Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I really don't have time to play around, but I bought it anyway. Oh well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'll make this short and concise. But bear in mind that in so doing, I am glossing over the positives - which are understood - in favor of the negatives, which are unexpected.


1) It seems like a good game. And though irrelevant to gameplay, the ship builder is just AWESOME. I spent more time in there than in the actual game last night. Unfortunately, 99% of it is cosmetic rather than functional, but I expect to be able to change that in a mod. Don't equate "cosmetic" with "irrelevant" - it's truly awesome.

2) If you like strategy games other than SEIV, I preliminarily recommend buying it. But see the proviso in #3...

3) I do NOT recommend playing it right now, even if you buy it (ergo, there's no point in buying now). The release was decent, and much cleaner than Civ IV a month AFTER release. However, it is not finished. There are some aspects that are just broken, as well as scores of small bugs. But these problems are almost universally easy to fix (5 to 200 minutes each) rather than fundamental; they are typically issues of "specific implementation" (easily mutable) rather than "missing functionality" (requiring massive work). Perhaps 20% of them were fixed in the first patch, a record 4 days after release; I anticipate another 25% in the next patch, due Thursday. At that rate, 90%+ should be resolved in two to four weeks - and bear in mind that most games do not reach the 90% mark, ever. Actually, most published games never reach the 40% mark, but here I'm using the word "game" to refer to something to which a reader may have been exposed.

3a) GalCiv2 is playable and fun now, but I'm a perfectionist. The issues that annoy me will annoy other perfectionists. Why settle for less when you can demand and receive more? If you like turn-based (aka "real") strategy games and don't care about minor details, go buy GCII and play it now - but in that case, you wouldn't be active in the SEIV forums anyway, so you'll never see this.

3b) On the other hand, cautious perfectionists and non-perfectionists alike should neither buy nor play GC2 before visiting the official website (www.GalCiv2.com) and reading the Official Bug List and Other Official Bug List and Unofficial Bug List.

4) There are numerous issues that I have with design decisions, such as population growth rate (currently ~10% per week), technological development, ship parameters, weapon balance, overly coarse granularity in some areas (like ship HP), and so forth. These will not be fixed as they are not 'broken'. However, mod support will be included in Thursday's patch. From examining the XML files (I can post them here if anyone is interested), most (but specifically NOT all) of the numbers I'd need to change are already XML'd rather than hard-coded, so (assuming that a relatively small number of additional things migrate over to XML) I expect to be able to change the game to the way *I* want it by Thursday.

5) Bear in mind that unlike SEIV and Dominions II, GC2 is strictly single-player; thus AI deficiencies are ?X (read: some number of times) more meaningful, and no imbalance can be remedied by "mutual agreement".


I will let you know when I feel that the game is ready for prime time. God knows why people release things before they're ready, as they only hurt themselves. GC2 has been getting 90-95% reviews according to GameRankings.com, but who ever knows what filthy crack reviewers are smoking? They're the same people that gave Final Fantasy 7 100% and Xenogears 80%, and the same people that convinced me to buy Star Control III with 85%+ reviews... when it was a pile of stinking feces. Not to mention that they unanimously gave Civ IV 90%+ reviews *at release*, when it 1) was unplayable on non-Nvidia cards, 2) regularly crashed after at most 2 hours, 3) gradually slowed to below 1FPS after playing for "too long", and 4) allowed you to get any city from any AI at any time through an easy diplomacy exploit (I found that bug *after* their 1-month patch). I no longer trust any published reviews. And even though I use the keyword "they" to denote "the enemy of all that is good", I'm obligated to note that I have received financial compensation for writing the game reviews of a periodical with circulation over 500,000.


In the meantime, I know there are others here who have bought and played GC2. So come out of the closet; it's nothing of which to be ashamed! Post your impressions too.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Thank you for the review, it was very enlightening and helpful. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

You're welcome. I consider it more of a "late-beta preview" though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I got it on release and it's fabulous! The game deserves those high scores because it's awesome! As for the minor bugs here and there, you said it yourself, that they are easily fixed and most of them will be gone in a few weeks. I'm a bit of a perfectionist too but they don't bother me that much because i know that they be fixed soon enough and they don't affect gameplay. For now there is no doubt who is the 4X king! I'm sure SEV5 will challege it for the title but baring in mind how different they are, i think there won't be much competing.

Now it's time for SEV5 to live up to our expectations cause GalCiv II already has.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

You mean the debacle of Civ 3 didn't have you convinced?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Let me rephrase that: They hurt me too. I always swear "This time, I'll wait until (my friend buys it, a patch comes out, a demo comes out, it drops to $19, whatever) before buying it." And I always break down, and later regret it. I didn't buy MOO 3, though - I started to suspect something was wrong in the final weeks.

BlizzardGR:

Opinions on the game vary, though on the GC2 forums they seem largely positive. Regardless, there are undeniably a lot of bugs that you would not see in (for example) a Microsoft-sponsored PC game at release, let alone in a console game. To me, it's like going to a job interview without showering or combing your hair. You're the same person underneath, by why saboutage yourself? The game's quality is monotonically increasing at a very rapid rate, so there's little point in diving in now, when it will be much better in a few weeks.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SC3 was hardly that bad. It was nowhere near as good as SC2, but that doesn't mean

It was only a subset of ATI cards where the game wouldn't start, and in many cases it was a matter of Microsoft's DirectX 9.0c install routine not properly updating the drivers.

I never experienced any crashes that I would consider regular. Even so, one crash every two hours is extremely low for any kind of game.

Do you have the recommended 512 MB of RAM? You'd probably want at least 1 GB to prevent slowdowns.

It's a single-player game, so just don't use that exploit.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Irrelevant. There is no reason why the game shouldn't have been able to run _at all_ with 1 version out of date drivers.

*cringes* More like, extremely high. There is no excuse for a $50 game from a huge company to crash in anything but the most obscure of situations. The game would crash _every turn_ after playing for a while in many cases... It was absurd.

High amounts of RAM didn't help anyone I know. Game was still unstable and crashed a lot with a gig or more. It has been fixed now, but the beta release 1.0 was really bad...

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I thought Starcon 3 was horrible. I derived no pleasure from it *except* for melee mode, which took no game designing, as it's been present since SC1.

