"I for one motion for full deployment of virus bombs against the Terran pestilence before they have a chance to become a problem." Wait no, I'm Dictator for Eternal-life, I don't motion for anything. Fuck it we ball.
I love this game.
The original GalCiv II Dread Lords was my first PC Game, (ignoring MNOLG and some dimly recalled edutainment). The first time I went for a genocide playthrough, after getting bored of easily winning via "diplomacy" wherein you puppeteer everyone else to fight each other and then congratulate your allies about how you've brought peace to the galaxy by eradicating everyone else not in the alliance in the name of "freedom and democracy", the Terrans almost immediately called me out after testing my new Virus Armada against an unsuspecting minor-race that insulted my custom Barbarian Starhorde upon our first contact. The Terrans promptly lost their shit and formed an alliance of Allies and we engaged in an epic struggle that lasted until the end of that campaign. I love how every once in a while the game spits out a Space Opera with actual drama and pacing. The AI in GalCiv II is definitely above average, and doesn't even start cheating until you select one of the very high AI difficulty options.
It's not perfect mind you, there's a goofy "moral" system that often offers a bunch of uninteresting choices for either good-boy-points or chaotic-stupid-points. Meanwhile the only correct choice is Neutral to achieve Technological Supremacy via the Temple of Neutrality.
I'd say the game is unintentionally comical, but a lot of the events are tongue-in-cheek and occasionally eye-rollingly so, or just downright kinda dumb. More pressingly I feel that too many of the Evil options simply don't provide enough of a strategic benefit to be valuable. There's a clear intent for them to provide short-term gains but I've always looked at them as insignificant.
I think there's also a handful of bugs, as I once encountered a minor-race with a soldiering bonus of over 4 billion percent. Not sure how that happened. I've never encountered anything run destroying though. On max size maps there's also a chance of random crashes, as the game is only 32-bit.
The game is easily moddable, and has plenty of customization options for bringing new races and factions into the game. I like to roll with a pool of Master of Orion and Twilight Imperium custom races available to the CPUs.
You can lose weeks of your life to this game, stay away.
(Fuck the Drath. Scheming lizard bastards. If people are declaring war on you for no reason, it's always because you're playing against Drath. Every. single. time.) It's okay when I make the same kind of backroom deals tho
I love this game.
The original GalCiv II Dread Lords was my first PC Game, (ignoring MNOLG and some dimly recalled edutainment). The first time I went for a genocide playthrough, after getting bored of easily winning via "diplomacy" wherein you puppeteer everyone else to fight each other and then congratulate your allies about how you've brought peace to the galaxy by eradicating everyone else not in the alliance in the name of "freedom and democracy", the Terrans almost immediately called me out after testing my new Virus Armada against an unsuspecting minor-race that insulted my custom Barbarian Starhorde upon our first contact. The Terrans promptly lost their shit and formed an alliance of Allies and we engaged in an epic struggle that lasted until the end of that campaign. I love how every once in a while the game spits out a Space Opera with actual drama and pacing. The AI in GalCiv II is definitely above average, and doesn't even start cheating until you select one of the very high AI difficulty options.
It's not perfect mind you, there's a goofy "moral" system that often offers a bunch of uninteresting choices for either good-boy-points or chaotic-stupid-points. Meanwhile the only correct choice is Neutral to achieve Technological Supremacy via the Temple of Neutrality.
I'd say the game is unintentionally comical, but a lot of the events are tongue-in-cheek and occasionally eye-rollingly so, or just downright kinda dumb. More pressingly I feel that too many of the Evil options simply don't provide enough of a strategic benefit to be valuable. There's a clear intent for them to provide short-term gains but I've always looked at them as insignificant.
I think there's also a handful of bugs, as I once encountered a minor-race with a soldiering bonus of over 4 billion percent. Not sure how that happened. I've never encountered anything run destroying though. On max size maps there's also a chance of random crashes, as the game is only 32-bit.
The game is easily moddable, and has plenty of customization options for bringing new races and factions into the game. I like to roll with a pool of Master of Orion and Twilight Imperium custom races available to the CPUs.
You can lose weeks of your life to this game, stay away.
(Fuck the Drath. Scheming lizard bastards. If people are declaring war on you for no reason, it's always because you're playing against Drath. Every. single. time.) It's okay when I make the same kind of backroom deals tho
"Alright For A 4X Of Its Time, But Shows Its Age"
"Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition" is a decent 4X title that ultimately got a bit boring for me. I spent a few hours studying the mechanics, and another few playing multiple games, and found it to be a bit dry for my taste. The systems are there for sure, and this game is capable of giving a good amount of hours to any serious 4X fan, but for myself I had to stop after 6-ish hours. I admire the amount of customization for a game like this, as you can practically make your ship look as crazy as possible, but I found the dialogue/trading system to be too basic.
This game does a good job in allowing you to customize your faction. It gives ample room to write your own biography, gives a great amount of skills to swap in/out, and even allows you to select political parties and goals. It wasn't necessarily the deepest of games when it came to these options, but they were there. Furthermore, I liked the fact you could build ships from scratch, and attach different thrusters and peripherals to them. The only aspect that got a bit annoying were the weight ratios, which I felt were limiting in the fact they were so small and restrictive. Nonetheless, it felt like I could create my own civilization with a pseudo-personality to an extent, which was appreciated.
