Been reading tremendous reviews, 90% and up, for the latest expansion to Galactic Civilizations II, Twilight of the Arnor(no sic necessary). PC Gamer, Gamespy, Gamespot, everybody is raving. The expansion also redoes the graphics, improving them quite a bit, and supposedly makes each alien race's tech tree quite different.

This is what they call a 4x game - explore, expand, ex-something something. Anyway, it's a turn-based strat game, and I love those. Anyone playing this now?

Setting yourself up with this game and the latest expansion runs 70 bucks, and I'm cheap, so wouldn't mind some opinions on the game.

Also curious -- does every edition out there come with manuals? Figuring out what to order is tricky on this game, as I'd like a paper manual to at least get acquainted with what looks like a complex game. And I'm not sure you can get one unless you buy the Game of the Year edition, which doesn't have the first expansion, which doesn't sell separately anymore, which you need in order to install the latest expansion ... sigh.

Haven't picked up the new expansion yet, but have also heard good things.

The initial game and first expansion were pretty solid. I'm definately no expert in the game, but am a big turn-based strategy type and this was one of the best games in recent memory from the genre.

I never got any of the expansions. I thought the game was pretty good. I would describe it as the lovechild of Ascendancy and Master of Orion. The combat system has a very rock-paper-scissors feel to it. There are three types of weaponry and three types of armor, and each armor has seriously diminished effects against all but one form of weapon. This does make recon and consideration of your opponents pretty important in designing useful ships. (EDIT: Also, they may have fixed it in a patch, but one of the armors got disproportionately powerful early in the tech tree, and strangely the AI almost never exploited this.)

The economy in this game took me a while to figure out. There are basically two parts of it, trade and taxes. Taxes look like they're basically population times a tax rate, with higher tax rates giving you a lower happiness (where happiness plays a role very similar to culture in Civ 3 as far as assimilation of nearby cities.) Trade, unlike most of these games that I've played before, is in my experience an absolutely vital part of the economy, and can make war very expensive if it involves shutting down trade routes. As a result of this, at least on the more moderate difficulty settings the AI is not necessarily super aggressive. Reputedly it is very clever on higher difficulties, but I haven't gotten to those.

(EDIT: The research component of the game feels somewhat unsatisfying. The tree is difficult to negotiate, but ultimately not that complicated, since there isn't that much branching and your research decisions are pretty much entirely composed of deciding which technology you want to level up next. In this regard it is very MOO. I tend to prefer Civ or Ascendancy style trees.)

Thanks for the feedback guys. Either of you like the game enough that you'll pick up the expansion?

I really enjoyed the research trees in X Com: UFO Defense and in Civ. The reviews seem pretty universal in praising the good work they've done on the tech trees.

I hate scissors rock paper combat. I wish it would die in a grease fire forever. But I understand that you basically don't micromanage the combats anyway, so at least I don't have to dwell on it if I get the game, I guess.

I'd love to find a good turn-based strat game, because a really good one can be played for many years, and you can always return to it. I was thinking Heroes of Might and Magic 5 might be it, but that got pretty bad reviews and came out with almost no maps and severe copy protection, so I was really bummed. I think I'll wind up giving GC2 a try, but damn I would like a manual. Having to keep everything in your head for a complex game -- especially when you start and don't know what the heck is going on in the first place! -- can be really aggravating and it degrades the motility of my sperm.

have you played any of the paradox interactive/entertainment games like hearts of iron 2, victoria, europa universalis? They are ridiculous.

I cant play turn based strat games just against an AI.

Gal Civs AI is good but is fairly easy to beat unless you play against an AI with Bonuses.

Unless a turn strat had pbem Im not interested these days.

What's pbem?

Also, when you say you find a way to beat the AI, does that mean you always feel forced to use it? Some people do, same like some people will use glitches in the game code in multiplayer matches to do something sneaky, etc. -- I mean, just because it's possible to win some way, they refuse to play any other way.

Or if you find a never-lose strat, do you just play it until you're bored with it and then keep playing the game trying other strats?

In that regard, to state where I'm coming from, I don't mind finding an insta-win strat, and then not using it. I never really build up a dependence. I'm used to never ending cycles of perfect strats from, of all places, multiplayer. In multiplayer RTS's, you get many strats against players that are unbeatable until their counter gets found, at which point that insta-win strat becomes just one part of an ever-wider vocabulary of strats. And you may rarely or never use it again except to surprise someone or feint that you're using it while you're really doing something else.

So, I don't mind figuring out the insta-win and in fact take it as a fun challenge. And then I don't mind leaving it behind and trying something new, too.

Is GalCiv2's AI so bad that you have to play really stupid or extra-boring strats to lose or something?

