So many, many problems...

User Rating: 6.5 | Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords PC
I've played the Civilization series and enjoyed it a lot, and because GC2DL is so similar in concept and execution it was familiar and appealing to me from the outset. It's well-made for the most part, from the space art and ship design to the music and inspired sense of humor (Monty Python In Space!). But there are numerous issues with movement, stacking, combat and fleet operations that make even the most basic mechanics of the game an exercise in frustration even when using the latest version and a fast system.

My main problem with GC2DL is with the simple process of clicking and moving units. It works just fine, but first you have to learn some awkward processes. I lost track of the number of times I left-clicked on a single unit, right clicked on its destination, and watched helplessly as my unit stayed in place while the rest of my other units moved instead. You'll be playing in a zoomed-out mode most of the time, and when you think you're clicking on a unit you're often not; at least as far as the software is concerned. And when that happens, when your click doesn't "register" the way you expect it to, the next unit on the list of automated movements will move instead. And then the next, and the next, etc. etc. In fact that second unit will often move to the target your first unit was supposed to move to, because when you clicked on that first unit the software didn't "get it" and instead it assumed that because you ignored the first unit you actually meant to move the second one.

The simple solution is to zoom in every time you want to click on a unit but that's so terribly time-consuming that it's just not feasible. Either that, or you have to click on several different locations in that same unit until you find the specific tiny spot that actually registers. This doesn't always lead to disaster, of course, but it's easy to see that it could. When you need to move your heavy defensive unit into the orbit of your Class 18 planet just before the bad guys arrive, it's pretty frustrating to watch your ship "accidentally" move off in another direction. And you've just lost your planet.

Other times, when you click on a unit in order to check out its information, immediately the rest of your ships start moving. The screen jerks and spins so quickly, moving from each automated unit to the next, that it's impossible to follow the action. What reason could there possibly be that single-clicking on one unit, and giving it no instructions whatsoever, should cause the rest of your ships to move instead?

Sometimes when it's your opponents' turn you'll hear the sounds of an attack. That's you being attacked, or depending on your settings it may be one of the other races within sight of your units, but you often have no idea who, what or where the attack is taking place because the screen often doesn't move to that location. You have to actually zoom in and search for it, and you'd better be quick because it won't last long. And if you arrive too late, you're going to have to review your entire civilization to determine which ships or which planets you just lost.

There seems to be no way to predict exactly how far your units are able to move. Every ship has a "speed" rating of a certain number of parsecs, and we're told how many parsecs there are per sector, and you can view the gridlines to get a basic idea of what to expect, but there seems no logical reason that when you want to move that afore-mentioned heavy defensive unit toward your planet, you can't determine whether or not it can actually reach it. Are you 6 parsecs away, or 7? And if you're transporting troops you surely don't want to leave your troop ship stranded by itself right next to the planet. You can right click on the planet and you'll be told how many turns it will take you to get there, but as soon as you make that right click you'll start to move whether you want to or not.The only "fix" for this seems to be to hold a ruler up to the screen- no doubt it would work fairly well, but a few centuries from now I suspect that the measurement process will have progressed somewhat beyond the necessity to carry giant rulers into space.

The game frequently minimizes itself. Perhaps it's a built-in "you need a break" message, but I'd really prefer to make those decisions for myself thankyouverymuch.

When you want to move in a straight line toward your destination and want to pass through the unexplored area in between, if you're moving on a diagonal the program often won't let you go that way. It ideally should make a series of one-square (or hex, etc.) moves, turning right then left then right then left, etc. in order to maintain as straight a heading as possible, but it doesn't do that. In fact, units are ruled by the programming imperative to make as few "turns" as possible, meaning that your units will travel a seemingly-arbitrary L-shaped course. You never know in which direction your unit's going to start moving and you never get to see that area in between that you'd hoped to survey. And often this kind of inaccurate movement will bring you into your enemy's line of sight, which is probably not at all what you wanted.

