It had been a very long time I didn't have much fun with a strategy game. Since Civilization II, I think. RTSs are another world completly, one in which my skills are far from bad but which lead to a simplistic experience compared to turn-based strategy. To me Starcraft and AOK were a lot of fun, but cheap fun nonetheless.

I had some not so great hopes about Civilization IV, and not so great fun with it when it came out. They made the game much more complex, so much in fact that I feel each of my choices has very little effect in the global picture, since the global picture is determined by so many causes. You know, in CivII, when you switched from monarchy to democracy, suddenly your trade jumped by like 300%. In CivIV to get such increase you have to deal with 30 different ±10% factors. For instance the governement has been split up in 5 different social aspects.

This is not to flame CivIV, but to show I like games where each one of your choices has dire consequences, and therefore you have a lot of direct control on what happens.

I had never heard of Galactic Civilizations before the release of this expansion, DA. I'm no big fan of science-fiction but what caught my attention was the emphasis on artificial intelligence, something that other games keep as simple as possible. In real-time strategy the AI has absolutely no time to think; it must make decisions instantly. So it's generally more of a series of scripts than real analysis of the situation. Civilization is a turned-based game, but it's basically the same AI system that should take only 1-2 seconds to play, therefore cannot deeply analyze the game but reacts according to predefined paths. In addition, they play exactly the same way at all difficulty levels: always doing their best with different penalties or bonuses. GC : DA's idea of playing against an opponent that actually takes some time and CPU cycles to analyze the situation and come up with a smart solution, that can play a strong game without the use of economic bonuses (even though that is also present in the game) is something I just couldn't resist to. I had to try it.

I mean I can wait for the AI thinking. If it has to take one minute, so be it. In computer chess the AI can "think" (crunching numbers) for 5 minutes and it's ok. It comes up with moves often better than what a human would. If my computer rival in a strategy game would actually spend such time to plan his attack or expansion plan, maybe they wouldn't ever need to use economic bonuses anymore. The strongest strategy player might become the computer, just as Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1993. Maybe that isn't possible now with the speed of current processors, but remember in the 70s they could barely imagine the world champion of chess losing against a machine, and yet their computer chess algorithms were already pretty good.


Though I didn't get the occasion to play against the computer at its full potential (100% strength and no bonuses), as I'm still learning the game, I am thrilled by the gameplay. The graphics are perfect, especially with the high-resolution mod. They don't cause lag on my mid-range config at 1280x1024, 4xAA; they look clean, they're colorful and functional; I love being able to tweak the ambient and specular levels of lighting. The camera work is AMAZING, I mean I can feel you guys designed this game with the gamer in mind, almost as if you knew my personal gripes with cameras in 3d games. Auto-snap-back after tilting? Check, and only on the xy plan, not the xz so I can play the game with the dept I like while not losing track of north and south. The seamless transition to the strategic view is too cool to be true. I find myself often referring to this view. I almost cried when I saw you included a "throttle frame rate" option. Like you actually care about my video card!

The inferface is complex, but I don't think it could be done much better. I was afraid of ship design and must say I don't really get how to customize the looks of a ship, but in essence the system is very effective and not hard to use as you seemed to put it in the manual.

There is so much content with 4 different ways to win, different AIs, completly configurable maps, even a campaign (which I'll probably never do but that's just me  ), and yet I don't feel overwhelmed since I am able to quickly identify the consequences of each of my actions. Trade routes work like they should. I can see the computer gets a serious boost to their economy from the trade routes I set up with it, and the effect on mine is very clear too. Diplomacy is very intuitive. In short, just about every aspect of the gameplay is refined, seems like there has been a lot of intelligent thought in it, plays right, feels right.

Copy protection: well at least this time I don't have to wait for the crack. The game just works out of the box. Cause I happen to have Alcohol 120% and Daemon Tools installed, and some games just won't play if you have these software installed, even if you bought them. Then you have to use the crack. What nonsense.

Now for the little time I have played, here is what I'd like to see in a future expansion or sequel. Graphically this looks good, but technical bling aside, this game's realism could benefit from having the planets actually revolve around their star, and asteroïds too. I don't think the gameplay would have to suffer from it. I felt slightly uneasy with Mercury being about a quarter of the size of Jupiter and about halfway between it and the sun. Mercury in reality is a pebble compared to Jupiter, and it's litteraly glued to the sun in terms of proximity. I know you're using a parsec system that doesn't allow you to place things with much freedom, but maybe use a smaller basic unit. I'm not asking for things to respect the real scales, but at least be closer to them.

Also, although what influences what is clear in general, there are some stuff that are hard to figure out.

- It took me a lot of time to understand how can I send my ships further out into space. I designed a ship with lots of "basic life support" modules which are supposed to "extend range", but it made no difference. I finally tried building an influence starbase near my range borders and it was effective. But I don't know if that's because it's an influence starbase or just because it's a starbase. And this isn't made clear anywhere in the game. Or maybe it is, but I didn't find it.
- Also, how to improve my tourism is still a mystery for me. It seems to improve gradually over time, but what exactly is responsible for this is unclear.
- When I tried to colonize a planet near my rival's empire, I learnt soon after that the planet would turn to the enemy if I didn't do anything. But there was no suggestions as to what to do. So I bought as many embassies as I could. This didn't change the influence points of the colony. And the colony turned to the enemy when its IP was 8(5). Isn't the rival influence supposed to be 4 times your influence? There is certainly an explanation, but I didn't find it in the game.

But keep up the good work, especially on the AI! And please if you ever release a sequel, don't fall where Sid Meier did with CivIV. Keep things simple yet deep: we want to be able to make significant strategic choices and not the game decide for us, or effectively limits our control with too many options to tweak.

Thanks for the greatest strategy game I've played since Civ II. I'm out to tell everyone else now.