GalCiv2: AKA Software Insomnia

Okay, I'm writing a review of Galactic Civilizations 2: The Dread Lords because I'm to go to a play tonight. Understand that for the past week, I've been coming home from work, putting a Pizza Pop in the microwave and starting the game. Next thing I know, it's way past my bedtime, the Pizza Pop has congealed in the nuker and I still can't hit the 'Quit' button.

And if I do that tonight, I won't make the play.

GalCiv2 is a classic 4X (eXplore, eXploit, eXpand and, um, eXfoliate) turn-based strategy game along the lines of Masters of Orion, the Civilization series and, well, GalCiv1. And since it's in space I of course had to try it out. So after a digital purchase and download (c'mon, c'mon, c'mon! Download already you piece of ....) I fired it up and got invaded by another civilization before the first year had ended.

Alright, check the forums for strategies. Nope, too new, everyone is learning. Okay go through the tutorials. Okay I think I got the grasp of this. Start a new game....and Earth is invaded by aliens within a year. Alright read the actual manual. Oh so the default spending is 50% but to get everything working at top capability, max spending to 100%. Ah okay. Start up another game, crank up the spending, go into debt by the end of the year, have my colonies rebel by the end of the second year and assimilated by angry robots by year 3. Doing better at least!

Start up a new game, do stuff to get my population up and be happy by researching those technologies and I have 5 colonies humming along by the end of the year, okay, now let's... oh wait, another race is demanding my lunch money. Screw you alien scum! My, what a big fleet he has, and here's me with no military to speak of....

And that's the game really; you need to balance spending, popularity, technology, efforts into building economic output, military, your influence on other races, your influence with your own people, deal with moral dilemmas (dilemmae?), negotiate, lie, cheat, steal and outright beg from other civilizations including the genetically-modified warrior squirrels (no, I'm not kidding).... There are so many things to balance!

Which is great!

One of the really neat things in this game is the construction of your ships. You can customize things like weapons, defenses, sensors etc, but there is also a huge catalog of cosmetic add-ons you get for free to make your ships as cool as you want them to be. this is turning out to be a huge hit for the fans out there. I've been avoiding it since I got City Of Heroes and played with the costume creator for an entire month. Bloody addictive personality.

The AI is really solid (almost too solid at the harder levels) and the devs make no apologies: a computer can micro-manage much better than a human (especially me). And although you can repeatedly hit the 'Next Turn' button, every time you do, the uneasy sensation that you are forgetting to look at something grows...

The learning curve is pretty steep, and although the manual gets into the mechanics, it takes some time to figure what does what (and what side-effects they have) to get a civilization going, and for some that will not be an appealing feature. Even when you do get over the hump (which I did recently by dominating the universe, not by force, but by selling cheap trinkets, pushing diet soda, and making sure out technologically enhanced pop-stars make regular appearances on alien worlds. In other words I destroyed their cultures with my own! I felt a little dirty, but dammit I won.) there is still alot that can happen with random events, planet placement, races, events etc etc. No game plays the same twice and, here's the main thing, no strategy will work every time!

So as a game it's pretty damn good. Add to that, there is some very tongue-in-cheek messages (one race invaded me because I tried to sell them diet cola), some really great graphics you have a winner.

Now there are some cons here. The interfaces can get a little confusing and may not work as well as expected. But I'm putting together a list for the forums, which by the way, the devs are very active on and have already implemented some suggestions in a patch or two. It's a typical indy-developer viewpoint getting more and more presence: they know who buys their games, they know there will be problems, and they know they are fixable. This is a refreshing change from the big-corp method of 'Behold, our great and innovative sequel! Tremble and be amazed!' attitude.

So overall, this is a fantastic, turn-based strategy game in a day and age where the genre has been declared dead. It's not without it's warts, but frankly it's a helluva lot more polished than many of the 'offerings' from the big boys over the past couple of years. So it looks like I have a new source of sleepless nights for the next while (besides the other reasons).

Oh, and if any of the devs are reading this, who came up with the confirm message for quitting to be "Are you sure you want to quit? A few more turns won't hurt..."

Bastards.