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Well done, but very difficult

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The idea on the game is very cool - command a planetary empire, and not as though it were a bunch of spreadsheets with a lousy GUI (ahem...Master of Orion 3).

The game has three major screens:
* Planetside - in which you build structures, manage power allocation, and fight in tank combat.
* Interstellar - in which you manage your vast fleets.
* Space combat - which can take place between ships or in orbit around one of your or your opponent's planets.

As much as it can be called "realistic" the space combat is just that. Attackers must overcome space fleets and planetary-based defenses before landing their attack ships on-planet.

The difficult part of this game is the economy - resources are gathered slowly, buildings are built slowly, and there is a maddening amount of time spent awaiting for these vital generators to do what you need them to do. Resource allocation is different than in the C&C series - it is quite frequent to run out of money, energy, or both, and you can do very little when either of these tickers hits zero.

In short, a fully entertaining and immersive game, just very very difficult.

This is the best game I have ever played or owned.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Previous reviewers have been right in that normal mode is insanely hard. Beatable, but not unless you do everything just right and get lucky at the same time. Overall the main problem with the game seems to be the difficulty of progress; if you encounter another race very early on, you can generally wipe them out without a problem. But any later than that, and you have no chance--and if you failed to conquor your friendly neighbors earlier, they suddenly turn on you. The speed of progress that you have to keep up with is too high, because alliances are nearly impossible to make without already having the upper hand and every race is hostile; hence, you have to compete with six other races, many specializing in one field. You have to have superior technology, superior military power, a superior economy, and superior spying capabilities--since you can't enter alliances to spread these requirements out, you come up against a race with one advantage over you and they immediately attack.

However, this is the only computer game I spend any mentionable time playing--even now, in 2006. It's scope is brilliant. It's graphics are perfect (although for some reason the graphics in the menu are horrible, the in-game and cutscene graphics are magnificent). The diversity of units is endless because you can customize them. The diplomacy system is, indeed, too difficult to use, but it can be extremely useful and is very fleshed out. The level of control in battle and of the weapons and other capabilities of your military is very high. The number of planets is incredible, and the auto-build function keeps you from having to oversee and keep track of all of them. The plot is interesting even when played multiple times. The conrol interface is amazingly efficient and the time system--the game has four settings for time speed, ranging from paused, in which you can modify your cities, designs, research, and spying without missing anything, to fast, which you can use to allow your ships to travel to their destinations quickly. The technologies researchable are brilliant and extensive.

Overall, despite its problems, I have to say that this is the best PC game that I have ever played. I randomly got it from a garage sale one day, but it far surpasses anything I've gotten at stores, even now. If only they fixed the problems--or, better yet, came out with an Imperium Galactica 3!--it would be perfect. But it still comes pretty close.

Good Game, but GUI sucked, from 2005 standard.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: August 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It is a very comprehensive strategy game that involve a multi-facet approach to conquest of the universe, diplomacy (bullying and back stabbing), space battles (albeit very childish GUI), spying, trade, you name it. Its as real as it gets, well, for early 21st century anyway.

Advice/tactics:
I had play Campaign "Hard" so many times that i am totally bored and i stopped playing, here is the trick:

a. Pick Solarian, they're good in everything, as good as you can made them.

b. In 53 BCE, 35,000 Roman Legionnaires under the command of Marcus Licinus Crassus was obliterated by 10,000 Parthian Heavy Cavalry. The trick Parthian use, engage Romans from afar using arrows and cut them down into pieces. It is my favor tactic in the game, equip destroyers (with torpedoes) and corvette (with adv. Torpedoes) as soon as possible. In battles, pull your fleet as far away as possible and allow as much torpedo to be let off as possible. Always worked in my favorite. Advice: make advance ships your priority by building lots of ship research in the 3230s era.

c. Make sure your population is growing at an accelerated rate. Take care of your population through basic infrastructure and low tax. You'll need more people to manned your research centers than tax early in the game. Switch to normal as soon as your population hits 20,000 on any planet. Always good idea to terraform planets. You need people, more people the better.

d. As soon as you have corvettes and advance torpedo and paralyser, deploy at least three of them, that will make your fleet invincible in the late 3230s and early 3240s. Then reseach tanks until you hit anti-gravity and rocket turret 2. That will ensure an invincible ground force against any empire, except Krahen planetary garrison. After heavy corvette and Hyperdrive MK4, research Mega track with ion turrent (now you're good to take on Krahen planetary garrison). Then move to cruisers. Solarians are fast with upgrades.

e. Empires that saw your fleet as small will declare war on you. Make sure your spy don't stay idle and always on counter-intelligence so that they won't know you're smaller than they are (and keep your spy growing)! If they do delcare war, use "hit and run" and "Scorch enemy planet". I used it to devastating effectiveness. That means, no pitch battles with enemy grand fleets, occupy their planets instead with your powerful ground army will always sucker them back into their own land and you also deprived them of vital tax and production. Scorch planets is not recommend. I once used it on the Krahens until they have like 100 ships but 0 population and tax. But a milder version such as destroying their factories for credits is good.

