Rate the game on what it is...not what its promoted and promised to be. If you were to rate something on hype...then Duke Nukem Forever is the bestest gaming experience evar!

"Saying the game has no soul is pretty harsh, but I've just completed my second technology victory and man is that soulless. I didn't think anything could be worse than the boring Civ spacerace, but I am wrong. I mean researching a few techs in a perfectly straight line with no tech requirements and all I get is 1 sentence (2 or 3 sentences if I am lucky) descriptions of the tech is just bad."

Exactly! This is a striking problem with the game. I end up winning by complete accident and boredom, mostly through influence before I can even research up the tech tree. The first few runs of the game are interesting, figuring out the tech tree and designing some ships. But then it all reaches an 'Hrmmm...' moment where the player realizes that the ship designer is all fluff and it all comes down to one attack vs defense, over and over again.

There isn't much to play for battle wise...and its pointless moving up the tech tree for 'Now your farts don't stink'. I'd play for the strategy of defeating a rival Empire, but by the mid-game the victor has already been decided in several key battles in the early game that I always win due to a tech advantedge.

Yes I could play for 'Metaverse score' but that would be like going for Gold in the Special Olympics as a non-disabled person.

I'm going to chime in here as un-defensively as possible, but forgive me if by bias creeps in occasionally
 
I know that GC1 got some criticism from some players (as well as some reviewers) for being 'soul-less'. In many of the GalCiv2 reviews I've read, the reviewer has said something like '...GalCiv2 has that extra SOMETHING that makes a good game into something more.', so I figured we had fixed the 'soul' problem... but perhaps the issue is a bit harder to pin down than expected.
 
As a game developer, you have to make alot of choices (game design, scheduling, artistic, ect) that all vary in magnitude (teeny tiny choices to HUGE, GAME ALTERING choices). In every choice made, you run the risk of disappointing a % of players, so you have to pick wisely. Success results when you hit that target demographic, meet gamers expectations and make the highest percentage of players happy. Then, if you've really done it right, a % of THOSE players will connect with the game on another level entirely.
 
I believe that is the connection where the game feels like it has a 'soul'. It cannot come from the game alone, but it takes a bit of the player as well.
 
While I can't list the personality breakdowns that will/will not connect with GC2, let's look at the choices made to simply make the game 'better' than GC1...
 
One choice we made is to simplify the tech-tree. GC1's tech tree was a spagetti-string mess of pre-reqs and crazy offshoots and difficult navigation. Some people liked the complexity, but most people were overwhelmed and wanted change. In GC2 we simlified the tree. Most players that I've seen have liked the change, but there are now players that find it boring. Are we happy with the change, dispite some negative feelings by various gamers? Yes. When we start work on GC3 (not for a while, mind you, but eventually) will we revisit the tree and try to please even more players? Absolutely.
 
Another choice made was the abstraction of various game mechanics. Unfortunatly this is a side effect of having 9 playable races. You'll find that any strategy game that dosent take this route will never have more than 4 playable races. While I agree that it'd be AWESOME to see each race have their own special abilities, balancing a 9x9 matrix of possible game-play styles would be near-impossible. Would we have been lambasted if we cut the number of races from GC1 from 7 to 4? Hell yes. Did we try and give races their own personality through customization, flavor text, and AI play-style routines? Your better beleive it. Is there room for improvement? Until 100% of the players are 100% satisfied: Always.
 
One thing I will get defensive on is the music. Our sound-guy did a great job, and went well beyond our expectations for what we needed. We ordered 35 minutes of music...he comes back with well over an hour of tunes for cutscenes, in-game sequences, and race conversations. That music is all driven to be event specific, changing based on your status and the status of the galaxy. If you're not a fan of the songs, fine...that's subjective. But, as for improving on GC1 and bringing more 'soul' to the game, I think it's irrefutable (ok, leaving defensive mode) 
 
The game is designed to put the player in the roll of a galactic empire, where your quick and easy control over everything a necessity, thus putting gameplay ahead of anything that could be considered 'polish'. While I agree Heroes would play an interesting roll in unit gameplay, it would be a polish item. As for adding 'soul' to the game, and giving the units a bit more character, it should be noted that the main characters of the game are NOT the ships...the other characters are the various Galactic Leaders, who have HUNDREDS OF PAGES of text to tell you exactly how they feel about you and your empire. Could these all have been recorded as MP3's? Probably. Could we have added 'heros', 'spys', ect to the game to add even more character to the resulting Space Opera? Defiantly. Could we have made more elaborate cutscenes to spice up the campaign and various sandbox events? Certainly.
 
