galciv vs. SMAC

I yearn for the good ol' days of Alpha Centauri. Man, oh, man, just making "Planetfall" and not knowing if Chairman Yang or Lady Deidre would be your nearest neighbor! I'd say Alpha Centauri has more gameplay variability in the early going. I'd also say the GalCiv AI is gonna kick your butt. GalCiv is much more of a wargame, especially later on.

~SDC~

if you like turn based youre gonna like GalCiv. Just note that everything takes place in space, not on the planets.

Based on how you played SMAC, GalCiv might or might not be a perfect fit. Obviously the odds are very good you will like, if not love, it.

1. Did you automate your formers in SMAC?
If yes, GalCiv is more likely going to meet your needs than if you liked deciding whether to build forest or solar collectors 40 times a turn.

2. Did you find the combat in SMAC vaguely unsatisfying? If yes because you did not fully understand the interactions of all the specials, GalCiv might be better because GalCiv is more abstract in terms of combat. If you found it unsatifying because it lacked formations and tactical aspects, GalCiv might not meet your needs either.

If you enjoyed customizing your amphibious probe teams, GalCiv might not satisfy your need to create the ultimate military tool for your specific strategy.

If you like military 4X without extensive trade and economic simulation, I don't think GalCiv would cut it, even if you don't like to micromanage. The big thing about GalCiv is that you have to fund your war machine with more than just a tech path.

Also, if you liked playing the pirates in SMACX because it avoided the race to the good base locations, GalCiv starts as a race and I don't see a way to avoid it. Rather than slow territorial expansion, the lack of territory with contiguous boundaries means the game plays differently.

Another point in GalCiv's favor is that unlike the SMAC/SMACX surface map, where there is lots of movement across terrain to get where you want to go. In space (at least in GalCiv), there are not lots of moves where you have to make path decisions on the basis of fungus or terrain improvements.

The characters in GalCiv seem more like faces on AI, and I am not sure why. For some reason the characters in SMACX seemed more like people you were negotiating with. A point in SMACX favor is that even though there are always 7 players, with the expansion, you never knew who you would face. In GalCiv, you can change all the attributes of the players, but all that does is make the Drengin good or have new bonuses, it does not take on the roleplaying aspect of facing the Data Angels instead of the Gaians, since none of the graphics other than the interface change.

SMAC has a better production value with a great manual and tech tree, slightly better graphics, and excellent voice overs. The SMAC interface is also more polished than that of GalCiv in general. In particular, I think GalCiv still needs a few more hotkeys, map zooms, waypoints, hold commands, pre-battle odds confirmation, post-battle pause and reports, and correcting some small things like not depleting a unit's movement points when you put them on guard/sentry. SMAC also has better waste management with production and research automatically spilling over to the next project, though it seems like GalCiv is planning to catch up in this department soon.

GalCiv has a more competitive AI without too much cheating, although this can partly be attributed to the lack of terrain and unit design that tend to give players too many oppurtunities to abuse the computer opponents. There are meaningful diplomatic interactions that actually affect gameplay, which is an especially attractive feature in light of the non-psychotic AI. The road to victory is more open ended and remains so on all difficulty levels. Tedious end game micromanangement has been significantly reduced as well. You may still have to maneuver 10-20 constructors per turn on a gigantic map towards the end game, but it's nothing compared to the 500+ Clean Super Hover Formers I used to run around with on SMAC.

Overall, I would definitely put GalCiv on a "buy" rating. It's a fun game as is, and it may well surpass SMAC if we see start seeing some more improvements and polishing in the future. There certainly isn't anything on the market that can seriously compete with it right now, and it doesn't hurt that the game retails at $40 instead of $50 too.

Very good analysis Librarian. Now I almost feel like I have played SMAC. I own it but keep putting it off for some reason.

Miquv, there is another aspect you might want to take into consideration that a lot of the players haven't cought onto yet.

