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First thoughts
Civ4. No, really, when the map finished loading my first thought was civ4 but with a fake looking 3d background similar to that in (star wars) galactic conquest, that is, a 2d flat map pretending to be 3d space. After that i tinkered around checking it out...love the Mitrosoft 
Since the sound was somewhat lacking in volume i turning it all off and put on some mp3's instead.
I thought the interface was hard to read at first, although providing plenty of information. I lost my first game because i didnt realize how to increase production and couldnt build much. Second game i rushed and spammed my way to a huge lead over the AI, at one point getting about 50% of all tech research(beginner difficulty) and was too far ahead in powergraph to be bothered by them. During this game i also figured trade\starbases, nice to see manual trading again, but i think the payoff was a bit low even with faction boosts. It was about 100 turns before i finnaly got any military tech, as i headed for industrial\science buildings and infact ended the game with no military contact. The AI even at such a weak level keeps trying though and actually came back with more population than me via ICSing. AI is a big and after civ4 and now GalCiv its going to be very hard to go back to weak AI games.
Although im still not happy with the map creation options, and no scenario\map editor? im getting more enthusiastic about playing another game. It has enough of smac goodness and civ4's solid gameplay in it, it just might become my favourite. Someday
On a side note, i though the ship builder was somewhat dissapointing as i couldnt get super star destroyers with it
The custom civ feature needs a way to specify a avatar file in jpeg too, unless i missed\forgot a button. For now i am intending to photoshop the race_custom png.
Bottomline for me....AI is fun to play vs.
PS; got the xpack+original game at the same time
Since the sound was somewhat lacking in volume i turning it all off and put on some mp3's instead.I thought the interface was hard to read at first, although providing plenty of information. I lost my first game because i didnt realize how to increase production and couldnt build much. Second game i rushed and spammed my way to a huge lead over the AI, at one point getting about 50% of all tech research(beginner difficulty) and was too far ahead in powergraph to be bothered by them. During this game i also figured trade\starbases, nice to see manual trading again, but i think the payoff was a bit low even with faction boosts. It was about 100 turns before i finnaly got any military tech, as i headed for industrial\science buildings and infact ended the game with no military contact. The AI even at such a weak level keeps trying though and actually came back with more population than me via ICSing. AI is a big
and after civ4 and now GalCiv its going to be very hard to go back to weak AI games. Although im still not happy with the map creation options, and no scenario\map editor? im getting more enthusiastic about playing another game. It has enough of smac goodness and civ4's solid gameplay in it, it just might become my favourite. Someday
On a side note, i though the ship builder was somewhat dissapointing as i couldnt get super star destroyers with it
The custom civ feature needs a way to specify a avatar file in jpeg too, unless i missed\forgot a button. For now i am intending to photoshop the race_custom png.
Bottomline for me....AI is fun to play vs.
PS; got the xpack+original game at the same time