshots I took while playing (more than what's in the AAR) though many are kind of pointless I think.

http://www.mediafire.com/?458bh2k06wwir7e

 

The strategy should be largely apparent from the AAR/diary so long as you ignore the stuff about bees.  I left out a lot of menial things like goodie hut collecting, and most of the 'slave trading' I did (read: trading champions I hired the same turn purely to trade for stuff).  Also I could have been far more efficient in this game but I was taking my time and playing around with things.  The majority of the 4-man archer squads I built never saw battle because I wanted to make 12 man warg riding archers to kill AIs with instead.  This was partly due to the fact I wanted to illustrate some various bugs/quirks/exploits I (and others) have found in the game at the same time.

 

Hope this is useful to you.  If you do happen to have questions about this game I'd be happy to answer, but I don't know what you're looking for exactly.  Anything to help make this game even better. :)

 

Edit: In this particular game I got lucky/unlucky in that there were no AIs near me.  This made taking a large chunk of land easier but I also didn't get the massive number of resources ridiculous AIs start with.  When there are AIs near me I use the strategy I outline here since early in the game the AI cities are extremely easy to take with a caster sovereign with fire dart.  This is the first game I've had where the AIs are all on the other side of the map and in many ways the rest of the game is easier when AIs start nearby.

Reply #18 Top

http://www.mediafire.com/?67822kn29g2643h

http://www.mediafire.com/?44ppihipeffqmhf

http://www.mediafire.com/?wp0771uj119cj3h

Three saves from a game. The first is about at mid-game, and is likely to be the most useful. After that things get rediculous when the AI starts sending mobs of catapults and out of annoyance I see just how powerful a unit can get with combat buff spells do not expire, so the only useful things there are a pointed example of how baddly broken that bug is and what happens to the info card pick of non-humanish (dragon) offspring.

Reply #19 Top

I decided to play through the game linked in my previous post from turn 250 through to turn 301, and I'm really glad I did.  First, here is the link to the .zip with a few more screenshots, a save for turn 301, and a word document with a concluding diary entry.

http://www.mediafire.com/?559eid87qppb6k4

 

There are actually several note-worthy things that came up in that 50 turns.  Most of them I have made posts about in the support forum as I think/know they are bugs.

My city of Ahetirvern (lower right corner of the map) can produce any unit in exactly 1 turn because of 2 empire 25% reduction buildings and 2 kingdom.

Pariden's Return can be cast an infinite number of times, only 1 active at a time per caster though.  Very useful spell.  I destroyed Magnar in my game by rushing into his area (move of 7) and casting Pariden's Return 3 times (3 casters) and then pushing forward with my main army will the 3 titans spread out and killed things.  They are a one man army using blink to kite.

Related to the above, a good strategy I found was having my army continuously scatter and reassemble as I ran through the AIs lands.  I would scatter the army to take out pioneers and other stragglers, or poorly defended cities and regroup them to take on larger armies.  Since every unit in the army had a move of 7 and there were roads everywhere it made it easy to do.  I was taking 3+ cities per turn while also killing wandering units.

There are two screenshots in the above file "Fun with Curgen's Inferno" and "Weird movement grid" both are graphical only problems I encountered which went away when I restarted the game.  "Fun with Curgen's Inferno" was the result of quick-saving, casting the spell 3 times and then loading the quick-save immediately.  I'd never seen the spell and wanted to try it.  It's 100% reproducible on my machine at least, just load a game cast the spell, reload same game.  Weird Movement grid I don't know what caused but it didn't actually effect anything but the visual grid, movement was still normal.

"Fun with burning blade stacking" is self explanatory.  I did not do that in my actual game (way too cheesy), I reloaded after it, but I wanted to try it.  Rather ironically even with 1107 attack those archers still managed to hit for 2 damage... bad aim I guess.

Also in the save for turn 301 there's a town called Rinaneaprii which there are screen shots of.  This town is nothing but an Arcane Temple, not even a city center, and can't build anything.  Don't know what that's about.