This game is highly multi-media MODable. I agree that the diplomacy feels a little too abstract. But what you look up to are BIK video files. Easily swapped out. My little mods in the "Library" reached from the GalCiv homepage replace just two images but help to give the game a slightly differant feel. Imagine how differant theis game could be with new vidios and matching music, that by the way is MP3 format. There are + & -'s to all games. And it takes a while to get your mind around GalCiv but once you do. Its a tasty treat.

RustyBlade



~SDC~

Some interesting points were mentioned (cool analyses Librarian and Za H).

But I sort of disagree on some things... for example I didn't find combat unsatisfying and SMAC is open-ended (economic, conquest, diplomatic, and tech victories not to mention allied ones).

It's also disencouraging to hear/read that GalCiv has worse presentation values than a 4-year-old game

Another thing to keep in mind is where the game's going. I still play SMAC but do so with the latest patch which came like 2 years after it was released or something. So GalCiv probably has plenty of room to grow.

what about UP vs. Planetary Council? I hear you can't propose issues...

The tachs in GalCiv in the most part actually have comprehensible names.

And at least in GalCiv the terrain isn't that ugly red colour everywhere.

miquv,

I did not find the combat unsatisfying in SMAC. In fact, I liked it more than GalCiv because you could look at the unit and see its attack/defense/movement without looking elsewhere on the screen. I also never had the patience for complex unit design and am not a tactical guy, so for me SMAC was perfect. It is just that there were those who felt it was too abstract (tactical folks) and those who felt it did not offer enough help in complex unit design (strategic grognards). I am neither, so stuck on a desert island, I would take GIB [bridge] and SMACX. I hope GalCiv gains the polish to make the list.

In terms of openendedness, I was getting at the fact that SMAC is more openended in a way. It is easier to be xenophobic in SMAC than in GalCiv. If you don't trade/sell tech to your competitors, you won't have much chance. Sometimes in SMAC, you could be on a continent all by yourself and do awfully well without anyone else really knowing you existed. If you are a Yang type, you will have to be more political/economic in GalCiv.

There is lots of talk about why there is no economic victory. In short, it is because the whole game is economic, so no matter if you are militarily inclined, tech inclined, or culture inclined, you will have to master the economics of GalCiv. Did you ever try to lease a hovership from one of four corporations in SMAC?

I think GalCiv does not have the polish of an AAA game . . . yet. I also think SMAC was exceptionally wonderful as a design that suited the game.

If you like "control," SMAC gave you more control over your world. The UP is almost a random event, in terms of the topic raised, but you do have some control over the outcome if you are politically savvy. The random events in GalCiv can be great or awful, but like some martial art, the point of the game is keeping your balance as circumstances change. A frustrating problem for more rigid players. (The SMAC Doctrine:Mobility quote about the arm held stiffly is the key to playing GalCiv).

My opinion is that SMAC is hardly an open ended game compared to GalCiv, especially on the higher difficulty levels. With the psychotic AI and Chairman Yang spewing out infantry units from every possible orifice, there is no practical method to achieve the alternate victory conditions without military dominance before hand or utilizing cheese tactics.

As far as presentation goes, it was icing on the cake for SMAC, and it's not something that can break a game like GalCiv. It's hard to say how a game will be supported 2 years down the road (that SMAC patch wasn't really essential either), but if Brad is able to maintain his fervor of updates, GalCiv is going to leave SMAC behind in the dust for sure. The metaverse may very well revolutionalize the strategy game genre if and when it is operational too.

UP vs. Planetary Council is in favor of GalCiv I think. Both have lots of room for improvement, but at least GalCiv is still being supported and updated. The Planetary Council in SMAC had little impact on gameplay even if you could submit your own proposals. This is very different in GalCiv however, as the decisions you make in the UP can have a huge impact on the game, even if you have no control on which issues will be voted on.

