I have a dell 1905 19 inch monitor that I have been running the game in 1280x1024 landscape mode. I finally tried it in windowed mode at 1024x1280 ( I didn't realize at first that the w flag had to have a space betwen it and the shortcut pointer) and I liked that. Even though the resolution was the same, now whenever i switched to another program, or clicked on another program, on the extended desktop, the game stayed up. So I now could keep up the galectopedia or website on my second monitor on my windows extended desktop. So far very cool.

But wait there's more galactic goodness...... My monitor can rotate into portrait mode 90 degrees. I couldn't find an option to swich the rotation in the options menu, so I went to the pref.ini file in my documents/my games/galciv2 and edited the display width to 1024 and the display height to 1280 and.......omigod it works!!!

It is great, the only thing that is distorted is the opening menu screen (planets are streched) and maybe the full screen GNN screens (but they don't look bad).. The bottom menu is now far down on the screen and the drop down lists are now doubled (well at least 50 % longer in size!) everything else is not distorted as the desktop has now realigned itself and I just see far more information on the screen. The research tree is now doubled in visibility and I don't have to toggle off the bottom main menu to see everthing. The planet lists / ship lists are now seen without scrolling.. Wow...

The main screen now is more square instead of a wide rectangle and I can seen more when zooming out.

Try it if your monitor can rotate into portrait mode.

Thanks Frogboy for making this possible

I am very happy.
Edit: See screenshots below