There's something new to play for everyone this week, it seems. While most of you will be enjoying the senseless depravity of GTA4, there is another game coming out that appeals to those of us that perfer to think just a tad bit grander-and certainly potentially more malevolent-scale.

That game is Galactic Civilizations 2: Twilight of the Arnor. The second official expansion pack to one of the best 4X games made in this modern epoch of PC gaming, Twilight of the Arnor adds tons of new features to the game:

- New campaign detailing the final chapter in the Dread Lord wars.
- The star destroying new unit, the Terror Star arrives
- Unique technology trees for all 12 civilizations
- Unique planetary improvements for each civilization
- New 3D engine powered map editor
- New Scenario Editor for creating highly detailed custom games
- New Campaign Editor for players who want to create their own custom epic campaigns for themselves or to share with others
- New Metaverse Tournaments: Specific Map & Scenarios recorded to the Metaverse with prizes for top players
- New Ship Component: Atlas. Makes ships in a fleet more lethal
- New Ship Component: Fortitude. Gives ships in a fleet have more hit points
- New Ship Component: Driver. Makes ships in a fleet move faster
- Unique weapons per civilization
- Updated Planetary Invasions
- New Enhanced textures and graphics for planets and ships
- New Galaxy Size: Immense (vastly bigger than current galaxy sizes)

Galciv2: Dark Avatar players already know about the huge difference in terms of species differentiation that was the result of the changes in that expansion-each faction really had a strong suit that you had to play towards and a weak area that you wanted to exploit if you needed to conquer and cleanse them from the galaxy. Arnor continues along that path and is really focusing hard on completely differentiating the factions, resulting in some very varied and wild gameplay when you swap from one faction to another.

The game is shipping with a simply staggering amount of editors, as has been mentioned in several places in addition to the list above. The idea is that this is the last hurrah for GalCiv for quite some time, and in order to give the game the legs that will keep it going (and selling, for that matter) for some time they wanted to ensure that the community had everything they need to make sure that new, cool stuff would be constantly coming out.

Metaverse tournaments are what have me really excited. When Dark Avatar came out, I engineered some strategies and was able to get some really good metaverse scores on the Masochistic difficulty level with just large galaxies. It will be fun to compete against other people using the same map and scenario settings, and see who can rack up the highest scores when everyone starts on the same footing.

Game is due out Wednesday, April 30th via digital distribution through Stardock. You can order it digitally and have a copy mailed to you at no extra charge.

Screens:



New planetary management screens and invasion screens. Looks like someone chose core detonation in their invasion!



Note the new techs for the Korath in this trade window.



I can't remember a 4x space strategy game that didn't, at least once, eventually devolve into me building massive hulled doomships and totally eliminating the one remaining alien's empire. The problem is that I then had to send in marines, occupy the worlds, and defend them, or set up an annoying array of influence starbases to convert the planets. That sucks, it's slow and requires huge micromanagement.

Terror Stars fix this endgame problem by allowing you to destroy the star and its systems completely. So if you want to conduct a campaign of rolling genocide with captures of one or two systems to keep supply lines open-purging everything else-you can do that. So awesome!

Note also that Stardock is selling an ultimate bundle pack of the game plus both expansions for $59.95, if you are LTTP and looking to jump in with all the bells and whistles.

Is that ultimate bundle pack DD only?

The additions of the unique techs and improvements = sogood.gif

Will get to this eventually (after gta iv) but its going to be pretty high up in my backlog.

I've had this preordered for months. Held off on playing the beta so that I would be simply overwhelmed by the finished product.

MoxManiac said:

Is that ultimate bundle pack DD only?

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Yeah, it's DD only.

I can't wait to see what kind of stuff they added to the Korx and Thalians. I just hope they tuned down the Korath some, they were to GalCiv2 as the Ming Empire is to the EU games-they would gobble up the other AIs with frightening speed. Getting containment on them was always a top priority, not even the Drengin were as much of a threat.

