06-15-2003, 12:11 AM
I just lost that track, and went off to a new one. ;)
Godly. The interface is smooth as silk and easy as a slide. I kid you not. It's one thing I just LOVE about the game. It's so easy to use, so NATURAL, I can't imagine it any other way.
Ships are not built in the same way they are in MoO3. You don't custom-build your ships; they have pre-set ships that you research through Tech. Everyone has the same ships, so there's no worry about how you should outfit your ships, either. Keep in mind, though, that combat is also very different. But I'll get to that later. As you research through the ships, you CAN manually assign each individual planet to create a ship (micro), OR, you can use the wonderful Governor (which you can also assign to individual Planets, although the default is for ALL planets; assigning to individual planets takes a small bit of micro, but it saves you a ton, since it's still all automated after that ;)) to quickly change your planets Military project build queue. You can have all your planets that are building Star Fighters, for example, switch to building Corvettes, with just 3 simple clicks. (Select Star Fighter, select Corvette, click "Swap". It's that easy.) As for spying, it works differently than in MoO3. There's two sliders, much like in MoO, that you use to control the amount of funds (direct, not percentage-wise) you wish to devote towards a particular race. Espionage is the art of gathering intel on the race. You'll find out things like how their political party is faring, whether someone is paying them tribute to keep the peace, etc. Destabalize is the other option. This one is much more straight forward: you pay to disrupt their colonies, in the hopes of getting them to rebel against their former race, and thus creating a new "Minor Race". You don't steal techs, and you don't sabotage buildings. But you CAN find out intel on them (mostly diplomatic information, but sometimes you'll get lucky with an "Event", saying something like "Our spies have been working with the Carinoids {a Minor race}, and have found out that they have stolen all the Techs of the Drengin Empire. They are eager to trade these Techs with us, and are particularly interested in gaining Star Systems"), and you can disrupt their planets, thus forcing their Star Systems into rebellion and weakening their power (while at the same time giving you a new race to trade with, conquer, etc.).
In all honesty, I can't remember if it displays Star System names in the main screen or not. I think it does, though. I know it does NOT display it on the mini-map, but it DOES display who owns what (through color-coding).
Influence plays a VERY big part in the game, and thus they incorporated it into the mini-map VERY well. Just about everything you could want, from Influence, to Ships and their Destinations, to Production on Star Systems, can be turned on or off on the mini-map via a series of buttons. I always keep Ships, Destinations, and Influence checked on, as it allows me to take one glance at the map, and know exactly where everything is, and what I need to do.
Each Star System that is controlled by someone is not only color-coded on the mini-map, it also hosts a color-coded Empire Flag that is displayed right on the Star System as you scroll around. There is no zooming required, although you CAN zoom in the game (typically not necessary, IMO), on the mini-map.
Through the mini-map, and through the MULTITUDE of interfaces and menus, you can see EXACTLY what you want to, everywhere. It's truly beautiful how well they did the interface, at least IMO. And, players are constantly adding on to the "Wanted Features" list, which is just one more great thing because of the level of ONGOING support the dev team is giving this game. Already I've watched the game improve in several small changes since I got it, and that was only a few days ago.
