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This is not a review of GalCiv just yet but on-going impressions. Please join me if you feel so inclined.
First off: Yes, I played MOO3, and while I see the genius behind some of the ideas, only a few *major* patches will make it a game worth keeping IMO. So MOO3 is still on my HD awaiting small miracles. There, having put that to rest...
"Wow. Old school on steroids!"
GalCiv, as you might have gathered from the screen shots, has a wonderfully 'old school' feel about it. Oh, sure, the cut-scenes, alien head shots, etc., are all quite nice --and the rendering of the planets is outstanding-- but you definitely don't buy this game for visuals. Hey, to me that's a plus! So not only will the game run on tired systems, you hope that the greatest focus has gone to gameplay. So far after a bit of play, that seems to be the case.
First thing you notice is that the alien civs expand QUICKLY! It's the TBS equivalent of the RTS rush. My first few test runs left me thinking: "Hey, no way in heck these civs aren't cheating!" But then I realized that you start off the game with about 2,000 in the bank.
"Ahh! I can be like the U.S. government and ignore a balanced budget!"
Sure enough. I move the global econ sliders (very nice that you think globally not locally) for maximum military spending --which is what all ship-building falls under, even for colony ships. I now saw that instead of taking 16-20 turns for a colony ship, I could crank one out on a good planet at like 3-5. O.K. Things make a bit more sense now. Even still, them darn aliens are on the best planets faster than you could imagine.
"Ahh! I can also rush build a colony ship!" That's a nice option to remember when it's absolutely crucial to claim some planets.
Now that I could keep pace somewhat with the colony rush, I felt much better about the aliens and could see that, indeed, they were not cheating. There were, rather, executing highly optimized AI scripts. I wondered, though, if that would mean inflexible, predictable AI behavior later on?
Well, before I could get that far, I had to ponder how techs work in the game. These, too, are wonderfully strategic choices! After trying an approach of "Wow, lots of neat techs! Let's learn them all!" approach. Buzz! Wrong answer.
It became harshly clear as I watched my relative power fall through the floor compared to my neighbors that I was doing something wrong. You simply don't become a Jack of All Trades in this game...at least not early on. Rather, as I am discovering, you focus on a strategy and become a specialist in that area, craftily trading for, buying, and stealing other techs as needed. In other words, STRATEGY!
My strategy so far has been to go for the influence/trade angle. I figured this would be the easiest in gameplay terms, and I also wanted to test to see if this non-war method would actually play well, since most every game that claims such a victory is possible has failed to deliver.
My test in my last game (which made me late to work this morning!) was to go 100% on tech/trading advancements and leave no ships to defend myself. I wanted to see if the bad guys (I was playing 'good' by making 'good' decisions on the various moral dilemmas the game throws at you) would be opportunistic. They should, right?
I was stunned, in fact, to see that way that the Yor (think: Borg) eventually found their way to me. They were seeded on the entire other side of the galaxy from me, thank God, which gave me some time to breathe. Cleverly, they didn't simply declare war on everybody at once. Rather, they formed an alliance and took on the goody-goody civs, the other human civ.
For a while, I was content to let the goody-goody dudes take a beating. Then it hit me: Wait, if those guys fall, I'm next!!! So I call goody-goody on the phone and say: "Hey, dudes. Here is some money and tech. I've also whipped up some fighters for ya. Go to work. Best of luck. And if anybody asks, I'm not at war with the Yor, O.K.?"
While I couldn't see the immediate effects of this since I didn't have look out in the relevant sectors --mental note: work on that-- it must not have been enough because sure enough the Yor started threatening me. For a while at least I had hoped to keep them liking me by establishing a trade route. In fact, it does seem that alien civs, no matter how evil they are, still love money. It's not that they still don't want to rip your head off, mind you, it's just that if you are a good source of their income, they'll rip it off last!
Sadly, as I hadn't gotten the hang of bonus modifying star bases down yet, my trade route with them was worth a pittance. Now, I knew, I'd be in trouble. Sure enough, the Yor call me and say some such things like "Time to die."
Keep in mind I had no ships on me at this point, so I used my big stores of cash and immediately produced about 12 of the best ships I could find. Suddenly my military might graph shoots up to close to that of the Yor! A few turns later they call me back and say: "On second thought, let's not fight...it's so tiring."
Great! The AI noticed (or so it seemed, anyway) my beefed up military and decided to leave me alone a moment while it worked further on some other civs. But here's the problem: Now I had huge upkeep costs for all those ships. I was going into debt fast! Not only that, but some of my trade routes were getting killed off because of on-going war in those far-off sectors. It seems that, indeed, by not helping keep the peace or protecting my frigates, I had been sitting back sowing the seeds of my own economic headaches...
What a wonderfully fun challenge to balance this all!
So, a few hours ago I stopped the game and came to work. As I read somewhere else by a beta tester, I, too, find myself thinking about how best to dig myself out of the hole I'm in. For the moment I have a scary fleet of ships, but I can't afford to upkeep them. My cultural influence plan is in good sted, but I realized there are but a few planets in my sector that might defect to me anyway. So that won't help -- in my next game, I'm going to go for a Cultural Bomb strategy by placing more cultural power in an enemy sector to see what will happen...