I've had this preordered for months. Held off on playing the beta so that I would be simply overwhelmed by the finished product.

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Same here. I don't do betas that much because I don't want to play an unifinished version of a game, much prefer to see it in its full glory.

GalCiv II was always a game that was friendly for my laptop... I'm assuming the new expansion has similar requirements as the base game I hope?

Artadius said:

GalCiv II was always a game that was friendly for my laptop... I'm assuming the new expansion has similar requirements as the base game I hope?

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Same requirements, if anything it takes up less RAM now with the engine tweaks and changes than it did previously.

Sounds very impressive. I think I read this expansion adds more content than is in the entirety of the original game.

Edit: I love the engine to this game too. It is SO damned efficient.

This game intimidates the hell out of me. And I own it.

I'm still playing Galactic Civlizations 1 and I think it's finally time to move on to GC2

Is there going to be retail version of Twilight of the Arnor ? I revoked my credit card so I can't get this through digital services .

MidiSurf said:

Is there going to be retail version of Twilight of the Arnor ? I revoked my credit card so I can't get this through digital services .

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You'll be able to get it via Bestbuy, Circuit City, or the rare EBPawnshop that still carries PC games.

Fragamemnon said:

You'll be able to get it via Bestbuy, Circuit City, or the rare EBPawnshop that still carries PC games.

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I know you can get the retail version of Gal Civ 2 Gold at retailers, but I thought TotA was only available via download? Even the CD version from Stardock is supposed to be just a CD, no retail box.

Oh god. I haven't even bought one expansion!

This sounds so delicious... I want it. How can anyone resist Deathstars, really? I mean, they're huge. And cuddly. And doomy.

Gonna see if I can save a few bucks for this.

Takeda Kenshi said:

I know you can get the retail version of Gal Civ 2 Gold at retailers, but I thought TotA was only available via download? Even the CD version from Stardock is supposed to be just a CD, no retail box.

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Let me double check. I saw CD on their website and assumed they were going to do a boxed product.

Yep, you're right:

There are no plans to release the title at retail and discount bundles are available of the whole Gal Civ II saga on the game's website.

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Where do you see the discount bundle for all three games?

ElyrionX said:

Where do you see the discount bundle for all three games?

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https://store.stardock.com/addproduct.asp?PRODUCT_ID=ESD-TGN-W279

I'm thinking of signing for the totalgaming membership. $69.95 for 10 tokens. You only need 8 tokens for the complete GalCiv pack and that leaves 2 tokens which can go toward Sins of a Solar Empire or Space Rangers 2. Anyone have any idea how reliable TGN is?

ElyrionX said:

I'm thinking of signing for the totalgaming membership. $69.95 for 10 tokens. You only need 8 tokens for the complete GalCiv pack and that leaves 2 tokens which can go toward Sins of a Solar Empire or Space Rangers 2. Anyone have any idea how reliable TGN is?

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As total gaming is a part of Stardock it's reliable. I've bought Gal civ 2 and it's expansions, Sins of a solar empire and Space ranger2 from them and it's all good. I've never used the tokens system myself, And just paid the asking price on all those games.

If $70 for 10 tokens seems like a good deal then go for it, I dobut you'll be disappointed.

Almyn said:

As total gaming is a part of Stardock it's reliable. I've bought Gal civ 2 and it's expansions, Sins of a solar empire and Space ranger2 from them and it's all good. I've never used the tokens system myself, And just paid the asking price on all those games.

If $70 for 10 tokens seems like a good deal then go for it, I dobut you'll be disappointed.

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I can second this, totalgaming.net is reliable and your account information will rollover to their new Impulse system without a problem from what I have read.

You might want to hold off a little bit on Space Rangers 2 as they are supposedly going to be distributing the Space Rangers 2: Reloaded here in the US version pretty soon. Though if you did buy it now you would so not regret it, it's like Diablo and Star Control 2 got together and had a beautiful baby. So very, very awesome.

