This made me pretty apprehensive about sending them into battles unless I was certain that they would emerge victorious.Įach of the mercenary’s ships come with their own special benefits, such as offering buffs to accompanying ships in their fleets, being immune to certain weapon classes, or moving extremely fast.
In fact, I found myself becoming rather fond of certain mercenaries, and in turn, overprotective of them. This narrative turn helps to individualize each merc, and lends itself to really caring about their personal safety. And then there’s the bizarre looking Prince Viturian and his mighty beam-laden dreadnought, The Sabre, who seeks to make the rest of the universe grovel at his feet. Talk about having that “love, not war” factor. For instance there is Ruire Podaq Nu, who commands a powerful precursor constructor vessel which can alter any nearby planet’s allegiance. Each mercenary comes with their own backstory and motivation. The good news here is that all races have access to them, not just the Torians (at least in multiplayer games). Each hero comes with his or her accompanying ship, which usually tends to be a bit overpowered. In gameplay terms, Mercenaries enables factions to recruit powerful hero units at the new bazaar, for a price. The Torians, long enslaved by the Drengins, have taken this opportunity to escape their captivity, and the bazaar is born, in order to help the underdogs in their fight for redemption and revenge. In a strategic oversight, and in the Drengin’s unquenchable thirst for conquest, they left their galactic territories near their homeworld relatively unprotected. Mercenaries introduces a full-fledged campaign which tells of how the evil Drengin Empire, in their over-zealousness, have thrown the vast majority of their formidable forces at the Terrans, eventually ending up on Earth’s doorstep. So along comes Stardock’s biggest and baddest expansion since GalCiv 3’s release, titled: Galactic Civilizations III Mercenaries, and boy, is it something else.
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Each DLC that they’ve released since GalCiv 3’s initial inception has frankly been hit or miss, with my favorites being Galactic Events and Precursor Worlds, and least favored, the lackluster Revenge of the Snarthi (a silly mod that introduced evil space squirrels). Being a smaller independent game studio, Stardock has always had one ear wide open to its gaming community and has listened and responded when things weren’t going quite right, which is really how it should be with all game developers. Since its initial release in May 2015, Stardock, as usual, has been releasing a steady stream of bug fixes and patches that has mitigated game crashes and shored up other niggling issues that gamers were complaining about.
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Add to that-randomized and/or customizable galaxies and ships, and GalCiv 3 is a hardcore space empire simulator that has near limitless replay value. GalCiv 3 not only gave you access to pre-rendered races but also let you create your own from the ground up. And of course the last “X” in the equation-you would proceed to go to war and attempt to exterminate your foes. From there, you had to exploit the resources of said planets under your control and amass their income in order to forge massive fleets of naval vessels. Next, you expanded your burgeoning civilization’s borders by colonizing planets near and far. You took control over your own galactic empire and proceeded to send your first scout ships out to explore the surrounding galaxy. GalCiv 3 epitomized what a 4X should aspire to be on the modern gaming PC. Much to my delight, it delivered in spades (read my review here).
When I’d first heard that GalCiv 3 would feature multiplayer I was all in-and patiently awaited its release. To me there is nothing quite like outwitting real human foes (or, errr…getting outwitted by them) instead of dealing with the automated machinations of today’s rather limited AI technology. However, since the GalCiv games didn’t feature any multiplayer components (which is a must for any 4X title in my book), I soon grew bored of them and moved on to something else.
I admired the GalCiv series’ attention to detail, broad scale, ability to customize ships (much like tuning a car in a racing game), and for some odd reason its overall wonkiness and innate charm. I also tried Galactic Civilizations 1 & 2 back in the day. At that time I thought to myself: “Any game with that cool of a title has to be good.” It turned out to be not just good, but great, and it revolutionized the RTS genre with its fluidity and manageable yet massive scale. I still remember the first time that I tried out a Stardock game, which was the original Sins of a Solar Empire.