I should not have said "Unplayable". In fact it was playable on most ATI cards, but there were major graphical flaws. In my case - I have 512 MB ram and a Radeon 9800 Pro, which had the latest drivers (and the latest DX) - I got no wonder videos, a black diplomacy screen 80% of the time, the screen went all *weird* when I zoomed out (orange blocks rather than cloud cover). But it was playable. However, that was after the patch that was supposed to fix problems with ATI cards.

I also had no music at all except for the intro (maybe that's the only music, I don't know), and after my fourth city, the game would slow down as time progressed so that I had to restart the game every 20 minutes or so, rather than experience 0.5 FPS. That was a memory leak combined with a graphics caching problem, I understand.

And then there were the crashes, but there were only a few of them. However, I only played for about 7 hours. Civ IV is the only game I can think of that's crashed in WinXP SP2 (though I have a bad memory). WOW crashed, but that turned out to be a motherboard problem, due to crappy Taiwanese industrial espionage (they messed up when stealing the Japanese electrolyte formulas, but used them anyway). If they didn't have a virtual monopoly, I'd never buy another Taiwanese motherboard again... and I see no reason to cut Firaxis slack for shipping a technically broken product, either. Developers know at release whether their game works or not, just like mobo makers know whether they are using black-market child-labor capacitors based on crayon drawings smuggled on the underwear label of a dyslexic Japanese janitor. The Taiwanese execs may not have known the capacitors would explode and leak, but they sure knew that they didn't care. And Firaxis didn't really care whether ATI users could play their game within two months of buying it, or whether anyone could play more than 2 hours without a crash or more than 10 turns (mid game) without restarting. I know there were reports of people not having problems, but you can't launch a new jetliner based on scattered reports of them not crashing on takeoff... and you shouldn't do that with software, either.

As for not using exploits... it wasn't like I tried to. The typical AI diplomacy routines, like those in Civ 3, demanded strictly unequal trades. But if you used the new feature, the "What will make this deal work?" button, the AI would accept any deal you had put on the table, even if they had rejected it before. And they would never accept my peace settlements otherwise, no matter how badly they were losing in a war, or how little I asked for.


As I said earlier, GC2 is in much better shape. No major graphical flaws, working music, no crashes, no slowdown after 10 straight hours DESPITE defragging my other harddrive for the first 4 hours of it. They simply care more... though not *quite* enough for me.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I'm just glad I borrowed a friend's copy of Civ 4 to try it before wasting any money on a beta...

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

It wasn't a problem with having 9.0b. It was a problem where the install routine Microsoft provided didn't upgrade 9.0c installs to the latest version of 9.0c.

Have you ever played more than a half dozen various games? Games have crashed every few hours well back into the DOS era.

Did you make any attempts to fix your computer if the crashes were that common?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

The lead developer certainly cared.
Civ 4 Problems

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SimCity 3 was better after the Rush Hour expansion pack came out. So yes, it was broken at game launch.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Please don't shift the blame away from Firaxis here. A patch of the game fixed the problems without ANY reinstalls of DirectX or video card drivers. They did not test the environment very well and did not initially make the game able to run well with those older drivers or versions of DirectX.

I have played many games, and stop playing the ones that have inexplicable, repeating crashes. Very few games I have ever seen crash periodically _in the middle of every turn_. Forget every few hours... It is not excusable for anyone to release horridly buggy games. I no longer buy games before trying them out because of this widespread beta-as-release phenomenom.

My computer was never broken or in even slightly bad shape. The computer never crashed, only Civ 4 crashed. In the first version that wouldn't even have the game start, I did attempt to perform the ridiculous procedure that Firaxis posted of reinstalling drivers and the game, but it did nothing to alleviate that problem. After some patches it would run, but crash once the game had progressed to a certain point. There was nothing for me to fix, short of hex editing fixes into the Civ4 exe, since there was never anything wrong with my computer, but with the game. Now that they are finally progressing from the beta stage, the game runs rather smoothly, without any further dicking around with reinstalling drivers and DirectX.

Anyways, this thread is about GalCiv II, not Civ4, so I won't post anything further about it in this thread.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Running old versions of DirectX and old drivers is the users fault, not the developers.

Then you haven't played very many games at all, and especially not many DOS games as I said. Random, unpredictable, even predictable crashes have always been, and always will be part of PC games.

Please don't attempt to rationalize a justification for piracy.

How do you know? Did you make any attempt to fix the dozen or so problems that all computers have. Did you purge your registry of entries from programs that you uninstalled months ago? Did you update all your drivers? I dislike it when people aren't willing to perform even basic maintenance on their computers before making complaints.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Borrowing a game from a friend (where he does not make a CD image to keep playing it while you have the CD) is totally within the realm of fair use. I only respond to this because this bizarre assumption of piracy from left field might lead others to believe that it is not. Without a demo, there is no other way to test a game on your machine to see if it will run. You can't return opened games to stores these days (at least in California), since everyone that wants to return software is a dirty pirate.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I dislike it when people make ridiculous claims like Listen to yourself! Or rather, read. Can you not see just how ridiculous this statement is? That's a candidate for Sivran's Most Ridiculous Item of the Day, AFTER I spent an entire day listening to novice computer users describe their problems to me!

I suppose you're also going to say that Windows 9x/ME could not possibly function for more than twenty-four hours at a time, and that spyware "just happens," and that deleting your browser cache is actually useful in more than a small handful of situations?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I foresee yelling. Much yelling. And I've got a headache.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I don't want to wade into the arguement too far here, but this statement is, in my experience not true.

I have bought many games through the years, and few have crashes at all let alone crashes every couple hours.

I also have to disagree that random, predictable and unpredictable crashes always will be a part of PC games, since that implies there is nothing that can be done about it. That is not true. Crashes are inevitable, yes, given the massive amount of hardware and software combinations that exist. Something won't play nice with something else, and cause a crash. However, there is absolutely no reason why the vast majority of such bugs can not be caught by the developer during beta testing. The rest that emerge after release should be taken care of in a patch as soon as possible.

There is no reason a gaming company should have a "finished" product that crashes in more than the most unusual circumstances. Crashes are not an unavoidable part of PC gaming.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Over 20 years, I have had more DOS "crashes" due to power outages than software problems.

