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In the year 2128, humanity finally came into contact with an intelligent, extraterrestrial species. Communications evolved between the humans and their new acquaintances, the Arceans –queue Star Trek theme-. Over time (some 50 years later) humanity ascends to a new level of technological utopia with the invention of hyper-drive. Alien races had been moving through the galaxy for thousands of years before the humans ever knew (for sure) they weren’t alone in the universe. The other intelligent races utilized star-gates in order to travel great distances. These colossal star-gates were expensive to operate and maintain. It was the human invention of hyper-drive that essentially shut them down. Humanity placed a wager that any intelligent race capable of exploring the galaxy, had probably evolved beyond warmongering. So humanity decided to share their hyper-drive technology with the five established races in the galaxy. It was this action that triggered the race for galactic colonization. While politically, sharing the hyper-drive technology may have given the Humans an advantage, it didn’t stop the other races from using the technology to stake their own claims throughout the galaxy. The Humans realized this and pushed onward to colonize habitable planets before they are all claimed by the other five races. The year is now 2178. Humanities first colony ship has been completed along with a survey vessel, which will be used to explore the galaxy. Leading your people into the great unknown won’t be easy. You’ll soon find out that the galaxy isn’t exactly the friendliest of all places…

Designing your civilization is the first step you’ll take towards galactic domination. There are seven political parties to choose from, each with their own distinct advantages. You can choose between the Technologists, War Party, Pacifists, Merchants, Populists, Universalists or Federalists. Each party’s advantages are self-explanatory (Technologists have a bonus to tech, Pacifists to diplomacy, etc). You also have default ability bonuses that you to customize if you so desire.

After you design your civ, you will need to configure the other five races. You will be able to set their alignment and intelligence levels. Alignments range from “Pure Evil” to law abiding goody-2-shoes (Pure Good). Intelligence ranges from sub-intelligent to Genius. The overall difficulty will be displayed in the lower right portion of the screen. If you want to get a good feel for the game, I suggest playing your first civ on an easy setting. If you stick the AI on Genius, you’ll get WORKED, I promise.

Last, you’ll need to pick the size of the galaxy and the abundance of habitable planets. There are six galaxy sizes and several habitable planet frequency settings. I like the ‘Large’ size galaxies with ‘Common’ habitable planets, personally.

Now you are ready to start your game. If you’ve played Masters of Orion 3, the first thing you’ll likely notice is that Galciv stuck with the classic 2D interface. When you compare Galciv and MOO3 on ‘prettiness factor’, Galciv doesn’t really stack up too well. I’ve spoken with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock (who produced and developed) regarding this matter. Here’s what he had to say:

“I think the perspective is definitely an issue from that point of view. We went with that for playability. I don’t agree, however, with going with 3D. Ultimately, the goal is for the game to be fun. Adding 3D doesn’t make it more fun.”

I agree with his opinion but only to a small extent. It does make for friendlier playability. It will be interesting to see if games like MOO3 can push the genre towards 3D or if titles like Galciv will keep it 2D. Galciv also has pretty lean system requirements because of this. You don’t need a great machine to run a fancy 3D interface. On the other hand, companies that have failed to embrace change and industry trends often find themselves on the defensive, clinging to their outdated technology. I’d like to see the 4X TBS genre graduate beyond the flat 2D surfaces we’re all accustomed to seeing. I’m not a game designer, so I don’t have all the answers. I’m only one of those assho..err critics (same thing, right?) who judge other peoples game design choices.

Besides the 2D view, the rest of the interface is easy to navigate once you learn where everything is. Give yourself an hour or two to get acclimated. There are hotkeys for all of the major functions and each button has a label if you hover the mouse over it (newbie friendly!). There are a few aspects of the interface that are aggravating, such as ship movement. Depending on how you have it set, TAB should take you to your next ship with moves left, but it doesn’t seem to work for me. I don't know if I am pressing TAB the wrong way or what. I'd also like to be able to move my ships manually and not have it automatically cycle to the next ship, but I didn't see any option to let me change that. It almost feels like the game is forcing your turns on you. When you civ gets larger, it becomes a lot harder to manage, so you may thank what automation the game already gives you. There is a very nice automatic build queue feature that you’ll thank Jesus for later in the game when your civ gets large.

So what does it take to win a game of GalCiv? Well, there are four ways to win. Political victory, meaning the political influence of you and your allies is so great that everyone simply adheres to your demands. Those who don’t are simply crushed out of existence. Cultural victory, where your cultural influence has spread through so much of the galaxy, everyone is living and acting like you. Technological victory occurs when you have researched technology to the point where it pushes humanity to a new level of existence (like when hyper-drive was invented). Lastly, “when you just gotta kill every single mother f’er in the room”… you can always go the conquest route and conquer everyone in order to achieve victory. Sometimes though, things won’t exactly work out as planned. In one of my games I had been shooting for a conquest victory. I ended up achieving a cultural victory instead, even though I was steadily conquering every race I came across. I had taken out 4 of the 5 major races and a number of minor races (spin-off races). When the game went to the end cut-scene, I expected to see a massive army of Dreadnaught battleships, along with billions of advancing infantry soldiers invading various star systems. The dreaded Abe, sole ruler of the galactic imperium, would be standing in triumph over his vast invasion force. Instead I was greeted to what appeared to be a cargo ship, offloading my ‘cultural stuff’ or something… it really didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, even for a ‘cultural victory’. I was like: “NO damnit! They’re not supposed to like my stuff! They’re supposed to FEAR ME, damnit! FFFEEAARR MMMEEE!!!”. –Sigh- No sooner does my manly civilization suffer this embarrassing victory, then I notice a new patch for the game is available. I have seen on the newsgroups that patching can hose your saved games because they add tech and things that are brand new to the game (and unknown to your save files). So I apply the patch and simply start a new civ. I now see that you can turn on and off the victory conditions! At last, I’ll see my ‘Conquest’ cut scene! One thing I like to see is a designer who pays attention to the fans. Thanks to the Internet, this has become widespread practice with more and more companies. Features requested by fans have been patched in. Fan have also made their own downloadable content add on's which are hosted on the Galciv site. Some gameplay changes suggested by the fans have even been implemented.

