love the game. wish you could zoom in on the planets.

This is a reluctant recommend review, I don't know why Steam doesn't allow for mixed individual reviews when they can categorize the overall ratings as mixed.

The game has so much potential and what it there probably makes it worth a purchase but the frustations will likely to get to people before long.

The diplomacy system is very deep, everything from treaties to trading technologies to funding proxy was and would be an epic part of the game if the AI weren't so terrible. Sure you can support one of your neighbors in order to keep an agressive neighbor on the other side of them from threatening your systems but you might as well be throwing firearms to monkeys and expecting them to fight with them for all the good it does. Not to mention the constant demands you receive for tribute from the AI players, including the single planet holding 'minor races' all while you have the top rated military in the known galaxy.

Exploration becomes repetitive and tiring before long, it's a purely open galaxy which means there are virtually no restrictions for travel. This might not sound like a bad thing but other space games that utilize the use of 'jumplines' or 'wormholes' between system make for a more more strategic and enjoyable experience. There are wormholes but they are entirely useless for anything other than having your survey ship unintentially scout the space in a straight line between it's destination and your own space as it slowly returns home.

Combat animations are two-dimensional, which is disapointing considering how big of a resource hog the game is in general. The actual battles are purely one-dimensional and nothing more than a numbers game, there is no retreat mechanic, which makes battles boring and frustrating at the same time and means that any civilian ship caught along has no hope of surviving even if they are an ultra fast scout ship that can outrun anything...and the different roles make it sound deep on paper but in practice a fleet of at most three ship types can dominate, and that's really only if you're bored and wanted to make three different ship types a fleet of death stars can rule the galaxy.

Preformance wise you need a ridicilous amount of RAM to run larger maps with more than a small handfull of opponents. Bugs were prevelant at launch and barely a fraction have seemed to have been adressed. Playing a bit more now I'm even finding the game crashing more often now than it ever did before.

Workshop support is nice for factions and ship designs, the ship designer is nice but with the two-dimensional nature of the game you never get to see your creations in detail except when building them.

I love it! The flexibility and variety make it great. If you love the Civ games this is for you!

I've been financing a 3-sided war for over 75 turns and have moved a transport ship near each civ's weakened homeworld.

The end is near.

Buy this game.

GCII still seems better due to game balance & glitches

great game

I would recommend this game, especially if you liked GalCiv 2.
Pros.
-Personnally I think Diplomacy is a little more thought out.
-Ship design, production is stream lined.
-Empire management for everything is much more convenient. Things like idle colony alerts help.
-Starbases are far more important now and rare galactic resources actually feel unique and important.

Cons.
-Still suffers from issues in massive maps that cause bugs between turns that force you to exit and reload.
-The new range part of weapons can make certain weapon techs less useful than suggested in actually combat. (early game missiles give you the first shot and almost guarantee the win if the enemy is not missile tech even if their ships are "stronger")
-Creating custom races doesn't use your description. It just uses the description for your base race.

Overall it's a good successor to GalCiv 2 and I would recommend switching if you still play the old one.

Great game ruined by shoddy coding. I love the Gal Civ series, but I have yet to be able to play a game of Gal Civ 3 to completion. I come back every 3-4 months it seems hoping that they will have tightened the code, with no luck. Every game ends with a crash to desktop. This has occured on multiple computers (one windows 7, one windows 10), multiple patches, even after I've followed all the recommended system tweaks that the dev has recommended. I'm through with it, and with any future stardock games. Too many other good games out there to spend my time endlessly fiddling with my system and reinstalling in the seemingly vain hope that this time I'll actually be able to play an entire game. Recommending a pass on this one, as if it isn't reasonably stable this long after release I have little hope for it.

Galactic Civilisations is Civ in space in many ways, If you like Civ (Like I Do ) There is a lot to like here if not well not every game is for every player

What a game! I've always wanted to try my strategic and tactically abilities on a large, no, grand scale and this game is near-perfect for such a desire. Whether it be by conquest, cultural imperialism or whether I wanted to ascend to a higher plain then this is the game for just that. I've played too many hours, admitedly, on this but every minute was worth it. The level of detail in the textures is brilliant and does the game proud.

This game does many things very well, some of them mentioned in the above, but personally I do have a few gripes I'd like to see disapear:
- The trading system (outside of diplomacy) is very thin and the only economics visible is the balance of payments and several trade routes you can form - I'd love to see an expansion of this, with just a bit of realism, like any economic body which has to keep tabs on imports and exports and regulate accordingly.
- The lack of a politics within your empire - and yes I know everyone's sick of politics atm - now, don't get me wrong, I love the ability of being the all-powerful being who guides a civilisation to victory (or in recent cases... to shameful defeat and desolation) but whilst it's benefitial, simplified and clear (and easy to roleplay as a benevolent dictator - like Valkorion) it sort of takes away from the idea of there being any politics within your society. So people/droids just blindingly follow and don't question? There isn't any political struggle/backlash or another way to run the system? I'm not asking for a full-blown and in-depth government panel like Democracy 3 or EU4, but the option to change the system, the government, from absolute autocratic state to bureacratic republic would be greatly appreciated... and help to roleplay as the Old Republic in custom games :D

These are the only two gripes I've really got with the game, there's no point me detailing all of the mechanics done so well here - you can read that on many other reviews. This is aimed, more so, at the developers who still have done a fantastic job and are a credit to the millions who watch sci-fi to imagine and think of what could be.

This game, simply put, allowed me to play out my galactic fantasies - as humans or another sentient life form. None of us will ever get to see mankind reach distances we can only see through a telescope but this is certainly one of the games that allows you to dream and shape a possible, but distant, future.

P.S. If you love watching epic space battles, then do your inner star wars fan a favour and spend a few credits :)