Cheap Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords (Software) (Windows XP) Price

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Customer Reviews of Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords

Spyware warning
All other things being ignored, Stardock still has not learned from its first releases. My objection to this game and manufacturer relates to the fact that in order to get patches, updates, and expanded content, you MUST register and download software from the manufacturer. This software was identified as spyware by all 3 spyware programs I have running. The 2 spyware programs that identify 'threat levels' gave it the highest threat rating possible. The company claims that it is not spyware, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... <
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>It is up to the individual consumer to make the choice whether they want to trust this manufacturer to install potential spyware on their system. However, I feel it is important that consumers are aware of this before they make the purchase. Since this game CLEARLY needs patching based on the sad state of its release, unless you're willing to take the spyware risk, steer clear of this title and manufacturer.

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One of the best 4X game designs in recent history
I was an early fan of the original Galactic Civilizations, which I enjoyed when it first came out, and which I've continued to re-install and play over the years. When GalCiv II came out, I downloaded and installed it, started playing--and immediately got frustrated. That's because I kept expecting the user interface and game design to play like the original. I finally stopped playing, went through all the video tutorials, read the manual a little, and started again--and everything was fine. <
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>More than fine, actually. GalCiv II is that rare modern game that gives as much or more thought to game design as it does to eye candy. The result is a game that makes you think about what you're doing, while letting you have fun doing it. <
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>GalCiv II is an outstanding example of the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) genre that includes classics such as Stars!, Masters of Orion II, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire, the entire Civilization line, and so on. It provides a variety of options (map size, star density/quality, racial attributes, selection of competing races, etc.) to allow you to customize the game play to your liking. Likewise, you have the standard set of victory conditions available (political, technological, cultural, military), as well as the usual technology tree, structures and enhancement, trade routes, and so on. All well and good, but all pretty much common to other 4X games. <
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>Where GalCiv II really shines, in my opinion, is in the ship design capability. Now, designing and/or customizing spaceships is nothing new--heck, I co-authored a computer game over 20 years ago that let you customize your spaceship--but in GalCiv II, it's both fun and critically important. _That_ is a rare combination for any aspect of a game's design; usually, the fun parts and the critically important parts are distinct and separate. <
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>Much of my technological research (and financial allocation to that research) is steered by the type of ship(s) that I think I'm going to need soon. And while I have a handful of custom designs that I use in each game (yes, you can save designs from one game to the next, though they won't become available until you've researched all the required techs), I am constantly trying out new designs and combinations. <
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>Beyond that, GalCiv II has a truly innovative mechanism for tricking out your ships--dozens of (cost-free) structures that do not add any functionality or capability but which can radically transform how your ship looks. <
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>Ship combat is based on a straightforward beam/missile/railgun v. shield/point defense/armor calculation, with the ability to build fleets of a certain size (based on your current logistics technology rating). Fleet-to-fleet combat can be watched in a 3-D display, and combat itself tends to resolve in accordance with the "fuzzy wuzzy" rule (i.e., a small number of ships of a certain power and defense ratings can often be defeated by a larger number of weaker ships--because they can usually get off far more shots each round). <
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>The game's UI--once you get used to it, if you're a GalCiv I player--is outstanding. It scrolls smoothly, zooms and rotates smoothly, and lets you accomplish what you need to with a minimal of fuss. You also have possibly the best set of management UI screens that I've ever seen in a 4X game. <
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>What are the weaknesses? The software itself has an annoying habit of getting ahead of you--for example, while you're in the middle of doing something (such as selecting a ship to build), the game may suddenly pop up a new alert box to let you know that another ship arrived at its own destination. <
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>Also, the various AIs just don't come across as having much personality; dealing with them becomes pretty rote and automatic after a while. (The gold standard in this remains the original Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--the factions and their leaders felt more like real characters than any other 4X game I've played.) <
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>Next, the worlds and systems themselves are a bit boring. The star map is 2-D, the systems are largely plain vanilla, and the inhabitable worlds all tend to look the same after a while. Planetary geography (beyond the number of developable tiles) doesn't really matter. <
