The Wargamer

I <3 MOO

I first played Master of Orion soon after I joined the Navy and made it to my first (and only) ship. While we were in port, I would sneak up onto the mess decks in the early evening, plug in my clunker of a 386 in the back corner, fire up Master of Orion, and I wouldn’t come up for air until it was time to shower, shave and muster for morning quarters. I’m a bit older now, and all-nighters are only wistful thinking, but I still fondly recall my nightly hours spent in solitude, wielding technological Psilon prowess against my foes. I still miss my second set of arms.

Unfortunately, I’m one of the many Master of Orion fans who feels like it just doesn’t get any better when it comes to a 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) space strategy game. Master of Orion II was good, upgraded in many ways, but it didn’t quite recapture the same addictiveness. Unfortunately, Master of Orion III was a waste of time and may have destroyed the series.

I missed out on the original Galactic Civilizations. I’m not sure why, looking back. I owned it for a spell, and tried it out, but it never really sunk its claws into me, despite my objective opinion that it was certainly a decent space strategy game. However, after reading much of the pre-release hype surrounding Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords from news previews and forums, I quickly decided it was time to jump onto the bandwagon. I reserved a copy, picked it up the day of release, and took the plunge.

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is a turn-based 4x strategy game, much like the Master of Orion series or its prequel, Galactic Civilizations. The majority of the game is played on a three dimensional representation of space. Solar systems, planets, anomalies and more abound, spaced by a grid, each square containing a parsec of infinite space. Players take on the role of one of ten space-faring races, from the familiar Terran Alliance to the alien Drenjin Empire, and strive to conquer the computer players through technology, diplomacy, military victory and more. Galactic Civilizations II certainly handles the basics of 4x strategy quite well, but does it have that extra spark required to make it a classic?

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is a turn-based 4x strategy game, much like the Master of Orion series or its prequel, Galactic Civilizations. The majority of the game is played on a three dimensional representation of space. Solar systems, planets, anomalies and more abound, spaced by a grid, each square containing a parsec of infinite space. Players take on the role of one of ten space-faring races, from the familiar Terran Alliance to the alien Drenjin Empire, and strive to conquer the computer players through technology, diplomacy, military victory and more. Galactic Civilizations II certainly handles the basics of 4x strategy quite well, but does it have that extra spark required to make it a classic?

Infinite space and your hard drive…

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords is very simple to install, and even simpler to run. It transfers to the hard drive easy enough, taking up just under 2Gb of hard drive space—not bad for the infinite reaches of space. Gone are the nefarious copy protection codes or annoying anti-piracy programs. There is no copy protection whatsoever. The reasoning behind this move is interesting, and Stardock have been quick to explain their motives. I won’t go into it much here, but there is an interesting forum post from Stardock concerning their decision to free Galactic Civilizations II from any form of copy protection. Check the post out here.

On top of this, Galactic Civilizations II, once installed, runs without the CD in the drive, which I love from any PC game. Maybe I’m just lazy, and don’t like to have to fetch the CD for every game I play, or maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the same no-CD treatment from the MMORPG genre, but I enjoy being able to click my “Gal Civ 2” executable and go.

Even better, Galactic Civilizations II has run silky smooth for me, even during the end game on bigger galaxy maps. There is apparently a crash bug in the latest patch which stems from added memory usage implemented in version 1.1 to speed up saves on the larger maps. This is a known bug, and Stardock will likely have fixed it with a small 1.11 patch before this review goes live. I haven’t experienced this bug myself, but it has affected a small percentage of players.