Stuff That's Gone Right

Accentuate the Positive

Considering there's about a gazillion threads on bug reports and suggestions and whatnot (not that that's necessarily *all* bad, mind you), how about more threads on the stuff we *do* like? I'll start off with my own list.

1. The ship builder and combat viewer.

I know, I know, *everybody* likes these two things right? But there's even more to it than that, in my particular case.

Ya see, I'm the sort of gamer who generally hates combat. I find it to be boring at best and confusing at worst. Even in my role-playing group I'm known as the sort of gamer who prefers to concoct Rube-Goldbergian plans for indirectly dealing with enemies instead of just bashing heads in. I'd rather spend my time in diplomacy, tech, trade, etc.

Well, the nice part about GalCiv is that you can do non-combat stuff and it still feels like an integral part of the game, as opposed to an afterthought outside the main focus of combat. You can even fight wars themselves with backroom under-the-table deals and plans. But let's stay focused here.

The ship builder and combat viewer just makes combat completely and totally cool. Even a gaming pacifist like myself can't deny the utter wickedness of watching my custom-designed ships blow up (or get blown up by) the AI's custom designed ships. I find myself almost itching to get into battles, now!

2. The dialogue/backstory/flavor text, etc.

I'll admit, I'm not generally a strategy gamer. My first gaming loves are adventures and RPGs, which tend to be very story-heavy. So it's very fun to play a game outside those genres that has so many little atmospheric details, from different greetings depending on where you are the game, to whom you're talking, and why, to the tech and ship descriptions, to the names of stars, to the little "Person on the Street" comments in the Planet Details, etc. And of course there's also the entire backstory, which is IMHO very intriguing.

Oh, and the gratuitous references. I love gratuitous references.

3. All the little conveniences.

The way that everything that's remotely scrollable is, well, scrollable with a mouse wheel.

The way that the money and influence sliders on the Trade screen can be scrolled by both tens and ones and by dragging the slider. The way you can click through each different race without leaving the Trade screen is also nice.

The way tons of information is all nicely gathered into the various screens. I like the planet/starship list in particular, especially the way you can now keep track of AI-owned and unowned planets and ships as well.

The way you can click on the GNN "buttons" to go to the planet in question, or launch newly built ships by right-clicking on the button.

The trade route lines are very useful.

The way you get little tooltips on the planet screens explaining all the numbers.

4. The graphics.

Granted, I'm probably the only freak on the planet who liked the GalCiv1 graphics just fine, but I think the game is very pretty. I like getting to have graphics in a modern game that actually look like *art*. I especially like the way the alien race "head shot" videos show emotions. (Maybe I'm just easily impressed.

)

5. No copy protection.

I know this has already been covered elsewhere, but really, it's nice to be able to just download and install a game after buying it without having to fuss with the CD.

That's just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. The nutshell is that you've created a strategy game that hooked someone who usually doesn't play in that genre.

Other people's thoughts?

Peace & Luv, Liz

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

I think the game is an absolute triumph and clearly one of the strongest games released this (or last!) year. Personally, I like it much more than Civ 4 -- which is saying something as I thought Civ 4 was reallyreally good, but the singleplayer game was somewhat dry and multiplayer, while fun, lacked the sheer variety that I thought the game should ideally have. (Certainly it didn't have staying power beyond a week or two, for me.) Stardock's developers should be immensely proud of their achievement, and personally I can't recall anything besides World of Warcraft that will likely have space on my harddrive for as long as Galactic Civilization 2. The surprising depth of the game, its excellent graphics and customizability married to strong core mechanics really make this game a winner in my eyes.

In terms of specifics...

1. Flavor text. The game is very entertaining to read, from the alien's dialogue to the research text to the word of the everyday citizen on the street. It's got humor in the same vein of Star Control 2, which I think is very positive.

2. Excellent graphics. The graphics are engrossing and run extremely well at highest resolution with 4x AA. In particular I'm thinking of the ship designer in, which I've spent way too much time in making exactly the kind of dreadnought little children have dreams about. (Or, perhaps, nightmares...?)

3. Artificial intelligence. The computer reacts extremely well to all situations, and at greater intelligence can become quite difficult. I've only played it up to Bright so far, but I've found that the computers are nearly as intelligent as humans. (Without all the messy drama you get when you annihilate a human player, though their surrender messages are hilarious.) Frequently, whatever I think they 'should' do they 'do' do -- except when they do something unexpected and surprising and many times more optimal than my original suggestions. I really hope all single player games will get AIs this smart; the AI in Warcraft 3, Dawn of War, and even Civ 4 have much to learn from GalCiv2's.

