Space strategy roll-call!

[Martok]

Right now I'm still playing GalCiv2/Twilight of the Arnor and it's the best I've seen lately. Very challenging at the upper difficulty settings, with interesting and varied tech trees.

Since I'm currently playing vanilla GalCiv 2 (I'm waiting/hoping for a full bundle to be released in an actual box), I have to ask: How does the AI compare? I know it received a major upgrade in Dark Avatar, and again with Twilight of the Arnor.

I know a lot of gamers don't like that strategy-only approach, and apparently Stardock will be adding tactical combat to GalCiv3. But that's years away.

Yeah, I know. *sigh* Brad recently said that we definitely won't see the next GalCiv game this decade, which I pretty much expected -- I know Stardock already has their hands full working on their fantasy strategy game. Still, it's hard to wait sometimes!

For a strategy game, I'd want the vastness of space to be represented meaningfully on the strategic level. That means no magic jump gates or hyperdrives, which crowd planetary systems together on the gaming map. Make it so the player and the AI factions can travel just a hair under lightspeed, but no faster.

I hate to point this out, but wouldn't that make space travel completely impractical? While I've not brushed up on my astronomy recently, I'm still pretty sure that it would take years -- if not decades -- to travel to other stars even *at* light-speed, to say nothing of near light-speed.

Make the logistics of those distances matter for colonization, military offense and defense. Include the effects of lightspeed delay on your current intelligence and ability to know where the enemy might be.

Well I would say that most space strategy games already take this into account, at least to a degree. Or are you saying you want stars so far apart (at least time-wise) that colonies would essentially be on their own? I'm not quite sure I follow you here.