Anyone play Imperium Galactica?
Nathaniel Bonini
it. It looks like a really cool game (except that I wanted a
multiplayer game) Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Nathaniel Bonini
Blair Nowakowsky
<eMIfONUHvcCwKy...@4ax.com>:
This is a DOS game and a real nightmare to install and get running on a
win95 computer. I had to disable the sound to get the game going. Also I
had to install the patch then manually copy files from the disk. I have
forgotten the details but go to GT Interactives web site
http://www.gtgames.com . They have all of the files and information. Here
is the faq http://www.gtisonline.com/pc/igfaq.html
Once I got the game going I rather enjoyed it. Of course I borrowed it
from a friend so the price was good :-). (and no, it was not pirated!).
The end game was a bit tedious and some of the micromanagement of your
ships was tiresome but on the whole I really got into it. I liked the
fleet management and movement. Ground battles could be fun too.
TNX
Blair.
PS - IG 2 is coming out in 2000. www.gamedomain.com and others have
preview.
Jimmy Chan
<bon...@nospam.eznet.net> wrote:
>I saw it the other day at EB used. I bought it and couldn't install
>it. It looks like a really cool game (except that I wanted a
>multiplayer game) Any thoughts?
No multiplayer in the game if I remember correctly. It was a long
time ago since I finished that game. You should be able to find some
of my comments and others in deja. There were some problems with
certain soundcards, I was able to do a workaround with the soundcard,
and got the game working.
Game itself was okay at first but after awhile the game is a drag,
can't really recommend it anymore as there are better games available
in the bargain bin to entertain yourself. The game itself felt sort
of unfinished, many things looked like it was thrown in but not fully
utilized, the diplomacy was useless.
Doug Jacobs
> I saw it the other day at EB used. I bought it and couldn't install
> it. It looks like a really cool game (except that I wanted a
> multiplayer game) Any thoughts?
Amusing at first, then got really, really tedious and boring about 4/5ths
of the way through. I never finished the game.
Interesting premise:
You start out as the commander of a small fleet and are given various
missions to perform. As you progress through the game, you're given more
and more to do (manage research, manage planets, etc.) The storyline
unfolds as you go through the ranks.
Bad implementation:
It's more like an adventure game - everything's in the exact same place,
the misions are exactly the same, heck, even the AI's movements are
*exactly* the same each time. No replayability. No multiplayer (doesn't
fit with the game's premise.)
Management gets really tedious really fast. Trying to manage a dozen
planets, plus fleets, research (which requires you to build differing
research facilities on different planets), population problems, taxes,
enemy incursions all at once gets tedious.
The manual doesn't cover much, so when you get to the later stages of
the game, there are things that just aren't covered. Such as, how to
colonize a new planet. Trial and error while things are happening in
realtime is amusing at first, but when the game's this complicated, it
leads to a lot of restarts.
Oh yeah, did I mention this was all done in realtime? Yes, you can do
your tasks while the clock is paused, but after awhile I found myself
spending an hour on pause, for 5 minutes of clock time (things happen
that fast.)
If your computer doesn't have a genuine Sound Blaster AWE32 or 64, it
probably won't be able to play sounds/music for this game.
Peter Knutsen
Doug Jacobs wrote:
>
> Nathaniel Bonini <bon...@nospam.eznet.net> wrote:
> > I saw it the other day at EB used. I bought it and couldn't install
> > it. It looks like a really cool game (except that I wanted a
> > multiplayer game) Any thoughts?
>
> Amusing at first, then got really, really tedious and boring about 4/5ths
> of the way through. I never finished the game.
I bought the game a couple of years ago, and I could use some help
with the strategy part.
I've never had any sound card problems, but that might be because I
have an AWE64 card. I used exit to DOS, then I installed the game,
used sound card autodetection, and it works fine.
Now, here's my setup:
I've advanced to Commander rank, and I have lots of money,
and several large fleets.
I have two fully built-up fleets, called "Invasion" and "Pounder",
each containing 3 flagships with the best weapons, and 25
destroyer 2's with the best weapons, and 30 Fighter 2's.
My tech level is what you can achiev when you have only 6 planets,
i.e. the weakest kind of Guns and the second type of Lasers.
I also have 9 fleets, called "Carry 1" to "Carry 9", they
consist only of 3 flagships each, and their purpose is to
carry tanks to ground battles (each can carry 24 tanks).
