what is the game like?

its a bit ropey at the moment - but it is a beta.

I have only just bought it - at $44 its quite steep but I am enjoying the concept of contributing to the development of the game, the developers really do seem to listen. If you check out this forum, you will see the potential. Also the game philosophy etc is quite exciting. Menu's are quite neat but I don't really like the representation of the universe at the moment - very flat - as are the ships, once I have played for a while I will send in my comments. The ideas for diplomacy and trade are very interesting, technology development is comming along very nicely, but the tactical aspects of combat are very poor at the moment.

Anyway thats my initial impressions. Should you buy it? If you like this sort of slow paced thoughtful space strategy epic why not?

In the end it's whether you get a good feeling or not about it - there are aalso some early previews on Gamespot etc

s

Steevodeevo, you make an interesting observation. You mention that ships and such look flat.

How would you like them to look? Everything in the game is 3D rendered so changing the perspective and such isn't that hard.

One thing I would like to avoid is the isometric look that many games have bone to (i.e. where "north" ends up facing top left for instance). But that's just one guy's opinion.

not sure what you mean about the north ending top left, north should be north - top middle isometric or not!

If the game area was simply tipped top edge away from you, bottom edge towards - rather than direct 180 top down, you could perhaps take more artistic licence and see more 'depth' on the ships and some clever but simple use of shading could (possibly) create the effect that they were 'floating' in space above the board surface.

steevo

The only source for shadows in space is a proximity to a star. Why should we see shadows of ships at all in GalCiv?

Cheers,
Jack

I take your point, but hopefully you get my drift(I new a lobby for graphical changes wouln't be top of the pops!)

The map is an abstract representation - shadows would simply provide a sence of depth and enable the ships to be shown off better. Potentially I suppose it may allow for other graphical features to be implemented that provide info on screen that otherwise would be tough to implement full top down? Happy to let this one go if its sacrilige!

No its a good idea, some artistic sense of depth would give it that 'deep in space' feel. Another idea is to have some of the stars in the background change color or twinkle. But not too many, just two or three per sector....that would add depth.