Galactic Civilizations [PC game]
Who here has played Galactic Civilizations? ^^ For anyone who doesn't know, Galactic Civilizations is a 4X turn-based strategy game made by a group called Stardock. Very fun game, indeed. It came out around the time of Master of Orion III and ended up, despite having a far lower budget, surpassing it in sales.
The backstory states that five alien races constructed a system of enormous Star Gates [no, not THOSE Stargates
], massive structures which folded space to bridge the distances between it and another Star Gate. This tiny network was the only faster than light capability developed, and cost far too much to operate regularly. Thus contact and trade was limited, and there was no chance of ever reaching a political understanding. Eventually, one of these five races -- the Arceans -- made accidental contact with a United Earth via deep space probe. At some point, the Arceans gave the Earth the technology necessary to construct a Star Gate of their own so they could become part of the system. The Arceans also supply Earth with various information about the other races -- the Drengin, Yor, Torians, and Altarians -- as well as the mysterious Precursors.
However, the Terrans weren't content with operating a power-guzzling, economy-draining gate that would greatly limit contact and sought to improve upon it. Reckless and ambitious, the humans managed to create a far more efficient form of the technology -- hyper-drive. With incredible naivete, the design for hyper-drive was sent to the other five races in the belief that any sufficiently advanced race would need to be benevolent and peaceful lest they'd have destroyed themselves. And then all contact is lost, and a race to colonize the galaxy begins.
The creator of the story -- I can't recall his actual name, so let's just call him "Frogboy" -- actually intended, and still intends sometime, to write a series of books based on it. He's the founder of Stardock, I believe, and started making games on the OS/2 operating system. He also writes the AI for the games, and they are quite good compared to many other games.
Galactic Civilizations has a single expansion pack thus far called "Altarian Prophecy" and they're working on a sequel, "Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords". Altarian Prophecy introduced two new races -- the Korx and the Drath -- to the story and Dread Lords will introduce another two -- the Iconians and the Thalan. Stardock is also thinking of continuing the creation of expansions for the first GalCiv even after the second's release.
...and that post...was a lot larger than I originally intended it to be. oo So, yes. Has anyone played this game? Is anyone interested? Any discussion topics with which I'm too tired to think of right now?
The backstory states that five alien races constructed a system of enormous Star Gates [no, not THOSE Stargates
], massive structures which folded space to bridge the distances between it and another Star Gate. This tiny network was the only faster than light capability developed, and cost far too much to operate regularly. Thus contact and trade was limited, and there was no chance of ever reaching a political understanding. Eventually, one of these five races -- the Arceans -- made accidental contact with a United Earth via deep space probe. At some point, the Arceans gave the Earth the technology necessary to construct a Star Gate of their own so they could become part of the system. The Arceans also supply Earth with various information about the other races -- the Drengin, Yor, Torians, and Altarians -- as well as the mysterious Precursors.However, the Terrans weren't content with operating a power-guzzling, economy-draining gate that would greatly limit contact and sought to improve upon it. Reckless and ambitious, the humans managed to create a far more efficient form of the technology -- hyper-drive. With incredible naivete, the design for hyper-drive was sent to the other five races in the belief that any sufficiently advanced race would need to be benevolent and peaceful lest they'd have destroyed themselves. And then all contact is lost, and a race to colonize the galaxy begins.
The creator of the story -- I can't recall his actual name, so let's just call him "Frogboy" -- actually intended, and still intends sometime, to write a series of books based on it. He's the founder of Stardock, I believe, and started making games on the OS/2 operating system. He also writes the AI for the games, and they are quite good compared to many other games.
Galactic Civilizations has a single expansion pack thus far called "Altarian Prophecy" and they're working on a sequel, "Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords". Altarian Prophecy introduced two new races -- the Korx and the Drath -- to the story and Dread Lords will introduce another two -- the Iconians and the Thalan. Stardock is also thinking of continuing the creation of expansions for the first GalCiv even after the second's release.
...and that post...was a lot larger than I originally intended it to be. oo So, yes. Has anyone played this game? Is anyone interested? Any discussion topics with which I'm too tired to think of right now?
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