Re: hello and help
 

I would suggest that you download the demos for both games. Even if you are unfortunate enough to have dial-up internet (like me) and it will take many hours, it is well worth it to check them out, plus look at the opinions of the people here. I'd also advise you to make a thread over at galciv.com and get their opinions. Then again, they may not even know what SEIV is, so maybe they won't be able to compare http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

Personally, I would suggest you go with SEIV. I have literally played well over 1000 hours, probably a lot more playing SEIV, and I've probably put only about 50 into GalCiv. It's a good game, for the first couple of games. Then it becomes boring to be honest.

If you want a good summary of the respective strengths and weaknesses, Fyron's post below has a very good summary.

Re: hello and help
 

I also recommend downloading the demos for both and trying them out for yourself. This is probably the best way to see which one you will have a taste for. My Opinion only, SEIV is the best space game out there. You can do more, play more, play against humans by PBW, more decent and tough mods to wet your appitite for conquest... and the friendliest bunch of members then any other site out there. We have members of all ages, including some older geezers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif that tend to get into some sort of mischief every once in awhile and have to have the younger ones help him out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif SEIV you fight with single ships or fleets of ships, you have fighters, drones, carriers etc. more for the buck IMHO, so I would ck them out and chose wisely... Welcome to the forum and don't be afraid to ask questions or jump into a thread.. have fun and enjoy yourself

Re: hello and help
 

I have played both and although I liked a lot of what GalCiv had to offer, the game play was simply just to boring for me. SE IV Gold has far more depth to it than GalCiv, and is simply the better of the two games hands down. Hell GalCiv isn't even really a 4x game. Comparing SEIV to GalCiv is like comparing Star Craft to Age Of Empires. Which of the two gave you greater game play depth?

Re: hello and help
 

Starcraft ofcourse!

Re: hello and help
 

Star Craft was a great game, but AOE was far more involving for longer periods. GalCiv is a great game, but has no replay appeal whereas Space Empires has tons.

Go figure.

Re: hello and help
 

Try both demo's, don't just go with opinion.

But, just to give mine, I played the galciv demo for 5 maybe ten minutes and uninstalled it. But that's just me.

Re: hello and help
 

I know that the dicussion has been hammered to death over this topic spread out over this forum and others now for over a couple of years.

I recall reading one post on the MOO3 forum where someone dared say that MOO3 was the best 4x game ever made. Then someone posted a link to Malfadors web site and the demo. A few hour slater, the poster came back and posted a correction.

Any one who thinks Moo3 is better than SEIV is IMHO insane. Any one who thinks that Gal Civ is better than SEIV has not played SE IV. Nuff said.

Re: hello and help
 

Moo3 is better than GalCiv IMHO

And after the last patch, the game was pretty decent, but it was still annoying and boring at times (GalCiv is just plain boring and silly)

Infact, if I ever find my moo3 cd, I might just play it again... just for the purpose of wasting a few hours http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: hello and help
 

I played GalCiv in the OS/2 days as well, and I gotta say, the AI wasn't that great. I found the game compelling, working out all the ins and outs of the rules, but it was easy enough to build just enough to not alert the AI, and then counter attack when the AI declared war. That's what some people gripe about SE4 -- the AI seem s unpreditable, declaring way when friendly, and not giving up when all is lost. That's just to avoid falling into the trap of the crafty human player, with his gigantic fleet, offering trade deals.

The big thing was that OS/2 was multithreaded, so the AI could do so much more in the background, but like the Imperator says, the game is so abstracted, it could all be an algorithm, and wouldn't make much of a difference.

Re: hello and help
 

GalCiv 2 Demo lasted for under 5 minutes on my HD... SEIV has been there for two or three years. SEIV is easily comprehensible, you figure out the basics in a couple of minutes, and when you've got the basics figured out the rest will come with time... it's an easy-to-use GUI, too. GalCiv 2 was not very comprehensible, had a weird tech/ship system, colonization was odd, etc. In short, it was a totally crappy game - the only plus side was, that the aliens were incomprehensible until you discover Universal Translator... but that is offset by two minuses:
1. You can only play as the Humans (who have apparently invented the hyperdirve and gave it to all other aliens then for some reason lost contact or something), and
2. You get universal translators really, really fast. About two or three turns after my first alien message I got it - and that was the total research time.
In SEIV, you get to play as any race of your choice, all fully customizable from their culture and if they're friendly or genocidal all the way to exactly how much stronger they are when compared to other species. No weird "systems" GalCiv style here (i.e. no suns simply lying in a patch of space in which you could freely roam, with the drawback that a ship seemed to be the same size as a solar system. I don't know when you start fighting, I never got to that point.) because SEIV has a set number of systems (you cannot create more systems ingame, only in the mapeditor) which are connected by wormholes called "warp points" (and yes, you can create and destroy those too.). This means that you will have to watch your back more, since an enemy could easily sneak into your home system through an unexplored WP (Warp Point) or they could open one themselves (and yes, you can shield from that, too - though the shield generator for that is very expensive.) to let their assault fleet in.

SEIV rocks. GalCiv is barely sand.