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Imperium Galactica II
By James Cobb

The population’s morale turns sour if starved, cold, overtaxed or overworked. Managing these things is the old balancing act of pacing taxes with improvements. Factories, research centers and defenses round out planet improvements.

Buildings are erected by going to the planet’s surface, clicking on an icon and getting another pull-down menu. The selection is dragged over the surface until it fits into the city matrix.

A tank factory is located on a planet surface

Production, on the other hand, starts on the starmap by opening an icon that brings up a split production screen. Four different queues of tanks and four different queues of spacecraft are possible with four different production options each.

Production of space craft begins

The difference between creating buildings and producing vehicles represents a painful; flaw in the game. Each process has its own separate maze of command options. The designers may have felt they were doing us a favor by providing many different ways of doing that same thing but have really only confused us.

On top of this, the pause and three different speeds give a sense of discontinuity to play. Sure, auto-build will run the planets and the game begins to move but the player must stop and correct the mistakes or simply become an observer.

Secondary planetary activities include research, trading, diplomacy and spying. The research tree is divided into three groups: space craft, tank and building. Advances require increasing number of research centers, credits and previous technology. Naturally, falling behind in any area spells doom but upgrading and designing new ships and tanks is an enjoyable sub-game.

Trading is sterile. Itinerant traders offer vehicles for purchase. The player hits them with a business fee if a trade center and a bank are present. The supply and demand model is non-existent between races. Diplomacy is the stock choice of alliances, threats and deals between contacted races.

Spying is enjoyable. Spies are rated for four different abilities. Once hired, a good spy not only collects data but can wreak such havoc through sabotage that invasion forces merely clean up after the fact.

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