INTRO:
The first Galactic Civilizations might be considered a testing ground for the aspiring developer that is Stardock. Although it had a few rough edges, it was one of the best titles of the sort of 4X strategy games that have the player controlling fictional interstellar territories.
Stardock would later return with greater resources (obtained from its non-game operations) to develop a more sophisticated and refined sequel in order to coincide with its foray into the field of developing, publishing and distributing its games all by itself.
Although that venture did not exactly turn out well, Galactic Civilizations II: The Dread Lords remains as a turn-based strategy game that raised the ante on the space empire management subgenre.
PREMISE:
The backstory of The Dread Lords' predecessor was little more than an excuse to explain how the space-faring races of Galactic Civilizations canon obtained the means to cover light-years of distance - and then start a tussle for galactic dominance.
In the sequel, that backstory is re-visited and fleshed out to establish the relationships between the major races for its single-player story-based campaign. The humans are again the inventors of the hyper-jump technology, which has since been adapted by all other races.
The Terrans discovered their cousins, the Altarians, and together forged an alliance with the pragmatic but otherwise peaceful Torians. They stand against less-peaceful races, such as the flesh-hating cyborgs of the Yor Collective and the brutal Drengin Empire. On the sidelines are unaligned races such as the Arceans, who were once a dominant race, and the Drash, who hold a grudge against the Altarians.
Fast-forwarding to the present, the status quo is that there is a stale-mate, with the Terrans and their allies on one side and the Drengin Empire and the Yor Collective on the (tenuous) other. However, the appearance of an ancient race long thought lost would upset the balance.
TUTORIALS:
Considering the dauntingly complex gameplay of Galactic Civilizations II, it is fitting that the game has a large number of tutorials that explain the most significant of the gameplay elements in bite-sized chunks (more elaboration on this remark later). They can seem a lot to beginners, but these tutorials are the best way to learn.
Even veterans of the original Galactic Civilizations may want to play the tutorials, because the sequel introduces a handful of gameplay designs that are new and revamps more than a few that were in the previous game.
For better or worse, these tutorials are not hands-on. Most of them are pre-recorded videos that demonstrate the gameplay in the sequel – hence the "bite-sized" remark earlier. To some players, this can seem inadequate.
Fortunately, the game has another feature to ease in the unfamiliar player. In the "Game Options" settings screen, the player can enable "Tutorial Mode", which will have advisory messages popping up even as the player plays the game. There are also "help" and "info" buttons within screens that the player can click to bring up information and guides on what the screens display and how the player can use it.
CIVILIZATIONS:
The sequel's system of races is improved over its predecessor's and makes it more on par with contemporary space empire-building games.
In The Dread Lords, there are ten official races. Although they are only differentiated by their statistics, they are still more sophisticated than the races in the previous game, which have no substantial differences beyond behaviour. Different races also start with different technologies, usually basic ones.
In addition, the player can create new races in the sequel with their own statistics and portraits, including even preposterous ones such as space-faring anthropomorphic hamsters.
The creation process gives the player a blank, all-average default race, as well as some points to distribute into its statistics. The player can take away points from the default levels of the statistics to free up some points, but of course this creates weaknesses. The player is also given some points to invest into its starting technologies.
It is possible to get a tech of a higher tier than the very basic ones, but the player will be so diminished in other fields of science that this is a risky choice to make.
Different races also prefer different forms of governance, as represented by their favourite political party. Political parties will be elaborated later.
In addition, the player can edit the specifics of existing races, though the official ones are already well-balanced.
The aforementioned statistics are called "abilities" in-game, because they happen to determine how effective civilizations are in pursuing certain activities.
Some of these may be familiar to long-time veterans of the subgenre. To cite some examples, diplomacy determines how effective the civilization is at negotiations and economics grant a bonus to tax revenue.
Some others work in manners that are similar to the familiar ones, but these are less utilitarian and are meant for specialized playstyles. For example, espionage is perhaps useful to players who prefer to resort to spying and covert actions to get ahead of rivals, which is a surprisingly viable tactic in The Dread Lords, as will be elaborated later.
There are some abilities that may seem "miscellaneous", considering the specialization of their benefits. To cite an example, there is courage, which gives the player an innate edge against enemies that happen to have better technology in combat.
There are more statistics that are not mentioned here for brevity's sake. However, it can be said here that the game describes them well enough that players will usually be able to make wise choices or have clear fallback plans when creating races or deciding which abilities to improve during actual gameplay.
PLANETS - OVERVIEW:
In the previous game, only star systems were represented on the galactic map, thus requiring the player to click on star systems to examine the planets in them. This system was unwieldy.
In the sequel, planets now appear in the galactic map, together with their star. In addition to being more believable, the player can examine the planets directly. Consequently, civilizations are also no longer able to hog all planets in a star system, which also mean that neighbours can be uncomfortably close to each other, within the same star system.
The breaking down of colonies into individual planets also means that each planet now has its own independent happiness rating, and thus loyalty of its own.
PLANETS – CLASS & TILES:
In the previous game, the class of a planet is little more than a statistic that imparts a modifier to its productivity and the happiness of its citizens when it is colonized. In the sequel, it is a much more substantial aspect of a planet.
To be specific, its class ranking determines the number of useful tiles on a planet. It does lose its modifier properties from the previous game, however. Nevertheless, this change has solved the issue of already high-quality planets being developed to overpowered levels of productivity in the previous game.
Anyway, the surface of a planet is represented as a grid of tiles that is imposed on top of some artwork that vaguely indicates the types of the tiles. Not all tiles are useful, however.