Windows itself is very unstable compared to DOS games.

And just to be clear, attempting to run DOS games under windows dosen't count. Boot to DOS with a floppy, and keep in mind that your hardware is a hundred times more than the game and the OS was designed for. It works damn well.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Ok, I was under the impression that the problem was people had DirectX 9.0b, and the game wanted 9.0c... ok, so the release dates for the two versions of the library are pretty distant, so it could be "old" in that sense... but 9.0b -> 9.0c was supposed to be a minor bugfix release, as evidenced by the internal version number going up by only two builds (i.e., compile all the fixes, "oops, there were a few typos", compile again, done). It wasn't something where there were only functions that required 9.0c. There is really no reason why the entire game should crash from that. And any testing department worthy of the title would test the game out under a variety of boxes, under a variety of hardware and environments. That means having computers from low end to high end, cheap no-name video cards, mid-range and high-end cards from BOTH nVidia and ATI, use both crappy on-board sound and sound cards, use Windows 98 through XP SP2, test it with the first release of DirectX 9.0, etc. If you only test it out on the same boxes that the devs use, you're going to find jack [censored] for problems.

And Fyron knows what he is doing with his computer. If he says it's a problem with the game and not the box, it almost certainly is a problem with the game. He knows how to take care of his machine, and he would check on drivers and patches for anything before complaining about it. Most of the people on these boards are the same way. While it is annoying to deal with people who complain about things that they screwed up because they have no clue what they're doing, your assumption in this case is entirely unfounded.

Oh, and I have played quite a few games, including several in DOS. Two hours between crashes is bad. I remember keeping some games up for days by playing a bit in the morning, going to school, play a little more when I get home, and so on. Games should not be expected to crash after as light a load as two hours. Period.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Why am I suddenly reminded about this poster ? I wonder... Really, reboots *are* a feature!

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

In reference to frequency of crashing, SEIV has only crashed on me once in all the years I've played. Now THAT is impressive! Few games can be played for at least 1000 hours with only a single crash.

Can't even remember what exactly caused the error, it was an RCE but for the life of me I can't remember when it occurred.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

According to Graeme's link, "the" problem was people with 9.0c thinking they didn't need to upgrade to Firaxis's 9.0c (let's call it 9c'), and thus a problem with Microsoft's naming convention... or else, people with 9.0c being unable to upgrade to 9c' because the Direct X installer was broken.

I honestly don't believe that. First off, all this "the problem" crap implies that Civ IV had a single problem. Second, the game's graphics were only ~85% functional on my Radeon 9800 Pro, after the 1-month patch. Third, I had DX 9.0b, so I upgraded to Firaxis's 9.0c when prompted, and had major graphical corruption - and a host of other problems. Therefore, I conclude that while some earlier adopters were probably unable to play at all because Firaxis shipped a broken game with a broken DX 9c' installer, the game was still broken regardless of people's DX version, and a straight month of intense bug-fixing by a huge corporation - taking advantage of hundreds of thousands of unwilling reverse-salaried beta testers - was unable to remedy it.

In their defense, I heard of a major game once (forgot the name) that recursively deleted your entire harddrive when you uninstalled, if you had installed anywhere other than the default directory. Whereas Civ IV's uninstall went quite smoothly.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Actually there were *several* games that did that. Sort of pathetic, really. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SEIV has *never* crashed on me since I switched to Windows XP last year. And I've spent hundreds of hours playing.

Now, SEIV used to crash quite often when I had Windows ME, especially when I used ALT-TAB to switch between SEIV and other programs. But it was a Windows ME problem and not an SEIV problem.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I have gotten SEIV to crash on me several times. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Most often while playing the Expanded Mod with uber huge systems.

I will say though, RCE's are pretty much history. I have not seen an RCE since 1.49. Well one or two since then, but mostly do to issues that were addressed in 1.94. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Supporting a game going on six years after its release has to be a world record. Aaron should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize along with having his name in the Ginues Books (sp) for superior game support.

If the big boys played by Aarons rules, games would have a lot longer shelf and life span. SIX YEARS! This is simply unheard of! A First! The Fifth X in 4x gaming, eXceptional support!

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SE IV, the first 5X game! I like that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

SE IV Gold has crashed twice for me in about 15 months. Both times I was in a combat replay and a TDM-Tessellate ship was ramming one of mine (Terran). Dozens of other replays with ramming caused no problems, so the circumstances must be very specific.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I've also gotten SEIV to crash rather reliably with several of the memory-sucking mods that are hod on my paltry 256k RAM: Adamant and Invasion come to mind as games that got to the point I'd be assured of a crash if I opened the mod.

But I know what the problem is and can simply avoid it by not playing those mods.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SEIV is barely crashing at all. Within the last years i can only remember about half a douzen crashed, ALL my fault, due to wrong modding and that strange out-of-range something like that error right after processing the first turn. I for one cant remember a single crash NOT *forced* by my behavior. In my conclusion, SEIV is one of the least-crashing games. Look at X1, X2, X3, take Master of Orion, take most RPGs (Temple of ELemental Evil comes to mind, as do Daggerfall series), even take CnC Generals, take the First Decade, take Civ4 they -all- crash occasionelly, be it with or without patches applied.

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btw. Im pretty amazed by the people who *defend* Firaxis here. It was clearly their fault and i believe FAR more than 75% of the initial buyers had major issues with the game. Firaxis did not even fix their stuff in the first place, i absolute remember that a fanboy made some kind of dll-swinging .exe which solved the memory-lads. When the official patch was released, it included that fanmade fix. Unfortunally this is where im dissapointed from the so called god of gamers Sid Meier. I remember playing Civ 2 when i was like 10 years old, i remember Colonization, and Pirates Gold. Civ 4 was a catastrophe.
Now, months after release, its good and modable, but thats no excuse which would allow a company to sell crap. Its like your car-shop is selling you a so-called new and intact car, which is in fact missing both its brakes and its gas pedal.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Civ 2 and Colonization were mostly Brian Reynolds and others though, with Sid's name tacked on...

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And I don't believe that, especially not when, of the 4 people I know who bought it, not one of them experienced any major issues whatsoever. If it was 75% of all initial buyers that had problems, then at least three people in a group of five should have problems.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

...assuming statistics actually worked that way. 5 people is an irrelevant sample size.

