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A nicely streamlined space 4X game, which hits the right balance between strategy and micro-management.

There’s a lot to like about Galactic Civilizations. It’s certainly the best of the current crop of space grand-strategy games. Publisher StrategyFirst and developer Stardock have struck a balance between playability and complexity which is far more satisfying than their rivals.

GalCiv looks and sounds good. Sure, the graphics won’t blow you away; but they are more than adequate at presenting the information you need clearly. The sound effects are run of the mill, but the music makes up for a lot. The main theme is a clever pastiche of Star Trek orchestral style, and each alien race has a memorable (and, in the case of the Drengin Empire, laugh-out-loud funny) musical style.

In fact, smiling is something that happens a lot in GalCiv. There are many “oh, that’s neat!” moments; and the text accompanying events and discoveries is often wryly amusing. (Though like every other game today, it suffers from poor proof-reading.)

Playing the role of humans in the twenty-third century, you are responsible for guiding your people to victory by cultural, military, or political means. Each of these is a viable alternative, and they are equally fun to attempt.

This definitely isn’t a mainly military game with ‘culture’ tagged on as an afterthought. It is extremely satisfying to build starbases to spread your civilization’s ideas and products with special technologies, and you can certainly win without ever firing a shot in anger.

In fact, the game probably won’t appeal to those who spend loving care creating huge fleets of high-tech spacecraft. Unlike the Master of Orion series, spaceship design is non-existent; simply pick a class of ship and it will be kept automatically updated to your best technology.

I can easily imagine that this would drive some players nuts; I loved it. It frees you up from worrying about nagging details. Those players will also dislike the Civ-style combat between units; again, for me, it led to a fast moving game.

Colony management is similar; just enough management to keep you interested. Your planets can build a unit and a “social improvement” at the same time, with different spending levels set at an Empire-wide level. There is a genuinely useful option to establish different building queues for different planetary specialties: although these are called ‘governors,’ no AI is involved.

Speaking of AI, the aliens are all fully believable and follow their own agenda. Each can be set independently to a differing difficulty level and moral standard, which can lead to some interesting situations. In addition to your main rival Empires (which are the same each game), several non-spacefaring “minor races” will appear in each galaxy.

Trade with them is key to maintaining good relations. (It’s a little annoying that the minor races are all represented by generic symbols rather than getting individual artwork and music.)

Your own moral rating is affected by decisions you make concerning infrequent random events. By becoming good or evil, you can change your standing with the alien races and also influence how your high-end tech tree will develop.

The advancement tree is large enough that you’ll need to specialize early on, but not so large that you lose track of your research goals. Eventually, even the background music and the UI (which is consistently well-designed) will change to reflect your moral status.

GalCiv won’t appeal to everyone. Combat is extremely simplistic; espionage is only a token sub-system within the game. You really need to worry about your popularity if you run any form of government other than an Empire. There’s no multiplayer. You can only be human, although you can modify your starting profile and bonuses in a large variety of ways.

There are a few niggling bugs, though I didn’t find any show-stoppers. (I couldn’t get the tutorial to work properly, the ‘military production swap’ option worked irregularly, and the program didn’t get on well with some of my background applications; a reminder to quit other programs before you fire up a game.)

If none of those problems worry you, then you should definitely look at the game. If you’re new to the genre, this is a great place to start; you should read not only the manual (which contains a few omissions and mistakes) but the helpful guides installed with the game and on the game’s website.

If you’re a jaded expert, GalCiv will seem like an old friend from the moment you begin. Although there’s little new to the genre here, it’s all handled so well that you’ll feel refreshed and reassured that space strategy has a future.

Review by Marc Read.