Then, there are tiles that are outlined yellow, purple and such other colours except green. These are initially unusable, until the technologies to render them usable are available; these technologies happen to be planet quality-improving technologies in the previous game, albeit repurposed for the sequel.
These tiles are not automatically unlocked for use once these technologies have been obtained. Instead, the player must instigate projects on these tiles to convert them into green tiles.
It has to be noted here that these unlockable tiles are randomly generated when the player establishes a colony on a planet – regardless of whether it has been colonized before or not.
This means that a player can exploit this game design by establishing a colony on a planet, converting any unlockable tiles that have been generated into green tiles, destroying the colony afterwards and repeating the process again. However, this exploit can be time- and resource-consuming, as well as risky as any other rival civilization can take the planet from under the player's nose.
On the other hand, this is perhaps the only way to "heal" planets that have been subjected to nasty invasion methods, which will be described later.
Anyway, the player can use green tiles to build facilities and other kinds of projects on them. Considering that every planet ultimately has a limited number of tiles, unusable or otherwise, the number of projects that the player can plonk down on a planet is limited.
The most important consequence of this system is that the player must have planets specializing in one activity over the rest in order to get the most out of them. For example, planets with many tiles and fertile lands are suitable for specialization as cash-cows or sources of troops for invasions.
If there is a complaint about this otherwise sophisticated system of limiting a planet's potential, it is that there is a lost opportunity to utilize it for even more sophistication. The tile-based system could have been used to implement a secondary system of adjacency, such as having a farm contribute additional productivity to an adjacent factory and vice versa.
PLANETS – RESOURCES:
Some planets may have tiles with resources on them. These resources improve the yield of specific facilities that are built on them. For example, a farm can be built on a tile with fertile lands to greatly increase its yield. These resources have bonuses of varying potencies, ranging from +25% to +700%. However, a tile with resources that has something else built on it is completely wasted.
It is worth noting here that these resources tend to be more common on planets with fewer tiles than those with many. This makes them as lucrative as planets with many tiles, if not more, because planets with many tiles may not necessarily be more efficient or productive (though they do have more tiles to accommodate Galactic Wonders, which will be described later).
This is a wise design decision in the sequel. After all, lower-class planets were all but useless in the previous game, making them utter red herrings.
However, that is not to say that there are not any planets with many tiles and many resources, but these are so rare and are likely to be heavily contested.
If there is a complaint about the feature of resources on planets, it is that the player cannot see which planet has resources with a glance when he/she is in the galactic map screen. To see whether a planet has resources or not, the player must look at the grid of tiles. This is only possible for planets that the player already owns, and not pristine planets that the player is scouting out.
ECONOMICS:
The main way for the player's civilization to create revenue is through raising taxes. Of course, there is trade too, but trade in Galactic Civilizations II is a lot more different than trade in its predecessor. In fact, it has to be described in its own section. There is also tourism, though this still remains a by-product of culture generation, which will be described later.
Anyway, taxes are the most reliable form of income, if only because they are within the player's short-term control. The player can control the level of taxes that are levied to all planets under his/her control through a single slider, or he/she can go about meticulously adjusting the taxes of individual planets, which can be more tedious. Fortunately, there is a tool to simply exempt a planet from taxes, which is very convenient if the player wants to defuse any revolt that is brewing on said planet.
As in the previous game, the more populous a planet is the more taxes that can be reaped from it. Of course, sustaining the population on the planet and having it grow is a different matter.
Financial facilities boost the tax income of the planet – more so if they are built on wealth-giving resources. It is worth noting here that many of the higher forms of these facilities have secondary benefits, such as improving culture or generating some industrial production, thus making them very useful facilities.
MILITARY & SOCIAL PRODUCTION:
The odd naming of the ratings for the production rates of ships and facilities has been retained from the previous game. Also, like in the previous game, the player can develop high capacities for either kind of production on colonies, but the player must spend money to utilize these capacities.
In addition, any one colony can only focus on the building of one ship and one facility at any one time.
Military production concerns the production of ships, both civilian and military, or anything in between. Only colonies with starports can build ships, though it is probably wise to make sure that each colony has one, if only to make sure that it is building a ship, no matter how meagre its capabilities are.
Ships that have been built are sent into orbit around its parent planet. By default, they take on the duty of defending said planet. However, the orbit of a planet can only support so many ships; any excess ships will have to be kicked out. This also means that a planet must have enough space in its orbit to accommodate a ship that is to be repaired.
This limitation addresses an issue in the previous game, which was that players can delay invasions by building a lot of cheap ships and stuff star systems with them.
Social production concerns the building of facilities. As mentioned earlier, facilities can only be built on green tiles, and they get bonuses from tiles with resources.
It is worth noting here that with the tile system, the player can pause the building of a facility on one tile and shift production over to another project. This is a lot more versatile than the production of ships. However, the player does not get to exploit this feature too much, because projects that are stalled have their progress slipping backwards, wasting the time and resources that have been invested in it.
As in the previous game, the player can shell out money to have the private sector complete projects by the next turn. This is only to be done by very rich players with surplus budgets of course.
POPULATION:
Like in the previous game, the most important assets that a civilization has are the populations of its colonies. These are the source of the player's tax income, as mentioned earlier. They are also the colonies' main defence against invasions, as invasions are still a matter of genocide, as will be explained later. They also happen to provide the manpower for the player's own invasions of other colonies.
Interestingly, the player does not need to have enough population on a planet to work its industrial capacities; the player only needs to put money into working them. This may seem like a lost opportunity for more complexity in the gameplay, but then this would have made new colonies more difficult to develop than is comfortably appropriate.
