I think the game is "solid" in the sense that actual crashes and flat-out "it won't run" bugs are small in number, and usually dealt with by obtaining the latest drivers.

I don't think it's solid in the sense of the actual gameplay. There seem to be dozens of issues around the economy, bonuses, diplomacy, the UI and so forth. Stardock has so far ignored most of these. There are dozens of threads in the Bug Reports forum pleading for a developer to respond, even if to say "tough luck, that's just how it works". Here's my thread documenting a long series of economy bugs in the current patch. Not a word from anyone at Stardock.

Also as said by a poster above, the game seriously lacks polish. Not in the graphics - it's a beautiful game to look at. But the game mechanics are opaque to a level that's incomprehensible for a 4X game released in 2006. And the UI in some areas (tech screen, diplomacy) is very poorly designed.

All in all, I'd encourage the Stardock team to not get too carried away with patting themselves on the back. I'd rate the quality of the released game significantly below my expectations for an "A list" title. I've always been impressed with their responsiveness on these forums, and I like buying from independent game developers. But I think they have a ways to go with the current incarnation of GalCiv2.

It IS buggier then the average game released

While I understand your frustration that the game crashes for you, you cannot be a gamer of 20+ years and say this with any sincerity. It's simply a ridiculous statement. Have you played Battlefield 2? World of Warcraft? X3? Quake 4? Fear? Half Life 2? Rome : Total War? Civilization 4?

These are just some titles I'm mentioning off the top of my head, all of which were released in a MUCH buggier state than this game. Yes, there are bugs in GalCiv 2, and the latest patch actually introduced a new one (fleet movement staying 0.)
But to call it buggier than the average game is nonsense. It's not.

Now, I am not saying that you are lying, or that the game isn't crashing for you. I've been the odd one out who's had problems with a game that virtually nobody else was having. In your case, you just happen to have that one unlucky combination between motherboard, memory, processor and graphics card that causes you issues. But if the large majority of players are having no problems, then it's not "More buggy than the average release."
Because the average release has bugs that show up for everyone.

I personally think the game is very stable, and very playable. I've got to admit I've had two crashes to desktop, both of which came after a LONG time playing, and both of which were on my Win2k image. That's in about 30 hours of playing.
Since I've installed it on my XP image, the game has been rock steady for me.

I'm not flaming you, or calling your issues unimportant, I can understand how frustrated you are, since you obviously enjoy the game. But with your frequent posts in the thread, it's easy to form a negative overall trend for anyone who reads it trying to make up his mind on whether to buy the game or not.

The crashing happens to a very small amount of people. The large majority of customers is playing without any issues whatsoever. This is a fantastic game, well worth anyone's money.

Btw, why aren't you sending your debug file in? The developers can make sense of your crashes far better than you can.

Creston

I just have to chime in and say that Galciv II has not once crashed on me. This is compared to Civ IV, which crashed on me constantly and still crashes occasionally even after the latest patches. This is on Win XP, Geforce 6600GT, Pentium4 3.0 ghz, 1.5 Gig of RAM with latest drivers. I have encountered very few bugs, the biggest being the ship save dialog showing up BEHIND the ship-build screen, which has since been fixed. I am very satisfied with the stability of the game.

The game runs rock solid for me. But then so did Civ4 - neither of them have ever crashed on me despite hours of playing!

What I find dents the game is some of the odd UI decisions, which surprises me given Stardock's background. Why can't I upgrade ships when they're stacked? (Or on a planet?!) Why does clicking on another ship not unselect the first? Why do I have to select a new component before I can delete components from ships? Why can't I disband fleets when they're stacked with other units? Why is the information on techs in diplomacy so limited (and I always seem to get "no future techs..." on all mine)?

And the game really needs a "civilipedia". As well as being annoying from a strategy point of view, it actually reduces immersion for me to just a a tech bring in a list of things I've no idea what they are.

And some things which might be bugs or strange design choices - like first turn after reload not working for the player, only the AIs (Some have suggested this is to punish save-reloading. As someone with limited time, I want save games to restore me to exactly where I was before. Trying to punish save-reload exploiters is, I think, needlessly worrying about the metaverse - i.e. gearing yourselves towards multiplayer at the expense of the SP experience - something Frogboy rightly warned about).

Isn't it interesting that any software that somebody is using at the time, that fails to function or work as expected, is considered the buggiest software they ever used? Tommorow they will play a different game and post on it's forums, and say how incredibly buggy it is, and how ALL their software runs great.....yeah..right.

I did techsupport for Microsoft windows for two years. I can't count how many times a problem was caused by the user. How they didn't do anything what so ever to mess up their system.......well....except for the bajillion items of spyware and viruses they foolishly downloaded on their system from fake mp3's on a p2p network, Or clicking on all those lovely gator pop ups and the like. Of course they blame someone else after I discover the problem...damn those kids...or damn my husband....or damn cat.

