Galactic Civilizations II Gold

Rating:

The Good: Hours of addictive empire building
The Bad: Weak AI and no multiplayer makes for little challenge beyond building the perfect empire

Let me start by giving you some context - I'm a Noble level player on Civ 4. I've been playing Civ-style games since the old Empire game on Macs and the original Civilization on PC, and I won't make any claim to have ever reached the upper difficulty levels. I get plenty of enjoyment out of the bottom half of the difficulty tree.

So when I start my review by passing along that I have yet to find a level of AI in this game that is a significant challenge, that should tell you something.

I purchased GC2 with all the expansions, including the recently released Twilight of the Arnor expansion. Overall, I have spent many hours playing the game, and thoroughly enjoyed building up empires and conquering the galaxy. It's good, classic, Civ-style fun.

That said, it has all the weaknesses of classic civ. An "infinite-city-sprawl" strategy still wins every time - grab more planets than the other civs and it's hard to lose. The AI doesn't seem to "think smarter" at higher levels, it just gets to cheat; e.g., you just get more penalties and they get more bonuses. The problem is, the AI is so poor that the cheats aren't really sufficient to overcome its weaknesses.

You can tell the designers were concerned about the lack of challenge from the AI because they have added "mega events," which tend to be game-breaking, random events. Having experienced most of them, I turned them off. The whole point the mega events appears to be to give you the human player something else to worry about besides the AI - whether it be ridiculously numerous fleets of super-teched pirates, the return of the super-advanced precursor race, or economy-crippling viruses... (In one case, one of the AI discovered a lost pre-cursor warship that was so advanced that the combined fleets of every race in the game probably could not have destroyed it. Completely at a loss as to what I could do, I offered the AI all of my techs in trade for his ship. Amazingly, he gave it to me. Needless to say, my invincible armada quickly wrapped up the game.) The problem with these events is that the AI is even *less* capable of dealing with them than you are. So the human player must spend endless turns returning things to the status quo, just so he or she can get back to conquering the now-even-more-pathetic AI civs.

These flaws are very disappointing, especially considering the advances that have been made in the genre in the last 17 years.

That said, there are things about the game to like.

If you like customization, it's here in spades. Not only can you customize the design and look of your ships, but you can name *everything* in the game; ships, planets, stars, starbases, etc. You can design your own civilization, including looks, names, and abilities.

The combat system is straightforward, with a good rock-paper-scissors feel. And there are plenty of ways to win that don't require planet-to-planet conquest.

There are plenty of avenues for empire building. Whether it's getting your planets up and running, crafting that perfect fleet, or cobbling together a network of starbases to enhance your economy or spread your cultural influence, you'll find lots to keep you wanting to take one more turn.

In the end, I've returned to playing on the tiny map - its makes for a faster paced, more challenging game, as there are less planets for you to gobble up to get an "ICS" advantage over the AI.

If you're looking for a decent civ-style game to keep you busy while you wait for the next offering from the genre, I'd recommend this game. Just don't expect the depth and challenge you get from a game like Civilization 4.

Finally, Vista Users - I don't know what the other reviewer's issues were, but I'm running the game on Vista and it works beautifully.

Rating:

Strategy game is improvement over original, but graphics are harder to use and less clear than original.

Rating:

Ok, this is a decent game. I love strategy and even turn-based stuff. I play it all the time. That said, I cringe to say this too: this game can become quite boring. Don't get me wrong: it's not boring all the time, but it lacks a certain spark. the tech tree is quite bland, and it lacks any useful info about WHAT the tech does. It is also a little TOO straightforward...for instance you research Torpedos I, then Torpedos II, and so on...with that being the only listed improvement.

All in all, its a fair game, but I am going back to some older turn based space strategies.

Rating:

Its a really fun game but would be better with multilayer. Id get the original game but i would not get the expansion like dark avatar and gold edition just not worth it with out online play.

Rating:

My own love of the game Master of Orion II may have prejudiced my review here but I stand by it. MOO II when it was released was considered the best 4X sci fi game ever made, & retained that title for several years, despite that several other games attempted to take it. For years I haven't seen a better game, & was disappointed with the attempts to top MOO II.
So I finally see ads that GCII is the only real 4x sci fi game that can take the "spiritual" sequel from MOO II. (MOO III got harsh reviews. I loved that game at first, even wrote a rave review of it, but several serious flaws in the game became apparent only after several days of playing it).
Is it good? Yes? Does it have the MOO feel? Yes, but its still not as good as MOO II.
However with the available mods on the internet, especially the Star Trek mod, this game is better than MOO II--again only with the mods.
Since almost everyone here has written a rave review, I'm going to focus on the things I didn't like about it (& remember I enjoyed the game overall)
-combat system lacks some of the dynamics of MOO-no Trek like transporters-your troops can't beam onto enemy vessels & take them over.
-No capturing of enemy vessels possible
-no retro-engineering of captured technology is possible
-the diplomatic relations in the Dread Lords version is pretty flat. The Dark Avatar expansions has improvements over Dread Lords, making it better than MOO II but I expected more & better given that MOOII is years old!)
-several of the technologies don't have a cool factor: e.g. in MOOII, mass drivers had a bunch of cool things like armor piericng ability, rapid fire etc. In this game most of the weapons improvements only have a few points of extra damage, that's it. No other special features.
-a non-serious approach throughout the entire game: this can at times be funny, but nothing in the game seems serious. E.g. in MOO when you got a new tech, the scientists explains how the tech worked. I thought that was kinda cool. In this game the scientists makes some sarcastic comment like "lasers II are better than lasers I because I say so!"
-NO SPECIAL CHARACTERS!: MOOII allows you to assign special talented governors & officers in charge of ships & colonies. Wish this game had that. It would've been great to have been able to add in modded characters.

The game though is good overall, just not at good as MOOII. Here are some of the improvements over MOOII
-better graphics
-ability to MOD this game--allows you to make your own ship designs, & empires! MOO SHOULD'VE HAD THIS FEATURE!
-Thanks to the internet community, several have made excellent mods allowing one to play in several of the popular sci fi universes such as Trek or B5. The Trek mod in incredible & if I were rating this game based on the Trek mod I would've given this game 5 out of 5 stars.
-use of influence in being able to take over enemies instead of only being able to conquer them through might
-ability to win the game from technological understanding alone

Overall a good game & worth playing, just not as good as MOOII. With the available mods-this game really takes off.