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`