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Best turn-based space game since MOO2!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 225 / 233
Date: February 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you've ever played and loved Master Of Orion 2, your prayers have been answered. I downloaded the game from GalCiv's site (although you can save $6 by purchasing it from Amazon, but I couldn't wait), and it is a wonderful game. At the time of writing this review, I still haven't slept since downloading it. I haven't done that with a game in years.

Where does this succeed where Master Of Orion 3 and Imperium Galactica failed?

1) The GUI - The interface to the game is very streamlined, simple, and uncluttered. MOO2's greatest feature was how fast you could navigate all of the options. This interface reminds you of the great MOO2 interface with big buttons, a solid feel, and a nice heavy "click" on the buttons. You can control ships with mouse or keypad, and a double-click will access almost anything in the game. Gone are the overly-complex right-click menus and 5-10 layer deep menus of MOO3.

2) The Music - Not overly complex or overdominating. It sets the mood and then stays out of the way.

3) The graphics - You can crank the resolution way up to 1600x1200 if you want to heat up your graphics card, but this is the rare game that looks almost exactly as good at 1024x768. You could have a four year old GeForce2 card and run the game as fast as someone with a brand new 7800. The main reason is that the game uses 3D when necessary to add depth, but otherwise relies on beautifully drawn 2D environments.

4) The mechanics of the gameplay - The game plays fast, but of course, being a turn-based game, you can move as fast or as slow as you like, which is why it is so elegant. A beginner can take his time and enjoy, but as a game goes on and you build a huge empire, you can fly through the screens to manage your empire. The ship design and combat system is truly fun, while maintaining its simplicity.

5) Many ways to win...really! - Most games like this are won through combat or combat+"some minor element that really doesn't matter". In my first game, I cranked up the difficulty and built myself a massive fleet and set out to conquer the universe. Then I noticed my enemies were not fighting each other as much and focusing on me. I had neglected the diplomacy, and I quickly lost the game via diplomacy. You really can win, and get beat, through diplomacy, economy, and many methods other than war. Very cool...

My hats off to the designers of this game. They definitely set out to make an homage to MOO2, and they've succeeded. This little indie publisher really showed up the big guys.

Who knows, maybe in a few years we'll be begging companies to make another GC2:DL!

Spiritual Successor to MOO2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 171 / 178
Date: February 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Master of Orion 2 was probably the last really good game that has been released in this catagory. MOO3 was a bit of a flop -- it was far too automated with far too many "false choices"...ways you could design a spaceship that simply were not as efficient as hitting the button that let the computer design the whole thing for you, instantly.

GalCiv2 brings back everything that was good about MOO2, with modern graphics and appealing decisions to make with just enough automation options to keep the endgame from becoming tedious without ever "playing the game for you".

The main thing I want to talk about, though, is the AI.

Historically, games like this have the computer opponet cheat. You have 1 colony ship, they have 3. How? Because the computer cheats. The developers couldn't come up with a good way to make a smart computer opponet so they compensated by having it cheat instead.

GalCiv2 doesn't do this (unless you want it to, which I don't advise).

The AI is pretty fantastic. Set computer opponets to an "intelligent" level of difficulty and they will fight you with all the same restrictions you have. They have to scout, just like you. Their ships cost just as much as yours. Their factories produce just as quickly as yours. The only advantage they have is one of efficient micromanagement.

It's not completely infallible, it sometimes does silly things, but it's good enough and smart enough to trounce you most days without any need to cheat.

I find this to be much more appealing. I like a level playing field.

Beyond this, the game has all the usual componets. You research technologies you want from a large and diverse tree. You colonize planets and build factories and research facilities and so forth. You design starships with your latest technology including a fairly optional ability to customize the "look" of your ships. There's diplomacy and war and espionage and random events and all that.

The only thing really missing is tactical combat, although whether we really miss it is arguable.

In the MOO series of games, lots of time was spent on tactical combat -- how your fleet is going to attack the enemy fleet. You move the ships around on the screen and tell them who to attack, etc.

In GalCiv2, this is all handled automatically, similar to the Civilization games. They do take it one step further by providing you with a nice "tactical battle" view, though, which takes you through a full 3-D enactment of the battle but it's just a viewer. You aren't ordering your ships to do anything in this mode, you're just watching it unfold like an episode of Babylon 5.

The bright side of this, I suppose, is that it doesn't take you all year to complete a game. Like Civilization, your focus is on research, developing your worlds and playing a strategy game. You won't be spending hours of your time stuck in a tactical battle between ships.