I think the game is pretty solid. Except for some small bugs (like the remove thing in the ship screen, where the list keeps refilling itself everytime one part is removed)
The only thing I didn't like is the activation procedure for internet-less computers. I was under the galciv 1 impresseion that you just archive and reinstall wherever you want, when in fact it asks for an internet conexion. Without one you have to write to stardock, then they write back (very quickly I might add) giving me a procedure that requires this and that and another email wqith the internetless computer info. So I gave up. I was about to upgrade my order for the CE version, but turns out it would cost 30$ (in addition to my totalgaming account subscription) , so I might as well just buy another copy here in europe through play.com, it will be the same price, but faster. I 'd have prefered send my money to stardock tough. But I was a bit disappointed I could not reinstall the game in another computer without going through this procedure (all in all it would have taken 8 days to install it in a cmputer without internet - country house). That was my only problem . The game is great, and had I known, I would have bought the CE box directly from stardock and used the temporary sn to download the game, and the CD to install it in another computer. That way I would have not even noticed the problem. And I'd be here saying how great the game is, period.
Come to think of it, if I can install the game from the cd without any verification whatsoever why the different treatment for those who downloaded only?

"Hopefully players of the game can attest that generally speaking, the game's pretty solid" - Frogboy

I agree with that statement. The game works well on my machine,and it gets better with every update.

I have never had a crash with GalCiv II.
I seem to have more problems keeping the original GalCiv running, it just crashed on me last night.
Yeah I like playing both...

While there are still bugs in II and they can be annoying, I know SD will get them fixed.

I've had no major bugs either. To me, this game is pretty solid, much more solid than the average game at release.

What irks me are UI bugs. I'm a developer by trade. I understand stability issues. I understand calculation errors. Those bugs are subtle and hard to track down. But UI errors? Come on, guys. UI errors are visible and therefore easy to find. They are also pretty easy to fix. Why can't individual fleets be disbanded while in a stack? Why does selecting a ship/fleet in a stack and moving it result in one of the OTHER ships/fleets/starbases in the stack to be selected? When a ship design is deleted/obsoleted, why does the Governor still show the old design being built, while the planet view shows an Idle shipyard, and you can't use the Governor to reassign production? And beyond these obvious bugs, there are a host of UI enhancements needed, particularly for fleet management. We should be able to drill into a fleet and see the stats of the individual ships. Survey ships need a combined Auto-Explore/Survey command.

I know I'm focusing on cosmetics, and that stability and calculation bugs are more important. But it really detracts from the game. As a developer, I'm much more understanding of CTDs than I am of bad UI. These need to be fixed.

one last thing, which will surely get me some flame from the forums but i believe it is worth address. Frogboy, I think your posts to reapy smack of unprofessionalism. You are the developer of the game we are your consumers. We bought the game expecting the game to work on our computers and it doesn't, i think we are justified in our wanting to seek help. Now I realize that you probably deal with lots of screaming purchasers on a day to day basis; but you created the game and we bought it. Indeed i think it is incredibly unprofessional to tell one of your consumers that you are now refusing to "babysit" them on the forums. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I am an adult and simply refuse to be spoken to in that manner. Imagine going to a store, seeking some help with a product that you purchased. I think everyone here would be quite offended if the store then told you that they deal with this all the time, that you needed to fix yourself, and that the store could not "babysit" the purchase.

The game is buggy for many people, myself included. I realize this is frustrating for you, the developers, to deal with but I do not expect poorly just because "we take this stuff personally." Of course you do, but you also get all the money for the game. So don't expect much sympathy from me.

I believe that you owe reapy and similarly situated posters an apology. We want the game to work. We come to the forums for help, that you provided, we post, and then we get flammed for various individuals who have no problems. It is sad when some of this heat comes, albiet very subtlely, from some of the people who have made the game. I appreciate your responses, they demonstrate your level of committement to your product. I would, however, appreacite being treated as an adult and in a professional manner.

I have no doubt Stardock will remedy the problems. However, if you simply are going to reply and tell me to update my computer (which i have done) or return the game, well then simply tell me how to return the game and I will.

I must say I agree with Frogboy. The game is solid.

It runs just fine even with the bugs. Thou I do get Crash to Desktop or one event I experienced yesterday was such that I had to manually shut down the game, but out of about 30 horus of gameplay I only had 3 issues that ended the game unexpectibly. Which is pretty frikin good for somethign this massive.

I can't excuse the bugs, I do think the game coudl ahve used another beta phase to hammer it out, but I would still be playing the same game at the same time sicne I preordered I had beta access (except the closed beta). So the only difference would be for people in the store who didnt get the game online and didn't get into beta, they wouldnt have the chance to play the game for another month or two.

I think we will see many patches to plug these holes. Especially THE MOST ANNOYING phantom ships. Totally tuins the look of a planet :/ Having some fleet sticking out of it is annoyign as hell!

docbates7, this is not a flame - you're being unfair here. Most devs just plain and simple ignore you altogether and basically tell you to stick it. This is not Blizzard, where they have about 1400 people just on the tech-support. Cut Stardock some slack and understand that these guys are really Indie and small. They've hit the jackpot with this amazing game, so they do have to adapt as fast as possible, but until they do, cut them some slack.

You're angry, that's understandable. I was, too, when just until yesterday the game crashed like crazy on me, something like every 5 minutes or so. They've fixed it, and it was anything but the game, eventually. I was unfair then, too, because I wanted the game to WORK. But that is just egotistical. We just demand all day long like children, we need to try being above it.

And Stardock needs a Forum-Moderator, but that's beside the point (and no, I don't want to be one if that's what you're thinking, thank you very much).

Any crashes I've had with my game are due to known issues with my computer rather than issues with the game (it has a history of crashes, so I don't let it bother me too much.) There are some annoyances in the game, but nothing particularly horrible.

Once you've played EVE-Online, everything else seems rock solid

-Dewar