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So with the third game coming and the games being on sale I had to get them on steam to try it out.

I was playing the campaign on normal which felt pretty weak as far as difficulty goes until the dread lords came. The first mission where I fought them and took a world I tried going for attacking fast and attacking their main base. However during the last fight against the dread lords or supposedly the last fight I basically was getting swarmed by them. I didn't give up and instead realized all their ships only have movement 6. I adjusted and made my ships faster than their's by a lot. They also kept very few and crappy ships behind on their planets so it was really just a matter over hit and run with super fast battleships and troop transports as weird as that might seem. However I needed to keep my sensors high so that I could see them a mile away and also have a really good life support system on each ship so they could move very far away from my main bases. The end result was a long stalemate for hours with some successes until finally when I got back to it I managed to weaken my opponent enough with capital ships that I could make some beachheads on their main four planets. I then take time capturing, losing and re-capturing some of them but never losing the beachhead until finally I take all the planets and instantly win.

It took many hours spread over a couple different playthroughs in two different days but I won and I felt good about it. Maybe it's embarrassing to say so since it was only on normal but for the most part I am very much a noob with 4X strategy games and Galactic Civilizations in general.

Currently I'm defending the arceans against the Yor and the Drengin attack with our alliance buddies. Not sure how that's gonna end story-wise. As far as the game goes however the Yor and Drengin are total wimps in comparison to the Dread Lords. I don't think I ever lose a fleet battle against them. What a bunch of pansies. You see compare that to the Dread Lords which win pretty much every battle you face them if not every battle and you understand how pathetic the Yor and Drengin are in the campaign.

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In a normal custom game I think the Yor sound like fun. The super slow speed aura their influence gives to all opponents is really, really annoying and makes me want to reach out and punch them in the face even if I break my hand doing so. All my awesome movement gets reduced down to 3. I hear warp bubbles might solve that problem but still it's really stupid.

I hear torians are pretty much broken though but I only heard of stories. If the game ever had a multiplayer mode people would probably scream at them to nerf torians. The reason being if their happiness is at I think 100% they reproduce super ungodly fast. Then all you have to do is colonize everything and as long as they're happy they re-populate way too quickly to be stopped. I'd figure even ground invasions might not matter if there are enough of them. Then happiness is easier to maintain with a low population and they'll just reproduce super fast all over again. They sound like cockroaches. You just can't get rid of them.

I'll try checking out the other factions. I'll see what unique things they each bring. Currently only a few really interest me. Perhaps when I learn more about each I can find who I like most and least.

I was really looking forward to the second one, played it heaps, but eventually gave up when I realised that no matter what I did my galactic rating would go down every turn, even with all the population-friendly options turned to max, and 0% taxes and the whole lot.

At that point it felt too artificial (even when I'm being a paragon of popular support, I'm still losing support), so I gave up.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I was really looking forward to the second one, played it heaps, but eventually gave up when I realised that no matter what I did my galactic rating would go down every turn, even with all the population-friendly options turned to max, and 0% taxes and the whole lot.

At that point it felt too artificial (even when I'm being a paragon of popular support, I'm still losing support), so I gave up.

That doesn't sound right, did you have influence trying to hit your territories?

Currently I'm at the mission where you defend earth. The previous mission I had to get to a planet. I did so by only colonizing it without needing to invade the planet since no army took it. I fought 3 separate troop transports from the dread lords but the 3rd one got one of my planets. As I said it was risky but I just took a fast transport and colonized the planet with the arnor device.

The mission before that with the drengin and the yor fighting around the arcean empire was pretty easy. I find it annoying how despite how much *ss I'm kicking my side is getting thrashed in the storyline of the campaign. How is that possible? Did you not see me make the dread lords look like little b*tches and make the yor and drengin look infinitely worse? Ugh.

I will say I do like customizing ships now. It's also nice to see certain options are really good depending on who you face or at least in the campaign.

Maybe I just don't give my populations much in the fertility skill but when I play the actual game I find fertility facilities to be super needed. That way I can get my population up quickly and then build markets to tax that sh*t hard.

Still a noob here but it can be a lot of fun playing.

I like Gal Civ II more than Civ V actually. I dunno, it just feels wrong that in Civ V; World War 2 only takes six turns.

I also really like how Gal Civ does not take itself seriously at all.

The campaign for GalCiv2 was just silly... I could never beat it without cheating. Maybe I didn't grasp a fundamental part of the game, but the Dreadlords were just crazeballs hard to beat.

Loved the game though, so many hours spent playing it.

 djones520 wrote:
The campaign for GalCiv2 was just silly... I could never beat it without cheating. Maybe I didn't grasp a fundamental part of the game, but the Dreadlords were just crazeballs hard to beat.

Loved the game though, so many hours spent playing it.

They are very specific with their weakness. Usually but not always they have beam weapons and beam weapon protection. I think they also have some anti-missile protection or something on some guys. They are fairly fast but if you are super fast you can recruit ships, flee them to group up with other ships and then get enough to attack a few poorly defended worlds. They also take time to set up on a new world so their main starting bases are the most important for producing military units and their hardcore super elite high tech armies. They generally are very powerful to the extent that you're probably just better off out-running them, grouping up and attacking their small garrisoned home worlds where they're most vulnerable (because they're stupid). Also it's usually much easier to hit them hard and fast before they gain momentum. They become really hard to stop otherwise.

I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only person having problems facing them. That said I find they're pretty easy to take planets from during ground invasions. Against other armies they are usually very heavily populated but against the dread lords you can probably take a world with just one transport and maybe one good invasion choice.

I'm hoping that GalCivs3 doesn't make custom races too hard to make look unique.

In GalCivs2 you just needed a couple .png files... not sure about GalCivs3. The Civs series has the same problem, makes it annoying and far too intensive to mod the game for casual players.

The trailer is pretty cool. Has anybody played the alpha for the 3rd one yet? Also any idea of when it will reach beta and finally the finished version. I'd rather not pay 100 USD for a game that's in alpha. There's a lot more finished games out there with more stuff for cheaper Also seems kind of lame that you're almost a game tester except that you pay them 100 USD instead of get paid to play the game.