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Well, if 75% of all people had a problem then the odds of 5 people (picked randomly) having no problems is .25^5 = 0.0009765 so about 1 in a 1000. Of course, I can't confirm that the five people cited above didn't have problems.

Note: I'm not defending Firaxis, I've never played Civ IV and don't plan to, my brief experience with III was quite enough.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Note: it was actually "major problem", not "problem".

"Major" is subjective. There are tons of people posting on the GC2 boards saying, "Congrats - the game is flawless - I love it - whiners are posting problems, but I haven't experienced any."

These people are wrong. They have experienced problems, but they didn't notice or didn't care. Major problems, though - that's totally subjective. I was mostly even with the other majors in my first GC2 game, but had by far the weakest military... and suddenly found a "Lucky Ranger", then another one 5 turns later, each with stats sufficient to destroy all other empires combined (no enemy ship was strong enough to damage it). I crushed a nearby empire (the strongest in the game) taking not only no losses, but no damage. Due to a random event that happened twice in quick succession, I went from 'struggling' to 'godlike' and the game became boring, as my victory was inevitable regardless of my past or future actions. So, I quit.



As I said in my first post, this kind of 'annoyance' is widespread, but can be easily fixed. I consider it on some levels to be a major bug, since it destroyed the game for me and made it unplayable until the issue is resolved (many others have complained about "Lucky Ranger" power and frequency), and on others a trivial bug, since it can be fixed in a few minutes. I can see how some people would not classify it as a bug at all, let alone a major one. There's also a bug where you can upgrade every ship in your empire for free. The debt limit is -2000 BC, a 'feature' to prevent people from accidentally ruining their empire with an accidental purchase. However, upgrading all ships in your military for 100,000 BC, when you only have 1 BC, will leave you with -2000 BC; since that is the debt limit. Again, this is a major gameplay bug, but a minor game bug, as it can be fixed in minutes. However, Stardock's official word is that "It's a feature, not a bug." So, who knows whether it will be fixed? (I give it an 80% chance within a week.) And furthermore, it's plain how 'aggressive' or 'competitive' players would find this to be a major bug, since you can't possibly compete with Metaverse players who exploit it, unless you exploit it at least as much as they do. Yet others who don't notice a whole lot, and assume their racial pick of +20% social production is working (actually, it did nothing before the patch today), will say "The game works fine for me; I don't know what they're complaining about."


So... 5/5 people not noticing major bugs - especially occasional bugs, exploits that are not technically low-level bugs, bugs that are specific to specific hardware configurations, and etc - is not just a statistically small sample, but actually irrelevant. I estimate from my experience that 80% of randomly selected players of randomly selected games would say, "I never experienced a bug" regardless of how buggy the game was... simply because they are not attuned to it, don't know what bugs are, forgot about them, weren't annoyed by them, enjoyed the fact that it let them do something they couldn't otherwise, or whatever. It would take a spectacularly buggy game for Joe Gamer to notice a bug.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I totally agree with you that what one person considers a problem, another may not. But if 75% are experiencing what they consider to be "major" problems (whatever they may be), it is unlikely (1 in 1000) that you will randomly select 5 individuals that report no problems.

I'm not saying that these people were found; I'm not saying that the fewer than 75% had major problems. I was just responding to Fyrons comment about how statistics work. A sample size of 5 can be relevant, though the method of collection could make it irrelevant.

I certainly don't appreciate rushed, and buggy games, and I am not commenting on the quality (or lack thereof) of GC, or CIV IV. I've never played either game.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

75% was a fairly generous exaggeration anyways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I still say 5 is an irrelevant sample size, especially when there is no randomness to the selection.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I agree that the method of selection leaves a lot to be desired.

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Er, sorry, Yoda - I may have come across as aggressive, but it was meant to be general commentary that happened to quote you.

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Indeed it was one. I meant "a lot". Actually, if Graem says 5 of his 5 friends had no problem, i will just state the opposite, because 3 of 3 of my friends from work had problems, and that does not include me. So here you go, statistic fixed.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

So is GalCiv II worth buying or not? Also who is selling it retail wise?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Retail: Most major game stores, including EBWorld / Gamestop. You can also get it by digital download.

Worth it: I'm still holding off on that. Bugs and issues are popping up faster than they're being fixed (like a whack-a-mole game). Evaluating it right now is like putting a price tag on a California mansion built on alluvial plains, during an 8.0 earthquake. It's hard to focus on the house at all, let alone predict what it will look like in 30 seconds. However, I will extend my forecast for the end of the earthquake until late March.

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I bought it yesterday but haven't had much time to play yet, so all I can say is that it's Purdy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time yet to get into it very much, but when I do I'll post my review of the game, as it stands with the latest patch installed.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Impressions: Overall, I like the game a lot. It has its issues, definitely, but I've found I can overlook most of them quite easily and don't even notice them that much after a while. A few things though, really irk me, such as the inability to pan through the main screen map using the arrow keys, you have to use the mouse. Pain in the arse. But a minor one.

On the positive side, the game hasn't crashed on me once in about 12 hours playing, haven't noticed any glitches even. The graphics are very nice, even including rotating moons above planets. The ship designing is a very welcome addition over the original, though I'd say it's a little more clumsy than that of SEIV, though more detailed. For example, you can't (yet) automatically upgrade your designs if you research better weapons, but on the other hand you can totally customize how your ship looks buy adding all the components and extra aestetic features onto the base design.

Combat is also much better than the original, but no where near as detailed as that of SEIV. Still, I've found it to be quite enjoyable, though one thing that bothers me is the huge advantage attackers get over defenders. Many times I've had a couple decent ships defending a planet, when the enemy comes with a single ship, blows hell outta me, and goes on his merry way. Oddly enough, any one of my ships if I attacked them would be enough to blow him out of the sky without a point of damage. It's odd how they gave such an advantage to being the attacker, so much so that a weak ship attacking a stronger ship can win many times. That is one of the most annoying things that I have found.

I had wondered how they would implement a campaign in a TBS games such as this, but to my surprise it is actually quite well done in my opinion. It's also quite difficult, as the enemy they have you face is extremely advanced technologically. You have to act very fast to accomplish your goal, or else the numbers of advanced ships the enemy throws at you will be overwhelming.

