Galactic Civilizations 2 Announcement

Galactic Civilizations 2 Developed and Published by:	Stardock Systems, Inc. List Price:			$59.95 Platform:			OS/2 2.1 or later Minimum System:		386sx with 4 megs of ram, single speed CD ROM Typical System:			486DX-66 with 16 megs of ram, quad speed CD ROM, 1024x768 with 65k color Contact:				Brad Wardell, 313/453-0328

Background: In late 1994, Galactic Civilizations was released as the first major OS/2 game ever developed. To the surprise of many, Galactic Civilizations sold well world wide and helped create the OS/2 market. At the time, there was little game developing occurring for OS/2. After GalCiv's success in user surveys (it has consistently placed in the top 5 on the Internet Top 100) and at retail other OS/2 games began getting developed (December 1995 will see the release of 8 or 9 new OS/2 games).

While a good game, GalCiv was developed under low sales-rates assumptions which meant its budget was much lower than most commercial games. Stardock contracted a third party to market and publish the game. This time around, Stardock is doing both the development and publishing of its flag-ship game and the result is a powerful strategy game with graphics, sound, and animation that rival any entertainment vendor out there. Also behind it is Stardock's considerable resources for promoting it in a wide variety of channels.

Galactic Civilizations 2 will be released on December 18 and has already generated over 12,000 pre-orders from anxious customers -- without a single penny in advertising. Not bad for a game that runs on a platform that "Experts" continually say has no users.

The Game: In the 21st century mankind discovers a new form of propulsion -- Micro Impulse. It allows ships to travel a great distance in a short amount of time. For years, man has known that there was a earth-like planet rotating around Alpha Centauri but had no way to reach it -- now it could. The first colony ship dubbed "The Santa Maria" was launched with 50,000 colonists on board. Unknown to them, Micro Impulse had a glitch, when it came in contact with an unknown physical force called a "Quantum String", it created a wormhole that sent it far across the universe to a totally alien galaxy -- a galaxy in which you are not alone.

In this new galaxy you must set up a new civilization for mankind. Research futuristic technologies and balance your economic growth between social, scientific, and defense programs so that your civilization can not only survive but thrive. Of course, you're not alone as up to 5 other computer controlled players are vying for dominance of the galaxy. Through diplomacy or warfare, you must come to some sort of arrangement with them. You win the game by conquering the galaxy, uniting the galaxy together through alliances, or evolving into a higher form of life.

What's so special about Galactic Civilizations? Many strategy game players have called the original GalCiv the "greatest space based strategy game ever developed". Why would such a modest looking game get so much acclaim? OS/2 Magazine even awarded it the 1995 Editor's Choice Award. The reason for one thing is that Galactic Civilizations' AI (artificial intelligence) engine plays by the same rules you do, i.e. it doesn't cheat. Unlike most games that have computer players that get incredible advantages over you or can conjure armies or fleets out of thin air, Galactic Civilizations wins by having very smart computer players. The secret to its success is actually the operating system: OS/2 Warp. While you are moving your units, taking care of diplomacy, managing your resources, etc, the computer players are busy calculating their moves and forming strategy in the background. What this means is that the time between moves is relatively short and that the AI has the time to formulate a good plan. Moreover, the economic engine that gives the game a sense of realism rarely seen in a strategy game (in fact, many people consider GalCiv a simulator), also runs in the background allowing for a very complex universe.

When you put all these together with the additions found in Galactic Civilizations2, OS/2 not only exclusively has a great strategy game but a strategy game that rivals the best strategy games out there (Ascendancy, Masters of Orion, Warlords, etc.).

Editorial on Galactic Civilizations 2 by Brad Wardell (The lead designer of Galactic Civilizations 1 and 2)

It is a major upgrade to the original Galactic Civilizations. In fact, I know it is taboo for developers to "slam" their own game but up until GalCiv 2, I didn't find GalCiv as enjoyable as I had wanted it to be. But I am EXTREMELY pleased with GalCiv 2. It is the game I had always hoped GalCiv should be. Anyone who has GalCiv 1 should definitely get this. It is a few orders of magnitude better than the original IMHO.

So the big question that keeps coming up is: What is new in GalCiv 2?

First of all, let's talk about the cosmetic changes: One of my new favorites (and luckily not a competitor to any of our current offerings) is Mech Warrior 2. Besides being a pretty neat game, it has excellent production standards in the graphics, animation, and sound categories. Every week during a status meeting I would bring up Mech Warrior 2's intro or music and say "We don't ship until we beat that!". It will be quite apparent when you play GalCiv that we put a lot of emphasis on polish as well as gameplay. Every status meeting I would play the Mech Warrior 2 introduction and would quietly say "We don't ship until we can match this quality."

