One of my favorite things. The amount of things to do in this game is immense, and yet easy to understand. Read on...
Imperium galactica is one of my favourite games. Yes its fairly old, but still it retains its dominance.
If anyone doesn't have this game, i recomend getting it, even today.
Single Player - single missions are awesome, there's a variety of things to do and each on its own difficulty level
Campaing - You may play one of 3 important races to succeed in galactic dominance. Each team has its own rare events, game story line (this is what i love so much about the game, it has a story line!!!) and alliances etc. You can even marry a pirates daughter to assist you!
Gameplay - You can build on every single one of your planets. Each planet has a different terrain, which can be transformed; and this may inhibit or increase your growth rate. Defences can be built on each planet, including ground fortresses, or planetary guns to stop spaceships even deploying tanks. You may research new buildings to create, and these include a large variation. Also!! you can build alot of buildings on each planet, the graphics are good and you can easily see whats happening. There is an auto-build tool, whereby the planet will automatically build in a way you ask it to.
You may colonise new planets using colonisatoin ships, or by attacking an enemy planet, and thus declaring war. You may also attack pirates etc. If your planet is under attack, you may defend it with ground fortresses and ground tanks, (which you may reserach a variety of types, and design them with different turrets/ abilities you have researched, including air strikes, radar jammer, anti-tank guns etc), you may also research spaceships, and spaceships may be designed for special purposes. With a large variety of shields, torpedos, bombs, lasers, cargo, computer technology. There is just such a massive range of things to do, and you may also use fighter jets which attack in massive numbers and can only be killed by laser guns. It is also important to note, you may build a self-destruct on a planet, and also a planetary shield (which assits your planetary guns when fighting off an assault)l, and the self-destruct completely blows up every building, and every tank on the planetary surface, so they don't get the civilisation you built and they lose their army too.
Each race has its own unique abilities, and you may also ally with opponents, or complete many other tasks through diplomacy; which is great because it adds an extra feel to the game. If diplomacy fails you, you can send in spys to either obtain plans for researched items, incite revolts, counter intellegence, or assasinate a faction leader, amongst other thing. you can also construct spy satelites to spy on enemy bases. Although these may be destroyed by planetary guns or spacestations (orbit planets as defensive measures). If you catch an enemy spy you can either kill him, release him or make him a double spy, whereby he informs you of enemy plans etc, but sometimes they betray you depending on their loyalty level. There is also skill levels in many areas, such as combat, infiltration etc and these determine a spys level of success.
Space battles have good graphics and you have a high level of control, being able to chose a formation, pause or speed up a battle. You may also click on single ships to chose indepenent targets and disable certain weapons, or allow all your weapons to be fired at once.
As i've said, i love this game, the amount of things you can do is endless; it is far better than other modern games i have been seeing, as games aren't just about the graphics, its about gameplay too. From this last statement, do not assume the graphics are bad, they are infact very very good; whoever made this game is a genious, and it actually fits onto 4 CD-roms. I believe there is an imperium galactica 3, but i still must check out this game before i can say anything about it. I did try the demo, and i felt imperium galactica 2 was better.
Negative aspects of the game:
Multiplayer is fairly hard to do. You cannot save games and the game is on a fix speed rate of either 1, which is very slow, or 3 which is very fast. However, you can chose to be any race which is very very interesting. If you have 10 hours spare time, sure you can get a full game in maybe, but try not to leave ur computer or when you come back you'll probably have lost alot of planets.
There is a limited number of scenarios, so once you've played them all (about 12 i think), you may get bored. However, you also have the campaigns to play, and since there are random events, its pretty much never the same twice round.
Good luck, if you chose to buy this game, and remember, your allies CANNOT be trusted.