I haven't even touched on many aspects of the game, and while there are a number of issues, mostly they're quite minor. More annoyances than issues to my mind. It could be that I'm not as picky as some people, or just haven't noticed some things (quite likely), but I am enjoying it thoroughly. And given its potential, with the updates that are pomised and new features to be implemented, issues to be resolved, I'd say this game will be on my computer for quite some time.

9.2/10 For comparison, in my book SEIV gets a 9.6 or so out of 10. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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...on the other hand you can totally customize how your ship looks buy adding all the components and extra aestetic features onto the base design.

This sounds like a big waste of time to me.

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Somewhat, yeah. But some people want prettiness as well as gameplay. Personally, I could do without it but from reading the GalCiv2 forums, a lot of people like it.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

My only good point about the Game is tha AI. It is tough. It will kick your butt. Of course it isn't as adaptive as I was lead to believe, because you can bascially out think it in some regards...but they will always find a way to make you go hmmmm....

Kana

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Warning - long post, but I figured I would share my impressions as well.

I precede my impressions with a short disclaimer that this is my favorite genre. I pretty much buy every major space-themed 4x strategy game that comes out on the market and started my foray into this genre with Stars and MOO I. I also try a fair amount of shareware and open-source clones available and have even bought several shelves full of DirectX, C++ and general game programming books in periodic attempts to cobble my own game together (obviously without much luck). My current hard drive load-out of Ascendancy, Star General, MOO II, Imperium Galactica II, Starships Unlimited, Space Empires IV, MOO 3, Free Orion and Space Empires V (beta), provides me ample material with which to compare to GalCiv II. Note - I did purchase GalCiv I and played several games for about a year after it’s release, but alas it did not make the cut for those games loaded on my current computer (built in 2004) - it just did not give me that "one more turn" enjoyment factor.

INSTALLING/SETUP - The two CDs installed without a hitch. It has no copyright protection, other than a serial number to be entered during install and again upon launch. Stardock also has a unique software update system which, when launched, allows the player to view various components of GalCiv II (as well as other software bought from Stardock) such as main executable, graphics files, tutorials, documentation, etc. and allows the user to download/update each component individually depending on the connection type, etc. I immediately saw that there was an update to the main executable, several tutorial files and a nice bonus pack available, so I allowed the software to download and install all of them before starting my first game. I should also note that I bought the collector's edition from EB, so I received an additional serial number to tell the Stardock software to unlock an additional file with "collector's edition" content to download. The collector's edition also came with a nice large color fold-out of the entire stock tech tree (the real reason why I bought the collector's edition).

TUTORIALS - Although I could probably write a small doctorial on 4x strategy games over the past decade, I decided to try a few tutorial videos anyway (since they are only a few minutes long) before starting a new game. I must say I was very impressed with how the tutorial system works. Each tutorial is a movie with someone showing you (pictorially) and explaining (verbally) how to accomplish a given task using the standard interface and any shortcut/helpful things to know regarding this task. Since they are broken up into short segments (e.g. "setting up a game," "What to do on Turn 1," and "Conducting Diplomacy") I found them very useful. They can be viewed in full and windowed screen mode and can be viewed even while you are in the middle of game (in case you forget how to do something and want to make sure you don't accidentally send a declaration of war). Each movie file is a .bik file with an associated .xml file which not only allows Stardock to update tutorials as they add features or content, but also allows modders to easily drop in the their own tutorials to tell users how to use new features created or changed by their mod.

GAME SETUP - The game setup screens are very intuitive, with the options broken into 4 main screens (Galaxy/Game Setup, Pick Your Civilization, Customize Your Civilization and Choose Opponents). Since all the defaults are setup already, you could conceivably "quick start" a fairly average/normal game as the default race - Humans, with a matter of 4 clicks of the "Next" button - very quick indeed. Of course, most players will want to customize their games and there are a variety of options on each screen for that purpose. The "Galaxy/Game Setup" screen allows the player to pick (via one-click sliders) the galaxy size, insert a custom map or scenario, modify what types of victory conditions are allowed, control the frequency of habitable planets, star density, the number of stars, anomalies (equivalent to Civilization's goodie huts) and planets in the galaxy, and (my personal favorite) the rate of tech research. The "Pick Your Civilization" screen displays portraits of all the game's races and a summary of the currently selected race, allowing the player to quickly view potential races without opening up a myriad of pop-up windows or secondary screens which require further clicking (and thus time) to close. The "Customize Your Civilization" screen allows the player to modify any of the default races chosen by changing their race name, portrait, leader name, political party, homeworld name, emblem, abilities, ship style/color and even their standard interface color. The "Choose Opponents" screen allows the player to choose which and how many opponents the game will contain, their individual AI levels, the starting relations between that race and the player and the overall game difficulty (if you don't want to individually set the AIs). In a recently released patch, the ability to randomize some of these elements has also been added - a nice addition for those of us who want to be surprised as to who and what level each of the opponents will be. Overall, the setup interface is well-designed and I quickly chose the game parameters I wanted (avoiding my desire to choose the "huge" galaxy option) and then chose "humans" as my race. No serious glitches were found with this aspect of the game. The only negative point I can see is that I don't know how easily this portion of the game can be modded by players (e.g. adding your own races, shipsets, galaxy types to the game), although perhaps this will be done via the "scenario" selection button.

