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Master of Micromanagement

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 32 / 43
Date: April 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

While this is a terrific game concept with some nice features, it is far more work than play. The core of the game is a standard 4X space empire builder, with colony management, a complex tech tree, tactical space and ground combat, espionage, and diplomacy. But there is no centralized display of colony status. A building must be supplied with both power and workers in order to operate, and if it doesn't have enough of either, it will simply shut down and the game gives you no warning or announcements. You are forced to pause the game every few months and personally inspect every single colony to discover these problems. But the tech system is even worse, and has not been improved from IG1. There are three types of tech, and so you have to have three types of labs. But you can only research one invention at a time, so while you're developing a new hyperdrive in your ship labs, your ground unit and colony facility labs are sitting idle, sucking up your colony's power and workers. If you can't afford that waste, and most of the time you can't, you have to once again personally remember where you placed each one of up to 30 labs, go to the colony display for each planet on which you have a lab, and turn the idle ones off, one at a time. If you decide to develop a new building next, you have to go around and turn off all the ship labs and turn all the building labs on again. And I don't have room here to go into the game's futile diplomacy system, or the sluggish screen redraw, or the constant nagging interruptions by messages regarding random events and spies demanding orders. No offense to the other reviewers here, but only a hardcore strategy addict with a fetish for micromanagement could enjoy this game. I returned it four days after I bought it.

This game is the middle ground of many other games

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game 3 days ago and already I found it a rather grave disappointment. Allow me to tell you why:

-Switching between different screens (ex. research screen to starmap screen) takes 3-5 seconds. Unlike the previous reviewers, I happen to know for a fact that my hardware is more than capable of handling anything that is thrown at it. It's merely bad coding ettiquite. This is unacceptable especially in a multiplayer situation.

-The research system is SLOW. It costs too much or takes too long (usually both unfortunately). On top of that, the research system only allows you to research ONE item at a time. This is extremely tedious, and makes it impossible to research most of the good items. By the time you research something you REALLY want to use, all of the planets are either in your possession or you're dead.

-Star systems only have one planet per star. This is just a minor gripe, but it takes out the essence of simulating star system colonization. This also removes any possibility of one star system being more productive than another since you can terraform.

-You can only play 3 races. Multiplayer allows you to have up to 8, but if you choose single player you only can pick 3. This is extremely disappointing considering each of the 8 races has unique attributes, but 63% of those attribues are gone if you decide to make it solo.

-All 3 branches of research require too much attention. I feel like I'm playing Sim City trying to manage where my population is supposed to work I'd rather be handling conquering the galaxy.

-Combat resembles Warcraft/C&C/Starcraft, but lacking many of the options you find in other games. Even more annoying is that you have no control over your fighters, and many advances you make in the ship research department have little or no noticable affect during battle.

That's not to say the game is all that bad. The Spy feature is nice, and the plots for single player are actually entertaining. Graphics are top-notch for this genre of game (strategy), but again, at the cost of waiting 3-5 seconds between different screens. If you're into multiplayer, all of the races are very balanced and this allows you to apply many different types of strategy.

But I suppose I am overly disappointed because this game lacks personality. You get hints of Starcraft, hints of Master of Orion, and occasionally a little Dark Reign here an there. Unfortunately I have yet to find anything in the game that tells me I'm playing Imerium Galactica II.

Nice, but seriously flawed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: July 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I bought IG2 based on reviews, and overall the game is quite nice. It has some serious flaws, however, which should have been corrected by the developers. The most serious flaw is the research system - you have to build 3 different types of research centers for the different techs, but it rapidly becomes incredibly tedious to cycle through all of your planets toggling the various research centers on and off when you want to research different classes of technology. A single research building for all the different classes would significantly decrease the meaningless micromanagement and let you focus more on the game.

Another flaw for me is performance. My system is a PII 330MHz w/64MB RAM and an 8MB 3D video card. I have to play the game at the lowest resolution (VGA), and still find it incredibly slow. Especially annoying are the pauses whenever you switch screens - I get at least a 5 second pause, making the previously mentioned research center toggling triply annoying. Other 3D RTS games like Starcraft and Age of Empires II scream on my machine at their highest resolutions (SVGA), but this game makes me feel like I'm playing on a 386.

