Galactic Civilizations Deluxe

Rating:

I'm a big fan of civilization 3 and this was like a slower, easier, and less fun version of that. It seemed like a lot of people liked it but it's basically hit or miss i guess with this game... basically it missed. Kept me entertained for a little while though and for the price probably worth it.

Rating:

game lacks originality, feels just like the older versions of galactic games. but still fun to play

Rating:

If you really like taking your time to build up your resources and power, then you might like this.
This game just doesn't have any excitement. Your really don't have that much control. As another reviewer said, a lot of mindless clicking.

Rating:

Neither of the 2 keycodes supplied worked to install this game, tech support could not help, I'm out $30

Rating:

A non-game factor that almost cost this game all its stars: I nearly had to return it because the CD verification codes wouldn't work. This is common, apparently, but has never been fixed. The company's FAQ is not helpful and just says, "we won't replace nonworking codes, remember that 1, I, and l all look similar." I was pretty mad after typing in all the permutations of 1, I, and l and none of them working.

But fortunately (and this is what should be in the FAQ), my friend found that all I had to do was change two letters in one of the verification codes. Both were in the form "42-03-AP1-5423." I just had to change one AP1 (for Altarian Prophecy expansion) into GC1 (for Galactic Civilizations). The dumbest thing about all this is once you go through this huge hassle based on them treating their customers like potential priates, the game does not require the CD to play. So you can still give it away to your friends and it doesn't prevent piracy at all.

Once I got past this, however, I found an amazing game, much better executed than Civilization 3, both in interface and in gameplay.

Interface:
They've done a ton to eliminate the end-of-game micromanaging. You can set governors to handle all the routine building in the order you want, and it needn't even pop up a window but just scrolls by in a box in the lower right corner of your screen. Military units can be set to produce and launch straight toward a rally point, saving you tons of unit manipulation in the late game. Units can easily be moved in stacks. All stuff Civilization should have done a long time ago.

Victory conditions:
One reviewer complains that he was never attacked during a game. That makes some of the fun stuff possible! You can win by being so diplomatically deft as to form peaceful alliances with every other civilization, or by peacefully spreading your culture across the galaxy. This is much more fun than in Civilization, whose culture and United Nations victories are tacked on and anticlimactic. With this game you can shape your whole strategy toward this method of victory, from cultural exchange centers in your starbases to researching technologies like Cultural Conquest and The Better Way. While genocide is still an option it is awfully fun to find yourself maintaining a military only in order to protect your trade routes. On the higher levels staying out of war becomes a skill and not a drawback.

Features:
Trade is a central concept, much better executed than Civ's caravans. You don't just establish trade routes, you have to protect them too, and you can prey on your enemies' freighters. The tech tree is interwoven and can be researched in many different paths depending on your strategy, unlike Civ's strict progression through all the techs in each historical era. There's a nice little flavor of politics -- you have to win elections to keep your party in control of the Senate (harder when your form of government is a Star Federation) and there's a United Planets organization where your influence gives your vote more weight on issues like "should we put a tax on civilizations with too many starbases?" It all makes the game more well rounded, none of it is annoying.

Gameplay:
I've played this game for fifty to a hundred hours since I bought it last month, and I still haven't researched every tech or tried out every strategy. Despite being a Deity-level Civ 2 player I'm still finding Painful a tough challenge and haven't moved up to Crippling or Masochistic. The artificial intelligence is punishing early in the game, and isn't easy to placate or buy off. In the late game it's not as good, especially post-Dreadnoughts, tending to send its forces into battle piecemeal and without any transports to occupy the planets it clears. But it's not stupidly easy to game like the ones in Master of Magic. The different races really do have different personalities. My friends and I each found a different race as our recurring nemesis.

What's been really fun for me as a Civ player is discounting one after another feature as not really significant, such as trade, starbases, influence, and morale, only to find out that learning to manage these things can be the key to winning certain games. Don't miss out on this game just because Gal Civ 2 is coming out in early 2006. Buy it and give them some time to get the bugs out of the new one.