One of the best 4X designs in game history

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 47 / 47
Date: April 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

[edited 5/29/2006]
Early versions of this review stated that the 5 stars for 'Overall' was a mistake. No longer. With the release of the 1.2 beta and the innovative direction that Stardock Games is taking with GalCiv2, this game clearly deserves the 5-star rating. Go to galciv2.com to see what I'm talking about.
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I was an early fan of the original Galactic Civilizations, which I enjoyed when it first came out, and which I've continued to re-install and play over the years. When GalCiv II came out, I downloaded and installed it, started playing--and immediately got frustrated. That's because I kept expecting the user interface and game design to play like the original. I finally stopped playing, went through all the video tutorials, read the manual a little, and started again--and everything was fine.

More than fine, actually. GalCiv II is that rare modern game that gives as much or more thought to game design as it does to eye candy. The result is a game that makes you think about what you're doing, while letting you have fun doing it.

GalCiv II is an outstanding example of the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) genre that includes classics such as Stars!, Masters of Orion II, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire, the entire Civilization line, and so on. It provides a variety of options (map size, star density/quality, racial attributes, selection of competing races, etc.) to allow you to customize the game play to your liking. Likewise, you have the standard set of victory conditions available (political, technological, cultural, military), as well as the usual technology tree, structures and enhancement, trade routes, and so on. All well and good, but all pretty much common to other 4X games, though GalCiv II carries it off as well or better than most.

Where GalCiv II really shines, in my opinion, is in the ship design capability. Now, designing and/or customizing spaceships is nothing new--heck, I co-authored a computer game over 20 years ago that let you customize your spaceship--but in GalCiv II, it's both fun and critically important. _That_ is a rare combination for any aspect of a game's design; usually, the fun parts and the critically important parts are distinct and separate.

Much of my technological research (and financial allocation to that research) is steered by the type of ship(s) that I think I'm going to need soon. And while I have a handful of custom designs that I use in each game (yes, you can save designs from one game to the next, though they won't become available until you've researched all the required techs), I am constantly trying out new designs and combinations.

You also have the ability to obsolete any design (including the preexisting "core" designs), delete user designs, upgrade user designs, and upgrade existing ships--either individually or (if you've got the bucks) as an entire group. That last feature (upgrading ships) can be very valuable, whether it's to speed up a colony ship or scout that's chugging along or to upgrade the weapons systems in all your ships.

Beyond that, GalCiv II has a truly innovative mechanism for tricking out your ships--dozens of (cost-free) structures that do not add any functionality or capability but which can radically transform how your ship looks.

Ship combat is based on a straightforward beam/missile/railgun v. shield/point defense/armor calculation, with the ability to build fleets of a certain size (based on your current logistics technology rating). Fleet-to-fleet combat can be watched in a 3-D display, and combat itself tends to resolve in accordance with the "fuzzy wuzzy" rule (i.e., a small number of ships of a certain power and defense ratings can often be defeated by a larger number of weaker ships--because they can usually get off far more shots each round).

The game's UI--once you get used to it, if you're a GalCiv I player--is outstanding. It scrolls smoothly, zooms and rotates smoothly, and lets you accomplish what you need to with a minimal of fuss. You also have possibly the best set of management UI screens that I've ever seen in a 4X game.

What is even more impressive is that Stardock Games actively solicting feedback from the users for improvements to the game--and then releasing them in a matter of _weeks_. The latest release [5/29/06] is the 1.2 beta (soon to go gold) and the list of feature improvements/enhancements is truly impressive. Combine that with the Stardock copy protection policy (there is none, but you need a registered copy to get the updates), and I think that Stardock is going to put a lot of pressure on other game companies.

Finally, Stardock continues to expand the moddability of Galciv2, including the ability to modify the user interface and other key aspects. Stardock envisions a time when players can, in effect, create their own 4x game with the 'GalCiv' core engines.

What are the weaknesses (at least, pre-1.2)? The software itself has an annoying habit of getting ahead of you--for example, while you're in the middle of doing something (such as selecting a ship to build), the game may suddenly pop up a new alert box to let you know that another ship arrived at its own destination.

Also, the various AIs just don't come across as having much personality; dealing with them becomes pretty rote and automatic after a while. (The gold standard in this remains the original Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--the factions and their leaders felt more like real characters than any other 4X game I've played.) However, as others have noted, this doesn't mean that the AIs are dumb; they're not. They're smart, tough, and adaptive.

Next, the worlds and systems themselves are a bit boring. The star map is 2-D, the systems are largely plain vanilla, and the inhabitable worlds all tend to look the same after a while. Planetary geography (beyond the number of developable tiles) doesn't really matter.

