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For a good series of [[After Action Report|after action reports]], and to get a feel for the game, check out [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg these] [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=195920&site=pcg two] articles by Tom Francis from PC Gamer.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Absolute Xenophobe]] - The Korath.
* [[Abusive Precursors]] - The Dread Lords.
* [[
** There is also a random event in which your empire finds and accidentally activates some Precursor war robots, which go wild and start laying waste to your people. You can either destroy them and save your people, or sacrifice a portion of your population to examine their performance and improve your military power.
* [[All Planets Are Earthlike]] - Averted. Some planets are uninhabitable at all, starting with Dark Avatar some require special technologies to colonize due to special conditions like high gravity or toxic atmosphere, and each planet has a Planet Quality rating which affects how much you can build on it.
** It's also worth mentioning that Earth itself is a fairly average planet, as are the other homeworlds, with a class of 10, with 26 being the highest possible class before Terraforming and modifiers.
* [[Alpha Strike]] - Favored tactic of the Arceans and custom Super Warrior races as of Dark Avatar. Pack as much firepower as possible on to each ship and as many ships as possible (or as many as needed) into each fleet and try to eradicate your enemies in that first strike alpha before they can retaliate. Also the favored tactic of anyone in the original Dread Lords game, where attacker-gets-first-strike was the norm; this was changed in Dark Avatar where defenders get a guarunteed [[Counter Attack]] against anyone who is not a Super Warrior.
* [[
** While the Drengin are plain vanilla [[
* [[A Million Is a Statistic]] - Played very, very straight. If you take the Evil choice in an event that will kill millions or even hundreds of millions of your own people, you'd hardly notice the population drop at all, and heck; replacing those losses takes so little time it's almost funny, especially for the Torian Confederation or custom races with the Super Breeder ability.
** The game measures most aspects in billions to begin with. Oddly, 1000 soldiers equal 1 billion of population, which in turn turns every planetary invasion in a battle that costs billions of lives.
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** While there is no limit on ships, fleets have a limit on how many ships they contain (doesn't prevent you from stacking several fleets on top of each other though).
*** There are, however, some variant modes that allow you increased or unlimited logistics points.
* [[Artificial Brilliance]] - The AI is capable of Machiavellian planning and [[Gambit Pileup
** This trope can still wind up being very subject, especially when the alleged Brilliance still seems accidental.
** The focus leans away from tactics a bit, which helps the AI shine (see below).
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** OTOH, there are a lot of systems with no inhabitable planets, which would really be more useful if they were just asteroid fields for your space miners. When empires get rich and bored enough, and have constructors to burn, Terror Stars start looking like big mining charges.
** At full strength, Terror stars have significant defense while producing influence. Sending a pack of them allows you to gradually take over the galaxy.
** And end wars with one shot.
** Building lots of fully equipped starbases will give you massive bonuses to your economy, industry, influence, military, and ascendance crystal mining, but believe me when I say that it will take you a looooong time (or a lot of planets constantly churning out constructors which presents its own problems) to fully equip so much as a single starbase much less multiple.
*** That or money. Lots and lots of money.
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** The Yor Collective is Evil (25), with a hatred for all organic life driving them to exterminate other races when they can, or avoid them otherwise. They are however less inherently evil than the other evil races.
** The Drengin Empire is Evil (1), with the Drengins' economy so dependent on slavelings that they have, in their history, planned conquests tens of thousands of years in advance to get more.
** The Altarian Republic is Good (99), being the zealous [[
** The Drath Legion is Good (75). Though they are inherently pretty nice guys, they are also highly passive-aggressive, and will use the [[Manipulative Bastard|manipulative skills]] they've honed over the history of their civilization to indirectly harm anyone who opposes them.
** The Torian Confederation is Good (75). Also nice guys, but as a result of the strife they suffered through in their history, they have grown to become somewhat xenophobic.
