Galcon is fun, but man, it's tough. I can't reliably win on "easy."
!!! Seriously? Just wait for the guy to take an expensive planet, then take it right out from under him...
Well, I understand that part of it, though that's less a part of my strategery than to find the planets with highest production and start claiming them right off. Which itself somewhat harms my ability to afford to take planets away from the other guy. But I'll try leading with that strategy instead, apart from some of the bargains in my local group.
I'm curious on some maps how I'd do if the positions were reversed-- sometimes one player or the other just gets stuck in a relatively empty or else impoverished corner of the universe (just like real life!) and the transit times plus the pathfinding can make a difference.
Yeah, it would be cool if they had a "same map, swap start planets" feature on the restarting menu"
I think there are different strategies for different arrangements, ones that can even help recover from unfortunate starting layouts (if you're super isolated, pick a better planet, devote whole heartedly to that, and hopefully your start planet is far enough out of the way to stay out of trouble and just slowly supply extra troops)
So I re-jiggered my strategies so that taking pricy planets from the other guy is higher priority, and grabbing high-production planets (prefering bargains) is second. I can now reliably beat the game on Medium and less reliably on Tough, although I don't always do it on the first attempt.
I notice that when I'm relatively isolated, it pays to make a major grab against the enemy close to his home-- by the time he launches against your home planet, you will have captured his high-production world and have enough fighters there to reinforce the homeworld in time-- plus, the homeworld can take alot of crap from a single wave that, so early in the game, is necessarily coming from either 1 100-prod planet or 2 such planets that're about 50% depleted.
I've only played on the PC, by the way, not the iPhone-- more difficult? How do you scroll the percentages?
"Scrolling the percentages" is done by tapping, 50->75->100->25->50
The control is pretty decent once you get used to it... instead of left click right click the control is more drag centric, though you can also click click click on your planets and then click on an enemy planet to send a massive wave
Also, sometimes when I close my eyes I see Galcon. Sometimes it's early in the game with lots of fighters on the screen, and other times it's near the endgame with a human victory in sight, but no fighters, just blue planets.
Yeah! Weird. Mostly for me it's just the triangles, tho...
I just watched a video done by the developer demonstrating the iPhone version. Pretty neat-- I think the relatively obtuse changing of the percentages is offset by the great touch interface. It wasn't quite apparent what he was doing to multi-select as compared to sending ships to his own planet-- but I suppose it just depends on when you lift your finger.
Plus I read up on some of the other game modes like beast and stealth. Interesting! I've got a couple days before I need to decide to buy it, though. I hope he or someone cooks up a Java midlet or PPC Galcon, but I don't suppose it's likely.
Hit youtube and search for Galcon 2007 Ultimate Hero Tournament. It's an astonishing ~5 minute video of a tournament with the replay sped up considerably, so these vast armadas become swarms of color, and the stars seem to just infect one another. Often you'll get a fleet without a home, just flying around waiting for an opportunity, and in some cases making spectacular comebacks. And I'll stop beating this comment thread to death, I promise!