How does Gal Civ II compare to SMAC? Will it have as much long term replayablity?

[drank]

SMAC/SMAX is my all-time favorite 4x game. I put it aside for a while, but I'll always eventually come back and play another game. As someone earlier said, it's a very immersive game and there are lots of different ways to play/win.

So far, I don't think GC2 has that kind of staying power. There's basically one strategy in the game - spam colony ships, research tough ships, beat the snot out of your neighbors until you're the biggest kid on the block. Then you can take your pick of which victory movie you want to see.

If you play that way, the AI is pretty much toast even on Suicidal. Brad says they're going to work on the AI for the next patch - and in fairness, the GC1 AI was pretty good. But it's just not much of a challenge at present.

The biggest hurdle to long-term replayability, though, is the lack of alternative ways to play. It's not viable to have a small empire that turtles and out-researches everyone. It's not viable to be a financial powerhouse and buy everything you need. There certainly will never be anything like an OCC victory in GC2 - the game mechanics dictate that you need lots of planets and population to win.

Personally, I feel like I'm kind of winding down on GC2 after a couple of weeks. I'm going to finish my current Gigantic/Suicidal game to prove that I can, but I'm ready to move on to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion when it comes out.

[ForesterSOF]

Replayability for me deals with all units, techs, etc... being balanced so the play does not become squewed along with human interaction for they are the true irrational and illogical players.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Stuie
I'm not sure why people insist that SMAC/Civ cannot be compared to MOO/GalCiv. The games are very similiar at the basic level:

SMAC has Cities - GalCiv has Planets.
SMAC has City Improvements - GalCiv has Planet Improvements.
Both have tech trees with various branches to follow.
Both have trading.
Both have unit design (and here GalCiv goes further allowing you to combine a number of units dependent on your logistics ability).
Both have some form of resource mining.
Where SMAC has tile improvements, GalCiv has starbases.
Both have diplomacy.
Both have some sort of uber Council (planetary or galactic) that meets at certain intervals.

One big difference lacking in GalCiv is the social engineering aspect. The government choices in GalCiv are pretty weak in comparison.

What am I missing that makes comparing these games like comparing apples and oranges? They seem VERY similiar to me.

To me too:

http://www.civilizacija.net/eng_content/feature_comparison_table.htm