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GalCiv2, SotS, SEV: a 4X Comparison

Jason

chasing a bee
Joined
Jun 30, 2005
Messages
10,737
Location
baby arm fantasy island
<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

YourConscience has spent most of 2006 exploring the depths of the universe in the recent batch of space 4X titles: Galactic Civilizations 2, Sword of the Stars, and Space Empires V. He's back and ready to let the rest of us know how they stack up.<br/><br/><strong>Read: </strong><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=29">GalCiv2, SotS, SEV: a 4X Comparison</a>
 

Andy Brown

Novice
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
4
I think the author missed the point with SotS ship design/tech.

The article's right in that players do/should equip ships with the best weapons they can.

It completely overlooks the point that the "best weapons" depend a lot on enemy choices of weapons and defences.

For example, there's little point in putting reflective armour on ships if the enemy is choosing to use all his small weapons mounts for point-defence weapons ...

Which the enemy will do if the player has maxed out on missiles ...

Which might not be a good idea if the enemy is Tarka whose tactical speed advantage enables it to close quickly with ships equipped with slow-firing misslies and carve them up with closer range beams, cannons and mass-drivers ...

Unless the enemy has researched as far as heavy combat lasers ...

And so on.

It must also be noted that the randomised tech tree of SotS means that optimal tech solutions vary from game to game. Players can't easily construct misslie defence solutions around point-defence weapons if pd capability is not part of their tech tree for that particular game.

I also think it's important to note that GalCiv attempts to optimise the single player experience while SotS is streamlined for multiplay.

I've barely played GalCiv2 and I haven't looked at SEV. However, if the article's understanding of these games is as superficial as it is of SotS, the author has used a lot of words to produce something less than useful.

Cheers,

Andy
 

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