The two first fleets also have 24 tanks each.
But my problem is, that I cannot manage to conquer a Garthog
world. I can win the space battle easily (send in Pounder, smash
lots of stuff, then retreat before I loose too many ships, then
I send in Invasion to clean up). It's the ground battle that is
the problem. The Garthogs have a *LARGE* amount of ground forces,
and also a lot of Fortresses, like 6 Fortresses per planet. Since
I can only send in 24 tanks at a time, and all I have is Medium
Tanks, I haven't been able to conquer a single Garthog planet yet.
One tactic that I tried was to smash all the Fortresses on one
Garthog planet. Basically I was able to smash, at the most, one
Fortress per fleet assult, so I had to use 8-9 waves of 24
Medium tanks in order to smash all the Fortresses. The purpose
of this strategy was to limit the Garthog's ability to house
tanks on the planet (each Fortress smashed ought to reduce the
tank housing capability by 12 or so), only it didn't work. When
I had smashed all Fortresses but one, the planet still housed
a large number of ground units, far too many for 24 Medium tanks
to take on.
So what should I do here?
I have tried some other tactics, in order to increase my number
of planets beyond 6, so I can do more advanced research (remember
that I'm still at Commander rank, so I cannot colonize yet, or
even engage in diplomacy).
One tactic was to attack one of the Ychom planets (yes, I know
they're supposed to be friendly, but I'm desperate), the one
that has a very small population of maybe 1800-2000 Ychoms.
The conquest was damn easy, only problem is, after I conquer
the planet some other alien (which have, so far, not bothered
me at all) attacks one of my planets with vastly superior technology.
I suspect that this alien species is allied with the Ychoms. So
this tactic is bad.
The third tactic I've tried is to attack the Morgan planet in
the lower right corner of the screen (when zoom out is maximum,
at Commander level). The space battle was a bit tough, but the
ground battle was easy, as the Morgans had almost no forces.
The problem is, when I manage to conquer this planet, I'm
immediately promoted to Grand Admiral (i.e I skip the rank
of Admiral) and given control of 4 additional (Human) planets.
I'm also given acces to the full map, and Diplomacy options.
But it's very problematic, because I don't recieve the flagship
Thorin (apparently because I've bypassed some of the storyline
of the game), and also, I feel unprepared. I'd much prefer to
progress slowly, expand my empire slowly so that I have time
to manage it and do research. Going from 6 to 11 planets all of
a sudden is difficult, I can't decide what to research, and
anyway I get attacked very soon by all sorts of aliens, before
I've had a chance to research better tech.
So can somebody help me:
1. I could use a good recipe for how to conquer just one Garthog
planet.
2. I'd like to know what the conditions are for advancing from
Commander to Admiral rank, along the regular storyline.
I'm playing on Hard difficulty level, last time I played (was
maybe 1 1/2 years ago, or more), I played on Normal, back then
I found it easier to play, and I believe I managed to conquer
some Garthog planets. Only I'd like to play on Hard level, and
I'm convinced that if I can manage to skip this stage, I can
progress much farther in the game.
I know about the cheats, but I'd like to win without cheating.
Also, I fail to see the usefulness of the cheats, as they are
bound to interfere with the storyline, and I'd like to get
hold of the flagship "Thorin".
Please help me, somebody.
--
Peter Knutsen
Stormcloud
news:3847AC2A...@knutsen.dk...
>
>
> I know about the cheats, but I'd like to win without cheating.
> Also, I fail to see the usefulness of the cheats, as they are
> bound to interfere with the storyline, and I'd like to get
> hold of the flagship "Thorin".
The main concept you should know about Imperium Galactica is that it's
realtime and dynamic. This means, that while you're pandering away to
complete your alloted missions, all the other races are increasing their
strengths - settling on empty planet, building space fortress, ground based
space cannons etc.
Therefore, you need to complete the mission as fast as you can without
wasting time until you get to the final mission where it's open ended. From
here, you get all the resources and ships (inc. Thorin) to build a Human
empire.
Me, I cheat on the money (no, you don't miss the story line) and later when
I got bored, I cheated on item production. Got myself a couple of Leviathan
class flagship (i.e Thorin), so each attack group consists of 1 Leviathan
flagship + 2 Advanced flagship ... plus 15 Advanced Heavy Cruisers and 10
Advanced Destroyers. Why I chose this battle fleet mix up?