Anyway, to raise the population of a planet, the player has to build farming facilities on tiles, which could have been used for something else. Population growth is not immediate either, though there are a few factors that influence population growth.
TECH TREE – OVERVIEW:
In the previous game, the technologies that the player can research are merely grouped together as a massive list. This made planning a bit difficult, and neither was it user-friendly.
Thankfully, the sequel uses a chart diagram to display the potential technologies that the player can research, including even the end-game ones. This puts the sequel more in-line with other 4X strategy games during its time, which had long used chart diagrams to display tech trees with.
One can argue that using a chart diagram that also shows the technologies ahead would be a deliberate spoiler. This is difficult to deny, but the chart diagram does help the player keep track of research plans that he/she has to accommodate his/her preferred strategies.
RESEARCH & SHORTCUTS:
Like in many other 4X strategy games, the player can only invest research resources into one technological project at a time. The more advanced technologies typically require more than the earlier ones.
The player can reduce the time that is needed to unlock a technology via research by building more research facilities on planets and upgrading them whenever possible. This is not an inexpensive endeavour, and it also comes at the opportunity cost of having other facilities on the player's planets. The game does inform the player that it is better to have a few planets focus on research work, especially those with the appropriate resources.
However, building research capacity is only half the work done. To utilize this capacity, the player must invest money in it, which of course comes with an opportunity cost. This limitation was in the previous game to prevent players from simply focusing on research and using that focus to power their way through the tech tree. It may still be an inconvenient restriction in the sequel, but it is a balancing measure with merits that are difficult to argue against.
Yet, that is not to say that there are no shortcuts to gaining technologies.
Firstly, there are random events that offer the player a chance to advance a research project quickly, but often with a ghastly cost, such as the sacrifice of millions of citizens. These are only there for lucky players, and players who are avid risk-takers at that.
Secondly, there are nebula anomalies, which were also in the previous game. Like their previous incarnation, a nebula, when checked by a ship with a survey device, has a 50% chance of granting a significant amount of instant progress to the player's current research project. This is a matter of luck, which may not please players who despise luck-based factors.
The third, also luck-dependent shortcut is to invade and capture a colony of a civilization that has technologies that the player does not have. There is a chance that the player may gain one of these technologies upon doing so, especially if the enemy is technologically superior overall. (Of course, such an invasion is more difficult because the defenders do have the tangible advantage of being technologically superior.)
Next, the player can obtain technologies through diplomacy. This can be done through trading various assets (including technologies) in exchange for desired technologies. Alternatively, the player can obtain them through extortion, though the other civilization will remember this transgression, whether they capitulated or not.
However, the most elegant diplomatic method to gain technologies is to have research pacts with other civilizations. Research pacts duplicate half of a civilization's utilized research resources and grant this to its partner, and vice versa. In addition, research pacts do not appear to be affected by physical distance, unlike trade agreements (more on this later).
Therefore, a research-focused civilization can curry much favour with another that happens to be less research-inclined by offering a research pact, which can be difficult for the other to refuse.
Interestingly, A.I.-controlled civilizations will never give away technologies as gifts. Of course, the player can do this to curry favour with another civilization, but this is a double-edged sword.
Finally, there is the ability of 'creativity' that a civilization has. This is practically a chance to get a technology for free for no reason other than sheer luck. There can be issues with this feature though, because very lucky players can get an unfair advantage. On the other hand, the effect of 'creativity' is so minor that it is a rating that is not worth improving.
SHIP WEAPON & DEFENSE TECHS:
In the previous game, the offensive and defensive capabilities of ships are merely represented using a pair of numbers. In the sequel, they are no longer as simplistic, though they are still a matter of statistics.
There are now three fields of weapons and thus three fields of defences that are developed specifically to counter the former. This can be seen in the research branches that have been designed just for these. Generally, as the player travels along these branches, he/she unlocks more powerful but more expensive weapons or defences to be mounted on ships.
However, there is a lost opportunity for more sophistication in design of their tech branches. There could have been research projects for ship parts that have combinations of two or more fields. This would have given the player more versatility in utilizing the space on ships when designing their loadouts.
SHIP CUSTOMIZATION:
In the previous game, the player is stuck with whatever ship and statistics that it has when its prerequisite technologies have been unlocked.
In the sequel, the player has access to a ship editor that allows him/her to cobble together a ship using parts that the player's civilization has unlocked by having the associated technologies. This was nothing new in space-based 4X strategy games at the time, but it was certainly an upgrade over the rigid ship-building in the previous game.
The ship editor has screens and tabs that show important information such as the performance-related statistics of the ship being customized and its capacity for mounting equipment, which are very useful when trying to squeeze as many parts onto a ship as possible.
If there is anything to complain about the ship editor, it is that most of it is just there for cosmetic purposes. The player can pick ship models, change their sizes, add decorative parts and reorient these all over the place, but these do not really serve any gameplay purposes.
In other words, a sleek ship that has been meticulously sculpted to resemble a ship from a popular space sci-fi franchise does not perform any differently from an ugly, slapped-together ship that has the same technological parts.
FLEETS:
In the previous game, fleets are nothing more than a tool to move a group of ships together. They do not fight in concert.
In the sequel, this dissatisfactory limitation has been addressed. Ships can still be moved together as a group for purposes of convenience, but fleets of ships are now ships that combine their firepower to fight together.
To create fleets of ships, the player will need to unlock the necessary technologies, namely those that concern the leadership of fleets. A fleet can only contain so many ships before it can include no more. Different sizes of ships also take up different amounts of space in the fleet. Technological research can increase the capacity of a fleet, but there is eventually a ceiling limit that cannot be breached, at least not without outright cheating.
