Galactic Civilizations 2
Galactic Civilizations is a space based strategy game in which you are in control of humanity's destiny. The year is 2178, the Terran Alliance has invented a new technology - Hyperdrive. But the secret has leaked to the other civilizations.
Galactic Civilizations 2Galactic Civilizations Gold- by Lief ClennonSummary: The Classic gets another update inthis conclusion to the Galactic Civilizations saga. Combining featuresthat were previously only available separately, GalCiv Gold alsoimproves upon the gameplay.Galactic Civilizations, OS/2's own competition to such strategicchallenges as Civilizations and Master Of Orion, is an undeniably clunkygame. The interface is rough and unpolished, the graphics aresimplistic (with exceptions), the sound effects seem tacked on as anafterthought. And yet this game has won multiple accolades, includinghigh praise from PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World (two publicationswhich rarely even acknowledge OS/2's existence), and two of our ownReaders' Choice Awards.
Why?The Play's The ThingThe introduction is quite simple: a group of colonists from Earth setout in the first experimental interstellar ship, to take mankind to thestars. But something went wrong (as things always must, or therewouldn't be much of a plot), and the ship's engine opens a gateway toanother galaxy. And so the game begins: you must find habitable planetsto colonize, develop your modest technologies, and deal with the otherraces who live in this galaxy, whether that be by defending yourself,annihilating them mercilessly, or learning to coexist. As an aside, the (GIF, 28K) of the alien races are exquisite, without a doubt the best graphical feature of the game.While the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, the basicconcepts of the game are sound and well-thought-out. If you can learnits quirks and work around them, the game is fun to play. But that aloneonly makes it passably okay: the thing that writes this game into thehistory books as an enduring classic is its AI.Where most games fudge the rules in their favor if you raise thedifficulty, GalCiv simply thinks harder.
Like a chess simulator, itadamantly follows the same rules you do. Unlike a chess simulator, ithas to do this for an extremely large and highly complex playing board,and this is where OS/2 shines through: using multithreading, GalacticCivilizations is still thinking while you're taking your turn.The Good, The Bad- you know.Perhaps the greatest feature of Galactic Civilizations Gold is therange of challenges it can give you. You can select the size of thegalaxy, from 'Tiny' to 'ENORMOUS!!'
(each of which lives up to its namequite well). You can select the number of opponents you will be facing,and the intelligence level and general disposition of each. You candecide whether you want to deal with the Ominorians - a highly advancedrace devoted to the casual annihilation of everything that isn't them.You can activate the(GIF, 14K), which allow you to create your own uses for thetechnologies you've acquired, rather than just using the prepackagedship types - and allow your enemies to do the same.And last but not least, perhaps the most interesting new addition GalCivGold has over GalCiv II, is the option to play World Civilizations. Therules of the game all stay the same, with a couple of minor exceptions,but the setting changes completely: instead of a futuristic colony ofmankind struggling for survival in a foreign universe, you get to foundan empire at the dawn of humanity. Instead of Cold Fusion and ControlledGravity, you strive for the secrets of Irrigation and Bronze Working.Of course, it still uses the GalCiv game engine, so your warriors andcities are referred to as star systems and spaceships; regardless, I'vehad as much fun playing in this mode as in the normal game.I mentioned that the interface is clunky. Well, it's the plaintruth.
Often you're not notified of things it would be nice to know of- population increases, for instance. Also, while GalCiv makesexcellent use of the PM's graphical tools to make its interface lookgood at any screen resolution and color depth, I do wish it wouldn'tinsist on using you entire screen, no matter what.
Turbo fast season 4. You canre-size the actual GalCiv window, but you can't re-size some of theparts inside it, which means it's full-screen or scrollbars. This isprobably okay at 800x600, but some of us use four times that. Admirably,though, the interface is designed so that it doesn't need to have thefocus for most operations: this means that if you stick to using themouse, you can have other programs running in front of GalCiv and still be able to play the game.Perhaps the worst difficulty, though, comes for those who preferto use the keyboard. GalCiv supports this completely - and very badly.Very often it not only doesn't do what you'd expect, it does somethingyou most definitely do not want. A couple of good examples: in theselect-a-technology screen, where you decide what to research, the upand down arrow keys scroll through the list but at the same time willalso move whatever spaceship happens to be first in line.
Plus, whencertain alert windows pop up with a button that will take you to theplanet where something happened that you should react to, pressing enterwon't select that button. It will select the Turn button (the last oneyou clicked!), and you lose one turn's activity completely. And thealert window stays there. Worse, this doesn't happen with every alert. Usually they just go away, so it's easy to build a habit of just hitting enter.EndgameGalactic Civilizations is not a game that will appeal to everyone,but I think it will appeal to most.
And while I doubt anyone will playit obsessively for weeks on end, I also doubt anyone will leave it onthe shelf forever. It's the kind of game that's only good in smalldoses, but in those doses it's very good. I recommend it to every OS/2 enthusiast on principle, as it is the classic OS/2 game; but I also recommend it to any serious gamers looking for a real and fair challenge that doesn't wear out over time.