GalCiv II: yet another set of initial thoughts

So, why do I think you all want to read my thoughts, when I'm hardly a
major league poster and don't even own the game?

Well, I've been playing strategy games for ~30 years now (starting with
Trek on a PDP-12) and "4X in space" is up there among my all-time
favourite genres (though I am torn between sci-fi and magic). IMHO MoO1
is the best single-player space 4X ever made, and I still play it
fairly regularly. I bought the original OS/2 version of GalCiv, and
until MoO1 came out it was my favourite. It was good but the micro got
tedious. Eliminating micro is the single most important thing for any
4X game, I think. That's why MoO2 will never be as good as MoO1 and why
MoO3 was such a lost opportunity.

I have to say there are some massive gaps in my knowledge though - I
never played Spaceward Ho, RFTS, Pax Imperia or Imperium Galactica.
Just too many games and too little time (and frequent departures into
genres other than 4X TBS - RPGs, RTS, the occasional FPS etc.).

Anyway, I have been eagerly awaiting GalCiv II. I picked up GC1 for
Windoze a couple of years ago, and never got into it. Still can't
really work out why. I played GC2 for a few hours this weekend (the
first two chapters of the campaign), so these really are first
impressions.

It looks beautiful. I'm easier to please than most because I very
rarely play new games, so the graphics are really impressive to me. But
also the feel of it is really nice, like the feel of MoO1 or
Ascendancy. Immersive, sort of. I really like the light-touch humour in
all the tech descriptions, the diplomatic and trade interactions etc. A
good sense of fun, without descending into silliness.

The tile-based movement strikes me as an odd choice. Most space games
(3D or not) tend to have vector-based movement, and I guess that just
feels better to me. The isometric view means I often clicked one tile
away from the destination I intended unless there was a landmark to
click on. Multiple waypoints would be especially nice for explorer
ships, though not hugely important for others. I never worked out how
to set a rally point for a newly built ship, but I know it's there
because there's a toggle on the main map to show them.

I didn't get to do much multi-ship combat, but the combat seems fine to
look at (albeit a bit odd as ships suddenly rotate towards you and get
MUCH bigger). One thing I don't get though - do you actually have any
say over the combat? I mean, all I could see were buttons to play, FF,
rewind etc. I couldn't see any means of exercising any choices. So it's
basically like the VCRs of VGAPlanets, right? You can watch the fight,
but the outcome is unaffected. So in fact I'd probably switch off the
combat videos altogether to save time, and just see which ship blows up
on the main map. I thought GC2 was supposed to have tactical combat,
but I may be wrong. Did I miss an option setting? I guess if you have
fleets it might be worth watching to see how your formations work out.

I really like the tech tree. Ok it could be a lot easier to view, but
it strikes me as having enough depth to be enjoyable without being
unncessarily complicated. The increments of weapon and armour tech seem
sensible, though there seem to be some steep cliff-edges in the social
techs (building mark I takes 2 weeks, mark II takes 4 weeks, mark III
takes 14 weeks??). Lots of nice little ideas like Logistics and
Minaturisation (damn american spelling) which evolve as tech improves.

That reminds me, there are some odd synonyms floating about. Morale ==
approval? Weeks == months?? The ship movement and research seem to be
measured per week, but each game turn is a month, isn't it?

I like the fact that research carries over into the next tech - huge
anti-micro measure. Is the same true for social and military
production? I couldn't tell in the time available. Also, it seems that
postponed production (or research) doesn't atrophy a la Civ4. Don't
particularly mind that - one can make a realism argument either way.

I deliberately chose to try the campaign instead of sandbox mode,
because I don't usually like campaigns in 4X, but I've been pleasantly
surprised by the feel of this one. I find myself looking forward to the
next scenario, which is as much as a campaign can ask for. If it's
moddable enough that users can write campaigns, that bodes well.

