A little help please.

The latest patch with the balance mod is better than GC2.GC2 is good and worth buying,but lacks the depth of SEV..

My experience is that all the major bugs have been solved, and in about a month (or even less) the game will reach a great stability. There are still a few bug, though.

Despite the bugs I suggest you to go for SE5 if you like a full and complex 4X game. I have both SE5 and GalCivII, and SE5 is so much better than GalCivII

Exlore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate

This is how this games are described

The patches are slowly making it the game it should have been.

I admit, there are some glaring bugs. But the fixes are coming pretty fast and the game's overall content greatly surpasses GC2 (though also a very good game). Heck, if nothing else, as of the time of this post, if you order SE5 from Strategy First's website you'll get Starfury for free ^_^

I think it depends on what you want;
SEV games are much longer then GALCIV games; They are also much deeper and more complex.

I myself love all the micromanagement of SE5
But some people like it simpler and faster...

But if you like detail and dept... go for SE5

~Myrath

There are two planet status icons that I have yet to figure out what they represent. One is a yellow dashed box which may or may not contain what looks like a crate (cargo?). And the other has two multicolored items which also look like some type of cargo or supplies. I have so far not been able to see a pattern of the planet containing supplies or cargo related to these icons and neither is represented in the manual. Any help is appreciated.

rms1954: I believe the common status icons are Has Shipyard (with icons within when the queue is busy), Has Spaceport and Can Resupply. They certainly don't look that intuitive!

You can find them out for sure by hitting Shift-O for empire options, choosing System Display on the left, then scrolling the right pane to the section on planetary status icons. You can experiment with turning one on at a time to see which are which!

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

The dashed box is the construction queue icon, the icon within that box is a tiny representation of what is currently being built on that planet. I believe that the other one is the icon representing a resupply ability for that planet.

-Currently subjecting multiple galaxies to the doom of conquer or blackholes

Galactic Civilizaiton 2 is a good game. I just got bored with its lack of depth.

They need to update the manual to include these in the icon listing. That's probably not real high on their list of "to do" items right now.

I noticed that after refitting a ship at a planet that did not have my native population the number of crew was zero. Is this by design or a bug?

you can refit??? i was never able to do that, and i was playing full tech....
I had to scrap my ships and build the new/better version
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Every great fall begins with a single mistake, YOU just made your's........

I've run into this as well. When you refit and get an upgraded Crew Quarters/Life Support you crew drops to zero. If you are not over a planet with the ships original native population, it will remain that way until moved to one (at half-speed).

So yeah either retrofiting/repairing over a native world or move a planet over to one will fix it...That is if the ship has engines. I have a few frontier Space Stations--mostly designed for unit contruction and unit lanch--over some wormholes which cannot move to refresh their population. These have remained at Zero since being upgraded. Since they do not participate in combat (aside from launching units) I haven't had a problem, but if you have a defence base then I figure it would be.

Not sure if it is a bug or not. I have not found any crew transfer feature like moving population and such. Would be a cool addition I think that is if another races native abilities carry over. Currently when I build a ship at a planet with a conquered population, the ship appears with my native races population and not theirs.

I own both and they both have their merits.

Galciv 2 is a more polished game in many respects but lacks the potential of SEV, it has a surrender method that completely ruins the gameplay for me and many of us complained about it for ages on the forums but that aside its a fairly good game, the AI, at present is better than SEV standard - (Not mine and probably not kwok's and we have only just started ). Graphically it is better than SEV but in all honesty i'm having more fun with SEV.

SEV has more options for setting up the game as you want it, then goes a step further and allows you to modify the game, then goes a step even further and allows you to actually alter the code behind the game. It feels more epic in scope than galciv 2, which seems to scale everything down to a more marco level, the surrender method I talked about is a good example of this:

In galciv two, play in a crowded galaxy and you will see the AI just up and surrender if you make a decent attack or worse AI's will surrender a few days into a war with a seemingly random empire, if its you, you can be lumbered with un defendable, debt ridden colonies... This makes the game faster and simpler, as it reduces the number of opponents to deal with; where as with SEV you will have to deal with all the opponents you put in and everything that comes with that.

For me I like busy galaxies, difficult decisions and lots of opponents to make them against, so I configure space empire games to be as such, occassionally I like small, really intense games and I could make SEIV and soon SEV play as such.

I think its a hardcore strategy fans dream come true personally

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

My two pennies.

SEV is definatly a game worth having in the long run, however its not yet a game to sit down and play properly.

GC2 is a game that is fully playable now, but lacks a lot of the depth that you will get from SEV.

GC2 is the anti-SEV. The focus is on graphics, Ai and ease of user usability.

SE-V focus is on Depth, and User based Mods.

GC2 would be "gothic 3", Se-V would be a graphics based Angband.

One offer's pretty graphics, and a "Movie" like experience. The other provides depth, and reads like a thick "sci-fi" book experience.

GC2 provides 5 worlds around a Sun. Usually one planet will be fertile, One semi-fertile, the rest barren. It uses the Pax imperia approach and you plop down Buildings of a planet based graph. It use's a limited ship design approach, and all combat is computer controlled. (It plays like a Sci-fi starship battle with poor helm control. The Ai controlled ships run in circle's firing at each other.)Ground Combat uses the Master of Orion approach and has simulated combat with a number cruncher. The three Unique approach's to the game is Starbase Zone Bonus's, Ethical choice's and Ai smarter then the rest of the 4x games.

The soon released addition include's Asteroid mining, Different atmosphere's, and a even more robust AI. (Funny how GC2 keeps becoming more like the SE series everyday. )

My advice would to buy both, but if your money is short. Buy GC2. (And later when you want something deeper. Buy SEV. By then most of the game damaging bugs, general slowness, and brain dead AI will be fixed.)