The game lumps all of the statistics of the ships in a fleet to give simple sums. However, the simply-lumped statistics suggest that the fleet is more effective against technologically superior ships, but this is only partially true. This is because the individual ships in a fleet have to pit their weapons against the defences of individual opposing ships and their defences against the weapons of the latter.
In other words, that a fleet has lumped statistics that is higher than a single lone enemy ship is not a certain factor for victory.
Nevertheless, an observant player may notice that pitting a few ships as a fleet against a superior ship will produce better results than pitting them individually against the latter anyway. This is because for every given amount of time, the fleet of inferior ships can produce a combined potential damage output that is better than the potential damage than they could produce on their lonesome.
SHIP COMBAT:
Considering the sophistication of the game aspects concerning ships that have been described earlier, that ship combat is still essentially a matter of RNG rolls can be quite disappointing.
Granted, there are many factors that influence the outcome of battles between spaceships. The player that knows these can plan battles such that victories are a forgone conclusion. However, the degree to which the outcome turns out is not within the player's control.
To elaborate, firstly, the player can watch space battles occur, but not micromanage it. This is a lost opportunity for more sophistication, especially considering that the developer actually had gone to the lengths of creating 3D animation scripts for space battles (which will be described later).
With that said, the factors that determine the outcome of the automated battles are many indeed. The number of ships, their technological quality and current state (namely the number of hitpoints that they have left) are the main factors. It is very rare for anything other than these to significantly influence battles.
Unfortunately, that rare something happens to be straight dumb luck. The player may expect a skewed skirmish to turn out convincingly in favour of the side that has tremendous advantage in the aforementioned factors. Yet, sheer luck can cause the disadvantaged side to survive the battle, having somehow disengaged after having dealt some damage to the other side, where it would have been annihilated otherwise.
One can argue that such unexpected outcomes are due to minor factors. These minor factors include examples such as a civilization's 'courage' rating, which purportedly give disadvantaged ships a small edge in fighting much more powerful ships. However, their effects are so vaguely described in the documentation of the game. They are also so subtle as to be almost negligible.
Thankfully, there are not any outrageous outcomes, such as the aforementioned disadvantaged side winning the battle instead.
SHIP RANGE & SPEED:
Another aspect of ships to be considered is their travelling range. Like in the previous game, ships cannot travel too far from colonies or space stations, supposedly because of limitations of supplies. When a ship is selected, the game conveniently displays the areas that it can go to while remaining in range of supply sources.
Ships can inadvertently be caught out in the void if their supply source is knocked out. When this happens, the ships will automatically attempt to return within the range of the nearest supply source; the player loses control of them.
Furthermore, a ship that has been caught out in the void becomes terrifically vulnerable to attacks. Not only does it move slower, it appears to suffer tremendous penalties to its combat performance. Therefore, cutting off powerful armadas from their supply sources is indeed a viable tactic, assuming that the player's can have the range to strike behind enemy lines.
The speed of a ship is indicative of the number of squares that it can move in a single turn. In fact, a player can have a high speed ship that cannot move too far from his/her territory (though such a ship may be useful if it is used to transport colonists around).
As in the previous game, engaging in combat causes a ship to lose half of its total moves. As long as it has moves left, it can still engage in combat, though it is not certain whether the number of moves it has left has any influence on the outcome of the fight.
Wily players can use this limitation to delay the advance of a marauding hostile armada by putting lousy and cheap ships in its path, baiting it into hitting unimportant targets.
SHIP EXPERIENCE:
The element of combat experience has been overhauled in the sequel. Gaining experience levels through successfully destroying enemy ships no longer grant bonuses to the attack and defence ratings of a ship. Instead, experience levels merely grant increments to its hitpoints. This can be a disappointing change, because it made veteran ships less valuable.
MAINTENANCE COSTS:
All ships and facilities on colonies incur maintenance costs. For the latter, their costs are clearly mentioned in their descriptions. For ships, their costs amount to 2.5% of their building costs, by default.
As a civilization expands its hard power and technical capacities, these maintenance costs can balloon. This is an understandable drawback, because such a civilization does have a clear advantage over those that cannot perform the same expansion.
POLITICAL PARTIES, GOVERNMENT SYSTEM & ELECTIONS:
As mentioned earlier, the player has to pick a political party right at the start. This party acts as a passive bonus. However, unlike typical passive bonuses, they are not permanently enabled. They can be temporarily lost via the game element of elections, which will be described shortly.
Every civilization begins with the Imperial system of governance. The only benefit of this system is that a player's chosen political party is always ever in power, thus maintaining its passive bonus.
As the player unlocks more political and socioeconomic technologies, more systems of governance become available. These other systems grant considerable bonuses over the Imperial system, but with the caveat of them involving elections.
In these other systems, elections are held every few in-game years. The player's party must win the elections, lest the player loses the benefit that comes from his/her party. More importantly, the player does not get any benefit from the other party that won, if the player's own lost. In fact, the benefits from the player's party become penalties of the same magnitude instead.
In other words, the player trades civilization-wide benefits for risk when changing to any system other than the Imperial one. Furthermore, the more benefits that a system of governance offers, the more wilful the people of the player's civilization become. In addition, the matter of going to war with another civilization has to be put to a vote.
However, veterans of the previous game may recall that this had been in the previous game and is thus nothing new. Nevertheless, if political parties are to be considered a form of passive bonuses, they are still some of the most interesting to be seen in computer games.
Yet, some of the issues and exploits about elections in the previous game have not been addressed in the sequel. Namely, the issue of the people having short memories is still there. Barring severe goof-ups like sacrificing a lot of people for short-term gain, the player can still resort to cheesy methods such as reducing taxes drastically a few turns before election day and win by huge margins.
