Galactic Civilizations interview
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
I just did an interview for a UK magazine. Here's what I said. Please do not repost this.
> > GALACTIC CIVILIZATION
> >
> > 1. The original GC is about six years old now. Why have you gone for a new
> > version and what makes GC so interesting!
The original GalCiv was released in 1994 and developed in 1993. Hard to believe it's taken that long. The main reason we've wanted to make a new one has been advances in hardware allow us to create a much better computer AI. In most recent games, graphics have been the large focus of the development. But for us, particularly on GalCiv, we want to create computer players that have a truly organic AI. AI that really takes the time to look at all the variables it faces and put together a compelling strategy that isn't just effective but is intelligent. We also want to translate that into how the computer players interact with the human player.
> > 2. What have the team or individuals working on GC done before?
The Galactic Civilizations team (the new one) is a superset of other teams. We've combined the original GalCiv on OS/2 team with the team from The Corporate Machine/Entrepreneur as well as incorporated the entire LightWeight Ninja team. The music is being done by the same people who did the Empire Earth music and many of the cinematics are being done by Spin who has previously focused on movie special effects.
> > 3. Who are you aiming this out? Are you going for the hardcore player and
> > does it not cause a problem in missing out a large slice of the market?
There haven't been many turn based strategy games made in the past few years. Real time games have seemed to have captured the imagination of developers. We think there is a considerable market for people who want an intelligent turn based game that is friendly enough to use that it will appeal to casual gamers.
> > 4. Explain the background story. Have you rewritten it? How many of the
> > original team is involved?
The original GalCiv was pretty much written by just me. The sequels on OS/2 were done by myself with some help from Mike Duffy who is involved with this one too (and in fact, Mike Duffy had left Stardock to pursue new things and has rejoined our team for this specific project). But now we have a real art staff, an engine team, and other coders to make it a much better game. I tended to not like to pay much attention to visual details which made the OS/2 version of GalCiv kind of "hackerish" at times. With this team in place, I can focus on what I do best - computer AI, design, and economic/political simulation and the rest of the team can focus on what they're good at.
The background story goes something like this:
It is the late 22nd century and human kind has recently been contacted by other sentient life forms in the galaxy. The means of transportation in the galaxy has been via star gates. A star gate is an immense city sized thing in space that ships enter and are warped to a second star gate in another part of the galaxy. For tens of thousands of years, major alien civilizations have been sending probes into the galaxy and mapping it out and making contact. But since star gates are so expensive to build and maintain, trade and diplomacy is pretty restricted. The good side of star gates is that they keep war from happening since all one has to do to protect themselves from invasion is turn their side's stargate off. And so it's been this way for the past 100,000 years or so in the galaxy as space faring races such as the Drengin Empire, the Arceans, and others have expanded their knowledge of the galaxy if not their actual hold.
Well, the humans come along and we're different. We're reckless. We try new things without looking at the consequences. And humans come up with Hyperdrive. Hyperdrive allows a single ship to warp itself to different parts of the galaxy. Great news for trade and for interaction but bad news for warfare. And even worse for humans -- we don't actually know where the home planets of the other races are and we certainly haven't mapped out the planets in the galaxy yet (outside what's reasonably close to Sol).
Hence, the beginning of the game covers a mass push to colonize all the good planets (and lay claim to those sectors) they can. Once that is done, things get interesting. A long standing organization was created called the United Planets and it lays down laws that are voted on by the members. One can ingore those laws but no one will trade with a civilization that doesn't belong to it. Different races have different levels of influence on the United Planets votes (based on population and influence points in different star systems). The laws that come up for vote can cover everything from trade to legal/illegal technologies and ships.
Additionally, diplomacy and trade really begin to heat up as each side vies for either domination of the galaxy or at least survival in it (or to at least keep what it has).
Wars can break out and diplomacy plays a key role as players who aren't directly involved in the war can provide weapons and materials to friendly civilizations to fight. Or if you're directly involved in a war, you'll have to decide carefully what you do with your resources - military production versus researching new technologies versus social improvements. It's a delicate balance.
Eventually the game can be won when someone conquers all, creates a united galaxy (all are allied), or researches technology that allows their civilization to transcend life as we know it (very rare since that would require playing a very very long time).
> > 5. Explain the combat system. Is it based on ratings where each hit
> > depletes these ratings?
Very straight forward - you have Attack, Defense, and Hitpoints. There is a new variable called experience points where the mroe you have, the more hitpoints your ship can get when it's healed.
