Galactic Civilizations III

1. ClinkinCups

   May 15, 2015

   10

   Now I've been following this game since alpha as a supporter. I've watched it flow and ebb and finally morph into a BEAUTIFUL final product.Now I've been following this game since alpha as a supporter. I've watched it flow and ebb and finally morph into a BEAUTIFUL final product. Here's why:
   
   The Dev's have been nothing but accommodating for us. Listening and taking our idea's from the forums to the project lists. This made us supporters feel like part of a family and i personally know i assisted in the making of this game.
   
   The cinematic of battle mode make me have a "Nerd-gasm" every.single.time. Its fabulous and it has come a long way from its initial stages.
   
   The strategy itself is direct and time consuming. Something more 4x games need today. To wake up in the morning with your coffee and slug away on your immense universe. Struggling to keep your economy going in the midst of a global depression.
   
   The AI are SMART and **** Ive died multiple times from there cunning attacks and alliances against little old me. For anyone saying the AI is not well done. Take a step back and please, Please go look at other AI dependent games. You will see the beauty of Gal Civ 3.
   
   All in all? I love this game. I would recommend it to ANY of my friends. 4x fans or not.
   
   This is the strategy game of the year.… Expand

   • 7 of 23 users found this helpful
2. andre_rossel

   Sep 3, 2021

   10

   A TRUE MASTERPIECE BUT FALL SHORT TO BE A LEGENDARY.
   
   This is a great game, not good; great, the tech tree has so much love just as theA TRUE MASTERPIECE BUT FALL SHORT TO BE A LEGENDARY.
   
   This is a great game, not good; great, the tech tree has so much love just as the races and their playstyles and personalities, it has the best diplomacy system i ever seen. The AI in general is super responsive to your movements. And balancing economy, military and research can be a real challenge. Ideologies are also fun and ads to the game balancing between been consistent and do what its best.
   
   2 things stops this one from complete greatness. First the campaing its crap. Its crap because its too small scale and short to reflect the needs of a game made for civs developing over time on big maps.
   The second it has a meta. One power Ancient its totally broke OP, beats all other by far also missiles with miniaturization beats absolutely anything, just stack power, speed and other mod on small hull to total supremacy. I beat on gifted by research without barely even making contact with other civs. investigated entire tech lines on one turn.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
4. joggy

   May 16, 2015

   9

   Don't fix what is not broken. Guys from stardock kept that in mind and gave us remake of old hit, upgraded in a good way. If you playedDon't fix what is not broken. Guys from stardock kept that in mind and gave us remake of old hit, upgraded in a good way. If you played previous galactic civilization (and if you didn't, you should have cause it's legendary game) you will be right at home here, but you will see little improvements almost in every aspect of the game. Of course there are some technical issues still, unfortunately I don't expect the games of today to come out as 100% finished product. But these are minor things like loading saved game for 1-2 mins on high end rig. What is important is that this game is still fun to play, the "one more turn" syndrome is back and I like it :)… Expand

   • 3 of 10 users found this helpful
5. Mastodon

   Jun 8, 2015

   6

   Thankfully the difficulties I was having getting the game to run properly have been patched.... so I can now give the game a true review.Thankfully the difficulties I was having getting the game to run properly have been patched.... so I can now give the game a true review. Sadly I don't find myself raising the score from its original 5 very much. There seems to be a great platform here to make an amazing game.... but that's all it is at the moment, a platform. Don't get me wrong there is plenty of attractive details.... but compared to Gal Civ II with expansions it feels like a downgrade other than graphically.... even graphically the only real obvious improvement is improved resolution on everything. AI, while improved quite a bit from Gal Civ II is still pretty dumb. Ship builder is great but with an occasional bug or two. Research is pretty cool, actually.... however on default research speed you'll get to the end of the tech tree before the end of a game on larger maps. Speaking of larger maps... the 3 largest map sizes are disabled unless you have enough ram... so if you only have 4GB of ram you won't be able to play those galaxy sizes. Diplomacy is okay.... however the AI begs and asks for money or threatens you on a constant basis. It gets quite annoying and makes diplomacy feel cheap and without diversity. Customization is pretty awesome in this game on almost every level.... however the celebrated race creator is actually a little too short and simple for my taste.... especially considering you are supposed to be able to customize the race's AI behavior but you don't really get that many choices to mix and match with. Honestly I find the fact that some of the reviewers found this feature "too confusing and complicated" quite laughable. The graphics are okay. Sound quality is decent. Auto-Explore/Survey AI is terrible.
   
