I thought that I would be spending most of this past Thanskgiving weekend plowing through Assassin’s Creed II, maybe starting some Brutal Legend, and even getting in more time with Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. All of that changed when Stardock put Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition on sale for $20 this Thanksgiving holiday. Gal Civ II was a game I had on my “to buy” list for a long time, but after I tried out the demo, I felt it was too complicated so I shrugged it off and set it aside. The sale rekindled my curiosity so I tried once again to jump into it and this time it stuck. By the time I realized what had happened, I was already late for bed last night and cursing the fact that I had to come into work today. I was on the cusp of galactic victory. How could such a thing be denied?!
I’m not that big of a sci-fi fan. I like Star Wars (who doesn’t?) and am just starting to watch Battlestar Galactica now but I’m much more at home playing present day or fantasy-themed games. Space and futuristic technology just doesn’t quite work for me, but after I devoted some serious time to understanding the game (it has a steep learning curve), now I’m thoroughly hooked. In comparison to the other Stardock game I played, Sins of a Solar Empire, I realize that Galactic Civilizations II is more the type of game I enjoy. Sins of a Solar Empire seems almost too simple compared to it, since it focuses on combat due to it being a real-time game. While I grew bored of Sins of a Solar Empire after only a half dozen games, Galactic Civilizations II seems to have tons more depth, allowing me to spend time and effort with economy, culture, and technology as equally as military.
For those wondering what Galactic Civlizations II is, I don’t know if I’m the best person to explain it since I’m not a serious 4X turn-based strategy game player. I’ll try my best though. First off, 4X turn-based strategy games defined as such because the X represents 4 things you must do when you control an empire: explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. There have been a lot of games like this on the PC, but probably the most mainstream one is the Civilization series. While I may offend fans of both the Galactic Civilizations & Civilization franchises, I have to say that Galactic Civilizations II plays like Civilization in space. You pick a race, colonize a planet, and from there, manage the planet’s economy, what resources to create and what ships to create. Then you explore space, looking for new worlds to colonize, other races to befriend or go to war with, all while researching tech to allow for more advanced upgrades to your economy, military, government, logistics, etc. And like my first few times playing a Civilization game, I was totally hooked with Galactic Civilzations II once I understood how to play the game.
Currently I’m about 6-7 missions into the Galactic Civilizations II Dread Lords campaign, and love the fact that a game like this has a campaign. I played Civilization III, IV, and Sins of a Solar Empire, but none of those games had campaigns. I would just start a game from scratch on a randomly generated world with randomly generated computer AI players and take it from there. For some people that may be enough (and that mode is still present in Galactic Civilization II), but I like playing through campaigns because they not only give you some sense of objective, but there’s a storyline and new game concepts get introduced to you gradually. I almost feel like the free mode should be played after getting through the campaign and probably don’t play more than a dozen free-mode games for any of these types of games.
Now, while I do appreciate that there’s a campaign, I have to say that the Galactic Civilizations II Dread Lords campaign is NOT newbie friendly at all. This isn’t a Starcraft or Warcraft campaign where you’re limited to only a few units and abilities each level so you can gradually learn more and more. The Dread Lords campaign introduces this ridiculously powerful race called the Dread Lords who totally blow any other race away in the game. You may start researching and building ships to take on tne opposing races, but the Dread Lords as a third party simply come in and devastate anything you can build in the first couple of hours of the level and then take over your worlds too. It’s ridiculously tough, but at the same time, I’m figuring out ways to survive and press through the campaign. What I often end up settling on is letting my AI partners take over the planets closest to the Dread Lords, and meanwhile I just hang back and research as much tech as I can to create huge starships that can take on the Dread Lords and actually do damage to them. But each of these campaign levels is taking me 3-4 hours to beat just because I’m trying to build up forces in order to engage them. I have to say that this is NOT a good way for new players to the game to learn it. I’d like to build and appreciate star bases and trade routes, but it looks like the Dread Lords won’t let me. I’ve even resorted to switching to the easiest difficulty (there are maybe 7-8 different settings), and I’m still having a ridiculously tough time on one of these stages because the Dread Lords are 10x more powerful than your race.
If the game weren’t so engrossing, I would have pushed this aside by now and gone on to play something else. But even with how ridiculously powerful these Dread Lords are, I’m still dying to get home today to finish them off and move onto many more campaign missions against foes that are not as imbalanced. It’s an awesome series, and if you like the Civilization games and don’t absolutely hate space/sci-fi, I highly recommend it. Just realize that if you got hooked on Civilization, this game has the potential to have you question where all your time goes as well. Gal Civ II is honestly one of those types of games where I’ve learned that I need to make sure all my responsibilities are in order before I fire it up. The Ultimate Edition stands at a fantastic bargain, even at its $40 retail price if you’re looking for gaming mileage for your buck. Perhaps this game has too much mileage…
Good to hear someone else recommending GC2 – it’s a great game. I haven’t played the campaign in a while, but I am pretty sure you keep fighting the Dread Lords throughout, so don’t count on them going away. One thing about them – while they may have insane tech, they have almost zero population. It isn’t too hard to take over their planets if you get good enough troop technology, if they have nothing in orbit defending the planet. You can also try to focus on picking off their troop transports, rather than their combat ships, so at least they can’t invade you. Or you can focus your race on having a high population and high population growth, to try to stem off any invasions of your planet. It’s not easy, but like you said there are stopgaps while you improve your tech. Also agree that the campaign is not at all newbie friendly.
If you get frustrated with fighting the Dread Lords, I would also highly recommend the random maps. I agree with you about preferring a story and objectives, but one thing about the scenarios is that you can set them up to have a truly epic scope, something you can’t do in campaign.
thanks for your tip redyak! i did finally make it past the Dread Lords levels and am nearly complete with the Dread Lords campaigns, and what a difference it is to just fight Drengin and Yor. I did realize after playing through the campaign that yeah the Dread Lords have practically zero population, so it was easy to take over if you could get a transport to land on the planet but the toughest part was dealing with the combat ship orbiting the planet. I guess maybe if I were to go at it again, instead of just holding up and teching to capital ships, maybe i can implement baiting tactics and use weak ships to draw their combat ships away from planets they are defending, and sneak transports in to quickly take over the planet. ah well, i’m just happy to get past the Dread Lords and move on. these later campaign levels are huge in size, and are starting to feel like the random maps but without certain techs so i do see the limitations. like not being able to set up trade routes on some campaign maps? that’s just strange.