 | |||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Galactic Civilizations Review April 17, 2003 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
|
 |
|
| |
Summary: Master of Orion 3 entered the bottomless abyss of suckage and managed to make it even deeper. If gamers are a bit shy about even mentioning 4X strategy games ever again, we'd understand. Of course Jakub, being the masochist that he is, dived right into GalCiv without batting an eye and returned unscathed. Well, he's been foaming at the mouth whenever he mentions the Yor Collective, but we've got a good life insurance policy on him in case he has rabies anyway.
 Page 1 | Page:: ( 1 / 5 ) |
Look who’s daddy now
It must have really sucked to be designer/programmer/head marketing flak/swamp master Brad Wardell a few months ago, when MOO3’s ship date was finalized and coincided with Galactic Civilizations’. The effect was not unlike trying to release an independent movie at the same time as the new Star Wars. No matter how good your game sounded, everyone expected Master of Orion 3 to crush it.
Early reviews seemed to confirm this fate for GalCiv, but a second sober look showed the massive holes present in this latest Master of Orion release. Buried under needless layers of complexity, conflicting AI governors and poor features was… a terrible game. Nothing quite as disappointing had hit the PC market since the release of Outpost a decade earlier. The stage was set for GalCiv to dance its way into the hearts of gamers like Cinderella. But has it delivered?
[image]
| <% print_image("01"); %> | <% print_image("02"); %> | <% print_image("03"); %> |
What GalCiv is
In many ways, Galactic Civilizations is the anti-MOO3. Whereas Master of Orion 3 built on the complexity of Master of Orion 2 and added AI elements to help the player cope, GalCiv took a cleaner approach to the manner. Resembling Civilization and Warlords more than Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations is a deceptively simple game with deep gameplay that belies humble graphics.
MOO3 has a wild collection of factors displayed to a player that he considers before colonizing a planet. GalCiv just rates planets by number – the higher the better. A planet rating of 15 is the minimum one should colonize, and a world in the 30s is exponentially greater, a virtual Eden. MOO3 has AI governors who routinely ignore the demands of the ruler, while GalCiv’s governors are nothing more than a production queue. Yet despite being the simpler method, GalCiv is far more effective. True, there are no specialized industrial colonies, research colonies or farm colonies, but systems and worlds retain a variety of strategic significance by their quality rating.
This kind of initial simplicity makes GalCiv easy to dismiss as yet another Civilization clone that adds nothing to the genre, except a space setting. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth, as Stardock has come up with some new tricks for the old dog, and delivered on age-old promises that other titles in the genre have never quite achieved.
[image]
| <% print_image("04"); %> | <% print_image("05"); %> | <% print_image("06"); %> |
SIDEBAR: I’m really looking forward to E3 this year. Just pity the poor souls at the Denver airport if I have to suffer layover wait there.
| Page 2 | Page:: ( 2 / 5 ) |
Intelligence? Noo…
GalCiv has some of the best AI we’ve ever encountered in a strategy game. Even vaunted titles like Civilization 3 had, in reality, terrible AI. The AI would cheat, constantly swapping technologies with itself even if two opponents were at war. It would know the locations of player cities and units despite fog of war, and discovered strategic resources with uncanny accuracy.
GalCiv AI doesn’t cheat, at least not until the Genius and Impossible levels. Rather, it uses strategies based on actual player data, and gets a percentage chance each turn to react in a proper fashion to the moves of its enemies. We’ve rarely encountered scenarios where all the AI players gang up against the human. Indeed, it takes determined action by the player to draw his opponents into all-out war with him.
Yet the game remains challenging nonetheless. This reviewer humbly admits he has yet to beat the AI with more than one opponent set to Normal difficulty. Even the few times I’ve gotten the better of my Normal counterparts, it seems to have been mostly due to their bad starting locations rather than any great action of mine.
[image]
| <% print_image("07"); %> | <% print_image("08"); %> | <% print_image("09"); %> |
The AI isn’t just difficult, however. It’s communicative and, well, intelligent in a very human way. A player with great cultural influence might not declare war against someone, but he may decide to destabilize him to cause his planets to defect. If that opponent declares war, then the cultural power will try to bring in an ally. The AI recognizes threats and communicates about them. If one race is becoming too powerful, the player may get messages from other races suggesting that this one race is a mutual threat. A far cry from the days when the AI in games would indiscriminately focus on the player, no?
So what’s the secret?
There is both less and more to the AI’s capabilities than there seems. Its ability to keep up with the player is really nothing but choosing the right build order and technologies. Fortunately there are many, many build orders and paths to take to win. Indeed, the exact formula to win is not known and probably never will be. Does it pay off to build fusion power plants before manufacturing centers? Or should you put those off until you have a research center first? What technologies should you choose in conjunction with those? How much are you willing to compromise your military or your public’s happiness? What form of government will give you the most benefits, yet allow you to win enough elections? There are no perfect formulas, but there are guidelines to winning and the AI is very adept at following them. There truly are many ways to win – through trade and alliances, a cultural victory or good old-fashioned genocide. Except Alpha Centauri, no other game has truly managed this, and even AC’s non-combat methods of victory weren’t that exciting. With GalCiv, they’re often preferable to war.
