Comparison to Sword of the Stars?

So your looking for a strategy game with more depth than Sins and your thinking of GalCivII. Well sir you've definately heading in the right direction .

I got into GalCiv2 dark avatar and then Twilight about 6months ago. I think ive pretty much explored all the different areas of the game now and its still fun!



Regards to Diplomacy in GalCiv2
Their attitude to you (up to eight opponents) is very important and will dictate whether or not a race you've just met race will declare war on you but even if your long term buddies will turn on you if

They're are paid enough
You are trying to go for an Ascention victory or a Research Victory
Their president is assassinated by you in an "accident" [this is one of the many random events in the game which liven things up from time to time :D).
Your ethical alignment is different to theirs, (constantly builds animosity)
You get too powerful
You control too much space (influence)
Your boundaries border.
You attack their ally
Erm its a Wednesday?

Theres qui


So the diplomacy is pretty varied in GalCiv2, with lots of different, sometimes irreconcilable factors which dictate their attitude to you.

On Customizing chars
in addition to the minimum you'd expect in terms of character creating

You can customize the ship style of you faction, from eight maybe 10 options you can also modify ships in the list (create your own default constructor or whatever). Or create your own complete ship style

You choose a base race from 8/10 each of which has different +/-'s in terms of attributes, ship build speed, damage, diplomacy etc. You then have ten extra points to speed in whatever you like, minimizing the shortcomings of a race or accentuating its strengths. There are quite a few different attributes like 15 or so.

In Twilight each race now has its own tech tree such as the inherent ability to colonize certain planet types. Techs are broadly similar but are in different places and there are quite a few unique techs like 6 or 7 or so for each race.
You can choose one of those trees and also further customize your first few starting techs.
You can change colours of different parts your ships in a few different ways to make them look different, they all have a dual colour scheme and engine colours etc.

Each race has a super ability which you can choose from in a custom race, these super powers are super diplomat, super warrior (more hp attack), super organiser(gets other races to help them in wars) or super hive (pop growth), inherent speed penalty in their space, etc etc, most work very well (can be also be disabled)

Also you choose your political party, from around 10 with yet more attributes, there are also elections every once and a while and negative consequences if your party gets voted out of power. So you have to keep your own people happy round election time.

also as the game goes on random events present moral dillemas such as: we have discovered a small number of local inhabitants on Taurus5 do we:

GOOD. welcome them into our community educate and house them - 5% production
NEUTRAL. leave them be - o% change, this can also still be a negative or positive option
EVIl. put them to work in the mines + 10% production

These choices add up to your ethical alignment, which i guess is customizing your race as you go . When you research one of the first mid level techs ethics you get an on screen choice of good, neutral or evil each of which has unique buildings, techs abilities etc. If your actions up that point have been evil and you want to choose good, it costs a hell of a lot of money, if you want to choose neutral it costs somewhat less money and it costs nothing if choose evil.


Im afraid ive never played SoTS. But i have played Sins. The advantage of having a purely SP game is that you don't have to worry as a developer (im not one by the way) about being "fair" to all players at the same time so

-the maps are completely random (can be assigned to a specific created map) - comes with a map, campaign and another editor which i cant remember, some are a lot "fairer" than others i different ways.

- random events, lots of little ones and late game game-breakers which are designed to destabilize the status quo whatever that might be. This can turn victory into defeat or vice vera, conversely they might not even effect you very much at all.

Right now im loving the new graphics which are really good now and the ship building tool which i sometimes load up the game just to do for a few hours.

If you do decide to go for GalCiv2 Id wait a few days until Twilight is released in full or go ahead and pre-order Twilight of the Arnor (pre-ordering lets you download the beta, i did so about 3months ago and ive watched the beta get better and better, the beta is now at 0.98 and contains almost everything which will be in the final release.) Actually if you pre-order the final release will be like a rather large patch update .

The tone of the game is serious but cheeky also, but dont let that fool you its very in-depth.

I could go on but frankly my fingers are rather tired now, let us know what you decide and if it lives up the expectation ! .
Alex

lol, wow. What a response Thank you very very very much. Sounds like the game for me.

