OT: Galatcic Civilizations (GalCiv)

[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.

[1FSTCAT]

My review of Galciv:

I've played through it now, twice, and tend to agree with what's been said, so far.

The combat is EXACTLY like the "Civilization" series. Your units have attack and defense values, and hit points.

I don't feel this lends itself well to a large research model, where you're researching "Shields", and "Phasors", just to get an increase in attack points, or a new unit that features said upgrade. They might as well have just had "levels" of research in Attack, Defense, communication, etc. (Level 1, level 2) It would have simplified things, I think..

The diplomacy is very good. Trading and communication is easy and thorough. No one else has mentioned it, but there is NO multiplayer capability.

A couple of gripes about diplomacy : NO SURRENDER. All I can do is quit. I would like to have had a scoreboard, or something, similar to Civilization. It would make the single player games, ultimately more interesting.

I don't like how you can only attack star systems, and not planets. You also can't GLASS a planet/system, like you can in SEIV. You can only capture it.

My overall score would be "Average". It's not great, IMHO, but it's a lot more playable then MOO 3.

--Ed

[Malfunction]

Sounds interesting, but I don't like the having defense and attck values instead of unique atrributes for armor, shields, weapons and such. I think I'll just break down and get the Gold SE IV instead (I have the classic).

And yes, MOO 3 goes down in my book as well as a POS.

[Aloofi]

Well, it looks like SE4 still the ruling king of 4Xs.
The thing from GalCiv that got my attention was those political parties.