In the course of finishing Galactic Civilizations III, I was forced to do something I didn't want to do - I won the game.
Oh, I didn't object to it in principle, it just snuck up on me, though. I was tottering along, micromanaging my planets when all of a sudden - defeat! It took me awhile to figure out what happened. I'd been exploring the galaxy, looking through the mostly-empty map to find the NPC empires, for trading purposes mostly. I'd long since had contact with the Altarians, and we'd been allies for about 100 turns, but the Iconians were tucked away in a distant cluster with a lot of dark space between them and me. My persistence paid off, though. After settling a forward base to extend the range of my ships, I was finally able to get a purpose-built exploratory vessel through.
And then ten turns later, I lost. It turns out that the disadvantage to stacking your AI opponents with all the benevolent factions is that they can go from strangers to allies in less than a year. The Altarians wound up winning a diplomatic victory. Which wouldn't bug me so much, except that you can't keep playing afterwards, and I was having too much fun upgrading my planets. So I loaded an old autosave, bribed the Altarians into hitting the Iconians with a Trade Embargo, then went and allied with the Iconians myself, a couple of turns later. Because you can keep playing after you win the game.
I'd go into more detail about why these machinations were worth it to me, but I'm sure they would be impossibly tedious. I like clicking buttons and seeing numbers go up.
Overall, I would not say that Galactic Civilizations III won me over to the series. It's a fine game, but it didn't actually solve any of the problems I had with its predecessor. Still too much warfare and expansion, and it still isn't as slick as its contemporary competition. That said, I had fun for almost the entire time I was playing it, and were something to happen to make me unable to play the rest of my 4X games, I would find this one to be a worthy consolation prize.
I know that sounds kind of back-handed, and I don't really mean it like that. It's just that the problem I have with the Galactic Civilizations series, and it's not really a problem, per se, more like an "issue," is that it's a game that confuses "size" with "scope." Progress is usually in the form of bigger numbers - more planets, longer ship ranges, higher credit and research totals. There's nothing that really comes along and changes the way you approach the game. It's not like the Space Empires games, where the end of the tech tree brings you radical new powers. What you're doing at the end of the game is a lot like what you're doing at the beginning.
Which is fine. I like most of the stuff you have to do. And except for contesting territory, I like it more the more of it you have to do. It's just that as your empire expands, it feels less like you are growing in power and more like you are growing in the number of repetitive chores you have to do.
I'm actually pretty sure that's the case for all 4Xs, though. It's just GalCiv doesn't even pretend to balance small empires against big ones. So for a guy like me who always plays "tall," even when I'm forced to go "wide," it just seems like work shoveled upon work. Not something I object to in principle, but just enough to put this game at the middle of my list, rather than the top.
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