What is the release date for Twilight? I'll probably just buy the bundle

Last I heard, the 30th of this month, but afaik you can pre-order the bundle now and download the beta.

Yes. When you purchase the bundle, you can download the current beta, which is the last beta released, though this beta lacks a significant amount of content being placed into the version to be released in about two days. (Though I honestly have no idea what time Wednesday the game will become available.)

Brad (Frogboy/Draginol) had said a couple times in a couple of different spots that it will be late-ish afternoon the 30th.

(In other words, Thursday for us 'other side of the world' kids. ;))

And AJackal really went in-depth with his description of GalCivII and what it can do. I've played Sword of the Stars and, while it's fun, GalCiv is a better game by bundles. If anything, the replayability alone keeps me coming back. Every time you play, it can be a totally different game, due to my species, special abilities, what opponents I'm playing against, where they're located, the size of my map, the amount of colonizable worlds, etc.

It's so worth the money it's not funny. If you like SotS you'll absolutely love GalCiv.

I have all three, although my Sword of the Stars is pretty old!!! I enjoyed that game quite a bit. I also enjoy Sins too, but I have gone back to GalCivII lately. You can only blow up ships the same way for so long before it gets old.

I bought the Twighlight pak at the 2nd beta, and it keeps getting better. Once the final game is released, all the missing stuff will be in. Another week or two discovering the new stuff, then the ability to create content... I think my copy of sins will end up sitting for a long while.

You won't regret this game at all...

T

No problem, i have to apologies for all the typo's and even half sentences in there but i sort of got carried away typing and then when my endurance finally gave up i just lurched for the post reply button .

Alex

http://www.download.com/Galactic-Civilizations-II-Gold-Edition-Demo/3000-7493_4-10696264.html?cdlPid=10738396

If you do not know yet whether you want to buy it or not just try the demo with the above link.

GalCivII is complex, not in the detail (spendings are distributed by only 3 sliders, spying is just clicking on buildings and disabling them) but in the whole. The big complexity of the game is to get the mass of factors right to make a good game. At the beginning it seems almost too complex to understand quickly, but maybe that is really the right game for you, try it. And with TotA you get a lot of additional complexicity, so you may want learn the basic game principle by playing Dark Avatar first and then proceed to the new individual tech trees of each race in TotA when you understood the game mechanics. But believe us - its worth the money.

Ok. I downloaded the demo.

Where the heck has this gem been hiding? I can't believe I missed it. Wow.

I went in expecting a flat diplomacy concept (I love intricate, lots of options, type of diplomacy). I went in expecting horrible graphics. I went in expecting just another shallow game.

All I can say is oh my lordie. Boy was I WRONG. Flat out WRONG.

So.. I launched the demo. And, as I did expect, alot of features were disabled. No problem, I'm just looking for a feel for the game. Cool.

So after creating the faction I use in most 4X games, the Trade Federation (haha, yes, Im a SW geek at times. I love the Trade Federation concept. Shoot me. It's my sandbox dangit.) was reborn in GC2 glory. I setup my UI scheme(which is very cool btw) and then my ship concept. Couldn't create a custom one, so I selected one that seemed interesting. I told myself I'd stay with a neutral concept, but eh.. lol. Saw I could choose my color scheme, so I picked an orange/black color. I usually use orange for my Trade Federation, it seems a neutral color.

I honestly that was the ship builder everyone was bragging about haha. So about 20 mins into the game while accustoming myself to the different clickables, menus, diagrams, statistics, etc etc.. I was overwhelmed (which honestly is a feeling I've been craving for awhile. I just hope that one day it doesn't all click and seems so simple.). it was great. I stumbled into the Shipyard and saw I could create a ship. Cool.

I was BLOWN THE HECK AWAY. I could not BELIEVE that this was happening. It was like The Sims, meets Sim City, meets Spore(if you have no idea what Spore is, go google it NOW. This game is gonna be great. Basically.. you start with one mico-organism.. and evolve it all the way to the space age. You get to totally design what you want etc, much like the Ship Builder. But for creatures. Seriously. The Trade Federation will totally live on in the spirit of some gnarly looking 6 legged reptile with 8 eyes, and a jaw that hangs on the ground). Ok.. sorry.. off topic. Anyhow...and all that meets the Space/SciFi nerd in us all.

