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Editors, Tech Trees and Terror Stars. Oh my!
Published on April 9, 2008 By Zoomba In GalCiv II News

As the release of Twilight rapidly approaches, more previews are cropping up around the Internet.  Last Friday, GameShark joined the party with their own impressions on the latest build of the expansion pack.  Troy Goodfellow puts the game through its paces and shares what he found.

Like just about everyone else, Troy paid special attention to the degree of customization and differentiation between the races.  Unique tech trees for each race, unique structures, weapons and defense systems promise a lot of replay value between the races.  And of course, no preview of Twilight would be complete without a mention of the Terror Star.

"Near the end of all the tech trees is something called a Terror Star, a solar system destroying death machine that can be outlawed by the universal UN. They moved at a snail’s pace, but will undoubtedly become very popular with players."

Also mentioned was the wealth of user editing tools built for Twilight.  Now users will be able to create their own tech trees, planetary improvements, maps and even scenarios.

"More color, more variety, more story, new winning conditions, new music, and even a new "Immense" galaxy size – it’s an expansion pack all right. In all, Arnor seems to be moving the game to an end point. If Stardock delivers on everything it says it will, there won’t be much left to ask for."


Comments
on Apr 10, 2008
Stardock promises “completely unique technology trees”, so by the time of release these “every other branch” tech trees would have to be upgraded in order to fulfill that promise. At this stage, there is not a lot of difference between playing one nation and another beyond figuring out what has changed and then seeing if it matters.


Are the tech trees really in development yet or is this statement nonsense?
on Apr 10, 2008
At least UI play beta with them for couple of months already
on Apr 10, 2008
Nice review
on Apr 10, 2008

Are the tech trees really in development yet or is this statement nonsense?

At this point only small tweaks are being made to tech trees....If none of the tech trees could share data I think we'd go crazy (or at least cut it down from 12 trees).

on Apr 10, 2008

At this point only small tweaks are being made to tech trees....If none of the tech trees could share data I think we'd go crazy (or at least cut it down from 12 trees).


In my opinion the tech trees are very good as they are now. There has to be at least some comparability to the tech trees of each race. Otherwise you would have to learn a completely new game with each race. I find it very satisfying to see the tree and think "Okay, that tech does something like the old tech in a bit different way, so i have to adjust my play style to this." Your style of play does not get completely useless when you see the individual tree, but you have also a challenge to adjust your gameplay to it, because it actually is a bit different. I do trust in your skills of making a good game, so i just lean back and enjoy whats coming. What i have seen so far does more than meet my expectations.
The current version does good in giving a very different feeling to each race. I just read that article and could not really believe that. If the reviewer is disappointed at the end, because he does still see the similarities between the races (with some techs only renamed, others changed a bit and a few new bonus techs), i think he is just stupid and has no idea what it actually does mean to make a good game and get it balanced well. Twilight already now offers more than almost any other expansion available for other games, so there is no need to complain in my opinion. Give us, what we see now plus a few extras that make it perfect and we all will be very happy, i guess.

By the way - as i can see it, there will be lots of possibilities with the editors, so if the reviewer doent like the way the game is, he might as well make it the way he wants it to be by himself ^^
on Apr 10, 2008
It's much more fun trying out the different races now, and play out their strengths and/or weaknesses. With an editor only the universe will be the limit I suppose. But the original races truly hold their own candle now. This is what I call an expansion.

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on Apr 11, 2008
My preferred game is always as a custom race in the largest galaxy. What I'm looking forward to in Twilight, and this is the question, is the ability to start my custom race with a choice of any of the technology trees. Am I right in reading the pre-release blurb that this is the case, total flexibility?

In a similar vein, how difficult is it to customise your start planet? Can you add any pre-cursor square of your choice? Is this a simple option, or does it require going into the map editor for the entire galaxy, just to customise the one planet?

on Apr 13, 2008

Yes, your custom races can pick their tech tree from the pre-made ones (or make your own tree in the editor and use that!)

As of now there is no way to specify starting bonus tiles that a race can receive    It's all dumb luck.

on Apr 13, 2008
Thanks for the reply. Pity about not being able to choose starting bonus tiles, although I guess dumb luck is a "fairer" way to do it! Speaking of which , do you know if they've fixed that old bug where other races intelligence were defaulting to dumb if you restarted a new game with Alt-N instead of going back to the main menu.

Irrespective, I'm looking forward to buying this expansion and losing a lot of sleep again over the next few weeks!
on Apr 14, 2008
Back from loooong hiatus from this game (cleaned/bulldozed my room and found that collector's edition metallic ship and remembered that i should start all over playing this game again) and damn i need to buy both of those exp. packs.

When will it be possible to order package that included both with digital dl + cd's ?
I know, (i'm lazy) , that you can order them separately, but still...

Keep up the good work.
on Apr 16, 2008
Looking forward to the final release, this is probably my favorite game series.