As soon as I'm over Europa: Rome, I am so there.

platypotamus said:

As soon as I'm over Europa: Rome, I am so there.

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I couldn't go more than a weekend with EU:Rome. . There's a good game there, it just needs some patching to fix some of the really, really obnoxious stuff. I thought about giving it a spin with some of the "oh shit fix what Paradox fubar'd!" mods but I figured I'd wait for an official patch anyway since the ping-ponging problem will be somewhat allieviated.

I wish they released Impulse already, I'm waiting for that and the Space Rangers 2 expantion to jump in TG.net. Although I already got Space Rangers 1 & 2 retail but the promisse of translation fixes and no Starforce is too much for me to resist.

Prime crotch said:

I wish they released Impulse already, I'm waiting for that and the Space Rangers 2 expantion to jump in TG.net. Although I already got Space Rangers 1 & 2 retail but the promisse of translation fixes and no Starforce is too much for me to resist.

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You could always try the impulse beta?

http://forums.wincustomize.com/307304

It's not really all that exciting at the moment to be honest.I'll be more interested when they launch properly and start adding more games and apps though.

Fragamemnon said:

I can second this, totalgaming.net is reliable and your account information will rollover to their new Impulse system without a problem from what I have read.

You might want to hold off a little bit on Space Rangers 2 as they are supposedly going to be distributing the Space Rangers 2: Reloaded here in the US version pretty soon. Though if you did buy it now you would so not regret it, it's like Diablo and Star Control 2 got together and had a beautiful baby. So very, very awesome.

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Wow, that is an amazing description for a game, I suddenly want to play it. Does it also match Star Control 2's wit and catchy music?

Minsc said:

Wow, that is an amazing description for a game, I suddenly want to play it. Does it also match Star Control 2's wit and catchy music?

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Well, I meant in a game mechanic/interface sense. There is a lot of zipping around star systems, taking on baddies and blowing them up for loot to sell. There's not much in the way of witty talk and music in SR2, though the text games are fun and the sound work isn't too bad.

Yeah you just sold me on it too. Damn you frag

Seriously, it's a ton of fun. You start out weak and in a puny spaceship, you can then run trade/text game missions to get some cash to upgrade your ship, then you can start doing bounties, and then you start going to systems where there are huge conflicts going on between the two warring factions, killing and looting until your cargo bay is full and getting l33t d00d upgrades and weapons.

The only bummer is the RTS missions, stay away from those when possible.

But yeah, it's fuck awesome.

Kinda sounds like Escape Velocity... which would be awesome.

Game added to "to buy" list.

So.... I don't quite get it. No retail, DD only?

Not that it matters to me right now, I'm not buying any new games until I've finished off the ones I already have. I will get this sometime this year though.

chirp chirp

Is this thing on? So I started the GCII SP campaign for the very first time last night because I've become a little bored of the sandbox game. It's seems to be pretty fun so far, but I wonder if the changes to the game in TotA would affect the OP if you installed over it.... That could be cool but potentially unbalancing.

In the Dark Avatar expansion, you picked during the load whether you wanted Dread Lords or Dark Avatar, so each campaign/rule-set was unaffected. You simply got the one you wanted. I can't imagine they'd change this for TotA, but someone with the game would have to confirm it.

Spruce Moose said:

chirp chirp

Is this thing on? So I started the GCII SP campaign for the very first time last night because I've become a little bored of the sandbox game. It's seems to be pretty fun so far, but I wonder if the changes to the game in TotA would affect the OP if you installed over it.... That could be cool but potentially unbalancing.

Click to expand...

If you're really worried about it, you can just run the old executable for the previous expansions. When DA installed on my machine I still have the original Dread Lords executable lying around and if I wanted to play "vanilla" GalCiv I could do it that way.

I'm not posting much here since the game isn't out until tomorrow. I'll be discussing what I see in this thread going forward after I download it from Stardock and start kicking the tires.