This is mostly a non-issue. If someone is pissed at you, you'll know why. When someone demands tribute from you, if you refuse, it ticks them off. Repeated refusals will drag you into a war. If you're allied with someone, and they have a squabble with someone else and end up going to war, they will come to you and say "Honor our alliance and join the war, or we will break the alliance". Stick with the alliance, and you're suddenly at war with someone, even if you were friends with them moments before! Break the alliance, and your once-friends will be very upset with you. One of the victory conditions for the game is to unite everyone under a common Alliance. That is, everyone is allied with you. That is one way to win the game, although I have found it to be very difficult. If you choose the cultural / diplomatic side of the game, you'll find yourself trading techs or money between races just to create Peace Treaties, so wars are quickly squashed. ;) Conversely, you could of course always encourage war, and sometimes that's an even easier way of getting an Alliance victory: kill off all the Evil races, and then get the Good races to join up with you. :) Or vice versa. Suffice it to say, diplomacy is done VERY well in GalCiv. It's such an INTEGRAL part of the game, they had to do it right. And they did. The other big factor in relations is how you yourself are. If you're Evil in a galaxy of mostly Good races, you're gonna be hard-pressed to make friends with said Good races. And the converse is also true. However, races of your moral line will typically like you, or at least not be angry with you. Your morality plays a BIG role in who likes you and who doesn't, although it's not too often that any race will go to war with you "just because", unless they feel they can gain from you (i.e. they are a much stronger power than you). One random thing, though: certain events cause random wars, usually because "while ambassadors from A and B sat down to dinner, Ambassador A insulted ambassador B. The result spiraled out of control and into war." Things like that happen, although not often. But, wars are not endless. If neither side is getting anywhere, or if one side is significantly losing, you'll often find it MUCH easier to make peace. Oftentimes, if you're beating them, or at least not losing, they'll come to you asking to make peace, since they don't want to fight anymore. You won't suddenly be all buddy-buddy, but you also won't be hated. You'll just be on poorer grounds than if the war hadn't started.
Not to my knowledge. But then, you shouldn't really need it. It's all VERY simple, very easy to use, and it all makes so much sense. I find myself FLYING through the menus like they were a native language. They're just that good. :)
Always glad to help, especially with this game. I WANT this game, and this company, to succeed. They've done a wonderful job, and I look forward to supporting them for a long time. My experience with the MoO series is very limited (own 1 and 2, although can't play 2 due to mouse issues, for some reason; don't own 3), and even worse with the Civ series (never played a single one, nor do I own any of them), but I'll give the best impressions and comparisons I can. :)
Quote:How does the interface feel?
Godly. The interface is smooth as silk and easy as a slide. I kid you not. It's one thing I just LOVE about the game. It's so easy to use, so NATURAL, I can't imagine it any other way.
Quote:Ships and spies in MOO3 are micro, at least I consider it micro, and most of how they work is not fun.
Ships are not built in the same way they are in MoO3. You don't custom-build your ships; they have pre-set ships that you research through Tech. Everyone has the same ships, so there's no worry about how you should outfit your ships, either. Keep in mind, though, that combat is also very different. But I'll get to that later. As you research through the ships, you CAN manually assign each individual planet to create a ship (micro), OR, you can use the wonderful Governor (which you can also assign to individual Planets, although the default is for ALL planets; assigning to individual planets takes a small bit of micro, but it saves you a ton, since it's still all automated after that ;)) to quickly change your planets Military project build queue. You can have all your planets that are building Star Fighters, for example, switch to building Corvettes, with just 3 simple clicks. (Select Star Fighter, select Corvette, click "Swap". It's that easy.) As for spying, it works differently than in MoO3. There's two sliders, much like in MoO, that you use to control the amount of funds (direct, not percentage-wise) you wish to devote towards a particular race. Espionage is the art of gathering intel on the race. You'll find out things like how their political party is faring, whether someone is paying them tribute to keep the peace, etc. Destabalize is the other option. This one is much more straight forward: you pay to disrupt their colonies, in the hopes of getting them to rebel against their former race, and thus creating a new "Minor Race". You don't steal techs, and you don't sabotage buildings. But you CAN find out intel on them (mostly diplomatic information, but sometimes you'll get lucky with an "Event", saying something like "Our spies have been working with the Carinoids {a Minor race}, and have found out that they have stolen all the Techs of the Drengin Empire. They are eager to trade these Techs with us, and are particularly interested in gaining Star Systems"), and you can disrupt their planets, thus forcing their Star Systems into rebellion and weakening their power (while at the same time giving you a new race to trade with, conquer, etc.).
Quote:While it is fixed in the code patch, you could only see plant names at the closest zoom levels
In all honesty, I can't remember if it displays Star System names in the main screen or not. I think it does, though. I know it does NOT display it on the mini-map, but it DOES display who owns what (through color-coding).
Quote:while you could turn on empire flags to see what kind of influence people had where it still was not a good feedback.
Influence plays a VERY big part in the game, and thus they incorporated it into the mini-map VERY well. Just about everything you could want, from Influence, to Ships and their Destinations, to Production on Star Systems, can be turned on or off on the mini-map via a series of buttons. I always keep Ships, Destinations, and Influence checked on, as it allows me to take one glance at the map, and know exactly where everything is, and what I need to do.