1) Leviathan class flagship sucks when in comes to carrying capacity of
space-ground missiles (used to destroy those dangerous ground based space
cannons), so it's pointless to use too many of these to assault planets. A
few bad points are - it's bigger, turns like a pregnant whale and have a
shield strength like a standard flagship.
2) Those 15 Heavy cruisers with flagship type shields will make mince meat
out of any enemy fleet. Not to mention they also carry several space-ground
missiles.
3) I use the destroyers to catch up on stragglers when the enemy retreat.
They're fairly maneuverable ships, but with weak shieldings. A few will die
in each battle, but these are expendable.
I don't really use fighters much. It takes too long to build a respectable
amount, and they die like mayflies in battle.
I was happily on my way to become conqueror of the galaxy (I routinely
attacked the Dargslan fleet and planet to keep their military strength
down - since they're the actual threat with advanced tech ships), when
suddenly I found out that I couldn't build any more buildings or gun
emplacements. Seems that the game will limit the amount of buildings you can
build after a certain number has been reached. That put me off so bad, I
stopped playing and muttered something incomprehensible towards the game
programmers :P
One good thing I like about Imperium Galactica is their real-time (pausable)
tactical space battle engine. To me, it reminds me of the Star Wars battle -
turbolasers pounding away at capital ship's shields - hark! there goes a
turbolaser battery! destroyed! There are few annoyances, but ultimately, it
CAN be improved. Imho, it's better than MOO/MOO II space battle concept.
rnj.
Jimmy Chan
wrote:
>I was happily on my way to become conqueror of the galaxy (I routinely
>attacked the Dargslan fleet and planet to keep their military strength
>down - since they're the actual threat with advanced tech ships), when
>suddenly I found out that I couldn't build any more buildings or gun
>emplacements. Seems that the game will limit the amount of buildings you can
>build after a certain number has been reached. That put me off so bad, I
>stopped playing and muttered something incomprehensible towards the game
>programmers :P
I ran into the same thing also, but I just continued and managed to
finally finish the game. At this point, I had about 3 fleets to
attack and defend all the planets, 1 fleet would be used to attack new
planets and defenses, the other 2 fleets would be used to defend
against any fleets trying to invade. Many times one of those fleets
would have to go chasing down remnants of the attacking fleet.
Usually no fleet would be able to get close enough to any planet to
land any forces, so didn't bother with the building program from that
point on.
>One good thing I like about Imperium Galactica is their real-time (pausable)
>tactical space battle engine. To me, it reminds me of the Star Wars battle -
>turbolasers pounding away at capital ship's shields - hark! there goes a
>turbolaser battery! destroyed! There are few annoyances, but ultimately, it
>CAN be improved. Imho, it's better than MOO/MOO II space battle concept.
IG's way of doing space battles is what really drew me into the game,
though even that was starting to wear after 3 weeks of playing. I
hated the feeling that things were thrown in and not used to good
effect, like diplomacy was totally useless and having to visit certain
portions of the ship, most sections only visited once as that was all
the game required for the storyline. Why bother with having to check
the cabin and meeting in the lounge, etc. if it was only going to be
utilized once in the game? It was a waste of time to have those
portion in the game and didn't add anything worthwhile.
Peter Knutsen
Stormcloud wrote:
>
> Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote in message
> news:3847AC2A...@knutsen.dk...
> >
> >
> > I know about the cheats, but I'd like to win without cheating.
> > Also, I fail to see the usefulness of the cheats, as they are
> > bound to interfere with the storyline, and I'd like to get
> > hold of the flagship "Thorin".
>
> The main concept you should know about Imperium Galactica is that it's
> realtime and dynamic. This means, that while you're pandering away to
> complete your alloted missions, all the other races are increasing their
> strengths - settling on empty planet, building space fortress, ground based
> space cannons etc.
Yes, I've been aware of that, only I wasn't sure if the computer
played "by the rules", i.e. was under the same limitations as a
human player. I thought that maybe the computer just recieved
buildings at specific intervals, which is common in computer
strategy games.
> Therefore, you need to complete the mission as fast as you can without
> wasting time until you get to the final mission where it's open ended. From
That's a good idea. The first mission can be completed rather fast,
but the second mission is dependent on the storyline, so you'll
just have to wait until the storyline progresses that far, so
you get to advance to Commander rank.