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** The Iconian Refuge is Good (75), being the eldest and wisest of the younger races, once the pupils of the Arnor themselves, and now considering themselves the heirs to that long-gone civilization.
** The Thalan Empire is [[Blue and Orange Morality|Other]] (50). Seeing as they are a mysterious [[Hive Mind]] from the future, it's no surprise that their morality is... different.
** The Korath Clan is Evil (1), being [[
** The Krynn Consulate is Neutral (50). ''Another'' shade of [[Knight Templar
* [[Church Militant]] - The Krynn Consulate. Not terribly so, but they are willing to be, especially if a galactic war breaks out.
* [[Civil Warcraft]] - What typically happens when the Fundamentalists, the I-League, or the Jagged Knife rebels against someone's rule and takes a noticeable chunk out of everyone's empires with them in the sequel. Technically the Drengin Empire vs Korath Clan conflict is this in Dark Avatar, but the Korath are somewhat altered in physical appearance (their features are more elongated and simian-like, and their flesh is far paler and they have glowing eyes) and have a somewhat altered tech tree (as of the ''Twilight'' expansion).
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** The Dread Lords have acess to ships more powerful than anything the player could hope to build, and their soldiers have such an insane advantage that ''10'' of them are a serious invasion force against planets defended by 8000-20000 soldiers.
* [[Conflict Ball]] - Seems to happen occasionally. Everything will be... okay in the galaxy. Trade is good, the economy is good, relations are wary between longtime enemies... Then someone says something and suddenly everyone declares war on everyone else.
** The Drath, with their ability to persuade other races to go to war, and the Altarians, who can get others to fight in their defense, tend to be the biggest causes of this sort of thing. Other than that, there's the good old Bismarck special, where A attacks B because B attacked A's ally C, who attacked B's ally D because one of D's citizens killed C's leader. Its like [[World War
*** Thanks to the actually pretty intelligent AI, if one civilization attacks another, ''everyone'' will attempt to capitalize on the moment. You don't need entangling alliances when you can clearly see that, with your neighbor occupied with a massive war on the other side of their territory, they don't have sufficient resources to protect the side closest to ''you''. The AI will take advantage of this as often as possible, and it's ''extremely'' rare that war is only declared between two races.
** See [[Random Event]] below, which suggests that the AI ''purposefully'' [[Killer Game Master|does whatever causes the most grief]], be it random assassination attempts, or population increases, or even spawning Dread Lords on the map.
** "Good guys have gone to war with X. You're good, do you want to fight X too?" "... sure."
** AI players almost always honor their alliances, which is largely responsible for this.
* [[Crippling Overspecialisation]]: Ships are generally built focusing on one kind of weapon and defense, due to the difficulty of researching multiple kinds of weaponry/defense systems without becoming a [[Master of None]]. Setting up your ships to exploit this is workable, at least for a while.
** Making up for this is the tendency for a mix of weapons to be more effective, but it's still only worth it later in the game; early on, it's good to focus, keeping in mind the weapons and defenses of the most threatening civs, which in turn brings about the importance of espionage.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]] - The GNN's tongue is planted very firmly in its cheek when it's describing whatever technology you just researched. For example when you complete the space defense research it will say something to the effect of; "Space is a very hostile place, the vacuum can kill you if you're not protected, which is very rude. But even if you are protected by a hollowed out piece of metal you may bump into other people in hollowed out pieces of metal who may not like you."
* [[Deflector Shields]] - The Shield defense category, used to protect against [[Frickin Laser Beam]] weapons.
* [[Deity of Human Origin]]: The backstory has a human go back in time and become involved in the creation of the universe and the Precursors. His influence also creates the Altarians.
* [[Design
* [[Doomy Dooms of Doom]] / [[Death Ray]] - The Doom Ray, the most powerful beam weapon available.
