Galactic Civilizations III

Galactic Civilizations® III on Steam

The reviews that are in depth seem negative, the short ones seem positive... Sounds like a game that could be awesome in 6 months if they patch it up a lot. Keeping on eye on it, really been waiting for a new 4x game since MOO3 got lost in the mists of game-breaking crashes. Sins was meh, and Civ4... I still want my refund for that game.

Civ4 is awesome

Been playing the absolute fuck out of this.

Ship and planet lists not being to the standard of galciv2 annoys me. But I assume they'll either patch that or it will be in a UI mod. Otherwise though, it manages to not crash out and all around seems put together more competently. The planet screens even make sense. In 2, they really didn't. They also took some time to work with the humor of it, which is a nice polish.

It's basically galciv2, but not borked. Which is a good thing.

Miles better than Beyond Earth, sadly enough.

GalCiv plays weird for a 4x though. It's hard to explain. It's just a weird 4x. The pacing of it is erratic. The AI is schitzophrenic. The scope of it is ridiculous. In a lot of ways GalCiv is a hot fucking mess.

But, whatever. Shits fun. I like building a little empire and then meeting an alien who genocides me for no apparent reason. lol.

The sensor stacking needs to be removed.
The Pragmatic opening into 3x constructors upgraded to colony ships needs to be removed.

The map also needs either 'fast travel' lanes or some additional forms of choke points. I guess the clouds and asteroids are supposed to serve that purpose but they are too few and far between.

aaron_sl said:

Endless Spaceis a game you might be interested in if you don't want to get GCIII. One of the best MOOII clones I've seen.

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The whole Endless Whatever games are great - Endless Space is probably the weakest but that just makes it a good 4X rather than a great (and novel) roguelike (Dungeon of the Endless) or the best Civ-clone since Civ4 (Endless Legend).

faille_sl said:

Civ4 is awesome

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Yes, miss-type, I meant 5. You know I love FFH2 =)

Bought this when it was on sale for 20, haven't played yet, was huge fan of the others though so looking forward to it. Wanted to wait for it to be released though, going to try soon and will post how it is. (This type of game, as others have said though, is usually best played 3-6 months after release.)

Anyone know if ship design in this matters more than simply countering enemy fleets? Like is the combat screen just an abstraction of stats (IE Laser vs Armor=HP loss)...So like Gal Civ 2, it's essentially spread sheet vs spread sheet. Or is the ship combat actually combat where maneuvering ect matters (And where you choose to place your components matter)? Playing SD2 right now, don't have time to try it out.

(Wish SoTS 2 wasn't shit--the basic mechanics for ship design and 3d combat in that game were revolutionary. 3d armor matrices, with ballistic penetration/impact patterns? Was amazing. Even in it's junk state, it's ship design and combat were unreal. Too bad it has no AI and runs like dog shit.)

I haven't messed with it a lot, but I think it's still spreadsheet vs. spreadsheet.

There was some "Adaptive ai" talk that, I'm not sure. I think the AI might tailor against your spreadsheet in 3. It didn't do that in 2. Once you saw their spec you just wrekt'em. So that's an improvement, but it's still basically the same ship system.

Appears both this and Endless Space are Steam only. Ug.

Endless space is phenomenal. Cleanest MOO2-alike in recent memory.

Sins of the Solar Empire 2 has the benefit of being a fun multiplayer but the node-based maps and RTS-like gameplay turns ppl off. SoTS2 is has a few years of maturity behind it now along with several excellent expansions' worth of refinement.

Over the MOO series? Shirley you can't be serious!

There's a game in Steam Early Access called Predestination that I've been following for awhile. It's the closest thing to a MOO2 clone I've found.

Bought this yesterday and I have to say that it was a long time since a game pulled me in like this. I started playing around 18:00 just to see what it was about and when I next looked at the watch it was 02:13 and I really needed to go to bed....

Now if someone could just make a good 40k Battlefleet Gothic skin to the (I SUCK at the designer) I would be set until Fallout 4.