The graphics are fine. They don't seem grainy or anything at all. I currently play on my 37" HD LCD TV lol, reclined back in bed... so I play at 1024x768 resolution and it seemed fine. I did like the custome resolution option, but it still cut some off on my TV. No biggie. One day I may get a new monitor. (I have a decent system... Q6600 processor, 8800GTS, 4gb ram, etc etc.. and my monitor crapped on me. Instead of buying a new one.. I now use my TV lol. I'm economical). But anyhow, the graphics are great. I have yet to see a fleet battle however. I didn't even research Military yet =0 I was too busy looking at everything, exploring the tech tree, etc. If I recall, the Twilight expansion will improve the graphics even more right?

After spending an hour and a half on just a small scout design (I am that meticulous..I will probably spend atleast that on every ship I can. I love control. GC2 gives it to you)...I came up with the Scorpion Scout. I intended to make something much more not-so-crazy..but I figured heck, lets see what I can do. The cool thing was, I didn't start building and decide it looked like this. I saw a dead scorpion up in the light fixture and decided ok. Let's see if I can build a ship which looks like a scorpion. I had NO IDEA that it would come out anything close like this:










I think it looks pretty good for my first attempt. I have no idea if the stats are right, but after about 30 mins in the game.. I realized I may want to make the Scorpion Scout Mk.2 by maybe taking off a sensor(s) and adding a survey module. Anyhow.. wow..

I am seriously BLOWN AWAY. The game has so much depth. I have a buddy at work who is looking for a new game to play, but I do not think I will recommend GC2. He finds Sins of a Solar Empire deep and complicated...he thinks the tech tree there is huge..(which btw, is AWESOME in GC2. Lots and lots of Tech) I don't think he would appreciate the intricacies and fine achievement of GC2.

I see a HUGE replayability factor. One game you could decide to play an evil race set on the destruction of all.. one, you could play a pacifist race. Another, you could play a greedy, monopoloy-driven faction... the next, a bunch of religious zealots out to vanquish the entire galaxy of a specific race(which, could be setup obviously. It's AWESOME). All you need is imagination and a bit of role-playing, all mixed in with a bit of creativity ..and bam.. you have a different game every time.



A few questions...

1) What is the Metaverse? I saw it was disabled in demo but it said something about competing? That sounds fun.

2) I noticed some of the factions pictures on the diplomacy screen were animated, and some weren't. Are most of them animated, or not? Just curious because I find the animated ones MUCH more attractive. It is a small detail, but it definently adds ALOT in my opinion. Makes them feel.. alive?

3) Does the Ultimate bundle come with the Gold Edition extra building parts? I saw some were specific to the Gold Edition version.

4) Are fleet battles have a pannable camera? I would hope so, but if not.. I can live.

5) Gameplay question. I noticed that when mining, a yellow stream existed between both the mining colony and the planet. Is there a way this can be "blocked" to cut off a planet from it's mining resources?

6) Another gameplay question. I have yet to setup a trade route but.. once again, is there a way to block a trade route? I.e, a blockade on the trade route, to prevent the funds from getting to the destination planet, to cut income on that faction's planet?

7) What is the best way to become unaddicted? =0



The only real complaints I had were minor. For instance, I kept wondering why my ships wouldnt move to the planet. It took me a bit to realize I could already see the intel on them. Doh.

I also wish you could pan the camera UNDERNEATH the galaxy. Frivilous really, but as I said, I like control. No biggie.


The demo was great..I expect the full game to be awesome.


Oh and to answer my own question.


yes, GC2 is deeper.

Yes, GC2 is better. Sorry SoTS fans.

I found my new home

1. Metaverse is a way to compete by posting your games scores as an individual and/or as a member of one of the many metaverse empires. I think you will like it.