The game also has occasional stability problems, which I've handled simply by upping the autosave feature to every 4 games.

I do have one major UI complaint, which I think the original GalCiv actually did better: when browsing through world information (full screen view), there appears to be no easy way to see where that world is located on the map--nothing equivalent to the old "Tactical" view in GalCiv. I find this a major annoyance. On a related note, the minimap view is much harder to read, scale, and scroll than the original GalCiv minimap. These are two areas where GalCiv II went backwards from GalCiv.

Finally, note that this is a turn-based 4X game. This means a lot of resource management, particularly if (like me) you play with very large maps (I've had games with nearly 200 planets under my control). This also means that you can reach a point in a game where it's clear that you're going to win (via, say, technology or influence), but you have to play several hours more to actually gain the victory.

My sons and sons-in-law, all in their mid- to late 20s, all play computer games, but they go for first-person shooter (FPS) and/or real-time strategy (RTS) games; they look at the 4X games I play and shake their heads.

All those issues aside, I have found GalCiv II to be addictive nearly on the same level as Civ IV. I find myself trying out different settings, different approaches, and different ship designs and combinations. And the innovative updating system (via Stardock/TotalGaming.net) means that many aspects of the game will shift and improve over time. I expect to be playing GalCiv II for many years to come.

Your mileage may vary. ..bruce..

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NOTE: for players of the original GalCiv, here are some key differences that will affect your gameplay and strategy:

-- You can play any race, not just human.

-- Free-standing (non-resource-based) starbases are now specialized into military, economic, or influence, though all starbases (resource and non-resource) can have both attack and defense modules.

-- Resource-based starbases have no economic, influence, or military-assistance capabilities.

-- The influence starbases are not nearly as powerful as the influence attributes of starbases were in the original GalCiv, making a cultural conquest much harder and slower to accomplish.

-- Planets are uninhabitable (class 0) or inhabitable (class 4 or greater); you don't have marginal worlds (e.g., classes 12-14) that you can terraform up into habitability as you did in the original GalCiv.

-- You can't build every improvement on a given planet; instead, a planet has a number of tiles proportional to its class level, and that limits how many buildings and projects you can create on that world, though you can upgrade, replace, or decommision existing developments.

-- You do have the ability to terraform some additional tiles on certain worlds as you gain the technology to do so.

-- Specific tiles on a planet may have bonuses in manufacturing, research, food production, influence, entertainment, and so on. These bonuses can be 100% (all), 300% (food, research and manufacturing only), or 700% (manufacturing only, as far as I can tell). Note that these can be _very_ powerful; building a manufacturing unit on a 700% bonus tile is the same as having 8 manufacturing units on that planet.

-- Different races can colonize different inhabitable worlds in the same star system. Again, this has a _big_ impact on attempting a cultural victory.

-- As noted above, you can design and customize your own ships, and you can (and absolutely should) explicitly organize fleets of ships for combat purposes; otherwise, ships occupying the same tile attack and defend individually. The maximum size of a given fleet is limited by your current logistics rating (based on tech research) and the hull sizes of the ships.

-- Critical note: ships in orbit around a planet (including fleets that you may move into orbit) do _not_ act and fight as a fleet unless you build the Fleet Manager improvement on that planet.

Definitely A MOO Killer!! A++!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: February 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Definitely A MOO Killer A++!!
No Multiplayer was included because the developers felt it didnt warrant the 30% of the game budget, so instead they focused highly on the singly player aspect of the game and they included Ship customization and other cool stuff. The ship customization is awesome, you can create all kinds of different and cool ships, shields, engines, weapons and much much more. you can even attempt to create your own personal X-wing look alike fleet and send them into battle and watch the action unfold. The game has nice graphics, and alot of stuff to research! This game definitely was insipired by the MOO series. I bought the game Digitally (download) and i am 100% satisfied with what i expected. The developers did say if enough peeps wanted multiplayer they could easily create an expansion to include it in the future. The Tech Support is superb, and the game runs nicely.. if your a fan of the Master of Orion Series, check this game out you wont be disappointed.

One of those Blue Moon Games

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: March 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've played many games over my lifetime and in the last 10 years there hasn't been a lot to be excited about. Galactic Civ II brings a breath of fresh air to turn based gaming and streamlined play in the 4x space strategy game genre.

This is one of those games that has that "just one more turn" aspect to it and a couple of hours will turn into 8-10 hours before you know it.

In the beginning it's a race to colonize, and attempt to keep up with economics, military and social spending against an excellent AI. Now, of course there are exploits that some people use and then complain about, but, if you love challenge and can keep yourself from using gamey exploits that the AI wouldn't or doesn't use, it's a very challenging game. With 13 difficulty settings and a range of galactic settings I'm sure anyone can find their challenge level in this game.

