Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords

A Cheapskate Game Review

The first thing a serious strategy gamer notices about “Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords” ($20) is the sheer wealth of options when creating a new game. Not just which ‘civ’ you want and how big the game world will be; there are seven distinct aspects of the galaxy that can be scaled up or down depending on your preference for that session. In fact, the world-building options are vast enough that it made me a bit weary. I knew that I was likely going to be investing many hours into even the very first game, and I didn’t know enough about it to really understand what I was choosing. I checked out the manual for some descriptions of the various options, but was disappointed by the lack of real information there. 5

The manual is weightier than most from games in the ‘cheap’ price range, but it still doesn’t seem to explain enough. Daunted, I decided to back out and attempt the tutorial. The ‘tutorial’ section is a miserable collection of videos about how to play the game, which is like learning to drive by watching episodes of “Speed Racer”: You can’t actually learn anything because can’t actually see what Speed Racer is doing with his hands and feet all the time, not to mention the trite, formulaic plot, the use of only six drawings (just moved around on the screen a little) for the entire series, and that stupid dancing monkey that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Instead I tried the one-player scenario that comes with the game. I’ve never been much of a fan of the scenarios in empire building games because it always seems like your direction and strategy are being a little forced to match their story-line. GalCiv was no different. The tech-tree was scaled back and well pruned, and the enemy was single-minded in its attempts to destroy me. I got promptly trounced by the enemy in the very first chapter and decided not to go back, but it did give me a good idea of how to build the galaxy in a custom game, and well explained the basics of the interface and strategy. I decided that the ‘scenario’ is this game’s ‘tutorial’.

Before I could go in, however, there was one more decision to make: How difficult do I want the game to be? The options were: Cakewalk, Easy, Simple, Beginner, Normal, Challenging, Tough, Painful, Crippling, Masochistic, Obscene, or Suicidal, which didn’t really seem to explain themselves, so I again turned to the manual. I found the section on difficulty levels, and it had a comprehensive list of the levels, with the advantages and disadvantages of each clearly laid out. Unfortunately, the list didn’t match the one in the game. The game offered the 12 levels listed above, while the manual listed only 8 levels, only two of which shared names with the levels in the game (and not in the same spot on the list). Frustrated with it, I put the manual back in the box, and did not reference it again. I choose ‘Normal’ because it looked the most like ‘Novice’, and went on my way.

Now, I’m the type of guy who likes to really customize my experience within the games I play, and GalCiv was certainly willing to accommodate me. If there is something I can change, I will change it. I cannot stand to leave anything on the default setting, even if I like that setting better. It’s like a Reverse Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: It’s best if things are not in order, counting things is annoying, and it’s important to constantly stop whatever I’m doing to rub my hands with bacteria infused dust mites.

I already mentioned that the galaxy creation options were immense, but they were nothing compared with the Civ customizations. When choosing your civ, you may customize almost every aspect, from merely aesthetic options like the colors of the UI, ships, and map markers, the basic design elements of your ships, and the diplomatic portrait of your leader to strategic options like your civ’s political party and special abilities. It was like customization heaven, but again, I was presented with so many unexplained options that as a new player, I had no idea what to do. I ended up just choosing the traits and abilities that I would find most beneficial in a game of ‘Sid Meier’s Civilization IV’. I knew in advance that this was a mistake, because the game was likely to be very different, but I had no other guide other than the prefab civs (which I would have used one of if I wasn’t fundamentally opposed to keeping default options in a game that gives me a choice, which is my own flaw, not a flaw of the game). Once in, the basic gameplay is much like other turn-based empire-building games, with a few specifics that stand out.

As is par, there is a technology tree that allows the building of more advanced units and buildings within the player’s colonies. The most notable thing about this tech tree is how vast it is. The number of technologies is actually so great that they become overwhelming, although this could have been helped a lot with even a slightly better tech interface. A lot of the bulk of the tree comes from single major advances that are broken up into detailed steps. For example, once your civ discovers beam style weapons, it opens a branch of the tree that continues directly through twenty different strengths of beam weapon, without any requirements or interference from other parts of the tree. Navigating the information of the enormous tree is made a little daunting by the size of the entries. Each tech on the graphical representation of the tree is simply a name in a box with some lines leading away from it. The player must find the name in the list above, and click on it there before receiving an actual description of the advantages of researching that entry. Despite this lack of info on the tree itself, the boxes are very big, and the lines are very long, making it possible to see only a few layers at a time, and only a couple of the branches. Navigating the tech tree in this game war like bathing an entire herd of lemmings one at a time: Annoyingly time-consuming and repetitive, but not altogether unpleasant. Also, every five or six turns you forget what you’re doing completely, and have to go back to reading the Lemming Bathing Manual (which is actually a copy of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair”)

