Galactic Civilizations II impressions

Renegade 13 · #1 March 1st, 2006, 01:57 PM

In reference to frequency of crashing, SEIV has only crashed on me once in all the years I've played. Now THAT is impressive! Few games can be played for at least 1000 hours with only a single crash.

Can't even remember what exactly caused the error, it was an RCE but for the life of me I can't remember when it occurred.

Kamog · #2 March 3rd, 2006, 03:58 AM

SEIV has *never* crashed on me since I switched to Windows XP last year. And I've spent hundreds of hours playing.

Now, SEIV used to crash quite often when I had Windows ME, especially when I used ALT-TAB to switch between SEIV and other programs. But it was a Windows ME problem and not an SEIV problem.

Atrocities · #3 March 3rd, 2006, 05:26 AM

I have gotten SEIV to crash on me several times.

Most often while playing the Expanded Mod with uber huge systems.

I will say though, RCE's are pretty much history. I have not seen an RCE since 1.49. Well one or two since then, but mostly do to issues that were addressed in 1.94.

Supporting a game going on six years after its release has to be a world record. Aaron should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize along with having his name in the Ginues Books (sp) for superior game support.

If the big boys played by Aarons rules, games would have a lot longer shelf and life span. SIX YEARS! This is simply unheard of! A First! The Fifth X in 4x gaming, eXceptional support!

Hunpecked · #4 March 3rd, 2006, 03:12 PM

SE IV, the first 5X game! I like that.

SE IV Gold has crashed twice for me in about 15 months. Both times I was in a combat replay and a TDM-Tessellate ship was ramming one of mine (Terran). Dozens of other replays with ramming caused no problems, so the circumstances must be very specific.

Emperor's Child · #5 March 3rd, 2006, 04:39 PM

I've also gotten SEIV to crash rather reliably with several of the memory-sucking mods that are hod on my paltry 256k RAM: Adamant and Invasion come to mind as games that got to the point I'd be assured of a crash if I opened the mod.

But I know what the problem is and can simply avoid it by not playing those mods.

Ragnarok-X · #6 March 3rd, 2006, 09:32 PM

SEIV is barely crashing at all. Within the last years i can only remember about half a douzen crashed, ALL my fault, due to wrong modding and that strange out-of-range something like that error right after processing the first turn. I for one cant remember a single crash NOT *forced* by my behavior. In my conclusion, SEIV is one of the least-crashing games. Look at X1, X2, X3, take Master of Orion, take most RPGs (Temple of ELemental Evil comes to mind, as do Daggerfall series), even take CnC Generals, take the First Decade, take Civ4 they -all- crash occasionelly, be it with or without patches applied.

Ragnarok-X · #7 March 3rd, 2006, 09:43 PM

btw. Im pretty amazed by the people who *defend* Firaxis here. It was clearly their fault and i believe FAR more than 75% of the initial buyers had major issues with the game. Firaxis did not even fix their stuff in the first place, i absolute remember that a fanboy made some kind of dll-swinging .exe which solved the memory-lads. When the official patch was released, it included that fanmade fix. Unfortunally this is where im dissapointed from the so called god of gamers Sid Meier. I remember playing Civ 2 when i was like 10 years old, i remember Colonization, and Pirates Gold. Civ 4 was a catastrophe.
Now, months after release, its good and modable, but thats no excuse which would allow a company to sell crap. Its like your car-shop is selling you a so-called new and intact car, which is in fact missing both its brakes and its gas pedal.

Renegade 13 · #8 March 7th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Impressions: Overall, I like the game a lot. It has its issues, definitely, but I've found I can overlook most of them quite easily and don't even notice them that much after a while. A few things though, really irk me, such as the inability to pan through the main screen map using the arrow keys, you have to use the mouse. Pain in the arse. But a minor one.

On the positive side, the game hasn't crashed on me once in about 12 hours playing, haven't noticed any glitches even. The graphics are very nice, even including rotating moons above planets. The ship designing is a very welcome addition over the original, though I'd say it's a little more clumsy than that of SEIV, though more detailed. For example, you can't (yet) automatically upgrade your designs if you research better weapons, but on the other hand you can totally customize how your ship looks buy adding all the components and extra aestetic features onto the base design.

Combat is also much better than the original, but no where near as detailed as that of SEIV. Still, I've found it to be quite enjoyable, though one thing that bothers me is the huge advantage attackers get over defenders. Many times I've had a couple decent ships defending a planet, when the enemy comes with a single ship, blows hell outta me, and goes on his merry way. Oddly enough, any one of my ships if I attacked them would be enough to blow him out of the sky without a point of damage. It's odd how they gave such an advantage to being the attacker, so much so that a weak ship attacking a stronger ship can win many times. That is one of the most annoying things that I have found.

I had wondered how they would implement a campaign in a TBS games such as this, but to my surprise it is actually quite well done in my opinion. It's also quite difficult, as the enemy they have you face is extremely advanced technologically. You have to act very fast to accomplish your goal, or else the numbers of advanced ships the enemy throws at you will be overwhelming.

I haven't even touched on many aspects of the game, and while there are a number of issues, mostly they're quite minor. More annoyances than issues to my mind. It could be that I'm not as picky as some people, or just haven't noticed some things (quite likely), but I am enjoying it thoroughly. And given its potential, with the updates that are pomised and new features to be implemented, issues to be resolved, I'd say this game will be on my computer for quite some time.

9.2/10 For comparison, in my book SEIV gets a 9.6 or so out of 10.

Renegade 13 · #9 March 5th, 2006, 02:39 PM

I bought it yesterday but haven't had much time to play yet, so all I can say is that it's Purdy!

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time yet to get into it very much, but when I do I'll post my review of the game, as it stands with the latest patch installed.