The Council had little impact??!!! not at all... changing sea levels alone can make or break your game (not to mention how the planetary governor gets lots of bonuses)

BTW I just finished a game in transcend with the tech victory (I hate conquests... don't have the patience for them) so it is open ended.

Librarian,

The quote is from Doctrine:Flexibility LOL

Thanks. That is one of the more memorable voiceovers.

This game is a true sucessor to SMAC. If you are a SMAC fan you will probably like this game 2. This game has the best AI I have ever played against. I gotta admit that the Nukes in SMAC are cooler than the TerrorStars *Cough* Death Stars *Cough* of GC are. This game IMHO had much cooler events, and the alinments are just cool. It is much more diplomatic and economic oriented than SMAC is. You can actualy win the game with out ever fireing a shot

miguv,

SMAC has far better presentation that GalCiv. SMAC also has far better presentation that Civ3, Moo3, and every other 4x game out there. I think it's going to be a long time until we see a game that surpases SMAC in that aspect.

That asside, GalCiv is a really interesting merging of a lot of the elements of Civ/SMAC and Moo. From a purely gameplay aspect i've found it to be just as addicting as SMAC. It also seems to flow a lot faster than SMAC most of the time.

SMAC and Galciv are my 2 favorite turn based games. Both are very, very enjoyable.

If you like one, you'll almost surely like the other.

By the way, the SMAC universe is very interesting and detailed, as well. There are already 3 novels and a comic book. I'd like to know more about the Galciv back story, too...


~SDC~

I would have to say that SMAC is a far deeper game.

For example, where colony management in GalCiv consists of settling on a planet with a high 'rating' and then setting items in the build cue, in SMAC, it consists of picking an appropriate building site taking into account the various attributes of the outlinning terrain (altitude, climate, mineral availability, defensibility), you then have to choose where to place your people in order to concentrate on growth, energy, or production, and then decide what to put in the build cue. Managing your terraformers is practically a sub game in itself.

Similarly, the military aspect of SMAC is far more detailed with 3 different types of units (land, sea, air), 2 orthogonal types of combat (regular, and psy), many types of specials (amphibious assault, parratroopers, etc.), terrain modifiers, and zones of control.

The same can be said for other aspects of the game (ie. Social engineering vs. Galciv's governments).

Now I know that some people will argue that complexity doesn't equal depth, and while I agree with that sentiment, in my opinion, in SMAC's case, the extra complexity did equate to more depth.

On the other side of the coin, is the balance issue, and that's where I think Galciv may have an edge. SMAC had a number of balance issues (ICS, Crawler bomb, etc.), and the AI had a few deficiencies. It's still a little too early to say whether Galciv has the same types of problems (although I'm worried that spamming starbases everywhere may be similar to ICS).

Overall, I'd have to say that I think SMAC is a better game, but that isn't an insult for Galciv. SMAC is a difficult game to beat, and Galciv is a fine game for what it is.

I know I've read this elsewhere, but have since forgotten - what is ICS?

I know about "crawler bomb" but I haven't actually used it in a game.

~SDC~

ICS = Infinite City Sprawl

Basically Civ I, Civ II, and SMAC had a design imbalance where founding a new city was equivalent to getting an extra worker (ie. Creating the Settler unit costed you one worker, but then founding a new city would get you a worker in the city centre in addition to another one in your new city). People realized that you could take advantage of this by literally covering the map with as many cities as possible. This lead to a very easy, and very dull, game. Civ III solved the problem by making a settler consume 2 workers rather than one.

Ah, I see your point.

SMAC/X does have some balance with the limits of city proximity, but still... and the AI tends to do it way more than I do. Makes it easy to leapfrog their damned bases with drop tanks.

~SDC~

This is a really interesting topic. For some reason GalCiv made me think about SMAC, and I'm glad to see that I'm not alone.

I think SMAC was the best turn based strategy game ever. But it took me a while to warm up to it. Initially I thought it was just a Civ2 clone and not much different.