By the way I meant OC as in Original Campaign, not OP as I posted. Damn tired, sleepy brain!

Yeah I just realized that I've been playing the campaign with the DA rule-set enabled. I think I'll finish it off before I buy the new xp.

Spruce Moose said:

Yeah I just realized that I've been playing the campaign with the DA rule-set enabled. I think I'll finish it off before I buy the new xp.

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You're a better man than me-I didn't enjoy either campaign and quit halfway through. Sandbox games are just so much more dynamic and I can't stand the Dread Lord ships/troops, such a PITA.

Better man? Hardly.

I'm only partway into the first one, so I stand just as good of a chance as you of quitting. Heh.

Apparently some guys were working on a Stargate mod that would add/change a lot of things...but they don't seem to have made much progress

Looks like Stardock Central has been updated and the release version is available from what I am reading. I'll download tonight and start playing the Korath Clan, bent on cleansing a medium scale galaxy of all sentient life. Should be fun.

A super-duper full post of the new stuff is available here:

http://forums.galciv2.com/310173

OK I'm jacking this thread for a gameplay AAR. Buh-bye 56K and what not. The following is intended to point out how the game plays to people who don't own it, and to give some hints to newbies or lesser experienced players of the game so that they can go off and have their own crazy interstellar hijinks.

So, let's start out:



Standard settings, medium sized galaxy. All victory conditions on to give the AI maximum winning options, and with tech trading enabled since the game is both faster and more fair to the AI with it on. Also, I'm going to be playing a race that really benefits from tech trades. Nothing contraversial here.



In Galciv, you customize your race by spending points to improve traits. These values compound with the base traits of the race you chose. You can also play a completely custom race. Here is the Humans as the NeoGAF alliance, and as you can see the frat boys over in OT have named our leader.

Spent 5 points in diplomacy, 4 in economics, 1 in morale.

- Super diplomacy trait + max diplomacy from points + base diplomacy bonuses mean that I will have huge leverage to swing deals with the AI.
- Diplomatic win is naturally the first thing I will plan for. I'll pick a couple of allied civs and we'll wipe out everyone else.
- Economic and Morale choices are always good "power gamer" buys if you plan on working your magic through peace rather than force.
- Federalist Party almost always a good choice for a peaceful-aligned race like Humans. +20 is a huge boost to taxation revenue.



Five races on challenging difficultly. Usually I play Masochistic, but with the new stuff, me being rusty I turned it down a notch. Civs are random since I don't want to know going in, as this would allow me to beeline the Good/Evil/Neutral choice earlier than would be fair. Note that in GalCiv, each race has an alignment, and you'll get good diplomatic bonuses if you are of the same alignment. Given that this is going to be a heavily diplomatic game, well, this is important.



Our homeworld. We rolled a 300% manufacturing bonus-4 factories for the price of one!- and a 100% food tile. Earth is very well suited for short term production transitioned to longer term tax and population world. We'll start out with all factories and build markets over them when our colonies and trade revenues are better developed. We'll rush buy a factory on the homeworld in the manufacturing slot to get a huge head start on production.





Sliders before and after modification on the first turn.

VERY important first turn step-increase production capacity to 100%-use all of your potential technology and industrial output. Lower taxes until approval is at 100% for a large population growth bonus. Rebalance sliders for zero military, all science and factory output, balanced such that we can get our next tech in exactly three weeks. If you want military early for colony ships and scouts, I just set focus to military and let the unspent social flow fuel the production. Also, setting military to 1% has a similar effect.



Next, land the colony transport and relaunch it with full settlers. The one you start up the game with does not have a full load of colonists and the new planet will develop slower if you don't land and relaunch it to "fill it up". Going to wait a turn before colonizing since our flagship is exploring a very closeby system. Your second planet is not a huge deal to get going right off the bat, usually it is small and not very valuable. If you use it and discover a class 8-10 on your next turn, you'll be hitting yourself for it.