However, when it came to interacting with other players, the game loses a lot of luster. While an AI can never fully match the unpredictability of a human player, in this title it boiled down to three personalities: evil and trying to conquer everything, good and trying to influence everything, or neutral and trying to research and/or transcend to a higher existence. After not even two games, this got a bit old. I know there are settings to adjust in order to increase frequency of X interaction occurring, but it feels less natural once you pull back the curtain and start toying around with things. Additionally, the dialogue interactions were little more than a trade speech menu, in which certain condition and/or items could be traded. Instead of conversations, it was more of an "offer screen", which limited my imagination in how the AI and myself formed a relationship. At a certain point I found it easier just to take advantage of one AI's idiocy, leech off of their influence and power, and find myself strolling to a victory. It might be personal preference, but I wish I could "interact" in a more cohesive way, rather than the bare minimum.
The game's other systems are okay. Most anomalies give a random boost to an aspect of your civilization, and you can mine asteroids for materials. I did think that the starbase mechanic was wonky, since I spammed economic and influence bases everywhere without hurting my economy. The most aggressive AI never wanted to attack, and so my lead blew wide open. Since the game doesn't have a lot of "depth" at this stage, it was appalling to feel like I had no pressure to make defenses or anything of that sort, and once I finally garnered and unstoppable economy, I sank it all into this aspect. Without a fear of losing, I literally couldn't help but roll over my opposition, which hurt my experience with the game. While I'm sure I can tinker around with background settings to flesh everything out more, I'd rather have a real dialogue/personality system in place that is more adaptable, instead of a bunch of sliders.
Overall, this title felt like a simplified version of Civilization in space. If it had added a bit more nuance to how you interact with other races, I could see myself putting more time in. However, I think I will invest more time into the sequel, since it has most likely grown within the 10+ years between the launch of the base game and the sequel. This isn't a bad title, but it doesn't stand out in too many ways either. I would Not Recommend it to any 4X fan interested in a space-themed style of game, as I feel thee are better options out there that allow for more faction interactivity and deeper gameplay.
Final Verdict: 4/10 (Average)
"Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition" is a decent 4X title that ultimately got a bit boring for me. I spent a few hours studying the mechanics, and another few playing multiple games, and found it to be a bit dry for my taste. The systems are there for sure, and this game is capable of giving a good amount of hours to any serious 4X fan, but for myself I had to stop after 6-ish hours. I admire the amount of customization for a game like this, as you can practically make your ship look as crazy as possible, but I found the dialogue/trading system to be too basic.
This game does a good job in allowing you to customize your faction. It gives ample room to write your own biography, gives a great amount of skills to swap in/out, and even allows you to select political parties and goals. It wasn't necessarily the deepest of games when it came to these options, but they were there. Furthermore, I liked the fact you could build ships from scratch, and attach different thrusters and peripherals to them. The only aspect that got a bit annoying were the weight ratios, which I felt were limiting in the fact they were so small and restrictive. Nonetheless, it felt like I could create my own civilization with a pseudo-personality to an extent, which was appreciated.
However, when it came to interacting with other players, the game loses a lot of luster. While an AI can never fully match the unpredictability of a human player, in this title it boiled down to three personalities: evil and trying to conquer everything, good and trying to influence everything, or neutral and trying to research and/or transcend to a higher existence. After not even two games, this got a bit old. I know there are settings to adjust in order to increase frequency of X interaction occurring, but it feels less natural once you pull back the curtain and start toying around with things. Additionally, the dialogue interactions were little more than a trade speech menu, in which certain condition and/or items could be traded. Instead of conversations, it was more of an "offer screen", which limited my imagination in how the AI and myself formed a relationship. At a certain point I found it easier just to take advantage of one AI's idiocy, leech off of their influence and power, and find myself strolling to a victory. It might be personal preference, but I wish I could "interact" in a more cohesive way, rather than the bare minimum.
The game's other systems are okay. Most anomalies give a random boost to an aspect of your civilization, and you can mine asteroids for materials. I did think that the starbase mechanic was wonky, since I spammed economic and influence bases everywhere without hurting my economy. The most aggressive AI never wanted to attack, and so my lead blew wide open. Since the game doesn't have a lot of "depth" at this stage, it was appalling to feel like I had no pressure to make defenses or anything of that sort, and once I finally garnered and unstoppable economy, I sank it all into this aspect. Without a fear of losing, I literally couldn't help but roll over my opposition, which hurt my experience with the game. While I'm sure I can tinker around with background settings to flesh everything out more, I'd rather have a real dialogue/personality system in place that is more adaptable, instead of a bunch of sliders.
Overall, this title felt like a simplified version of Civilization in space. If it had added a bit more nuance to how you interact with other races, I could see myself putting more time in. However, I think I will invest more time into the sequel, since it has most likely grown within the 10+ years between the launch of the base game and the sequel. This isn't a bad title, but it doesn't stand out in too many ways either. I would Not Recommend it to any 4X fan interested in a space-themed style of game, as I feel thee are better options out there that allow for more faction interactivity and deeper gameplay.
Final Verdict: 4/10 (Average)
This is so much better than the base game that it might as well have been an entirely new game. It takes the story established in Dread Lords and brings it to a satisfying conclusion, and introduces a couple of new features, but the biggest change is that every single race's technology tree has been completely revamped and built from scratch. This makes for a tremendous amount of replay value and allows for many different playstyles. The actual strategy element might not be the most refined out there, and there are a couple of loopholes that the player can exploit, but this is one of my favorite games from a genre I admittedly don't play an awful lot.
I hit the end turn button a bunch and won a scenario, so that was something.
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