Galactic Civilizations 2

[Martok]

A cool thing about the game's combat, though, is that unlike most games where higher-tech/tier automatically means better, in GalCiv II spamming hordes of low-tier, low-cost cannon fodder is actually a legitimate strategy.

Indeed. Stardock wanted the game to be all about freedom of choice, and that's an excellent example.

It's also nice to have a strategy game where the AI is not only competent, it can downright kick your arse all over the galaxy (and without cheating!). I've only played a couple times on some of the higher difficulty settings, and I still get pummeled. I love it.


That said, I will agree with those who wish for controllable space battles. As it is, they're still kind of fun to watch, but I admit I'd prefer to play them out myself. Also, I wish that retreat would be a viable option -- I dislike strategy games where your only option in combat is to fight or die. (Whatever happened to discretion being the better part of valour? )

[professorspatula]

The game certainly has its merits, but for me it was a little pedestrian to get into. I loved Master of Orion 2 but struggled to get into this.

One thing I dislike intensely about ship combat is it's all about a series of numbers. The battle scenes are worthless as they don't really show what is truly going on as no matter how big the fleets are, only one ship is targeted at a time - the strongest. It ruins the level of immersion when you know you go into a battle and your best ship is guaranteed to be toast at the end of it. There's no random chance a smaller ship will soak up the damage first, just your best. You have no option to protect any veterans in the fleet, other than to send them home, whereas in MO2 you'd sooner sacrifice your small ships than have one of your elite Titans get destroyed in the first attack round.

I also didn't enjoy the economy system in the game. It takes a long time to be profitable, and in the opening rounds you're just playing around with various sliders that control funding to various activities and going on a colony building rush. With every patch and expansion they changed how it works, but for standard GC2 I didn't enjoy it. You also get penalised for building more advanced production facilities because the higher tier manufacturing plants produce more output but the cost per output unit remains the same. Even if you don't want to make anything, you're still footing a massive bill so early on building these advanced structures is too expensive. So much for economies of scale!

In the end I tried to get some fun from the game by editing a custom race and giving myself lots of massive bonuses to my race's stats. This enabled me to become an overlord of the galaxy and directly influence what happens when it comes to war and politics. It was also good fun building a series of cheap fighters and ships to sell to one race to help them fight a war, then do the same to their rivals, and watch them kick the seven bells out of one another, before stepping in with a giant battle cruiser and silencing them all.

But that's not the proper way to play!

There's fun to be had with GC2 for sure, but you do, to some extent, need to persevere to find it. Should you find it, you can guarantee hours upon hours of gameplay.