Galactic Civilizations III

Early Access Review GalCiv3 pleases me very much. In the third Part there is finally a Multiplayer Mode and the Ship Editor offers almost unlimited Possibilities to build your own Ships. The AI is also very good and becomes noticeably smarter and more challenging with each Patch. With a later Patch, new Editors on Modding will also be published and a German Translation is already in The Works. At the beginning I didn't like the Shipping combat So much because it is only a "Battleviewer" to watch and offers no tactical Decisions like in Endless Space (Formations, different Types of attacks, withdrawal, Etc.) but due to the new Ship rolls are the Fights Now become a little more tactical. It allows you to determine whether Ships are flying forward quickly or defending important Ships with Support Modules. With the new Raw Materials there are also Prototypes for Weapons and other Modules that are very strong, so it is worth building star Bases to break them down. The Game also has many Settings in Card Generation. There are tiny little ones to play through in an Hour, right down to insanely large Galaxies where you can play Days or Weeks. With the big Cards, it is also possible to play against 100 + Opponents. Each Breed also possesses a slightly different Technologi ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ and plays a little differently and there are many different Ways to win a Game (Conquest, Influence, Technology, Ascent, diplomacy). For me, GalCiv3 is one of the best 4X Games even though it still has some small Quirks at the moment. But it gets better with every Patch.

I usually don't write any reviews, as I'm really a bit too lazy for that. In this case, I HAVE to get out a warning though: As nice as the concepts of this game are, it really is NOT playable. It is full of game-breaking bugs, which get worse with every update. I've been owning the game for ~1 year now and so far could NOT finish a single game. While in the beginning the game was "just" slow (meaning one NPC turn would take around 10 - 15 Minutes on an insane sized map) that was just a little annoying. Play a turn, get out a book, read a chapter, play the next turn (yes that's the main reason I got ~100 hrs dumped into it). So I waited a bit, for an update or two, and tried again. First thought: Nice, it seems faster. Play an evening and get a nice galaxy set up. Next day try to load the game - get a black main map. Everything running, UI there, can even open planet views, but no main playfield. So the savegame is broken. Great. I start a new game, everything is fine. Save/load again, the game is broken again. I'm like ok - wait for the next update. Hope it will get there. As long as they work on it, I tend to be patient. To make along story short: With todays update, I can't even start a game anymore. The "black map bug" occurs even on new games. So I get annoyed and want to tell Stardock about it - create a forum account. Which, of course, doesn't work either. They just don't send out activation emails. So I can't even do anything about the game not working. Conclusion: As long as the game is running, it's great. I'd probably even give it 8/10 points. Since I could not play for a year now though, the $$ are wasted - and by now, I have to give it 0/10 points. Way to waste a good game. Side note: While searching through the forums, I found out that Stardock actually knows about these bugs, but never fixed them. Instead they keep pumping out DLCs and content updates for a game that doesn't work.