Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords Review

Back in college a friend introduced me to game that took a bunch of sci-fi races and mashed them all together.  The object of the game was to gather resources, build ships, make trades, and destroy the rival races that interfered.  Each of the races had different advantages and disadvantages.  The game had you playing against other people, taking turns, and then you

The best word to explain the graphics in GCII is clean.  Looking at the overall map you can see nebulas in the background.  While zoomed out, you see all of the objects as icons.  As you zoom in on the map, you can see more details on the ships, stars, and planets.  When you zoom in far enough, you can actually see the landscape of the planets and sunspots on the stars.

The fog of war is ever present on the map, giving a light haze to map in the areas where you don

The music in GCII is very atypical of what you

GCII can be played almost completely with the mouse.  This could be the death knell of the game if the interface wasn

GCII has the typical 4X gameplay you

The amount of replay in GCII is incredible.  Six galaxy sizes from 3×3 to 16×16 are available.  Several different scenarios that change the starting conditions change your strategy in the game.  The Habitable Planets, Number of Planets, Number of Stars, and Anomalies all have five settings, while the Star Density has three settings.  Once you have your galaxy configuration set, you choose from ten preset races, or you can create your own custom civilization.  Then you choose bonuses in certain categories for the race