The game is great (8/10), however Civ4 has raised the bar quite a bit and this game does fall short from Civ4 in some ways:

1) No Civilopedia. The tech tree is massive and it's hard to make decisions about future research when you don't know what the next tech will do for you. What does a Xeno Farm do exactly?

2) Seeing alien influence before you meet aliens. This is bad. It's easy to determine which stars are unclaimed and thus rush for the empty ones.

3) VERY slow weapon improvement. Hmmmm... Stinger vs. Stinger IV and the difference being a whole 4-5 slots in size? When the weapon itself is a size 16? I often have to improve my weapons three or four times before I can actually fit an upgrade onto my new designs. Kind of lame.

4) Building is so slow and purchasing is so cheap. It's almost pointless to build anything the long way. When I go to war, I buy, buy, buy every turn. The first few turns of the game, I just purchase colony ship after colony ship.

5) The treasury should show the delta per turn.

6) There should be an way of communicating with others from the main screen.

I don't mean to be negative. The game is VERY fun even though it has some flaws.

**********My review************

**Background**
I thought the original Galactic Civilizations was okay. After the huge disappointment of MOO 3, I found GalCiv and was reasonably happy with it. It didn't hold my interest long term because I felt I was too limited. Too many games ended the same way. I still liked it but would have given it a 4 out of 5. Good try but not perfect.

**Getting the game**
I've used Stardock Central before to get Object Desktop which I own. So i was familiar with it already. The download went very smoothly. Click. Click. Click. Click. Went and had dinner, came back and it was ready to play.

**First game**
My first game was 10 hours. Started out as a quick game and suddenly it was 4 in the morning. That is the sign of a great game and that never happened with the first one.

**The Good**
The game is just incredibly fun. As a huge Civ IV fan and assuredly not a GalCiv fanboi by any stretch, it feels weird saying yes, this game is actually better than Civilization IV.

I read a person saying the game should have an in-game civpedia. I don't fully agree with that. The Civpedia stuff was put in as a consolation prize for Civ IV catering to the MP crowd. There's no richness to Civ IV's techs or any sort of feeling of accomplishment, you don't even get to build a palace in Civ IV. So they at least tossed us a bone and gave us the rather nice CivPedia.

GalCiv 2 seems to take a different approach, they spoil you with detail as you get it. But that means you can't just go to some sort of hypercard like UI and look up a weapon ro tech or building and find out info. It's all integrated as part of the game. Is it better than a Civpedia? I can only speak for myself. I prefer having the game's depth in data feel like part of the game play than be a cut off set apart chunk of the game. I think it would be nice if they added it but I think it reaching to argue that the game is somehow flawed without it.

The game is going to be compared with Civ IV & Civ IV is a great game. This is a better game. I think as the weeks goo by that edge will become more apparent.

You really feel like your civilization is your civilization. The ship design is freakin crazy good. The graphics make the screenshots look like crud. You have to see th egame to believe them.

The campaign, which I have only started, looks interesting and seems to be a lot more polished than one would expect of this type of game.

As a matter of fact, the entire game has a polished, professional feel to it that shows tender loving care.

** The bad **

I wish there was more sound. Ambient sound. The sound track, as others have noted, it fantastic. But I wish I could hear more sound.

Loading saved games on very large maps takes too long. 10 seconds on my computer which is a long time to sit there. It doesn't come up often but still. 10 seconds is 10 seconds.

** Summary **

I would give the game a 9.7 out of 10. It's just about perfect but the sound effects are above average but not the end all be all.

If this game gets reviews that are below Civ IVs I would be surprised.

Graphics - For a 4X game, we should not even be talking about this. These games were never about the graphics. They were always about the brains. Yet here we are with a beautiful, smooth running program. Rank 5/5

Sound - The music is highly reminiscent of the recent Lord of the Rings movies. It gives an epic feel while not becoming overblown and interfering with the experience. It immerses the player and gives a lot of character to this release. Rank 5/5

Gameplay - Strategy games are all interface and while I applaud the easy-to-use dynamic in Dread Lords, it's not perfect. Some simple tweaks are missing, namely diagonal scrolling. Rank 4/5

Novelty - Galactic Civilizations successfully does what many sequels fail at: staying true to its predecessor while introducing something new and exciting for the player. Ship design adds even more character by augmenting the core concept of the game - creating your own world. Add on to that the feeling that none of your ships are throwaway and you have a game that literally brings personality to the game world by letting the user design it. It tweaks gameplay so that these individual designs actually matter and contribute to the players' victory or demise. Rank 5/5

Overall - There's a strategy to making strategy games and this game is a textbook example of how to win. Master of Orion has been defeated and Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords now stands as the dominant power in the universe of galactic strategy. 5 stars

I've just been using the mini-map to scroll, it's hands-down better than moving the mouse to the sides of the screen (especially with the odd implementation of that which the game has). It even scrolls with the mouse wheel, making it easier to manage with larger maps.

