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Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords
The year is 2225. The reckless humans
have joined the other galactic powers who now race for control and
domination in the galaxy. The evil Drengin Empire has plans to wipe out
the humans and their allies but as they will all discover, there is
something far worse in the universe than each other...
Galactic Civilizations takes place in the
23rd century and mankind has just begun its leap into the stars and
encountered a wide variety of alien civilizations who are also
attempting to expand their empires. These races were once subdued by the
ancient Dread Lords who mysteriously vanished centuries ago, allowing
the lesser races a chance to explore the cosmos.
The game takes this plotline and
incorporates it into a turn based strategy where players must interact
with several other civilizations all vying for control of the galaxy.
Galactic Civilizations is essentially a galaxy sized game of Risk where
players must manage their territories and attempt to gain control of all
other civilizations.
Features
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Play as the Terran
Alliance or as one of 9 alien races -- or create your own
Design your own ships both in how they look and how they function
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Sophisticated
diplomatic engine makes sure politics takes a center stage as well
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Watch your designed
ships and fleets do battle in GalCiv II's state of the art 3D engine
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Play stand-alone
games with randomly generated galaxies, preset scenarios, or a
multi-mission campaign that provides the back story for the game
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Advanced governors
and empire management ensure that the late game won't bog down, even
on gigantic maps.
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No CD copy
protection. Once you install, you never need your CD again. You can
even use the included serial # to re-download the entire game from
us years from now.
Thankfully there are several different ways
to actually beat Galactic Civilizations which allows players to achieve
military, diplomatic, technological, and cultural victories. Military
victories are achieved by either wiping out the other civilizations or
forcing them to surrender. Diplomatic victories occur when players are
able to establish good relations and communications across the galaxy
while cultural victories are obtained by exporting a civilization’s
culture to other races and becoming the envy of the galaxy.
Technological victories are achieved by
advancing so far in the game’s technology tree that a race actually
achieves a higher state of existence and leaves temporal existence
entirely. Each of these victories requires a different strategy to win
and choosing which victory to strive for at any part of the game is the
most important decision players will face
The graphics in Galactic Civilizations
won’t win any awards, but certainly don’t detract from the game in any
way. The galaxy is rendered in full 3D, with moons rotating around
planets and impressive looking stellar clouds in the background. Players
are able to zoom the camera out until the galaxy looks like a
chessboard, or zoom in on a particular ship they are interested in.
Combat also looks impressive with laser
beams shooting across the screen using appropriate lighting effects. The
cutscenes in the game are fully rendered in 3D using the game’s engine
and are quite impressive.
In conclusion Galactic Civilizations II is
an impressive title that featuers some extraordinary realistic A.I that
offers gamers hours and hours upon of gameplay value as each turn is
randomly generated. The only downside to the title is the lacklustre
tutorial that features several videos of how to master the game but
apart from that, check it out! |