Three potential star systems toward the center we'll explore with our flagship, gobbling up aNOMNOMNOMalies on the way for cash. Hopefulyl we'll find habitable planets there.
Lasitus has no colonizable planets. We'll head north on the map to explore those systems, and go ahead and colonize mars now. Mars is an uninteresting class 4 planet. Hopefully some three boobed women will spice things up later.

I like to make very small planets like this tech planets, as terraforming tech gets better they get more useful, and they contribute tech in a continuous form and you don't have to wait forever to get them to build ships and waste a slot on a starport. They have low population and growth so money planets don't work well here either.



Factories are building at one every other turn on Earth. That's pretty optimal, until that point I usually rush buy factories.



Skowbo is also devoid of colonizable planets. It's in Arcean borders, so that is one of the races we'll face. They'll make good allies, hopefully.



Paulos has a class 6 habitable planet. Now here comes our first choice in the game, really. Rush buy a colony ship before ion drives are done and limp it out there? Given the situation of the map-only one real potential system left for expansion, realistically, there isn't much choice. I rush build a colony ship for next turn:



What isn't shown in this screen is that Paulos also has a class 15 planet inhabited by a minor race! Right off the start, I find one! A class 15 planet is just too juicy to pass up no matter what, we'll need to take over that as soon as possible. We'll hedge our bets that the AI won't go to war immediately with the minor and the conquest will happen a bit down the road after the colony rush stage ends.



Keep tweaking the slider in the early turns to keep pop growth at 100% until you start to get low and/or your burn rate gets too high. The population boost is a huge thing-you are investing in the future at the time in the game with the biggest payoff.



You can set your ships to leave a planet from a certain grid point around them. Useful for saving turns in a situation like this where we are rushing to the colony.



Vesta has a habitable planet as well, a class 5. That will be target #2, but a rush for a colony ship at this point is overkill. No need. If we don't get it-it's not the end of our empire. We clearly have other options available.



- Ion Drives are in. Time to start working on diplomatic techs and start trading them for military techs from the minor race in the Paulos system.



We get Paulos I. Now we get a prompt for good/neutral/bad. We'll go evil. We can make back the alignment hit (for the Arceans) later, and this sets up Paulos I as a good production world. And what a good choice that was. There's a 300% manufacturing square on it! So now we have an early idea about how our empire is going to look:


Earth - Split manufacturing/tax world.
Mars - Science world.
Paulos I - INdustry world
Paulos II (the planet with the minor) - tax world.
Vesta V (if we can get it) - science world.

Taxes are important. It's vitally important to have an tax base,build it up, and build the tax buildings. The biggest problem people make learning GalCiv2 is that they don't realise that each beaker of production and each unit of miliary/social spending costs 1 BC. You can't keep building tons of new factories and labs without the tax base to support them. IN fact, upgrading your labs and factories will INCREASE your total amount spent in BCs on tech/manufacturing because your are producing more from your labs and factories. Remember this rule, it's not like Civ or other 4X games where upgrade=more shit for free.

Morale goes hand in hand with this-with morale techs, you can raise taxes while keeping approval high. We'll see more on that later.



We have an ascenion crystal in our space. This crystal acts as sort of a "victory point" in Galciv-once you build a starbase on it, you start making your way to a victory. However, all AIs will notice and as you get further along to the victory your relations will plummet and you might have to beat them back while the VPs tick. We won't be going for this win in this game, in all likelyhood, unless we get a really bad split on our races.



Here's a miliary resource right out of our dominion. We'll need to get a constructor out there as soon as our colony ship for Vesta V is done, which will happen after our factories build.



Translators are in. Ahh diplomacy! It's time to use our fancy racial ability to extort the living snot out of this weak race. We'll get Interstellar Warfare from him and some cash for a cheap tech.

