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Learn a little bit more on what's coming in GCII:TotA
Published on September 26, 2007 By Zoomba In GalCiv II News

There's no doubt that 2007 has been a good year for Galactic Civilizations fans.  In February we released the Dark Avatar expansion pack, and have completed several major game improving patches.  We top the year off with the upcoming release of our second expansion pack: Twilight of the Arnor.  Eager to learn more about the soon-to-be-released expansion, GameSpy strategy games guru Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch sat down with Brad Wardell to try and glean a few more tidbits of information.

It's a very detailed interview going over everything from the new technology trees, to the campaign being written entirely by Brad himself, and even covering the often talked about unit of ultimate destruction, the Terror Star.  Here's the specific bit about Terror Stars:

GameSpy: Tell us about the Terror Star. The inspiration is obvious, but what will it cost to make such a thing and do you really think it'll get used very much?

Wardell: The Terror Star destroys entire star systems. It's quite handy, especially late game, for... finishing off entrenched players. They are very expensive to build and quite vulnerable so only players who have significant military superiority can really benefit.

Hit the link below to read the full interview.


Comments
on Sep 26, 2007
Good article, but I found this funny:

GameSpy: One of the most controversial additions to Dark Avatar was "Super abilities." How have they worked out in practice? Do players like them and will we get any new ones in the new expansion?


I don't remember that ever being a controversy, and certainly not even close to the firestorm that arose over the issue of Mega Events (I hope by now those on the other side have learned how to turn them off or are now enjoying their use).
on Sep 26, 2007
The Super abilities I think worked out pretty well. I just think some of them ended up not being as powerful as we had hoped. But with so many powers to choose from, I don't think it's a significant issue.
on Sep 26, 2007
I was thinking, both the Iconians and the Yor can trace their history to the Arnor and the Dread Lords. The Iconians have been working on restoring their data networks since the Yor rebelled, and the Yor still have the planet Icona. My point is, both of them have access to information that might provide them with precursor technology.

The question is, should they be running around with high quality weapons, special hulls, a few planet improvement structures, or maybe a all of the above?

________________
I'll be back after I do some more thinking.
on Sep 26, 2007
Was hopin' for a little more insight on how much they are going to modify the espionage system in update version 2.0?
on Sep 27, 2007
Hey, Frogboy. Is this a good place to provide suggestions for racial techs?
on Sep 28, 2007
I have a question, it may have been answered elsewhere, but how is the unique technology tree for every race in this expansion going to impact the Galactic Wonder and Trade Goods system? Are the Drengin still going to be able to produce the Restaurant of Eternity and Diplomatic Translators or will those things also be available only to certain races?
on Sep 28, 2007
i know art's expensive and all, but... any chance you can get your art dept. to re-skin some of the older ship parts? not new wire frames, but new textures that are up to the quality in DA would be nice. it's disconcerting to see the wonderfully detailed pieces (and themes) in the DA jewelry juxtoposed with the, well, mosaic-like (by comparison) pieces from DL. i know some of them got new skins; i'm just hoping to see it applied to all of them in TA.
on Oct 03, 2007
Nice sell to the press!

My main want would be for the tech tree to be truly distinct for different players, and not just cosmetically. Like techs could be in different orders for some races, grant different modifiers, grant slightly different modules and ship hulls. A possible spin-off is are the racial techs be tradeable? If they are, will they be hoarded? If I trade for one what do I get? If Terrans ally with Drengin and make nice, can Terrans get the plans for Slave Pits and build them? If Terrans get the Drengin version of Planetary Improvements, do they get both the modifiers of the Terran and Drengin versions combined?
Will racial hulls and components be tradeable? Can I buy / steal a Yor stealthship / stealth module for example?

Another thought I had was it's cool that the backstory will show up more in the game, but I'm wondering----how about events and chained events that play out aspects of the backstory, rather than just the 'calculated' random and megaevents that we have now in DA?
on Oct 03, 2007
My main want would be for the tech tree to be truly distinct for different players, and not just cosmetically.


Check out Brad's dev journals on the subject--the plan is to have the races not just have different tech trees, but different improvements with entirely different game mechanics behind them.
on Oct 04, 2007
Again, how is that going to impact the Wonder/Trade Goods system?