* [[Dynamic Difficulty]]
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* [[Easy Mode Mockery]] - The game is very easy when the artificial intelligence is low, but you will be notified when you, for example, start building an invasion fleet next to their planet. This was mainly because print game journalists often play games on easy settings to work through them more quickly, and Stardock was concerned that because the AI was nerfed on those difficulties, reviewers might unjustly pan their AI players.
* [[Enemy Civil War]] - The typical result of the Fundamentalist minor race (good), the I-league minor race (neutral), and/or the Jagged Knife minor race (evil) forming due to a random event and making their territory by taking a substantial fraction out of the planets of the players that will probably be bigger than any single major race's empire at the time of their rebellion, though they (the rebels) will be very spread out. The Drengin-Korath war is basically this from the viewpoint of the other races.
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]] - The Drengin are quite horrified when the discover that the faction that broke away from them; the Korath Clan wants to outright exterminate all other forms of life instead of simply enslaving them. Coming from a species that considers chopping up someone's spouse in front of them and eating said spouse to be hilarious while making massive usage of slaves (even for research, in the case of the "Slaveling Imagination Center") despite the presence of emotionless robots; this is saying something.
* [[Evil Is Easy]] - Oh so easy. And profitable.
** But it does leave you in a bit of a lurch when the rest of the galaxy goes ape and declares war on each other, which seems to happen at least once per game. Being evil increases the likelihood that the goody-two-shoes alliances will declare war on ''you'' and you, being evil, won't have many friends.
* [[Evil Pays Better]] - Literally. The Evil option in random colonization events gives you the best bonuses while the good option will give you penalties or nothing most of the time (Neutral, of course, is somewhere in the middle). Though in a few cases the evil option will have a small cost, typically the lives of some of your people, but population is incredibly easy to replace in the game.
** However, when it comes time to choose a definitive alignment for your civilization via the Xeno Ethics technology, Neutral is the clear winner in terms of advantages bestowed. Also, some civilizations like the Altarians and Drath in the ''Twilight of the Arnor'' expansion gain better technologies through Good than they would with other alignments, and don't have to take the Good choice in random events since their [[Karma Meter]] is already set to that alignment.
* [[Evil vs. Evil]] - [[Omnicidal Maniac|The Korath Clan]] vs [[The Empire|The Drengin Empire]]. One wants to kill pretty much all non-Drengin or Dread Lord forms of sapient life, the other merely wants to keep all non-Drengin forms of sapient life as slaves, pets, and zoo attractions. However, the Drengin Empire is portrayed in a more positive light and it's made clear that they're the ones that you should be rooting for.
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* [[Glass Cannon]] - Ships built with the all-weapons-no-defenses philosophy. These are the mainstay choice for late-game highest-tech ships, since even the best defenses cannot protect your ships effectively against fleets of extremely heavily armed dreadnoughts focusing fire on them. They also work extremely well when used by Super Warrior races who can take out some or all of the opposition before the enemy gets a chance to attack. Conversely, such ships tend to struggle when used against Super Warrior opponents.
** Dread Lord ships may have massive attack and respectable defense (in the same category) but have fairly little health.
* [[God Is Evil]] - Draginol, the mad creator of the Dread Lords. {{spoiler|[[Humans Are
* [[Gratuitous Latin]] - In Tom Francis' Let's Play, this also doubles as one of his funniest moments.
{{quote|
* [[Guilt Based Gaming]] - [[Schmuck Bait|"Surely one more turn won't hurt?"]]
** [[Sequel Escalation|Kicked up a notch in the sequel]], which requests you take ''several'' more turns.
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** It is mentioned in the descriptions of some of the technologies unique to the Altarians that they are not the same ''species'' as the humans, but that they *are* more genetically similar to humans than they are to any of the other species on Altaria. To the highly religious (but in a good way because their religion is all sunshine and rainbows) Altarians this is no accident and that their gods have reunited them with their long lost brothers. To the Humans, who are much less religious, this is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Most of the other races who care either way agree with the humans.
