Galactic Civilisations 2

[The_Doctor]

Does anybody have this yet?

I will be getting it on Friday.

The reviews are good:
http://www.nlgaming.com/nl/asp/id_13...reviewDisp.htm
http://www.pcgameworld.com/reviews/g...iew.php/id/889

[discovery1]

Yes, I do. And there is a thread a while back on it. It's good. I'm barely holding my own against the greatest power in the galaxy in my latest(2nd) game

[Xiahou]

Yeah, I dl'ed it for free because of my grandfathered totalgaming.net membership. It seems pretty cool, but I havent spent too much time on it as of yet.

[Reverend Joe]

"Far out, man, all right, I've been waitin' for this one!"

[BelgradeWar]

Hmmm, maybe I'll try it. Can someone tell me is it something like Space Empires IV, because that was by far the most advanced game of this type, albeit not too fancy in appearance...

[Martok]

Well I'm getting it tomorrow (my pre-order finally shipped out; yay!). I'll try and let you know--assuming I'm able to stop playing it, anyway.

[Zenicetus]

I've been playing it for a few days. I never played the earlier version, so I'm climbing a steep learning curve. This game is complicated! But I think I'm finally getting my head wrapped around how the economy works. Some quick impressions:

The two features that really knock me out (so far) are the diplomacy and the ship builder. The galaxy feels very "alive" once you start interacting with other civilizations, and there are many ways to work diplomatic angles.

The ship builder is a blast. You can customize ships from a toolbox of parts. I spent most of last Sunday just getting lost in the ship builder.

On the downside, the overall graphic design is a bit cartoonish. The idea of the ship builder is great, but the results can look more like Lego toys than spaceships. My last space game was X3 which had beautiful ship and space graphics, so I guess I've been spoiled by the look of that game. It's a minor quibble though.

The other downside is no tactical battles. Everything is auto-calc'd, and then the game runs a little movie showing the 3D space battle. The developer is adamant about not including tactical battles. He says the human player can always find weaknesses in the AI and exploit it. I miss this feature regardless, but it does mean they can put all the programming effort into strategic AI for the galaxy map, and that does seem to be very strong.

Anyway, yeah... a fun game so far, and highly recommended if you're into pure (non-tactical) turn-based strategy games.

P.S. it would be great if MTW2 had this level of diplomatic interaction.

[BelgradeWar]

Hmmm, sounds nice...always liked those games where you can customise a lot...but, generally these space exploration/domination (except SE IV, but nothing can beat that game in terms of customisation) get me bored after few days...but maybe diplomacy model here can keep the game rollng...

BTW, has anyone played Space Rangers 2?

[GoreBag]

I went to EB to buy it today after perusing the intraweb for reviews (which were all favourable). I only found the original in the deluxe version - they were sold out of the sequel, but get new copies in tomorrow. I pre-ordered it in full.

[Xiahou]

You know you can buy it on totalgaming.net (run by the developer-Stardock) and download it. No need to wait for deliveries or any of that and even better, downloads with their apps require no CDs!

If you wanted you could buy a 10 token membership for $70 bucks- GC2 costs 5, so you'd have 5 tokens left to get another couple of games with too. Alot of their library is kinda cheesy/dated, but some like Uplink are awesome, imo.

Sorry if that sounds like a sales pitch, but I really like their system since it has no intrusive copy protection vs something draconian like steam. And, being developers themselves, they(Stardock) are extremely developer friendly- unlike many big publishers who screw the devs.

[GoreBag]

That is quite possibly the most helpful thing I've ever seen you post. But then, that's 70$ American, so I'm not really losing much money in the transaction.

Tru dat about Uplink, though. I still play that game.

Thank you kindly. I'm going to look into this.

[BDC]

I just pre-ordered for £18 (maybe $28 or something) off Amazon, so hopefully it was a good purchase.

Apparently its #1 software product in Walmart in the USA now. Word-of-mouth really does work for selling. You just need a good product. EA could learn a lot. Invest all that marketing money into design!

[GoreBag]

Heh. When I got the game, there was an ad in the box for totalgaming.net. I would have discarded it without second glance if it were not for Xiahou's post.

The game is a lot of fun. Simple tech trees make everything easier to manage, even though I like a little bit of crossover in places like that. Diplomacy is fun, reminiscent of the Civ series (with trackers to keep track of past relations, like in Civ 4). The coolest part of the game, though, is the ability to design and customise your own ships. I've spent a great deal of time setting up my strategy and creating newer, longer-range colony ships, surveyors and freighters, as well as specialised fighter ships (quicker and with a greater sensor range for better interception, for example). I'm having a blast.