We contracted F.J. Fisher to re-do much of the graphics such as the aliens and news girls (good and evil). Stardock has also produced a intro video for the beginning of it that we think is really pretty cool. It's about 2.5 minutes of special effects video that is on par with any other game out there. The part where you are zig zagging over the surface of a new world with an awesome sound track in the background is pretty neat.

We also had a full musical sound track developed for the game, about 100 megabytes of music/sound for GalCiv 2 (as opposed to about 2 megs in the original). The sound track of GalCiv 2 is (IMHO) movie quality. Anyone out there who has played some of the new games like Mech Warrior2 now know what the new state of the art in music is for gaming and we believe we have met that challenge.

The entire interface has been revamped (visually) to give it a cleaner, more appealing look to it and to make it easier to use.

And, Stardock is in charge of the packaging/documentation (unlike with GalCiv 1) and the packaging will be the same level as Object Desktop. In fact, the GalCiv manual looks very much like the Object Desktop manual. I went through the original manual and tried to condense it as much as possible given the hatred of game players for reading the instruction books. Even so, the manual still ends up about 50 pages, that was as short as I could get it whtout leaving important things out. The irony for those who bought GalCiv 1, this manual was is derived from the original GalCiv 1 manual we submitted to our former publisher (AIM) but was rejected in favor of their "on-line" manual.

The biggest criticism of the original GalCiv was "it's a good game but the graphics are lousy". We think that GalCiv 2 has the same graphics quality as any major game out there. We're not out to be the #1 OS/2 game anymore, we're out to compete toe to toe with the DOS/Windows games now appearing.

Now, all this is nice and all and many "sequels" to games are essentially the first game but with snazzier graphics.

Not GalCiv v2 though. To be perfectly honest, my primary goal for GalCiv2 was to make it not so annoying for me to play. Those of you who followed the internet know that I designed GalCiv for myself. :) Unfortunately, I had some major gripes with my own game:


 * 1) 1 No sense of "isolation". Within 10 minutes of playing you knew all the players in the galaxy and what was happening regardless of how big the galaxy was.  This is not realistic and kills any sense of "adventure" in the game -- it did for me.


 * 1) 2 It moved too slowly. I was worried, at the time, I would be able to "beat" the game quickly.  Unfortunately, just the opposite occurred.  It just took too long for me to get "into" the game. I mean, why should it take 15 minutes just to get to Diplomacy?

I realize that GalCiv's AI has been called "the best" in the industry by many players but it also has a lot of flaws that we can take care of because we are using a 32bit multithreaded OS like OS/2. For example, in GalCiv2 the AI will be able to assign ships to monitor certain quadrants. It will be able to detect if you're massing all your transports preparing for attack or be able to mass its ships for the same reason.
 * 1) 3 The AI was missing out on some key ingredients to make it nasty.


 * 1) 4 Not multiplayer. I couldn't take care of this in the time I had and we've made GalCiv2 expandable where we or some entrepreneur out there can just add on a Multiplayer module (i.e. help prove the opendoc for games concept).

So what did we do to address my complaints?

+ Starships now have ranges!! This is a BIIGGG thing. This totally changes the way you play the game and in my opinion makes it worth getting for this change alone (even if we hadn't changed everything else). GalCiv has been set up so it creates galaxies with "pockets" of stars. A new galaxy size called "Gigantic" (24x24) has been added. Each type of ship has its own range. Colony Wagons have a 1 quadrant range while scouts may have a 3 quadrant range. You'll have to really think about how you deploy your ships, which ones to research, which ones to build, etc. Because a Battleship may be a really tough ship but Battle Hammers have greater range, etc. Best of all, with the new way galaxies are created, you could end up on an "island" of stars and be isolated from the computer players for a long time (or a computer player be isolated from everyone else) letting you the chance to develop your own path. Moreover, holding key quadrants will also be very important because you might not be able to expand to conquer parts of the galaxy without an "outpost" nearby.

The way ranges work is as follows:

Your ship can only go a certain number of quadrants away from your nearest planet.

Obviously, this change caused a major re-write of the SDS/AI to manage its ships. Afterall, how do you tell the computer player it needs to colonize some really crappy planet in the middle of nowhere so that its range is increased to get to other "good" planets? Imagine that code? Anyway, that's the *BIG* new feature that makes GalCiv2 a much different game than GalCiv1 (once you play it, you'll really see what I mean). So for those of you who "mastered" GalCIv 1, it's time to rip up your old strategies and start anew because ranges change the entire thing in a better way.

+ We also added new discoveries so that you can get technologies that will increase your ship ranges and made existing technologies less expensive, hence speeding up gameplay.

