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Better than MOO3, but MOO2 is still more fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: August 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Everyone else seems to be saying fairly accurate things here, so I won't try to reinvent the wheel... MOO2 still has more fun factor than this game, but GalCiv is way better than MOO3, and is an addictive 4x game if you take the time to read the manual AND the "how to play" tutorials on the website. The manual by itself is almost worthless, but some kind folks put together a useful free document that you can download from the same place you get the game patch. And the patch is a must!

A decent game, but nowhere near Civ III

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 20
Date: June 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Every reviewer here is brown-nosing the AI. I guess it's good, but any strategy game I play, the AI is good. I mean, the easy is easy and the hard is extremely hard. There is no reason to go on about how great the AI is. It's smart. End of story.

The gameplay is smooth and thought provocing. The only problem is choosing techs. The game has many paths to follow on the tech tree, but no instruction on how to get there. The tech tree is not in the manual or in the game. You have to go to a third party web-site just to view it. I hate that, because if I want to head straight for the dominant military tech, there is no direction on where to go.

The game is fun, but access to a tech tree is necessary. The game is enjoyable for a few weeks, but in no way does it stand near Civ III

Cheap Rip-off

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 39
Date: July 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Being a Moo fan and seeing this game, I had hopes. boy was I wrong. on the ooutside it loks like an increadible Moo ripoff, which I would not have minded. ounce you start playing however, you come to realize that there is no real hope for this game.

No ship customization, no organized way of of doing combat other than "go here and kill", and for Willy's sake, you can't even play as anyone other than the stupid F***ing humans! Diplomacy you have to discover through tech reserch, even then it's so mundane it hurts. unimaginative planet design, and tedious turns.

Don't get me wronge, there are a handfull of things that are decent. I dig the major and minor races, and how the minor ones just pop up out of nowhere. If you start doing evil your entire screen changes to dictate how ruthless you are. and the random anomalies that you can explore are a nice touch.

All in all, it's an unimpressive game that it more bark than bite.

The true heir to "Master of Orion"

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Master of Orion III was a catastrophic disappointment, the sort of failure that can kill a franchise. GalCiv, on the other hand, is the resurrection of a popular OS/2 game (perhaps the only popular OS/2 game?) that succeeds where its more illustrious kin fails.

MOO3 offers plenty of depth, but then proceeded to savage game play by allowing the AI to completely master that complexity. In the end, players were left to do little more than hit the "next turn" button.

Not so in GalCiv, which offers plenty of player control, yet also includes just enough automation to keep things moving along. Diehard MOO2 fans (are there any MOO3 fans?) will be disappointed that the game doesn't offer the ability to design starships or to efficiently colonize sub-standard worlds (I know I was).

But the game's strengths more than make up for these weaknesses. The game's greatesting strength is its AI. It's militarily aggressive, and capable of launching devastating late game attacks that will keep players used to mopping up at that point on their toes. Just as impressive is the fact that if you pay an AI to attack an enemy, it really *will* attack the enemy. It was happy surprise when I paid a race to declare war on an opponent, and then saw their ships flying along side mine on planetary raids. Very cool!

Over all, this is a darn good game. Is there room for improvement? Yes. But anyone burned by MOO3 would do well to return that game and pick up this one instead.

Great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: April 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Well, surprise, surprise: MOO3 was horrible and this game is great. The other reviewers will tell you something about why Galactic Civilization is lots of fun. I would like to add a unique element: the designers care and provide frequent game play enhancements and updates on their website. The game is already very stable and fun, so the updates on the website are not patches for the most part. Instead, they are feature enhancements. This is an unusual element---many other developers publish a game and that's the end, except for one or two patches to fix the biggest bugs. In contrast, Galactic Civilizations is undergoing continuous gameplay improvement with already exceptional AI and features. This game is up there with the Civilization, MOO2 (TWO!!!), and Imperialism.

This game is a gem.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: June 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for a good stategy game this is it. This is the game people hoped Masters of Orion would be. You can find out more about the game by going to the game's website, but I am so impressed with this game that I'd put it in my top 5 favorities with the orginal Civilization, X-COM, X-Wing, and Baldur's Gate II.