 

Reply #22 Top

I got Elemental this morning  :rofl:

So, here's what I've done so far. About 400 turns in, killed Umber with my kids. No army, just my kids. They got the merchanting part for their mother, but they got the 20+ mana from me. Just imagine 3 kids, each with his own army of Ice Lords, Fire Giants, and other summons that aren't really that useful against groups. I'll post another save when I'm farther along on another map.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12979284/s4.EleSav

Reply #23 Top

There was a new version upload & I decided to upload the new version 1.09e and start a bran new game. I got to turn 81 and the game just locks up after turn 81, no matter what I do. I tried exiting & restarting the game like 4 different times and it locks up every time. I restarted my computer too, made no difference.

So, I'm just posting this game for Stardock troubleshooting purposes, as it's impossible to move past turn 81 without a crash I don't know why? I move the last guy & then the game crashes. Before, I could exit & restart and go at least 20 turns without a crash, there's something different this time.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wq57k55aa8tini6/AutoSave.EleSav

Guess I'll try starting a completely new game again.

 

Reply #24 Top

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YBTEJVCA

 

'Challenging' game ... my woman sov married Janusk and imbued him right away, and thanks to meditative was able to get flame dart just as I ran into Magnar. Killed Magnar early, set up a roadblock on Kraxis, explored the north and found Resolyn. Finally got tired of letting Kraxis push Capitar and Gilden around in the southwest, and took over Resolyn. Left them in one tiny city above their starter city, made peace. (AI question - the Resolyn should hate me a lot more than they do...) Waited for Resolyn's kid to get of age and demanded a marraige.

In the meantime, Kraxis wiped out Gilden and Capitar and controlled the SW (about 40% of the map) leaving me the north (35% of the map) and Altar the Southeast (25% of the map) ... Kraxis wouldn't even think of a non-aggression treaty (BTW: WHY DO THESE NEED TO BE 99 TURNS? I would LOVE a 20 turn non-aggression pact. Something for getting in/out of another nation to get a quest etc) so I steamrolled them.

It began when Altar took the Kraxis home-town with a small force (~5 soldiers?) - I was pretty impressed with the AI for that, and equally unimpressed with Kraxis for A) leaving their biggest city with just 1 spouse + 1 soldier for defense and B) doing so when I had a 'guard' city to the NE of them with over 900 power. So I took teh Kraxis main city, steamrolled about 2/3 of Kraxis's towns in the southwest, then sat back for about 200 turns while Altar and Kraxis got on Parity.

I was amazed at how screwed Resolyn was - zero food sources, AI not even thinking of getting Nature's bounty - they were permanently stuck with their 2 level 1 cities even after I sent caravans. Caravans, incidentally, should not be able to just wander into enemy territory and spy without being locked to a city. I sent a few to keep an eye on Kraxis and Altar.

I ended the game about 20 turns after this and it crashed rather than give me a victory screen. After steamrolling Kraxis again, I used 2 floods to trap him on a peninsula with a high level wandering demon - I liked seeing "Kraxis has fallen to monsters and ruffians" a turn later! Summon a titan, killed Resolyn, teleported to my Altar base and wiped out Altar in similar fashion.

Some spell notes:

1) Reveal doesn't work on fog of war, just on unexplored. Broken?

2) Blistering Sands can only be cast inside my influence, even if I'm at war with someone. I want to wipe out their resources! Broken?

3) Flood and Earthquake and Volcano can be cast in nuetral, friendly or enemy territory (from my territory) without the enemy attributing it to me as an attack. Like, I sunk one of Altar's cities (no treaties and no war between us) and they didn't even raise an eyebrow. Working as intended?

Reply #25 Top

You know Frogboy doesn't look at these, he's a total tease.  I'm going to post a new one tongiht Froggy, and I expect you to look at it.  There will be a test!