Why are you putting GalCiv aside?

[Vince278]

Not many active players now, are there?

[vee4473]

I will say again that the reason I have put it down for a while is because the scoring system makes ZERO sense.

You can play a great game and get a lower score from one victory as opposed to another type of victory...and what map size and were you good or evil etc..with no understanding as to why.

In other words, when you win a game via alliance victory on a medium map as good and get a score of 300...then you win again at the same settings and get a score of 52..you wonder...

but then you play again and after a conquest victory you get a higher score!! then you say to yourself, "maybe conquest gets a higher score"..so you play the best conquest victory ever...again... and you get a lower score than before...then you play what you perceived to be the worst game of your life...and get the highest score you ever had!

This lack of knowing how the scoring system works destroys the game from a competitive viewpoint.

No one seems to know why the higher scores are higher and vice versa.

Look at the top empire currently...one player must have had over a dozend games dated on the 17th of june 2004 where they all scored 60,000 points...what's that all about?

[LDiCesare]

It's easy to submit all your scores on one day. Play, don't submit. Repeat and rinse 6 times. Then, submit all on the same day.
As for getting 60k pts, that's feasible if you want to play conquest games, use cheese tactics, and whatnot. The scoring system is why I stopped submitting games to the metaverse, not why I stopped playing. I think there is no reason to grant more points to a game than another and think no scoring system is worth anything.

[Vince278]

Everytime I look here I see more reasons to be glad I never bought this game (which is saying alot because I have no regrets buying MOO3).

[Death 2000]

The only thing that's keeping me away from Galactic Civilizations is TBS airing Zoolander every weekend, and Hidden & Dangerous II. But I just finished my first game, so it hasn't been keeping me away "that" much.

[Desert Dog]

I will say again that the reason I have put it down for a while is because the scoring system makes ZERO sense.

Actually the scoring system does make sense and they intentionally designed it for competitions as player against player Empire against Empire. There are clear methods to the scoring system that can be understood.

At Galciv.com there are posts on how the scoring system works. Once you understand the concept and why you can begin enjoying the game and especially competing with an Empire.

One thing that I feel is cool that any player who had a high score must keep playing in order to maintain his throne. Any time a player does not submit a game over a 30 day period the score will degrade slightly. 60 days its a little more and 90 days a little more.


60,000 points can be had playing on a high level and military conquest only. I know many players who do this and without any cheesy tactics.

Civ3 and Galciv do not compare IMO, sure they both are TBS games, Empire building, but from there they begin to separate on many levels. The best thing about civ3 is the moddability IMO not the game play thats for sure. I find the game play with Galciv is much better then civ3. Of course I am a Galciv addict and stopped playing civ3 along time ago being burnt out on the game from Modding and testing it over the years.

It is sad to read so many people are either not giving this game a chance or just stopped playing it for one reason or another. It is the best 4x genre game there is on the market today.

[bigvic]

you know, i burned out on civ 3 finally about 2 months ago. once i figure out the ai of a game and all i can do with it, interest ebbs. the ting i like about thi game is the ai - and the differences betwen it and civ 3. thusfar after an initial cursing love hate honeymoon, i am appreciating it more and more (almost 2 months of playing). the altarian prophesy expansion really helped the game.

i am beginning to contemplate moo3 now, which i have ignored til now under the mistaken impression it was real time - i hate real time in my strategy games. my friend, who has played both, thinks he likes galciv more because of its simplicity.

i also think the metaverse is brilliant. after several forays into civ3 online mp, i am skeptical of the potential and possibilities of multiplayer god games of great complexity. it looks like these guys have created an ai engine that can sustain my interest for a while. i don't believe anything like civ 3's inability to have the ai use artillery should pop up, though my experience is still limited so who knows?

[Desert Dog]

Galciv blows Civ3 out of the water IMO! I rarely play galciv without Mods installed but other then that I play the game daily and I do not see myself putting it down anytime soon.

The thing that most players miss is the level of play and how the scores you get for each game increase. The game play changes dramatically as your progress to the harder levels. If you are getting bored or feel the challenge is not there anymore bump up the difficulty people! I play on normal myself and when I "attempt" challenging level I am dumbfounded as my normal strategy no longer works.

Stop in at NeoTech meet some of the great players and Modders. Icho Tolot is a staff member and his Mods are hosted there. In case you do not know it Icho Tolot mods are the best made for Galciv. I am biased of course!!

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Desert Dog

Stop in at NeoTech meet some of the great players and Modders. Icho Tolot is a staff member and his Mods are hosted there. In case you do not know it Icho Tolot mods are the best made for Galciv. I am biased of course!!

Neo Tech? huh? Ich Tolot? huh?

[Hywel Dda]

Originally posted by Desert Dog
The thing that most players miss is the level of play and how the scores you get for each game increase. The game play changes dramatically as your progress to the harder levels. If you are getting bored or feel the challenge is not there anymore bump up the difficulty people! I play on normal myself and when I "attempt" challenging level I am dumbfounded as my normal strategy no longer works.

Fair enough, perhaps, but the problem is I've not felt sufficiently engaged at the lower levels to want a bigger challenge. I've played at normal level for ages and still get the idea I don't really know what's going on even though I keep winning. This lack of feeling that I know where I am makes me afraid to progress and try new things. Perhaps this is why the game keeps getting shelved (though I keep going back to it!)

