Galactic Civilizations

Other products by Strategy First

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000899ZX
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 25, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,838 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Manufacturer's Description
Galactic Civilizations is a space-based strategy game that puts the player in the role of leader of United Earth near the dawn of the 23rd century. As leader of United Earth, you must explore and colonize as many suitable planets as you can, research new technology, negotiate treaties with other civilizations, invest in social programs, build star bases, and, of course, maintain a military fleet to defend mankind.

Unprecedented replayability and a multi-threaded artificial intelligence engine ensure that each game is its own epic experience. Players can take multiple paths to victory including conquering the galaxy militarily (taking over all enemy planets), conquering the galaxy culturally (spreading human ideas and culture so thoroughly through the galaxy that the citizens of other civilizations defect to join up with you), technological victory (researching to the point where humans move beyond mortality), and political victory (uniting the surviving civilizations together under your rule). Much of the development effort has been put into making sure each path is enjoyable for players. Players also face ethical dilemmas along the way. The choices they take help determine whether their civilization take the path towards "goodness" or towards "evil". As one moves down these paths, the game interface visually changes, how the game reacts to you changes and how other civilizations deal with you changes.

Another innovation is that the game engine attempts to generate a completely new experience each game. The content that would normally be created for a linear campaign is instead dynamically retrieved in pieces for each game and assembled into an epic experience for each game. The user interface of the game has been designed to vastly reduce micro management. Often strategy games become difficult to play in their later stages due to excessive micro management. Galactic Civilizations solves this problem through user interface enhancements, rather than relying on player-assigned AI managers.

When these features are combined, the result is a unique strategy game with a high level of replayability. The game's developer has budgeted an additional year of development time after release to add free new features based on player feedback.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Read the negative reviews carefully, September 15, 2003

By	Harry Haller (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

After buying this game, I went back and read the negative reviews more closely, and it seems to me that they are generally correct. I have loved 4x games since I played the first Civ, but this game leaves a lot to be desired. I get the impression that the designers were really focused on having a good AI (which is nice), but along the way they left out a lot of other things (which was not so nice). Galactic Civilizations seems much more like an experimental prototype for a later, more sophisticated release, rather than a fully developed game in its own right.

One thing that is completely missing is the ability to improve your territory. This is normally a big part of 4x games, and I never really realized how important it is to game play until now. During the course of the game you colonize planets, and each planet has a simple "quality score" that generally varies from 1 to 20. All planets of the same quality rating are exactly alike in game terms; you don't have some planets that produce a lot of trade resources, other planets that produce a lot of minerals, and so on. They are all just "generic planets of quality X." I think this might have been acceptable (maybe) had this game come out in 1990... but for a game released in 2003, this is just not sufficient in my opinion. The interface is also not that great... sometimes it would be nice to able to use the keypad for maneuvering your ships, rather than the mouse. However, they didn't include keyboard shortcuts for commands, so you have to constantly switch back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard, or just give up and use the mouse constantly. Also, the game lacks many customization options: for example, you always play against the same 5 alien races, no matter how large or how small the galaxy is, and you can't turn off "features" like random effects that can have a huge effect on the game. There is no multiplayer option, which was puzzling a couple of years ago when Civ 3 came out without multiplayer but is almost unbelievable now. Finally, despite all the talk about the "non-cheating AI" the fact is that the computer players start out knowing the location of all the good star systems, while you have spend quite a few turns stumbling around trying to find good spots to colonize.

Altogether I rate this as something of a disapointment: a good AI in search of a game.

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent space strategy game, April 7, 2003

By A Customer

General/Summary: Galactic Civilizations is an updated version of a game released back in the mid-90s for the OS/2 operating system. Loved by many who used it it's now been released for a mainstream OS, Windows. It's a 4x Space Strategy game but is closer to Civilization, than some other 4x games. I'd describe it as a cross between Master of Orion 2 and Civilization.
Gameplay: Great, it has an intelligent AI, multiple paths to victory, and great strategic depth. On the outside the mechanics of the game itself are very simple but the strategies of the game itself are very deep. You have to decide which path you want to take and deal with the computer controlled empires.

Of note is the strength of the AI. It will bargain with you, and each other, surrender when it's almost destroyed (to prevent the end game tedium in other games), get angry if you build up military outside it's sectors etc. etc.

The AI also does not cheat as blatantly as other games. It does get knowledge of where all the good stars are (it's explained by the background story by "they've been in space longer"... lame but it's not a HUGE advantage) and the equivalent of the tech "Stellar Cartography" but it does not get the massive free resources/planets/ships as in other games.

Graphics: Servicable but definately but the greatest. The cutscenes are nice and add to the game. The graphics are decently drawn 2d graphics, no massive 3d explosions or such but in a 4x game what else do you expect?

Sound: Decent music, only average sound effects. Again not a big factor in this type of sound and definately not as annoying as some other games effects.

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First, Four Stars, Falling Further With Time, January 24, 2004

By	"kendevon" (Brooks, ME United States) - See all my reviews

I do like Gal Civ for a number of reasons.
1 Minor mistakes are not fatal
2 You can micromanage planetary production as much as you want,
3 You don't have to micromanage if you don't feel like it
4 I like the exploration and discovery aspects
5 The frequent updates and addons are pleasant
6 There is an overall strategy to gaining influence, military might, and economic strength that is satisfying
7 I really enjoy exerting enough influence in a sector to cause the alien systems to surrender to me.

The problem is that most of the things I like were only true until I was thoroughly familiar with the game. Oh, I'd buy it again even knowing what I know now, but it promised a fuller experience than it delivered in my opinion.
1 The AI has a huge advantage in reaching habitable planets
(I may be petty, but the scrambling for habitable planets is frustrating because I can send a ship that starts closer to a good planet than the AI's only to discover the AI's ship moves in record time and claims the prize)
2 The survey ship, which is not meant to be a fighting ship is the only one that can get offensive and defensive bonuses from the various specials floating around in space at the start of the game. (Your survey ship can get enough bonuses to be more powerful than battleships - somewhat less than realistic) By the time you can build heftier ships with survey abilities, most of the specials have been explored and used up. So, the more advanced survey ships are seldom useful.
3 Though space battle tactics are considered unimportant by the developers, I consider tactical combat challenging and exciting. I believe the game lacks some punch for that reason.
4 Once familiar with the game the anomalies become hohum, even the free ships.

With all the potential of this game I was looking for that little extra "something" and didn't find it. The game is very enjoyable and I recommend it to those those with long range gaming goals. It has the framework to be much more, however, and I hope the developers produce it in another edition.