OT: Galatcic Civilizations (GalCiv)

[Askan Nightbringer]

I played the beta and am now waiting for my CD to arrive.
The battles are Civ like and the effects of technology are sometimes abstracted (get a new weapons tech and all your ship might get +10% attack). The economy model isn't resource based and you can actually fund things through debt (purchase a colony ship and pay back money over time). The developers have also been very active on the forum (during the beta phase anyway).
Its quite a good game as long as your not expecting a MOO or SEIV clone.

Askan

[Atrocities]

Well I have played my third game thus far. I must admit, it is not much to look at for star system details. (Moo3 still hold the top award here for galaxy map) but SEIV hold the best layout for star systems. GalCiv does a great job at drawing you into the game play. I must admit that I have really enjoyed it.

I have started messing around with the data files. I have also discovered that I can not, at least at this point, add new ship images. I think they are all 3d Models saved in the GFx folder as .MDL files. I have not been able to open them with any program I have. I have one other program I can try, but it is on another PC. I will have to get it for this PC. The same program I used to view the SFC models.

Overall, the game is fun. I hope others find it that way as well.

Now if we could combine the best of SEIV with the best of Moo3 and now Galciv, we would have a truly epic 4x game for all. (Galciv reminds me more of BOTF than SEIV.)

[Aloofi]

By the pics it looks like there are not systems like in SE4.
Any news about a demo?

[oleg]

Originally posted by raynor:
Come on, Atrocities, Moo3 wasn't really *that* bad of a game. I mean, sure, I plucked down $50 and still haven't finished my first game yet. And, yes, I uninstalled the game from my hard drive less than a week after installing it. But, really, it's a pretty good game--or will be by the time it reaches the magical Version number of stability for all Master of Orion games: 1.3

(Of course, with MOO3, they may need to release their incremental patches by ten-thousandths instead of tenths...)

Come on, Raynor ! You did not finish your first game because you uninstalled the game... How worse it can ever be ?

[dominion]

Last time I've heard, the demo is not coming out until mid-April.

[raynor]

The #1 problem for me in MOO3 is the lack of options once you go into the 3D combat screen. It requires the battle to go until finished or 10 minutes--whichever comes first. If you have two unarmed ships (or perhaps so lightly armed that neither will ever die), then it will always take 10 minutes. So, if you have three or four such combats, you have to get up and go get a cup of coffee every time there is a ship combat.

Because of this rather significant flaw, I never even got to the point where I found out that the game has no AI. Even if they release a patch for the AI next month, I'm still not going to reinstall the game.

I'm playing Gal Civ now. It has some interesting features. But I'm still struggling through the interface in my first game. The AI is pretty tough. I've got it set to 'Cakewalk', and I'm trying to just press rush through the turns so that I can see what cool technologies I get. But even at the absolutely easiest level of difficulty, I'm gonna lose if I don't at least do *something*.

[solops]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Well I have played my third game thus far. I must admit, it is not much to look at for star system details. (Moo3 still hold the top award here for galaxy map) but SEIV hold the best layout for star systems.

I am having a good time with it, although there are still some rough edges on the interface. Gameplay is great. And, I don't care for the graphics. Everything is BIG. they need a zoom in/out of the main map and I haven't found one. This will be a really fun game as long as the AI is a challenge.