14 DAY TRIAL // Galactic Civilizations III has been launched for about two weeks now, but I am showing no sign of getting bored with the title, even if I have been playing at least three hours of the Stardock-made strategy title each day.
This is pretty amazing considering that I have not played with more than three of the factions, with most of my time spent on the Humans, the Iconians and the Altarians, and I could probably keep myself occupied for a few months perfecting strategies for the rest of the included races.
The replayability of Galactic Civilizations III is a testament to the quality of its core mechanics and the way the developers have managed to balance the strategy experience and keep it engaging as the turns progress.
But, mostly when I reach the late-game stage, I start thinking about the ways the experience could be improved and about the kinds of expansions Stardock will be announcing and launching in the coming years.
Galactic Civilizations II received two expansions during its lifetime and the same will probably be true for the new release.
Starbases need to become more important, ship combat more engaging
I suspect that the first expansion for the Stardock video game will be focused on tweaking all the core mechanics in some small but significant ways that cannot be implemented via simple patches.
But I would also love to see an improvement in the way starbases interact with the rest of the world.
At the moment, they are very useful when they acquire resources or when they can boost two or three planets in a system or in two that are very close to each other.
But I rarely see the point in investing in starbases, even when I have the Pragmatic achievement that allows me to deploy two modules at once, when I can create more powerful fleets or I can enhance my economy.
A second expansion for Galactic Civilizations III will need to deal with the biggest limitation of the title as it stands now: the lack of control for the tactical fleet engagements.
I understand that carefully crafting ships and then building balanced groups that can stand up to enemies represents a challenge on its own.
But I would very much like to see how my fleets would perform if I had some level of actual control over their in-battle moves and attacks.
I understand that this would require a major re-thinking of the core ideas of Galactic Civilizations III, but I also believe that it would make the experience more appealing to a wider range of gamers.