I wonder if people making comments have played with both expansions? I haven't played either expansion yet and barely feel qualified to give any opinion because of it. They have changed a lot with an updated and better tech tree, much better AI, etc.. There were a few cheap ways to beat the AI when I was playing but they actually fixed those rather quickly with patches as people found them.

I loved this game, although it took me awhile to get into the different races and background story, I started liking it more and more. I buy very very few PC games ( less than one a year on average ). I don't regret this purchase and look forward to re-installing it and purchasing the expansions.

PBEM is play-by-email which I thought they were actually going to implement at some point.

Well I ordered GalCiv2 Gold from Amazon. This game better be good for the 70 bucks it will take to get it with both expansions!

GalCiv2 Gold arrived today. Will download the Twilight of the Arnor expansion probably tomorrow. Looking forward to it! Very glad to have even the small manual that comes with the Gold box. And the hotkey chart is very cool, but would be more readable if they had done some color coding.

I'm gonna be pissed if it won't install and upgrade properly without registering, as my home internet is out.

I don't recall any problems for installing offline. I do know they had some steam type thing to get new patches called stardock central. Looks like they have a new app that replaced it called called "impulse". Not sure if it is required to get the newest patches but it looks like they want it to be.

As an aside, when the game came out it was only $40. Their polling showed only a small ( but vocal ) number of their players wanted multiplayer and by leaving it out they could have a game that was $10 less than the norm as well as a whole bunch of features that would have been left out.

I just noticed that you can get the game with both expansions (download only version) for $60 direct from the official site.

Nope, never did. Did lots of X-Com UFO and Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and 2.

Yeah I saw that too. But it's only ten bucks more if you buy the first two parts as the Gold edition for 40 bucks and then the last dowload only expansion for 30. So I figured it was worth 10 bucks more to me to have the discs and manual/shortcut card.

Plus from Amazon I didn't have to pay any tax on the Gold edition box, so that's cool too.

Well, this is a very complex game and many parts of it are less than clear, but wow is this a good game so far! I've only played two scenarios, and thank goodness for the relaxed pace. I think it would be virtually impossible to lose either of the first two scenarios. Absolutely has that "just one more turn" thing that can wind up becoming 3 more hours.

It would really benefit from an extensive in-game help section like the Civopedia, or else a nice bulky manual devoid of fluff(like you could find easily for Civ 2 or X-Cmon when those were alive and well.).

Unless something goes drastically wrong somewhere, I think this game is the one I've been looking for for years, and I may well be playing it for many years to come. I haven't liked a game this much in some time, and from what I've seen it's easy to recommend.

The "campaign" is pretty terrible, in my opinion, and it's over pretty quickly. Definitely most of the game content is in a skirmish mode, much like Civ.

This thread inspired me to bust this game out again, and I actually just finished a game in a large galaxy. One thing that I've never understood is how influence is generated. I tend to get massively outinfluenced by the computer opponents even when it seems that I own as much or more territory, and it never seems like I find embassies or millions of influence starbases, either. The computer also seems to do a much better job than me of finding the resources to tap with starbases, which is a pretty big deal.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the passiveness of the AI seems to be recurring even on higher levels. I played my last game on the highest setting where the computer doesn't get bonuses, and while I noticed that some of my opponents would start leaving fleets near my starbases or planets, they didn't seem interested in striking first, even if I had started meeting their buildup. This allowed me to score first strikes and take out a couple bases on the first turn of each war, which is a pretty big advantage. I reached a point where I was getting beat in every facet by one race, but their anti-me technology hadn't made it into their military yet and so I was able to take them out pretty quickly, and from there the rest of the game was mop up.

Are you talking the main game without the expansions? I am curious how the 'original' campaign plays out if you have the expansions installed and how the whole campaign played through is like? When I played I never finished the campaign because there was an early patch that reset it and I never bothered to start over.


This is interesting because I recall that I won a lot of my skirmishes through influence. I played largest galaxy, toughest level without computer cheats. I don't remember any trouble figuring out what gave influence but maybe I researched it and found info online before trying my first influence victory.


Was this with the most recent patch installed? No expansions? IIRC even choosing max enemies there were a few races left out. Some races are a lot more aggressive than others so you want to make sure those aren't the ones left out.

This thread has gotten me excited to try out this game again.

Yeah, I haven't purchased any of the expansions. If they ever get bargain bin cheap, I might. The game I was playing was "tough" difficulty with five random races in a large galaxy. The way the star clusters panned out, something like 75% of the inhabitable planets were in a central cluster that I started in. The game was winnable largely because I was able to pick off a weakling or two, and then about the time that the one AI opponent was passing me I had a lot of military built up to take out the first two empires. The final two civilizations were allied against me by the end but I had the chance to take all the others out one on one.