INFLUENCE & TOURISM:
The gameplay feature of influence returns from the previous game. The influence of a civilization exudes from its colonies and culture stations.
Having very high influence is desirable, because it appears to have a positive effect on the loyalty of a civilization's population. High influence within a civilization's territory also makes it difficult to conquer, because the populace is more than likely to rebel, making occupation and assimilation very difficult for the invader.
Moreover, a civilization's influence can overwhelm that of another (including friendly neighbour's), if it is strong enough. Entire planets can rebel and switch allegiances, as do affected mining asteroids and moons (more on this later). Only space stations appear to be unaffected, which can seem odd.
Furthermore, influence is an asset that is not lost easily. Even if rival civilizations do not react kindly to the encroaching influence of a culture-focused neighbour, taking out the sources of the influence does not solve their problem immediately. The influence of their neighbour remains, at least until they counteract it with influence of their own, which can take a long while.
To balance this territory-grabbing advantage of influence, a culture-focused civilization needs exponentially more influence to expand its shadow further distances from the centres of its culture.
In addition to giving a culture-focused civilization a weapon of sorts that creeps through the galaxy, cultivating culture grants it votes for use in United Planet (UP) meetings, which will be described later.
However, perhaps the most lucrative and versatile benefit from generating culture is the income from tourism, which may require some elaboration.
The total amount of income from tourism, counting all individual incomes from all civilizations, is proportional to the total population of the galaxy. However, the size of the proverbial piece of the tourism pie that a civilization gets is proportional to its share of the total culture points in the entire galaxy.
This is a very convenient source of income for a player that has invested effort and resources into a cultural victory, which can be costly to achieve and has no other benefit that grants hard power.
DIPLOMACY:
Like its predecessor, Galactic Civilizations II is a mainly single-player game. Therefore, the player will be dealing with A.I.-controlled rivals most of the time, and always at least one of them, because none of the game modes allows the player to play a session without any other civilizations.
Most of the interaction that the player has with these A.I. rivals is performed through diplomacy. To facilitate this, there is a set of screens that is dedicated to the pursuit of foreign relations.
If the player recalls the number of other civilizations and their details that the player has set before starting a game session, he/she can have an advantage in the session as he/she may remember the temperament of the other civilizations.
However, he/she is not able to start relations with any of them until his/her civilization has come across them, understandably enough. When this happens, profiles are created for them. These profiles contain information pertinent to them, like their state of technology and temperament towards the player. More information can only be obtained via trade or espionage, which is described elsewhere in this review.
The profiles also contain the tool to start negotiations with any civilization. The player must be on good (or at least non-hostile) terms with them before this can begin. Like in the previous game, the player gets to see animated portraits of the civilization's representative, though these mostly serve cosmetic purposes.
When the player starts negotiations, the player chooses the subject of the would-be dialogue from a list of items on the side of the screen. Details of these items can be tweaked. Exchanges of amounts of resources are probably the most common items in negotiations. These resources can even include influence points, which when traded around, may reduce or expand the player's territory in space. These items and their details are then cobbled together into a proposition for the other party.
The game happens to include a tool that informs the player whether the other party would agree to a proposition or not. The proposition is colour-coded according to the other party's potential reaction, which is a convenient visual design.
The other A.I.-controlled civilization does remember the propositions that the player has forwarded, whether it accepted them or not. Therefore, it is important that the player heed the advice of the aforementioned tool. Of course, the other civilization will also remember the list of deals that it had sealed with the player and will adjust its regard of the player accordingly.
Other factors that determine the other civilizations' regard of the player include the diplomacy rating of the player's civilization. This rating can be improved in many ways. Having a better diplomacy rating makes the other party in a negotiation more likely to accept a proposition, among other subtler benefits.
The other party's current relationship with the player is also dependent on its relationship with other civilizations and the player's own relationships with others. The adage of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" does apply to a degree in this game.
Neighbours tend to have the most tenuous relationships, mainly because one cannot expand its own territory without eating into the others'. Even if they do not fight each other, their opposing influences will cause tensions anyway.
If the player wants to see the factors that go into relations good or bad, the diplomacy screen has a tab that is dedicated to displaying reports on these, conveniently.
TRADE:
Trade is perhaps the most lucrative yet most complicated form of revenue. As in the previous game, trade can only be initiated with another civilization. Any civilization can offer another civilization a trade pact, if they have good relations with each other. However, achieving a trade agreement is only half of the work done.
One of the civilizations has to create a trade freighter at one of its planets and send it over into the territory of its trading partner. Like in the previous game, this freighter will be marked as belonging to the planet that created it, and any trade route that it creates will have this planet as one of the exchange points.
Perhaps it would have been more convenient if the player can change this marking of the freighter. The player could have a planet in mind for a trade route, but the planet may not necessarily be good at ship-building. Creating a freighter on another planet, sending it over to this planet and re-launching the ship from it does not do much, because the freighter is considered to have been loaded with goods from its parent planet.
Anyway, afterwards, the freighter's owner has to pick the destination planet within the other civilization's territory. This has to be done wisely, because the distance the two planets is one of the factors that are used to calculate the value of the trade route. In addition, the individual prosperities of the planets determine the value of the trade route. The more prosperous either of the planets are, the higher the value, apparently.
Incidentally, due to this factor, the trading partners are likely to use their own capital planets for trade routes, because capital planets tend to be the most prosperous due to being the oldest colonies around.
Once a trade route has been established, it brings income to both trading partners. However, the proportions of the total value of the trade route that they get are different. Usually, the partner that established the trade route is the one that obtains the lion's share of the income. The civilization's ability at trade is also a major factor.
