HomeLAN - What new gameplay features and improvements can we expect in the sequel?

Brad Wardell - The 3D engine will help immensely because with the scroll-button on the mouse, they player will be able to easily zoom and out. We also plan to have multiple view angles (top down to nearly head on). This will make it much cleaner to manipulate your fleets an dsuch.

Fleets are not new in strategy games but the way we're doing it is. In GalCiv 2, you'll be able to build fleets. But the # of ships in a fleet is determined by your civilization's logistics ability (which you improve thorugh research and building). So you can take the path of building huge fleets of crummy ships or try to have a handful of huge capital ships.

The biggest game mechanic change though is the way we're doing the planets. The planet handling in GalCiv 1 was pretty lame IMO. Each planet was assigned a planet class from 1 to 30. The higher the number th better. Anyone who got a class 20 planet could just sit back and benefit hugely from it without any real skill. So the player who managed to go around and get the best planets from the start had a huge advantage.

By contrast, in GalCiv 2 you will still have classes of planets (1 thorugh 40) but this number now determined how many usable "grid blocks" on the planet surface are available to build on. So now it won't just be a matter of building every last thing in the game but rather what you choose to build and where on the planet you build it. Plus, certain grid blocks will have things like ruins and mineral deposits and what not that if you build the right structure on that grid block you'll be able to really get a lot of beneift from the planet.