Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Playing GalCiv 2
| Playing GalCiv 2 |
Thu, 06 April 2006 04:14  |
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 iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
In a recent month I've been playing a Stardock's 4X game Galactic Civilizations 2. The game is a sequel to two previous games, the first one for IBM OS/2, and the second one for Windows. All games were written for a single player mode only, and become famous for the good, non-cheatig AI.
GalCiv2 continues in this direction. It now uses 3D-graphics, and generally spekaing looks nicer that GC1. It has also a ship design, where one can put on ship different weapons, defenses, engines and support modules (cargo, colony, constructor, sensors, range-extenders), and different parts to make ships outlook more appealing.
Colony management also changed. Now each planet has a limited number of usable tiles, where one can put buildings. These come in various (upgradeable) types: production enhancers (factories), research enhancers, morale enhancers, influence enhancers, farms, defensive structures, and »wonders«. Since space on planets is quite limited, is there quite a challenge what to build.
Running an empire is on empire-wide scale, there are no individuall settings for a single planet. It is done by 5 sliders, that manage tax level, spending level, and where to spend: in ship-building, colony building, or research. Such an approach makes a quick ramp-up of newly acquired planets in late game quite difficult, esp. one can't build earlier-level (and cheaper) buildings on a planet.
Tech tree is now much cleaner that in GC1, and is visible with all levels – already researched ones, and future ones, so the navigation is quite simple. However (at least with ship components) some levels don't bring new stuff, just a smaller version of the already existing ones. Since space on ships is limited, that's quite usefull, as it allows the builder to put up one additionall component, that wouldn't fit in previous version.
Diplomacy and trade are done with the same window, and are strong: one can sell or buy almost everything, and also ask for peace, alliance, peace with some other. However some things for the player are lacking: demands to remove ships/starbases from one's space, NAPs, warnings of other civ growing too big…
Since GalCiv2 is a single player game, there's a big emphasis on the AI. And in this game AI really stands for Artificiall Intelligence (not A. Idiot). Routines for computer players are written without much scripting, so they actually »think«, and adapt. In economic department are they quite successfull. A player needs some practice to be on pair with them.
They also design quite good ships, if they have a proper tech, and they also can use those ships pretty well. However they are slow. They need considerable time to change their designs, they can't execute a »blitzkrieg« style attacks, they don't use tactical opportunities that arrise (like: an AI destroyed all opponent's ships, so his planets are defenseless. But instead immediately researching planetary invasions, AI's research went to miniaturization).
The best analogy to describe Ais' behaviour would be IMO a flood on a flat land. It comes slowly, but steadily, and rises, and rises... until it covers everything. The way I play is more like avalanche: big force applied in very short time on a limited area. And that limited area is usually what hurts an opponent the most: resource mining starbases, defensive starbases, and the juicest: planets. In this department AI nedds more development, but I'm sure Stardock will cover it with the time, as they're known to keep improving their products for at least a year after release.
So far I'd say the AI in GalCiv2 is in the range of a Stars! Intermediate player: it can put together a good economy, a good pressure on the border, but it can't focus on what's really important at the given moment.
Oh, and huge games are also as tedious as are here in Stars! 
BR, Iztok
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| Re: Playing GalCiv 2 |
Wed, 12 April 2006 23:54  |
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| Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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I'm guessing with all that fancy graphics it won't work under wine on Linux?
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