Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition

SOME TIPS THIS OLD CLASSIC GAME:
- At the start of the game, at least, it is more efficient to build happiness buildings to increase morale to make more tax money rather than building economic buildings to do the same.
- Factors that go towards morale: population count(Higher forces a greater penalty, and it gets real high, real fast. 16 billion is about the best amount), morale buildings on the planet, your tax rate(Higher adds a worse penalty), planet quality(Higher is better).
-Mouse-over the Morale score on the colony screen sometime-it'll tell you EVERYTHING.
- Most important is: DON'T OVER-EXTEND YOUR BUILDING. Remember that you need to pay for your production as well as building maintenance, ship maintenance, etc-those hammers and shields aren't free. Building too much too soon will break you.
- My strategy is to build morale enhancing buildings and drop my tax rate to the minimum at the start, while colonizing. I often get into the red, but the low taxes and morale buildings make the population grow as fast as possible and it always ends up paying for itself. Be sure not to stay in debt for too long, though, as that will also piss off the population.
********The Early Game And Its Economy
- The game is really complex and there are hundreds of tips one could give about it but I will concentrate in the early game and its economy (which I think is the most important factor in determining your mid-game strength). Obviously, pick a "regular" computer difficulty at the start or you will lose... badly.
- First of all, go into the screen that shows how much you spend in military/construction/research stuff and change the total output slider (I forgot its name) from 70% (or whatever it is) to 100%. What this does is that it will make your factories/research institutes work as hard as they can. You will spend more money but it is really important to work at 100% at the start.
- During the first turns it is incredibly important to grab plenty of planets, rush-buy (its really expensive) two colony ships and try to get nice planets (with a quality of 8 or more) that are close to your home systems. If your race can colonize certain hostile planets and the computer can't and you see one of those planets, don't grab it at the start, you can wait a bit.
- Use your explorer ship to explore anomalies and try to get as many as possible (if you happen to get plenty of money this way you could rush-buy another explorer, it is generally worth it if there are plenty of anomalies).
- Do not use your first colonizers to grab the local, low-level planet in your home system that most races start with, you can grab it later. You can even let the computer grab it since it is under the huge cultural influence of your homeplanet and it will switch to your side sooner or later. Hey! free planet with some population and factories already built.
- Also at the start, concentrate in keeping the moral in your new colony planets at 100% (by reducing taxes), it will make everybody start breeding like crazy but will make you Hemorrhage money. The exponential growth of the population and thus future tax revenue is worth it. Try to keep it going 100% as long as your money will allow. After that you can drop moral to 70% (green) or even less (yellow).
- BTW, do not, I repeat, do not, keep more than 9-12 billion people in a planet (that is don't build too many farms). After 12 billion their morale goes to shit, and it is really difficult/expensive to keep them happy.
- I don't know if they patched yet, but if you are in a democratic government you are not supposed to tax the hell out of your citizens or they wont vote for you. Well, they are idiots, if you keep them happy during the week before the elections they will vote for you no matter what. So, reduce taxes before elections, it works in videogames too!
- So, basically, at the start try to grab plenty of quality planets (the perk that gives you extra movement is a great but costly way to improve your chances), keep them happy and try not to lose too much money (as you will when populations are low and you have many planets).
- That is basically it for the early game. The next phase of the game starts when the computer starts to build their attack fleets, as soon as you see them doing so (check the graphs) you have to start you own fleet or they will bully you. Hopefully, your superior economy should allow you to keep up.
- BTW, a good tip to *appear* more powerful is to make ships with cargo hulls (huge capacity, crap hitpoints) filled with weapons. The computer will see all your weapons and think that your paper-armor fleet is stronger than what it really is (cheap crappy North Korea style show-offs).
- The humans are (as usual) a good race to start. They have balanced stats and their super-diplomat ability means that you can keep most hostile races at least semi-friendly for longer or trade for technologies/stuff at advantageous terms.
Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords:
- Play to your race's strengths as much as you can. Terrans have amazing diplomacy, so trading technologies for more credits than usual will compensate for you maxing out your income usage and running your empire at a loss. Drengin have strong military, so wage war on those weaker than you where you can. Korx are master traders and start with all trade techs, so get those trade routes up ASAP.
- Don't worry too much about running at a loss in the early game. You can sell techs and, if need be, ships to other races if you go in the red, which will boost your coffers. Eventually you'll either have enough income from trade, tourism and economy that you won't need to raised taxes, or your population will be so happy that you can tax the balls off them. Don't let your approval drop below 50% though.
- Trade route income depends on the distance (further is better) and population of the planets involved. An ideal trade route would be from your capital planet to that of a race on the outer limits of your range. Try to avoid trading with warmongering races like the Drengin or Yor unless you're certain they won't turn on you, though.
- You occasionally get choices with a Good, Neutral or Evil path, which will give benefits or penalties depending on your choice. These choices will move your race's ethical alignment. When you come to research Xeno Ethics you will have to choose an alignment, with different bonuses depending. They might have a cost depending on how far your alignment is from that choice. For instance, a Drengin player picking only evil choices can align Evil for free but would have to pay 10,000bc to align Good. Unfortunately, the Good choices tend to suck. It's better, if you have the cash, to pick Neutral choices, then pay the 2,500bc to align to Good when Xeno Ethics is researched.
LEAVE MORE TIPS PEOPLE

