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I get quite a bit of email on this topic so here's a post to help answer the question on it.
Galactic Civilizations has 6 MAJOR civilizations. But the game supports up to 36 total civilizations.
Each civilization gets its own AI personality (though minor races share the same one). In short, the other civilizations are just as interactive as the others.
Here are a couple examples of how these other civilizations can play in.
In most games, other civilizations won't really show up. It's largely random. But not completely (and some of them are not randomly generated at all but are based on specific chains of events):
Scenario 1: Imperial overstretch. A powerful civilization gets over extended, falls into debt. People get unhappy. The empire can be split into two at that point.
Example A: In tonight's game the Drengin Empire was conquering the galaxy when a recession hit. I used that moment to destroy his main economic star base which drove him into debt. Combined with some destabilization, his people rebelled and the Drengin Empire split into two new civilizations: The Drengin Imperium and the Drengin Peace Federation (each with their own ships incidentally).
I spent a lot of effort and money supporting and trading with the Drengin Peace Federation (for obvious reasons) but eventually the Drengin Empire won the civil war and was able to conquer the rest of us in turn (I was allied with the Altarians, Arceans, and Torians but the Drengin and the Yor allied together and wore us down).
Example B: Several civilizations were simply having problems keeping their people happy. A new civilization was created called the "Independent League of Non-Aligned Worlds". Every so oftne, another world left (iincluding a few of mine) to join up with them based on how unhappy they were. They became pretty powerful and the galactic map became pretty odd looking (their sector ownership is orange which I'd never actually seen before since no one else has that color). The Indie League is actually classified as an Associate power (not a major race but not a minor one either).
Scenario 2: This is where a series of events leads to the creation of a scary civilization. There's a TON of back story in GalCiv that gets leaked out during these things.
Example A: You get a message that a new interstellar civilization has been found called the Calorians. No biggie. Awhile later there are rumors that the Calorians are really terrorists. If the Calorians aren't destroyed, a few turns later terrorist actions begin to crop up on planets until they're destroyed.
Example B: A religious sect is bent on freeing the "Dread Lords". You get a message about this but don't know in which civilization they're hiding in. If you spend enough money on espionage, you can find out and thwart them. If you don't, eventually they will successfully free the Dread Lords who will gain a planet and each turn become increasingly poewrful along with their massive fleet that they get (again, each race has their own unique star ships). This one is particularly nasty and it only comes up very VERY rarely because it is so nasty. You may never actually see this one.
Scenario 3: Crusades. This is where some cultural crusade occurs. Too much "evil" or "good" in the galaxy those who disagree may take things into their own hands. It happens much more often to evil civilizations than to good ones. But is very rare.
Scenario 4: Minor races show up. Thare are almost always a few minor races in a given galaxy. But others will occasionally pop up and can be great sources for trade and diplomacy. It's very interesting because AI players may become quite economically dependent on some minor races and hence before you decide to take out the Jarkians, for instance, you may want to make sure none of the more powerful civlizations are friends with them.
There are a ton of things like this that are simply very very very rare. But there are enough of them that every game or two something interesting will happen. Rarely is it game altering and you usually have control over how it comes about but it serves to remind people that like real life, there are events that are quite unexpected.
Galactic Civilizations has 6 MAJOR civilizations. But the game supports up to 36 total civilizations.
Each civilization gets its own AI personality (though minor races share the same one). In short, the other civilizations are just as interactive as the others.
Here are a couple examples of how these other civilizations can play in.
In most games, other civilizations won't really show up. It's largely random. But not completely (and some of them are not randomly generated at all but are based on specific chains of events):
Scenario 1: Imperial overstretch. A powerful civilization gets over extended, falls into debt. People get unhappy. The empire can be split into two at that point.
Example A: In tonight's game the Drengin Empire was conquering the galaxy when a recession hit. I used that moment to destroy his main economic star base which drove him into debt. Combined with some destabilization, his people rebelled and the Drengin Empire split into two new civilizations: The Drengin Imperium and the Drengin Peace Federation (each with their own ships incidentally).
I spent a lot of effort and money supporting and trading with the Drengin Peace Federation (for obvious reasons) but eventually the Drengin Empire won the civil war and was able to conquer the rest of us in turn (I was allied with the Altarians, Arceans, and Torians but the Drengin and the Yor allied together and wore us down).
Example B: Several civilizations were simply having problems keeping their people happy. A new civilization was created called the "Independent League of Non-Aligned Worlds". Every so oftne, another world left (iincluding a few of mine) to join up with them based on how unhappy they were. They became pretty powerful and the galactic map became pretty odd looking (their sector ownership is orange which I'd never actually seen before since no one else has that color). The Indie League is actually classified as an Associate power (not a major race but not a minor one either).
Scenario 2: This is where a series of events leads to the creation of a scary civilization. There's a TON of back story in GalCiv that gets leaked out during these things.
Example A: You get a message that a new interstellar civilization has been found called the Calorians. No biggie. Awhile later there are rumors that the Calorians are really terrorists. If the Calorians aren't destroyed, a few turns later terrorist actions begin to crop up on planets until they're destroyed.
Example B: A religious sect is bent on freeing the "Dread Lords". You get a message about this but don't know in which civilization they're hiding in. If you spend enough money on espionage, you can find out and thwart them. If you don't, eventually they will successfully free the Dread Lords who will gain a planet and each turn become increasingly poewrful along with their massive fleet that they get (again, each race has their own unique star ships). This one is particularly nasty and it only comes up very VERY rarely because it is so nasty. You may never actually see this one.
Scenario 3: Crusades. This is where some cultural crusade occurs. Too much "evil" or "good" in the galaxy those who disagree may take things into their own hands. It happens much more often to evil civilizations than to good ones. But is very rare.
Scenario 4: Minor races show up. Thare are almost always a few minor races in a given galaxy. But others will occasionally pop up and can be great sources for trade and diplomacy. It's very interesting because AI players may become quite economically dependent on some minor races and hence before you decide to take out the Jarkians, for instance, you may want to make sure none of the more powerful civlizations are friends with them.
There are a ton of things like this that are simply very very very rare. But there are enough of them that every game or two something interesting will happen. Rarely is it game altering and you usually have control over how it comes about but it serves to remind people that like real life, there are events that are quite unexpected.
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