My gut tells me I've lost my window of opportunity this round. I didn't support my buffer civs early on when it might have mattered. Now not even my trade routes are safe. I'm relegated to being the fat pig in the galactic corner waiting to be slaughtered--and I love it! I did some things right, but not enough, and the AI seems absolutely adept at setting me up to die for it. I'm on normal difficulty by the way. All AI's are at normal. I fear what happens as I notch that up!
In case you haven't noticed, I haven't mentioned the game UI, etc. In fact, that's not because it's perfect. Actually, I see much, much room in the way the interface could be improved...I won't bore you with them now, but there are significant annoyances that you have to train yourself to work around (screens that should logically pop up in places don't, selecting things that should be easy is counter-intuitive in places, cumbersome counter-negotiating interface, etc.).
But you know what? So far at least, the core gameplay seems so well done that I hardly noticed the UI problems. To me, that's the sign of a hugely promising game. Yes, it needs tuning. But the 450 horse power engine is already in place, and the body work can be done over the next few months. Brad, like Johan at Paradox, is set to upgrade this already stable, challenging game for the next year!
However, I refuse to get too giddy here. There are still some issues I need to test. For example, will the Yor always follow so closely to its script that I can 'counter-script' it into easy submission? One hopes the AI updates Brad will take from actual human play over the coming months will help with this. But who knows?
The one thing I *do* know so far is that it will take me several more tries before I begin to feel in control on normal level. And I know that to be in control I'll need to use some real thinking and real strategy to be successful. And once I've done that, I raise the AI level to see if it's really all that much harder. And if it is, I then randomize the AI behavior so that I truly will have to react on-the-fly as the galaxy opens (or closes) before me.
Well, this is not a review yet, but very few games in the past couple of years have shown such sound under-the-hood strategy as GalCiv seems to hold. Yeah, to address an oft-thrown complaint, I miss some tactical combat and ship configuration type stuff... but then again: Think of Battle Chess a moment:
Do you really care if you can watch an animated queen squash a pawn? Sure, that's fun for a few moments (though being able to attach some cool rock-scissor-paper type weapons on that pawn might be fun!). In the same way with Gal Civ, what you don't get in tactical play, you more than make up for in grand strategizing. And it has been a long while since I've had that against human players let alone again an AI!
In other words, GalCiv follows in its design the same way of thinking you've got to employ in the game itself: Pick your strengths and utilize them to maximum benefit!
More later...
First off: Yes, I played MOO3, and while I see the genius behind some of the ideas, only a few *major* patches will make it a game worth keeping IMO. So MOO3 is still on my HD awaiting small miracles. There, having put that to rest...
"Wow. Old school on steroids!"
GalCiv, as you might have gathered from the screen shots, has a wonderfully 'old school' feel about it. Oh, sure, the cut-scenes, alien head shots, etc., are all quite nice --and the rendering of the planets is outstanding-- but you definitely don't buy this game for visuals. Hey, to me that's a plus! So not only will the game run on tired systems, you hope that the greatest focus has gone to gameplay. So far after a bit of play, that seems to be the case.
First thing you notice is that the alien civs expand QUICKLY! It's the TBS equivalent of the RTS rush. My first few test runs left me thinking: "Hey, no way in heck these civs aren't cheating!" But then I realized that you start off the game with about 2,000 in the bank.
"Ahh! I can be like the U.S. government and ignore a balanced budget!"
Sure enough. I move the global econ sliders (very nice that you think globally not locally) for maximum military spending --which is what all ship-building falls under, even for colony ships. I now saw that instead of taking 16-20 turns for a colony ship, I could crank one out on a good planet at like 3-5. O.K. Things make a bit more sense now. Even still, them darn aliens are on the best planets faster than you could imagine.
"Ahh! I can also rush build a colony ship!" That's a nice option to remember when it's absolutely crucial to claim some planets.
Now that I could keep pace somewhat with the colony rush, I felt much better about the aliens and could see that, indeed, they were not cheating. There were, rather, executing highly optimized AI scripts. I wondered, though, if that would mean inflexible, predictable AI behavior later on?
Well, before I could get that far, I had to ponder how techs work in the game. These, too, are wonderfully strategic choices! After trying an approach of "Wow, lots of neat techs! Let's learn them all!" approach. Buzz! Wrong answer.
It became harshly clear as I watched my relative power fall through the floor compared to my neighbors that I was doing something wrong. You simply don't become a Jack of All Trades in this game...at least not early on. Rather, as I am discovering, you focus on a strategy and become a specialist in that area, craftily trading for, buying, and stealing other techs as needed. In other words, STRATEGY!
My strategy so far has been to go for the influence/trade angle. I figured this would be the easiest in gameplay terms, and I also wanted to test to see if this non-war method would actually play well, since most every game that claims such a victory is possible has failed to deliver.
