Which expansion is best to start?

from GalCiv2 Forums

Hello. I played GalCiv 2 a lot, but not the first expansion. I just bought the pack, and was wondering if I'm missing out by planning the current beta of the second expasion, rather than the first?

I don't play through the story stuff, I like the sandbox galaxy games. Is everything active in the beta?

Will I get the Dark Avatar expansion plus more? Or is there enough development that I should start without the beta?

-Scott
4,208 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you have DA now or not? If not you will need it to play TA in any case. I my opinion DA added really great stuff so i it find much better than DL. TA is even a another whole step forward. But it is still beta as not everything is enabled and there may be bugs. Read the beta reports and you can see for yourself. But apart from that all races are active with their own techtree and terror stars are also active.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think you should take baby steps and play DA a bit to get used to the new Super Abilities, extreme colonization, revamped espionage, asteroid mining... Once TA goes live, then step into that.

Two months of playing DA should give you enough of a feel of it's changes to be able to take the next step that TA gives you as all the things I just mentioned in DA are in TA. It'll be best to not be overwhelmed IMHO.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the feedback! I'll start with DA then, get in a couple of long games, then move up to TA. :-)

-Scott
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Start with DA, because if you go straight to TA even in its unfinished state you won't want to go back. I'm actually sorry I jumped on the TA beta so soon as I hardly played DA and it seems like I had to waste my money on it in order to get TA. But having played TA, DA just feels unbearably bland.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Start with DA, because if you go straight to TA even in its unfinished state you won't want to go back. I'm actually sorry I jumped on the TA beta so soon as I hardly played DA and it seems like I had to waste my money on it in order to get TA. But having played TA, DA just feels unbearably bland.
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I feel the same way as I did the same thing. I always used to be able to beat the AI easily on Normal in both DL and what I played of DA, but TA puts up a real fight even on Normal, and I only played Normal instead of Tough for testing purposes. I'm just coming to the end of my best game ever where the Thalan, Altarians and myself (Terran) were the 3 main superpowers with the Thalan just crushing everyone into oblivion and getting surrendered to, in which the Altarians and I teamed up and destroyed them (Altarians held them off while I blew up their stars). Now it's just me and the Altarians in a tense situation as of what to do as I could do 3 of the 4 current victory conditions now. This is what TA can do.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would say that DA is one or two levels harder than DL. I'm expecting the same when comparing TA to DA (haven't played TA yet). Just seems to work out that way. In any case, I would imagine jumping on TA as a noob would be a bit overwhelming. I thought DL was a fairly complicated game first time I played it. TA would seem to be over the top. Fortunately, the expansions always leave the original game intact and if I understand the prequisites correctly, you can always fall back to DL to learn the basics since both expansions require it. Though it doesn't matter for me because I already have all three key codes. I've certainly got a lot of mileage off both DL and DA so far.