Exclusive: Gameplay Article, Part 2

[DanQ]

The Project Lead on Stardock Systems' Galactic Civilizations is Brad "Frogboy" Wardell. Today, he completed and posted his second example from the said title's gameplay. Wardell, who also serves as President of Stardock, was kind enough to grant Apolyton CS an *exclusive* in announcing this article's availability. In the first chapter [see story], Wardell lost and this time around he decides to position himself as the master diplomat. An excerpt:

The computer players are set to normal intelligence. In the name of disclosure, I should be able to easily beat the [artificial intelligence (AI)] at this level since this is a level that most experienced players will be able to win. It's designed to be challenging but in the end winnable for people familiar with the game for awhile.

The difficulty levels in GalCiv mean a lot b[y] t[he] w[ay]. Intelligence levels mean just that -- intelligence. Each computer player has its own AI engine. The higher the difficulty, the more AI features get enabled. It's not just a matter of "give AI more gold" or something like that. Normal means some features are on and some are off.

Twenty-four screenshots captured by Wardell illustrating the gameplay example at hand are dispersed throughout the write-up.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Asmodean]

Scratch up one for the good guys

Asmodean

[Biggles]

Looks like it is a great game.

A worthy replacement for Moo2.

[PriestOfDiscord]

I like the little touches they have been putting into this, even things like reordering the universe if you feel you got screwed in a starting position.

Some small things I have questions or comments on as I read through this.

I really like the idea of basing this on human expansion through the stars, from Earth expanding out. Shouldn't the starting population of Earth be a bit bigger than 1 billion though? I mean China has more people than that today, and this is 170 odd years beyond that.
Taking that a step further, maybe the Home planets for all Empires should have the most basic of infrastructure already in place. After all, these aren't just colonies. These are the breeding grounds of sentinent races. I know these first two points are a bit trivial, but I think they would be a boost to the immersiveness of the premise.

It seems the changes in the senate make sound sense, I like that. When you were at war the War Party membership spiked, and etc. It also seems that the developers are big fans of the Federalists though, and I wonder what kind of bonuses they must have to keep choosing them. Hopefully they all have good balance.

How does one claim so much empty space like the terrans managed to, and more importantly, why bother?

Thats all that came to me at the moment. I really regret not getting on this earlier so I could beta. This looks like a must have for me. Good job to the developers.

[PrinceBimz]

A total joy to read those two games! Can't wait for the game!

[Comrade Tribune]

I guess I´m sold on this one. Nice, clean design, Civ-I-reminiscent (a very good thing!).

Please post a few more AARs to shorten the waiting time!

[Draginol]

Regarding population:

Population reporting is based on the number of citizens which in this "future" United Nations based world government is based on the number of tax payers.

You can figure that the actual population of a given planet is really 3 X that.

The original population of each world was supposed to start out at 7 Billion. Unfortunately, new players weren't able to do as much with that kind of resources as the AI was. We're hoping to eventually make it bakc to the 7 billion (total pop 21 billion).

[PrinceBimz]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
I guess I´m sold on this one. Nice, clean design, Civ-I-reminiscent (a very good thing!).

Please post a few more AARs to shorten the waiting time!

Are you kidding me? I am so freaking sold on this one it is not even funny I am convinced this will be the game we all been waiting for.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by PrinceBimz
Are you kidding me? I am so freaking sold on this one it is not even funny

I have for years been disappointed with new TBS games. Few new, interesting ideas, and, worst, the same old strategies worked with every new game.

After one or two games, it all started to become an incredibly boring exercise in micromanagement, outcome always being a foregone conclusion after 1/3 of the game or so.

Which all leads to make me very sceptical, and much more inclined to than .

But I agree: This one looks as if it may work.