> > 6. How big is the playable Universe? How much will it be possible to
> > control at any one time?
You can set the galaxy level at the beginning. It can be as small as just 9 sectors (good for a game that will last an hour) or as big as 400 sectors (months to play).
> > 8. What happens if a planet is left to its own devices for a period of
> time?
Depends. You can set a star system to have a governor which will tell the planets what to do. You assign the governerors directly as to what they have to do (there's no AI involved - nobody trusts governor AI). Generally the planets don't need your interaction to do things but you will need to interact with them in order to effectively develop them.
> > 9. Explain the interface and controls. Are you told that something is
> > happening in another part of the Galaxy? How do you keep an eye on all of
> > your "properties"?
Your main view is of the sector map which you can scroll around like in most strategy games. You have a button at the bottom that will list all your star ships and another one that does the same for your planets. There is a mini map in which you can view the entire galaxy at once.
The bottom right has an event window that tells you what's going on between turns. Major events come up and show full screen.
> > 10. What races are involved? How do they differ? Are some unable to travel
> > to certain places due to gravity, planet constitution, etc?
The races can all be identical if the user chooses (they're customizeable) but they will have defaults.
The main differences have to do with culture (back story) and "good/evil" which is settable.
They aren't limited in the sense that they have certain limitations on where they can go and such. The differences are much more subtle and more designed to provide character to the game.
> > 11. Can you win the game by economic means as opposed to military might,
> > for example? How many different "paths" can a player take?
You can win as an economic power in the sense that eveyrone can become so dependent on your economy that they ally themselves to you. The other non-military path that is likely to be a favorite is influence domination which is where you have so much influence over the galaxy that you can make them elect you supreme chancelor of the galaxy.
On your planets, you'll have improvements that build up your manufacturing capacity, increase your economy, increase your military aptitude or increase your star systme's influence rating. Influence is going to be the trickiest part of the game to balance since there is no immediate economic or military advantage in it. That means we'll have to have issues that come up in the UP that reward the player for having a lot of influence.
> > 12. Are resources finite? What happens to a planet when its resources have
> > been exhausted?
Resources are infinite.
> > 13. What, indeed are the resources available? Can each race use them all?
No resources at all. There are 26 planet classes from 1 (terrible) to 26 (incredibly good). The better planets are rarer. The better the planet class, the more it can produce. We wanted to keep this as simplified as we can so that the player is not micro managing planet resources but is instead focusing on the strategic issues of the game.
> > 14. Does each race have equivalent technology, units, etc? Or is each one
> > proficient in certain areas?
Yes and no.
The technologies available to each player depend much on their choices in the game - particularly the good/evil aspect. All races encounter different events that they must deal with ("Your colonist have just discovered that your new planet is inhabited by several million pre-industiral natives. What should we do? [A] Excellent! Slaves! (+10% to production) [B] We will have to put them into reservations [C] We will restrict our use of this planet (-25% to production). How you choose when these events come up determine what kind of culture you're creating. Your culture then determines what kinds of technologies are available to you. Similarly, the same is true of the AI. The AI miltiary units are all unique per side though.
> > 15. Don't you think that having macro systems (lend lease, espionage, etc)
> > is going a bit too deep?
Not at all. In fact, it's a key aspect of the game. Let me give you an example:
You're trying to win the game by economic domination. You don't want to fight wars directly. Your friends, the Altarians, are in a desperate war against the Drengin who are clearly trying to take over the galaxy. The only reason they haven't attacked you is because the Atlarians are in the way. With Lend-lease, you can literally GIVE star ships you build to the Altarians and let them use them to fight the Drengin without having to get involved.
> > 16. Is there a happy ending where you can align all races with each other
> > so dispensing with warfare, poverty, etc? A Utopia in effect.
Yes.
> > 17. How random will resources, technologies, new alien races, etc be?
There are only 6 major races that are garaunteed to be in the game. But there will be an additional 6 races that may or may not show up in the game based on events (as you can probably gather, this is here a bulk of the effort is going to go - creating lots of events that are far more than just "disaease strieks planet, lose 10M population" type things). Each galaxy design is completely unique each game.
> > 18. What do you begin the game with? Can you select your start point? Are
> > you given tasks?