[image]
| <% print_image("10"); %> | <% print_image("11"); %> | <% print_image("12"); %> |
Yet to attribute the success of the AI to simple formulas is incorrect. Other formula AIs (like in RTS games such as StarCraft) fail miserably after initial engagements; their grasp of the strategic situation is horrible. GalCiv delivers a very compelling experience, almost like playing another human being. The AI knows when your space station is there for trade or to beef up your military units. Should you upgrade a starbase to do both, sometimes the AI will tolerate your increased military presence in its sector in exchange for improved trade, sometimes not. The AI may also demand or offer tribute or trade – and everything is up for trade! All-in-all, GalCiv has set a new standard for strategy game AI and games will be compared to this for years to come.
SIDEBAR: Am I really running out of ideas for transition text to the next page so soon into an article? Tsk tsk.
| Page 3 | Page:: ( 3 / 5 ) |
Starbased
AI aside, GalCiv’s greatest gameplay achievement is the Starbase. Starbases are somewhat of a unique idea as far as games go. The scale of their effect on gameplay is not unlike that of shrines and temples in Warlords, but the way they do it is completely different.
First of all, starbases are created by the player using special constructor ships. Constructors take a long time to build and really aren’t practical until about one third of a way through a game. They’re also very slow and vulnerable, making them prime targets for enemies, pirates and space monsters. So why bother with them?
Well, first of all they capture strategic resources that can improve the morale, production or research of a race. Later, a starbase can be upgraded with further constructors to have better defensive structures, to improve the attack and defense of the player’s spaceships, make trade routes more lucrative, or gain a better effect from those strategic resources.
The mere existence of starbases adds depth to a game; their specific functions make them even better. They can speed up cultural victories, or shore up weaknesses in combat technology. Like chess, or go, (or onions and ogres), GalCiv has layers of depth that don’t overwhelm the player, but get added on in phases.
[image]
| <% print_image("13"); %> | <% print_image("14"); %> | <% print_image("15"); %> |
The bad, the bad, and the ugly bad
For all its strengths, GalCiv is far from perfect. The interface can be a bit clumsy, which is somewhat of a surprise as GC is designed by a company that sells improvements to the Windows GUI. Like MOO3, it often shows the player unnecessary information. Unlike MOO3, with a few games it becomes easy to discern between important and unimportant data. A planet’s exact population, like that of a city in Civilization, is irrelevant. What’s more important is the quality of the planet, the happiness of the citizens, and its improvements.
Then there are new concepts like tax rate and spend rate, which can be confusing. You see, whereas previous 4X titles had a fixed rate of spending – that means that the computer spent Y credits every month, depending on the maintenance of improvements and units – GalCiv lets the player decide. Improvements cost a fixed amount in maintenance of course, but how much money is spent in total on research, improvements and military projects is decided by the player. Then adjustments to the individual research, social and military sliders can be made.
Graphically, GalCiv is a hair over on the good side of ‘acceptable’, but the sound is rather disappointing. Music can get old especially quickly, but the downloadable upgrade pack for paid GalCiv users offers many bonuses, an MP3 player among them.
[image]
| <% print_image("16"); %> | <% print_image("17"); %> | <% print_image("18"); %> |
Finally, Galactic Civilizations isn’t exactly perfect on the gameplay front. While it may have adopted Civilization-style unit creation (ie, no customized units) and combat, it just doesn’t have the same zing to it as it should. Part of the reason is the unfamiliarity of the units – everyone can imagine an archer, a legionnaire and a rifleman. A space-borne battleship, frigate, or defenders are units without any character. Furthermore, there are far fewer units and unit types to play around with in GalCiv. A Battleship typically takes anywhere from 24 to 133 turns to build, depending on the planet. Since it is the first unit capable of assault defended starbases or planets, the combat that occurs before its appearance is not nearly as dramatic. To top things off, there are only two ships better than a Battleship – the Dreadnought and Ranger. Pardon us for lamenting the sorry state of combat even as we conquer the perfidious Torians with our trade goods and McDonald’s culture.
SIDEBAR: One would think that pillowball mounts mean a comfortable ride. Instead, these hardened aluminum strut mounts can induce a compressed spine, with a stiff-enough suspension.
| Page 4 | Page:: ( 4 / 5 ) |
Pros
Gameplay.
Despite our complaints about the weak combat, Galactic Civilizations is a 4X strategy experience par excellence (pardon the French.)
AI.
There is absolutely no other game out on the market with strategic AI as competent, communicative and natural as GalCiv’s.
Stability.
GalCiv is remarkably bug-free and has yet to exhibit any serious quality control problems. The only issue is an abrupt cutting off of music, which can be fixed by engaging in negotiations with another race (or ending them, if the music disruption occurred there.)
[image]
| <% print_image("19"); %> | <% print_image("20"); %> | <% print_image("21"); %> |
Cons
Interface.
Not so much a con as a warning that not everything is perfect here. GalCiv is generally intuitive but indulges in some oddities that are quite confusing at first.
Combat.
Master of Orion made unit customization pretty standard in space strategy games, and combat in GalCiv is dull enough without it. The poor variety of units and their lack of character really don’t help the situation.
SIDEBAR: IGI2 review later this week!
| Page 5 | Page:: ( 5 / 5 ) |