The graphics, as I said, are pretty dern slick, especially with the blazing performance the game engine has. The only big failing here is the low quality textures, but there's a texture pack in the works so that doesn't bother me much.

I like the tech tree. It seems slower to progress in, but that's adjustable! I like the slowish "Normal" research speed because it gives the tree more of a grand feeling.

I have only completed one game so far. I won a culture victory which didn't end the game but gave me a huge influence rating everywhere, and all of the enemy planets began to turn (which was aided by my attacks). It was easy, but I was on a low difficultly level so that's not too unexpected.

Here we go. First off, I've only played one game (well, two, but the first one I accidentally surrendered to a minor race right next to my system and lost on turn 3). I haven't finished it yet (work! arrrgggh!), but I already love the game and have some suggestions. Here's the run down:

Sound 4/5 - Hopefully, I'm not missing out from bugs or something, but I only have two complaints in this area. Number 1; the buttons and dialogue windows need more sound in my opinion. Or more noticable sounds. Birth of the Federation is one of my more favorite Space Civ games and everything in it had a sound. Button presses, alerts, pre-combat, and so on. I think more of that would help (this is assuming it doesn't exist, I hear none on my end... but I do hear sound of ships fighting and stuff...). The only other thing I can think of this front is the ship's engines. As nerdy as it may be, I loved how Homeworld's ship engines hummed when you zoomed in far enough. Since we can zoom in in and out of battles, give those ships some hyperspace hum! In other aspects, the sound is great. The soundtrack is amazing and the weapons sound like weapons.

Gameplay 5/5 - Worst part here is the overwhelmingness if you don't read the tutorials. Otherwise, I'm addicted. I went to bed no earlier than 4 am last night. You guys are great. It plays smooth and easy, like silk.

Graphics 4.5/5 - You guys hit home here - almost. I don't know if this is my own graphical problems (which I don't think I have any of..) would be a part of this, because I thought someone said there were engine trails. I thought there was an option to turn up their detail. With all my settings on and maxed, I don't see any. I think they'd add a lot to the already pretty ships.

AI 5/5 - Woo! I tell you what. The AI know how to play. I was totally outclassed - the Civ 4 AI is easily used. Change religion, civics, send them a tech, and they're permanent allies. Easy come, easy go. But this AI actually messed with me, I messed with them, and it was fun. I mass colonized a huge area, like 13 planets. Got waaay to big for my britches. I never built any defensive ships at all. All I had was constructors making some star bases. The Arceans met me and quickly declared war calling my military might laughably pathetic. So I went and had every planet with a port build my first gen fighter/defender. Every planet had two orbitting them when I was done and I quickly switched to my offensive medium ships. I had two fleets of three by the time a real Arcean force showed up and I took out a fleet of their fighters. The rest quickly turned tail and the Arceans wanted to make peace. Apparently, I had them outclassed in military tech and they had shields versus my mass drivers. Of course, later the Drengin and them allied against me and I was slowly but stubbornly reduced to Snathi II, which died.

GREAT game. I look forward to the collector's goods and future patches and updates. And with how good this is, I can't imagine how well you'll remake Master of Magic once that legal bologne is done. Keep it up, guys. My compliments to the chef - Nay, the entire kitchen!

I only recently started playing it last night but I would like to say so far I am enjoying it. I do wish I had the docs and dont want to print the adobe file since I ordered the box set to come later.

I've wasted most of my time in the ship builder and even for the simple scouts I couldnt just leave them alone..

I barely remember Gal Civ 1 but I still have the game, I played them all from MOO series to any other imitations.

I like alot of the options from the planetary council to the planet views. Although I have been spoiled by eye candy games and while GC2 isnt bad for a turn based game, I would have loved to seen more animations from Ship emissions to cool cinematic ship battles. But I am spoiled and so want it all, but I cant say this was a bad investment at all, it will keep me occupied for awhile and its a refreshing change from the mindless fast paced games they pawn off as strategy.

Good job!