Also annoying is the CD security. The game has 4 CDs - a base CD and one for each of 3 races. The annoying part is that you have to have the base CD in the drive to start the game, then swap out for another CD *every* time you play. Why not let the game start up from any of the 4 CDs?

Anyway, if you can get past all these flaws, the game isn't bad. I prefer Master of Orion, though. Swapping CDs and plodding through the various screens just makes this game too painful for me to really get into.

A good, but broken game.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: May 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I play a great many strategy games and I consider myself to be a fairly decent player, though not great by any means. On the one hand, I truly enjoy playing IG2. The mechanisms of planet building and support, the ship design, the research tree, and the general interface are all excellent and make the game a pleasure to play. Or would if the difficulties (easy, normal, hard) were actually indicative of anything. When I play a game on easy, I expect to learn how to play and very likely win on my first try. In IG2, the easy was so easy, I won before I really felt I had a handle on the game. Normal level should be a challenge. I should need to play well, and in the end, I should still only win about half the time. I've lost count of how many times on "normal" (as the Solarians) I have not even come close to winning. I get wiped out every time by a Kra'Hen fleet so large I can't even conceive of what I would need to do to make one half its size. Sometimes I die even sooner. Goodness forbid that I even try to play on "hard" difficulty. For any normal game, I have come to expect that the "hard" difficulty to really be "nearly impossible". In IG2, normal mode does this, and I feel the game is hardly worth the trouble as a result. I have tried as the Shinarians as well, with similar results. In conclusion, while I truly liked the game architecture, I cannot recommend this to anyone. I found this to be one of the most frustrating games I have played in quite some time.

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!

Good Game gone Bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is potentially the greatest space opera game to come along in years. It is depressing that this potential is lost. First, expect to find sound conflicts with the game. The game will lock up your PC or dump out of the game during periods that you acess the game's personal communications device. (No, no option to avoid going there, so expet to get dumped about every 20 minutes of game play). But, this glich is based on your system's hardware, so, maybe you won't have that problem. Next, you will find a game that bases interaction on diplomacy and spying without adequate instructions on how they play against one another. Worse yet, expect diplomacy not to work at all. The diplomacy function is extremely frustrating as you seem incapable of generating anything from the other races except a declaration of war, which they do as soon as they have more ships than you. You will also be frustrated in your inablitiy to manufacture ships while the computer players just build them out the whazoo. You will also be frustrated in the need to micromanage all tanks during any invasions. You have 30 tanks? So, what?; unless you give 30 indivdiual orders they blunder around the map and get shot up piece meal. Forget about giving group orders. With all the negative said, this game has a great concept, great music, fantastic cut-scenes, fun space battles, and a flawless intergration of real time/turn based concepts. This is a buyer beware item. If you love MOO you will find this game acceptable, if you don't know what MOO is, STAY AWAY- FRUSTRATION AHEAD!

Nice Try But No Cigar

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

IGII is a great looking game with a moderately original angle on 4x gaming, but it never really succeeds in becoming addictive. What the game attempts to do is marry story elements to a traditional 4x platform, so that random (and some not so random) events power the decisions you make about constructing ships, buildings, research, diplomacy, etc. But this one original concept is never that well done in the first place, with a relatively small selection of random events that quickly become familiar after a few games (and surprisingly vary very little between the three races in the game). And the idea actually undermines the 4x aspects fo the game, as you feel less in control of events than simply swept along respnding to one manufactured crisis after another. Add to that a ridiculously difficult diplomacy system, mediocre AI, and surprisingly little variety to the storylines (and even the building graphics) of the three playable races, and you have an intriguing and great-looking game, but also a game that is ultimately unsatisfying.

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.

Good and Bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I like this game overall, but as you can see by the other reviews, it does have its flaws. What I liked about the game is just the mere fact that it is rather time consuming. You don't just put it in and win. You have to think and manage your planets carefully. The "normal" skill level is just way to hard to be "normal". I haven't even wanted to try to play it under "hard". Why bother when I can't even beat it under normal.

I myself haven't had any problems with memory. But, I can't see a lot of the text when the starfield is on. This makes it hard to use the quick research function. The text is there, just can't read it. And it's not that I have a slow system, it's a brand new 866.

I also think this game is very much like Master of Orion, just not as good. Well, maybe they will come out with another version of Master of Orion for us.

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.

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