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Unbelievably fun and AWSOME customer support...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 25
Date: April 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

'nuff said, go to the galciv.com website forum and check out the support and comments of actual players yourself, this game ROCKS!

Has potential but serious issues with gameplay

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 23
Date: April 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I like the idea of a space civ but no one has really been able to pull it off yet. There are a couple huge, obvious problems with this game.

In the name of elimination of micromanagement, they have eliminted control over resources at the planet level. There are two build queues, social and military. You set the % of resources that go to these queues and research at the civ level. So if you have 33% of the resources being spent on social projects (planet improvements), and you don't have anything to build on one planet you throw away a third of the production on that planet.

There is no printed tech tree, and you cannot find out what technologies are available or what the requirements are. All you have to go on is the name, tech type (trade, weapons, defense), and the immediate benefits. So there is no way to plan or focus your research unless you've played the game several times and have it memorized.

Both of these issues are far worse than any other game of this type I have ever seen. The first civ managed to get these right, but this game doesn't.

Total waste of time and money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 45
Date: September 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

After my experience with HoI and the majority of the reviews here I bought it. Big Mistake. MoO2 is by far better in terms of complexity and fun. The "decisions" you have to make, whether you want to be good or evil repeat themselves all the time and are not exciting after the first time. The research tree is bad, not documented and neglects the slightest approach of userfriendlyness. The whole setting of the game is boring and repetetive. You can only play the humans and lead them to another stunning victory over the other inferior species, so imho it is a truly fascist setting. The handling of your empire and your fleets is bad. The "battles" are abysmal. The politics are worse than in MoO2. I would not buy it again and I would not accept it as a present.

A smaller, duller version of Master of Orion

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 27
Date: March 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I love 4X games. I love designing my own starships with the latest technologies, I love sending scouts out to explore and make contact with other civilizations and I like making allies. I like managing cities/planets to specialize output for my empire. I didn't get a feel for any of these preferences with this game.
There is no designing of ships in this game. Certain tech levels let you build a fixed ship design. Other techs might increase the combat values of all of your ships, but you won't have mixed tech fleets.
Exploration of the map is really quick. It took me only 1 hour of game time to explore the map and all of the systems. Although I didn't play the largest map, exploration was way too quick.
There is no real management of individual planets except for what is to be built on that planet, and there isn't much variety in what is to be built.
You can only play a human player and the only difference between different set ups is what government you start with.
The aliens don't seem interested in initiating any diplomacy, they either seem to agree to all of your deals or agree with none of them.
This game feels like a either a console game that is ported over to the PC or a real time game that was made into a turn based game to allow for "Diplomacy". It doesn't have the depth I expected from a 4X game for the PC.
If you want a detailed 4X game, I would recommend either Master of Orion 2 (Yes I said 2, not 3), or Space Empires IV instead.

How can anyone complain?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 19
Date: July 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Fun game, great community, helpful staff at stardock and regular updates and now an expansion pack. It's a game with a simple premise and a challenging AI. The graphics are good enough and its clearly a game for the thinker gamer rather than a "blaster".

Disappointing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 23
Date: April 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Fun for a few hours, but disappointing. I expected more from a turn-based space strategy game in 2003. Not much new here.

Among the flaws are no ability to customize the ships, a painful UI, simple combat system, no ability to change the screen resolution, sparse manual, and a few remaining crashing bugs (even with the latest updates).

I'd recommend Space Empires IV (a 2-3 year old shareware game) instead. That game has more complexity and depth without the annoyances.

Turned based complexity for the strategy gamer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based game in which your aim is to dominate a galaxy of planets. You can only play a human, facing against other races of characters of various alignments and with varying cultural missions.

Developed by StarDock, Galactic Civilizations is is a planetary take-off on the Civilization genre. The way in which you win is up to you. You can defeat the other planets with your military, or culturally enrich them all, or even unite them together in a worldwide peace.

The AI is where this game shines - the computer notices if you are massing your troops in a given area or taking other steps to cause it harm. Your interface also adjusts depending on how you tend to act. If you start slaughtering helpless natives, your interface starts to take on a more dark tone.

The game is relatively complex. You have to keep track of your armed forces on the various planets, you have to keep up diplomatic negotiations with your friends and enemies, plus track the economic status of your worlds. Definitely a game that you get sucked into and realize suddenly that it's 3am and it's time to get to sleep ...

Graphics are good, and do the job of letting you see where your forces are and how your plans are progressing. This isn't a game of cutting-edge graphics, it's a game of pitting your intelligence against the AI of your many opponents. Balance your taxes with your spending, and move out to influence the rest of the planets.

Highly recommended for turn-based gamers who enjoy a game with complexity.

Enjoyable - But Not Fully Refined

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I tend to get hooked on one game at a time, and will play that game 50 to 100 times in a row, over a course of 6 months to a year, before looking for another game to move on to do the same... this game fit the bill for me over the last year, and I'm just now starting to look for a new replacement "favorite game".

Galactic Civilizations has an excellent AI, and decent 2D graphics and musical score, and an easy to understand user interface. It has a complicated tech tree - even in the longest of games, I was never able to get thru all the possible technologies.

One major negative to GC II is the inability to play against others online. While playing against the excellent AI is enjoyable, I certainly would have liked to play against others at some point.

I've been looking at the Galactic Civilizations II Beta (up to 0.21, as of this writing); it will be quite different from GC, being based on 3D graphics - but, right now, it is hard to judge GC II, as it is still in an early Beta state. Having said that, I think they are putting too much emphasis on ship design in GC II, and not enough on graphics related to planetary improvements (both of which are new features in GC II). I also see where the first release of GC II will not provide the ability to play against other humans - this is unfortunate, as this was probably the biggest deficiency in GC I.

Beautiful!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 17
Date: May 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is on my top five list. From the start, I was hooked... at first I fumbled around, figuring things out... but when I got into it, boy did I ever!

Micromanagement is something I've never been good at, which is my downfall because I love the complexities of strategy games. However, this takes the cake. Micro was never an issue when I played this game... and I only played the demo!

Now that I own it, I must say that it has blown me out of the water as far as expectations. MOO3 this is not!

Did they forget to put the fun in?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game seems like a near-clone of Alpha Centauri, but set in a galaxy instead of on a planet. The basic structure of the game is virtually identical, but the major difference is the lack of fun. There is no sense of humor and no cool videos. And the competing races are not at all memorable. Without these elements of entertainment I very quickly felt like I was just reverse engineering a computer program.

Also there are holes in the playability of the game. Several times I got stuck in a state where I had no resources to do anything and I just sat there turn after turn with nothing happening, waiting to be overwhelmed by other teams. It was not at all clear what I had done wrong.

Good concept and technically sophisticated. Just not fun.

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