You can design your civilization fairly heavily. For instance, depending your difficulty level, you get X number of bonus points to assign to your civilization in areas ranging from navigation (more moves per turn) to economics (more money per turn). How you use this helps set out what type of game you want to play. Additionally, you can choose a political party to belong to. This gives you additional bonus points to use but ONLY if your party maintains control of the senate (which means you need to keep your people happy).
> > 19. What do you believe GC brings to the strategy genre that is new and
> > exciting?
There are a few major things and several minor. Outlining here:
1) Events. No strategy game will have put as much energy into the events as we have. The events are designed to be uncommon but very game altering. So you could be playing the game for 8 months and suddenly have an event where the Arnor (a new race) have arrived and provide you with 9 new technologies to research but require you to destroy the Yor in order to get them. Or another one where you discover a wormhole that will instantly transport your ships that enter them across the galaxy.
2) Politics and the United Planets. The UP will allow for game altering features to be implemented. Basically alternate game rules suggested by beta testers and such can be implemented instead as alternative sets of rules that can come up in the UP. Think that ships shouldn't have a maint. cost attached to them? Maybe it'll come up and you can vote on them. Want to require that planets can only build either ships or improvements but not both at the same time? Maybe we can put that in as a UP issue. There are countless numbers of rules that can be added in this way that are game altering and voted on. We've developed this as an installable system so that we can make them after the game has released and add more then too (i.e. just copy the .issue files into your GalCiv directory).
3) Story. We dont' want the game to feel like a cold sterile strategy game. We want the game to feel different each time and feel like it's an epic story. We hope to put in what we're calling "micro cut scenes". Basically these are very short cut scenes that we have on disk that come up to help create that epic atmosphere. Let me give you an example - The game can tell if you've just lost a major battle to the Drengin. Typically that's all that happens. But in GalCiv, we can roll a rand() and bring up a micro cut scene that has text that fits your particular game "News of the Terran defeat spread across the human worlds and great fear was felt that the Drengin Empire would soon be arriving with their dreaded shock troops. Rumor quickly spread that their production 74% higher than ours woudl quickly amass a battle fleet that would wipe out Earth itself..." No big deal really in terms of technology but it's those touches that help replayability.
4) The Metaverse. This is the biggest and unquestionably most innovative feature to the game. Let's be honest, Stardock is a small company and we can't hope to compete with the marketing machines or the distribution of other game companies (unless we team up with a large publisher). So to counter that, we are building the ultimate strategy game community. Stardock is actually better known for its Object Desktop software which has helped build a sizeable community of "skin authors" (see www.wincustomize.com which gets over 1.5 million visitors a month).
The metaverse allows people to play GalCiv on-line against the computer player but have their scores logged and made part of a overall galaxy. The more they play, the better they do, the more points they accumulate. These points are then added to the metaverse where the user can see how well they're doing, see a map of the galaxy with their empire and take advantage of features that are available only to those with a sizeable empire. Additionally, we can record human player strategies (optionally) and have the AI automatically use the most effective strategies (things like what technologies to research first, what spending ratios to use, what projects to build in what order, etc.) based on what the top human players do in their games.
Another cool thing about the metaverse is that you can form larger empires by combinging your empire with others. Then those who are part of your empire all share (slightly) with those they bring into the empire in terms of score. (kind of like a super clan).
The metaverse also allows users to create their own star ships, technologies, improvements, events, and issues and submit them to the metaverse library where if approved they become "canon" and part of the game. So what we lack in size, we hope to make up for in having a large community of users who help turn Galactic Civilizations into THEIR game.
We're taking the strategy that we use on our non-game software. We're not going to release the game, put out 1 patch 6 weeks later and call it a day. We expect to have GalCiv 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc. Treat it like a regular software product where it keeps improving over time and stays new and fresh.
Minor innovations include the lend/lease features, user interface enhancements, diplomacy (which unfortunately is somewhat similar to Civ 3 in design somewhat on accident - it WAS going to be a major innovation), computer AI depth, multithreading.
> > 20. Does technology, weapons, building, etc all have to be researched?
Technologies provide ships and improvements to build.
> > 21. Can a game finish without there being an overall winner? What about
> > having the technology to destroy the Galaxy? A short game, possibly, but
> > one that is different.
If you research enough technology, you can evolve beyond such petty concerns as galaxies and mortality.
> > 22. Can you terraform "dead" planets? How can you, if at all, attempt to
> > make planets under your control
Yes, you can research the terraforming technology and that will let you do so.
> > 23. Sum up the game in a sentence!
Galactic Civilizations - help humanity survive in a hostile galaxy through economics, political savvy, and military genius.