Would choosing these features limit the manpower put towards other, more important game features (possibly rendering the game unplayable)? Without a doubt.
 
In the end, I think the whole 'soul' issue is moot. Some players are going to emotionally connect to a more abstracted style so they can really infuse their own mythos into their various games (this is where 4x games get teased for being 'interactive spreadsheets'). Others are going to connect to a simplified game with more polish and flavor to their game (Leonard Nemoy voiceovers comes to mind). Other players still are going to connect to something completely different, which we'll hear about after GC3
 
Will we be able to emotionally connect with 100% of the player 100% of the time? Never. Do we hope players can enjoy the game, even if they don't connect emotionally with it? Absolutely. And as long as players continue to support our work, will we continue to improve our game designs, hopefully engaging more players and exposing the 'soul' of the game to everyone possible?
 
You better believe it.

I don't think anyone here has said it's a bad game. I think it deserves high reviews, because it is a well designed game. But I'd still have to say there's nothing to emotionally attach to in it.

No offense to BoogieBac or any other Stardock designer - the gameplay is stellar.

However, I have to agree with Orion Adrian's points - the game is more LOL than connection. Music isn't especially my taste, but that's a matter of opinion. The tech tree at the beginning was difficult enough, but within the first few games, it does feel very linear - I just have to simply improving all the baseline stats and abilities, with little regard to combinations or symbioticness. The random events are my favorite part with entertaining dialogue and unpredictability, but otherwise the game has become overwrought to me.

I'm not sure anyone has anything kind to say about the campaigns either, which is a pity because the design team worked hard on that. It just doesn't have much allure - dull story and campaigns.

On the otherhand, the AI is devious and prevents relaxation, ship design is great and is expected to be easier to improve and upgrade, and the special buildings and starbases help me overlook the few problems that OA had outlined before.

The "soul" that is missing amounts to unique racial abilities and the opportunity have game changing techs that the other players lack. "Soul" in these games comes from unique functions. Since all races have identical abilities (some are better at this or that ability) as opposed to exclusive abilities, then all the backstory and flavor text and differentiated AI subroutines in the world will not create "soul" for these races.

OTOH I understand that the reason for the generic nature of the races was that first priority in developing GC2 was given to creating smart AI that could play without cheating, and for ensuring proper game balance so the AI could be tested and improved. I furthermore think that to have accomplished this to the extent that Stardock has is a staggering, almost unprecedented achievement.

In the future, I would like to see Stardock first optimize the AI and treak and balance the current game as much as possible, and then concentrate on introducing ways to make the racial abilities more unique, rebalancing the AI tactics and strategies as necessary. I would also like to see modifications to the tech tree that provided a reward for specializing in certain tech areas that gave unique abilities as suggested earlier, and then AI rebalancing based on that.

I understand this is all a very big job, and I wish you all the financial success required to marshal the resources to accomplish it!

OK, my first post on this was about a billion paragraphs, and it got swallowed, so the Space Gods are telling me to try to simplify it.

This is a very interesting thread to me.

GalCiv2 is a highly abstracted game system. This allows for much more effective AI, and also promotes replayability (e.g., a Merchant/Diplomat plays very different from an Expansionist/Industrialist plays very different from a Militarist).

However, it also does mean that more of the "color" in the game is left up to the imaginations of the players. I enjoy embellishing my own games, but I find some of the most personally engaging games help to stimulate that imagination better than others (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a good example of such a setting).

While I like the "3 choices" scenarios that GalCiv offers, I've often felt like the designers perhaps missed out on an opportunity to develop some plot and interesting side-stories here. If you had various "story threads" that would creep into a campaign (for the human player only), featuring maybe one set of 3 choices ever 5 to 20 turns, with perhaps 4-6 total choices in a given "thread", it might be interesting.

