Where to find IG2 strategy?

[dimple]

Hey, I just bought IG2 today down at Electronic Boutique. But the problem is, it was a used version and didn't come with a manual!! I'm so lost as to how these buildings work. The descriptions from the research menus are fine, but other than that, I have no idea if things such as banks, spaceports, and spacecenters stack or not. For example, does building more than one bank or building more than one spaceport improve my income??

And how do you guys usually start your multiplayer games? I find that if I go straight for population by cutting taxes, I should be able to squeeze in a spaceport, spacecenter, and bank. But then I don't have the money to build colony ships. Which is more important? Should I go for money first, or go for colonies first?

Should I build massive amounts of recreational centers, bars, and parks to increase my moral? Or should I just drop my taxes instead?

Also, how do I defend my colonies? Considering how long it takes for my fleet to travel from one colony to another, it's easy for the enemy to move in and pick off any colony. I'm not quite sure how good my tanks should be, or how many I need.

And about research, other than doubling the cost of the research expenditure, is there another way to increase the speed of research? Building more research buildings didn't seem to help.

Is there a tech tree anywhere that I can download? I'd like to know what I'm teching up to, and how much I'd need.

One more question... Does it cost more to refit a ship than to build one? And how many ship factories do you guys have by the time you start pumping out battleships?

Yeah, those are a lot of questions. Hehe, but any help would be appreciated!

[Arclan Cirel]

Greetings !

***** SPACE PORTS, BANKS, AND SPACE CENTERS *****
Traders visit your planets; you get no benefit from this unless you have a spaceport, in which case you'll get $ from every visit.

Adding a bank will increase the money derived from each trader visit by 50 percent.

Adding a Spacecenter increases the frequency with which traders visit your planet.

Traders are MUCH more important in multiplayer games because there are SO many of them. So the first thing you should build is a Space port. I would probably not build a bank or spacecenter, however. Instead I'd build colony ships.


***** EXPANSION/COLONIZATION *****
It is extremely important to colonize other planets as this consistently increases your tax revenue. However, if you have ten planets with no defenses, an enemy can wipe you out !

It's a balancing game; expanding versus defending what you have. If you must choose, choose wisely (quote hehe).

***** RECREATION CENTERS, BARS, PARKS *****
Building recreational centers, bars, parks, etc. all increase the population growth rate of your planets. You have the right idea by lowering taxes. This also increases growth rates.

***** PLANET DEFENSE *****
Early in the game you can get away with merely building one planetary gun. This should hold off several destroyers

Space bases provide awesome defense. But you can only build one if you build a spaceship factory first. A space bace will hold off a good number of ships.

I could write pages of info here but you get the idea.

***** RESEARCH *****
Building multiple research facilities does, indeed, speed up research. However, researching an item requires a fixed amount of money. The more research facilities you have, the faster the research goes, and the faster you spend the money for this reasearh.

No sense paying to build a bunch of research facilities if it causes you to spend money quicker than you earn it.

***** TECH TREE *****
You are in luck. I did a tech tree for ships. Link below. The number in parenthesis for each tech indicates minimum number of ship research facilities required to research the technology.

One of these days I'll get around to tanks, buildings, etc.

http://www.whitewolfbrigade.com/ig2/images/techtree02.jpg

***** REFITTING SHIPS *****
I do not believe it costs more to refit a ship. However, it will seem that way if you have a bunch of ships and try to refit them; especially the engines !!!

***** REGARDING BATTLESHIPS *****
To merely research a battleship requires sixteen (16) ship research centers. I imagine two or three Advanced Ship Building Facilities on a planet with high minerals (150% or 200%) is good enough. Otherwise you spend $$ way too quickly.


***** PLANETS *****
Oh, you may not know what the two numbers on each empty planet mean. The number next to the wrench indicates how productive a population on that planet would be. The other number indicates how quickly your population would grow there.

Uggg so much info !!

I have not played IG2 for a couple months so I apologize if my terminology is not 100% on the mark.

Feel free to visit the web site I did for IG2. It's not great but there is some good info there.

http://www.whitewolfbrigade.com/ig2/IGhome.HTML

Good luck, friend ! Feel free to post any more questions.

[dimple]

Wow, that was helpful. I've been playing quite a bit over LAN with my friends, and we've caught on to a lot of things. But isn't it the spaceport that makes traders more frequent?

Speaking of spaceports... It seems that the person who builds the most spaceports will hog all the traders. In a particular game I was playing, my friend who played the Shinari basically massed as many spaceports as he could. At the end of the game, hardly any of the other players had seen any traders, while he had traders within radar range constantly!! This is really unfair because each trader drops off enough money to build another spaceport, and it's impossible to catch up to him. Everybody else was financially struck because of that. It would have done me better to not even build any trade stuff. In fact, I had 6 spaceports on my primary planet, and I saw about 3 or 4 traders the entire game up until it went out of sync. The other guy had enough traders to be constantly training his spies at level 5 and enough to do other things. I believe he had some 15 or more spaceports altogether!! I think next time we play, I'm going to ignore trade altogether, because I know he'll pull the same tactic which is ridiculuous.

Btw, does having more than one spacecenter or bank on a planet help?

[Arclan Cirel]

Ok I wasn't sure on the spaceport/spaceenter thing since it has been a while. The more expensive one is the one that increases traders coming to your planet.

That is very intersting to learn regarding having a ton of space ports. Thanks !

If you don't want to spend any money trading, it might be advisable to kill the traders. There are only a certain number of traders in the game and you can certainly destroy them all.

When I played kra'hen one time I destroyed all the traders since Kra'hen can't trade. LOL my buddy was pissed at this. Be advised, though, sometimes a trader destroys my fleet and I'm like What !!!!

***** SPYING *****
Do you know how to allocate experience points for spys? As they gain levels, you click on the number (or arrow?) next to the trait you want increased.

**** DROPPED PLAYERS *****
If you or your friend drops from the game, don't worry. Just have your friend join again while the game continues to play. He will be asked what race he wants to take over; so he can pick up right where he left off prior to the drop. Not sure if you knew that.

Good gaming !

[dimple]

Yeah, we noticed the dropped players thing. That is so cool whenever somebody's game crashes.

My friend tried killing all the traders while playing Kra'hen one time. Wow did that screw over the other guy playing Shinari. =P