Online Software Warehouse. Huge range of Brands: Microsoft, Adobe, Apple plus Financial, Design & Accounting Software, Video Games plus more!

In the year 2225, mankind's thirst for domination has spread to the stars, where the battle for conquest rages on. Humans struggle for supremacy over the other Galactic powers, who have their own plans for the cosmos. In Galactic Civilizations II, you will use technology, diplomacy, colonization and war as your tools to build a far-reaching interstellar empire.
Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition includes the best-selling and award-winning space strategy game Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords and the two AddOns Dark Avatar and Twilight Of The Arnor in one comprehensive collection! Alternative map sizes and victory tasks Players can now design new starships from the main game menu All game campaigns have been updated to be playable within Twilight of the Arnor New user manual Numerous new game setup options Updated diplomatic options New planetary governors for automating the building of planets Revamped espionage system Auto-building for starbases Balance updating Improved graphics

I, for one, have played hundreds of hours of this game.
It's fun, detailed, with a good AI, has unlimited possibilities and replayability. You won't find any turn based 4X game like this anywhere.

I purchased this game yesterday. First what I like about it:

- It has some elements of the old Trade Wars BBS game. You can make colonies, get different ships explore etc.
- Has some similarities to the Star Control II / III games but unfortunately despite the nice graphics, there is no Melee.
- There are some addictive parts to it, you want to see what's in the Universe, make colonies etc.

What I don't like about it.

- My biggest gripe: Sometimes a screen will display some text or information without erasing the text that was displayed there before. The result of this is you see a blend of the previous page with the current page and it is not readable. Sometimes you can do ALT-Tab and it will redraw correctly but not always.

- It is very difficult at times to select a ship that is orbiting a planet. It took me a while to figure it out and even then because of the display problems there were times I had to try and try again.

- I put the colonists to work right away when I start my colonies, getting them building the Research centres, the factories etc for some reason this puts a huge strain on the economy. Even on planets that have resources coming in from different mines.

- The PDF document doesn't explain everything and there is no much in terms of context sensitive help.

- At some point, I got a message from the game that I wasn't researching anything. (The time of completion all said never) but didn't explain why it was happening. There was no suggestions on how it could be adjusted.

- Aside from my flagship I wasn't able to get a ship that could explore and discover things like it did. I couldn't build another flagship either. The scouts and mining ships could find things but they couldn't survey.

- The technology tree view is hard to understand / navigate.

- I didn't see a menu where I could manage my colonies by selecting them all or clicking on individual ones to manage them. I'd have to find them on the space map, zoom in and then select the various options.

- There are too many options making the game cluttered. I would have preferred fewer options but make sure that the display and interface work correctly.

- The game froze on me a few times.

My favorite game. Unfortunately, now that I have upgraded to Windows 7 (32 bit) it will not work.

I remember when this game came out there was a big hoopla about the fact that it was released with no DRM whatsoever, not even a disc check. Unfortunately a decision was made that they weren't going to support used copies. Once an account has been associated with the game, it cannot be changed. This has an effect of leaving people who purchased the game used out in the cold as far as product support. You get support for what's on the disc and nothing else, forcing you to pirate patches, an odd decision I must say. Personally I'd rather just have had a disc check.

In addition I agree with other reviewer who said the interface is basically inexplicable. I pointed this out on the official forum when the game was released and ended up getting my forum account suspended. More tooltips or even consistency between UI elements would have helped gameplay significantly. When a game like this comes out with a number of complex systems interacting, you need to be able to figure out what's going on to follow any kind of involved strategy.

Give this one a pass, and future Stardock games a pass unless they change their tune about supporting used games.

Every time I turn around I find more bugs. My first major problem was not being able to patch the game. When you install it, it installs "Stardock". It's a program that patches the game, and any other Impulse games. I couldn't get Stardock to run. I'm using Windows 7 and thought maybe that was the problem. It kept saying the program was asking for administrative privileges and asked me if that was alright. I would approve but it still did nothing. I tried running it in Vista and XP modes with no success. I finally E-mailed them and was told after a couple of responses to uninstall and download the newest version from their site. That worked, and I was able to update the game.

Even with the game patched, it's very limited because of the bugs. I can't play certain races when choosing simple things as a larger map. When I choose accelerated start (already start with more techs open) the game crashes to desktop while it's creating the map, making anything other than normal start impossible to play. Thank goodness for auto-save, or else you would have to start from scratch often due to unexpected errors and crashes. Now I'm at a point when I hit the "turn" button nothing happens. I can still click on units, but can give them no commands. The "turn" button is now grayed out as if it is in between moves, but no matter how long I sit there, the move never happens and I can't get out of it without quitting. I start the game from any saved point and it still won't go to the next turn, on any game I have saved.

Even before the current "turn" problem I am having, I was able to play the game for some time, and it wasn't anything great. Space combat is really lame. I can watch the ships fighting from different angles, but it's boring and I have no control. Not that I'd want it as it's very simplistic. Ground combat just shows numbers of troops remaining as a number, and you have no impute to the battle. It's alright for wasting time, but not much substance here.