Imperium Galactica II: Alliances

aka: Imperium Galactica 2
Moby ID: 2317
Windows Specs
Buy on Windows
$2.49 new on Steam
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Description official descriptions

Starting on an untouched planet you have to expand your empire throughout the whole universe. Colonise more planets, fight against other races, research new technologies, and many other things more. You also can be diplomatic and cooperate with some species. Graphic effects include independent weather effects and lens flares on every planet, and explosions when it comes to space or ground fights.

Spellings

  • 银河霸主II - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

160 People (141 developers, 19 thanks) · View all

Lead Programmer and AI Programming
3D Engine and Space Battle Programming
Ground Battle and Colony Programming
Programmer
Network and Storyline Programming
Development Manager
Story
Graphical Design
Animations
Vector Graphics
Music Composed by
Sound Designer and Lead Sound Engineer
Surface Textures
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 22 ratings with 2 reviews)

Good graphics, decent ground combat, semi-realtime, but overall merely adequate

The Good
Good graphics. You get control of both ground and space combat (sort of RTS as you can designate specific targets you can go after). All the standard stuff is here as you can research for better tech and add them to your ship designs. You can even upgrade your existing ships with new technology. Diplomancy is defined. There are a lot more of the random events like leaders and such. Both campaigns and scenarios available.

The Bad
No special weapons. The research tree is quite shallow and the differences between the different stuff were not explained sufficiently. No "air units" even though it was implied in the intros. Only three races (with their race specific "campaign", but it's more like a small scenario") though more races are available in multiplayer. Very derivative (most of the features you've already seen in MOO). Graphics sometimes too flashy and quite distracting.

The Bottom Line
Imperium Galactica 2 is a hybrid of both turn-based and real-time strategy. The premise is similar to Master of Orion. You start with one planet and build it up, research technology, colonize other worlds, and eventually conquer the local cluster of stars.

The game comes in four CDs: one for installation and tutorial, and one for each of the three playable races.

Imperium Galactica 2 is not turn-based. There's a timer that runs at four different speeds: stop, slow, normal, and fast. Taxes from each system are collected at month's end. Ship movement, research, and production are all dependent on the days that go by. You can issue orders when the game is stopped and inspect all you want.

The starmap is fully 3D, both rotatable and zoomable (though all the systems are on a flat plane). There is only one planet per system. The ships are also not limited in range, though ships and planets have sensor range and you need that to detect other planets.

You build up your colony by zooming in on the planet you colonized. The planet is limited to a small square area though. The terrain is fully 3D, but it doesn't really affect anything other than build-able areas. Only perfectly FLAT areas can be built on. You start with a colony hub (which is built from the colonizer ship you sent). Other structures cost more money. You can build housing and power structures, research structures, production structures, and defense structures. Structures are of different sizes, so you have to fit them together within the confines of the terrain. Some terrains are more defensible than others.

Your planet has a production rating and a population rating. Some planets are more hospitable to your race than others, and thus your race reproduce faster on such planets. You can make a planet MORE hospitable by sending a terraformer ship there first. Your structures need population/workers and power to run, so you will need to build powerplants as well (hints of SimCity).

Research structures comes in three types: building research, ship research, and tank research (tank being the "generic ground force"). Building research allow you to build more buildings (which of course costs MORE money, and uses more power and workers). Ship research give you access to higher level research related to ships (which is divided into ship hull, shields, weapons, radar, and misc.), and tank research give you higher ground force technology. You need certain number of the centers to research the higher topics. Having more centers though does NOT reduce research time. The only way to accelerate research is by "double money", which spends twice as much to get results in half the time.

The production facilities increase the production rating of ship or tanks. The higher the production rating, the more ship or tank you can build in a day. As research improves, you can build advanced facilities that can do more in same amount of space. Unfortunately, structures cannot be upgraded. You must demolish and rebuild.

Defensive structures comes in two types: ground defenses, or ground to space guns. Ground defenses only fire at ground targets, and you need to protect your key colony structures with them, esp. your colony hub. Improved versions comes with more firepower. Ground to space guns fire into orbit from the ground, and can be quite powerful, but also expensive. Later you can buy planetary shields, but that's late in the game.