Few 100s hours on GOG and then some before that. I've tried GC3, they went too far with micromanagement, I refunded GC4 due to worse UI experience, ship designer and important features being behind DLC paywall. GC2 while being an old game now gets straight to the point with its features, ship designer is amazing and there's no unnecessary micromanagement. It's showing its age a bit but it's still THE 4X space turn based game.

It was easy to learn and understand and very fun to play if you like SciFi games.

The entire game is incredible.

Its sandbox like game customizations means anyone at any skill level may be able to have significant fun and or challenge.

based off of the original galactic civilizations and has slight added content

It's a great 4x game, but you should probably play the GOG version which runs better on modern systems.

One of the best civ-esque 4X games in a space setting that in some aspects has still not been surpassed in 2025.
Pros:
+ All 12 races have unique tech trees, AI personalities, diplomacy text and more.
+ Chess-engine type dynamic AI that has not been surpassed in any other 4X game and plays by the same rules as you.
+ Truly impactful galactic event system that keeps each game fresh.
+ Lots of different strategies to excel in, from influence, economy, diplomacy to war.
+ Actually really nice soundtrack for a 4X game.
+ Ability to create and download custom races and ship styles. (You can totally set up all Star Trek races).
+ A lot of content after 3 expansions, both in mechanics and in campaigns.
+ Well balanced and bug free after many years of community patches.
+ Runs on any computer and looks alright if you max everything out.
Cons:
- it's a game from 2008, expect some really shitty CGI and a lot of videos and UI elements to look a little low-res on modern resolutions.
- No in-game encyclopedia leaves you looking through the included manual, "Community Edition Guide" and old forum threads to figure out the intricacies of gameplay mechanics as the game came out before community game wikis became commonplace.
- Default ship designs are lacking, you are forced to use the ship builder to make optimized ship designs, this can be a chore and will lead to ugly designs if you can't bother to take the time to artfully place the modules.
- Ship designer does not let you modify the auto-generated designs.
- Suffers from the common "Space is empty" curse. No actual terrain, lots of uncolonizable planets and just deep space that is not fun or very distinctive either visually or strategically.
- Compared to stuff like Stellaris, planets are mostly samey as well.
- Civ4 style stacked combat system that does not really care for positioning outside of starbases.

Overall I would recommend it just for the very tight gameplay loop and good AI leading to very interesting gameplay.

Reviewing every game I've played in my Steam Library. Game 21
Fun and an interesting 4x strategy game, I did not play much but what i did, i enjoyed.
Probably suited to those interested in futuristic 4x strategy.
Maybe one day i'll play some more but until then this one is good on sale, if you don't have a powerful computer and want this type of game in this setting.