Brad
> > GALACTIC CIVILIZATION
> >
> > 1. The original GC is about six years old now. Why have you gone for a new
> > version and what makes GC so interesting!
The original GalCiv was released in 1994 and developed in 1993. Hard to believe it's taken that long. The main reason we've wanted to make a new one has been advances in hardware allow us to create a much better computer AI. In most recent games, graphics have been the large focus of the development. But for us, particularly on GalCiv, we want to create computer players that have a truly organic AI. AI that really takes the time to look at all the variables it faces and put together a compelling strategy that isn't just effective but is intelligent. We also want to translate that into how the computer players interact with the human player.
> > 2. What have the team or individuals working on GC done before?
The Galactic Civilizations team (the new one) is a superset of other teams. We've combined the original GalCiv on OS/2 team with the team from The Corporate Machine/Entrepreneur as well as incorporated the entire LightWeight Ninja team. The music is being done by the same people who did the Empire Earth music and many of the cinematics are being done by Spin who has previously focused on movie special effects.
> > 3. Who are you aiming this out? Are you going for the hardcore player and
> > does it not cause a problem in missing out a large slice of the market?
There haven't been many turn based strategy games made in the past few years. Real time games have seemed to have captured the imagination of developers. We think there is a considerable market for people who want an intelligent turn based game that is friendly enough to use that it will appeal to casual gamers.
> > 4. Explain the background story. Have you rewritten it? How many of the
> > original team is involved?
The original GalCiv was pretty much written by just me. The sequels on OS/2 were done by myself with some help from Mike Duffy who is involved with this one too (and in fact, Mike Duffy had left Stardock to pursue new things and has rejoined our team for this specific project). But now we have a real art staff, an engine team, and other coders to make it a much better game. I tended to not like to pay much attention to visual details which made the OS/2 version of GalCiv kind of "hackerish" at times. With this team in place, I can focus on what I do best - computer AI, design, and economic/political simulation and the rest of the team can focus on what they're good at.
The background story goes something like this:
It is the late 22nd century and human kind has recently been contacted by other sentient life forms in the galaxy. The means of transportation in the galaxy has been via star gates. A star gate is an immense city sized thing in space that ships enter and are warped to a second star gate in another part of the galaxy. For tens of thousands of years, major alien civilizations have been sending probes into the galaxy and mapping it out and making contact. But since star gates are so expensive to build and maintain, trade and diplomacy is pretty restricted. The good side of star gates is that they keep war from happening since all one has to do to protect themselves from invasion is turn their side's stargate off. And so it's been this way for the past 100,000 years or so in the galaxy as space faring races such as the Drengin Empire, the Arceans, and others have expanded their knowledge of the galaxy if not their actual hold.
Well, the humans come along and we're different. We're reckless. We try new things without looking at the consequences. And humans come up with Hyperdrive. Hyperdrive allows a single ship to warp itself to different parts of the galaxy. Great news for trade and for interaction but bad news for warfare. And even worse for humans -- we don't actually know where the home planets of the other races are and we certainly haven't mapped out the planets in the galaxy yet (outside what's reasonably close to Sol).
Hence, the beginning of the game covers a mass push to colonize all the good planets (and lay claim to those sectors) they can. Once that is done, things get interesting. A long standing organization was created called the United Planets and it lays down laws that are voted on by the members. One can ingore those laws but no one will trade with a civilization that doesn't belong to it. Different races have different levels of influence on the United Planets votes (based on population and influence points in different star systems). The laws that come up for vote can cover everything from trade to legal/illegal technologies and ships.
Additionally, diplomacy and trade really begin to heat up as each side vies for either domination of the galaxy or at least survival in it (or to at least keep what it has).
Wars can break out and diplomacy plays a key role as players who aren't directly involved in the war can provide weapons and materials to friendly civilizations to fight. Or if you're directly involved in a war, you'll have to decide carefully what you do with your resources - military production versus researching new technologies versus social improvements. It's a delicate balance.
Eventually the game can be won when someone conquers all, creates a united galaxy (all are allied), or researches technology that allows their civilization to transcend life as we know it (very rare since that would require playing a very very long time).
> > 5. Explain the combat system. Is it based on ratings where each hit
> > depletes these ratings?
Very straight forward - you have Attack, Defense, and Hitpoints. There is a new variable called experience points where the mroe you have, the more hitpoints your ship can get when it's healed.