4. Replayability. New random universes are always avaialble, there are a ton of scenarios, a branching campaign, a multilayered tech tree which in a single game I've never climbed fully yet, and a bunch of races you can use. I intend to get a lot of mileage out of this program.

So I don't want to sound like a fanboi but I'm extremely impressed with everything GalCiv2 has to offer. I was a fairly large fan of the first one but this one reminds me very much of the old Microprose offerings, and in a really good way. I hope that Stardock continues to support this excellent game and also that they come out with lots more new content regarding it.

And while I think multiplayer might be nice, I think it's also very nice without.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I would have to agree with all these points.
I'd also like to add a personal favorite feature of mine, that no one really mentions...

- The strategic view.
whoever thought of that feature is a genius. At first, I thought I would never use it, because I like the way all the planets and ships and everything look when you zoom in. I love the graphics, and I love seeing all my custom-designed ships zipping around the galaxy. But after getting used to zooming out a few times to look at the 'big picture', I've been using it more and more. It's to the point where I'll play most of a game all the way zoomed out.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm also of the opinion they got more things right in this game then wrong. And even the things that are *wrong* in my eyes are more personal preference then actually gameplay snafus. So my list would be...

1) Ship yard. OMFG! I love this thing. I sometimes go into the game just to play with this thing. There are times where I'll spend 30 minutes or more just tweaking the look of a particular ship. And the more I play with it the more things I figure out how to fit together to make even cooler looking ships. And then I look at some of the ships that others create and that just starts the whole process again. Great feature. Worth the price of the game all by itself.

2) Strategic view. Oh happy day when I found this gem of a feature. While the 3D galaxy is pretty to look at it's tough to actually *move* stuff around especially when you have to go large distances. But zoom all the way out and viola! you can pin point exactly where in the universe your fleets need to go. I've gotten to the point where I zoom out to where one click of my mouse wheel forward puts me in 3D mode so I can read the star names (when looking for a particular planet) and one click back takes me into strategic view so I can see the PQ of planets along with my immediate surroundings.

3) AI. I'm still trying to find my personal balance between too hard and too easy but I think I'll eventually find that sweet spot. Oh sweet gaming nervana that someone has finally managed to build a game difficulty structure that has so many variables. And we don't even need to start talking about tactics. The only thing that would have been better is an actual learning AI. But this will do very nicely until that breakthrough.

4) User interface. I like it. It gives me everything I need to know without being so cluttered that things get lost. And the fact that I can hide the lower area alone is just so sweet. The more of the *big* picture I can see at once the better I can plan my future conquests. Goes hand in hand nicely with the strategic view.

So like I said they got most of this game right and the things that aren't I'm sure they'll tweak as we go along. It's games like this from developers like Stardock that renew my faith in the fact that it is still possible to create a great game without having to spend millions of dollars. If more developers would follow this example the gaming community would be in joyous celebration.

Here's to a job well done and looking forward to future success from these folks!

Successfully updated karma reason!

A couple of things that I like that are not already in this post. These are low on my list but the headlines have already been talked up.

Large tech tree. Because the tech tree is so large and you almost always pick just one weapon / defence type to pursue, there is usually something to trade or steal from your opponents.

Automatic update of improvements. You don't have to waste your time visiting each planet to update your basic farms when you complete your research of Xeno Farming. The upgrades are automatically queued up for you. This saves you from loads of tedious micro management and you don't have to worry about these small details.

The sliders go all the way. You can actually set specific percentages (tax rate, spend rate, spend distribution) rather than in certain other games where spend rates move in 10% blocks. So you can actually get a perfect balance when you want it. Thing don't have to be too low or too high, it can always be just right. (I'm starting to sound like Goldilocks here.)

The trade routes. They actually exist in the game world and you can target enemy trade routes to hurt their economics. So it requires some player input, some thought to keep your routes away from potential enemies. For me this is a much better system than the game automatically picking the top 5 cities for each of my cities to trade with.

The rally point system and the Governors who can save you a couple of thousand mouse clicks per game.

Reason for Karma (Optional)

Successfully updated karma reason!

We're looking up the edits for this post...

Home

Galactic Civilizations II

Game Talk

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting and posting on the forums.

Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.

Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.

It's simple, and FREE!

Sign in or Create Account

View all recent posts

Mark all posts as read Delete cookies created by the forum Return to Top

Stardock Forums v Server Load Time: Page Render Time: