Galactic
Civilizations
Game
Mechanics
Summary
Galactic Civilizations is
a strategy game that takes place largely in space in the 23rd
century. The player
must guide mankind by making strategic decisions that include
warfare, diplomacy, economics, manufacturing, and trade.
Object
The object of the game is
to unite the galaxy under one rule. There are multiple ways to
accomplish this:
Conquest
– Using massive military might you conquer the other races.
Alliances
– Through diplomacy, you persuade the other races to unite
together.
Economics
– Using massive economic power, you coerce the other
players to accept your rule
Technological
– Over thousands of years, eventually someone is going to
evolve to the next level. All other races will gladly unite with
you to achieve
that level with you.
Random
– Once in a very very great while, there will be random events
that will bring unique ways of winning the game (example: you
discovery
a way to evolve to the next dimension of existence by controlling
a
monolith that exists on 7 planets spread throughout the galaxy,
control
all 7 planets and you win).
…In the
Beginning…
Players create a character
that helps determine what their civilization is going to be like.
The difficulty level determines how many points the player
gets and how many points the computer players get to distribute to
their character. Players can put points towards navigation,
research, economics, diplomacy, warfare, espionage, or production.
Each point is a 10% bonus towards the particular stat.
Additionally, players will
choose their political party which will provide additional
configurablity:
Federalists
– gives 1 points toward wealth creation, lose 1 point in
prestige
Populists
– gives 1 points in morale, greatly increases the rate
population
becomes angry at high taxes
Socialists
– gives 1 points towards keeping people unhappy due to high
taxes, lose 1 point in production
War
Party – gives 1 points to military units, lose 1 point in
diplomacy
Pacifists
– gives 1 points to diplomacy, lose 1 point in military units
Technologists
– gives 1 points to research, lose 1 point in tax income
Neutral
party – no points either way
So
after choosing what type of game you’re going to play (single
player, multiplayer, etc.) the second screen is the character
creation. Once the
player hits the “..Next..” button
you are taken to the player setup screen. On this screen, players
set up who they are playing against. It also has a small chat
screen available during multiplayer.
Players can decide the
intelligence and moral alignment of their opponents.
The smarter the alien race is, the more parts of the SDS/AI
the alien race gets to use in creating its strategy.
The moral alignment has a lot to do with how the race will
behave. Do not
confuse alignment with aggressiveness.
An evil race may not be aggressive at all, it just means
they will have no scruples in what they do.
Also on this screen is the
size of the galaxy. The Galactic Civilizations galaxy can range
from tiny (only a few sectors) to gigantic (hundreds of sectors).
Multiplayer games will typically involve tiny or small galaxies
since those games can be finished in a single evening. A gigantic
galaxy will take months to play out. The game mechanics change
dramatically depending on the size of the galaxy too.
The sizes are: Tiny,
Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gigantic.
To boldly go
Each side starts with one
planet and a single colony ship. From this planet, the planet,
players can build more colony ships as well as scouts and
improvements to the planet that boost morale, productivity,
technological research, prestige and more.
Players will know roughly
where other stars are located but will not know where habitable
planets are. They will need to explore the galaxy to find these
habitable planets are and colonize them. They will also need to
remember that the other races are attempting to do the same thing
so time is of the essence. There
is also a general fog of war in the game but it is done in a very
unique way. Star ships that have come within sensor range can be
tracked even when they leave sensor range. The longer they are out
of sensor range (time wise) the greater the chance that a given
opponent will no longer be able to track them.
Up to six color coded tiny dots appear on the bridge of the
ship to indicate which races can track that player.
Star Systems
On the main map display,
you will see a sector and it will be filled with stars and star
ships. By left-clicking on a star, the right side display will
change (the star map and graphs windows will change) and show a
solar system. There are up to 5 planets in each solar system
(actually there can be dozens of planets but any given solar
system is not going to have more than 5 significant planets in
Galactic Civilizations as utterly useless planets are simply not
displayed). You will
also see what star ships are in orbit of planets in the solar
system as well as see some basic information on the star system
such as what kind of defense modifiers are in place and free
resources. Free resources comes from uncolonized planets and are
therefore controlled by the local star system’s government (not
the federal government). Under
an imperial government (what you start out with) these resources
go to waste. But in the more advanced forms of governments, each
star system can assign these resources towards military, social,
technology, or morale building projects. By
default, the resources go towards improving the morale of your
people in the advanced types of government.
By double-clicking on a
star ship (or single clicking and choosing “leave” from the
bridge) the star ship returns to the sector map.
By clicking on a planet,
the player goes to the planetary management screen.
These worlds
Each planet has two
particular ratings to be aware of.
The first one is how habitable the planet is. Galactic
Civilizations does not get into the minutia of whether a planet is
mineral rich or good for farming. There are twenty planet classes.
A class 15 planet or above is considered Earth like.
Any planet above a class 10 can be colonized. Planets below
10 can’t be colonized but their resources, along with any other
uncolonized planets in a star system add to the resources
available to a planet. Good
planets are rare. There
is also a class 30 planet which is extremely rare.
The second rating is the
prestige rating of a planet. Some players may take issue of having
a second rating like this but any student of history knows that
propaganda value is not necessarily firmly rooted in reality. When
it comes to negotiating with others or forming the United Planets
it isn’t population, it isn’t wealth, and it isn’t military
power that determines your prestige (these factors are calculated
into your overall prestige value to a degree) but instead the
prestige level of planets. Some planets are worth more than others
in prestige due to their location, resources, beauty, and other
political reasons. Players will be able to enhance the prestige of
their planets through building improvements.
The planets themselves can
build a military project and a social project at the same time.
Moreover, players can build galactic achievements here as well. A
galactic achievement may only be built on one planet per side.
Additionally, there are galactic wonders which only one side can
build. To speed up
production, your entire civilization can contribute to the
construction of ships or improvements via your treasury. If you
don’t have enough money, you can borrow the money to get it done
in which you pay the money back in small sums per year with some
interest.
Beyond prestige, the other
issue players need to keep an eye on is morale. Morale represents
your approval rating. If it falls below 30%, the inhabitants may
cause uprisings or in dire situations rebel or even switch sides
if bad enough.
Social
Projects/Wonders/Super Projects
As previously mentioned,
planets can build both star ships as well as social projects. Each
project can improve a given portion of your planet or
civilization’s abilities. These include:
- Industrial
Improvement – how much your factories will improve.
- Morale
Improvement – how much happier your people will become
- Economic
Improvement – how much more money it will allow you to bring
in.
- Research
Improvement – how much more research that planet can
contribute to your civilization.
- Defensive
Improvement – How much ships orbiting your planets will gain
in planetary protection when attacked as well as improving
your ground defenses from invasion.
- Military
Improvement – how much star ships built on this planet will
be improved over the base type.
- Prestige
Improvement – This will improve this planet’s prestige
rating.
Planetary Details
You can check the nitty
gritty details on all your planets if you so choose. By clicking
on the “details” button, the player can look at the following
pieces of information:
- Planetary
Ranking in terms of Production, Research, Economy, and
Population as compared to the rest of the galaxy.
- How
important this planet is to your civilization.
Display me the money, Human
The domestic policy screen
allows players to set their tax and spend rates for their
civilization. Unlike other games, Galactic Civilizations allows
you to go as far into debt as you would like.
However, each year you are in debt increases the
unhappiness of your citizens which affects your civilization
drastically.
The tax rate can be set
from 0% to 100% and represents the percentage of your people’s
incomes that you wish to tax. The higher it goes, the more unhappy
your people get. Your political party can lose seats in the senate
(if you are a democracy or federation) if you lose the will of the
population (more on this later).
Typically, going above 33% is where people start to get
really mad in Galactic Civilizations.
Politics and Elections
Once your civilization
attains interstellar diplomacy or federation, players will have to
keep an eye on their approval rating. While the player has been
elected El Presidente for life, every 20 years an election is held
and the various political parties try to take control of the
Senate.
When your party has
control of the senate, you receive the benefits of that political
party without any of the negatives (i.e. if you’re a Federalist
and your party controls the Senate then you get an additional
point towards economics without the down side).
But if another party takes control, you get only the
negative side without the positive.
Additionally, when you try
to declare war, the Senate will vote. Depending on your political
party, getting that vote through could be more difficult.
Guns ‘n Butter
There are 3 slider bars on
the domestic policy screen that determine where you spend your
money. These 3 sliders represent:
Military
Spending – how much of a priority building new ships is
Social
Spending – how much of a priority building planetary
improvements is
Research
& Development – how high of a priority researching new
technology is
Governor Management
Also on the domestic
policy screen is the ability to set up what you want your
governors to do. There are two types of governors – military and
social. The military governor will assign planets that you’ve
instructed governors to manage for you to different military
projects. You can, for example, instruct all the planets not doing
anything to begin building battle ships or all planets building
scouts to build freighters and so forth.
It’s a powerful yet relatively straight forward way of
running a large empire.
The social governor is
nearly as simple. Realistically, many Galactic Presidents will
want to build the same sorts of projects in the same order on
non-critical planets. The
social governor is told what projects to build and in what order.
Those planets will then automatically do just that. It’s a great
way of managing a large empire where realistically only a few key
worlds are your focus and thus you avoid being bogged down in
having to micro manage all your minor worlds if you don’t want
to.
Type of Government
Finally, the domestic
policy screen allows you to choose your form of government. At
first, your government is “imperial”. What this means is that
your home planet (usually Earth) controls your expanding empire
directly. Colonies are just that – colonies. As time goes on,
this mode of government is shown to be less and less effective. To
hold together a huge interstellar civilization you will need to
explore other types of government since a planet with 9 billion
people half way across the galaxy is not going to want to be
micromanaged from Earth (Governors aren’t even available until
Interstellar Democracy is researched).
Interstellar Democracy
The
first level up is Interstellar Democracy. It allows governors to
take over the planets if you choose and even if you do not choose
governors, it still allows for much more local control over parts
of the planet that you are not really concerned with on a galactic
scale and thus allows for your planets to become more populated
and more efficient.
Interstellar Confedration
The
next level up is Interstellar Confederation. It greatly improves
your productivity and population caps on planets. The downside is
that now there is a Galactic Senate and your political parties
really kick in. You will have to now keep in mind how popular you
are with the other planets or else your political party may find
themselves not in control of the senate which has all sorts of
negative issues.
Interstellar
Federation
The final level is
Interstellar Federation. This is the ultimate form of government
in Galactic Civilizations. The down side is that it gets harder to
control the senate.
Bear in mind,
while losing control of the senate means your civilization gains
the negative aspects of whatever political party is in control,
this doesn’t impact your civilization dramatically, it’s more
of a thorn in the side.
Technology
On the technology screen
you can see the status of your research projects as well as choose
new projects to research and keep track of how you are doing
compared to your opponents.
There are hundreds of
technologies available to research in Galactic Civilizations.
Depending on your moral alignment, these technologies will
change.
The amount of resources
given to researching technology largely depends on what priority
you gave it on the Domestic Policy screen.
Researching new
technologies allows you to create new types of ships,
improvements, research new diplomatic options, new trade
approaches, as well as new forms of government.
Players will be given a
list of technologies that they can currently research as well as
be given a status on their current research project. Research
projects can be queued up as well.
In addition, if you pay for general espionage, you can keep
track of how your opponents compare to you technologically in
terms of Military, Industrial, Social, and Medical technologies.
There is no bonus for being in 1st other than
the knowledge that you’re ahead in a given area.
Diplomacy
On the foreign policy
screen, you will see your relations with the other players as well
as be able to set up your espionage, trade relations, aid, and
destabilization policies.
Your relations with the
other races range from War to Alliance.
The values in between include:
…Close…Warm…Friendly…Cordial…Neutral…Wary…Cool…Angry…Hostile…
By clicking on the
“speak to..” button by a given race, you enter the diplomatic
screen which will provide you with multiple options which include
everything from trading technology to negotiating an alliance.