> > 6. How big is the playable Universe? How much will it be possible to
> > control at any one time?
You can set the galaxy level at the beginning. It can be as small as just 9 sectors (good for a game that will last an hour) or as big as 400 sectors (months to play).
> > 8. What happens if a planet is left to its own devices for a period of
> time?
Depends. You can set a star system to have a governor which will tell the planets what to do. You assign the governerors directly as to what they have to do (there's no AI involved - nobody trusts governor AI). Generally the planets don't need your interaction to do things but you will need to interact with them in order to effectively develop them.
> > 9. Explain the interface and controls. Are you told that something is
> > happening in another part of the Galaxy? How do you keep an eye on all of
> > your "properties"?
Your main view is of the sector map which you can scroll around like in most strategy games. You have a button at the bottom that will list all your star ships and another one that does the same for your planets. There is a mini map in which you can view the entire galaxy at once.
The bottom right has an event window that tells you what's going on between turns. Major events come up and show full screen.
> > 10. What races are involved? How do they differ? Are some unable to travel
> > to certain places due to gravity, planet constitution, etc?
The races can all be identical if the user chooses (they're customizeable) but they will have defaults.
The main differences have to do with culture (back story) and "good/evil" which is settable.
They aren't limited in the sense that they have certain limitations on where they can go and such. The differences are much more subtle and more designed to provide character to the game.
> > 11. Can you win the game by economic means as opposed to military might,
> > for example? How many different "paths" can a player take?
You can win as an economic power in the sense that eveyrone can become so dependent on your economy that they ally themselves to you. The other non-military path that is likely to be a favorite is influence domination which is where you have so much influence over the galaxy that you can make them elect you supreme chancelor of the galaxy.
On your planets, you'll have improvements that build up your manufacturing capacity, increase your economy, increase your military aptitude or increase your star systme's influence rating. Influence is going to be the trickiest part of the game to balance since there is no immediate economic or military advantage in it. That means we'll have to have issues that come up in the UP that reward the player for having a lot of influence.
> > 12. Are resources finite? What happens to a planet when its resources have
> > been exhausted?
Resources are infinite.
> > 13. What, indeed are the resources available? Can each race use them all?
No resources at all. There are 26 planet classes from 1 (terrible) to 26 (incredibly good). The better planets are rarer. The better the planet class, the more it can produce. We wanted to keep this as simplified as we can so that the player is not micro managing planet resources but is instead focusing on the strategic issues of the game.
> > 14. Does each race have equivalent technology, units, etc? Or is each one
> > proficient in certain areas?
Yes and no.
The technologies available to each player depend much on their choices in the game - particularly the good/evil aspect. All races encounter different events that they must deal with ("Your colonist have just discovered that your new planet is inhabited by several million pre-industiral natives. What should we do? [A] Excellent! Slaves! (+10% to production) [B] We will have to put them into reservations [C] We will restrict our use of this planet (-25% to production). How you choose when these events come up determine what kind of culture you're creating. Your culture then determines what kinds of technologies are available to you. Similarly, the same is true of the AI. The AI miltiary units are all unique per side though.> > 15. Don't you think that having macro systems (lend lease, espionage, etc)
> > is going a bit too deep?
Not at all. In fact, it's a key aspect of the game. Let me give you an example:
You're trying to win the game by economic domination. You don't want to fight wars directly. Your friends, the Altarians, are in a desperate war against the Drengin who are clearly trying to take over the galaxy. The only reason they haven't attacked you is because the Atlarians are in the way. With Lend-lease, you can literally GIVE star ships you build to the Altarians and let them use them to fight the Drengin without having to get involved.
> > 16. Is there a happy ending where you can align all races with each other
> > so dispensing with warfare, poverty, etc? A Utopia in effect.
Yes.
> > 17. How random will resources, technologies, new alien races, etc be?
There are only 6 major races that are garaunteed to be in the game. But there will be an additional 6 races that may or may not show up in the game based on events (as you can probably gather, this is here a bulk of the effort is going to go - creating lots of events that are far more than just "disaease strieks planet, lose 10M population" type things). Each galaxy design is completely unique each game.
> > 18. What do you begin the game with? Can you select your start point? Are
> > you given tasks?
You can design your civilization fairly heavily. For instance, depending your difficulty level, you get X number of bonus points to assign to your civilization in areas ranging from navigation (more moves per turn) to economics (more money per turn). How you use this helps set out what type of game you want to play. Additionally, you can choose a political party to belong to. This gives you additional bonus points to use but ONLY if your party maintains control of the senate (which means you need to keep your people happy).