As you can see, using the flagship to epxlore and get anomalies is getting my coffers full. Even with the rush buys, I'm still richer now than I was before the game started. Some of the anomalies can be worth 500-1000BC-get as many as you can!



No screens of this, but there is more good news-the Lentz system deep in my backyard (and out of range of Arcean colony ships) has two habitable planets. If we start out with seven planets on a medium map, this should be a cakewalk. Note that I am still running at 100% approval. Pop growth IS that important, even if I am losing 71 BC a turn.

We reach Vesta V first with a new model colony ship with Ion Drive engines. Another victory for the NeoGAF alliance. We are then presented with the following ethical dillema:



Neutral is the best choice by far here.



Sweet jalepeno pepppers in a root beer float smothered in bacon grease, look at this planet! A 300% research square, a 100% research square, AND the bonus we got from our neutral decision. Anything but labs here is a mistake.

OK, I'll lay out my next step of actions in the next post, to step away from the screens and step into the planning!

OK, so the plan is as follows. First, I'll colonize Letnz III, the class 10 habitable tucked into the corner of the map and in my "backfield", if you will. Next, I'm going to claim the military resource with a constructor, then make a couple of scout ships with Ion Drives and start making contact and wheeling and dealing with the other races.

My tech goals goal will be to get planetary invasion, planetary bombardment, and planetary defense 1 so that I can invade the minor while its population is still on the small side (they are at 2.203 billion right now) and not take a huge tremendous hit to my tax base by having soldiering and tech skill far past what the minor has. This will be best done with wheeling and dealing with multiple races and playing their tech off each other.

Once I have that, I will grab trade techs and start trading with teh Aceans to bolster my income. Then comes the terraforming tech needed to get the class 11 planet in the Lentz system in my backfield.

I'll be needing to keep a close eye on militarization levels for the factions as I discover them so that I can ensure that I don't fall too far behind in fleet strength early. One of the keys to diplomacy is to walk softly and carry a big stick-don't make yourself a big target by making enemies and then not having a proper fleet to defend with. We'll see the mechanics of how that works later.

I don't know how Stardock's digital distribution works... once purchased will I be able to download it an unlimited amount of times, correct? Is there a steam-esque service they provide, or do I just keep an account with their website and dl it from there?

JoeMartin said:

I don't know how Stardock's digital distribution works... once purchased will I be able to download it an unlimited amount of times, correct? Is there a steam-esque service they provide, or do I just keep an account with their website and dl it from there?

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Yes, you'll be able to download it as much as you want and on however many machines you want. They have a very small client program (called Stardock Central) to download the product once you buy it (instructions are pretty easy and it is in the email when you buy it via digital distribution). Once it is downloaded, you can run it from the start menu without loading up the Stardock Central program again.

You can use Stardock Central to easily update GalCiv2 as well. It's pretty easy, the only thing I would say is that when you are putting in the license key you get in the mail, make sure that you specify the product you are buying in the drop down box before you enter the key. That threw me for a loop this evening.

Fragamemnon said:

Yes, you'll be able to download it as much as you want and on however many machines you want. They have a very small client program (called Stardock Central) to download the product once you buy it (instructions are pretty easy and it is in the email when you buy it via digital distribution). Once it is downloaded, you can run it from the start menu without loading up the Stardock Central program again.

You can use Stardock Central to easily update GalCiv2 as well. It's pretty easy, the only thing I would say is that when you are putting in the license key you get in the mail, make sure that you specify the product you are buying in the drop down box before you enter the key. That threw me for a loop this evening.

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Awesome. Once I stop being a poor college student I'm getting on this train.

Please keep this updated Frag.

Also, I hope other companies take note... this is how Expansion Paks SHOULD be done.

A new prototype has arrived.

The only thing that I am sort of irked about is the documentation-it's subpar, and giving us at least some kind of ideas as to the new techs and buildings each faction get (and some factions are significantly changed-Thalians, for example, can't build factories out of the gate!) and don't get versus DA would have been really, really handy.