Yup, it's addictive - just ask my wife...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: June 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Imagine Civilization II in space. This game has all of the activities needed for great TBS - infrastructure building, research, military building, diplomacy, maintaining of morale, exploration, politics, and a user interface that makes all of this fun, not tedious.

Hence, there's a new demographic out there - the unfortunate Galactic Civilizations Widow.

The game creators, Stardock, have excellence customer support. I had a problem registering the game online, and they replied (with a solution that worked) within half an hour. Enjoy!

A 2-D throwback that's worth a look...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: September 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been a fan of "4X" space games since I first played "Starflight" on sega genesis. Galactic Civilizations is a streamlined prettier version of that early spacer. Expand your civilization, explore strange new worlds (to a limited degree) and seek out new life and possibly blow it to smithereens. The graphics are nothing special, a strictly 2-D interface with a minimum of frills. The advantage being you don't need a burner to make this game run. The real fun is the AI, which can be set at several different levels (from cakewalk to masochistic). The AI is really smart! As far as I can tell it doesn't cheat until you get to the really difficult levels and therefore you don't feel like the computer gets cheap shots or breaks at the lower levels of the game. There are five major alien civs to play against. You can form alliances, trade goods, and discover new technologies to make your civilization the pride of the galaxy.
One of my favorite facets of the game is deciding whether to be good or evil. During the course of any given game you will presented with moral choices, as the game progresses the choices affect your standing in the galaxy. If you become evil, races will fear you, some will try to destroy you. If you are good, you can draw races to you and eventually take over their societies culturally. Lots of other stuff, too many little gems hidden in the gameplay to list. I'll just say buy it, you'll like it.

galciv vs. guiness

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: May 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

By the time I was done with the first game, playing the AI (set to 'fool') it was 3AM...hmmm. The game was 'aight', so after I got some sleep and my morning coffee (we had a 4 day weekend...it was Golden-week in Japan...lucky for me) it was time to try for a higher level. I set all races to sub-normal, about how I was feelin. Hours into GalCiv and the damn 'primates' start demanding everything from me...so I tell them [go away] and they start their 'primate assault' and start taking over my planets...needless to say I'm [angry], but here is where it gets interesting. 'Whitey race...with Maori tatoo' and 'Jar-Jar race...without the annoying voice' side with me and supply my fleet with ships! The AI figures that the 'primates' are even hazardous to their health, cause they know after me it's them. So on goes the galactic war through Friday night, thank god my girlfriend was outta town. My phone rings...I don't pick up. Was supposed to grap a couple of Guinesses with some mates. draftbeer or galciv? galciv tonight
That game ends with genocide of 'primates'...maybe next time I could end it culturally or diplomatically...but I have another idea...'I am the lord of the Darkside, I will destroy all who oppose me...hahahaha', talking to myself again. Time to play on a 'gigantic' size map and set a couple of races to normal, grab my beer and pizza (yep the have pizza in Japan...with mayo and squid on it)...ranamed my planet to 'Brother from Planet X'...this time I want to kill whitey race...enslave primates...make peace to 'metalheadz' and find that all female race...and go 'Beyond Human'...later

Good game, bad tech support

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: May 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations definitely seems like a big step up from other space civilization games. The AI is definitely an improvement...the other civilizations actually make intelligent decisions based on their situation, not just to make the game more difficult. For example, a civilization will be more likely to help you (and much less likely to attack you) if a big chunk of their economy comes from trade with your empire.

However, all of my playing experience comes from playing on a friend's PC because it won't run on mine. Despite the fact that I have a system that exceeds the system requirements, and I use fairly standard hardware and software setup, GalCiv always dumps back to the main screen when I try to run it.

I have exchanged countless emails with Stardock support, including sending them a number of game-created and MS Windows logs. After three weeks of email exchange, they have simply stopped responding. Not even an email that politely said, "We can't figure out your problem. Sorry."

So, in short, this seems to be a really good game. But if you have any technical issues, you'll likely be on your own. I'd recommend buying this from a place that takes returns, since the game will just not run on some systems.

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