[LDiCesare]

Playing on levels above average give a different experience because the ai will start getting some trade goods/wonders. On maso, it's got huge bonuses and won't trade for money, so you get a very different challenge on higher levels.

[okblacke]

Originally posted by Hywel Dda

Fair enough, perhaps, but the problem is I've not felt sufficiently engaged at the lower levels to want a bigger challenge. I've played at normal level for ages and still get the idea I don't really know what's going on even though I keep winning. This lack of feeling that I know where I am makes me afraid to progress and try new things. Perhaps this is why the game keeps getting shelved (though I keep going back to it!)

That sounds like my experience.

I've played maybe a dozen games, from beginner all the way up to sub-normal and I don't feel like I've learned much.

* I've learned that I have to be militarily superior or at least very near the top because otherwise the AI will declare war on me. Diplomatic "accidents"--the kinds that cause wars--only happen to weak societies.

* I've learned that there's no way to sense from the game experience what effect an improvement or tech has had, or why a stat (like planet morale) is where it is. I can sometimes dig around and find the effect, and I'm sure I could research it on the 'net, but from the game, there's nothing I can point to (other than class size and population) that explains to me why planets are the way they are (in terms of morale, production, income, etc.).

* I've learned that my economy will ebb and flow, without reason or explanation, and that this will sometimes be dramatic and drastic, such as going from a surplus to -200 in one turn.

* I've learned that, even if my planets are producing nothing at all militarily or socially, turning up research always reduces the amount of money available to me, and that resources not spent building something are wasted.

* I've learned that the difference between good and evil is subtle, and has nothing to do with empire management. I have noticed the UI change and, when good, I noticed a discovery that was tied to a person who would "not have been allowed to survive in an evil society".

* I've also learned that the good is always bad for you (at least at first) while bad is always good for you.

* I've learned that no matter how many "research" resources I control, I'm never going to win a scientific victory before winning by influence.

* I've learned that minor races can build any wonder at any speed and maybe it's better just to let them build them all and then conquer their system.

* I've learned that space is really pretty small, and good thing, because shuffling those constructors around gets real old, real fast.

* I've learned that space is also sort of bland, and that one planet is pretty much the same as the next, and the various life forms that populate it (like worms or cavemen) only seem to exist when a planet is founded, take their toll on population or morale, and then move on.

It's probably more indicative what I haven't learned. So far I've built every upgrade available, except for some starship upgrades. In my last game, I skipped most morale upgrades without much negative effect. I see that most people who play the game don't build any social but economic upgrades and trade goods; since there's no really satisfying means of feeling what an improvement does, there's no way of knowing what one is doing.

I do like the game; but I very much want to like it a lot more. Probably the worst aspect of Civ is the way it reduces great and wondrous civilizations to paper pushing--and the best aspect of Civ is when it gives you some small sense of epic history.

GalCiv has the sci-fi penalty: We don't automatically relate to technologies and civilizations (might make a great unofficial mod to set it in a particular "universe", tho') so the game doesn't resonate as much as Civ can.

I'd like to see it exploit that freedom instead of just suffering it. Give me a multitude of ethnicities, space gypsies, a pirate's lair (not just pirates), rebellious androids, let me build a stargate, let the United Planets have a starbase, let me terraform earlier on, or build a planet (a cool MOO 2 feature). Hell, get wild, let me build a farm in space to collect cosmic rays, infest one of my space stations with tribbles, have someone come from a future--or past!--time with some kind of technology, give me religion and metaphysics (for better or worse) and evil corporations and trade federations with teeth, give me a good and evil and warriors who follow those causes, give me unique resources which do something different than just boost this stat or that stat.

In short, make me feel like I'm part of a galactic empire, and not looking at a telephone switchboard.

Especially in single-player. An SP game needs to be more interesting and less mechanical than a multi-player game.

Not to undermine the entire premise but slow down expansion and make it less about moving people from point A to point B, and more about convincing the people at point B to join up with the people at point A. Then the Good versus Evil questions need not be so artificial.

OK, rant over.

[ok]

[Desert Dog]

Originally posted by bigvic


Neo Tech? huh? Ich Tolot? huh?

Funny! We have been around a while now. Anyone who has played Galciv 1 and installed a Mod knows about Icho Tolot and his outstanding Mods.

His Mods help keep my interest in Galciv and I for one am excited about him making a Mod for GC 2. Both games rock, comparing it to Space Empires or Civ series just does not cut it. Totally different style of games really. (Commenting on very old posts in this thread )

Stardock is the best company ever for making Video Games. The CEO comes to the community and joins in on the conversations. That does not happen very often.

[foxfire4321]

GalCiv just ended up falling into the dustbin (or in this case File Partition) of Apathy. It is a decent game, and better than the other space 4X games that came out at the time (i.e. MOO3)... but it lacked any real staying power. Unless you mod the game it is pretty much the same strategy ever time. As others mentioned, it lacked the personality of the Civ series and didn't bring anything truely interesting to the table with regards to the SciFi element.

Ulitimately the game succumbed to much better games on my HDD, such as SMAC/AX (oldie but goody), AoW:SM, and SimGolf (not a TBS, but one of Firaxis's best games).

The real appeal to GalCiv for me was it was one of the few games out there now without that stupid copy-protection device of having to have the CD inserted to run the game, I admit that this kept it running for a while longer than it probably would have otherwise.

[Vince278]

I'm holding out for Space Empire V. Now in beta test, due out Nov-Dec 2005.