More diplomacy?

Dark Avatar was also supposed to deliver more diplomatic options. This area left me feeling a bit disappointed, as I do not feel that much was actually done.

Treaties are the main addition to the game. You can sign an Economic or a Research treaty, which gives the other civilization 10% of your economy or research output respectively, without you actually losing that 10%. It’s a good addition for friendly nations. The AI also understands the value of these treaties and won’t just hand 10% of its economy over to you unless you’re friendly – and it will still want some compensation.

Still, I don’t feel that the treaties add quite a lot of substance to the game. They’re a nice touch, but not much more than that. Contributing to that disappointment is the fact that Research Treaties do not seem to actually work – initially, I was surprised to see that my research output didn’t change notably after getting a treaty from a powerful civ. Running some experiments and checking the output screens, I arrived at the conclusion that the treaty is bugged somehow. So, comments on just how useful these treaties are will probably have to wait until after the first update.

Treaties aside, there are not notable changes to diplomacy in Dark Avatar. United Planets is the same thing as it was in GalCiv2, so are the minor civilization relations.

I would also like to repeat something I’ve complained about before – diplomatic negotiations. After the initial GalCiv2 update, negotiations are just about the only thing in GalCiv2 that makes me want to shut the game down and not look in its general direction for a while. The problem is still finding the right price for a deal. When I see that the AI will trade tech X for my tech Y, I will go and ask them to also give me some gold. The matter of finding out how much gold they’ll give me is extremely mundane. It’s all about incrementing and decrementing my request until I find that they’ll give me exactly 318bc – but not 319.

Please, for the sake of what little is left of my sanity, have a “maximum they’ll pay” button for gold. I realize there’s are many combinations of what the AI would be willing to pay, but a button that fills in the maximum amount of gold – and gold only – is extremely straightforward and would certainly save lots and lots of tedious clicking to find just the right amount.

Fluff of the good kind

I just have to mention how ship design got even more fun in Dark Avatar. There are more items to put on your ships now, along with more basic hulls. You can now have flags with your civilization logo decorating your battleships, and there’s an excellent saucer element to be added, too. I usually call this sort of a thing useless fluff – I’m a hardcore “gameplay-over-graphics-and-such” kind of a man, but I just can’t fail to appreciate GalCiv2’s shipyard.

I’ve already mentioned the ability to assign custom ship styles to the AI. Add to that new ship design options, better graphics in the combat viewer and close-up zooms, and you have some really good fluff. Still, my favorite feature has to be ship templates – when you design a really cool-looking ship, you can add it to templates now, which allows you to design another ship based on the same visual design quicker and easier. So, if you create (or download, thanks to the extensive fan content Library hosted by Stardock) a Battlestar template, it should be easy to create separate designs for Galactica-class, Pegasus-class Battlestars or others of your imagination.

On the aesthetic front, AI leaders also have more different text to throw at you in various situations. While I maintain that Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is the most atmospheric strategy game I’ve ever played, it’s hard not to appreciate the slightly tongue-in-cheek atmosphere in GalCiv2.