Creating and disbanding fleets is often an exercise in frustration. What should take one or two clicks often takes 4 or 5, and in many cases the player is required to move ships out of a planet's orbit, then combine them (or disband them) and then move them back again. That seems unnecessary and wasteful. And if you're short on remaining movement you could really be in trouble.

When you create a fleet and then right click to move it, nothing happens. You'd expect that fleet to remain highlighted in anticipation of movement or attack, but no. For some reason the fleet loses its highlight, so you have to go back and click on it once again. It's a small matter, but after having to do this a few hundred times it gets tiring.

At other times, when one of your units is highlighted in the bottom information window the stats that display will be for a different unit altogether. This is another one of those funky processes that has to be learned- you have to not just click things, but click things in a particular order. In this case you actually have to click on the unit to de-highlight it, then click it again to highlight it- then the stats that display will be for the correct unit. This is the kind of stuff that makes you want to throw your computer out the window.

When you want to find out how much movement a specific ship has left and it's part of a fleet, it's very difficult to find that information. If you can find it at all. Perhaps after another 100+ hours I'll have this figured out, but should such basic information be so difficult to obtain? Ideally you should be able to click on a unit- any unit, anywhere, at any time- and be able to see all of its basic information on one screen. At the very least you should be able to find out right away whether or not that ship can move. But the way this game is designed there are situations where despite the fact that there may be 150 numbers, statistics and other misc. bits of information on the screen, nowhere does it say if your unit has any movement left! This is rather extraordinary. In this situation, in order to find out how much movement is remaining, if any, you actually have to click a few more times and then look way over to the side, where the remaining movement indicator is squeezed in between other stats. It's so small, and so out of the way, that it seems like almost an afterthought.

Several programming oddities pop up during combat. It's very common for a ship with heavy missile defense "armor" (essentially a force field), defending against ships with only missiles for attack, to go through 74 hit points and be destroyed... with not a single dent in its force field! Your hit points will decline, shot after shot after shot, and all the while you're passing 60 hp, 50, 40, down to 4, and your force field is still at full strength. Clearly there's a misunderstanding here of the theory behind force fields. The whole point is to prevent your ship from taking hits at all, and the fact that it's possible for your ship to be mercilessly pummeled behind an untouched force field demonstrates either really poor programming or a lack of understanding of the concepts involved. Whatever the reason for this error, there's little motivation in basing your defense on your opponents' offense if your defense isn't going to work anyway. Another oddity of the combat screen is that while the system is displaying the itemized damage per shot to your vessels, you'll find that the losses are applied before the shots even leave your opponent's ships! In other words, you've just taken 16 damage points but the shot that caused the damage hasn't even left your opponenet's ship yet. Amazing.

On those occasions when you lose ownership of a planet, oftentimes your icon (the "shield" representing your civilization) will be replaced by... the same icon! The planet belongs to someone else now, but although the program offers 42 different logos yet on many occasions it decides to replace yours with the same logo! Remarkable. And easily confusing if you're engaged in a lot of combat and your borders are in a state of flux. How hard would it have been to program out this partcicular error?

Another misadventure can be had when using the planet invasion screen. It may tell you that you hold an edge in troops, soldiering, technology and "advantage", and it will show you the specific numbers that apply to invader and defender in each of those categories, all so that you can see the actual odds of the attack, but right below that there is a graphic that looks like an odometer on methamphetamines. Numbers spinning like mad, and for God knows what reason. The player is supposed to click to stop the spinning numbers on a "random" ratio, ostensibly representing the combat odds, but the software knows what the odds are already- in fact it's already told you! So what is the purpose of playing this version of Wheel Of Fortune? And what makes it even stranger is that once you've "chosen" the actual odds of the battle you're shown another graphic where your advantage, e.g. 24 to 6, is expressed as colored bars that often read... backward! Whoever has the bigger edge gets the shorter colored bar. So as a heavy favorite you watch worriedly as your very short bar gets very slowly shorter, while your longshot opponent's longer bar drops like George Bush's approval ratings. Maybe I took too much Excedrin in the '60's, but much of this seems nonsensical.