4 of 5. My two biggest compaints are easy to say.
1) I would expect on a GeForce 4 448go that I would be able to at least have some textures on my ship. Instead I get bland colored blobs. Takes all the wind out of my sail when I am designing ships. I just throw on guns and sensors and save it. It is hard to get creative with something so ugly. Also I had to turn down antialiasing to play the game but I couldnt find a way to do it easily without being in the game without the screen being s. After digging through files I found out where I could change it. Kind of annoying to have to spend 2 hours finding out how to disable it because you cant get to the in game menu.
2)The original post by curttasker? says it all. The interface is counter intuitive in many senses and needs some help. His original post says everything I felt after my first 3 games.

It still gets a 4 though because I frickin love it. I know that Stardock will handle as many of these problems as they can and the game is still crazy fun. The problems it does have keep it from being my favorite game ever. The game is crazy fun and I am currently enjoying the 4th campaign mission after 3 sandbox games.

French review : http://www.esprits.net/wikini/wakka.php?wiki=GalacticCivilizationsII

Overall rating 4.5/5 Stars.

There is a lot that could be said about Galactic Civilization 2(GC2). The first thing that jumps to mind would be that it is the 4x strategy equal of a narcotic. Which is to say that it's so good , it's likely to be bad for you health or at least your personal relationships. Now I don't say this lightly. I have been playing strategy games on the computer for as long as they have been made. I hold space strategy games to a very high standard and until now had not found a single one that I felt lived up to the potential the PC provided such a game. Having spent the better part of the last week playing almost non stop I have formulated my opinion.

It's about time
-------------------
The real meat of what makes GC2 such gaming goodness is the 3D ship creation. I confess I never found GC1 all that and a bag of chips that others did. Not because I'm hung up on graphics , because I can't stand ships being generic. Sure sure many games let you "custom" build your ships you'll say. Well you would be wrong. Many games have let you play with the numbers the define what a ship does ,but in all other games I can think of to date the look and feel was preset. So to me this aspect alone would have been worth the price of admission, I have already caught myself spending an hour just tinkering with the look of a ship.

How this aspect integrates itself into the play experience is really fairly sneaky. See they don't warn you before you buy the game that you'll be creating a large part of your own aesthetic enjoyment. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has gotten in the habit of creating a certain "theme" for a ship type. For instance lets say your making your first basic fighter ship. I pick a hull and then add just a couple frills to give it a slight feel , sort of like how the warp engines on spokes define Star Trek federation ships. Just something a bit distinctive. Later it will be time to upgrade this ship , when I upgrade I leave the distinctive quality but just build on it a little. This goes nicly with the fact that generally new tech advances in game let you cram more goodies on the ship. That one looks slightly different then the first version. Rinse repeat as the game goes on and about the time you get to version 5 of your fighter it has a genuine flavor. It's also rather pleasing to flip threw the different versions and see how your little runt fighter evolved into the Hyperwarp packing Phaser boat of habitual smack down it is today that somehow turned out looking like a ticked off spider.


Strategy/Interface
-------------------
Then there is the actual strategy part of the game , it's that thing they force you to do in between designing your next ship. The way I described it to a friend of mine was, "Take everything you loved about all the 4x games to date ... they are in there. Now take everything you hated about those games .... ok those are not in there.". Put plainly they nailed this right on the money. I don't have a single bad thing to say in the strategy part of the game. They blended the complexity very well with common sense approach to interfacing that makes it simple to manage a large empire. It's not gonna play itself for you , however the micromanagement somehow fails to get overwhelming like most of these games because the way you interface with your empire simplifies the information management. I play on gigantic galaxies so far and have yet to find myself feeling burdened down with planet management.

The intuitive "little things" really stand out. Things like your colonies automatically upgrading your buildings , or when you make a new version of a ship all the shipyards automatically switch to it on all your planets making the old version. There are lots of these little touches scattered threw out the game that just make it easy and comfortable to play. You combine this with the easy to learn yet challenging to master strategy concepts and it just flat out shines above all other turn based space strategy games to date.

The ugly
-----------
Now comes the not so good part. The reasons I deducted half a star from what would otherwise be perfect gaming goodness that legends are made out of. Well it's still that but here is why I don't call it perfect. The only thing GC2 lacks is really in the how to information department. For instance it lacks an integrated easy to understand manual like the civlopedia from the Civilization series games. There is a manual via pdf , and there is information available in game on what tech does what. Whats really lacking is the feeling of having all the "how to" information one or two clicks away. For instance what happens if I declare a new world my homeworld ? There is nothing in game that tells me the effects of doing that , if I can only do it once , etc. Thats where a tool like the integrated reference manual of other games would come in handy. Considering how many other really smart easy of play features it's odd this one is missing.

