I bought GalCiv 2, but haven't played it as much as I would normally because I don't have a Windows box handy, and it doesn't behave well under emulated Windows for me. What I played, lead me to respect it as one of the best games in its genre that I've seen.
That it actually had a meaningful internal political system was astounding, even as simple as it was. You actually chose your government's political party at the beginning of the game and if enabling a democratic government, you were penalized for losing control over the Senate until you took control again, usually in exactly the area you need bonuses, not penalties, in (as the people vote for the war hawks when you go to war, etc., which backfires for you...).
It had small, independent non-expansionist non-empire races that you could maintain diplomatic relations with, trade with, surround, attack, whatever. They would still maintain technology and ships and can make a reasonable stand if you declare war on them. It really made the world you played in more rich.
Trade was a major factor and you could feel accomplished if you built a trade empire with routes flying all over the place. There were advantages in deciding how to allocate your trade routes carefully among your opponents and their colonies, as income and diplomatic leverage were both at stake.
Culture and influence was cool, with what I recall to be the most robust culture system I'd seen. It came complete with a meaningful border mechanic and colony cultural revolts. I didn't like the space station mechanic when it came to those, at least so far as overlapping space stations had a higher total effect. That seemed cheap when you could spam powerful influence stations to start systematically dismembering your ally's colonial front (if I recall correctly, this tactic put a serious strain on diplomacy, but I remember doing serious damage to some allies by having their colonies revolting and joining me).
It had a mechanic for you to design your own ships and it was both tactically meaningful and balanced to allow you to do so -- and the mechanic was extremely freeform when it came to player creativity in developing the appearance of the ship. A so-inclined player could spend a long time designing ships for the game, and many players did.
It even had cute random challenges where something would come up and you'd make a decision based on the evil, neutral, and good options, and individualized different empires' technology development based on their alignment.
I do remember the tech descriptions, and I do remember the unfortunate "marketing is on vacation" laser thingy. The style isn't my preference, I loved the Alpha Centauri style of description and tech development flavor text, but I resigned myself to getting to used to it and focusing on the good parts of the game. They obviously didn't emphasize it and just wanted to gloss over that traditional feature with a bit of humor, so I decided to humor them.
At the end of the day, it's one of the most fun games in its genre I've played, and, as I said, I continue to respect it as one of the best of its genre.
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Topic: MOO 3 (Read 9714 times)