I like the ship design. It's confusing to start with a Tiny and a Small
hull available, and then to research something which suddenly gives you
a second identical Tiny and Small hull (identical in stats and slots,
different picture). I never got as far as medium hulls, but it looks
like there's plenty of choice in ship design. I particularly like being
able to write my own descriptions as well as name my designs. At one
point I managed to fit two lasers and two impulse engines exactly into
a small hull, with no unused space, and just wrote "Oh yes." in the
description field. Gave me a laugh the next dozen times I built one.

The diplomacy and trading screens are very nice - I've not really
played far enough to stress test the actual decision-making yet, but it
all looks fine. Discussion rages elsewhere about tech trading - I don't
mind it but it would be very nice to be able to change the setting to
make it less common if I wanted a challenge game. Even just editing an
ini file would be ok.

I have to say the ground combat is a little disappointing. Being able
to get results ranging all the way from 1:1 to 6:1 for the same battle
feels a bit clumsy. I mean, even if the probabilities are actually
pretty smooth (ie. 6:1 is REALLY unlikely) it feels a bit kludgy to see
it in large print on the screen "23:4" etc. I wonder why it's shown? It
would be identical just to click Attack and show the battle without the
numbers - then at least the result would be a surprise. Having said
this, hardly any space games do ground combat well.

It's a bit galling that social production is all wasted once the tiles
are full. If all my planets are full then I can set the slider to zero,
but I often found myself with my early planets fully developed and just
one or two recently conquered ones needing social spend. Couldn't we
have some way of recycling unused social production?

This brings me on to my biggest beef, which is that managing the
economy is so damned hard. In the campaign scenarios you start off at
only 50% spending but with a huge 5000cr bank balance (normal diff). I
found myself playing the scenarios timing my deficit spending so that I
would win before I went bankrupt. Maybe it's just me but I can see full
sandbox games getting very frustrating. It's hard enough managing
production, research, pop growth and appoval/morale, but the economy is
exceptionally hard. Why does it cost money to spend factory
production?? It just doesn't make sense.

I did finally work out that I had to build some entertainment centres
to keep the people happy on the crowded planets, and that you don't
need them on all planets, just the ones which will get upset if you
raise the tax rate. Per-colony economy sliders would be better, but
then I guess that would be micro hell. I still can't really work out
whether the extra 5b people you can have if you build a farm are worth
it, since you probably need to spend a second tile keeping them happy
and two more factories or research labs are probably much more useful
than 5b more people. Many games require you to have certain pop levels
to staff the planetary improvements, but this one doesn't seem to. So
why bother increasing pop at all??

I even built a few starbases, which I never did in GC1 because
constructors were just too damned expensive. I need a list of which
techs enable which starbase mods, because I found myself building more
constructors than I had base improvements to make.

Finally ... is it just me or are all the ethical trilemmas tilted
towards evil? I never saw one where Evil wasn't the best choice ...

Anyway, well done Brad, it looks like a worthy successor. It did CTD
six or seven times, but they all seemed to be around loading and
saving, so maybe this is fixed in 1.0X

CC

Bent C Dalager <bcd.RemoveThis@pvv.ntnu.no> wrote:
> In article <1141664816.968775.298550.RemoveThis@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> magnate <chrisc.RemoveThis@dbass.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Finally ... is it just me or are all the ethical trilemmas tilted
>>towards evil? I never saw one where Evil wasn't the best choice ...
>
> Evil always gives the best bonuses, because becoming evil is supposed
> to be a penalty in and of itself. In brief, if you're evil, no one is
> going to like you while if you're good then the other good civs will
> help you out etc.
>
> It might also be that the good-aligned techs are better than the
> evil-aligned ones but I don't really know.

In GC1 - Altarian Prophesy, the Paladin was certainly an excellent
reason to be Good.


mcv.
--
"Serenity is a very personal work with political resonance and a
heartfelt message about the human condition and stuff blowing up.
'Cause let's face it, nobody cares about that 'human condition'
stuff... in fact if you notice it, try to keep it to yourself."
-- Joss Whedon on his new film