+ We added Star Governors who will automatically set your resources to something useful for you if you choose to use them. The #1 gripe people had about GalCiv 1 was the pain of managing your resource buttons on every planet. You can still do this if you want to or use governors.

+ We added Network hooks. GalCiv2 is not multiplayer out of the box but each player now has an IP address memory space and you can enter 2 IP addresses at the beginning. Right now, it doesn't do anything to them but we will shortly release GalCiv2: Developer's Kit (free of charge) to anyone who wants to write their own multiplayer add ons to it (you can sell them or do what you like with them, no royalty to Stardock).

+ When you select a planet, the star dialog also shows the surface (which are now completely rendered and look awesome).

+ 2 of the AI personalities will assign a ship to keep an eye on you. In fact, the Martzian AI (Drengin Empire's AI now) will send ships to put the fear of death into you should you become enemies with them (only on the hardest levels).

I-Brad Wardell

Order
 Thanks to your support Stardock Systems is the leading OS/2 ISV in both the consumer and corporate market. Users have asked us to list our complete product line so that users can order it directly quickly and easily. You can fill this out and fax it to us or email it to us if you wish and we ship same day.

All our Corporate offerings are now available at your local Micro Center and OS/2 Essentials is at CompUSA. You can also obtain our software from OS/2 oriented resellers.

Choose Which Products you Want

Consumer: [ ] Galactic Civilizations 2. $59.95 [ ] Star Emperor Advanced. $49.95 [ ] Avarice Preview           $29.95

Corporate: [ ] Object Desktop            $89.95 [ ] OS/2 Essentials           $39.95

Shipping: $7 in USA/Canada, $14 outside USA and Canada.

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Press
Galactic Civilizations 2 Now Available!

Highly anticipated sequel to award winning game arrives!

Tuesday, January 2, 1996

Canton, MIÿStardock Systems announced that Galactic Civilizations 2 began shipping in volume today. Galactic Civilizations 2 is the second version of the highly acclaimed strategy game.

"We think that Galactic Civilizations 2 is going to knock people s socks off!" said Bradley Wardell, President of Stardock Systems, Inc. "The first one had many of the right elements to be a classic game but the new version adds some exciting new strategic features as well as state of the art graphics and an original digital stereo sound track that would give some movies a run for their money."

Galactic Civilizations is a space based strategy game for OS/2. In it, you must guide mankind while exploring and colonizing a new galaxy. The player must manage their economy, research new technology, and fight intergalactic wars with their star fleets. What makes Galactic Civilizations unique is the fact that it is the only major game of this genre (on any platform) to take advantage of 'threads'.

Players quickly see the benefits of using the advanced features of a 32bit multithreaded OS such as OS/2 Warp. Not only do the computer players in Galactic Civilizations not cheat unlike most games, they play immensely intelligently. Moreover, the economic engine behind the game also runs in an independent thread allowing the galaxy to have a complex and powerful economic model.

"To use an analogy, when you play chess with your friend, you don t shut your eyes while your friend is thinking of moving his piece on the board. You look at the board and think of your next move. However, most strategy games on PC's do just that -- they don t think at all while you are taking your turn. Now, put the game on a great OS such as OS/2 Warp and your opponents can 'think' about what they are going to do while you are busy moving your pieces. Now the time between turns is remarkably short and the economic simulation portion of the game has no perceived performance impact." said Wardell.

The original Galactic Civilizations was acclaimed by players and reviewers. OS/2 Magazine awarded it the 1995 Editor s Choice Award and I-PC Games awarded it "Best Strategy Game" and edging out popular DOS and Windows games to win "Game of the Year".

For players, Galactic Civilizations 2 adds features such as governors that manage your star system resources for you, star ship ranges which allow empires to be more isolated from one another, hooks for future internet play, and many other requested features.

For retailers, Stardock contracted F.J. Fisher Communications, Inc. to supervise and design the packaging to ensure that the game sells itself on store shelves. Moreover, Stardock has commited to backing Galactic Civilizations 2 with the largest marketing budget ever seen for an OS/2 consumer product.

Galactic Civilizations 2 can be found at resellers in the USA such as Indelible Blue (1-800-776-8284), Kiyo Design, Computer Cosmos/2, and OS+Resource. Stardock expects it to appear in most retail outlets in the coming weeks. You can also obtain it from Stardock Systems at 313-453-0328. A complete list of OS/2 software resellers is available on Stardock s world wide web site.

Galactic Civilizations lists for $59.95. A $29.95 upgrade price is in effect until February 1st. It requires OS/2 2.1 or later, and a double speed CD ROM.

Stardock can be reached at 313/453-0328, FAX 313/453-1480, email stardock@aol.com, WWW:http://oeonline.com/~stardock.