GAMEPLAY - Before heading off into a review of the various subscreens, it is important to review the overall gameplay of GalCiv II. The best comparison on gameplay (and hence the source of its name) is to the Civilization series - not other games of this genre (such as the MOO or Space Empires series) due to its lack of depth in certain key areas. The game board consist of a 2-D galaxy divided into a square grid consisting of "sectors" (ranging from a "small" galaxy of 3x3 sectors to a "huge" galaxy 16x16 sectors). Each sector contains a further 15x15 grid of "parsecs" each of which can contain either a star of planet or other space object. This approach is similar to that taken by Stars!, Star General or Imperium Galactica II - there are no "warp points" or "jump points" separating parts of the galaxy as found in other games. The limiting factor for travel is then the "range" of your ships in relation to one of your colonized planets. Each star has a number of planets in orbit around it, with each planet being classified from 0 to 26+ based on its potential habitability and a race's tech level. A welcome switch from GalCiv I is that each planet is located in a separate parsec (square) - thus allowing different races to control parts of the same star system. Unfortunately, each race is treated the same in this regard, which is a departure from other games of this genre which have a deeper approach to this aspect of the game (e.g. specific types of planets and habitability preferences for each race). Each race starts with one planet. Each planet produces "military shields" (used to build ships) "social shields" (used to build facilities and other planet-based projects) and "research beakers" (pooled empire-wide for current research project). In addition to the above production, each planet (1) either adds or subtracts to the empire-wide revenue pool of credits (based on its individual revenues/expenses) and (2) project "influence" into the galaxy (based on the size of your population) which controls the civilization's ever-changing border with other civilizations. Your ships are moved each turn (which represents 1 week) on the galaxy map based on the number of parsecs they can move (research dependent). Research is conducted on an empire-wide basis one project at a time. Diplomacy and trade routes are conducted/set-up as you encounter each race. Space Combat is conducted by moving your ships into the same parsec as an enemy ship and resolved automatically. Ground Combat is conducted by transferring XX of your population to a transport and moving those transports to the same parsec as an enemy planet and is resolved automatically. Victory is achieved by (1) total domination by your civilization, (2) diplomatic victory (total domination by your alliance of civilizations), (3) successfully research an ultimate technology, or (4) achieving a certain level of influence throughout the galaxy.

THE FIRST TURN - The first turn opens with an introduction message from your GNN (galactic news network) robotic news service explaining the status of your empire in the galaxy. Note - this report also periodically comes back to you either once a year (or, at your option, quarterly) to provide you with a comparison as to how your race sizes up in various areas (military power, economic power, influence, etc.) against the other races known to you at that time - which is a nice touch because we often forget to check those handy little charts present in almost all these games now. Anyway, after the GNN message - you are brought to the research screen (discussed in more detail below) to pick your first research project. After you pick a research project, you are brought to the colony management screen (discussed in more detail below) to pick your first facility to add to your homeworld (you already have a colony - providing basic starting money and production points, and a starport - providing the ability to build and launch starships). Note, the game also provides you the GNN report, research screen review and homeworld colony management review each time you load and start your game as a way to get you quickly re-oriented to you game, which I think is a good idea because often you forget where you are when you left off a few nights ago. You also start with a survey ship and colony ship so I quickly headed these in opposite directions to find my first colony.

GALAXY VIEW - This is the "main view" and where the player will spend the bulk of their time moving ships and checking on the status of their planets. This view is not only graphically stunning (planets spin, moons orbit and you can zoom in all the way to see each ship in full 3-D gently bobbing and flashing lights), but extremely functional. As you zoom out, the graphic are slowly replaced by icons which you give a great overall view of the galaxy. In addition, as you scroll around in the normal view, I really like the fact that icons are superimposed on each planet to indicate ownership, population happiness, any specials present (such as an economic or research capital), whether a starport is present and color indicated icons to tell the player whether the ship/facility queues are empty or full. This provides some of the most-need information to the player (am I maxing my build queues?) without them ever needing to dive into a bunch of pop-up menus and wasting time. The mini-map is what you would expect, with several adjoining filter buttons for various types of information. There is also a nice big "Find" button to find the next ship with moves remaining. My overall impression is that a lot of time went into putting the information (such as build queues) and the buttons that the player would use most often in easy to find places. This concept is absolutely critical on the main galaxy view screen because the player will spend all their time here. If a game forces the player to dive into subscreens for even basic queue information each turn (such as MOO3 anyone?) it can it can turn 20 quick turns in an hour into a slow drudgery of only 5 turns an hour. The two drawbacks that I noticed on this screen are: (1) bumping the edge of the screen to scroll your view (even turned up to 100% speed) is incredibly slow and only scrolls horizontally and vertically (not diagonally), and (2) the fog of war is a bit difficult to decipher between (A) what you have not explored and (B) what you have explored but is not currently covered by sensors. At the time I write this, the developers have promised to address the scrolling issue (apparently most of their testers scrolled by "picking up the screen" with the left mouse button instead of using edge scrolling which is why they did not pick up on this issue). This is an example of why it is always a good idea to let some last-minute testers into a beta test and tell them to play the game without using hotkeys and shortcuts and to review all mouseover help text to ensure newbies won't have problems with what has probably become second-nature to most testers.

RESEARCH - Research in GalCiv II is almost identical to GalCiv I. All research points generated empire-wide are pooled into one project at a time. The research screen is straight-forward with a scroll list of available projects and estimated completion times, a summary and rotating picture of the currently selected project and a depiction of the portion of the tech chart that your currently selected item is located (but the tree can be opened up and scrolled around to view). Although this is a nice feature, one of the problems with providing this in-game tech tree is I doubt this will lend itself to extensive tech mods do the inability to display a modified tech tree. Furthermore, I could not find in my brief peruse of the files, the ability to create new techs, which is a severe limitation to potential mods. The tech tree has been streamlined from the original version and is extremely linear. While this will probably broaden its appeal to the mass market, the 4x grognards are probably not going to be pleased as it is much more simplistic. Due to its linear nature, it also does not reward players who pour a lot of time into one particular area (e.g. I can still access and research beam weapons level 12 - 20, by merely trading someone for beam weapons level 11).

COLONY MANAGEMENT - In GalCiv I you could essentially build every building once on every planet, leaving the order in which you build as the only strategic decision to make. I am very glad to see that GalCiv II has taken an approach more in line with the Space Empires and Imperium Galactica II in that the player now has a grid of 6x12 squares (superimposed on an atlas of each planet) on which to build facilities and projects. However, not all of these squares are initially open for building, the number open depends on the habitability class of the planet and certain terraforming technologies that can be researched. So the player now has the strategic decision of specializing the planet (e.g. building multiple factories or research centers) or making a more generalized planet, knowing that all facilities cannot be built on each planet. The main colony management screen shows the grid of the planet, its current output of shields/beakers, provides basic information about food/population/influence, etc. and allows you to place items and move them around in the build queue. Unfortunately, I think the colony management screen is probably the worst designed of all the interfaces (note - but in a game in which the interface gets an "A+" that simply means this screen comes in with a grade of "B"). The reason I am not fond of this screen stems from a design motto picked up somewhere long ago "put the information the player needs to make a decision on the same screen they have to make that same decision." To properly determine a planet's various bonuses, etc. the interface forces you to pull up separate "details" and "summary" screens in addition to the primary one, and even then it is not exactly clear whether the bonuses are already factored into the output that you see on the main screen.