I've enjoyed this one much more than CIV IV, but, this one is new and not a contious sequel of changes like CIV IV has had over the years. It is a II, but, I didn't play a lot of the first one because it didn't have ship design or a more realistic planetary build system. This one does, it's a lot like Ascendency with 100x better AI.

Combat both space and land is pretty abstract, more or less autocalc, but, a lot does depend on who attacks first and on land battles you have sort of a slot machine rolling set of "odds", if you click at the right time you can get extreme odds, if you click at not the right moment you'll get mediocre odds. You don't really get penalized for not cliking at the right time, you just get a bonus if you get lucky (and there is a luck skill in this game) and get double odds sometimes.

The space combat deals with mathematical equations only, the best weapon ship, doesn't always mean an instant victory, sine there are other variables in this game like "experience" which gains you more hp's over time IF the ship survives a lot of battles. This gives a lot of strategic flavor to the game, because if you sit back and be passive most of the game, even though you have a huge fleet of ships, you could get overrun by inferior size ships, but, with superior hit points. I've seen fleets of SMALL hull ships take out my entire fleet of MEDIUM hull ships, simply because I sat back and didn't gain any experience. (trying to win a diplomatic victory or influence victory)

And that's the other great thing about this game, you don't have to play conquer the map every single game and you can actually become friendly with every race in the game if you play it right and win without ever fighting one battle.

Now the bad. At this time there is no multiplayer feature, but, Stardock has said if there is enough call for it they will make an expansion for those that like multiplayer, that way those that just like single player don't have to spend extra money on something they will never use. This is a new idea and approach to making games they say. Plus if you notice the game is like $10 less than normal games because it is "single player only".

It also has a bunch of bugs and things that need tweaking and changed, and Stardock are busy at it, it's got a patch out now that takes care of most of the hardware issues and many of the game issues it had upon release. I've been playing for over 2 weeks now and haven't encountered any major issues myself that I couldn't solve on my own end. It will take some time to be 100%, but, as it stands now it's every bit of a 90% game.

My recommendations, buy it if you like 4x space strategy games, can deal without any tactical combat or multiplayer features and like spending every hour of your life playing a game. hehe

Everything you want, None of what you don't.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: June 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations 2 has great graphics, very nice sound, and most importantly it is both fun and everything is very smooth.

You ever play a game by Blizzard Entertainmet? If you have then you know what I'm talking about when I say everything runs smoothly.

But Galactic Civilizations 2 is cutting edge in the area of Turn-Based Space-Strategy. It is very much like Civilization but instead of running a single planet you are the President/King/ect. of an entire space civilization doing your very best to protect it from the other races and guide it to victory.

The AI is as smart or as dumb as you want it to b and one of my FAVORITE features is you get to DESIGN your OWN SHIPS! YES! So if you want to remake StarWars and have the humans all be Evil Imperials conquering the Galaxy with the Death Star and their Star Destroyers, THEN SO BE IT! Yes, you heard me, YOU CAN BUILD A DEATH STAR! HA!

There is a depth to this game that shows that the creators are serious sci-fi strategy fans and probably have played all of the turn based strategy games themselves before designing this game.

In short, this game has everything you like about turn based strategy and none of what you don't. Everything is seemless and yet you are still in charge of everything at the same time.

Lastly, the game while very complex is not very difficult to learn because the AI has easy to read suggestions about everything and if you are guiding your civilization the wrong way the AI will sometimes jokingly/seriously 'suggest' things you could do better. =-)

The new king of the 4X Mountain!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: March 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I purchased the first Galactic Civilizations (or GalCiv) game some time ago, I was amazed with both how much and how little the game resembled my all-time favorite game, Master of Orion 2. Ever since developer Quicksilver announced that MOO3 was in development, I waited with tons of excitement till it was announced that it had finally gone gold. Unfortunately, despite very high hopes and expectations MOO3 ended up being just as much of a total dissapointment for me as it was for many others, and the 4X (X-pand, X-plore, X-ploit, and x-terminate) crown was clearly up in the air.

Enter a small company named Stardock, which released GalCiv as the first true turn-based 4X space game since MOO2 that was actually, fun, engrossing, detailed and addictive.The first GalCiv certainly got a lot of play time with me, but certain things seemed either awkward or missing altogether. Chief among these was a tactical combat system and the ability to design your own ships. But these minor gripes were outweighed by the fact that Stardock really kicks ass, because GlaCiv was not only easily moddable (which the devs actively encouraged), but the game also had ABSOLUTELY NO COPY PROTECTION. To me that takes a lot of guts, and it seemed to pay off in spades for Stardock.