You'd need to set it up so each choice along the thread had practical implications, as well as "story branching" implications. And I'd encourage you to script the stories so every path resulted in some good and some bad results, rather than just having one "optimal" or "jackpot" path. It would definitely take some additional work, but I don't think it would be hard to create some scripting tools that would make these storylines VERY moddable, and w/the wealth of player creativity out there, it could really catch fire!

A few sample storylines:

1) Those primitive aliens you so tactfully cached on specialized reservations turn out to be not quite so primitive after all (think of the Organians, if you're a Star Trek fan...);
2) A highly desirable planet that you've colonized turns out to have a Gaian consciousness, whose priorities don't always agree with yours...
3) A crime syndicate/pirate ring starts spreading into various corners of your civilization;
4) A religious zealot begins to grow very popular on your home planet, and he comes to you with an offer...
5) A privately financed adventurer (think GalCiv Christopher Columbus) comes to you with tales of a Precursor ruin planet hidden in a nebula not too far from your home world...
6) A diplomat from a rival civilization approaches you with an offer to defect...
7) One of your scientists exploring some nearby Precursor ruins comes to you wtih an intriguing artifact and a request for additional guidance & assistance...
8) Labor leaders in your civilization approach you with some problems, but also with a solution...

These are just the tip of the iceberg. I'd heard in interviews that this type of plot development would happen in GalCiv1, but I never saw it in the 6-9 months of games that I played enthusiastically (maybe I was looking in the wrong place?). Putting some "real world" decisions out there, with real downstream implications for gameplay besides just a numerical tweak, might be very intriguing.

Heck, if anybody at StarDock is interested, I'd be happy to script a couple sample stories and decision trees (along with proposed bonuses)! Don't know how complicated this would be from a programming standpoint--certainly not easy, but I can't imagine it'd be back-breaking either, especially if you could draw on others to generate the content and storylines...

[ None of this is really a criticism of Stardock per se … they are giving what the strategy public wants. It’s a TBS for the RTS index-finger-workout crowd. It’s not the kind of game I or most other ‘strategy enthusiasts’ I know enjoy. ]

You must come from a very small and select group then, because I've been playing turn based strategy games AND chess for 35+ years and this is definitely a game THIS "strategy enthusiasts" enjoys!!! Mainly because I don't expect this game to be some clone of any other game. I'm glad it is "unique of itself". And while it might be a game of choice for the rts index-finger workout crowd (which is a good thing, brings more gamers into the TBS line of games and perhaps means more TBS line of games in the future) it certainly is a game for the pure TBS gamer at heart as well. Even if it doesn't have the complexities that I'm pretty sure every complainer is complaining about, it doesn't really need them. It's complicated enough I can see from the posts after posts of people having trouble with the economy and technology and getting or staying in 1st place. And with 12-13 difficulty levels and plenty of optional settings, there's no way anyone couldn't find an optimal setting for challenge.

I learn to accept the game that is in front of me. As long as it doesn't have game breaking bugs, CTD's things of that nature, I don't try to change it or make it into the game I think it should be. If I was to do that I'd make my own game or pay someone to make it for me. Are you willing to do that? NO??!! Didn't think so.

Of course there are some things I surely can see I'd like to see in the game or not in the game, but, I'm not calling the game souless or not up to par "comparing" to other games. It's it's own game in it's own right. It doesn't have to meet the expectations of other games. And that is your flaw in your comparisons or anyone elses comparisons. It doesn't require comparison, it's not trying to be another game.

As a consumer you have a few choices, play the game until you find the optimum value setting out of it, toss it aside and never play it again and of cource just don't buy anymore games from this company. 100% of the people are never going to be satisfied. Complaining or whinning on a forum doesn't do much good at all. Mostly it just brings flames back in your face. Making valid suggestions is one thing, coming to the fan forum just to say the game has no soul or isn't up to par with another game or games has no value and gives you less credibility. And you just end up noticed as a troll if you continue to do it. Because you aren't contributing, you're just trying to tear down. And of course any of those that agree with you on the forum are just little pied piper following trollites.

that is your flaw in your comparisons or anyone elses comparisons. It doesn't require comparison, it's not trying to be another game.

Good point. Sad that you directed it at me though, since I never said GalCivII should be a clone of any of the games I briefly mentioned. I said it should offer distinctive strategic choices and argued why it doesn't. There's a big difference.