   Ok ok so overall I feel that this game gets less and less fun after about turn 200 (default game speed). Too many things occur too frequently which ruin the immersion and it's almost like every feature in the game starts off with "wow this is great" and ends with "oh, that's it?"
   
   I give this game a 6 out of 10. Great potential, but it has a long way to go. But as a fan of the series and genre I am really rooting for this one to get to where it needs to be! I hope some day I can redo this review and raise the score :)… Expand

   • 4 of 6 users found this helpful
6. marc5477

   May 18, 2015

   5

   Its a good game, but a little boring and I believe that this is due to "easy mode" economics. One of the biggest challenges in galciv2 was toIts a good game, but a little boring and I believe that this is due to "easy mode" economics. One of the biggest challenges in galciv2 was to balance production, economy, research and approval. Well in galciv3 economy is stupid easy to maintain. Its trivial to maintain positive income even with no economic improvements on planets. Further, production seems to the king of all resources in this game as you can convert production to other types resources (like money or research as you could in Galciv2) but you can increase production much more easily than the other two and you can set up production based planets almost 3-4 times as fast. Since there are so many ways to amplify production, you can easily have a planet with 2x-3x as much production than any other possible resource with their bonus buildings. As a result, my main production center almost always acts as my best research planets (same for money but I never need money in this game)... very disappointing when you consider how much longer it takes to build research planets, one would think there should be a reward for it but nope, you are better off making all production and converting to research.
   
   My only other gripe is the AI. It seems to me that the AI cheats in higher difficulties rather than playing by the rules. I am not sure if Galciv2 was that way but I dont like that because it cheapens a win and a loss does not really feel like a loss since I know the AI is cheating.
   
   Overall a good game despite the above gripes. Much of the old game is in Galciv3 but I really did not think that any of the new additions made the game any better. I think Galciv2 is a better game.… Expand

   • 18 of 22 users found this helpful
7. demondred79

   Feb 23, 2017

   5

   It's hard to put 50+ hours into a game and then give it a thumbs down.
   I've had some good times with the game but mostly it's been either aIt's hard to put 50+ hours into a game and then give it a thumbs down.
   I've had some good times with the game but mostly it's been either a game that was so trivial to beat the AI (early patches), or maddening ones (patch 2.0).....all while playing normal difficulty. I'm glad the devs are constantly improving and evolving the game but I think it has a critical flaw in that it has simply too broad of a surface area on ways to play it, which can easily run the casual gamer into the ground...repeatedly. Ultimately it comes down to a "secret sauce" formula, as seen on countless fan sites, where you are going to lose unless you get a certain minimum amount of objectives done in the first 20 to 100 turns or else you're destined to lose. In other words, the whole game is made in the first series of turns....and the rest is simply a process of going through the motions.
   
   I've played Civ1 through 5, GalCiv2, Elemental, FE, etc.....and damn do I REALLY want to love galciv3 but it's just too screwy of a game that seems to be angling more for hardcore players. I think the game needs to be focused a bit more starting with the overwhelming state of the research tree. Yep, i'm sure that's controversial but it's WAY too broad. As a player I get sick of clicking through 4 trees (sorry but it needs to be 3) and having 12+ different choices that only (for the most part) very incrementally change the game. Research alone forces a player to micromanage, when that's a turn off for a LOT of people.
   
   I could talk forever and give example after example but it's just not worth my time. GalCiv4 will need to start from scratch if it wants to win me and others back. By and large it was too similar to GC2 to start with....but made worse by minutia and formulaic measures in order to win.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
8. Ogbek

   Sep 27, 2015

   0

   Doesn't support steamos despite being a recent game. That alone means I won't buy it.
   
   It's basically just a retread of Galciv II withDoesn't support steamos despite being a recent game. That alone means I won't buy it.
   
   It's basically just a retread of Galciv II with better graphics -- no bad thing, but certainly not compelling enough to buy a game that won't play on a steam machine.… Expand

   • 1 of 12 users found this helpful

See all 63 User Reviews