Whoever’s doing the dialogue for their representatives also deserves some credit their speeches aren’t horrendously stilted and typically reflect the values and tactics of their civilizations. Their demands and offers, while sometimes repetitive between species, reflect your relationship with their borders and even your responses to earlier overtures. While each species responds to your moves, it also shows a personality of its own.Īllies demonstrate the same level of love. It makes some parts of the game tough - but also absolutely enchanting. They will swoop in and, if they see you headed their way with superior firepower, run right back out again. blindspots.)Įnemies are now devious and delightful in the way they will attack your weak points - a solo ship in transit, an under-defended starbase - or pile up to attack a more heavily fortified planet or fleet. (To be fair, some of that tweaking happened after player complaints about now-fixed A.I.
in the business, especially after the tweaking in the 1.02 patch. I’m going to take a potentially unpopular stand and say this version of GalCiv shows off some of the best A.I. The enemy (and ally) artificial intelligence to realize that, yes, you’ve spent another night conquering the galaxy.
It all adds up to a great series of rewards for continuing to play, the kind of thing that will have you looking up blearily at 2 a.m. Even your friends will frequently make demands and offers, some in your favor, some not. in a second – and push aggressively into your space. Your enemies will attack your weak spots – more on that A.I. You’ll discover new places to plop a starbase to collect resources or tech or mine minerals.
Your survey ships can harvest goodies from anomalies and debris, and you’ll want to send some firepower with them, as they’ll now have to battle pirates for some derelicts. The shipyards (which now float in space) pop out new models at a good pace, prompting you to queue up new models based on the new tech and materials you’ve discovered. The colonies you’ve planted on planets along the way come to fruition, pinging you for new buildings to build and things to do. Is it better to be slow and methodical, or punch through the action and building be damned? I played through once, then the game drew me to try a second time to find out.Īs you expand through the galaxy, either in the campaign or in sandbox mode, GalCiv III gives you a pile of goodies to play with. It’s telling that I actually looked forward to the replay usually, I play through a strategy game campaign with an eye toward getting to sandbox mode and never seeing it again.īut the GalCiv III campaign is expertly balanced, with just enough of a nudge to keep you moving through the story - creeping across the galaxy with a ragtag band of survivors and freeing Earth from the evil aliens that have it surrounded - and just enough rope to hang yourself with. The single-player campaign wasn’t available for reviewers until the day of launch, which meant that we held this review until we’d had a chance to play through it more than once. Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.