You can also use diplomacy to bully opponents into doing
what you would like them to do such as giving you planets (and
vice versa) in exchanger for peace.
Players can also quietly
aid players in a sort of “lend-lease” type policy. Click on
“aid” and choose which player you want to give aid to and then
move the money or military aid slider over (or both) to give them
that aid. Often
times, you will see an improvement in relations but often times it
is not appreciated too. Use aid to help others help you. It’s
a great way of getting someone else to fight your battles.
The destabilization button
will allow you to spend your resource trying to make a given
opponent’s people unhappy. Productivity is directly related to
morale. Lowering an opponent’s morale therefore affects his
productivity. In addition, if his people become unhappy enough,
they will rebel. It
isn’t completely safe though, there is a remote chance you can
get caught and the longer you do it, the more likely you will get
caught which can have a very negative impact on your relations.
The espionage opens up an
entire set of new options for you. Through espionage you can learn
more and more about a given race until you finally can begin to
steal technology from him.
The more resources you put
towards it, the faster your information gathering will occur.
At first, you’ll learn things like the history of a given
race, then their anthropology, then their economic statistics,
then military statistics, and finally you will begin to see
technology being taken.
The trade relations button
allows you to punish a given race. You can turn on an embargo from
here on a given player to punish them for not doing what you want
them to do.
The United Planets
The single biggest
addition to Galactic Civilizations from the OS/2 edition from
years ago is the introduction of the United Planets.
In
the fictional stories that make up the Galactic Civilizations
universe, the United Planets are a crucial portion of the stories.
They are, at last, brought to Galactic Civilizations.
Here’s the way they
work:
As you work your way
through the technology tree, you can eventually get to the United
Planets technology. Once
you have researched this, you are automatically part of the UP
organization. Being
the first in it can have massive advantages as only members get to
vote on interstellar issues.
Non-members must abide by
the decisions of the UP or face losing all their trade income
until the next meeting occurs (every 100 game years).
Members of the UP who choose not to abide by the decisions
of the collective body not only lose their trade income but may
face war as they will take a dramatic political penalty.
Votes in the UP are based
on each side’s prestige points. Prestige is based on a base star
system value multiplied by the star system’s population
multiplied by any improvements made to that star system.
Prestige has no other real value other than for voting in
the United Planets.
Issues can range from
mutually beneficial issues to issues that only aid the top 1 or 2
or 3 races in the game at the expense of the “little guy”.
For instance, the UP may
vote to give a small power some planets at the expense of a large
power. Everyone will vote and everyone must abide by the decision
or face the consequences.
Another example would be
for the elimination of all military vessels. If you have
a large military, you probably wouldn’t want that to
pass. Of course, if you don’t abide by it, you could face not
having any trade income which would make it more difficult to
actually pay for that military power.
The funny thing is, the
one winning the game by every other standard may not necessarily
have the most votes. Hence a smaller state that has put more
effort into prestige could potentially dominate the proceedings.
Of course, a super power could potentially choose to ignore the
United Planets. Loss of trade is a two-way street and if you are
powerful enough, you can afford to ignore threats of sanctions or
military intervention.
Combat
Military action is one of
arms of foreign policy. If diplomacy does achieve your strategic
aims, then military might can often be used to achieve what you
failed to get at the bargaining table.
Combat is Galactic
Civilizations is simple. Two ships intersect, there is a very
brief battle and one of them is destroyed. There are no
“ranged” attacks and no “fleets” in the traditional sense.
Two ships simply intersect and one of them is destroyed. The other
one may take damage as each ship has so many hit points allocated
to them. While this
may seem simplistic, in actual use it plays very well as there is
no issues with “unit AI” and there’s no such thing as
“rushing” since even a unit not doing anything will
automatically defend itself and swarms of ships do not give any
advantage to the attacker.
Galactic Civilizations
purposely highlights the importance of strategy over tactics. The
player who has created the stronger civilization is going to win,
not the player who sends a mass of ships to attack at the right
time. Military is
just one factor (an important one) in the course of history.
..more to come.. |