> > 19. What do you believe GC brings to the strategy genre that is new and
> > exciting?
There are a few major things and several minor. Outlining here:
1) Events. No strategy game will have put as much energy into the events as we have. The events are designed to be uncommon but very game altering. So you could be playing the game for 8 months and suddenly have an event where the Arnor (a new race) have arrived and provide you with 9 new technologies to research but require you to destroy the Yor in order to get them. Or another one where you discover a wormhole that will instantly transport your ships that enter them across the galaxy.
2) Politics and the United Planets. The UP will allow for game altering features to be implemented. Basically alternate game rules suggested by beta testers and such can be implemented instead as alternative sets of rules that can come up in the UP. Think that ships shouldn't have a maint. cost attached to them? Maybe it'll come up and you can vote on them. Want to require that planets can only build either ships or improvements but not both at the same time? Maybe we can put that in as a UP issue. There are countless numbers of rules that can be added in this way that are game altering and voted on. We've developed this as an installable system so that we can make them after the game has released and add more then too (i.e. just copy the .issue files into your GalCiv directory).
3) Story. We dont' want the game to feel like a cold sterile strategy game. We want the game to feel different each time and feel like it's an epic story. We hope to put in what we're calling "micro cut scenes". Basically these are very short cut scenes that we have on disk that come up to help create that epic atmosphere. Let me give you an example - The game can tell if you've just lost a major battle to the Drengin. Typically that's all that happens. But in GalCiv, we can roll a rand() and bring up a micro cut scene that has text that fits your particular game "News of the Terran defeat spread across the human worlds and great fear was felt that the Drengin Empire would soon be arriving with their dreaded shock troops. Rumor quickly spread that their production 74% higher than ours woudl quickly amass a battle fleet that would wipe out Earth itself..." No big deal really in terms of technology but it's those touches that help replayability.
4) The Metaverse. This is the biggest and unquestionably most innovative feature to the game. Let's be honest, Stardock is a small company and we can't hope to compete with the marketing machines or the distribution of other game companies (unless we team up with a large publisher). So to counter that, we are building the ultimate strategy game community. Stardock is actually better known for its Object Desktop software which has helped build a sizeable community of "skin authors" (see www.wincustomize.com which gets over 1.5 million visitors a month).
The metaverse allows people to play GalCiv on-line against the computer player but have their scores logged and made part of a overall galaxy. The more they play, the better they do, the more points they accumulate. These points are then added to the metaverse where the user can see how well they're doing, see a map of the galaxy with their empire and take advantage of features that are available only to those with a sizeable empire. Additionally, we can record human player strategies (optionally) and have the AI automatically use the most effective strategies (things like what technologies to research first, what spending ratios to use, what projects to build in what order, etc.) based on what the top human players do in their games.
Another cool thing about the metaverse is that you can form larger empires by combinging your empire with others. Then those who are part of your empire all share (slightly) with those they bring into the empire in terms of score. (kind of like a super clan).
The metaverse also allows users to create their own star ships, technologies, improvements, events, and issues and submit them to the metaverse library where if approved they become "canon" and part of the game. So what we lack in size, we hope to make up for in having a large community of users who help turn Galactic Civilizations into THEIR game.
We're taking the strategy that we use on our non-game software. We're not going to release the game, put out 1 patch 6 weeks later and call it a day. We expect to have GalCiv 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc. Treat it like a regular software product where it keeps improving over time and stays new and fresh.
Minor innovations include the lend/lease features, user interface enhancements, diplomacy (which unfortunately is somewhat similar to Civ 3 in design somewhat on accident - it WAS going to be a major innovation), computer AI depth, multithreading.
> > 20. Does technology, weapons, building, etc all have to be researched?
Technologies provide ships and improvements to build.
> > 21. Can a game finish without there being an overall winner? What about
> > having the technology to destroy the Galaxy? A short game, possibly, but
> > one that is different.
If you research enough technology, you can evolve beyond such petty concerns as galaxies and mortality.
> > 22. Can you terraform "dead" planets? How can you, if at all, attempt to
> > make planets under your control
Yes, you can research the terraforming technology and that will let you do so.
> > 23. Sum up the game in a sentence!
Galactic Civilizations - help humanity survive in a hostile galaxy through economics, political savvy, and military genius.
Brad