Either trading partner can attempt to stack a bonus on top of the trade income by placing economic space stations in the vicinity of the trade route and upgrading them to bolster trade. This bonus income is not shared by the trading partner, incidentally, so the trade route may profit the player that has invested resources into trade.
However, due to the restructuring of the gameplay element of space stations in the sequel that will be described later, these economic space stations are not too overpowered.
Trade routes are very lucrative, but they are also easy targets for raids. Once too many private-sector ships that are plying the trade route have been destroyed, the trade route will be abolished.
In the previous game, entire star systems are destinations of trade routes. That planets are now the ends of trade routes is not functionally different, but there is a lost opportunity to have neighbouring planets contributing to a nearby trade route.
There have been changes that are intended for gameplay balance. For example, the number of trade routes that a civilization can have is limited by its research into trade logistics. There is also an eventual ceiling limit that cannot be overcome with more research. Considering that trade routes can generate a substantial amount of income, this is perhaps an understandable limitation.
The main requirement of the ability to conduct trade is still membership in the United Planets organization, which will be described shortly.
UNITED PLANETS:
The feature of United Planets (UP) returns from the previous game. All major civilizations are still by default members of this galactic organization, and they meet once every few years to listen to a subject matter that is usually tabled randomly.
The members, including the player, may sometimes have the chance to push for a subject matter to be tabled, but this is picked from a randomly generated list of items. These items do tend to have something to do with the state of the galaxy though.
For example, if the civilizations had been in perpetual war with each other for a long time without anyone gaining an upper hand, the subject matter in the next UP meeting is likely a galaxy-wide armistice. It may even be converted into a permanent one by the next meeting, thus turning the game session into a technological or cultural race.
There may be a finite number of members in the UP, but the amounts of votes that they wield are different. The amount of votes that a member has is proportional to the amount of influence that it has cultivated via the generation of culture.
A cultural victory is very much possible, if a member can amass and horde a stupendous proportion of the galaxy's total influence. Once that occurs, the next UP meeting is likely to table the subject matter of declaring this member as the most glorious of the civilizations – which the member is likely to win of course.
RECONNAISSANCE:
In any session, knowing what other civilizations are doing, hostile or otherwise, is key to success. Knowing what other civilizations are doing helps the player set secondary goals to his/her plans, namely obtaining the means to counter possible hostile actions or mooching off the success of others.
The simplest way to scout out other civilizations is to send ships to look at them. The longer a ship gets to look at something, the more information that it will uncover. However, no other civilization will appreciate this and it does happen to affect diplomatic relations if the player does this too many times, even if they happen to be allies.
Moreover, ships can only spot other ships, planets and other space-bound objects. They cannot clearly see what is on a planet or the specifications of a space station, to cite some examples of objects that ships cannot thoroughly examine. Improving their sensors does improve their capability to examine these, but they will never be able to immediately know everything about what they are looking at.
Incidentally, there is the technology of cloaking that can be researched, but it is, oddly enough, more useful in combat than for reconnaissance. On the other hand, this limitation may have been intended for purposes of gameplay balance.
However, a cunning player can still invest research into sensors such that he/she/it is ahead of the competition, thus granting him/her/it the ability to spy on rivals at a range longer than they can spot his/her/its ships. In this case, the latter is none the wiser.
There is a subtler way to spy on other civilizations, and that is through trade routes. Trade ships have very short sensor ranges, but they are still able to see anything next to them as they ply their trade routes. More importantly trade routes subtly but gradually reveals more of the other civilization's planet on the other end of the trade route. Of course, this works both ways, at least until relations turn hostile.
There are also diplomatic pacts that allow participating civilizations to share their vision with each other, including basic details on their planets. However, this is not a pact that is done lightly, as the player would discover when trying to propose this pact, even to friendly civilizations.
ESPIONAGE:
In the previous game, espionage was another way of reconnaissance, but its benefits are so subtle and small that it was often not worth the cost of investing in it. Unfortunately, it has been transferred wholesale into the sequel.
Money that has been invested into espionage is funnelled into working against the counter-espionage defences of other civilizations, as in the previous game. Purportedly, over time, the player can uncover more information about the other civilizations and even eventually steal technology, but this takes away so many resources from other endeavours that are more reliably rewarding.
The previous game's tool of destabilization also returns in the sequel. This tool allows a civilization to invest money to destabilize its rivals, but as in the previous game, the effects are so minor that it is often not worth the cost.
APPROVAL/MORALE:
Every colony has its own rating of approval of the civilization that it belongs to. This approval rating affects a couple of things that are important to maintaining and growing the colony.
Firstly, the approval rating is tied to the colony's loyalty and happiness. Obviously, happy colonists are more than likely to stay loyal. Regarding this matter, approval ratings can be eroded by the encroaching influence of rival civilizations.
Secondly, it affects population growth. High approval ratings contribute bonuses to the population growth of the colony, but as its population increases, overcrowding reduces the approval ratings, thus slowing down population growth.
The approval rating can be bolstered or reduced by other means, some of which are external to the colony. The most reliable way to improve and maintain approval ratings is to build morale- and happiness-increasing facilities, though these take up tiles that could have been used for something else. The player can also spend money on propaganda, but the benefits are often not worth the costs.
In addition to influence from rival civilizations, external causes of low approval ratings include bad fiscal health, interestingly enough.
INVASIONS:
Invasions in the sequel are still a matter of genocide and forced conscription.