There are of course a few bugs , but given the rapid response with the first patch within the first week addressing many of the more serious ones I have no doubt they will be fixed in short order. There are very few considering the history this type of game generally has with bugs (I don't need to remind you all of the Master of Orion 3 debacle). The game is definitely playable out of the box so the release gets a thumbs up from me.

Missing Features
-----------------
Aside from the above lack of in game reference manual which is the only design fault I have there are few things I wish there was. If any of these are there and I dont' know please point them out.

-I want a button to leave the planet screen and have the camera center on that planet. When going from the news to the planet to say add something many times you don't know where that planet is. It's cumbersome to have to exit out and go hunting for the planet the hard way so see where in your empire it resides.

-In the ship editor I would really like the red hardpoint markers to be smaller and make more sense. When you use lot of hardpoint pieces like some of the angle changers your whole model can quickly desovles into a red blob you can't even see the part threw. It's also akward since you don't actually hold the mouse pointer over the center of the hardpoint you hold it over the end of that arrow. There is just a tiny spoke to indicate what direction the piece will stick out that is like 10% the size of the giant red arrow it's attached to.

To make this feature truly intuative you would let me right click the object I wanted to attach something to and only that object would have it's hardpoint markers shown. Then left click to select my piece , and again left click on the marker to place just like now. It would also be easier to not have other objects markers sticking threw the one you want to attach to forcing you to micro move the mouse to try and "hit" your marker.

-While not a bug there is an exploit that could use shoring up. Minor races are very libral with what techs they will buy. Considering as best I can tell they never expand what they basicly end up as is giant banks of cash you can just go sell your technologies to. It's not like they will ever really use them , and since they dont' expand past 1 planet they are doomed to get left behind technology wise anyway. I would change this so that while they will trade tech normally (I assume thats part of their purpose as a sort of black market) , change it so they buy for dirt dirt cheap and won't set for cash. That way they maintain their function as a trade hub but don't shell out cash like venture capatlists to anyone who learned to rub two stick together. If your really up against a wall you should be able to turn to them for some money ,but like a black market you should get ripped off. This could scale with difficulty , the current behavor should only be on the easiest setting not when I'm playing normal.

-Minimap , there needs to be a follow camera option. I shouldn't have to zoom in and out to get the mini map to where I'm looking. On larger galaxies this is especially important since zoomed all the way out you loose almost all detail except culture borders. If I have the mini map zoomed in and move the camera away from that area the mini-map should stay centered on where I'm looking unless I force it to stay someplace via a button or something.

Conclusion
-----------
Put simply - Godlike 4x gaming goodness of a legendary level.

Curse you Stardock, for raising the bar!!!

Curse you for scalable maps, which tell me where my enemies are strategically over a huge area, but i can zoom down and look that the weapons on one enemy ship!

Curse you for the best ship designer ever!! I will look at those spreadsheet like ship design screens in any other game and have nothing but regret in my heart!!!!

Curse you for Smart AI's that conspire against me, and are painful to play!

Curse you for making such an addictive game that I've seen the dawn twice so far playing "just one more turn...."

Curse you for your sense of humor and making me break out laughing at my first look at the snathi!!!

Curse you for providing helpful stickies, notes, and a good manual, and making your ship design interface so easy to use that you can Upgrade any existing design and easily modify it in 2 minutes, as long as its not a core design... (thats a note to above poster. I'm amazed that people can't figure out what the UPGRADE button is for, much less the REMOVE button in the ship window. Thats what you get for making it easy....)

Soooooo,

Beats MoO!
Beats MoO2!
Beats MoO3!
Beats Galciv1!
Beats Ascendancy!
Beats stars!

IMO, anyway.

1) Galciv 2 is easier to play then Galciv 1. I no longer collapse under my own weight as discontent forces my taxes/spending to drop to absymal levels and production slows to a crawl. Did I mention I suck at Galciv1? In contrast, I dominate at normal in Galciv 2.

2) The tech tree is more accessible, but it lost some of if's character.

3) Planets gained specialty but when I have 20, It's a pain to remember which each one is supposed to be doing. Maybe I should name them with name like "research planet" or "pop world" so that I know what to fill tiles with next time I can use new tiles.

4) ship customization is good, but what's the point of having 5 different kinds of stinger missiles when they start at size 18 and drop by one every new tech? By the time you have a ship hull huge enough that it makes a difference, you'll hopefully have a better weapon. I kind of disagree. New weapon techs are more useful for beam weapons, since they're much smaller to begin with, the change makes a difference on small hulls. Haven't tried mass drivers yet.

