Galactic Civilizations Coming Soon

dragonsister writes "Like Master of Orion 3, Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based strategy game involving colonizing and dominating the galaxy - militarily, diplomatically, or economically. Unlike MOO3, GalCiv will (release date March 26th) come without copy-protection; Stardock are addressing the piracy issue by providing a bonus pack and further downloads to users providing a CD key. This 'rewarding the honest' approach is precisely what Slashdotters have asked for ." I've been playing a lot of MOO3, which I love, but this is looking great as well. Ah, the bounty of games.

GalCiv may also be purchased via a subscription to Drengin.net, which also supplies a variety of 'smaller' games which would not sell so well in the normal market.

I have no connection to anyone producing Galactic Civilizations. I'm planning to buy the game because I've been impressed by:

• The developer's interaction with fans, at least on the newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
• The level of beta-testing employed
• The comments from the public beta-testers
• The developer's budget of a year of additional development, including AI improvements (Stardock has a reputation for good game AI anyway!)

Others may not be so pleased to hear that the game is developed for single-player only - no multi-player - but to each their own."

Comments

Basically a 'free' expansion pack then?

[Dan B.]

So would I be correct in saying that if you buy the game, you get every bit of 'expansion pack' style material that comes out in the following year of development?

That's sure to be a success, although I can only think of one expansion pack I didn't buy for a Blizzard game (they're good at releasing expansions that cost half the same as the original game).

Still, I'm contemplating either MOO3 or GalCiv as I don't have loads of time to spend playing games these days.

Quick poll, which one do you think is better? I'm leaning towards GalCiv as I usually like playing strategy games single player. Multiplayer is much better in fast pace eg. FPS.

Re:Not everyone is honest

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing 'Copyright' and 'Copy-protection'. Completely different things.
Copy protection on CDs is a completely botched affair - it presents a slight inconvienience to those who wish to copy the CD, while producing problems to those who have bought it legitamately.

Actually, MOO3 can run on Linux-with a little help

[ClassicG]

MOO3 will run in Linux almost perfectly with WineX. Other than needing to change the cursor to 'system' in the options panel, the game works almost flawlessly for me.

Of course, WineX isn't free, ($5/month gives you binaries and voting rights to what should be worked on next), but I think it's worth it. There's also a bit a movement to get Transgaming to concentrate more on getting older classic games running in Linux, and for that hope alone, I'm behind TG.

GalCiv has multithreaded AI

[glMatrixMode]

GalCiv has such a bright AI that at most difficulty levels, not only doesn't it cheat, but it is defavorised against the human player - for example, if I understand well, it gets less money.

This has been made possible by the use of a multithreaded AI. To wit, whereas most turn-based games did 'think' only during a short lapse of time between the human's turns, GalCiv thinks continuously while the human is playing. So that allows for a much longer computation time.

GalCiv has already been used on Tom's Hardware to test the hyperthreading capacity of the new Pentium4 3GHz.

Moreover, there's a stuff called the 'Metaverse'. In short : after you end a game, you can automatically upload some crucial game data (your score, elements of your strategy...) to a central server which then deduces improvements to the game's AI. Then I guess you end up with a game which plays better.

The guys from the GalCiv team say it has already been working with the betatesters's games and has very significantly improved the game's AI.

Re:At last!

[OneEyedApe]

First, this is just a game, not an Operating System. Far less critical. Second, this is a far better scheme than a lot of companies have been using lately. Be honest, and you get extra stuff. It sounds like these would primarily be expansion pack type enhancements, and not really critical patches.