Reviewed: May 6, 2003
Reviewed by: Mat Houghton

Publisher
Strategy First

Developer
Stardoc

Released: March 25, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

8
7
6
8
7.0

System Requirements

Galactic Civilizations opens with the universe being opened to colonization because humanity was creative enough to invent the hyperdrive and make the use of stargates obsolete. Also in our inestimable genius we decided to share that secret with the universe. So now there are five great civilizations (and us) vying for control of the whole thing, not to mention a whole slew of other nasty little boils on the face of your empire and other malevolent surprises.

Galactic Civilizations features:

• Multiple, balanced paths to victory - Achieve victory using military strength, economic might, or political power.
• Immersive story line - Playing as the leader of humanity, your heritage depends on your ability to lead the human race and become one of the principal species of the universe.
• The Metaverse - Gamers who use Stardock.net to play will be part of the "Metaverse", where victories, defeats and campaigns can be recorded, allowing players to share their gaming experience.
• Replayability - The game is readily playable by casual gamers and includes a powerful and sophisticated AI and game mechanics that make each gaming experience different and highly addictive.
• Video and Sound - The game features state of the art sound subsystems and video resolutions of 1024x768 with over 16 million colors.

After that it’s basically boils down to waiting for your stuff to be build through the budget you have allotted (you can purchase social or military projects so they are ready the next turn, but unless you have a massive store of cash you buy it with a down payment and installments. Do that too much and good luck doing anything else because your whole budget is going to paying off debts). Unfortunately the computer cheats; well not really it just does things so much more effectively than you can because it can keep track of everything. There’s a reason the Borg can walk all over the Federation.

Anyway, what livens up the action is the random events. Anything can happen from having researchers develop a way to make zombie warriors to a fanatic religious cult using an ancient device to bring a species of galactic conquistador into your space. Have fun trying to get rid of that particular infestation. What bugs me about them is that almost all of these events are at least partially detrimental. It’s not like I didn’t already have enough to deal with, I have to have the computer screwing me every half dozen turns too. It’s not very random if everything that happens is bad. Also if those interstellar conquerors do happen to show their faces they’ll mop the floor with you because they can make the best ships at will and don’t have to worry about little things like ship yards or build times.

Also the really big kick in the teeth is that there are space sharks. What’s that? You haven’t heard of space sharks. Well they’ve heard of you. They’re hungry, and your trade vessels look like tasty appetizers for the main dish; your Terror Star. That’s right, the star base you’ve just spent the last at least four turns and five thousand dollars building. That’s not including all the time you spent researching to be able to build one, or all the effort put into upgrading the defense, support, trade, and other areas of the station. Maxed out, you have spent a good portion of your game building the thing. It can destroy a planet. The space shark will kill it go back for seconds. Does anybody else think that’s wrong?

So aside from unbalancing factors such as those, there’s plenty to keep you occupied here. The research trees are HUGE and pay off pretty consistently. As a hint though, specialize in one type of research until you have a good hold on the galaxy, otherwise you’ll just fall behind and get ground beneath your oppressor’s boot heel.

Also be careful of what you do because some decisions have significant repercussions. In colonizing a planet if you get rid of the indigent semi-sentient animal life, well you’ll crawl a few ticks closer down the evil end of the ladder, chose to leave them as they are and suffer a population penalty, but you get closer to being good. This really only affects two things, the most important of which is how the other species react to you.

The most beautiful thing about the game are the planets. Other than the galaxy screen there are sub-menus for each system that shows the planets when you click on them. Not every planet is paradise of course, but the most well developed planets all look sumptuous and inviting, but in a very sci-fi manner. You don’t get the basic blue on green Earth palette. On any planet sufficiently advanced you get well-blended pastels with a nice misting and softening effects.

There are also a few cinematics built into the game that play when you first colonize a planet, or build a space station, or study a piece of space debris. These are surprisingly good when compared with the rest of the game graphics; as are the renders of the other species, with good hair and skin textures and smooth motion (the few inches that they move). In fact the only real complaint I have about the graphics is that some of the societal structures are a little simplistic. Some buildings like the Galactic Stock Exchange or the Embassy are awesome, but the News Agency structure is little more than a folded cardboard box.

That aside however, the colors and textures are liberally applied with a few subtly utilized effects which is good because a background of unrelieved black would get a little oppressive after a while.

It is nice to have when it does show up, especially the evil race, because it’s a nice organ mood moment, but I’d like to have seen more of that.

You may want to turn down the sound effects too because the lack of other background noise emphasizes them. You know when combat happens because there are rather loud explosions and weapons discharges. These effects are also pretty basic, but fitting if noisy.

Personally, I’ve put over forty hours on the game and I still haven’t completed all the researches even though I discovered what made Brittney Spears popular and how to create galaxies, let alone destroy planets. While I have conquered a few small galaxies, I have yet to get a full fight with all the races and a huge galaxy so there is plenty of challenge left for me. If you like a slow inexorable conquest then you’ll probably lose the next few months and that new job to just one more turn. If you’re too impatient then well not only will you end up with your kiester in your hands but you’ll be frustrated as well.

If that’s not enough for you then there is the by now ubiquitous multiplayer option to keep you supplied with a good array of fresh meat for the mill.

So go have fun storming the galactic fortress, just watch out for that da-dun, da-dun, da-dun.