Quote:The game needs a toggle to put the color of the empire around the star system so that you know who the hell controls it.
Each Star System that is controlled by someone is not only color-coded on the mini-map, it also hosts a color-coded Empire Flag that is displayed right on the Star System as you scroll around. There is no zooming required, although you CAN zoom in the game (typically not necessary, IMO), on the mini-map.
Quote:Can you at least easily see who has the most influenc in this area and the neighboring areas without a lot of scrolling and trying to remember, etc?
Through the mini-map, and through the MULTITUDE of interfaces and menus, you can see EXACTLY what you want to, everywhere. It's truly beautiful how well they did the interface, at least IMO. And, players are constantly adding on to the "Wanted Features" list, which is just one more great thing because of the level of ONGOING support the dev team is giving this game. Already I've watched the game improve in several small changes since I got it, and that was only a few days ago.
Quote:MOO3 has a more complex diplomacy system than the previous games, but it somewhat nebulous. It can be hard to tell why someone is happy or pissed at you, and relations can still go from really good friends to a state of war in a turn or two without any real reasons or indications as to why.
This is mostly a non-issue. If someone is pissed at you, you'll know why. When someone demands tribute from you, if you refuse, it ticks them off. Repeated refusals will drag you into a war. If you're allied with someone, and they have a squabble with someone else and end up going to war, they will come to you and say "Honor our alliance and join the war, or we will break the alliance". Stick with the alliance, and you're suddenly at war with someone, even if you were friends with them moments before! Break the alliance, and your once-friends will be very upset with you. One of the victory conditions for the game is to unite everyone under a common Alliance. That is, everyone is allied with you. That is one way to win the game, although I have found it to be very difficult. If you choose the cultural / diplomatic side of the game, you'll find yourself trading techs or money between races just to create Peace Treaties, so wars are quickly squashed. ;) Conversely, you could of course always encourage war, and sometimes that's an even easier way of getting an Alliance victory: kill off all the Evil races, and then get the Good races to join up with you. :) Or vice versa. Suffice it to say, diplomacy is done VERY well in GalCiv. It's such an INTEGRAL part of the game, they had to do it right. And they did. The other big factor in relations is how you yourself are. If you're Evil in a galaxy of mostly Good races, you're gonna be hard-pressed to make friends with said Good races. And the converse is also true. However, races of your moral line will typically like you, or at least not be angry with you. Your morality plays a BIG role in who likes you and who doesn't, although it's not too often that any race will go to war with you "just because", unless they feel they can gain from you (i.e. they are a much stronger power than you). One random thing, though: certain events cause random wars, usually because "while ambassadors from A and B sat down to dinner, Ambassador A insulted ambassador B. The result spiraled out of control and into war." Things like that happen, although not often. But, wars are not endless. If neither side is getting anywhere, or if one side is significantly losing, you'll often find it MUCH easier to make peace. Oftentimes, if you're beating them, or at least not losing, they'll come to you asking to make peace, since they don't want to fight anymore. You won't suddenly be all buddy-buddy, but you also won't be hated. You'll just be on poorer grounds than if the war hadn't started.
Quote:Is the GalCiv UI customizable at all? Some of the MOO3 stuff would be much better if I could change it around a bit so that the stuff I care about is easier to get to.
Not to my knowledge. But then, you shouldn't really need it. It's all VERY simple, very easy to use, and it all makes so much sense. I find myself FLYING through the menus like they were a native language. They're just that good. :)
Quote:Ah well. I think that covers more of my direct concerns, that I hope you can provide feedback on. If not, oh well, you provided a bunch of great information already.
Always glad to help, especially with this game. I WANT this game, and this company, to succeed. They've done a wonderful job, and I look forward to supporting them for a long time. My experience with the MoO series is very limited (own 1 and 2, although can't play 2 due to mouse issues, for some reason; don't own 3), and even worse with the Civ series (never played a single one, nor do I own any of them), but I'll give the best impressions and comparisons I can. :)
Roland *The Gunslinger*