If you've never played a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) before, it can be overwhelming at first. By just playing with the character alignment (whether the race is considered good or evil), you can set up your game to be based heavily on economic or political strategies (by setting a majority of the races to good), and if you're feeling a little more masochistic, you can set up the game to be heavily combat based (by setting a majority of the races to evil). Galaxy size, character alignment and AI difficulty can all be adjusted to your liking, which, coupled with the unlimited tactics at your disposal, guarantees a unique experience every time. Galactic Civilizations is very non-linear in how you tackle things, thanks in part to the fact that you can customize your games at startup. How about being a tyrannical warlord and wiping out every hostile civilization in the galaxy? You can do that too. Feel like being a trade mogul and opening up interstellar trade routes? It's possible in Galactic Civilizations. Not too exciting eh? To counteract this, there are a number of different empires available. By default, you're the human race from that infamous planet earth but there's a number of other non-playable alien races. Your job is to colonize new planets, expand your empire, and eventually rule the galaxy by whatever means you see fit, whether it's through diplomacy, trade, or war. Galactic Civilizations places you in control of humanity at the beginning of the 23rd century when mankind has just stumbled upon a new technology that gives instant access to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Sell ships to an ally to fight against a mutual enemy without getting blood on your hands, or bind potential aggressors to you with trade routes and technology exchanges. Money, influence, ships, planets, technologies and treaties can be horse-traded. GC does a fine job of presenting a living, breathing universe of backstabbing, manipulative and intelligent factions who react in logical ways to your manoeuvrings. With the lack of a separate tactical combat engine, and no options to customise your fleet of starships, GC is not one for those to whom 'empire building' means 'conquest'.Д«ut those who prefer wielding diplomacy and economics as their weapons will be entirely satisfied. Where's the hell's that ship? What facilities has this planet constructed? Who does that star base belong to? After a few hours play it did indeed remind us of a board game - one which someone has bumped into, sending the counters and fake money all over the place. But this table-top comparison isn't always flattering - GC has major problems in organising and displaying its information.

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