[Zenicetus]

The ship designer is wicked addictive. I take back what I said about ships looking too much like Lego toys. It just takes time experimenting with the editor to come up with what you want. There are also some additional construction parts if you get the Collector's Edition of the game.

Check out the "Transformers" ship someone just posted: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx...162&AID=104273

And here's a Star Destroyer (Star Wars): http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=104065

The cool thing is how the eye candy is a separate layer from the actual functionality of the ship, which is constantly being upgraded as you research new tech and develop the resources to build these things. You can design a totally badass-looking small fighter, even in the early stage of the game when your actual weapons and defense are primitive. You're not stuck on some hardcoded progression where you only get the cool-looking ships later in the game (well, except for hull size... you do have to wait to research the larger hulls for capital ships)..

[GoreBag]

You can design a totally badass-looking small fighter, even in the early stage of the game when your actual weapons and defense are primitive.

And upgrade later as your tech improves! I love it!

[Xiahou]

Check out the "Transformers" ship someone just posted: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx...162&AID=104273

That is freakin awesome.

[Voigtkampf]

Best fun I've had with a space strategy game since Master of Orion 2.

[Bob the Insane]

Playing it and loving it...

After a quick game in a small galaxy with 4 races all on sub-normal intelligence (which I won with a diplomatic victory) I switched to a Gigantic galaxy with all the races all on "Intelligent" (common Stars, common planets, rare habital planets, tight clusters)...

OMG...

I still have not met all the main races yet but have come across 7 of them plus 6 minor races (evil squirrels??) and the interaction is just so natural...

I am have a heel of a time staying in the running and if you want to survive you need to make a few friends at least... I had a slight tech lead (from neglecting military buildup) which I only maintained with high spending and tech trading. Then the Xorn and the Yor declared war... I understand the Xorn in a way because they where bottled up against the side of the map by my empire and I was militarily weak. I have not got to the bottom of the Yor's reaasons yet but they are quite far away... Fortunately I had invested in a large industrial capacity and with my slight tech lead and intelligence about Xorn ship designs I was able to develop craft to counter theirs. They had Mass Drivers and light armour so I built craft heavy on armour and utilizing beam weapons. It worked very well and my outnumbers fleets devistated the Xorn military. It was funny to watch the Xorn leader's attitude change from "we will wipe you out" to "sorry this war thing is just a big joke, you can take a joke can't you?"...

I just turned my attention to the Yor now and am happy to see that their ships match the Xorn in design but are a little more advanced.

In the meantime the Dregan are fighting everyone else and taking over the minor races...

It really is too much fun...

[Lemur]

I'm liking it, but I'm crashing like the Hindenburg every time I play it. I've updated all drivers, dialed down the hardware acceleration on the sound, and I'm completely stymied. Gonna have to go to the support chat rooms and see if they can help a lemur out.

[Lehesu]

I'd like to buy it, but I want to be sure that it will be playable with my system. I have a Pentium III 1.0 Ghz processor, 256 Mb RAM, GeForce 4 Mx 420.

The min specs are a 800 Mhz processor, 256 Mb RAM. I meet the min specs, but minimum specs don't always mean playable. Anybody on the lower end of the computer power curve that has this game?

[Lehesu]

Getting a new computer in the semi-near future. No use spending money on a computer that I will no longer use.

[Zenicetus]

I'd like to buy it, but I want to be sure that it will be playable with my system. I have a Pentium III 1.0 Ghz processor, 256 Mb RAM, GeForce 4 Mx 420.

The min specs are a 800 Mhz processor, 256 Mb RAM. I meet the min specs, but minimum specs don't always mean playable. Anybody on the lower end of the computer power curve that has this game?

You might want to post that question over in the official forum, maybe do a search first on that topic to see if others have already covered it (http://www.galciv2.com/).

I agree that your RAM is really low, not just for this game but Windows in general. You might be able to get away with it, if you're running a really stripped-down config with no extraneous services running. But more RAM would be better. One gig is pretty standard these days for all major applications and games. Two gigs is where you start to really notice that things are running like silk with no (or very little) HD paging with modern games. Having lots of RAM also helps when you're multitasking a game, like Alt-Tabbing out to ask a question on the game's web forum, or check email. GalCiv2 has a very smooth Alt-Tab exit and return, if you don't have a tight RAM ceiling.