DIPLOMACY/INTELLIGENCE - This aspect has not changed too much from GalCiv I and is actually one of my favorite parts of the game. The first pop-up when you hit the diplomacy key contains a nice portrait of each other race encountered so far in the game and under each portrait is the current relations meter with that race (ranging from red, yellow to green) and also an indication of what you are spending on espionage/intel on that race. This is a fantastic tool because in one click - it quickly gives you a good idea of where you stand in the galaxy in terms of relations. Further diplomacy is conducted by clicking one of the races, at which point a full diplomacy screen opens up (with the interface color of that particular race) with an extremely gorgeous animated head of the race you are talking to (which changes based on their mood), with that race's theme music playing the background. Otherwise, the screen is very similar to diplomacy in the Civilization series and Total War series, where each player's tradable items (credits, influence, trade goods, planets, techs, ships, and agreements to attack, etc.) are listed in a column and you simply add/delete what you want to trade to form a "deal package." The text of the deal package changes as you add items, turning green or red depending on whether the other race is agreeable to the deal or not. In addition, by clicking on the portrait, you can replace it with a comparison graph of your races or show a summary of the factors which determined why they currently hate/love you. One other aspect that is done well is the abstract trading model. You build freighters and send them to a friendly race’s planet, whereupon successfully reaching it the freighter follows the same path back and forth automatically bringing in credits each turn. This also provides a strategic target for opponents since the freighter can be destroyed. The negative points with respect to this area, is that the game completely minimizes the intelligence/espionage aspects - into a sliding credit expenditure in which more credits equals additional information available to you for that race. Another negative that has recently surfaced (but which Stardock has agreed to fix) is the frequency at which AIs trade their techs (something MOO 3 had a problem with as well). The AI currently does not treat any techs as strategically important and will trade all of them away the same turn they are finished. This quickly forces games into a race of who can meet the highest number of races quicker so that you can get that many more trades for each tech you put on the market.

SHIP DESIGN/BUILDING - This is another area where GalCiv II has departed from its predecessor (in the original you simply built or bought standard ship units similar to the Civilization series). However, you can now build custom ships in a very "lego" like manner, starting with a 3-D hull and adding struts, wings and other building components (referred to as "jewelry" and which do not take up space) to the hull, in addition to the "real" components (such as engines, sensors and weapons) which do take up space. You can view your ship from any angle/zoom level and the graphic are very good. Strictly from a shipbuilding standpoint, I think this is one of the most fantastic ship building engines I have seen in this genre. Sadly, however, it really does not mean much in terms of gameplay (discussed in more detail under the space combat section below). There are few minor annoyances: (1) Stardock needs to insert a "copy" command so you can modify default ships without having to start from scratch, and (2) they need to insert a "filter" command so you can view either only the jewelry or the real components in the component list -which can get quite long. I have also encountered some crashes and freeze-ups while using this portion of the game, so I think they have some work to do here.

SPACE COMBAT - I knew from the start that this would be my least favorite portion of the game. You see, my "perfect" engine for this portion of the game would be a pausable, 3-D rendering of combat (ala Homeworld II). I like to control my ships in combat because I think that is where a large part of the "fun" factor in these games is. As I mentioned above under the "Gameplay" section, unfortunately GalCiv II resolves space combat automatically based purely on attack - defense numbers. Sure, you now have the option of viewing the results via a 3-D combat viewer (ala the unreleased Stars: Supernova style), but you are just a bystander. The engine does not model tactical considerations such as weapon ranges, ship speed, initiative, ordnance, supplies, etc.). Experienced ships do get more hitpoints, which is a start. One aspect of space combat that I do like that is new to GalCiv II is the use of three types of weapon categories (beam, guns and missiles) and three specific defenses for each of those categories shields, armor and point-defense) which is similar to the approach taken with Starships Unlimited (although they had many more categories). This approach is a welcome change from GalCiv I and certainly makes for a more interesting game between races that use different types of weapons, etc. - but in the end I look forward to a GalCiv III that perhaps introduces controllable tactical combat.

GROUND COMBAT - I also knew from the start that this would be a "least favorite portion" of the game based on past experience with GalCiv I. I am a big fan of Star General and MOO 3 probably solely for their treatment of the ground combat model. I think those two games modeled creation and control of units at the division/corps/army level is just about right and the fact that those "units" could be upgraded and gain experience lent itself to immerse the player in more of the RPG atmosphere by raising those units to the same "level" of ships (which also gain experience and can be upgraded). Anyway, GalCiv II ground invasions is similar to the MOO II model in that you build transport ships and then send them to the enemy planet (albeit, in GalCiv, after loading them with population). You are then given options as to how to conduct ground combat (with varying degrees of cost/collateral damage). That's it. No audio of your ground forces during the resolution phase (ala MOO III) and certainly no 2-D representation of your forces battling it out ([edit] ala Star General).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - With a game that is committed to the single-player experience only (there is no multiplayer capability other than a "metaverse" in which you add your single-player scores to your team's aggregate to compete against other teams), this is a key area which must not only pass muster but must surpass all others out there - and it certainly does at that. While following the Stardock forums for the last few months before release, I was continually amazed at the detail and pain with which the developers, and primarily Brad Wardell, took to make sure the AI did not slouch and that it continually looked for ways in which it could use the tools available to it (e.g. processing time) to analyze and continually re-analyze its position and make decisions based on that analysis. From what I have experienced and from what I have read, I think this is by far the most advanced AI for this type of game out there right now. Another very important aspect for many of us, is that we want to know at which difficulty level the AI is given "cheats." To that end, Stardock has put in the manual the exact level at which the AI starts to get bonus points as well as the levels at which it has 100% of the AI strategies turned on (i.e. is the “smartest” and is not otherwise dumbed down). The only sad part is, unlike other games in this genre (like the Space Empires series), this is one aspect of the game which is not moddable. It would have been nice to be able to tweak AI empires and play them against each other. I think the fact that the AIs are not moddable will also severely limit the modding effort in that modders will have to be careful not to shy too far away from the core mechanics of the game, so that you don't "break" the AI.

