First thoughts ?

[ACEofHeart]

Okay,,who has the game and what are you first thoughts after playing a game..
Would like to hear all,,the Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
Thanks...

[damunzy]

Got it in the mail yesterday at work, but I had already left for the day. I have it installed on my work laptop but don't plan on playing it until tonight at home - maybe I will steal a quick peek at lunch time.....

[damunzy]

Hmm, tried to run it but it crashed...not looking good!

[ZargonX]

Had it for a few days, and won my first game last night. Think I'm finally getting the hang of it! Had a few random crashes, but seems stable for the most part...

[damunzy]

Okay, installed GalCiv2_10D1_BonusPack_022406.exe, rebooted, and now the game runs. Woohoo!

[hamsterstyle]

I start playing then end up spending an hour building ships...then deleting them..then building more..its so much fun.

[ACEofHeart]

Ok I was curious,, does the intial feel of GC2 appear different than GC1.. or pretty much the same with just some better graphics..??

[tetley]

It's pretty much the same game, but there are some changes. The shipbuilder is probably the biggest one. Unfortunately, my initial impression of the game is it's very buggy. I'll still play this over Civ4, just because Civ4 moves so sloooooooooooow, but this is really beta code.

[bonscott]

Honestly this is the best strategy game I've every played and nearly the best game period outside of Morrowind.

It's not buggy at all in my eyes. Maybe there are bugs but I'm having too much fun playing to be concerned about it.

[damunzy]

I feel that there is more 'emotion' behind the game versus GC1. GC2's story feels more fleshed out and believable. So far I like the way technology/science research is handled - I did NOT like it in GC1.

I have to say, that this game plays a bit slow on battery power....but that is because the CPU automatically clocks down on my T40 - not recommended way to play.

[Warhammer]

I've been playing it quite a bit, and have loved it. There are some bugs, but it certainly is not beta code. There are some people that have apparently had some trouble running it, but by and large it seems stable. It does slow down after playing for 2-3 hours, but they are supposedly working on fixing that.

The computer player seems pretty tough, I have been having quite a bit of trouble with it with all AI on Intelligent.

[EternalSpark]

Random thoughts, completely without order:

1) I feel much more in control of the situation in GC2 than I did in GC1. Hard to place it down to one specific thing, but I'm much more able to survive in this game than the previous.

2) I'm still dissapointed by how hard it is to keep decently-populated planets from being unhappy. It's hurting my influence and population ratings, knowing that if I were to add any more farms, I'd wind up having unhappy people.

3) Kinda annoyed that each of the early campaign missions starts back at 0 techs. If I'm going from one system to another, I think I know how to invade planets.

4) Planets inside the radius of a Mining base. Look at the planetary summary, and it's not under the effect of that Mining. Seems hit-or-miss if my Starbases are doing anything for the planets at all.

5) Really like that the player has enough money to rush-buy a decent amount of colony pods very early on. In GalCiv1, I was constantly irritated about not being able to gain enough planets.

6) Can't cancel movement orders... very annoying when I'm trying to scroll and I wind up moving a unit.

7) Scrolling is very hit or miss. Sometimes, it just plain-old won't work.

I really like the game. When I aint so tired from work, I'll think of more.

[Hansolo88]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only person with scrolling problems. I have problems scrolling down, it seems to be hit or miss. It also seems to get stuck scrolling up every once in a while and I have to mess around with it to make it stop.

I am also having problems ascertaining the effect of starbases, though I love the concept and the strategy they add to the game.

[bonscott]

I never scroll actually. Just left click and drag the map around. Must faster then trying to scroll around. I can move across an entire Medium galaxy in just about 3 click and drags.

Or you can click on the mini-map to "jump" to the area of interest to make huge jumps.

What is the question on starbases, try to answer them.

I'll give a quick example:
Economic Starbase. Add in the trade modules and they will increase your trade income of your trade routes as the freighters move through the range of the starbase.

Military Starbase. Say you add a ships defense module that gives a +1 beam attack. Now all of your ships in range of the starbase have a +1 to their beam attack. This alone saved me from an Arcean invasion my last game. Had most of my home systems under the range of a fully decked out starbase. It alone added +3 defense in all categories and +3 attack in many of them as well. I tore the Arcean fleets to shreds despite the fact they were stronger then my ships on their own. Which I found out if I strayed out of range of the starbase. So I just let them come at me until it stopped. Meanwhile I build more ships and transports and quickly turned on them and took all their worlds.

[Hansolo88]

Yes, the economic and military starbase effects are rather easy to observe. I have especially enjoyed the trading modules; a few of those well-placed on bases by heavily used trade routes can really skyrocket your trade income.

However, influence and mining base effects are virtually impossible to observe. I know resources are supposed to be important, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to see what effect they are having. Likewise, I still don't understand how influence bases effect the game. Do they spread influence themselves, or do they merely boost planetary influence? Is their effect limited to their area of effect, or can it extend beyond that? Answers to all these questions would be great.