Woops wrong link above - this is the link for the web site for LE.

Anyways, go check out the forum, there u can see how the other folks react to the game...

The story behind Lost Empire is similar to that of the origin of Galciv. The first game came in 1990 and was made by a company called FLP, and was a good competition to the old VGA planets back then. That game was just called Pollux (v1.26 was latest).

The new Lost Empire has a simpler game play than the original, but are more streamlined and imho better. You dont _just_ have figther bays, you also got clones. You dont _just_ got stealth ships, you have 2 ways of achieving stealth. And you have counter measures to detect enemy stealth ships.

During the development of the game, the developers found that this game can be played in a lot of different ways, making the game last for a long time. There is a story in the game that you discover as you explore the univers, getting you bonuses along the way.

The AI IS quite scary, it is based on fuzzy logic techniques, which gives varied game play. It seems to be rather good and tough to beat.

Most of the game was designed and programmed by a single guy and that was recognized by the D3Expo show with a nomination for the "Best game of the year 2006" only losing to Hitman4. At that time, the game wasnt quite finished though, so it couldnt have won. Im not sure something like that has ever happened?

You also ask about other "skin"s. The game is highly mod-able and open in the design, so people can replace the existing ship designs with their own. You can also edit the game setup, names of races, stats etc. You can even put a new skin on the interface, although, it does come with a seperate skin for each race.

I can see on the Paradox site, that it is now the 3rd most sold game they have, better than their own hyped new Europa Universalis 3 (which I can recommand btw), so Im guessing there will be a site or two who would like to review it in the coming time.

-Mitara

Wow, that game might be really good for me! Some of the screenshots kind of remember me SW Rebellion (there seem to be heroes and ground forces/defense).

The problem is that I don't even find the time to play GalCiv2... damn..

lol - Im scanning all forums on google to see what people say about the game cause there has been so little information on it and no reviews yet - so I wanted to discuss the game with someone - thats how I found this forum - dunno about the guy above though, he seems to know a vastly more on the game than I do, lol.

I just saw the paradox home site. This game is now up in the Top 2 best selling games they have.

Somebody mentioned Steam. Why? I want it totalgaming.net instead (no I dont work for Stardock...)

Perhaps because when buying games available on TGN, internet connexion is required only for downloading the game (nothing to do to play in an offline mode) and you choose when you want to patch the game

  

I guess it depends about what kind of games you want to purchase

 

There's nothing wrong with Steam as far I as I can tell, but any program that restarts itself on the windows startup(with no way to turn it off, at least I couldn't turn the automatic startup off), and wants unchecked internet access, is annoying. I ended up uninstalling it and HF2 just because it was too intrusive for me. If I want steam to be active, I'll run it. Otherwise, I don't want an automatic program or a box telling me to sign in every time I boot up my comp.

I have this game... and ugh! It is a really good game, but it is not much for me. Game standard map has 5000 solar systems! It's mroe a game of exploration Plus there are no real hard limits with a game of this magnitude. You basically do what you like, and that's really hard for a mini/maxer like myself. I tend to prefer game swhere I know I have done the outermost possible on a turn and that I tweaked soemthign jsut a bit so I get +1 to somethign on that turn to be more efficent. In that game trying to do this would make your head explode.

Mitara, you are saying "The story behind Lost Empire is similar to that of the origin of Galciv. The first game came in 1990 and was made by a company called FLP, and was a good competition to the old VGA planets back then. That game was just called Pollux (v1.26 was latest)."
Do you have more information about Pollux, or do you now if it is available for downloading or purchasing?

Hmm I am wondering when there'll be some reviews of lost empire. I am playing it and its great - one of my favorite 4x-games during the past few years, but it would be nice to see what the game reviewers would say about it.

Maybe Frogboy will review it

I am waiting to see what they say about AI cheating...answers slow in coming, so still waiting.