5) when I make an order for tens of thousands of credits I don't have, my debt gets shopped up to -2000. What, am I just printing money or something?

6) on anything bigger then large galaxy, the minimap is a real pain. Any way to make it follow you when zoomed?

7) Is it just me, or are the minor races less agressive? On Galciv 1 I've seen some minor races with more planets then the Drenghins. I remember a game where the scottinglas had like 7 systems. In Galciv 2 I haven't seen the minors colonize yet.

8) It seems to me that every computer race is researching the same weapon tech tree and I just have to research "not-beam" or "not mass driver" and I can breeze through their fleets. Aren't they supposed to adapt to me? Or at least adapt to each other?

In a summary, while I really like the game up to now, it feels like it's lacking a little balancing touch in certain areas.

3 out of 5 stars.

I won't cover bugs, I haven't experienced any really nasty ones. There are some playability features that I would like. First being a way to id which ships I haven't moved! It should appear as an icon similar to planet/starport icons do.

As I stated on another post this game is seriously lacking in some areas considered standards of the 4X genre. First and foremost there really isn't expansion/exploration except in the very eary stages of the game. There is only one viable strategy and that is to buy colony ships (instant buy) and get them off as fast as possible. Its a simple land grab. Exploration and Expansion except in the monster sized galaxies is over before the first council meeting.

Extermination seems to be in the game just fine. In fact that seems to be about the only real way to play the game. I haven't won a game yet, I get too bored - more on that later. Exploitation? Of what? Most free floating resources and anamolies are gone as fast as the planets.

The research tree while very large is also very annoying. Being able to only focus on one item at a time leads to too much work. Basically between every tech discovery I have to go back and sort through the mess, and it becomes a mess quickly, to find the holes I need patched.

This brings up a major sore point. I have yet to discover any real differences between the AI empires. They all have the same tech or appear so. Even the minors have tech. Hell even one I was essentially blockading was more advanced than me and kept pace with the rest of the galaxy for the most part. Sorry but no single planet empire should ever EVER be able to out research me.

Diplomacy. The game gives way too much away. I would prefer to not know when I am going to piss someone off so I have something to learn. As it stands now the game tells me before I make the blunder.

I miss being able to truly spy on my enemies and cause them problems. Sure I can get someone to go to war with them but I prefer to cause them to go to war with subterfuge.

The starship creator is a great feature but still many races look to much like each other for my tastes. It desperately needs a copy/clone ability. I would like to be able to clone a small ship and then change hull size and keep the frill. This would make it much easier to maintain a "look". Even simple upgrades require way too much rebuilding, hell all I want to do is bump it up a few techs.
Space combat while pretty is only fun for me early on. After a while I just don't care. I don't have control over it.

The galaxy is so damn boring. By this I mean unless I really ramp up the startup values I am left with lots of class 0 planets that are totally useless. There needs to be a way to do something with these "pieces of artwork". Also exploration is over way to fast as except on the biggest maps you can get really really far out. Even that isn't a problem as you can plop down bases to extend your range quickly. It does appear that the AI knows more than I do, as in which systems have truly habitable planets and where resources are.

My type of game play doesn't apparently mesh well with what GalCiv offers. I like to explore, not just rush out and grab everything. I totally dislike the buy it now mentality of economics this game offers. This only aids the initial land grab. Sorry, but making instant starships is silly, worse its even sillier to be able to buy up every improvement on a newly taken planet. What am I doing? Putting down little seed pods and adding water to have an instant city?

The boring part... if you haven't figured it out. The tech research and combat is the major part of the later game. Yet the playing field isn't level. AIs just seem to swap techs with abandon. In the end it means I am up agains the whole galaxy instead of taking down one or two opponents at a time. They don't have to decide what tech trees to climb like I do, they just trade freely. Thats annoying. It removes one of the few aspects of empire individuality that could exist. Whats the point of having a "Mass driver" empire when you opponents only have to make instant counter ships as they have all the tech in place to defend?

A good game with some serious flaws. I can't justify a 2 but I won't go higher than a 3. Simply put I can find more replayability in any of the MOO series, including MOO3.

(hell this kind of reminds me of Ascendancy in some ways - great the first few times but...)

Because of the frequent CTDs I experienced with the Digital Release version I would have rated the game 2.5 or maybe 3 out of 5. The game is very fun, but crashing every 3 turns and having corrupted save games just kills the joy.

Thanks to Stardock's hard work fixing those problems the first week I can now give the game a nice 4 with the potential to score a 4.5 if tweaks like less weapon tech trade and features like shipyard copying / final deleting are implemented.