2. Some are and some aren't it is not a big thing to me after I have seen them a couple of times so I tend not to notice. Kind of like the game intro after you have seen it a few times.

3. pretty sure it does.

4. I think so but I should let someone else answer. There are a lot of camera options. I think the demo is fully functional in this area.

5. You can't block the beamed resource but you can destroy the mine or capture it with influence.

6. Essentially, the only way to stop trade income is to kill off the freighters, which means war. You can bribe others to go to war and let them kill the freighters if you wish. The bribed AI might take their own sweet time doing it though. As always the best way to get something done is do it yourself

I thought the bonus of Super Warrior was first strike ala original DL, so you can vaporize your opponents in the opening shot and they will thus never get to shoot back.

TA improves the graphics in several ways:

- Better improvement icons from higher resolution models
- Better planet textures
- Better ship textures (much, much better...)
- Animated ship parts! That radar dish or engine part? It can now rotate!

Of course, TA also has unique tech trees, new invasion screens, better AI, larger maps, new victory conditions, autodesign of ships, editors for just about everything (tech, component, map, campaign, improvements)...

You don't need to spend that much time on every ship, though. You can save a design (preferably without 'functional components') as a template and then re-use it every time you play.

Awesome thanks guys

You've all been very helpful and patient with me! Nothing like the support of a great community for a great game

Once you get the game and get the hang of it (or beforehand if you have questions or concerns), we'll be expecting plenty of participation on these forums from you!

Welcome to the community.

Just chose "Free Cam" , hold the middle mouse button to rotate in any direction, release and use the mousewheel to zoom in/out. I believe the arrow keys do move the cam in space.

7. I think there is no way. ^^ Damn, yes it is addictive. And it does not get boring with time it gets better and better when you develop a feel for the options you have to improve your game success. Do not believe staying in green numbers means having mastered the game

The Metaverse is not really a multiplayer, you just play cheat controlled single player games with the aim of getting a high score and after finishing it you upload the stats on the Metaverse server. Look at my MV-Profile here to get a feel of what we mean:

My MV Profile

But i have to admit that it adds huge amounts of motivation to keep playing the game, when your game results are not only for yourself but compared online with other players. That just adds to the addictive potential. TotA will have the Tournaments, in which you play set scenarios identical for everyone and compare your scores with them in this specific mission. Normal MV Games are played on random generated maps mostly, so Tournamenst are more comparative.

HazMask "If I recall, the Twilight expansion will improve the graphics even more right?"

Check out the this comparison, plus features list: https://forums.galciv2.com/309155

A resounding hell yes to that statement, they are much better and also use 1/8 of the memory meaning you can have masses more ships onscreen at the same fps, not that you need a particularly high fps to play a 4X game but scrolling at zooms below below icon mode could get stuttery in avatar with lots of customized ships , not had it happen yet in twilight

Also i realy like the scorpion, great design , ive got a few of my own im about to load up on the ship designs 2008 page, but since ive never posted a picture before i wanted to ask how did you do this, do i need to sign up to an image hosting site first?

one more point, personally i would definitely add another support module otherwise your scout will run of new territory it can explore without researching

Norfleet, your right of course super warrior does give you first strike capability not more hp, i think the warrior politcal party option gives your more hp but i could be mistaken

I use a free one ... go to http://www.imageshack.us

There, you can upload your pics. I just saved my screenshots as JPEG's, and uploaded. Once there are uploaded, just throw on image tags around the link. I believe the image button above will actually just let you plug the URL in, and it will add the tags for you.




One last question.... is the Ultimate bundle package the GC2 Gold + ToA , or is it just the 3 individually? I only ask, because I noticed some things ingame were gold edition specific.

thanks for the how to Hazmask. i beleive the gold edition extras are downloadable once you have the ultimate edition, thats version i bought and i know for sure i have the few extra components you only get with the gold edition

Rgr that, purchased it and it is



btw... ToA is AMAZING.

The graphics are top-notch wow. I enjoy thoroughly

While I can't comment on the intricacies seeing I am a new player, I can see that there is a HUGE difference right off the bat as soon as you load into a game. Huge difference.