Somewhat disappointed with GalCiv 2

I really loved MOO and MOO2 and the Civilization series. After reading the reviews I bought the original GalCiv and didn't like it at all. I came back for GalCiV2 /w the DA expansion and found it decent but not great. Now I recently but the Twilight expansion and I still find some design issues that really keep this game from being a real successor to MOO2:

1. Combat- Giving the player some basic tactical decisions really adds some flavor to the game. The MOO series with the simple grid ala King's Bounty would not be hard to implement and would really make it much more interesting. Civilization gets around this problem by adding terrain factors and siege weaponary in addition to the rock-paper-scissors. While you can build starbases to amplify your combat stats, I find it personally very dry and bleh.

2. Games dragging on long after you have achieved overwhelming tech/spaceship superiority- I stopped playing my last Galciv game after the Terrans I was playing completely mopped up one race (5 AI and myself in a medium galaxy with all AI set on tough) and was halfway destroying a second when I just got bored. I had an unsurmountable lead in weapons/defense technology since all races were using missle weapons and I had quickly researched up the anti-missle tech tree after peeking at the various AI ships. The solution here would be for the 2nd race to simply surrender either to myself or another race rather than force me to hunt them down at every last planet. Unfortunately I saw no such option in the diplomacy menu and the AI didn't offer to despite the fact they had zero starships left and I was sending a constant stream of troop transports to the remaining planets. The first race I eradicated never offered to surrender.


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Reply #1 Top
Now I recently but the Twilight expansion and I still find some design issues that really keep this game from being a real successor to MOO2:
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To quote Brad:

GalCiv as MOO 4?

No. The comparisons have always been there. Even back at the start when Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 was released. GalCiv for OS/2 came out in beta before MOO (Master of Orion) shipped but 1.0 came out after MOO. So there's always been some question as to who influenced whom.

I mentioned on a few occasions that with GalCiv II that we wanted to make sure we opened our minds and tried to put in features that appealed to a larger audience. And that meant looking at MOO and many other games. But it's not our intent to be like Master of Orion and as I saw someone else write in the forums, someone thinking GalCiv II is the heir to MOO is likely to be bummed out as it's quite different in gameplay. The ship design and fleets are obviously similar and watching your ships battle is pretty similar in some ways to watching ships fight it out in MOO if you turned on auto. But in MOO, you controlled those ships whereas here you're just (optionally) watching them to check out how your designs worked out. We've talked elsewhere -- at length -- why we chose not to do tactical combat which boiled down to wanting the game to focus on the strategic game. You're leader of a civilization, not a squadron commander. It would be like Civilization IV turning into Battlefield 2 when your forces entered a city (though I'm sure there's people who would love that! ).

If we were to do a MOO 4 we would go back to MOO 2, expand on THAT to make sure we remained faithful to the Master of Orion legacy. I think MOO fans, and they really are legion, deserve a MOO game that respects the original design. Of course, then again, I think Star Control 2 fans deserve a SC 4 that does that. What is it about version 3 of classic games? Maybe we should skip GalCiv III and go to GalCiv IV!
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Source

MOO is a great francise, and I look forward to a day that it returns to it's roots. But GalCiv is not now, nor has it ever been, MOO 2.5/4.
Reply #2 Top
This was the biggest complaint by alot of people, and really if you just play Galciv 2 you will find that it far outplays and is funner then Moo could ever have been. Having a Tactical Combat would be fun, but really you can do without it.

But if you can't and like tactical combat then try Sword Of the Stars. You can buy it and its expansion right off of Impulse.
Reply #3 Top
Re tactical combat, in many games it's just a means to beat the AI with inferior forces, making the game considerably easier for those willing to micromanage it. We didn't want that. If Brad can make a tactical combat AI that's worth it's salt (so it's both a challenge to those who use it, and not a penalty to those who don't), that's when you'll see it in our games :)
Reply #4 Top
I don't know about Gc2 being more fun than MOO & MOO2 were. But Gc2 ToA definitely holds its own. I play it instead of MOO in this present era. They are different games.