> here, you get all the resources and ships (inc. Thorin) to build a Human
> empire.
>
> Me, I cheat on the money (no, you don't miss the story line) and later when
I've started over, and done the same thing (on Hard). I cheated up
maybe 2 million credits, then later I made 3 more millions using
the cheat code.
I also found out that you can miss on the storyline, if you fortify
your planets while you're still Lietenant rank. I built 5 Ion Cannons
on each planet, and they managed to repel the Garthog fleet. The
result of this was that the storyline stopped advancing. Apparently
it was crucial to the storyline that the Garthogs manage to land
some ground units so you can have a ground battle. Because of
this, I had to backtrack to a saved game and then turn of the
ground artillery. Once I got to Captain rank, I turned the
cannons on and had no more storyline problems.
> I got bored, I cheated on item production. Got myself a couple of Leviathan
> class flagship (i.e Thorin), so each attack group consists of 1 Leviathan
> flagship + 2 Advanced flagship ... plus 15 Advanced Heavy Cruisers and 10
> Advanced Destroyers. Why I chose this battle fleet mix up?
>
> 1) Leviathan class flagship sucks when in comes to carrying capacity of
> space-ground missiles (used to destroy those dangerous ground based space
> cannons), so it's pointless to use too many of these to assault planets. A
> few bad points are - it's bigger, turns like a pregnant whale and have a
> shield strength like a standard flagship.
I haven't advanced that far yet, but in your situation, I'd do
something else. I'd have one "Pounder fleet" which is only about
reducing the space defenses of a planet. This fleet would have 3
Flagships carrying lots of bombs, and lots of heavy attack ships
(25 cruisers, no destroyers). I'd pound away at the planetery
defenses, then when they've been pounded to dust or my "Pounder"
fleet is almost destroyed, I'd send in my "Invasion" fleet which
would be maximized for tank carrying capacity.
> 2) Those 15 Heavy cruisers with flagship type shields will make mince meat
> out of any enemy fleet. Not to mention they also carry several space-ground
> missiles.
Looking forward to getting those...
> 3) I use the destroyers to catch up on stragglers when the enemy retreat.
> They're fairly maneuverable ships, but with weak shieldings. A few will die
> in each battle, but these are expendable.
It sounds like destroyers aren't useful for planet attacks.
> I don't really use fighters much. It takes too long to build a respectable
> amount, and they die like mayflies in battle.
True, it is slow to build fighters. It's probably better to use
your building capacity for larger ships only.
By the way, I have a question: If you deploy a Space Defense
Platform mark I, is it possible to replace it with a mark II
platform later, or are you stuck with it until it gets
destroyed? I haven't gotten the Mark II platform yet, but I
can't see any "retract" or "un-deploy" button on the Equipment
screen...
Some days ago, I had a very annoying bug. The Garthogs were attacking
one of my planets, but I had 5 Ion Cannons on the ground, and they
managed to cruch the Garthog fleet except for 2 Garthog fighters
that stayed away from the Cannons. They didn't move at all, and I
didn't have anything on the screen but those ground cannons, so
I couldn't attack the 2 fighters and they stayed still. Nothing
was going to happen so I had to quit and reload a saved game.
> rnj.
--
Peter Knutsen
Glenn Ironhat
>From: Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk>
>Subject: Re: Anyone play Imperium Galactica?
>Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 08:45:25 +0100
>I haven't advanced that far yet, but in your situation, I'd do
>something else. I'd have one "Pounder fleet" which is only about
>reducing the space defenses of a planet. This fleet would have 3
>Flagships carrying lots of bombs, and lots of heavy attack ships
>(25 cruisers, no destroyers). I'd pound away at the planetery
>defenses, then when they've been pounded to dust or my "Pounder"
>fleet is almost destroyed, I'd send in my "Invasion" fleet which
>would be maximized for tank carrying capacity.
Yep. The second fleet doesn't need any escorts, only the flagships.
>
>> 2) Those 15 Heavy cruisers with flagship type shields will make mince meat
>> out of any enemy fleet. Not to mention they also carry several space-ground
>> missiles.
The ground missiles (bombs) are nice.
>It sounds like destroyers aren't useful for planet attacks.
I built some destroyers in the early game, but buy the time Destroyer type 3
is researched and I start to build a few, I don't need them any more because I
can build the Cruiser 2 and then later Cruiser 3.
I never build destroyers after that.