I learn to accept the game that is in front of me. As long as it doesn't have game breaking bugs, CTD's things of that nature, I don't try to change it or make it into the game I think it should be. If I was to do that I'd make my own game or pay someone to make it for me. Are you willing to do that? NO??!! Didn't think so.

Wrong. I'm actually quite willing to do that, I'm an aspiring developer myself working on a project that may well, particularly if the development houses that have more resources than I continue to fail to incorporate them, result in the type of gameplay I'm more interested in.

Complaining or whinning on a forum doesn't do much good at all. Mostly it just brings flames back in your face. Making valid suggestions is one thing, coming to the fan forum just to say the game has no soul or isn't up to par with another game or games has no value and gives you less credibility.

I did make valid suggestions. Perhaps you should go read my post again before making blatantly false accusations/characterizations of what I wrote. My suggestions were clear and on the point of giving interesting strategic decisions, giving differences to each side as opposed to the current system where the same strategy is more or less equally effective with any race, and one game's the same as the next.

Even if it doesn't have the complexities that I'm pretty sure every complainer is complaining about, it doesn't really need them. It's complicated enough I can see from the posts after posts of people having trouble with the economy and technology and getting or staying in 1st place. And with 12-13 difficulty levels and plenty of optional settings, there's no way anyone couldn't find an optimal setting for challenge.

The game is challenging. I could come up with lots of ideas for games that would be challenging, but still bad games. That isn't the point, GCII succeeds on that score(as I made a major point of in my first post, by the way). Complexity isn't the issue either. A game can be simple without being simplistic. I would say GCII has some complexity.

The point is the repetitive grind, the fact that you can just 'lock in' to the same researching/building strat game after game after game. Nothing changes. I didn't say, and don't now, that it makes it a bad game. I say it limits it to the same type of gameplay as an RTS, only slower: memorize the best order of doing things, then go kick the crap out of the enemy. It is about rote learning of what the best tactic is, then repeatedly implementing it. This is not strategy. Strategy requires you to have to adjust to conditions that are different than what you've faced in the last dozen games you played.

The more I think about it, I think that GC2 isn't mising soul per se but it is missing the "5th X" What I mean by that is that GC2 is missing something in addition to the typical 4X game. For example:
SMAC-Had that pyschic fungus that is constantly a problem.
MoO2-Antarans would all of a sudden smack around the #1 or #2 platyer in the galaxy, creating panic
CIv-Just playing throughout history, building wonders, meeting famous leaders and researching new technologies drastically changes the game constantly.
And these games are pretty old, so yes if GC2 was released 20 years ago I would say the same thing.

I don't think Space Empires had anything extra either which is why I call it a good TBS but a bit soulless along with GC2.

Some of you GC2 fanboys are getting out of hand though, 12-13 difficulty levels? Umm, wrong. We can't compare GC2 to any other strategy game? Uhhh, what? More races equals a harder to code and worse game? Don't give me that B.S. Each leader has hunderds of pages of text? Ok, my finger is right next to the 'prove it' button.

The game is a great solid TBS with an awesome ship designer. Kinda reminds me of City of Heroes, the character desinger is so much fun that you love the game even though it is really just an above average MMORPG.

This kind of feedback is good to the devlopers and will overall improve the game. The comment of "if you don't like it, just quit and play something else" is ridiculous and something a 5-year old would make. Us 'complainers' LIKE the underlying game, we just want it improved so I can actually say that even without the ship designer, GC2 is one of the best TBS's out there. Right now, beating the game at the highest difficulty doing the same thing everytime on different maps and against different races, I don't think I can call it one of the best TBS games yet. All these fanboys are actually me like GC2 less, and I really enjoy playing GC2 and can't wait for the next patch.

I totally agree with your analysis of history/soul. Well done.

I don’t see how your Chess analogy works, because there aren’t imbalances in Chess. Everybody starts with the same stuff. If an imbalance is created, it’s because someone took someone else’s pieces.

You are viewing Chess overly simplisticly. Pieces, ie. Material, is only one of many and often not the most important. Before anyone has moved a piece, the first player has two favorable imbalances: Time(because they get to move first) and Initiative(the second player has to react to them, and it is more difficult for them to concentrate on creating play for themselves because they have to counter the first player’s threats). And this is the weakest part of Chess from a strategic standpoint, the beginning, because the pieces and board are always the same, they can never change.