The editor's review was right on when it suggested that future techs were not adequately discussed. It's certainly understandable that they're by definition "works in progress" and therefore the little information we may actually have about these techs would seem rather obscure to the average player anyway. How could anyone tell if researching Restaurant of Eternity is the best option at any given time? There's just no way to wrap your brain around it, whereas in other games your choice may be between building another farm or cutting more trees. Besides the fact that it might take you 100 turns to Eternalize your restaurant, this, like all of these other "future tech" options, may as well be written in a foreign language. I imagine that for most players, this limitation makes the process of technological development less satisfying. And less workable as a strategic option.

In any case, in a game set in such a large arena it's not practical to micro-manage as much as one might like. It would be simply too difficult for the player to be involved in the minutae of every single R & D process. For some of us the tradeoff is not a net positive. I spent hundreds of hours happily playing Age of Empires 2 and AE2CE but I bailed on AE3 because it was difficult to associate as closely with the fundamental workings of the game and as a result I felt more like a spectator than a participant. I appreciate that this is a matter of preference. One can't have both gigantic scale and fine detail. At least not for $29.99 :-)

GC2DL also shares some of the weaknesses of the Civilization series, among them the use of so-called "advisors" to negotiate. There's no negotiation here. There's no negotiation there, either. All that you do is pick something you want, pick something to exchange for it, and then depending on whether you see the green ("Yes") colored dialogue or the red ("No") dialogue you'll know how to proceed. At that point you can either add things to your list of Wants or you can add items from your own inventory to sweeten the deal. All you're doing is constructing lists that the software considers to represent a "fair trade"- one for you, and one for your opponent. Whichever way you make your adjustment, you can finesse it down to 1 single monetary unit. And you'll always have your "answer" before you even present your offer to your opponent. At no time will anyone say something like "I'll give you Stinger 2 and 3 if you'll give me Soil Enhancement", and there's no reason for there to be any "opponent" on the screen at all since you're dealing only with the software's concept of what a fair trade would be in this particular instance. When you know the answer before you ever present your offer, it's not negotiating. And that being the case, the use of so-called advisors for this process is pointless and silly. Perhaps programming a genuine negotiation would be too complicated- the player would have to have an excellent grasp of the current relative value of his inventory, which will change from turn to turn, as well as the same knowledge of his opponent's. He would also have to have some skill in knowing exactly what and how much to offer, and when. That might be too complex a task to program into the game, but it would make possible something more closely resembling genuine negotiation.

Also in common with the Civilization series is the negative effect on the game caused by excessive relative speed. When you begin constructing ships that travel at a speed of 30+ parsecs per turn, suddenly you'll be leaping huge distances across the galaxy. This may be realistic to the extent that we're able to predict future space travel, but it completely changes the nature of the game. Gone is the value of some kind of normal defensive perimeter, not to mention mobile defenses. You can still maintain those things in principle but they look very much different now. You are now the proud owner of LeBron James, and once your opponents catch up in technology every player on every team will be LeBron James. You may still be able to utilize basic strategic concepts but the relative size of the playing field has gotten smaller, while the abilities of the "players" have become greater, and because everyone is now dunking every shot there's little reason to use the same basic strategy. And for many of us that takes away a good deal of the enjoyment of the game.

Despite all of these issues, once you learn the disfunctional languages of movement and fleet operations there are rewards to be found here. The space art is great (zoom in on the suns!), the sense of humor is welcome and the variety of camera angles in the combat screen is nice. And it's cool to design ships specifically to answer the strengths and weaknesses of specific opponents. Although the problems mentioned above will keep me from playing the game into the future I imagine that for many players the rewards will be worth the extra frustration.