After playing SMAC more, I really came to appreciate the beauty of it. It was a fast and combat intensive game. The attacker had the advantage in SMAC, and you had to go on the offense quickly and take over the enemy. I loved it. Just about every single tech advance would give you some sort of combat advantage. And if you could get the airplanes first, then you could truly crush the enemy with airpower (as Saddam Hussein has recently learned).

I don't think GalCiv lives up to SMAC. While SMAC maybe was based on Civ2, GalCiv seems more based on Civ3, and Civ3 wasn't a game I liked as much as SMAC.

My problem with GalCiv is that nothing much seems to happen. You just keep hitting the turn button over and over again. Things move slowly. Ships thake many turns to complete, and maintaining a big standing fleet of ships will destroy your economy with their maintenance costs.

I have found it very hard to win any military victories in GalCiv. I finally one a game at Normal difficulty. It was an economic victory. All I did was fend off off the Drengin, and conquer them by building stabases with Cultural Palaces.

Without military conquests, the game just doesn't have the excitement of SMAC. My only regret with SMAC was the AI. After learning how to play the game well, I realized how stupid the AI was. Part of the AI's problem was dealing with Sea, Land, and Air. Traditionally, AI's have NEVER done well with naval strategy. I can't think of a single game where the AI ever knew how to manage ships very well.

I wish GalCiv had some kind of instructions that told you what all the techs did. GalCiv is really incomplete in this regards. Without a tech tree and explanations about what the techs do, I feel like most of the game I'm shooting in the dark. The makers of GalCiv should be ashamed of themselves for the lack of documentation the game comes with.

The interface for SMAC was definitely far more robust - right now you need to do things like grab a mirror of JavaScout's website in order to have an "in game" tech encyclopedia and tree, very little information is accessible other than what is presented right there on the screen, and there are truly bizarre UI choices made such as having you click right/left for a multi category sort when a drop down would have been my first choice. As has been said, far too many UI buttons need keyboard accessibility, and choices for how the sliders work is truly bizarre. SMAC's UI was Reynold's overly anal retentive child, but very, very polished after the patches, GalCiv's UI is currently clearly the work of a straight up programmer who made sure the user could access each of the game functions via some widget, but wasn't too concerned on just how easy or intuitive it was.

Mechanics I'm not going to comment on like so many. Other than the fact that they're 4X games, the similarity ends there and trying to compare them is really unfair. The bottom line is that while SMAC may have had some deeper aspects (along with the micromanagement to make it so), and GalCiv's mechanics are still in need of some tweaking, I think GalCiv has by far the better overall designed mechanics.

What I haven't noticed anyone comment on too much, and what makes GalCiv stand out along games like SMAC is the *flavor* of the AI. What made SMAC so memorable was the fact that each AI was an individual and behaved differently ("Noooo! Why did I have to land next to the damn Bible thumpers?"). I get a lot of that same feeling here. Both because of the way they behave, and the dialogue written for them, they feel like individuals and you'll immediately have similar reactions like in SMAC when you see your nearest neighbor is someone particular and realise they're ahead on the power charts ("Nooooo!"). That was the biggest problem with CivIII, a more refined game than SMAC by far, a nicer UI overall, better graphics, etc., but no flavor in terms of your AI opponents.

miguv:

I still think the Planetary Council of SMAC was a joke :nosture: By the time someone had researched the necessary technology for changing sea levels I would already have won the game decisively, regardless of map size or difficulty level, and have had no need for it. The same can be applied to all the other council issues such as allowing atrocities or some useless global trade pact. As far as bonuses for planetary governors go, I generally have the Empath Guild 50 years before I even meet all the other factions on a larger map so it's not a big deal raelly. Perhaps this is all a problem stemming from the AI's inability to launch a meaningful military assault on the player, especially if it involves any degree of combined arms. GalCiv has similar problems with unescorted Transport ships and delayed ground invasions, but at least with the simlpe game mechanics, I can forsee future patches to remedy this problem.

padlock:

I think you give too much credit for SMAC in terms of colony placement. Once you realize how the map generator works you can memorize the optimal city placement and just plop down your colonies blind folded. The same thing applies to formers too. Although it was an interesting mini-game early on, it just became a chore to terraform your 200 cities with 500 formers after you memorized the best terraforming pattern.