The invader must raise an invasion force by conscripting soldiers from its colonies and loading them onto combat transports. These combat transports must then land on a planet that is undefended in orbit. Next, the soldiers must defeat all able-bodied people on a planet before they can settle on the planet as its new citizens – their only way to get a new home after being plucked out from their original ones. Otherwise, they die trying to commit mass murder.
The discomfort from the feature of invasions is further bolstered by the use of specialty weapons, which are made available through technological research. All of them increase the effective fighting strength of the invaders, but they also happen to cause more collateral damage and require money to be used. There are even more of these nasty options in the sequel.
Alternatively, the invader can make use of the influence that it has over the local populace, if any. With some exchange of money, it can bribe some of the local populace over to add to the invasion force.
The defenders can seem like they are at a disadvantage, and they usually are. In the sequel, there are facilities that grant a bonus to their capabilities, but they use tiles that could have been used for something else.
One of the most important factors of invasions is the difference in technology between the two sides. This can be overcome with numerical superiority, but due to the revamp of the mechanics of fleets that have been mentioned earlier, the invader can no longer resort to swamping opposing star systems with tremendous numbers of transports like it could in the previous game.
This change in the workings of fleets does happen to balance the feature of invasions, which was not as polished in the previous game.
Yet, it also means that the invader can be at an disadvantage as multiple armadas of transports may be needed to overwhelm a populous planet.
SPACE STATIONS, SPACE RESOURCES & ANOMALIES:
Space stations return in the sequel with an overhaul. Space stations no longer start as basic vessels that can be upgraded in any which way; this caused a balance issue in the previous game.
Instead, when creating a space station with a constructor ship, the player is prompted to have the space station specialized for one of three roles: economic, military or culture. It will still start out all useless, however, and have to be upgraded with further constructors.
Fortunately, the sequel retains the self-sufficiency of space stations, meaning that they still do not cost much to maintain.
Regardless of the type that a space station is of, its armaments and defences can be upgraded to protect itself from attacks. Any space station also exudes supply auras, though military stations are more suitable for supporting ships.
Military stations are also the only ones that can be turned into a Terror Star, which remains the only space station that can move and bust enemy colonies. However, because of the splitting of star systems into planets in the sequel, the Terror Star can only annihilate planets one by one.
Economic stations are the only ones that can secure and exploit space-bound resources, which return from the previous game with their color codes and shapes as well as their civilization-wide benefits.
Anomalies return in the sequel, and they are still only retrievable by ships with survey modules. Most of the random benefits from the examination of anomalies have been recycled from the previous game, so the veteran player can still expect tiny benefits from most of them but which matter in the long run.
GALACTIC PROJECTS, TRADE GOODS & SUPER-PROJECTS:
The series' take on the mechanic of "Wonders" returns in the sequel. After having unlocked the necessary technologies to build them, a civilization can embark on special projects to gain significant benefits as mentioned in their descriptions.
In the case of Galactic Projects, a civilization must race against the others to build them before they do, because the civilization that attains any one of these projects first locks it down. The time and resources that any other civilization has been investing into making it are wasted.
Trade Goods are like Galactic Projects, but as their names suggest, they can be used as items in trade negotiations. Giving away Trade Goods to another civilization grants it their benefits too, so this is not to be decided upon lightly. On the other hand, if another civilization seizes the planet that contains the Trade Goods project, it gains it but does not take it away from the civilization that made it in the first place.
Galactic Projects and Trade Goods were in the previous game, of course, but the system of tiles for planets now requires the player to make wise decisions on which planet to build them on. The player can attempt to stuff them onto planets that have high production capacities, but at the cost of tiles that could have been used for other purposes.
Unlike Galactic Projects and Trade Goods, Superprojects can be built by anyone, but only one of each is allowed in any civilization.
MOONS & ASTEROIDS:
One of the features that have been introduced in the sequel is the inclusion of more celestial bodies in the gameplay, though these are not as exciting as one would think.
Moons are innate production bonuses to planets that cannot be stifled in any way. However, they can be hard to see on-screen and their benefits are mundane.
Asteroids contribute bonuses to production capacities too, but they must be colonized by mining complexes before they can contribute. Moreover, the player must select the colony that they contribute their bonus production to; this planet must be within supply range of them.
However, there is a penalty on the contribution with a magnitude that is proportional to the distance between the asteroids and their beneficiary planets. Still, controlling asteroids is lucrative, because they do not incur maintenance costs like planetary facilities would.
RANDOM EVENTS:
The predecessor's system of luck-based random events returns, for better or worse. In the sequel, there are even more types of random events. They happen to be associated with the game elements that are introduced in the sequel, especially the tile system for planets.
These random events are still intended to determine the player's in-game morality. Each random event offers three decisions: one that is all-beneficent, one that is callous and one that is a compromise. Generally, the most callous one has the most short-term monetary rewards, where as the beneficent one often comes with costs, but may grant other subtler benefits.
If there is any certainty to random events, it is that one is almost guaranteed to occur when a pristine planet has just been colonized.
MORAL ALIGNMENT:
The player's morality determines the attitudes of other civilizations towards the player's own. In addition, it also determines the kinds of rewards that the player gets when he/she obtains the Xeno Ethics technology.
Each of the three main archetypes of morality gets its own exclusive set of rewards. For example, neutral civilizations obtain bonuses to approval ratings, discounts when contracting the private sector for projects and disregard the need to obtain terraforming technologies to render tiles usable.
These are lucrative rewards, but they only come into play very late in the game, because Xeno Ethics is a very high-end technology.
REGULAR GAME MODE:
Sticking true to its roots, the main game mode of Galactic Civilizations II has the player trying to conquer a galaxy that has been generated using settings that the player has determined.