Edit: just noticed your post about a new comp on the horizon. Go for 2 gigs RAM, even if it means skimping a little on the CPU speed. Tons of RAM and a hot video card are more important than having the fastest possible CPU.

[TinCow]

I'm liking it, but I'm crashing like the Hindenburg every time I play it. I've updated all drivers, dialed down the hardware acceleration on the sound, and I'm completely stymied. Gonna have to go to the support chat rooms and see if they can help a lemur out.

I am having the same problems. Most crashes seem to come when I'm in the shipyard.

[TinCow]

I had one crash in the Shipyard, while designing a tiny fighter. No crashes since though, and i've made dozens of ships.

My shipyard crashes seem to occur mostly when I try to update a ship I have already designed. For some reason nothing happens when I click save. Then when I exit back to the galaxy map, the save window comes up asking for a description of the ship and it crashes. I've also had a few random no-reason crashes.

[frogbeastegg]

:froggy enters the thread again, muttering to herself that she does not have time for another game, especially not one of those time consuming strategy ones, least of all when she recently escaped civ 4's clutches and definitely not since it has taken her over 2 months to make 5 hours of progress in Prince of Persia SOT!:

I demand you stop making this game sound good!

:Sees the comment about it being a more complex version of civ set in space. Resolve teeters, under the excuse that there is no harm in just asking:

Alternatively, anyone want to compare this to civ 4 and Alpha Centarui (which sounds like the closest matches I've played) for a frog? Where it is better, where it is not, little nice features, things which feel like they are missing, and so on. Sounds like it may be worth waiting for another patch ... is it likely to be well supported?

[Xiahou]

... is it likely to be well supported?

If GalCiv1 is any indication, I'd say yes. They had several patches and a free add-on with new content in addition to a full 'for pay' expansion. Im really pleased with Stardock thus far.

I finally got started with my first real game with a small galaxy and uncommon habitable planets with 6 (Me, Altarians, Torians, Drengin, Iconian, and Yor) total races. I lost the planet lottery and was only able to get one 10 quality planet other than Earth before all the good ones were snapped up. I did find an awesome PQ18 planet, but the Iconians got to it way before my colony ship was even near it. Knowing I was in trouble, I went 100% research and charged down the diplomacy tree so I could hopefully do some advantageous technology trades with other civs. As I made contact with other civs, it became clear that the Iconians were the civ to beat as first the Drengin and later the Yor surrendered to them. Naturally, they started trying to extort funds from me and just as naturally, I told them to go to hell.

Long story short- they started attacking me, but my technological advances helped me stave them off even with the massive production disparity. Finally, my "luck" points paid off and I uncovered 2 complete Ranger class starships which allowed me to slaughter any fleets they had in my sectors, but they were too far away for me to hit em where it would count. So, what do I do? I screw over my neighbors- the peace loving Torians. They folded like a cheap suit after I took their homeworld in a suprise attack, allowing me the production and the range to go after the Iconians finally. I've now conquered 3 Iconian planets and have them on the ropes. Great stuff.

[ah_dut]

One wee little question: how does this game fare for people who only play say an hour a week. Is it like dungeon keeper, where I can just go on and off or is it the type of game where I have to play for ages to get anywhere (like the X series)

[Zenicetus]

It works fine if you only have a little time here and there to play it. You can choose the length of each game by setting the map size and numbers of stars/habitable planets. Tiny and small maps push civs into contact very quickly, and the game won't last all that long (depending on what victory condition you're going for... conquest is faster than a tech or influence victory).

The larger maps lead to longer games, where you'll have a better chance of moving through most of the tech tree. So you can basically choose the type of game you want. It's nothing at all like X2 or X3 where your economic expansion and military power is locked into a non-adjustable timeline in a fixed universe. I'm dipping into GalCiv2 campaigns when I can find an hour or two of free time here and there, while also trying to finish a Sassanid campaign in RTW/BI, and also indulging my wife's obsession with WoW.

P.S. there is a scripted Dreadlord campaign, and I don't know how long that takes. I've been having too much fun just playing the sandbox game, gradually ramping up the map size and AI quality as I learn the mechanics.

[Butcher]

Regarding support, it is Published by Paradox, and there are patches out already (it wouldn't be a Paradox game without it! :D).

Game is one of the best I've played so far.

[Fragony]

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This game sounds awesome. Why do they do this to me? Is it for mac as well?