map editor

You could give StardDock a shot. I've had really good experiences with them in the (deep) past, though I don't know if they are still doing GalCiv2 tech support. The forum isn't very active these days, so I don't know how much help you'll get.

For what it's worth it still works fine for me, though I just downloaded and installed it from Steam a few days ago. What problem are you having exactly?

Thanks for responding!

Maybe I'm trying to access it incorrectly. I go to browse local files under the properties option. I open the Galciv2 folder, then the Twilight subfolder, then the Tools subfolder. I run the Galciv2 map editor as administrator.

It opens up to a background with a huge patch of white and some small colored squares with a medium amount of black background. I can see the map grid as a blue outline, but that's it. It seems that I can place some objects, but I can't see what I am doing.

That sounds like some sort of rendering error, like the background images aren't being rendered correctly. I don't know what's going on there. You should try StarDock (alternately, back up your saves and reinstall?)

Yeah, I've contacted stardock. I did a reinstall and checked file integrity. It comes up clean.

Thanks for your help! I like to get advice from fellow gamers before contacting tech support.

Well if you hear back, tell us about it. I was messing around with game files and realized I hadn't properly backed a few up, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and now my map editor is borked the same way. It is also more unstable.

ETA: Okay, that was weird. All I had to do was boot the game once after reinstallation and everything was a-okay.

I will try that myself.

Yeah, it didn't work.

Okay, I did find a workaround. I created a desktop shortcut and launched galciv2 from there. I was then able to go into the file folders on my hard drive and open the map editor application using system administrator. I have no idea why it worked, but it did. Thanks for your advice!