Another familiar aspect is the need to manage the finances and resources of individual colonies and of the empire as a whole. This is the best part of the strategic design of the game. The management interface is at once easy to understand and use, while being detailed enough to allow real micro-management for those who like that sort of thing. The player has access to an empire wide distribution system, that allows them to designate how much of their resources go to each of the areas that need them, then (unlike other games in the genre) each colony itself may be individually changed to meet a different resource distribution. Another unique aspect is that each colony makes a distinction between building infrastructure, and building military units (always ships). At any given time, each colony can be building one building and one ship, and if they are not working on both, then some part of their potential production value will be lost.

Inevitably, there will be conflict with other civs, and battles must take place. This seems, strangely, to be the weakest part of the game. The player is mostly left up to their own devises in designing and building the ships from the components that are discovered, which is really cool in my book, and I wish that more games would do this. The only problem with the system was that if you want to keep your designs from game to game, you have to keep the same basic look to your ships (there are five to choose from among). The fighting between the ships, however, leaves something to be desired. The battles seem over simplified, and there is no strategy or tactics involved in the individual battles at all (although this is not really much different from other games in the genre). Also, to take an opponent’s colony by force (you could also take it through influence, which seems more common) one must kill every single person on the planet. Every man, woman, and child must die, and then you can bring in your own folks to live in their old houses. I had an ethical issue with this proposition, and so tried mostly to capture the opposition’s colonies by influence. Interestingly, your ‘influence’ in the game is represented by a visible border which seems to do nothing much at all, since there are no restrictions on who can pass through the border, or even on who can found new colonies within it. If you start with a settlement on earth, and wait too long to colonize Mars, a rival (possibly an enemy) will do it instead, despite it being well within your borders.

One interesting addition was the introduction of an ‘ethical alignment’ The game would define you as either ‘good’ ‘evil’ or ‘neutral’ (each with it’s own abilities and advantages/disadvantages) based on your choices in a series of ethical dilemmas presented to you at key points in the game. Each decision had direct repercussions (for example: when colonizing a new planet, you might encounter native life, letting them live might increase moral, while exterminating them might create more space to expand your colony) and an overall effect on your empire, based on your alignment. The strange thing is that the things you do in the actual strategic course of the game do not effect this alignment (Wiping out all life on a planet, so that you can claim it for yourself does not shift you toward ‘Evil’). While this concept was interesting, it wasn’t really well developed or explored, and the alignment of each civ didn’t really seem to have much of an impact on the game. Which is like falling in love with a female alien from across the galaxy: Erm… Actually, nevermind… It’s not like that at all.

Rundown

Goals

The strategic elements of the game are engaging and thought-provoking, but not unique. The genre-standards of balancing production, happiness, and combat are the main-idea here. The combat elements are a bit lacking in balance and sense, and the AI are too quick to fight. The game is fun in the short term, and seems like it would be incredible for multi-player, but the end game is lacking in balance. In almost every game it becomes obvious who the winner will be by the time the map is full of settlements. It is near impossible for a civ that is close to the bottom of the stack to ever recover, especially with how reluctant the AI is to ally against the current leader. This however seems to be a genre-wide issue, so no points lost for that.

Visuals

Attractive and utilitarian. Not beautiful, but no ugly spots either. Having so many different possible ship designs, and having the ability to customize my ships with a custom color scheme, and lots of extra little design elements is very cool. The ability to change the color of the UI is neat, but doesn’t serve much purpose.

Sound

The sound effects were all appropriate and unobtrusive. The music blended well into the background. As I always say: “The best soundtrack is the one that doesn’t stand out.”

Controls

As it was, I spent most of my game time on the tech screen, wishing I wasn’t. All the rest of the strategic windows are useful, and easy to understand. It is very nice to be able to zoom out as far as I want, and to be able to adequately control the game, even from the furthest zoom with the use of the strategic icons.

Swag

The game comes in a standard size box, with a plastic CD case, and a hefty manual inside. Unfortunately, the manual seems to have been written regarding a process other than the playing of this particular game..

Encoding

The game runs smoothly without error or glitches. No patch is required to get up and running, which is refreshing. I liked that I was able to run the program without the disc in the drive.

Marks

I give Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords 3.5 out of 5 Spudz!

More Cheapskate Game Reviews