You can build and upgrade ships based on the standard hull types. The normal stuff is all here... Fighter, corvette, destroyer, cruiser, and battleship. For static orbital defenses you can built space base(s) for each planet. You can upgrade the ships for a cost when you found more/better technology later. There is no limit on the total number of ship designs you wish to keep. You can even scrap ships to get some of the money back.

To order a fleet to attack is simple: select the fleet, then right-click the target, be it another fleet or a planet. When you encounter another fleet or planet, the game goes into ship combat mode. Basically, you get a semi-3D view of space or planet, and you can call your ships together in a group and right click on other ships to order attack, just like any RTS game. As expected, better firepower will win. If there are space guns on the surface, you need to destroy those as well.

Ground attack is similar. You choose a landing spot for the tanks you are going to land. When they land, you see the enemy colony in 3D view, along with any defending tanks. Select the tanks in a group and right-click your target. Again, firepower wins. Destroy all defenders to win the planet, or destroy key colony structures to make the enemy abandone the colony.

Diplomacy has all the standard options like trade, talk, etc.

Espionage is somewhat refined. Instead of "build" spies, you hire spies. The number is dependent on number of spy centers you build. As spies perform tasks, they gain experience, level, and skill. You can assign spies to gather info, perform counterintelligence (catch enemy spies), saboratage, or even assassination, among other activities.

The three races offered are quite different. The Kra'hen are militaristic and gets production and military bonus, but gets NO diplomacy and NO trade. The Shinari are excellent traders and spy masters but weak in other areas. The Solarians (humans) is your average race with research bonus. You can get other races in multiplayer with difference bonuses. However, it's not possible to design your own race.

Overall, this game is VERY reminiscent of Master of Orion (and its sequel), and that is somewhat unfortunately, as this game is not bad. The graphical touches are quite good, as is colony building concerns of power and worker, though the inability to find ways to further encourage reproduction is a bit of a problem. I can also find no way to move excess population from one colony to another. The combat is a bit simplistic and you can even choose to have the space combat resolved automatically without going into the RTS phase. However, there is no such option for ground combat (why not?) The game is otherwise full of these strange inconsistencies. Ground combat research is very limited with complete lack of air units and infantry (if any). At least this is more hands on than MOO's dice-rolling. :-) The random events are decent and you are sent different objectives during the campaign that are somewhat interesting.

Over all, Imperium Galactica II is a a decent spin on the 4X genre with a few unique ideas, but overall it failed to break out into new territory. The idea of three campaigns and multiple scenarios is okay but overall it's not THAT different, which makes it an "also-ran".

Windows · by Kasey Chang (4598) · 2002

A mediocre game of space conquest.

The Good
The pop up missions were very interesting the first time I played. The tactical screen for the planets had awesome graphics. I enjoyed the reflection of the clouds in my mirrored sky-scrapers.

The Bad
There are only 3 sides versus Master of Orions 30 or so. The intros shows fighters, men and tanks duking it out on the surface of a contested planet. Instead the combat consisted of only tanks and fortresses. The graphics were still great, but I never got over feeling I was being cheated out of my fighters and ground troops. Also, the path finding for the tanks was abysmal. For some reason the computer opponent tanks would sometimes huddle in the center of the city even if they out numbered you. This allowed me many times to blow up several buildings before they would finally come out and kill me.

There was no discernable tactics in the space combat. The guy with the biggest, baddest ships won.

The Bottom Line
Good concept, great graphics, poor execution.

Windows · by Jeff Watts (18) · 2001

Trivia

Demo

A demo CD of Imperium Galactica II: Alliances was given away with The Wheel of Time.

References

In one of the Solarian cinematics, there is a person putting a bomb and then walking away. If you look closely that person resembles Dante from the first IG series.

Version differences

A DVD version was released which includes a jukebox option, extra scenarios and full Dolby Surround support.

Awards

  • BAFTA
    • 2000 - Best Original Music

Analytics

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by DaHero.

Android added by Zalan Racz. iPad added by Sciere. Linux, Macintosh added by Iggi.

Additional contributors: Roger Wilco, Unicorn Lynx, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Karsa Orlong, Jo ST.

Game added September 4, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.