f. Spies in early games are good if you horn their infiltration skill to a min of 12 points. Hire as much shape shifter as possible. Once they hit "12" (through training or low level spy work) and decent "6" in combat, send them to sabotage ship. You get a 60% chance of success. Don't send them on assassinate leader missions unless: 1. enemy spies are all killed by relentless spy hunting missions. 2. All your spies are at level 20. Then send them to assassinate leaders (3% success rate). Its very late in the game, in 3280s, but it is fun to keep your enemies alive in that time period and see how they sunk into chaos and couple of planets broke off to join you. This is just for fun.

g. Good starters in early game, you usually would have Godans as your neighbor. Their weakness is that they don't build fortresses. So when their fleet (and their tanks) leave home turf for whatever reason, head straight for their home planet. With four destroyers and pulse lasers, you can easily defeat their planetary gun and conquer the capital planet. And let the tax flow in. Oh yeah, with torpedoes in your destroyers, Godan don't stand a chance. Also, they're often dumb enough to send their best spy with low loyality level early in the game so keep your agents busy countering intelligence. Capture the spy and convert him. You could use couple of infiltrator and counter intelligence agents. Keep the Godan alive to sharpen your fleet skill and spy training until you felt confident enough.

h. Toluens and Iberon can research Destructor Ray so save either one of the two race from Krahen or whatever threat and grant them five planets with lots of ship research and your blue print for Heavy cruiser. As soon as they done their research, steal or buy from them then oblierate them. With destructor Ray equiped Heavy Cruiser and Battleship, watch how you massacre the overwhelming Krahen fleet. I once had 12 battleships with destructor ray and mezon gun and cloaking device, I had one of the cloaked one with computer jammer head close to Krahen fleet and jammed their destructor ray while I pull my fleet far away and watch how I massacre over 100 Krahen battleships and cruisers.

i. in hard scenario, like all other level, there is the "pirate scenario" instead of "alien invasion scenario". Always pick pirate scenario, you will need the money, the tax, and pirate fleet are relatively easier to defeat with minimal or no loss to yourself. Trick, to defeat three tanks with only two at your disposal. The pirate tanks will have one tank as vanguard against you, use the two tanks to draw it out and quickly destroy it. By this time, two other pirate tanks will lock on to one of your tank and start firing. Pull the targetted tank away from their range but keep it close enough that the pirates don't fire at your second tank. Meanwhile, use the second tank to slowly but eventually annihlated the pirate force. Voila, 12000/15000 is yours to build a ship factory.

j. When you start with only 50,000 credits, you'll do better to build ship research and update your ship to the cutting edge instead of waste it on other crap. Use this Solarian strength!

k. terraform as much planet as possible. YOU CAN AFFORD TO BUILD TERRAFORM SHIPS! Its worth it. You need as much people as possible to manned all those buildings. Don't be cheap! I terraform all the planets except forest, wetland grass, rocky, and ice planets. It worked in my advantage enormously with all the tax and easy manning.

l. Diplomacy: make allies, then backstab them. If you don't, they will.

I guess that is all. Have fun, "Hard" is no longer impossible.

love it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: July 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played this game a long time ago at a friends house and was hooked ever since. The only problem was i never could find the game. If you can find a copy of this game i would highly suggest getting the game.

Quite enjoyable.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Alright, forget what the other reviews say about the Normal being impossible, for if you've ever spent any amount of time in the game, you'll find it quite the opposite. However, the Hard difficulty is another matter.

Anyway, the gameplay is extensive, you have your spying, planet construction, diplomacy, space battles, planetary battles, research, and other whatnot. Combined, they do you give you some very interesting and varied approach to the game. While the random event generator doesn't create a plot, per se, it keeps the game entertaining, since you never know when you'll be attack by a new pirate demanding tribute from releasing a virus, a freak meteor shower, or some other stuff. Also, there are merchants who sell you strange inventions and other unique services, but beware, some of them just want a quickbuck and may try to con you. However, you've got a space fleet, and conning the emperior is a crime punishable by incineration by destructor ray. These features kept me playing for many hours on end.

Let's see, the space battles and ground battles are decent, though not the level of Homeworld Cataclysm for space and Red Alert 2 for ground, but still fun nontheless. You get to customize your units, and the they look noticibly different, but you might have to strain to see them. However, differently outfitted units' powers are really noticible, and you can find some cheap but winning strategies such as fitting paralyzers on your ships or tank manipulators on your tanks to overpower your enemies.

The other features - spying, base building, research, are pretty extensive, and you have to consider carefully what you want to do. It's really cool to have spies that improve through missions and to massively sabotage the enemy planet's defenses just before your invasion. The sweetest victory I've had was in multiplayer, when my spy successfully inciting a rebellion against my friend's last stronghold planet, "liberating" its inhabitants from his tyrannical rule. Without that, it would have taken at least half an hour of me creating the sophisticated mobilie space station needed to beat down his 5 space stations, anti-fleet cannons, space fleet, and ground fortresses and tanks. So, anyway, you see that there are many approaches to victory in the game.