But I digress. Back to the gameplay. There are many stepping-stones to achieving victory in Galciv. You must try thinking politically in terms of the choices you make. There’s always the matter of the Galactic Council. Whoever controls the galactic council, essentially makes the laws in the universe. “You want to outlaw Terror-Stars (really nasty Death Star type thing)? I don’t think so!” The key to controlling the council is the size of your civ’s population. Another thing you’ll need to watch are the colonists who decide to break away from a major race and form their own civilizations. These smaller races can become extremely powerful and even pack more of a wallop than a major race. Who the hell’s passing out galactic steroids because I want some! Occasionally you’ll run into questionable operation and tactics of the AI, such as this example.

Besides galactic politics, you also have to manage your own domestic policy. How high should taxes be? How is my civ’s morale (it may be low because your taxes are too high). How much do I allocate for government spending and can my industrial manufacturing keep up? Do I want to concentrate more on social projects, military or research? What should I build first, the medical center or the news network? All of these questions are left up to you to answer. They all have some sort of effect on your economy, happiness of your colonists and overall success of your civ.

As far as domestic issues go, controlling your civ’s senate is also very important. You only receive the political party bonus while your party is in control of the senate. You’ll start off with an Imperial form of government. This means your party will always control. As the game progresses, three more government options open up (Republic, Democracy and Federation). If you choose to change governments, your people will end up happier in the long run, but you’ll find it more and more difficult to keep control of the senate once you graduate beyond the Imperial form of government. The senate is important because certain actions need senate approval, such as going to war. Nothing will piss you off more than when you want to whip the ass of some poor excuse for a species but the tree hugging Pacifists control the senate in it’s Democratic form of government. Well, that’s what you get for raising your taxes so damn high during YOUR parties last term of control!

Along the way, you will be presented with a number of scenarios. Usually these scenarios involve something to the extent of “You’ve discovered a strange underwater life form on a newly colonized planet… do you…A, B or C?” The three options provide you with a method of swaying your alignment towards evil or back towards good. There may be a little loss or gain in credits, population, morale, etc. Eventually, if you choose enough evil options, your alignment will change and you’ll officially be one of the bad guys. There also happens to be specific technology that is only available to evil players (and good players a-like)! If you end up becoming the scourge of the galaxy, the other races may decide it’s ‘time for a regime change’ and form an alliance together (Coalition of the Willing?) to eliminate you. This is something to keep in mind for all of you bad guy fans.

Technology and research are one of the most important aspects of the game. You must develop new technology if you are to be successful. There is too much tech to research in any standard game’s time length. You will need to pick and choose what you see yourself wanting and using. You will be able to do most of the basic stuff, and then usually get deeper into 2 or 3 other trees. If the game runs extremely long in length, then you could MAYBE research everything. I have yet to accomplish this.

After you’ve conquered your first galaxy, you can post your handle and points (each you win will reward you with a point total) on the ‘Metaverse’. The Metaverse is a scoreboard that’s hosted at the Galciv homepage. Each player is ranked according to points and given a title like “Noob” all the way up to “Grand Master” (peace out to Grandmaster Flash!). Players can band together and form empires. Each player in the empire totals his points towards an overall empire score. Along with your own empires, Stardock collects your scores, which also happen to include the strategies you used to win. Yes, it logs all that as you play! They can then take his data and refine the AI and push it down to your own game as a patch through Stardock Central. This is how it’s SUPPOSED to work, although I cannot vouch if this is actually being done yet or was a killed feature. The Metaverse is the only way you can compete with other players because Galciv is a single player game. That’s right folks, no multiplayer action. In today’s multiplayer frenzied industry, that’s a pretty bold move.

Sound effects and graphics-wise, the game is passable. There aren’t a lot of ambient sounds (it’s space, after all) and not really a lot of musical tracks either. You have your basic tranquil theme song, almost stereotypical to the genre. The few sound effects they do have are well recorded and presented, for the most part. Obviously the graphics in the 2D view can only be SO good, they’re sprites after all. Cut scene graphics are well rendered as well as the graphics in and around the game interface windows. Overall the graphics are about what you’d expect from a game of this genre. Quality-wise, it reminds me a lot of a slightly spiffed up Alpha Centauri.

Stardock decided to stick with standard 2D interface, based on what industry research and feedback they had from fans. Games like this purposely try to cater to a specific fan base and I think Stardock has accomplished exactly that. Not to mention a lot of disappointed MOO3 fans have found their way to Galciv. If you’re looking for an everyman’s Turn Based Strategy game like Heroes of Might and Magic, then Galciv may not be exactly what you’re looking for. It is very specifically designed towards one crowd. Even my sister was able to get into HoMM. I doubt she’d like Galciv. If you’re looking for some old school, traditional 4X TBS fun, then Galciv is going to be the game for you. You can even buy it online and download it with the option of having a CD mailed to you. I’m giving Galciv a very –strong- 8 out of 10.