My test in my last game (which made me late to work this morning!) was to go 100% on tech/trading advancements and leave no ships to defend myself. I wanted to see if the bad guys (I was playing 'good' by making 'good' decisions on the various moral dilemmas the game throws at you) would be opportunistic. They should, right?
I was stunned, in fact, to see that way that the Yor (think: Borg) eventually found their way to me. They were seeded on the entire other side of the galaxy from me, thank God, which gave me some time to breathe. Cleverly, they didn't simply declare war on everybody at once. Rather, they formed an alliance and took on the goody-goody civs, the other human civ.
For a while, I was content to let the goody-goody dudes take a beating. Then it hit me: Wait, if those guys fall, I'm next!!! So I call goody-goody on the phone and say: "Hey, dudes. Here is some money and tech. I've also whipped up some fighters for ya. Go to work. Best of luck. And if anybody asks, I'm not at war with the Yor, O.K.?"
While I couldn't see the immediate effects of this since I didn't have look out in the relevant sectors --mental note: work on that-- it must not have been enough because sure enough the Yor started threatening me. For a while at least I had hoped to keep them liking me by establishing a trade route. In fact, it does seem that alien civs, no matter how evil they are, still love money. It's not that they still don't want to rip your head off, mind you, it's just that if you are a good source of their income, they'll rip it off last!
Sadly, as I hadn't gotten the hang of bonus modifying star bases down yet, my trade route with them was worth a pittance. Now, I knew, I'd be in trouble. Sure enough, the Yor call me and say some such things like "Time to die."
Keep in mind I had no ships on me at this point, so I used my big stores of cash and immediately produced about 12 of the best ships I could find. Suddenly my military might graph shoots up to close to that of the Yor! A few turns later they call me back and say: "On second thought, let's not fight...it's so tiring."
Great! The AI noticed (or so it seemed, anyway) my beefed up military and decided to leave me alone a moment while it worked further on some other civs. But here's the problem: Now I had huge upkeep costs for all those ships. I was going into debt fast! Not only that, but some of my trade routes were getting killed off because of on-going war in those far-off sectors. It seems that, indeed, by not helping keep the peace or protecting my frigates, I had been sitting back sowing the seeds of my own economic headaches...
What a wonderfully fun challenge to balance this all!
So, a few hours ago I stopped the game and came to work. As I read somewhere else by a beta tester, I, too, find myself thinking about how best to dig myself out of the hole I'm in. For the moment I have a scary fleet of ships, but I can't afford to upkeep them. My cultural influence plan is in good sted, but I realized there are but a few planets in my sector that might defect to me anyway. So that won't help -- in my next game, I'm going to go for a Cultural Bomb strategy by placing more cultural power in an enemy sector to see what will happen...
My gut tells me I've lost my window of opportunity this round. I didn't support my buffer civs early on when it might have mattered. Now not even my trade routes are safe. I'm relegated to being the fat pig in the galactic corner waiting to be slaughtered--and I love it! I did some things right, but not enough, and the AI seems absolutely adept at setting me up to die for it. I'm on normal difficulty by the way. All AI's are at normal. I fear what happens as I notch that up!
In case you haven't noticed, I haven't mentioned the game UI, etc. In fact, that's not because it's perfect. Actually, I see much, much room in the way the interface could be improved...I won't bore you with them now, but there are significant annoyances that you have to train yourself to work around (screens that should logically pop up in places don't, selecting things that should be easy is counter-intuitive in places, cumbersome counter-negotiating interface, etc.).
But you know what? So far at least, the core gameplay seems so well done that I hardly noticed the UI problems. To me, that's the sign of a hugely promising game. Yes, it needs tuning. But the 450 horse power engine is already in place, and the body work can be done over the next few months. Brad, like Johan at Paradox, is set to upgrade this already stable, challenging game for the next year!
However, I refuse to get too giddy here. There are still some issues I need to test. For example, will the Yor always follow so closely to its script that I can 'counter-script' it into easy submission? One hopes the AI updates Brad will take from actual human play over the coming months will help with this. But who knows?
The one thing I *do* know so far is that it will take me several more tries before I begin to feel in control on normal level. And I know that to be in control I'll need to use some real thinking and real strategy to be successful. And once I've done that, I raise the AI level to see if it's really all that much harder. And if it is, I then randomize the AI behavior so that I truly will have to react on-the-fly as the galaxy opens (or closes) before me.
Well, this is not a review yet, but very few games in the past couple of years have shown such sound under-the-hood strategy as GalCiv seems to hold. Yeah, to address an oft-thrown complaint, I miss some tactical combat and ship configuration type stuff... but then again: Think of Battle Chess a moment:
Do you really care if you can watch an animated queen squash a pawn? Sure, that's fun for a few moments (though being able to attach some cool rock-scissor-paper type weapons on that pawn might be fun!). In the same way with Gal Civ, what you don't get in tactical play, you more than make up for in grand strategizing. And it has been a long while since I've had that against human players let alone again an AI!
In other words, GalCiv follows in its design the same way of thinking you've got to employ in the game itself: Pick your strengths and utilize them to maximum benefit!
More later...
ACK!
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