Veterans of the previous game may find familiar options such as the size of the galaxy, the density of stars, the density and habitability of planets and the rate of technological advancement of the various civilizations. The player can also determine the number of other civilizations, as well as the details of their races. The player can even create new races, as mentioned earlier, to be controlled by the A.I., and not just for his/her own use.
Perhaps the most interesting option when setting up a session in the sequel is the option to populate the galaxy with minor civilizations. These are actually a lot like the A.I.-controlled civilizations, except that they have much more limited A.I. scripts and have no aspirations for galactic dominance. They are mainly there for players who want to engage in diplomacy and trade but without empowering their rivals. It also has to be noted here that A.I.-controlled 'major' civilizations will know how to exploit them too, at least on the higher A.I. settings.
Speaking of higher A.I. settings, these are a bit more sophisticated than those in the previous game. In addition to the typical options of giving the A.I. statistical advantages or disadvantages, there are options to set their starting relationships with the player's own civilization.
There are difficulty options with adjective-laden labels, but the effects of these options are not well-documented beyond mere vague suggestions.
CAMPAIGN MODE:
There is a set of narration-linked scenarios with predetermined settings that the game uses for its Campaign mode. It is intended for the player to play and experience the plot development of the Galactic Civilizations canon. This campaign is, perhaps expectedly, called "The Dread Lords".
It starts with a scenario that illustrates the stalemate between the factions that have been described in the Premise section earlier. Later, the protagonists discover that entire colonies have been disappearing, though a handful barely managed to transmit warnings about few but immensely powerful enemies.
The player eventually encounters them. However, observant players would notice that they are not exactly spectacularly unique enemies. Instead, they seem to be more akin to heavily scripted A.I.-controlled players with a tremendous advantage in technology but severe limitations to the sizes of their fleets and invasion forces (which may seem trivial when their technological advantage is considered).
Speaking of A.I.-controlled players, they may start with pre-defined relationships with the user's own player, but they otherwise behave like the A.I.-controlled players in other game modes.
The aforementioned technologically supreme enemy is particularly vulnerable to tactics that utilize numerical superiority – tremendous superiority. Worlds that they control (or more likely, conquer) are limited to just a mere 10 million inhabitants each, for whatever reason. This means that the player can attempt to conquer any one of their worlds, if he/she can muster an invasion force that is large enough to overpower those (albeit hideously armed) 10 million.
Doing so allows the player to gain a technology through the invasion in the way that has been described earlier. As this enemy happens to have stupendous technological superiority, the reward may well be substantial. This in turn may help the player a lot in achieving the objectives of the scenario that is being played.
Speaking of objectives, they can seem disappointingly simple. More often than not, the player must get a ship from one point of the map to another, conquer a certain planet, or discover a certain ship that has been sitting in space for a long time.
METAVERSE:
The "Metaverse" gameplay feature is an attempt to implement social elements into the meta-game of Galactic Civilizations II.
This is actually a variation of the regular game mode. However, instead of creating a sandbox galaxy himself/herself, the player has to download settings that have been determined by other people. Then, he/she attempts to conquer this sandbox galaxy with as high a score as possible, before uploading this and the logs into Stardock's online listings for purposes of bragging.
The logs and other supporting information are intended to prevent players from cheating easily, but they are certainly not guarantees against determined cheaters.
GRAPHICS:
Many of the graphical designs of the game are for purposes of function and user-friendliness, which is good. Of these, the user interface (UI) is the most significant. The buttons for the UI of the sequel are much better designed than those in the previous game, with the most used buttons being bigger than most others. There are also icons floating next to planets, indicating things such as facilities being built and tiles that are still empty.
The borders and tinting of grids that depict the reach of the influence of a civilization return from the previous game, perhaps better-looking now. However, they do sometimes obscure other line-based delineations, such as those depicting the range of ships, if they happen to overlap.
There are also options to generate charts for the display of statistics, with many options to alter their display. This would please meticulous players. However, the player may need to consult the manual for the equations behind them.
The sequel makes use of an isometric view with 3D models over the top-down, sprite-based graphics of its predecessor. This change is visually for the better. If the player zooms far out in the galactic map, the 3D models are replaced with convenient icons.
The mini-map is also oriented in an isometic manner, and has options to toggle details in it on or off. Some of the most useful options include the display of the individual productivities of planets.
The sequel's graphics are not exactly cutting-edge, but it is adequate enough to help the player identify things at a glance. More importantly, it does support the feature of ship customization, allowing the player to create complex-looking ships. However, having ships with many polygons on-screen can cause frame-rate problems, especially when looking at animated ship battles.
Speaking of animated ship battles, every space battle is not merely just a list of RNG rolls. These RNG rolls are used to procedurally generate scripts for the animated versions of these battles. The player can see their progression and how the ships' load-outs helped. For example, the player may see ships using their cloaks at moments where they would otherwise have been hit.
SOUNDS:
The music in the sequel is mostly re-mastered versions of the ones in the previous game, which may not be a bad design for ardent fans of the original. It is still a set of soundtracks with themes of wonderment and discovery, with a few being ominous for the purpose of invasions and the likes.
The sounds for ship combat are cheesy electronic noises, but veterans of the previous game would note that the ones in the sequel sound a lot better.
Otherwise, the rest of the sound designs in the game are for button-clicks and such. The game's aural qualities are not really memorable, especially when compared to its other much more fun aspects.
CONCLUSION:
Galactic Civilizations II retains all of the sophistication of its predecessor, and builds on that with better balancing of existing features. Among its improvements over the original, the tile system for planets and reworking of ship load-outs and fleets are the most prominent, making the game all the more enjoyable.