So, I downloaded the 1.2Beta. And I played a medium game on Tough with abundent planets and 5 (total) races. And now I think I'm done with the game. Forever, regardless of expansions. So, perhaps I should review it.

Was it $40+ dollars well spent? In all fairness, I'd have to say yes; I've played it longer than Rome: Total War (though since I'm going back to R:TW, that may not be the case forever ).

I was introduced to some very un-Civilization-like game mechanics; Civ was the totality of my experience with TBS games, so it's interesting to see how different a TBS game can be.

The AI was the main feature touted by the game developers. From annecdotes posted on this forum, I could tell that the AI could be devious, starting wars of distraction while they built up power and so forth. However, at no time did I ever personally encounter such things.

In general, the AIs behaved somewhat similarly. Some races could expand well, others couldn't. Some went for offensive military, others just built a powerful defensive one. However, none of that matters because they all react to the same things in the same way.

The problem with the game is those intriguing mechanics. I've never played a game where you can trick the AI into doing the wrong thing so easily. If you want to keep the AI off your back militarily early on, build a few of cheap attack ships. and have a good diplomacy (build diplomacy wonders). If you want to keep the AI off your back later in the game, research the entire diplomacy tree, and build a Spin Control Center. That will keep you unmolested until you're powerful enough to kill everyone.

Another problem with the mechanics is that, once you get ahead, it becomes a continuously compounding problem. It starts with the tech tree.

In Civilization 2, you can't decide to research banks and marketplaces whenever you want, even if you have cities where they would be worthwhile. You have to research along the general intwined path that the game designers put together. You can get ahead in certain areas, putting off certain other techs and so forth. Terrain (and city size/growth) mandates that you can only get bigger so fast.

In GalCiv2, the only thing that prevents you from getting whatever building you want is how much research you have. Which makes research (and money) the foundation of any victory. Obviously, production matters, but research gives you production and more research. There's no slowing-down mechanism, so you can (relatively) quickly reach end-game status where you're just researching weapon techs.

In Civilization, you can only build one library in a city. Given specific terrain, and a specific tax rate, there is a fundamental maximum quantity of research that a city can do. In GC2, there are numerous ways to get more research; by allocating points during race creation, by finding galactic resources, by building more/better research buildings, and by using econ-starbases. If you do them all, the cumulative effects can "go non-linear".

Basically, in Civilization, the game designers can guarentee a certain pace to the game. They know just how fast a player is going to be able to advance, and so forth. In GC2, it is very easy to build up a world that has massive production, or has massive research, or has massive money making. And these happen pretty early into the game.

The fact that GC2 has no slowing down mechanism means that any slight advantage quickly magnifies and eventually becomes victory. And human beings always have an advantage over mere algorithms like AIs.

The ultimate problem with GC2 is that the mechanics make it a solved game, like tic-tac-toe. Population growth, morale, diplomacy, and research are the foundations of victory. You can, despite how many of the mechanics are hidden, easily find a strategy that will guarentee you victory on the highest difficulty level (before the AI gets cheats), without exploiting. The AI was designed specifically to be taken advantage of, and doing so is pretty easy.

No matter how simple and scripted other AIs are in other games, they, at least, don't have game-sanctioned methods for taking advantage of the AI. It's one thing for the AI to attack with a set style and set units, and to take advantage of this. It's an act of bad design when the AI is designed to be able to be deceived by certain factors.

The game is actually fairly entertaining before you find a way to solve the game. But once you do, the fun evaporates. Think of the game itself as being a meta-game puzzle: figure out enough of the game's mechanics to find the right way to play the game to guarentee success. Like any puzzle game, once you solve the puzzle, it instantly becomes less entertaining.

If I were to give this game some kind of numerical score, I'd say an 87/100 would be reasonable. I'm not fond of scoring games, however; I prefer having people read a review than just read a number and stop.