Also, unlike the sad technology tree of Warcraft 3, Imperium Galactica 2's research branches are awesome. You can get technology that really tip the odds. For example, I had a fleet of two battleships against dozens of destroyers and corvettes, and the enemy was scattered before my mighty warships without even beating down my shields. Also, civilian wise, the power generated by your basic fusion powerplant is really uncomparable to the last-tier mezon ones.

Overall, the game is pretty interesting. Also, what the other reviews said about the multiplayer being limited to 3 races and some other related features have all been fixed by the latest patches, so the flaws are gone. I would say this is a very enjoyable game, it only lacks a large multiplayer community to make it fun over the network. Otherwise, singleplayer is still a blast.

Alliances are hard to come by...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: September 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Imperium Galactica II, Alliances, is definitely a very good strategy game, yet it has several silly flaws for no apparent reason, thus taking away from what it could overall offer.

There is a good, though not great, variety of civilizations to choose from; from the peace loving Cheblon to the mighty warlike Kra'hen, and many others in between. Humans of course could not be absent as they exist in the form of the Solarians.
The feeling of building up your empire and expanding into the far reaches of the galaxy is very real and you do get a strong sense of accomplishment for all your effort. The battles, the inventions, the upgrades, and the plot are very good.
A lot of work seems to have been put into the game.

On the negative side, there are several points, which could have been dealt with before the game was released (and many of them have already been covered/pointed out by other reviewers):
There is an easy, normal, and difficult level of play, but normal is next to impossible and that is a pretty big problem.
Moreover, when you do decide to play single as opposed to multiplayer, you only get a choice of three races.
In addition, the actual alliances are very difficult to come by when you actually need them, while at the same time extremely easy whenever you're winning.
Furthermore, the videos and the graphics are average; not poor, but not great either.
Finally, there are such things as the "futuristic" electronic music for example, that is constantly playing in the background, which is rather terrible and highly annoying to say the least. A more Star Wars-like sounding music would have been much appropriate and inspirational.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hours of gaming enjoyment ahead when playing Imperium Galactica II, Alliances! Despite its flaws, and though it may not be a masterpiece, it will provide for a decent amount of amusement as well as excitement.

the trick is in the civilization

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game rocks! the interface is quite friendly, the speed buttons are quite simple and virtualy everything can be self-tought. The only problem are the difficulties. Most say that the difficulties are all messed up, I say the CD order is the one. CD 1 is installation, CD 2 is the Salarians (the most difficult), CD 3 is the Shinari (medium) and CD 4 is the Kra'Hen (quite easy, if you live up to the Divine Emperor's wishes). For the campaign, there are only three civilizatons (the worriors, the peace-keepers and the troublesome): The Kra'Hen, who come from another galaxy, have a supreme Emperor and can dedicate themselves to building ships while their people starve, in less than 30 years you can conquer the galaxy. The Shinari who use mainly diplomacy and espionage, and have medium citizen complaints. And the Solarians, who are a Federation ruled by a Senate; obviously, no starving, no slave-labour and consecuently, being wiped out by a gigantic Kra'Hen force. As I said, the trick is in the civilization.

not too bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

My biggest complaint is the lack of diplomacy in the game. Your spies are rarely successful. Quality of available spies varies and it's obvious the other races are always better than yours. The other races only seem to know brute force and they're always threatening you until they're about to be conquered by someone else. Alliances are almost impossible to make or if they are willing, they're too weak to be useful. They just want to attack, attack, attack. The only way to win is to kill everyone. It gets old. Messages are tedious once you've played the game a few times......you can't delete them, you can only click on them as they're playing to speed them along.

Fun game, but not easy.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is a lot of fun, but quite challenging. The graphics are OK. There's plenty of tension, and so excitement, during the game. There are three difficulty levels. Easy is too easy. Hard is too hard. But Normal is just right (after at least 10 games) IF you play the Kra'Hen (Klingons) until you are pretty good. THEN you can try the Solarians (humans). The Kra'Hen are much easier. The Shinari don't seem to work right. Initially, keep your taxes low for rapid population growth. In fact, when your planet has less than 10,000 people, use NO TAX. From 10,000 to 19,999 use low tax. 20,000 and above use moderate tax. The reason is, your population growth depends strongly on tax, but not at all on population size. Therefore, you wouldn't get much tax from small population planets anyway, so make them grow fast. Use HIGH TAX and no autobuild on all planets when you have half the galaxy or so conquered. Also use high tax if needed to satisfy a short term demand of the God Emperor. KEEP THE GOD EMPEROR HAPPY at all costs. Do these things and you will have a lot of fun on moderate difficulty and even win sometimes!

The plot!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've played this game like 5 times all the way through just trying to find out what happens with the Human plot. If you go too fast, it never develops... if you go too slow, you get creamed by the other races! It's so frusterating.

Fun to play except for this one little flaw in the human's plot!

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