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Just as good as MOO

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations is as addicitive as the original Masters of Orion and probably much better. The game strikes an excellent balance between playability and micro-managing. You'll spend little time managing and much more time having fun. The game also has that great quality of possessing a good AI that keeps you fighting until the end but also allows you, just when you think you're done for, to come back strong. Overall a great game for anyone interested in the genre.

Skip this junk!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 65
Date: April 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this junk thinking it would be something like good old Master of Orion only to the discover how wrong I was. Let's see:

1. Gameplay - worst elements of the games of this type combined. The designers clearly missed the point that much micromanagement is not the same as truly good control. Ships cannot be customized. Space battles are as primitive as in a game from 10 years ago! Lots of menus repeating the same useless info in different ways. Anybody who has played Master of Orion will think this game was made by Idiots Co.

2. Graphics - while some enjoyment can be found in the goofy style, the quality is one absolutely substandard for a modern game. Some of the color schemes will make your eyes blurry after an hour.

3. Fun factor - this game is no fun. I uninstalled it the next day after I bought it.

Enough said. Trust me, I would think this game is a piece of junk even if it came for free. Or, don't trust me, and find out for yourself at the expense of forty of your hard-earned dollars.

Terrible AI won't even attack you, horrible game design

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: August 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations is the junk food of 4x games.
It's filling and comfortably familar, but after awhile you realize it's making you sick.

It's basically what you would expect if you took every successful 4x game and merged them together, but with no regards for balance or gameplay. The feature list looks impressive, until you realize half the features are broken or unbalanced. Here's a sample game I played once I realized how broken things were:

Normal difficulty/Small Map

Right away I colonized 2 systems.
I did nothing except change research, occasionally build a building, and hit next turn. I did not build any attack/defense ships.

This went on until near the end of the research tree(!), when finally the AI attacked. I built ships to defend, but I was overwhelmed as you would expect. Then they ground invaded. Carrier of 5 million lost for them, killed 3 million of mine, repeat. Sounds bad since I only had 2 planets, right? Well unfortunately the pop of my planet they were invading was 100 billion. They couldn't conceiveably wipe me out since they couldn't make transports fast enough. Why are transports "used up" when you attack anyway?

So after a few hundred attempts they seemed to give up
then space sharks were randomly spawned. Since I had no ships they didn't attack me, and instead wiped out both the remaining ai player's fleets. I couldn't invade for the same reasons they couldn't invade me though, so I just waited to see what would happen.

Eventually I was given one of the AI's systems. Turns out I had set some money in "destabilize" a few dozen turns ago.
I pumped up the amount of money i was spending on it, to about 10% of my economy. Soon both civilizations gave me all their systems, including their capitals!!!!

So basically all you need to do to win is do nothing for a few thousand turns then put some money in destabilizing your opponent's systems and you win. That's it.

Utter junk.

What a waste

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 40
Date: January 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This had to be the most boring game that I have every tried to play. I spent 2 hours trying to figure it out to no avial. I feel like the reviews were written by someone who was paid (I must be missing something).

So boring!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 17
Date: April 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i played this game maybe a few days and then never again. It is just plain boring. Nothing in comparison to MOO3 or civilization. I really do not understand why today the AI player is so unlogically sophisticated. Do not understand me wrong since i love a challenge. Its only that why should i want to try to outrun a car. That would not make sense!

Not really much pleasure in playing this game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 10
Date: July 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

From the reviews I ahve read of this game it seems they are seeing a different game from what I have played.

I would have thought a possiblity of a "cultural" victory was possible. In the 6 games i have found only one thing happens. You are suddenly attacked with more ships than it seems possible to have been built in the time you had played (especially considering the amount of research that should have been necessary). Even if i set the bonuses of my civilization to max research I still find the other civilizations coming up with attack ships before I have even began research on them and by the time i can build much beyond defenders there is a fleet of invading ships numbering more than twice their known planets.

I am disappointed in this game enough to go back to playing civilization and wish i had saved my money.

Friendly Criticism

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 26
Date: March 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

GC aims to concentrate on strategy rather than micromanagement but IMHO kinda falls between. It doesn't have the detail to involve eg planet type is defined by a single no. vrs eg stars! 3differnet parameters which suited different races, different mineral levels needed for different kit. Ends up as bland, arrive dump people if planet no over 14, repeat. No decsions such as well it doen't suit my race but if I put a holding colony in how about a trade with race X which its ideal for or 'garden world' vrs 'mining hellhole'. On the larger map sizes micromanagement still ends up as a problem particularly for starbase upgrades.
Bug wise- Not real bad (typos, exclusive events happening twice, menus not auto updating between turns unless you go out and in again) and seems v well supported on the forum (although manual is appalling and I couldn't suss tutorial) but some gameplay 'decsions' eg unused resources in a colony disapear but you've only got fairly global control over allocation, seem rather odd.

It does have some really good points such as multiple paths to victory you can actually achieve (tech, political etc), intuitive interspecies trade.

After MOO3 crash and burning, Stars Supernova disapearing in to a publishing hellhole I really wanted GC to suceed unfortunatly for me it just doesn't have that hook to keep me playing.

Most excellent, far better than the Disappointing MOO3

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I waited years for a successor to Master of Orion series (part III), and as horribly disappointing as that game was I found what I needed with Galactic Civilizations, the true successor to MOO2. There are some differences, such as simplified combat, but everything you ever wanted in a 4x ('conquer the galaxy') game is here. I highly recommend this product.

Updates Updates Updates

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

They keep adding more and more to this game. I can't believe it a game producer that actually gives you more than you expect. Awesome game. Only thing I could hope for would be multiplayer. Buy it now!

Play it only if you can't find Master of Orion 1 or 2

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: January 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is a knock-off of the classic Master of Orion (MoO) series. It's not a bad game; it's just that this has been done before and better.

Gameplay: This is a turn-based, strategy game with a somewhat sharp learning curve. The object of the game is to conquer the planets of enemy civilizations with either your military might, cultural influence, or political wherewithal. There is a barrage of information that you need to absorb during gameplay, from statistics to what's going on with your planets' economies. Lots of things can be researched and upgraded, but it's sometimes hard to tell what difference they make in the scheme of things. You have very little control regarding customizing ships. Conflict with other civilizations in this game is inevitable, but not very exciting. There are many lulls in the game, and you'll sometimes get downright bored having to click on the NEXT TURN button until something happens.

Visuals: Ship-to-ship combat is very basic, and surprisingly not as well depicted as in the classic Master of Orion, which came out in 1994! Graphics generally are adequate for such a game, but no real improvement over MoO2.

Sound: The game does have nice music. However, there are no voices beyond the narrator at the opening. I don't recall what sound ships make, but nothing very memorable.

Technical/Replayability: The game was perfectly stable on my computer. The instruction manual is adequate. The developer has released a number of patches and updates that supposedly add some new content to the game. After playing the game once, I had no desire to play it again. Those who like the game should get some value out of it, since it can be replayed with somewhat different results. However, you can only play the human side.

Overall, if you have played Master of Orion 1 or 2, you may find this one to be disappointing. Given that it had the MoO model to work from, there is really no excuse for this game to be as limited and unoriginal as it is.

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