It's my only complaint though. ToA so far doesn't feel like a new game, but it feels like all of the old strategies I used to know don't necessarily apply anymore-a feeling I got when I played the likes of TQ:IT, Diablo 2:LOD, Supcom:FA, and many other top-shelf expansion packs.

Fragamemnon said:

The only thing that I am sort of irked about is the documentation-it's subpar, and giving us at least some kind of ideas as to the new techs and buildings each faction get (and some factions are significantly changed-Thalians, for example, can't build factories out of the gate!) and don't get versus DA would have been really, really handy.

It's my only complaint though. ToA so far doesn't feel like a new game, but it feels like all of the old strategies I used to know don't necessarily apply anymore-a feeling I got when I played the likes of TQ:IT, Diablo 2:LOD, Supcom:FA, and many other top-shelf expansion packs.

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My honest opinion is that Twilight goes beyond any of those Expansions you mentioned. Stardock really showed their love of this game by the sheer amount of content they added for a mere 29.99.

Nice AAR you've got going Fragamemnon. It reminded my of this PC Gamer Blog that inspired me to buy GalCiv2 last year. It also reminds me that I've got a nice Gigantic Galaxy game that needs to be played some more.

A question for you, though it may take some more playing time to answer it: Do the new faction-based techs force you into more limited strategies to be effective? For instance, in DA Earth was always better at a diplomatic build-up into a late game power, while the bonuses to research would help the Altarians get ahead. However, the differences were never so severe that you couldn't try a variety of options. Has that been changed much in TotA?

ag-my001 said:

Nice AAR you've got going Fragamemnon. It reminded my of this PC Gamer Blog that inspired me to buy GalCiv2 last year. It also reminds me that I've got a nice Gigantic Galaxy game that needs to be played some more.

A question for you, though it may take some more playing time to answer it: Do the new faction-based techs force you into more limited strategies to be effective? For instance, in DA Earth was always better at a diplomatic build-up into a late game power, while the bonuses to research would help the Altarians get ahead. However, the differences were never so severe that you couldn't try a variety of options. Has that been changed much in TotA?

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I went through the tech trees last night after I posted this to check out the new changes. I agree with you that it will take some further play to say for certain, but most of the changes that encouraged species-specific approaches often had some tradeoffs associated with them-extra teching time and use of a planetary improvement slot (and hence some reduced specialization of planets in return for the overall bonuses) often were two notable costs. Since teching is the primary new way that the races play out (aside from starting differences, which are somewhat dramatic, see my Thalian example above), you still have wide leverage to use the correct tactic when called for, even if it isn't always the species tactic.

I will say that often the "focus" of the abilities-for example, social/military production for Thalians, morale/influence for Krynn, etc.-often compliments a variety of broader strategic goals as well. I wouldn't worry too much about putting yourself into a "box", so to speak, with the race you choose in terms of how it plays out.

Holy moly, I need to play GalCiv2 again. I may suck royally at the game, but I can see from Fragamemnons' post that I made a sizable number of mistakes.

...

Is the DirectX bug still in there?

I mean the fact that if you have the decimal delimiter set to anything besides the US standard (e.g. in Germany: full stop) you'll have severe graphic problems? I'm talking of missing textures, missing weapon/shield effects, that kinda stuff.

Eh, I'm kind of iffy on this one. Sure, it's a completely incredible game, it was incredible in its base form and became even more incredible with Dark Avatar, so it is surely even better with all this new content. But ... I also remember how easily you spend insane amounts of time on it. ^^;

Anth said:

Eh, I'm kind of iffy on this one. Sure, it's a completely incredible game, it was incredible in its base form and became even more incredible with Dark Avatar, so it is surely even better with all this new content. But ... I also remember how easily you spend insane amounts of time on it. ^^;

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Prepare to spend more insane amounts of time. I'm literally sitting here jaw dropped like in some Looney Toons cartoon.