GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Stardock

Publisher : Strategy First

Engine : Not Revealed

Genre : Sci-Fi Turn-Based Strategy

Release Date : March 26 , 2003

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows 98 / Windows 2000

CPU : AMD Athlon Classic K75 / Intel Pentium III Processor

Memory (RAM) : 128 MB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 8.1 Compatible Video Card with Memory 16 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 3 Ti Series
ATI : Radeon 9200 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 600 MB

GAME FEATURES :-

Galactic Civilizations gives a nod to the elegant simplicity of Sid Meier's popular strategy series. But regardless of whether or not you're sci-fi fan, the outer-space setting isn't the real reason you should sit up and take notice. Galactic Civilizations' strong AI, robust diplomacy, and variety of strategic options make it an outstanding turn-based strategy game. The game has a single galactic map that can be customized in terms of size and star density, and all movement and combat occurs on this map. Galactic Civilizations also has a handful of additional interface screens you'll open up to monitor your production, economy, relations with your neighbors, and research, but it won't take long to find your way around in the game. It might seem unrealistic for star systems to be arranged on a single tile grid, but this interface wasn't designed for realism--it was designed for gameplay. You begin with a human planet, a survey ship, and a colony ship. Hyperdrive was recently invented, and now that all the galaxy's species have it, they've all started to compete to become the dominant power in the universe, by conquest or other means. The game has a number of initial customization options for the galaxy and the AI opponents, and although you always play as the humans, you can choose from a number of ability bonuses and adopt a particular political party, all of which actually affect the game later on. Every empire is born from equally humble beginnings, and you even have to spend a dozen turns to research a universal translator before you can talk meaningfully with the races you'll encounter. The first order of the day is to send your survey ship out to scout and collect a variety of randomly placed objects that can grant bonuses. Once you locate a decent planet, you drop a few hundred million people on it to get a colony going. Upon seeing another empire popping out colony ships one after another at the start of the game, or even the more expensive constructors used for starbases, you may begin to wonder if the AI is cheating. But, while the opponents come in varying degrees of intelligence, they don't cheat in any obvious way. That empire is just taking advantage of one of the more unusual elements of the economy: credit. Some corporations are actually willing to finance the operations of governments and produce units and buildings for you on credit. But obviously these companies are in business to make money, because even when you pay quite a sum up front, the monthly payments on a loan can continue for hundreds of turns. That survey ship zipping around the galaxy isn't gathering up goodies without some competition, and while you can set it to survey automatically, you'll want to pay close attention to which empire's colony ships are racing to the same planets as yours. Playing a strategy of cultural assimilation and need ships quick? Buy some from a militarily advanced ally. Surprisingly, it's even a legitimate strategy to research as many improvements as you can from your empire's technology tree and then sell technology to minor races or allies. You can even have them pay you in monthly installments, so you you can receive regular income each turn.

There are statistics hidden behind everything in Galactic Civilizations, and the diplomatic AI does a pretty intelligent job of adding things up to see if they're in its interest. One of Galactic Civilizations' more unusual factors is its alignment system. Essentially, good-aligned empires are much friendlier toward others aligned in that direction and tend to be more hostile to evil-aligned empires. AI alignments are set at the beginning of the game, but yours starts out as neutral and is determined by your response to random story events. You'll also have to deal with internal conflicts. Once you advance your government to a republic, or one of the later, more democratic forms, other political parties will compete with yours for control of your empire's senate. You don't kicked out of office if your party loses, but you lose the party bonus. You can also research military advances, and some of the most powerful and interesting of these require cross-sector research in multiple areas, such as studying both advanced weapons and biology. Unfortunately, Galactic Civilizations doesn't provide any clear indication of what sort of research you need to perform in each of these sectors to create improvements like advanced organic armor for you ships. These advanced ships are as powerful as they are expensive, and the interesting part of Galactic Civilizations' military engagements isn't the combat, since battles themselves are resolved quickly, but rather the maneuvering of scouts and warships to detect and destroy incoming threats to your planets and starbases. The map also has pockets of resources scattered about that grant empire bonuses if they're claimed by building a starbase, and these can become hot targets when war breaks out. Galactic Civilizations' greatest strength is its simple yet deep gameplay. The 2D visuals are crisp and the cutscenes are well rendered, but the ships don't look like much and don't sound that impressive. The presentation is streamlined, but it can take some clicking around to understand which buttons do what, since the little stylized icons aren't intuitive. If you do decide to play Galactic Civilizations, you'll want to get the patch and the "bonus pack" that were made available on the game's release date, as they add a few more initial galaxy options, a clear percentage score for each victory condition, and the ability to replace the standard sci-fi music with an MP3 playlist.

GAME REVIEW :-

8.5/10

Galactic Civilizations Trailer :-