** Also, the Dread Lords, in their brief appearance in the intro of the original game.
* [[Humans Are
** This is what everyone but the Drengin think. In reality, humans merely fought the Xendar to their homeworld; the Drengin, fearful that humans would find out about their involvement and turn their attention to them, nuked the whole Xendar homeworld as a preemptive measure.
* [[Humans Are Diplomats]] - This is how most races see humans, and their Super Ability ''is'' Super Diplomat. However...
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*** Of course, one needs to remember that such [[Fridge Brilliance|treaties are supposed to be signs of great trust between civilizations]]. Breaking them via warfare is considered to be a very dishonorable thing to do.
* [[Karma Meter]] - Slides between 0(Evil) and 99(Good)), with 50 being Neutral. It is affected through your decisions during random events which occur when you colonize some planets or throughout the course of the game. In ''Galactic Civilizations II'', you can make a permanent choice of alignment after [[You Have Researched Breathing|researching Xeno Ethics]], though you'll have to pay for it if your [[Karma Meter]] doesn't agree with your choice. After that, you can avail various bonuses granted by your alignment, and further random events will be auto-resolved on the basis of your permanent alignment.
* [[La Résistance]] - In the sequel this is present in the form of The Jagged Knife (Evil rebels) for Good Empires, the I-League (Neutral rebels) for Neutral Empires, and the Fundamentalists (Good rebels) for Evil Empires. Unlike most minor races they will have more than a single planet due to taking a sizeable chunk of the empire they rebel from, and in the cases of especially large empire the rebels can hold more territory than some of the major players. They invariably become a major problem for the empire they rebelled from and provide the game's version of Civil War. Also how the Torian Confederacy got its start. The scattered remains of the Terran Alliance and the Altarians become this in Dark Avatar due to the Drengin Empire conquering the majority of both factions and the Solar System being sealed away from the rest of the universe. The Altarians' faction name even changes from the Altarian Republic to the Altarian Resistance.
* [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo]] - The Terran survey ship strongly resembles [[Star Trek: The Original Series|another famous ship]]... The description [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this: "To boldly go where no man has gone before... into anomalies!"
** Mind, that description appears on every flagship, Terran, Yor, or Drengin.
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* [[Non-Entity General]] - Or national leader, in this case. The game will use the name you have typed in for your character in the conversations, and you can even choose an image for your leader, but otherwise you're pretty much just "Emperor."
* [[No Points for Neutrality]] - Averted. There are Good, Neutral and Evil alignments, each with their own bonuses. Neutrals don't get diplomacy penalties with anyone like the good and evil races do against each other. They also get massive trade bonuses, the best scientific building in the game and instantaneously maxed out planet quality, making Neutral the best choice for non-militaristic races (except for those that get better techs for sticking with their usual choice, and even then it may be a toss-up).
* [[
** United Planet Laws may also protect freighters, but only for a limited time.
* [[Omnicidal Maniac]] - The Dread Lords and the Korath Clan, oh so very much. The Dark Yor and the Snathi too, but they're played for laughs and have no serious chance at succeeding.
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* [[Recycled in Space]] - As described above.
* [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]] - Played straight in the original.
** Averted in the sequel: the Drath Legion are actually pretty nice guys.<ref>rating a 75 out 99 on the [[Karma Meter]] (99 being pure good and 0 being pure evil)</ref>
* [[Rock Beats Laser]] - Completely averted, weapons technology is much more important than in many turn based strategy games like the Civilization series. No matter how many you have, Basic Laser will never top Black Hole Gun.
** Played straight in a non-gameplay sense with mass drivers, which is as simple as shooting small metal balls really really fast. Only good old fashioned armor (made of futuristic alloys) can properly defend against it.
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** The Mega events in the Dark Avatar expansion can often make this go both ways, especially with the super-virus and rogue Precursor ships event.