>> I don't really use fighters much. It takes too long to build a
respectable>> amount, and they die like mayflies in battle.
>True, it is slow to build fighters. It's probably better to use
>your building capacity for larger ships only.
Except in the early game, I always have a full fleet of fighters. I find that
they protect the capitol ships from enemy missiles (cannon fodder). Plus what
survives is useful to distract the enemy guns. This works quite well when
attacking planets.
>By the way, I have a question: If you deploy a Space Defense
>Platform mark I, is it possible to replace it with a mark II
>platform later, or are you stuck with it until it gets
>destroyed? I haven't gotten the Mark II platform yet, but I
>can't see any "retract" or "un-deploy" button on the Equipment
>screen...
I never found a way to do that.
>Some days ago, I had a very annoying bug. The Garthogs were attacking
>one of my planets, but I had 5 Ion Cannons on the ground, and they
>managed to cruch the Garthog fleet except for 2 Garthog fighters
>that stayed away from the Cannons. They didn't move at all, and I
>didn't have anything on the screen but those ground cannons, so
>I couldn't attack the 2 fighters and they stayed still. Nothing
>was going to happen so I had to quit and reload a saved game.
That would be annoying.
General comments.
I played 2 1/2 times. The 1/2 was a practice game.
I think I used the money cheat in my first full game, but I don't remember.
My last game was on hard where I didn't cheat, but also IIRC I never even
needed to.
I just keep taxes medium or low and then later at very low, and the
populations just continues to climb which generates more income.
Once you get past the Garthogs though and you get to colonize planets, I found
that totally eliminating a colony and building my own colony from scratch was
more efficient. Even though alien buildings would take up less room that
human equivalents, the fact that alien colonies would only have nuclear power
plants mean you need too many of them and that takes up all the space you save
having smaller alien buildings.
Best way to eliminate an alien colony, is to destroy the Hub, before
eliminating the last alien unit. Then letting the colony revolt.
I would have my colony fleet ready to invade.
The best planets with that strategy are the human colony planets because you
don't have to kill the Hub and rebuild the whole planet.
It's a fun game to play a couple times but then that's about it. Also the end
game is rather tedious.
--
Glenn
--
**************************************************************************
Glenn Ironhat "Sir, you just committed treason!"
"I always hoped that if I ever had to make a choice
between betraying my friends and betraying my country,
that I would have the guts to betray my country."
Captain Sulu USS Excelsior Star Trek VI:TUC (novel)
[gd...@pge.com] My opinion is mine and not my employer's.
**************************************************************************
Michael J. Solomon
playing a normal and hard difficulty game? I played this game awhile
back. I think I would like to try it again on hard this time. Thanks.
Peter Knutsen
According to the manual, you get fewer money (same population,
tax rate and tax morale yields fewer credits) and combat is harder
(your shots does less damage, enemy shots does more damage).
I've heard that there is an advantage to playing on Hard, which is
that you get one Leviathan flagship - on Normal you won't get the
ship, and it can't be built. Since I haven't advanced beyond
Commander rank, I can't say if it's true or not.
--
Peter Knutsen
Glenn Ironhat
>From: mike...@worldnet.att.net (Michael J. Solomon)
>Subject: Re: Anyone play Imperium Galactica?
>Could someone please let me know what the differences are between
>playing a normal and hard difficulty game? I played this game awhile
>back. I think I would like to try it again on hard this time. Thanks.
Less money to work with.
The enemy seems to have more forces to defend planets with.
I didn't notice anything else.
Glenn Ironhat
>From: Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk>
>"Michael J. Solomon" wrote:
>>
>> Could someone please let me know what the differences are between
>> playing a normal and hard difficulty game? I played this game awhile
>> back. I think I would like to try it again on hard this time. Thanks.
>According to the manual, you get fewer money (same population,
>tax rate and tax morale yields fewer credits) and combat is harder
>(your shots does less damage, enemy shots does more damage).
>I've heard that there is an advantage to playing on Hard, which is
>that you get one Leviathan flagship - on Normal you won't get the
>ship, and it can't be built. Since I haven't advanced beyond
>Commander rank, I can't say if it's true or not.
It's not true. You get the big ship at either level provided that you
progress through the ranks normally. Apparently there is a bug that messes
you up if you do not defeat the Garthogs before attacking other races.
Technically, you are only at war with the Garthogs and should only be
attacking them anyway.