What's bothering me about GalCiv II . . .

from GalCiv2 Forums
Saturday I nailed down what's been bugging me about Galactic Civilizations II. One thing is probably just the nature of turn-based strategy games, which is that the pace seems glacial compared to RTS gameplay. That's really a personal problem, because I didn't really play a lot of TBS games back when the original Civilization or any of the SSI turn-based, hex-based wargames came out. (At that time, I was probably playing SSI's Gold Box games.) I've been playing RTS games since the days of Dark Legions and the original Warcraft. I'm familiar with that style of play, and it comes naturally to me. The idea of having to wait xx turns to research a single technology is just a bit alien. Nevertheless, I understand that I can't really fault the game for that.

No, my real problem is that I've been playing through the campaign, which is the first (and frequently the last) thing I do when I install any strategy game, and I've discovered something that really bothers me. I was playing a scenario where I'm allied with the Altarians against the Drengin and the Yor. The objective is to capture a Drengin-held planet where a resistance leader is being held by the Drengin. So I built a few ships with the techs I had and began researching and building up my economy. I sent a survey vessel to map out anomalies on its own and sent a few construction ships and a colony vessel into Altarian-owned space. Small Dread Lord ships came and went during this scenario. At one point, close to the end (although I didn't realize it at the time), a small fleet of DL ships wandered into the heart of my territory, destroyed the tiny armada I had constructed, and departed as abruptly as it had arrived. About this time, I received a message that the Yor had surrendered to the Drengin. Two turns later, the Drengin surrendered to me. The game then ended, with me victorious. I was completely befuddled, as I had not accomplished the primary objective of the mission. I hadn't even explored the area of the map where the Drengin-held planet was located, and my military was ranked 4th of 4 active factions (it had actually just been wiped out by the Dread Lords, but it wasn't that great before). The only rating I could see where I scored higher than the other participants was in the Social category (presumably because I had built a few Entertainment Centers on the three worlds I owned?). I have no idea how or why I won this scenario.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened to me over the course of the campaign. Does anyone know whether this is an issue that I alone am experiencing and, if not, whether it persists throughout the campaign? It really takes away from the fun when the mission ends abruptly and for no obvious reason. Are the campaigns in Dark Avatar or the upcoming expansion any different? I would welcome hearing others' thoughts on this.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have no idea how or why I won this scenario.


The Drengin surrender would have given you control of the planet, thus satisfying the objective of taking it from them. It does sound from the general inactivity of the AIs that you were playing on a low difficulty, so bumping it up would probably make them more agressive and less likely to give up.

Anyway, the campaign is really not the focus of GC2/DA. It serves mostly as an introduction to some features of the game and a telling of some backstory. The real focus lies in the random sandbox games--many players just skip the campaign entirely and go straight there.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The Dread Lords will become the big enemy later in the campaign. They have very few, but very high-tech ships that can destroy whole fleets of yours, and each single one of their soldier units can kill approximately 500 of yours(that's 500,000 of your people dead!).

AFAIK, the thing is to set up an economy strong enough to withstand 4-to-1 losses. As for military, make very fast, purely offensive ships early on to destroy their troop transports, while avoiding their actual military, and build dedicated far-seeing scout ships to keep track of their actions as they do to you. Keep researching and making money until you can take them head-on, and let your allies take the beating until then. Just make sure you don't let them take your/your allies' planets by using those fast-attack ships to kill their transports time after time after time again.

Their is a Game Example about this in the Databanks section.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I personally hate RTS games. All they are is a click fest with little to no strategy involved. The only exceptions to this is the Homeworld and Total War series which were great. Turn-Based games allow you the time to run an empire without the 'Zerg' affect. When I want a fast high paced game I play the FPS or MMO's.
If Gal Civ 2 was a RTS I would not be playing it. Now that I have bashed RTS. A good combo between RTS and Turn based can be found in the Total War series. This kind of game allows the empire building aspect of a turn based with the tactical aspect of a RTS game (as long as this part is done right which Total War seems to have done).
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Taking a stab in the dark I'd say the Altarians did all the work. If they were very strong then that would have started off the chain reaction of surrenders that you saw. I cannot guess how or why they became so powerful, as in my campaigns they are a useless resource hogging pain. If you follow Kyro's suggestion and bump the difficulty up then the game will be a lot more dependent upon your actions.

Just a side note when you tangle with the dread lords I find cargo hulls with only guns and engines is the best option. The dreadlords do ~100 points of damage with each round of attack so it doesn't matter if you have 1 or 20 hp they are always going to take down at least one ship. With decent weapons and logistics you can field (relatively cheap) fleets of 3 cargo-fighters that will only lose 1 ship for each dreadlord they destroy.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the responses.

Kyro, I realize that many people feel that the sandbox mode is the focus, but I tend to spend more time playing campaigns in games than playing skirmishes or sandbox. Because I personally feel that campaigns are supposed to serve a primary purpose of introducing a new player to the factions and the basic concepts of gameplay, I focus on campaigns more than your average GC2 player, I guess. So if the campaign is unsatisfying, that turns me off from the whole game. I will try cranking the difficulty up a few notches, but frankly, I'm not a master strategist, so I usually don't play games on high difficulty settings. The experience just leads me to question whether the expansion(s) would be something I would enjoy.

Bellack, I could probably scour the 'Net and find an equal number of people who express your opinion and mine regarding the relative merits of RTS and TBS gameplay (our opinions are almost but not quite diametrically opposed). All I can say is the RTS-style is what I'm used to. Incidentally, I haven't really played any MMOs, partly because I'm cheap (and some will argue you can't be a true RPG fan wihout having played WoW, but, oh well. . .), but NCSoft's recent release of the (free) Dungeon Runners is something I've been spending a little of my spare time with, and I've found it to be pretty enjoyable.

Chugstar and PeskyFly, thanks for the tips. I do think the Altarians must have hammered the Drengin military, because my only real contribution to the mission objective was to soak up damage from the Dread Lords and exploring anomalies. Plus I had a kick-ass espionage network!

Seriously, though, can anyone tell me whether this phenomenon is probably something I experienced because I had the difficulty setting set too low or because the game genuinely does weird things in the campaign? I'm sitting on the fence at this point about whether I should order the expansion. Thanks.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The campaigns are stable and it was an oddity and would be unlikely to happen again. Keep going with the campaign and you will come to stuations where you absolutely dominate and the Drengin will surrender to the altarians just to spite you from playing your final death stroke.

Finish the Dread lord campaign then get DA to keep the story going. Though I must admit the story does do a bit of an about face, in DL the story follows Terrans but for DA the story follows the Drengins. Honestly, if you don't finish the DL campaign or get hooked on the random sandbox games then don't bother with DA. It is an expansion, a couple of new bells and whistles but the guts are still the same.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks, Chugstar. I appreciate the advice.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The campaigns are stable and it was an oddity and would be unlikely to happen again. Keep going with the campaign and you will come to stuations where you absolutely dominate and the Drengin will surrender to the altarians just to spite you from playing your final death stroke.


Well personally i love the campaign, it is the only way to get a fight out of the Dreadlords! Since in the 'sandbox' games, you are forced to include every race against the Dreadlords which almost always results in the Dreadlords being wiped out.

If you play a mission for too long, where you dominate, then your allies will eventually win it for you.