That isn’t where my argument lies though, its what happens farther down the line when Chess opens up and really shines. Even after white’s most common first move, there are a few different moves open to black which lead generally to different kinds of games. Black can try to simply equalize or to play more counter-attacking style. Other imbalances that can come into play later are Space(having more freedom to move because you control more of the board), Development(having your pieces on more active squares), control of key files & squares, etc. The game becomes a battle of making your advantadges more powerful than your opponents, or conversely, eliminating his advantadges.

The point of all this is that there is very little of this in GalCivII. The starting map can be changed, and some editing of the racial abilities, starting situation etc. can be changed. But that’s as far as it ever gets. After this everyone develops in exactly the same way with exactly the same tools. And that is what makes it a weak game in terms of strategy.

having imbalances doesn’t make something more fun than something that doesn’t. … When the Civ games added in civ-specific bonuses(in Alpha Centauri), it was positive from some perspective(specialization), but negative from the perspective of never being able to play a “neutral” civilization. I couldn’t play a fair game. To me, the whole thing evened out

Well I would say that I object to the fact that GalCivII doesn’t appear to give me the choice to make interesting differences. But fundamentally, this is not what I mean about imbalances. The starting situation isn’t the point, its what happens after. Specific racial bonuses aren’t the point. It is that every game pretty much plays out the same way. Nothing ever happens to upset the strategic apple cart. It is this lack of variety that makes the game shallow, not what bonuses different races do or don’t get.

Right now, I can randomize locations for 6 races and I'll almost always be near one that is warlike and one that is expansive. It keeps me from neglecting one part of my game to focus too heavily on another. ... prefer to play out my games the way I want while being aware of who's around me and not have every be determined by who I happened to end up next to and if I'm lucky enough to get a race who's imbalance can be negated.

I can only say that it appears you are conflicted ... if the game 'keeps me from neglecting one part of my game', then it does not by definition allow you to 'play out my games the way I want ... and not have every be determined by who I happened to end up next to'. The game is still forcing you to play a certain way, the difference is that there is no variety from game to game.

if I'm a race that has advanced mental powers and my imbalances is to build a ship that can amplify my powers and project a defensive field around my fleet that gives it a -3 to damage taken (think moveable starbase kind of defense) my game will play out completely differently if I start it next to this race versus starting next to the religious fanatic race that gets one kamakaze attack before combat starts and will use that to take out my defensive ship every time.

You say this negatively, but its a great example of what I'm talking about. I cannot for the life of me digest why cookie-cutter gameplay is preferable to a situation in which you have to adjust to your enemy. Again, its a case of throwing strategy off the bus and replacing it with memorization of build/research/etc. orders.

Perhaps I'm not being clear, because once again the thrust of my argument is being ignored. Having racial differences that are more interesting is only a small part of it, but it is a concept that would be enhanced were the main point to be used. The main point is, I repeat, that the progress of each game should be differentiated. That in the course of the game, not dictated at the start but through depth of strategical options after the game has started, the situation would shift. That it would not always be best to do the same things every time. I have already posted the vehicles for doing this. If all you do is change the starting races but leave everything else as is, it doesn't address my concerns because it is still a matter of finding the one best way, the one best order of doing things, that is sufficient for all situations and doesn't every need to be edited or reconsidered.

Zorrmorph, the reason I didn't address that was because I haven't found that to be case so far. I entirely agree with your argument in as far as I think it would be great if each game were different. And yes, not because of the different starting points, but because of the choices the player, and the AI, make during the game. While I agree that there are certain tactics that should be employed pretty much every game, I don't agree that the overall strategy or game itself has to be same each time.

Essentially I've had quite a different experience in each game I've played, so as far as I've seen, what you're asking for (in general, if not the details) is already there.

However, it does sound like you've played the game more than I have, so perhap I will feel the same way after a few more goes.

Oh, and the chess analogies don't seem particularly apt to me. Chess' starting position is reasonably symmetric, but not at all homogeneous, whereas GalCiv II starts off reasonably homogeneous, on large scales at least. That it the diverges from that point is part of its strength.