Overview
Imperium Galactica 2 falls into the rather small family of 4x
real-time strategy games. What this means in Imperium Galactica's case is that you play the game in real time, until it becomes overwhelming, then you slow down and paused the game until you're caught up. This essentially turned IG2 back into a turn-based strategy game.
Like most 4x strategy games, in Imperium Galactica 2 you're tasked with building an empire in an effort to defeat everyone else in the galaxy. You do this through trade, espionage, research, colonization and most importantly conquest.
One of the more interesting features of IG2 is the interaction between space and the surface of planets. Pure space battles would happen as you might expect, with the game scaling down into a smaller RTS map where your ships fight it out against the opposing side's ships. Planetary conquests, however, are a bit more intricate. The first step in taking over a planet is to take control of the space surrounding the planet. This happens very much like any other space battle, except that planets themselves can have surface to space weapons. This means that defenders can use planetary defenses as additional units to take out attacking ship, and attacking ships will have to destroy any planetary defences before a ground assault can take place. To add a bit of realism, this weapons fire between space and a planet's surface will take a about 10 seconds, in real time, for ordinance to reach it's target.
Ground combat, by contrast, is much more muted. Each side has a number of generic ground units that attack the other side's identical looking ground units in a city/colony style environment. Once only one side's units remain, that empire is declared the victor and now has control of the planet.
Races
- Kra'hen Empire – As part of a brutal and bloodthirsty race, your race has a fetish for collecting the heads of your enemies (as soon will be revealed in the gameplay videos) and is entering the galaxy occupied by the other seven races in the game. As Imperator, your objective is to do whatever is necessary to appease your God-Emperor. His orders - to eliminate all other races from the galaxy, and bring their heads to him!
- Solarian Federation – Legend tells of four "Tears" (Data Crystals) strewn across the galaxy by your ancestors that have the power to make the Human race invincible, including ressurecting their dead leader. Representing the humans of the far-future, your Solarian Empire must recover these Tears through diplomacy, trade, and war. It is eventually discovered that many of the other races in the game such as the Iberon, Godan, and Toluen, were genetically-altered humans adapted to conform to specific climates.
- Shinari Republic – As the weakest race militarily, the Shinari Republic resorts to espionage and trade to turn things to their advantage. Upon encountering the Kra'hen, you must aid the Solarians in uniting all the other races in the galaxy to face this common threat. But when the Kra'hen are defeated, you turn down the Solarian Federation's offer for a galaxy-wide alliance because "war is good for profit" - instead, you must somehow reanimate the mad Solarian Emperor Kaileron, whose clout and radical views would certainly plunge the galaxy back into conflict.
Multiplayer
Imperium Galactica 2 can be played over either a TCP/IP Direct Connection or by IRC network. While similar in almost every respect, IG2 limits players to only one playing speed while in a multiplayer and disables the ability to pause the game.
Cheats
Run the game with the command "setconsole", then during gameplay, press "~" and enter the following in the command console for the desired effect.
ghettoblaster All Spacecraft
shootem All Weapons
dienodie God Mode
splasher Water View Mode
Requirements
Pentium II 233 MHz, 32MB of RAM and 350MB Hard Drive Space. The game will also need to patched to at least v1.08 in order to run on Windows XP and the v1.14 (unofficial) patch also fixes numerous graphics and memory issues present in the original game.
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