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>The game also has occasional stability problems, which I've handled simply by upping the autosave feature to every 4 games. <
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>I do have one major UI complaint, which I think the original GalCiv actually did better: when browsing through world information (full screen view), there appears to be no easy way to see where that world is located on the map--nothing equivalent to the old "Tactical" view in GalCiv. I find this a major annoyance. On a related note, the minimap view is much harder to read, scale, and scroll than the original GalCiv minimap. These are two areas where GalCiv II went backwards from GalCiv. <
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>Finally, note that this is a turn-based, 4X game: this means a lot of resource management, particularly if (like me) you play with very large maps (I've had games with nearly 200 planets under my control). My sons and sons-in-law, all in their mid- to late 20s, all play computer games, but they go for first-person shooter (FPS) and/or real-time strategy (RTS) games; they look at the 4X games I play and shake their heads. <
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>All those issues aside, I have found GalCiv II to be addictive nearly on the same level as Civ IV. I find myself trying out different settings, different approaches, and different ship designs and combinations. And the innovative updating system (via StarDock/TotalGaming.net) means that many aspects of the game will shift and improve over time. I expect to be playing GalCiv II for many years to come. <
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>Your mileage may vary. ..bruce.. <
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>NOTE: for players of the original GalCiv, here are some key differences that will affect your gameplay and strategy: <
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>-- You can play any race, not just human. <
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>-- Free-standing (non-resource-based) starbases are now specialized into military, economic, or influence, though all starbases (resource and non-resource) can have both attack and defense modules. <
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>-- Resource-based starbases have no economic, influence, or military-assistance capabilities. <
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>-- The influence starbases are not nearly as powerful as the influence attributes of starbases were in the original GalCiv, making a cultural conquest much harder and slower to accomplish. <
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>-- Planets are uninhabitable (class 0) or inhabitable (class 4 or greater); you don't have marginal worlds (e.g., classes 12-14) that you can terraform up into habitability as you did in the original GalCiv. <
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>-- You can't build every improvement on a given planet; instead, a planet has a number of tiles proportional to its class level, and that limits how many buildings and projects you can create on that world, though you can upgrade, replace, or decommision existing developments. <
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>-- You do have the ability to terraform some additional tiles on certain worlds as you gain the technology to do so. <
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>-- Specific tiles on a planet may have bonuses in manufacturing, research, food production, influence, entertainment, and so on. These bonuses can be 100% (all), 300% (food, research and manufacturing only), or 700% (manufacturing only, as far as I can tell). Note that these can be _very_ powerful; building a manufacturing unit on a 700% bonus tile is the same as having 8 manufacturing units on that planet. <
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>-- Different races can colonize different inhabitable worlds in the same star system. Again, this has a _big_ impact on attempting a cultural victory. <
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>-- As noted above, you can design and customize your own ships, and you can (and absolutely should) build fleets of ship for combat purposes; otherwise, ships occupying the same tile attack and defend individually. The size of your fleet is constrained by your current logistics rating (based on tech research) and the hull sizes of the ships. <
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>-- Critical note: ships in orbit around a planet (including fleets that you may move into orbit) do _not_ act and fight as a fleet unless you build the Fleet Manager improvement on that planet.

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DO NOT BUY THIS GAME
It should have been illegal to ship this thing in the state it's in. There are bugs in the dialog, there are bugs in the interface, there are bugs in the AI, there are typos and misspellings, you have to disable your script scanners to even run this game, it has a big memory leak, it crashes frequently, there are bugs in the way stats are computed, and there aren't any patches on the company website. You have to log into their network using their proprietary software to get the patches -- and that client is a monster, space-wise. Besides that, they don't even give you a list of the port you need to open up on your router to use the thing. The game has an enormous overhead, but still looks like a space sim game made 6 years ago. <
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>Also, the customer service for this game is practically criminal. Rather than taking responsibility for this quarter-baked game (that obviously never went through a beta phase), they try to blame your video drivers -- which I updated last week. Do not buy this game.