So now with the benefit of tons of player input and development time, Stardock releases GalCiv II. Right out of the gates, Stardock shows everyone that they remember what other company's seem to forget: That gamers buy games, and have opinions on said games that they want devs to listen to. Strdock listened to what people wanted, and the result was what I consider to be the true successor to Master of Orion 2 and the new king of the 4X genre. The game is not only as addictive as the original, but many personal gripes that I (and others) had seemed to have been dealt with in a classy way. And whereas MOO3 did away with the tried and true MOO gameplay in favor of something completely new and different, Stardock didn't get crazy trying to reinvent the wheel and ended up suceeding where Quicksilver arguably failed.

For starters, players can now design their own ships using a CAD-like system that is both simple and fun to use. And although there is still no tactical combat a-la MOO2, there is a way in which you can cinematically view battles as they are fought out by the AI. This is a good compromise to me, as anyone that remembers a huge late-game fleet action in MOO2 with 4 full rows of ships will sympathise with me on this. Another shining feature of the game is the incredible AI. I swear, there have been few time where I was this impressed with the level of complexity in a computer opponent. Some may argue that the awesome AI is there to compensate for a lack of multiplayer, and I can almost agree with that. But there is just something about the way the AI tries to trick you, backstab you, and lull you into a false sense of security that will make you quickly forget about a term called "multiplayer".

Pros: Updated, modern graphics (builds on an already great game design), awesome replayability, brutal AI, ship building, no tactical combat to micromanage.

Cons: Minor bugs at initial release, no multiplayer capability, brutal AI that may intimidate n00bs to the series, no tactical combat.

Summary: All in all, this is simply the best 4X game available, period. Still have MOO2 on your hard drive? Ditch it now, because this game plays smooth, is challenging, and is completely moddable! I would consider this as a new benchmark in serious strategy gaming.

Instant classic, just add ship designer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: June 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First up: If you're an adrenaline junkie or an action-addict, this game is definitely not for you. If you're into superb graphics and bugger the gameplay, this game is not for you. If you prefer to use your twitch reflexes to blow somebody's head off (in-game) rather than quiet contemplation of tactics and strategy, then please, please don't buy this game - it's definitely not for you.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy playing turn-based strategy games like Civilisation 4 or Heroes of Might and Magic, then you're going to love this game. In a world of adrenaline junkies, the turn-based genre is a slowly dying breed. Every once in awhile, a game comes along that can show that this genre still has tremendous potential. Civ4 is one example - and GalCiv2 is another.

The biggest disadvantage to newbie players (like myself) is the lack of an in-game tutorial. This would've helped tremendously in figuring out how to get started. Another big drawback is the confusing explanations of how hammers, beakers and shields work in this game. It took awhile for me to work out, but I wish the manual had been more helpful. And finally, although the technology entries were very amusing ("Old McDonald had a..."), they don't provide as much technical detail as you'd hope. This is important when you're designing ships, or deciding which buildings to construct on your newest planet.

Which leads me to the positives. One of the biggest highlights of this game is the ship designer. It's incredibly easy to use but also incredibly powerful. There's the potential to construct any type of ship imaginable. Which is very useful when personalising a custom-created civilisation.

The other highlight is the AI. At sub-normal levels it'll plod along like in most bog-standard games. But at normal or above, the computer starts making moves you'd expect a human player to make. Like surrendering to a more powerful race rather than being conquered by your massive fleet of marauding warships. Or secretely forming an alliance with another civilisation behind your back. In short: the AI in this game is delightfully evil.

In conclusion, GalCiv2 has all the makings of an absolute classic. Addictive gameplay, plus an extremely easy to use but powerful ship designer, and some evil AI, makes for a thoroughly enjoyable and challenging game. And the support from Stardock has been just tremendous.

Improved and Still Very Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: February 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Galactic Civilizations 2 improves upon the original game without changing what made the first version very fun. In a similar way that updated versions of "Civilization" kept on adding a few more improvements on an already great concept. Battles logistics are refined as well as planet management. You have more control, as each planet now have unique characteristics. The graphics and sound are much better, as expected. There are a few small bugs that I expect will be fixed with an upcoming patch, but overall it's very playable out of the box. If you are finally getting out of CIV 4 recovery and your spouse or significant other will not groan at you too loud for getting this, enjoy this game.

Awesome TBS game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 17
Date: February 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Stardock hit it out of the park with this one. A fantastic turn based games that will keep you coming back for more for years to come.

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