I personally like both GalCiv2 and Sword of the Stars. They play very, very differently though. If you would like to control (or at least choose to control) your fleets in combat, Sword of the Stars is it.
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It's entirely possible to win a battle through better tactical control even with fewer or less technologically advanced ships, which i find a compelling reason to play.GalCiv2 has a much more rewarding diplomacy model, and more options than 'kill everything to win.' It's possible to get an alliance win in SotS, but really a military victory is the most likely win scenario.I guess I can't really recommend one over the other so much as point out their differences. One thing I would suggest though, play the demos. Sword of the Stars can get extremely boring at times. Late in the game every single enemy planet will have a full complement of defensive platforms. Meaning that your fleet will just get HAMMERED by wave after wave of super long range undodgeable missiles.Your fleet will always start far away from the planet and the only ships that can survive the barrage are point defence ships and shield ships, both of which sacrifice so much offensive power that they can barely take out the turrets once they get there. Sword of the Stars can get extremely boring at times.
Late in the game every single enemy planet will have a full complement of defensive platforms. Meaning that your fleet will just get HAMMERED by wave after wave of super long range undodgeable missiles.Your fleet will always start far away from the planet and the only ships that can survive the barrage are point defence ships and shield ships, both of which sacrifice so much offensive power that they can barely take out the turrets once they get there.I can't say I've had the problems you're describing with late-game planets. Put lasers in your small mounts and you've got a good amount of anti-missile defense, especially from the planets where the missiles come from a known vector.
I sometimes ignore point defense (and rarely get shield technology in my tech tree) completely, since planetary defenses aren't that much of a problem unless you've got no fleet to speak of.Or research biowarfare and take the planet population out that way Had one game where cloaked biowarfare ships were my main offensive weapon. Sword of the Stars can get extremely boring at times. Late in the game every single enemy planet will have a full complement of defensive platforms. Meaning that your fleet will just get HAMMERED by wave after wave of super long range undodgeable missiles.Your fleet will always start far away from the planet and the only ships that can survive the barrage are point defence ships and shield ships, both of which sacrifice so much offensive power that they can barely take out the turrets once they get there.You have to defend against missle weapons with point defense lasers or phasers.
In late game rocket weapons are near useless for defending against a dedicated assault. You can build many different types of ships on many different types of technology. Since the research tree is random you cant depend on one type of technology strategy. Some times, for example, you wont get point defense or phasers. In this case you will want to invest in sheilds, light lasers or lots of armor.Random events can be very unforgiving in Sword of the Stars.
I have seen all surviving races team together to take out a threat that spawned in. You can turn these events off, but the horror factor of not knowing what might be floating out in the dark can be a lot of fun. Some things you fight, some things you run from.You can also send ships against an enemy system and raid commerce there. Piracy gets a lot more personal. That doesn't account for how many missiles there are. There were points where I tried sending in ships armed with nothing but point defence.
All of the platforms targetted one ship and it was quickly destroyed. There were so many missiles flying in that they got through because the point defence was busy recharging.I got bored of it pretty quickly though so I never took the time to integrate any advanced tactics.Maybe it's a difference between vanilla Sword of the Stars and the later Born of Blood (and A Murder of Crows) expansions? All I can say is defense satellites, when I run into them, are only a nuisance.I had a fleet that was 3 normal (not shield, not point defense only) cruisers interdicting a developed world. One cruiser didn't have a drive anymore (which is one of the reasons they I didn't have them leave). Instead of abandoning it, I sent a repair ship that direction which was going to take about 9 turns.
They just hung out at the edge of the system and destroyed missiles until the repair ship showed up.Generally I take along a few destroyers armed with lasers/phasers/PD/whatever-I-have to act as missile defense when attacking a colony while my cruisers take along larger weaponry because if you don't take anything to combat missiles, yes they can be a problem. Usually then I destroy all or most of the defense sats (manually targetting them). Still, I rarely run into a world with more than 5 small and 5 medium sats. I could see coming up on a planet with a full complement including the largest taking awhile to pound through.If I didn't like to play out the battles, though, there's no question in my mind that GC2 is the game to pick.
On the other hand, if you want weapon placement/ship design to matter beyond rock/paper/scissors then SotS is great For me, they fulfill different gaming itches so I like 'em both. I find that Sword of the Stars is far more satisfying combat wise.
Zooming in and watching your ships duke it out and actually being able to command them tactics-wise is far more entertaining than the Galactic Civilizations system. That being said, the Diplomacy/Research/Colony Development (Pretty much everything besides combat) is far more interesting in Galactic Civilizations.I did enjoy the differentiation among the SOTS races. There were only four, but there were far more differences between them than there were for (12?) races found in GC2. SOTS required a lot more strategy.If I'm in the mood for simple downright fun, I play SOTS. If I'm in the mood for challenging diplomacy/development, I play GC2.To tip the balance for a must have, I can only agree with the above: teleporting space dolphins kick serious ass.
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Awwwww, that's unfortunate. Guess I'll have to pick up AMoC and sort out the install.dreamer of pictures - Yeah, I noticed that when I was reinstalling through Impulse after a fresh OS install. Pre-Impulse they installed to two separate locations with their own disk paths, registry etc, but then post-Impulse it overwrote vanilla SotS.I asked about it, thinking it a bug, but it's apparently intetionally installed that way.
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Not a gigantic deal, unless you wanted to play vanilla SotS for backstory (or to remind yourself of all the goodness of BoB or AMoC).
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