** The Pirate and Peacekeeper mega-event fleets are made powerful enough to defeat the galactic average tech level and tech types at the time when they spawn. If your fleets are far enough above the average or use a different weapon/defense type than that of the majority, you can still fight and defeat them sometimes. Though if you're still losing ships, it's generally a better policy to retire your fleet, let the invaders beat the tar out of everyone else, and then send fast troop transports on a blockade run to take those now-defenseless enemy planets.
* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] - Subverted and played straight. Subverted in the case of the Altarians, who are highly religious, but their religion is extremely benign, resulting in a peace loving society with short work hours and a (formerly) four day school week. Played straight in the case of the Kyrnn Consulate who are much, much more zealous about spreading their beliefs which they call "The Way", though they still lean towards neutrality, so they probably try peaceful conversion before resorting to more...medieval methods.
* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]] - Creating a Galactic Empire that spans a dozen of planets inhabited by hundreds of billions of people takes about
** Also, the description of one of the hyperdrive technologies says "A trip of a million miles will feel like a light year" (Though, given the tone of the descriptions, this is certainly intentional).
** ''Painfully'' averted on the larger maps, especially if there's been a speed limit law enforced.
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** Some planet names, too. One campaign mission features the worlds of [[Riftwar Cycle|Midkemia and Kelewan]] (which might have something to do with the developers being called [[Wizarding School|Stardock]]).
** Also, there exist planets by the name of [[Star Wars|Hoth and Alderan]].
** One mission in the Dread Lords campaign had three planets called [[Final Fantasy VI|Locke, Sabin, and Celes.]]
** When you research technological victory, all your clocks show [[42]].
** The Drengins' split into two different factions over the merits of enslaving versus exterminating their opponents parallels the Ur-Quan Doctrinal War in ''[[Star Control II]]''. The fact that the rebel faction is called the Korath is probably a nod to this.
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** Hilariously [[Playing with a Trope|played with]] in the first of the PC Gamer playthroughs. The AI's do seem to work together against the human player, but only because the human thoroughly insulted all of them. And even this turns out to be a ruse; the AI's are clearly planning and taking steps to undermine each other after the human is defeated (They apparently don't realize defeating him will end the game). Further, the human player actually has an AI empire surrender to him... because they were being beaten by another AI empire and surrendered to the human's non-allied faction out of spite.
* [[Star-Killing]]: Terror Stars.
* [[Starfish Aliens]]: The Torians look...weird...to say the least. Also applies to many of the minor races.
** And the Iconians, and the Thalans.
* [[Superweapon Surprise]] - The player can do this. The computer often declares war based on standing forces, ignoring things like "huge technology advantage", "giant cash stockpiles allowing them to buy a fleet outright" or "allied with several races more powerful than me". All of this info is available to a human player through the Diplomacy system, so if you fall into it yourself you have no-one else to blame.
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* [[Worker Unit]] - Colony ships, freighters, constructors, space miners, and surveyors, in the sequel.
** Mind you that you can still put guns on them and make them blow up something, though it's generally pointless in case of colonizers and constructors, which get consumed upon usage. However, upgrading freighters to carry armament and defenses is a good way to prevent their destruction in case you don't have dedicated warfleets nearby to protect them. You can also pack them with sensors and hence make automated drones that will show you what is happening around the map as they do their trade runs.
* [[Villain Protagonist]] - The eponymous Dark Avatar of the Drengin Empire, in the sequel's first expansion.
* [[Zerg Rush]]: The AI is fond of swarm tactics, usually based around the idea that powerful gun + cheap, disposable body = a [[Glass Cannon]] that can be produced en masse. It can be devastating as hordes of little blighters charge around mugging your transports and doing a little light piracy on the side if they find a freighter, but if you can hold off the outbreak of hostilities for a while you can rush your way to Huge ships that will cut through fleets of fighter craft and frigates like a Korath sacrificial dagger through butter.
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[[Category:Galactic Civilizations]]
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