While I think the land, sea, and air combined arms military was a great feature of SMAC for the player (lots of fun in multiplayer), it was just a complete disaster to the AI. Have you ever seen the AI park a carrier escorted by AAA battleships on your coastline with a deck full of Blink 'Copters and reduce your city to rubble in one turn? I think not. The most challenging part of SMAC was the moral battle I had with myself. Do I play the game to my best ability, or do I handicap myself and not use combined arms so I don't take excessive advantage of the AI?

This is the biggest issue I have with "complex" games. Once you learn the details, the AI just isn't a factor anymore and the game becomes a sandbox in the playground to me. It's still fun, but there aren't any bullys to fight with LOL As in my reply to miguv however, I am not implying that GalCiv has the perfect AI. While at first galnce it is decent at early colonization, it must still learn to use scouting to replace heavy defenses early on and free up more resources for further expansion. There is much room for improvement on combined arms, massed attacks, and sneak attacks too. Yet with all these problems, I can see light at the other end due to the simple game mechanics and the steady stream of updates we have had since release.

The Leader:

GalCiv has a different pace to the Civ series, but I think this isn’t so much a weakness as something players will have to adjust to. If you examine pacing from the viewpoint of activity per play time instead of activity per turn, then GalCiv actually plays a bit faster than the other TBS titles due to some help in micromanagement and less tedious chores, and it plays MUCH faster towards the end game too. As far the military aspects goes, see my reply to padlock above. If you’re hurting for some documentation, check out the FAQs in the encyclopedia section of this website and maybe visit these links:

Javascout’s database:
http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpowdrell/

Azakain’s manual:
http://www.brimstonedragons.net/azakain/

My tech tree:
http://galciv.bsd.st/zai_h/

Stardock is still a small company compared to Firaxis after all, and Brad Wardell certainly doesn’t have the following of Brian Reynolds, at least not yet (that AVault deal was bad press though). Given these circumstances I am more inclined to overlook issues with game presentation and documentation, though I still wish detailed mechanics regarding taxes, spending, and morale could be revealed. Hopefully that thread in the strategy forums explaining some aspects of morale is just a start.

Za H,

You were playing SMAC wrong. Play it with a tiny map, and you'll see how much fun and fast moving the games are.

Librarian: If you want to avoid the initial race, set the planet inhabitability to the rarest setting and take the +15% PQ ability, and play on a Large or bigger map. I'm playing against "Bright" AI, and with those settings, the game was to easy, because even though the bulk of my planets were in the Class 15-18 range, I'd have so many more of them that I'd steamroller the AIs.

As to SMAC, loved the game. Not sure which I like better. Definitely prefer the GalCiv AI, I've had wars in GalCiv that, even though it's a turn-based game, left me feeling as frantic as a certain Starcraft scenario (can't remember the name, it's the one early in the Terran campaign where you have to hold the Terran base for a certain amount of time). I never got that in SMAC, because I always managed to avoid the major wars until I had a significant advantage.

Oh please, I was playing it wrong? You didn't come over from MOO3, did you? Map size hardly matters as the same problems with the AI persists. Park your units on a rocky fungus square and just watch them slaughter your opponents with ease. The AI is simply incapable of using combined arms, and I forgot to even consider probe teams. The only thing playing on a tiny map does is force me to beat up the AI earlier. I liked SMAC, but I had no illusions. Please don't spoil my fond memories of that game by making me talk about its AI.

Bah SMAC has nothing on this game. Galciv is the best game of its kind I played, and I played plenty.