We all know space is the final frontier but Kirk and company
were all about exploring it, meeting new aliens species and even sleeping with
them. There was nothing about conquering
all of that space and imposing your will on the new alien races. No great intergalactic battles. This is one of the reasons we liked the
first Galactic Civilization so much. Not
only was it a great turn based strategy game but there was none of that
Federation mumbo jumbo to get in the way of creating our own ginormous space
empires. With the sequel to that game
finally starting to appear on the horizon we got to chat with one of the folks
at Star Dock about what we can expect from the upcoming game.
GamingNexus: Can you introduce yourself and
describe your role on the project?
My
name is Brad Wardell and I'm the
Designer and Project Manager on Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. I mostly program the computer AI aspects of
the game and work on general game balance.
GamingNexus: What are the major new
features for the new version of the game? What new feature do you think fans of the
first series will appreciate the most?
Do you have something that you are particularly proud of?
Brad Wardell: The biggest new features
include the ability to design your own starships from scratch, unique
planets/colonies and the new map system, in which planets are part of the map.
Finally, we've added fleet combat
with a new combat system that makes use of different types of weapons and
defenses.
GamingNexus: I noticed you guys have taken a modular
approach to planetary improvements. Care
to expound on this? Also, one of my
biggest complaints with the original game was the feeling that many of the
improvements just weren't worth the
cost to build and maintain. How have you
tweaked the improvements in GalCiv2 to avoid this?
Brad Wardell: I agree and in fact, in
GalCiv I the improvements were just kind of pointless. They just added to the
bottom line on all your planets, rather than having any kind of tactical or
strategic value. In Galactic
Civilizations II, the planet class determines how many usable tiles there are
on a planet. You build improvements on those tiles and as a result, you can
only build a finite number of improvements on a planet. This tends to reduce micromanagement and
introduce a lot of strategic options.
GamingNexus: On to ships and fleets, which
also are getting a major overhaul. For many fans, the ability to customize
ships part by part as technologies improve is a welcome addition. However, I was quite happy with the original,
limited number of ship plans. How will
the new system keep burgeoning shipwrights happy without overwhelming the rest
of us with micromanagement?
Brad Wardell: Designing ships can be a
snap. The player can literally just
click on a ship size and then click on the various items and the game will
equip it for them. That way, people who aren't into the ship design aspect of the game can get
their ships out there with minimum of effort.
But shipwrights can add extras to their ship that cosmetically enhance
the look and feel of their ships. You can spend a lot of time making really
unique looking ships if you'd like.
Moreover,
your ship designs are saved to disk each time, so when you play a new game,
your ships will automatically appear when you get the proper technology
pre-requisites, à la GalCiv I.
GamingNexus: Will there be a full campaign,
a la The Altarian Prophecy? Any hints as
to what might be in store for us?
Brad Wardell: Yes. In fact, it has a dynamic campaign - you can
lose missions and go onto an alternative story.
This story is much darker than the first one and the ending, I think,
will be a bit of a shocker for players.
GamingNexus: Every race in the galaxy is
now available for play. What steps have been taken to assure a balance between the
various races? Will we still have the
race customizability that we saw in the original game?
Brad Wardell: You can still customize
your races like you did in the first game, but this time you can actually
design your own races (what they look like, what techs they start out with,
etc.). In terms of balancing, we've taken steps to make sure that each race has its
own advantages and disadvantages that don't
really alter the gameplay too much.
GamingNexus: One of the best things about
Galactic Civilizations is the support both from and for the fanbase
community. How are you ensuring Galactic
Civilizations 2 will continue in this fashion?
Brad Wardell: Galactic Civilizations II
has much more fan-base support built in.
For instance, the Metaverse stuff is much more sophisticated this time
around, with the player being able to design characters and logon with their
GalCiv account into the game right from the start.
In
GalCiv I players were kind of stuck between modding the game and playing on the
metaverse since the metaverse required the player to have the base data files
and such. This time, the metaverse uses
its own stored version of all the data.
So players can mod up the game completely.
Everything
in GalCiv II is either a .X file (standard 3D model file), a .DXPack file
(DesktopX - free download at www.desktopx.net)
for the user interface, or a .PNG for everything else. The data files are XML. So players could in theory design very
different types of games with this engine.
GamingNexus: Any word on multiplayer?
Brad Wardell: This time we did the
plumbing for multiplayer, but we didn't
actually go through and put in the multiplayer features. It was a tough call, but it was decided that
we would go for a $39.95 price point rather than a $49.95 price point and have
multiplayer as a separate addition later on if there's
sufficient demand. That way, the people
who want multiplayer can get it and those not interested in it aren't paying for a feature they won't use.
GamingNexus: Is there an expected released date?
End of February 2006.
