Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition
Get the complete Galactic Civilizations II saga including the acclaimed PC strategy game of the year Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, the award winning expansion pack Dark Avatar, and the newest expansion pack Twilight of the Arnor!
Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords: Galactic Civilizations II is the sequel to 2003’s hit turn-based strategy game of the same name. The player takes on the role of the leader of a space-faring civilization and must guide its expansion in a hostile galaxy. Gamers must balance their economic, technological, diplomatic, cultural, and military power to forge alliances, fight wars, and ultimately dominate the galaxy. The game is single-player and allows the player to play randomly generated galactic maps or play through a multi-mission campaign that tells the story of an ancient enemy called the Dread Lords.
Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar: The expansion pack for Stardock’s award-winning hit strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. This expansion pack not only adds the usual content that expansion packs tend to do such as new opponents, new units and a new campaign. It also greatly expands the game play of Galactic Civilizations II. New features include asteroid belts on the map that can be mined for resources, unique planets that require special technologies to colonize, spies to conduct sabotage and destabilization (or used to protect your worlds from the same), new types of diplomatic treaties, an enhanced artificial intelligence engine, and much more!
Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor: The year is 2227 and the fire of war is consuming the galaxy thanks to the manipulations of the evil Dread Lords. But the remaining factions, led by the humans, have a plan to rid the galaxy of the Dread Lords once and for all.
Expand the Galactic Civilizations II universe with Terror Stars, unique technology trees per civilization, Map editors, Custom Scenario makers, campaign editors, new types of ships, new planetary improvements, and much more!
Key features:
- Beautiful 3D engine brings planets, stars, asteroids and ship battles to life.
- Create custom 3D ships piece-by-piece with your Shipyard.
- Play as any of a dozen unique civilizations or create your own.
- Multiple paths to victory: Military conquest, cultural domination, political alliance, technological supremacy or ascension.
- Addictive gameplay: Dynamic galaxies ranging from tiny to gigantic.
- Superior multi-threaded artificial intelligence enables computer players to provide a challenge without having to cheat.
- Put your scores online via the Metaverse and compete with players from around the world.
- Fully moddable design enables players to create unique opponents, graphics and scenarios.
- Advanced diplomacy enables players to trade, make treaties, alliances and more.
Steam User 5
I haven't played this in 15 years, and Stardock still sends me emails.
Steam User 3
Every civilization in the galaxy bullies me no matter how nice I am to them. Peak realism/10.
Steam User 3
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
Steam User 3
I have to admit, I've never played the campaigns. I just love setting the galaxy size to huge, everything else to "random" and seeing what I get. I do turn off the time victory. I do like to actually win, not just run out of time. No two games are ever the same. I love being able to design my own ships and save them for the future but often the auto generated ships are good enough. The amount of things you can customize for your race is interesting and amazing, but you don't have to customize anything, you can take the defaults. I still play GC2 even though they just came out with 4. Eventually I will buy 3 and give that a go. Looking forward to it.
One thing that some might consider a negative is it does not seem to support ultra-wide monitor resolutions. It'll stretch and distort a bit. I leave it on windowed mode now and put my stock charts in the left over strip of screen. Now I can day trade my stocks and play while I wait for the market to make a move. So for me, the negative is actually a positive :)
Steam User 2
My first 4X Sci-Fi game was Endless Space. I really enjoyed that game. So when I got this game for free I was really interested in playing it seeing as most people call it one of the best if not the best 4X Sci-Fi game.
I wasn't dissapointed. The game features a lot of content and it will take you a while to learn the game. The video tutorials in-game are basic and for new players are kind of a crash-course.
Campaigns can be customized to your style and, especially, time you want to spend in it. So you can play for weeks a single campaign or a few hours depending on your initial setup.
Even though the game lacks in visuals it is still serviceable and didn't bother me in the slightest.
The UI is good and the soundtrack doesn't put me to sleep like in Endless Space.
The combat is nice to see but it is more of a simulation of what is already a calculated outcome. I liked the combat of Endless space more since you at least have some input.
Overall the game is fun and, like any 4X game, you can lose track of time while playing it.