OVERALL GRAPHICS/INTERFACE - Overall, the graphics are very well done. As mentioned above, the galaxy view shows beautiful planets with different atmospheres spinning, moon orbiting, etc. and zoomed all the way in shows your 3-D ships bobbing and stunning. The combat viewer is gorgeous (being able to see your designed ships battling it out in 3-D is cool, if nothing else - but I would still prefer tactical control and 2-D over no control and 3-D!). Overall, the interface is simply outstanding in all but a few cases (like the colony management screen) it delivered all the information I wanted on the screen on which I had to make a decision in an efficient and easy to understand manner, with a minimal number of view-interfering pop-up windows. It is definitely one of the best interfaces for this genre out there and I hope a lot of developers pay close attention to the thought put into each of these screens. Based on developer interviews, it appears that their secret weapon for creating this interface was Stardock's own retail interface tool called DesktopX (which is downloadable for free to the home user or $75 for the professional version). Apparently, this is a drag-n-drop windows skinning tool that converts the GUI components into an .xml file. The game engine then parses that .xml information into what it needs for the specific screen depth/resolution it is displaying the game in. Apparently, this tool allowed the development team to continually re-adjust and improve the interface throughout the beta process (and even now as they develop patches) with only a few hours time since they did not have to spend time worrying about the effects of each screen resolution. The development team also mentioned that they will be trying to market this tool to other game developers as an inexpensive library tool to use with other games which should prove to be a fantastic tool for small developers on a budget that don’t want to spend all their time fighting the GUI.

OVERALL SOUND - Overall, I would say the sound was average. The music was OK but did not especially grab me (after the first few minutes I turned it down to 40%) - but I did like the use of the different racial themes that played while you were engaging in diplomatic negotiations with a particular race. The sound was OK as well, didn't really grab me, but I really didn't see any area that was particularly lacking for sound effects, except the interface in a few places (where a gratifying "click" would probably have been nice).

MODDING EXTENDABILITY - As a caveat, Stardock has stated that they do plan to release information on the modding aspects of the game. However, as of the time I write this, none have surfaced so I am basing my observations on the file formats found in the various directories on the hard drive. For comparison purposes, I tend to compare the extendibility or "moddability" of game against the Space Empires series, which to me sets the bar for this genre in terms of opening up its files to modders. In this regard, GalCiv II is certainly more "open" than its predecessor. Most data files are in an .xml format, most graphics is a .png, .x or Desktop X format. However, most of these moddable files appear to be only "eye candy" files (graphics, sound, etc.) or pure data files and do not change the underlying mechanics of the game. Perhaps Stardock will release tools which do allow us to change ground combat mechanics (additional forms of invasion?), create new weapons, new races, new shipsets, change mechanics such as population growth rate, etc. but at this point it does not appear that you can easily change much other eye candy and add some techs/facilities. This is strange in light of Stardock's claims of mod-friendliness and the fact that new tutorials (developed by modders for their mods) can be easily added to the game. Perhaps this area is best left to the phrase "lets wait and see" when the documentation comes out and people begin experimenting.

DEVELOPMENT TEAM COMMUNICATION/SUPPORT - Another area where I think the development team has really shown bright is its interaction with the community. Lets face it, those of us that love this genre are not your average bunch of mainstream gamers. The fact that Brad Wardell and others have actually been out in the "trenches" on various forums (including their own) answering questions, listening to suggestions, etc. is truly the mark of a development team that cares about their fans is committed to developing a "living" product (via updates, additional content) and deserves my dollars. Another aspect that greatly appealed to me was their open-beta concept for those that pre-ordered the game on-line. What a fantastic way to award loyal fans (but preserve your sales figures) by allowing them to help you finalize and test the product. At the same time, they could respond to feature requests before the final release and make everyone a part of the development process.

SUMMARY – I think this game is definitely worth buying for those that like this genre. My own view is that it is more of a “beer and pretzel” level type game, but certainly has value for when you want a game you can finish within a week or introduce your child, nephew or niece to space strategy games. While I think it’s simplistic research model, lack of tactical space/ground combat, lack of multi-player and limited modding extendibility will hurt it’s longevity, I do think it pushes the genre forward in respect of how to do proper interfaces, development team interaction, tutorials, beta/copyright policies, diplomacy and trade models and graphics.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Good post Tampa_Gamer, but there are three points you mentioned which I think may need some clarification.

1) Diplomacy/Intelligence - "The AI currently does not treat any techs as strategically important and will trade all of them away the same turn they are finished. This quickly forces games into a race of who can meet the highest number of races quicker so that you can get that many more trades for each tech you put on the market."
- I've had many experiences wherein even allied races wouldn't trade me some of their weapon technologies when I'd offer them a lot of my own weapon techs and some cash to go with it so this could have a lot to do with the difficulty setting used and your own diplomacy skills.

2) Ship Design / Building - "(2) they need to insert a "filter" command so you can view either only the jewelry or the real components in the component list -which can get quite long. I have also encountered some crashes and freeze-ups while using this portion of the game, so I think they have some work to do here."
- Actually, you can select the option to only display specific types of components. If you select weapons, for example, there's an option to only show either Beam, Missile or Projectile weapons. In the Jewelry screen, you can select either jewelry specific to your shipset, generic jewelry, or jewelry used in the five other shipsets. I do agree that it would be nice if there were more options for filtering this though, perhaps being able to remove components from the list which no longer seem viable or which you don't use anyway.

3) Ground Combat - "That's it. No audio of your ground forces during the resolution phase (ala MOO III) and certainly no 2-D representation of your forces battling it out (ala MOO 2)."
- If by MOO2, you're referring to Masters of Orion 2: Battle at Antares, then I would really have to disagree with you on this. In MOO2, whenever you invaded a planet, you'd get a screen showing your troops and your opponents troop just going at each other. That's exactly what you get in Galactic Civilizations 2 as well, except in GalCiv2, you get something like a slot machine for the odds that your troops will defeat your opponent's troops.