Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[Gufnork]

You have to give us more parameters than that in order to find you a suitable race. I personally think Dratha is one of the best races. It starts with Ion Drive (faster colony ships), it has a nice diplomacy bonus, a nice defense bonus and a nice all-roundedness in the rest of it's bonuses. They also start with an alignment of 75.

Drengin are a very good evil race if you want to war early. Soldiering is a very important ability to me, since population is the key resource in this game and in my experience pop growth bonuses seems bugged.

If you want a good custom race you can pick Iconians. They can be customized fully and starts with a neutral alignment and a class 15 planet. Thalans also start with a class 15 planet and if their pop growth bonus works they would be great too.

This is assuming you want a race that makes it easier to win.

[Solver]

No parameters - I have my own Civ playstyle, of course, but this is a new game and I'm very open to trying different things and styles.

Drenging sound interesting, I'm not really a warmonger but going with them would probably give me more experience with combat and related concepts.

[drank]

Solver, good review. Just want to say that the Good vs. Evil stuff was really well done in GC1. Truly a place where there was not One Right Choice. You could play for the longer term advantage of good, or the quick hit of evil. There were also some good random events - one in particular would lose an evil player a bunch of his planets due to revolt against the evil policies.

This doesn't seem as well balanced in GC2 yet. The larger number of AIs means that the Good/Evil alliances don't form as easily. And I don't think Stardock has all of the alignment bonuses & techs in the game yet - at least some of the Neutral ones are missing. Finally, the ability to pay money to change your alignment when you research Xeno Ethics weakens the Good/Evil choices - it really hurt in GC1 to know that you were giving your Good allies forever if you took that Planet Quality improvement bonus.

But I'd bet that some of this gets sorted out better in future patches.

[Solver]

Don't anyone mistake what I posted for a review, that was just first impressions .

My second game is currently underway. This time I actually understand what I'm doing, and I started with what I believe to be a powerful strategy. I'm playing as the Drengin. More comments on the game will come soon, but the impression I'm getting so far is that warmongering is quite favored - and with good advantages. Moreover, I got the impression that Drengin, being a warmonger civilization, actually stand a good chance of getting a better starting economy. As said, detailed comments to follow.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by drank
There were also some good random events - one in particular would lose an evil player a bunch of his planets due to revolt against the evil policies.

The good old I-League. I remember one game where I was to the good side of things (for once) and pretty much everyone else was evil with the Drengin ruling the galaxy. Huge civil war erupted with the I-League forming from about 80% of all Drengin and Yor worlds, about half from the others and only 1 of mine (lowly outpost with low morale). Holy cow did the influence chart change after that turn! I was mostly spared since I had high morale on the rest of my planets and was good. Needless to say the I-League crushed all of us that game.

I haven't seen it yet in GC2 but then I haven't played enough games. I have seem posts about the I-League so I think they are back as a random event.

[xiko]

I just started playing it for the very first time and I must say I am really impressed.

The interface is very very very simple to make such complicated decisions!

I am really loving it ;D

Who played CIV 4 and etc will find it easy to play this one.

[Solver]

Looks like I scared Yin out of the thread .

GalCiv2 actually is very different from Civ4, there are some key differences both from Civ4 and from SMAC. Interface is a matter of preference for the most part, of course.

[xiko]

Yes there are key differences but the concept of getting new planets and making armies and influence is quite similar. It is turn based too !

I am looking forward for the demo so my friends can test it out.

[Solver]

Yep, the basic concept is similar of course. But the entire economics model and the combat models are different.

[Gufnork]

The I-League exist, but it's far from as radical as you describe that it used to be. Now it simply occupies a former PQ 0 planet, turn it into a PQ 15 planet then get squashed by the closest civilization a few turns later. As far as I can tell noone loses anything from it, but it's possible that population is lost.

[xiko]

Originally posted by Solver
Yep, the basic concept is similar of course. But the entire economics model and the combat models are different.

Yes I do agree, I was not trying to say it is a "copy" of Civilization or something like that.

Hmmm. It is like comparing stunts to need for speed. They are both race games but they are diferent. If you played stunts before it might be easier to play Need for speed. Was that clearer?

[tetley]

I would put Galciv2 in the same genre as Civ4, but it's a completely different game. People are mistakenly taking strategies from Civ and applying it to Galciv and it doesn't work.

[Solver]

GalCiv2 is certainly the same genre - TBS, and an overall "Civ" genre - I think we can Civ games a separate genre now. That said, GalCiv2 does enough things differently to keep it interesting.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Solver
Looks like I scared Yin out of the thread

LOL. No, just shutting up for a while, enjoying the posts. I get so little time to play at night that I think, Solver, you are already ahead of me!

[Solver]

Hardly . I finished up with my second game, though, and am ready to comment.